deliverusfromsburb:

geejaysmith:

It’s less about the thing in and of itself and more of the underlying attitude to it all, and I think it speaks to differing perspectives of the writers Hussie and Pratchett (wow, two authors turn out to be two very different people! Who knew). Discworld, or at least what comparatively little I’ve read of it so far (the City Watch books, Wee Free Men, Reaper Man, the Hogfather film, the quotes that float across my dashboard, what Kat tells me about) seems to have an agenda with lambasting the very notion of Chosen Ones. Sam Vimes starts off as a Gutter Punk McNobody and thinks of himself as a class traitor when he comes into wealth and power. He detests the idea of kings, of people elevated to a position above others by virtue of their birth. He spends a revolution wondering if any of the city leaders know or even care about the mechanics of the city grinding to a halt during the mess. Carrot is the One True King of Anhk-Morpork, but by being a literal “man of the city” as a policeman he’s far happier and everyone is better off. Tiffany Aching was skeptical of how things were “supposed” to happen in fairy tales from the time she was very small. Rincewind, as Kat tells it, is a straight parody of his character archetype. There’s also a great quote from Nanny Ogg, who I’ve haven’t read about yet, “hating everything that makes people special, makes them better than others, makes them less than human.” (I’m paraphrasing, I’m on mobile, but I highly recommend finding the quote, it’s great)

In Homestuck you could almost think of the entire human race as getting stuffed in the refrigerator to be a motivating factor for the other characters. They’re sort of absolved into a singular entity, “the human race”, and anyone not connected to the player characters – who exist disconnected from their species, both by ectobiology and by the style of the narrative (remember how John never sees his neighbors?) – may as well not exist except as part of that collective. And while there’s subversions on the idea of a Chosen One, with how it puts a lot of undue stress on Dave and Jake, ultimately with how the story plays out, that characters “don’t matter” unless they’re the Alpha, that Karkat spends time learning to empathize with doomed doubles only to be ready to throw their lives away in the retcon, that Dave’s issues with dehumanizing his doomed doubles as a coping mechanism isn’t addressed, that the John and Roxy who die in the retcon are mentioned and then wooshed away, the consequences never brought up- I dunno, after you spend a few months falling asleep to Samuel “Wants to Arrest the Gods for For Not Doing It Right” Vimes, you notice these things. And you think about them, in the sense that it’s interesting to compare the two world views that come across in the stories. SBURB can be cruel, made crueler by Lord English, but Lord English didn’t write an ending where these things happen and nothing even pauses to consider the ramifications of say, speeding up time to reseed the planet Earth when there HAVE to be carapaces still living on it. That’s a choice made by the author, decided in part by his worldview and priorities in telling the story. And while a bunch of children never wanting to talk about how they feel of the extinction of their species is fine or coping with it by focusing on their own lives is fine, that’s whatever, they’re kids and they’re allowed to be like that, I can’t shake the feeling the story became more zeroed in on the characters Hussie decided “mattered”, while either disregarding or being actively cruel to the ones who didn’t. It’s not just in the literal text or even subtext of dialogue, it’s in the framing of scenes. It’s in choosing what to show and what not to. It’s in the visual language Homestuck communicates in. And again, at least in the beginning, there was a conscious stylistic choice to it. Now, I’m not so sure.

I mean, unless my theory about this being Caliborn’s fanfiction and the equivalent of a neutral ending in Undertale proves correct, but Hussie would have to be playing the long game for that to be the case and I’m personally past the point where I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt in that regard. And you know me, I am literally always looking for ways to justify my personal grievances with the retcon. That’s what happens when you kill my favorite characters to hit the reset button on the story I’ve been reading for 3 years on my McFreaking birthday, because I’m bitter and will never ever let it go.

I’m worn out so I can’t give this the response I’d like to, which would probably involve a lot of musing on the differences between ‘ideas authors convey through their narrative choices’ vs ‘ideas authors support by presenting characters championing those ideas’ and how Discworld and Homestuck measure up there, but I’d say the fate of offshoots and alternates and basically everyone but a handful of people in the end is the kind of thing that Discworld would portray as a horrible atrocity. Paradox space is a crime – one so big you live in it, maybe, but that doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t pay. And while I would accept the idea that the kids are so traumatized by everything they can’t bear to face the reality of the loss of their species, their universe, their host of alternate selves, by the end both they and the narrative treat those losses more as if they don’t matter at all. 

You haven’t gotten to the Witch arc yet, but Skaia is exactly the kind of villain Granny Weatherwax would go after, because she’d know exactly what it was up to immediately and tear it to shreds. 

Anyway, welcome to the ‘why doesn’t everyone have Pterry’s worldview’ level of Discworld Fan Hell. I don’t think there’s any escape.