For some reason I had the idea that SBURB will try to kill any extraneous people who get brought along into the game. Not supposed to be here, don’t need you messing around, die and get out of the way. Presumably this impression is from the beta session, but that was Bec Noir, and there is nothing normal about Bec Noir even by SBURB standards.
What SBURB tries to do with extraneous people is throw them in jail on Derse. Keep them out of the way, but offer them to the successful player as a bonus reward.
Now that I’ve thought of this it seems incredibly obvious.
some of the reasons homestuck meets the requirements of a traditional epic!
homestuck is a finely crafted piece of literature that deserves serious discussion and recognition, and it bothers me when people won’t acknowledge that.
Homestuck is the most important piece of literature of the 21st century so far.
I’ve compared Homestuck to Lost in the past, and I’ve oft seen Lost analyzed as a modern twist on the traditional epic. This just makes the comparison even more poignant!
Homestuck is such an incredible piece of literature. I wholeheartedly agree that it’s the most important piece in the 21st century so far. Absolutely.
I want to point out that the plot doesn’t just span civilizations, it spans both genre (space opera, urban fantasy, apocalyptic romp, let’s play, fable,) and medium (epistolary narrative, comic, webcomic, novel, video, videogame). It employs all the accumulated self-aware, self-critical traditions of the latter 20th century to launch into a uniquely self-aware 21st century narrative: it’s not a story that’s epic, it’s an epic about stories.
The narrator struggles for control over the telling with his own metaphorical selves, he’s his own protagonist, deuderagonist, and antagonist— all with the acknowledgement that they’re only controlling the telling, that the story has always been what it is, that they’ve always been part of it, that they’ve always been inside it— and this is also a story that’s written, in significant chunks, by reader suggestion. Are we outside the story? Yes. Maybe. No. The audience is part of the theater, the bard is part of the crowd.
What is Homestuck? By now, the question’s gone from joke to koan and it’s still a completely legitimate question. But if it isn’t an epic, it’s only because we haven’t invented the actual word for it yet.
(Me: sees your aspects as facets of reality theory and raises
this: Aspects as elements of the story, Light as thematic importance
(see aranea being aranea, vriska stealing importance and luck) Time as
well pacing but also the timeline of a story. Ect ect
YES!
YesYes!! YesYesYes ^u^ ^u^ ^u^
This is another Wonderful Frame for analyzing Homestuck, or thinking about the Aspects ^u^ The one thing I’d say is that while some –like Light, Time, Space, and Heart– are pretty directly and clearly related to literary concepts by the text, others are a bit more difficult to figure out; either because their representative characters get less “screen time”, or because the Literary Concepts the Aspect embodies are more esoteric and vague.
Like: I’ve always had a hard time figuring out what Life could represent in a Literary sense. Fef’s story is surrounded by all sorts of Fairy Tale tropes that she’s laser-focused on either escaping(her role as Princess) or subverting(bringing Sollux, her “Hero”, to life with a kiss, rather than the other way around), and Meenah was also focused on escaping and subverting the life planned for her, so THAT could possibly be Life’s Literary side: either subverting narrative, or the way characters can take on “a life of their own” when the author realizes they’d do C instead of the A they had planned for them, and how that can lead the plot in a whole different direction.
Blood’s another stumper for me in this regard …Though… taking a minute to think about it maybe it’s self-criticism? Like: Karkat is obvsl VERY self critical(in a way Kankri very much is not) but both of them are super-critical of the story-itself and the world Hussie, as author, has set it in. So you could think of Blood as being the Critical or Editorial Impulse? MAYBE??
And Breath’s a good example of an esoteric one. While John’s the protagonist, people are constantly telling him what to do in the narrative, and outside of it through the prompt(at least early in HS), so he’s rarely ever deciding anything for himself. His actions drive the story, but his actions aren’t “his”, so what exactly would that make Breath? Plot? Protagonists&Characters?? Is it something simpler and more obvs like Adventure Game Narratives??? Does it include all of these, or is it one thing that covers all of them?x4 Considering Rufioh with John, something you might call “The Irony of Protagonists” seem rather central to whatever Breath is: on the one hand they’re the “hero” of the story and their actions drive the plot; but on the other that also makes them the most controlled, puppeted, plot-significant, and thus least realistic&”free”, of all the characters in the story.
Rufioh(through many years of bad memory, obvsl, so maybe I’m misrepping this) was the center of the primary romantic drama in his Session(which in turn drove the Session), and many of his fellow Players either pursued him, or openly professed their attraction to him. In this respect, they saw him as sort of like the Protagonist of a Dating Sim. Seeing him as attractive they saw him as confident and a player; they cast a particular narrative and identity onto him based on their perspective of him. But that’s not how Rufioh experienced any of those events, or indeed his life. He felt powerless and disrespected throughout; pulled one way then another by both Horuss and Damara, constantly uncomfortable with the desires others expressed for him(and the disinterest of everyone in what he wanted), trapped by his social situation into conditions and roles he never really wanted, and always betraying himself and his own feelings through his lack of confidence, and the inability to take a stand it created. Even thousands and thousands of years later his friends are STILL giving him agency for events he felt were forced on him against his will, and casually hitting on him despite his clear discomfort with it seen in Meenah’s walkaround. So, while he is defined as the “Protagonist” of his story according to those “reading” and telling it, he felt like all he ever did was just what other people told him to do, and chafes against the identity others have forced on him, which he has no control over. In this respect, he experienced all of that as a “Target” of a Dating-Sim; to be dated and wooed, but with no agency of his own.
While much more extreme(and negative), that experience shares some notable qualities with John’s. It suggests that Breath might be “The Illusion of Freedom” literary characters have, and Rufioh’s story suggests audience collaboration is a pivotal aspect of this illusion.
I love him because out of all the iterations of Jack Noir in the world of Homestuck, Spades Slick is the most morally upstanding. Oh, he’s still a huge fucking murderer and a caustic asshat with no regard for life or really any social skills to speak of, who thinks himself the center of the universe and won’t hesitate to get rid of anyone who gets in his way… But he’s the only Jack who ever showed empathy for another person of his own volition.
Bec Noir’s love of Jade is artificial, forced onto him from the prototyping. Union Jack doesn’t have any agency of his own at all for the majority of the time. Spades Slick goes out of his way to do this.
I’ve always believed that the strongest way to convey a scene is not through self-explanatory or long winded dialogue, nor is it through looking at still establishing shots of things that aren’t moving. It’s having the context of a scene inform the meaning behind the actions taken by the characters.
To break that down a little more, it’s about A Person the Audience Knows who Does Something with Another Person We Know that Changes Something Between Them Forever
Spades Slick is a character we know to be crass, evil, mean, angry all the time, the kind of person who calls people he doesn’t like “coffin stuffers” and feels no remorse in killing them. Karkat we know is an asshole who’s full of himself and judgmental of everyone around him.
In this scene, we learned that Karkat has been hiding something about himself that he cannot change, but that fills him with shame and makes him feel like an enormous weirdo. He overcompensates for this enormous insecurity by being a pompous asshole. When Spades Slick initially meets him, he stabs Karkat in the gut, and Karkat doesn’t even care about the wound, he just worries that this chess guy is going to tattle on him and reveal his secret that he’s been tightly guarding for all his life.
Instead, Spades Slick decides to cut open the palm of his hand and let Karkat know that he’s in the exact same boat. We never see another Jack Noir willingly, and with sound mind, comfort a child ever again. This is the only time. And that has just colored my perception of Spades Slick forever, because while he is an enormous dickwheel, he’s also the only Noir who naturally has a soft side.
I’ve commented on this before and I know exactly why it is, but it’s still kind of hilarious that out of all the things that Vriska did (murders and mind control and lying and betrayal and hubris and really stupid decisions and general assholery and narrative hijacking), what bothers me the most are the things she did to Tavros – except for killing him, which is the one part she actually felt bad about but also the… cleanest thing she ever did to him.
The absolute healthiest that Vriska’s feelings towards Tavros got in canon was “angry, so I’ll kill him. *kills him* haha I win”.
its been years so i might be misremembering but wasn’t it also in self defence, like she was about to get lanced for murders she (for once) didn’t do
He was trying to kill her, but that was part of the reason she was angry, I think, rather than something she considered a credible threat.
…Also I think it wasn’t because of the murders, I think Tavros was first of those – I think he was nominally trying to kill her because she admitted she’d helped engineer the creation of Bec Noir?
that was it, exactly, and Tavros was not remotely a threat to her at the time (her being god tier and him being barely able to walk down a flight of stairs)
She was annoyed that of all times he had to pick that moment to grow a spine, when it was the least useful to anyone.
eeeh, see, the thing is it wasn’t useful because her deeds were done, but it was the right thing to do as far as he was concerned.
she actually set out to cause the horrible situation they were stuck in, and not only proudly confessed to it, but also stated her intent to go face Bec Noir alone (which as we know would only result in a total party kill). At that point it wasn’t about him or what he could do, or whether it would solve their current problem; she had to be stopped because she had to be stopped, and she would only stop once dead (as far as he was aware).
vriska was pissed because he didn’t take a stand on her terms, or didn’t choose to develop a spine and fight the enemies she picked for him to fight, on her terms. She didn’t contrive this scenario for him to show his “courage”; she didn’t control the situation at all. Simply, when she was about something else, he decided to fight her, and it wasn’t for her or about her. It was for himself.
that’s why she killed him. and that’s why she was unhappy and confused about it afterwards.
I can’t even be mad at her about any of the Bec Noir stuff, it’s just so. Completely divorced from reality.
–Although it is VERY interesting to me that she gives the same “I encouraged it to happen, but it would have happened anyway, so no fault attaches to me” excuse that Doc Scratch gave to her.
Okay, so, literally how come everyone in the comic and even outside of it, in the fandom, is ignoring John Egbert’s depression?? How is everyone ignoring his blatant self hatred, expressed clearly through the writing on both the walls of his room on Earth and Prospit??? How come that nobody notices, in spite of popular opinion that John cries at literally anything, that the only time John has cried in the comic, out of actual sadness at a tragic event, was when Jade died and John only she’d a single, restrained tear.
Like???? This really ain’t adding up???
I get it, everyone has a favorite character and not everybody is going to focus on John Egbert specifically, but!!! Everyone’s legit turning a blind eye to what is so clearly written on the walls, literally! John’s hostility on the ship might not be the result of cabin fever, when you realize that depression in young men often take the form of aggression and anger. John’s lack of tears or outwardly showing sadness other than him saying “aw that’s sad” makes a lot more sense if you think about the fact that he repressed it, might not be able to cope with negative emotions, or never even learned how to express them in the first place!
And think about the credits, it’s time to face facts: Nobody’s come to John Egbert’s birthday party in years, but his party banner still remains up, nearly in tatters… He’s alone. In fact, I don’t think anyone’s seen John Egbert in a VERY long time. They’ve forgotten. Rose, Dave, Jade, Karkat. They all forgot. Everyone. Not out of malice or hatred. But because John is the Heir of Breath. He inherits freedom, even freedom from the ones he keeps himself tied down for. He’s all alone and doesn’t fit anywhere. His father is gone and so are all his friends.
Nobody’s reaching out to him, no ones contacted him. He’s all alone. He’s a young man stuck in his house, doomed to repeat long day after long day once again, but this time there’s no one on the other side of a computer screen to make it seem bearable. No one to make it seem that he isn’t so alone after all.
And even the ones who have made the long days seem not so long have hurt him, in spite of not meaning to. On the lily pad, Dave implies that John and Rose didn’t have much to complain about with their guardians, but that’s simply not true. Rose was raised by an alcoholic who, despite her genuine love for her child, was neglectful. John was raised by a good man, a good father, but not a perfect man. Instead of trying to seek treatment for the strangle, self-loathing messages and drawings on his son’s wall, he buys harlequinn-styled paintings and jester sculptures.
Then, Dave and Karkat both push Teresa’s black flirting onto John, which makes John EXTREMELY UNCOMFORTABLE. This makes John so uncomfortable that John EXPLICITLY STATE that he is going to BURY THOSE FEELINGS DOWN AND TRY TO NEVER THINK ABOUT THEM AGAIN. And what does Dave, John’s friend, say?? How does Dave respond to something that sounds almost exactly like a cry for help?? He says that it’s a “weenie thing to do” and wishes John luck with that.
And you know? This would all be okay, if it were the fact that people in the fandom acknowledged it. But there are so few that can’t accept the fact that he’s been forgotten, that he’s depressed, that he’s been depressed for a very long time and it’s only getting worse.
But, then again, if John’s friends all so easily missed the warning signs, who could blame us for also turning a blind eye to what is right in front of us?
karkat and sollux were basically best fucking friends with huge messy humiliating crushes on each other and i feel like somehow not enough people ever really got around to exploring the potential there even though it was one of the earliest and most obvious ships amongst the trolls
like. karkat, who already can’t separate his feelings for others into quadrants, is simultaneously envious of, worried about, and comfortable with sollux. he wants his friend to take better care of himself and wishes he would move closer so they could see each other more, but is also petty and rude and insulting in that way teenage boys so often are. he’s bitter that sollux is better at coding than he is, but also admires him for this fact, but also resents that such skill is wasted on a hot mess like sollux, but also wants the best for his good pal. meanwhile sollux teases the hell out of karkat because (1) he’s an insecure asshole to basically everyone and (2) he wants to push karkat to be better, which sollux knows he can be.
they know each other well enough that they are able to be at least kind of open with their genuine feelings, even if in a fairly roundabout way mixed with dark humor and deprecation of both themselves and one another. they’re basically always black flirting – sometimes as a joke, sometimes because they’re actually pissed at each other, and sometimes to cover the legitimate concern and affection they share. and no matter how vitriolic they get, they’re always reassured of their friendship because they’re just a couple of miserable, dorky 13-year-olds clinging to each other in the face of their uncertain but surely unpleasant fates at the hands of the harrowing world in which they live.
me roasting the everloving fuck out of homestuck, as is common in a rather unhealthy blackrom
This is very good and very true. It’s like Hussie just assumed Act 7 would be done in a few months and then when we realized animation takes time he just stalled forever.
OP is also leaving out
* Pre-scratch and post-scratch Jane meet up, but don’t do anything interesting (or even speak onscreen?)
* [S] Cascade ends with the heroes killing the Condesce, who is immortal. The music even turns sinister at the end to call attention to the fact that the Condesce can’t actually die, except nvm she can I guess because the comic’s over.
* Aranea mind-controls all the ghosts to their deaths, and none of the ghosts care about it. Once she dies again and presumably returns to the afterlife she is never seen or mentioned again
* Rose actually complains that she never figured out what “play the rain” even means, let alone did it, and the fact that every’s character arc has fizzled out is lampshaded and handwaved with “real people don’t have character arcs” in a realistic story where half the cast died at least once and all the humans are gods.
* Speaking of missing character arcs, Rose never meets her Denizen. (Neither does Dave, unless you count Davesprite)
* The main four kids never work together, because Jade is asleep the whole climax and, when she does wake up, tries to break up a fight between Bec Noir and some other dog she’s never seen before because she’s literally unaware the final battle is happening and there’s anything more important she could be doing.
* Karkat, the secondary protagonist of the comic, does nothing of importance for the whole of Act 6 and sits the final battle out after his Dream Self is killed as a gag
* It is established that Meulin is being mind controlled by her evil boyfriend. No one notices or cares and it’s never mentioned again.
* It is established that her evil boyfriend is working for Lord English and forcing her to do the same.
No one notices or cares and it’s never mentioned again.
* Damara is also working for Lord English and no one cares.
* This means that three out of twenty-four members of the ghost army is secretly working for Lord English. Luckily, they all forget to do anything to help him. Or maybe they don’t and actually do turn on the army. I don’t know what happened because it happened offscreen.
* The Ghost army even still exists without Vriska and Aranea mind-controlling it. Everyone just decided “whatever” and stuck around
* It is established that Mituna has brain damage because he had to push his powers past his limits in a Mysterious Event for everything to succeed. Fans theorize he sent his Prospit flying off so it could land in the final session and provide Quest Beds to everyone who still needed one. The actual answer is that it’s never mentioned again.
* John has a tearful reuninon with Jane’s dad, who he’s never actually met before
* Speaking of which, Jane’s dad exists in a timeline where his biological mother wasn’t around until he was an adult. This is never addressed or explained.
* Aradia’s whole character in Act 6 is that she is a dispassionate observer who kind of wants to see reality be destroyed just for the spectacle of it but whose primary desire is to just not die again and thus she’s sitting the plot out. She then leads the charge against a god-killing monstrosity. Makes sense!
* A few pages before the final battle, Dave comments that the kids have never even met Lord English and have no real reason to oppose him. They’re never given one, except the post-credits explanation of “John was bored”
* The comic begins updating on Snapchat. The Carapacians kidnap Jane and hold her prisoner on the moon or something but no one cares about the snapchat comcis so it just kind of stops.
That’s really the fitting end for Homestuck, isn’t it? Canceled mid-storyline because no one cared enough to install SnapChat, yet still trucking nonetheless.
My favorite is nepeta never having a strong purpose, other then the fact that she had a crush on karkat. Hussie then throwing us hints about her confronting this with her ancestors connection with the signless, her cut scene with jasper hinting that she was to come back to life to address this, and never fucking following through with jack shit THE TWO TIMES SHE HAD BEEN REANINATED.
Don’t forget:
Cronus was prophesied to be important against Lord English, which never happened
John was prophesied to die heroically, which afaik never happened
Gamzee’s character had a fuckton of unresolved questions
folks who like to argue with gay people when we say “this character is gay/a lesbian” by saying “NO, theyre BI, here is an itemized list of every interaction theyve ever had with the opposite sex, you are committing BI ERASURE” are hilariously pathetic but the MOST pathetic are the people who think vriska is bi because she had a crush on nicolas cage
between john’s appreciation of nic cage in his dogged “heterosexual” way, vriska’s fake crush on john, and both of them using nicolas cage as a human figure they use to assert their heterosexuality by reacting to his traditionally masculine roles by respecting and mimicking him (john) and feeling swooned by him (vriska) it’s safe to say they’re both gay and their respective relationships with human actor nic cage are manifestations of their performative straightness
vriska actually wants to be a big strong hero and john thinks nic cage is fucking sexy. both do everything in their power to deny their truth up to and including dating each other for 12 minutes. they’re both gay
just moving along like everyone else 