caligulasAquarium

once, once, i knew how to talk to you. once, once, but not anymore. hear the sirens call me home...

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

We Were All Wrong About Homestuck

Part One: You've Been Tricked!

(Ao3 Mirror)

"The human world is full of weak-minded people, who think they're as clever as can be and are convinced that it's terribly important to persuade even the children that Fantastica doesn't exist.”

Homestuck is the postmodernism Final Boss, and that's why nobody ever knew what the hell was going on in it... UNTIL NOW.

This is an essay about Homestuck's philosophy, its theses on reality and growing up, what it means to live a good life, why the ending feels "off", why anything ever happens. This essay explores Homestuck's Deep Lore, the bottom of the iceberg, its most foundational core values. This essay definitively defines classes and aspects, in accordance with all known canon and with cited sources. This essay aims to convince you that Homestuck was always good. In this essay I will -

So, a few things to make clear before we continue. First of all, I am ONLY concerned with canon Homestuck, Hussie's Formspring answers, and his book commentary. I am not concerned at all with any supplementary material, the Epilogues, or HSBC, which are all dubiously canon at best. Trust me, there's enough to discuss within canon Homestuck.

Second, I'm going to be talking a lot about how some interpretations are "wrong", etc. I want to be clear here that, apropos Death of the Author, interpretations of the text that were not intended by the author are valid. However, the scope of this essay is extremely narrow; I am primarily formalist, dabbling in postmodernist reading as necessary. So, just because I say something is "wrong" does not mean that I'm saying something is "invalid" or trying to tell people they shouldn't do/believe something. I'm just proposing my own analysis, and hoping that some of these ideas will be interesting, and it just happens to be a reading with very strict definitions of "correct" and "incorrect". 

Basically, please keep an open mind and don't take anything personally. I am not attacking anybody, I am just proposing an uncommon interpretation. People who make this weird are getting blocked.

Without further ado:

WHAT IS POSTMODERNISM?

I've actually had people argue with me before about Homestuck being postmodern before, so let me just... get this out of the way. Here's Hussie from the book commentary.

And because Homestuck is a neverending metaserpent always eating its own postmodern tail, here we have a printing of such a story, with even more "author notes" providing additional layers of quippy blithering.

I'm not going to get too into the weeds with defining terms you can look up on Wikipedia, since we have a LOT of ground to cover. However, I need us all to be on the same page here, so I'm going to start by defining some terminology.

Postmodernism is a literary genre that's defined primarily by its self-awareness. In other words, it's meta as hell. Postmodern stories are aware that they are fictional stories, that stories have tropes, that other stories exist, that the author exists, that the audience exists, and that the audience is also aware of all these things. It's defined by irony, intertextuality, metanarrative, unreliable narration, and non-linear storytelling (don't worry, we'll define these terms, too). What I'm saying is that Homestuck didn't exactly invent the wheel.

Something important to note about postmodernism is that its highly ironic, referential nature gives it a reputation - not entirely unearned - for being pretentious and cynical, so concerned with gazing into its own navel and commenting on the concepts of literature themselves that it fails to say anything meaningful, constructive, true, or beautiful. This idea is going to come up again later, so put a pin in it. 

You can consider the dynamic between modernism, the pessimistic movement that came before postmodernism, which often lamented the death of culture and the erosion of traditional morals and sincerity, and postmodernism, to be something like this:

For further reading on the topic, there's an excellent essay here regarding how Homestuck's usage of quotes from The Waste Land by TS Eliot and Nabokov's Pale Fire make it a direct answer to modernist pessimism: LINK

Irony is, when speaking about postmodernism, "saying something to mean the opposite thing". For example, acting like a bad movie is really awesome in order to drive home how bad it is. It has a lot of overlap with sarcasm and parody, though irony is not always one of the two. It's a general sense of eye-rolling self-awareness that goes hand-in-hand with postmodernism's "it's all been done before" attitude. 

The crazy thing about irony, and the difficult part to grasp, is that it stacks. You can be ironic about being ironic about being ironic. The problem is, at some point, you lose the plot and stop knowing if anything is true or genuine or significant. This is called "irony poisoning", and is also something postmodernism is often (correctly) criticized for.

Homestuck deliberately plays with irony. It uses its obfuscatory nature to hide its sincerity, its meaning, its truths. Homestuck is like a mine field, where the mines are penis jokes, and also Jigsaw is there taunting you, but it's cool because we all think it's funny that Jigsaw is there. He is going to cut off your legs though. 

Intertextuality is a big one. It refers to a work not only being aware of other works, but reliant upon them to establish its own themes. It covers things like references, parodies, and pastiche (the fancy literary term for references). For example, a lot of Homestuck's story is reliant upon the bunny from Con Air. We'll get into this more later, but Homestuck legitimately has a required reading list in order to fully understand it. I'll do my best to make this essay legible even if you haven't read them, summarizing where I must, but nothing's a true substitute for reading them yourself.

I'm trapped in this attic like the kid from The NeverEnding Story was. That kid was reading a long fantasy story in that attic as a framing device for the "real story," where a bunch of crazy stuff happened, and a sad horse drowned in a swamp at some point. Also, as the kid kept reading, the lines between the fiction and reality started blurring, so it was a similar kind of metaclusterfuck as Homestuck. (Well, not really, but whatever.) Except the guy in the attic in this case isn't reading the story that's coming to life and consuming his reality, he's writing it, while throwing a big tantrum, and screaming at a wolf-head trophy. So that's why The Neverending Story is a pretty apt "mascot movie" for the author-insert layer of Homestuck, which also does an incredible job of making the reader suspect that its story quite possibly will never end. The NeverEnding Story themes have a way of surfacing any time I show up in Homestuck.

Metanarrative is the idea that a story can be like an onion and have layers. A traditional story might operate only on two levels: the actions of the characters, and maybe some greater theme or moral. For example, Cinderella is a story about a poor abused girl eventually marrying a prince, and it can also be described as a story about how goodness and kindness and small feet will be rewarded. Postmodernism takes this idea and stretches it as far as it can go; David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest has footnotes, with entire stories taking place entirely in the footnotes. Homestuck has its own webcomic within a webcomic (SBaHJ represent).

But metanarrative also refers to the idea that all of these small-scope stories add up to some greater whole, beyond a basic or simple theme. As such, to properly understand Homestuck, one must keep in mind these greater, metanarrative ideas, and allow those to guide their interpretations of smaller events. One must think in terms of symbols and layers.

Unreliable narration refers to a character within the story being intentionally manipulative, unconsciously biased, and/or genuinely unaware of something in order to trick the audience. Now, the line between an unreliable narrator and a character just being incorrect is a blurry one, but this is the major difference: when a character is just incorrect, the way the audience is meant to feel about the story's objective reality is never in question: it's either clearly telegraphed to the audience that the character is wrong about reality for the purposes of dramatic irony, or else that the character appears to be correct and the audience is meant to believe them (and then we'll both be shocked later when they turn out to be wrong). Meanwhile, an unreliable narrator OBFUSCATES how we're meant to feel about the story's reality, and understanding that reality can only occur if the audience rejects the narrator's version of events, which the story itself usually doesn't do. Hence, this meme:

That's what that's referring to. If you believe an unreliable narrator and take them at face value, you will simply be wrong about the story's reality. You'll note that EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER IN HOMESTUCK is an unreliable narrator. If you are not, at all times, interrogating Homestuck in a dark basement room with a baseball bat, you are literally going to have entirely the wrong idea about its objective reality, and this is why the fandom can't even agree on basic shit like whether or not Gamzee was evil all along. 

Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's take a look at Homestuck's ending, which - apropos Homestuck's circular nature - is also its beginning.

THE ENDING IS SHITTY ON PURPOSE

Here's a question for you: who is the author of Homestuck?

It's a trick question, of course. Andrew Hussie is the obvious answer, and in our reality, this is true; however, is this still true of the diegetic reality of Homestuck? 

No. Andrew Hussie, who is also a character in Homestuck, initially appears to be the author:

I CONJURE THIS INTREPID FANTASYSCAPE WITH TEARS BLED FROM THE WISDOM-WEARY EYES OF FIFTY THOUSAND IMAGINARY MAGICIANS. I PULL HEAVY DRAGS FROM THE BRUMES OF INSPIRATION WITH ENCHANTED BELLOWS MARAUDED FROM A GUILD OF CHURLISH MYTHICAL DWARVES.

He wrestles with Doc Scratch for control over the story when Doc briefly takes over, calling Doc's meddling in Alternian history "troll fanfiction":

Before he's shot and killed by Lord English:

And Caliborn takes over the story:

ALLOWING HIM TO OFFICIALLY AND PERMANENTLY ASSUME CONTROL OF. A PROPERTY OF HIS EXPERIENTIAL CONTINUUM WHICH I HAVE REASON TO BELIEVE IS CALLED. "THE NARRATIVE".

And, because Lord English is ALREADY HERE, he turns out to be responsible for everything that ever happens:

uu: I THINK PART OF MY PERSONAL QUEST. IS TO BECOME AT EASE WITH THE FORCES OF INEVITABILITY. uu: INEVITABILITY THAT ALL THINGS SHOULD AND WILL FALL IN MY FAVOR. THAT ALL CAUSALITY ANSWERS TO ME. AND THAT ALL OUTCOMES NOT ONLY SERVE ME. BUT CONSIST OF MY BEING. uu: SO I FEEL THAT. THE MORE I GROW IN POWER. uu: THE MORE STUFF IT SHOULD TURN OUT I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR. uu: UP TO AND INCLUDING. EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENS. uu: EVEN IF IT HAS TO BE. uu: RETROACTIVELY.

Meaning that character!Hussie was, in fact, an unwitting pawn of Lord English the entire time, disposed of when he outlived his usefulness. This is, in fact, corroborated by Hussie in the book commentary:

AH, the character, as the cartoon avatar for The Creator, has a sort of arc, I guess you could call it. [...] More to the point, he is set upon a long-term trajectory from being the supreme goofball-savant in absolute command of his craft to gradually becoming a victim of his creation, as much at the mercy of the forces it unleashes as he was the original architect of their unleashing.

Which means that the author of Homestuck is, and has always been, Lord English.

In a while (next book) Doc Scratch himself is going to take over narration of the story. He's a villainous alt-author figure. This moment where I'm sort of pretending to be him, typing in his white text while also getting more whimsical and appearing to take my duties as an author less seriously, is just another leg in AH's long journey where he transitions from "the author as a limited, goofy, fallible human being" to "the author as a nefarious, destructive, non-human entity, which thrives in his absence, if not outright trying to kill/replace him, and itself has several different forms." Stuff like this generally tends to read as more stupid monkey business, but the individual segments start making a lot more sense when you start reading them as installments of "the increasingly derelict, maniacal author is gradually phasing himself out of control over the story, and/or is BEING phased out of control over the story by dark forces beyond his control."

And just to get this out of the way, Lord English is a symbol for oppressors: fascism, the patriarchy, abusers, and predators. I feel like this one is obvious enough that I don't need to back it up, but here's a quote explicitly describing how some of the souls in his cocktail were chosen for their toxically masculine traits:

I think when the time comes to show the douchebag cocktail stuck inside Cal, there's a brief temptation to regard it as an odd, semi-random melange of characters. But there are several layers of logic to the guys who all combine to form his personality. Much of the logic orbits around these negative traits associated with men, or more specifically, the "toxically masculine" aspects often linked to certain male personalities.

So, every time I say LE did this or that, mentally replace "LE" with "fascism, the patriarchy, abusers, and predators". Let's practice: LE usurped the story from "the author". LE was in control of the narrative all along. LE set up the characters to fail in order to perpetuate his own existence. LE made the ending shitty on purpose. Got it? Awesome. Let's get used to thinking in terms of symbols and layers, it'll help make things make sense.

But what does it mean that LE has seized control of the narrative? What is "the narrative," in Homestuck's cosmology?

Well, first of all, I want to make something very clear: "the narrative" is NOT a superpower in and of itself. There is no mystical force called "narrative" that bestows characters reality-altering abilities. "The narrative" just IS reality - more specifically, "the narrative" represents the idea that reality is like a story.

What is a memory, if not a story we tell ourselves about the past? What is a goal or dream or prophecy, if not a story we tell ourselves about the future? What is our identity, if not a story we tell ourselves about ourselves? 

We fundamentally experience reality as if it is a story - a string of meaningfully connected events, heroes and villains, rising and falling action - and so when a character claims to have control over the narrative, or serves as a narrator, all that this means is that the character who does so has some heightened awareness of reality, and therefore, more ability to directly act upon it. You could say - and this is a word that is going to keep coming up - that they possess some greater degree of enlightenment. Here's Hussie outright corroborating this connection between the awareness the story's villains have of "the narrative" (reality), and their effectiveness as villains:

As I've said before, the more powerful and villainous a character is, the higher up the metaladder they reside. Jack is higher than most characters due to his utilization of a Fourth Wall and appearance in narrative proximity to the author himself (my orange fingers typing his name). Doc is much higher than that. The first true alt-author of the story, but not the last.

So, with that in mind, what is the ending that LE, our author, writes for us? Simply put: it's one where everyone loses.

The way time works in Homestuck is that, in order for reality to continue existing, every time loop must close. If a choice is made that would result in a time loop failing to close, then the timeline becomes doomed and withers away into oblivion. The exact sequence of events that causes loops to close is governed by karma/Mind, which we will get to later.

Note that all other abilities are fundamentally subject to the laws of Space and Time. For example, though John's retcon powers allow him to flee doom indefinitely, and bestow a similar unmooring to anyone he wishes, he isn't actually able to unmoor reality itself: the post-retcon timeline he creates (under the guidance of a Mind player) not only satisfies all extant time loops up to that point, but is, in fact, in itself a requirement to satisfy other time loops, such as the creation of LE in the first place. Ergo: while John can escape doom for as long as he wants, the reality he lands in must still fundamentally satisfy the laws of Time, or else it will become a doomed reality and wither away.

AG: Think of it like circulatory system, where the veins and capillaries that do not help the overall flow of 8lood through the system are likely to wither and die. Those are doomed offshoots.

One of the largest time loops in the series, spanning from the far past of Alternia to the far future of Earth C, is the life and times of LE, Doc Scratch, and Lil Cal. One of the last chronological points in the story is the stop-motion battle Caliborn describes, where the eight humans challenge him to a battle, and eventually four rowdy souls get sucked into Lil Cal, who is banished into the void. This becomes LE, whose influence via Doc Scratch reaches to one of the earliest chronological points in time, the far past of Alternia.

This is the true form of LE's "narrative control", and what Doc Scratch means when he defines the alpha timeline as being the one that boasts exclusive rights both to his birth and to his death: via the time loops needed for reality to remain stable, LE has fundamentally bound reality to his own existence. There is only one viable reality: the one where John takes Caliborn up on his taunt in the end credits.

From there, we can easily trace the trajectory of the rest of the cast:

The Black Hole is detonated by God Tier!Calliope, thus rendering navigation through the Furthest Ring impossible, as all previously successful attempts to do so were done via either the light of the Green Sun or the cracked bubbles, both of which are now caught in the Black Hole's event horizon.

Dirk, Jane, Jake, and Roxy are trapped on Earth C in the far future, in Caliborn's session, with no way out.

John, Rose, Dave, and Jade, who are deployed from the House Juju, along with all other immortal characters, like Vriska and Aradia, are now trapped at the Black Hole with no way out.

"But wait, John's retcon powers" - it's implied that when past!John inherited (as an Heir does) retcon powers from future!John, this removed those powers from future!John, as the two never came to view the ability as more than just "something they inherited" (more on this when we get into Gnosticism). Therefore, they are no longer available.

(It's lowkey confirmed that they're definitely trapped at the Black Hole, given that Terezi has spent literal years scouring the Furthest Ring looking for Vriska to no avail.)

All characters left behind on Earth C, with the exception of Calliope, are mortal and die of old age, if not sooner.

Calliope must be parted from the Ring of Life at some point (leading to her immediate death), as Caliborn has the Ring of Void in his final boss fight, and each ring can only exist when the other one disappears.

Earth C is completely lifeless and abandoned by the time Caliborn and Calliope are born, implying that the new humans and trolls were eventually wiped out, too. This also implies that GCATavrosprite and Jasprosesprite^2 perish at some point, as well.

Now, of course, there is grey, undefined space within this ending, but it is overall intentionally bleak, hopeless, and shadowed by a feeling of inevitability. Remember what LE symbolizes? Well, this ending represents his triumph: a Total Party Kill, rocks fall everyone dies ending, where reality is fundamentally preserved, but everyone - including LE himself - is ultimately destroyed. Ultimate annihilation, the logical endpoint of the forces LE represents in real life.

In fact, I wouldn’t make such a sweeping claim without backing it up. This circular ending is, in fact, an echo from one of Homestuck’s intertextual foundations: The Neverending Story. The Neverending Story is, itself, a nested story-within-a-story - a boy named Bastian reads a book called The Neverending Story, and is eventually directly drawn into it.

But there’s a really interesting passage within it, before he’s drawn in: in order to tempt him into doing so, a character within the book, the Childlike Empress, goes to see the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, a figure who is, despite being a character within the book, the one who writes and records it. And there, she demands that he tell the story of The Neverending Story.

The Old Man wrote and said: "If the Neverending Story contains itself, then the world will end with this book." And the Childlike Empress answered: "But if the hero comes to us, new life can be born. Now the decision is up to him." "You are ruthless indeed," the Old Man said and wrote. "We shall enter the Circle of Eternal Return, from which there is no escape.”

And so he begins, causing a permanent, recursive loop.

Once again she started on her way to find the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, once again she climbed the ladder of letters and entered the egg, once again the conversation between her and the Old Man was related word for word, and once again the Old Man of Wandering Mountain began to write and tell the Neverending Story. At that point the story began all over again -- unchanged and unchangeable -- and ended once again with the meeting between the Childlike Empress and the Old Man of Wandering Mountain, who began once again to write and tell the Neverending Story…

But, yes, I understand that for most people reading this essay, intertextuality alone isn’t going to hold much water. As such, I’ll list rapidfire a few more diegetic pieces of evidence that the canon ending is worryingly sinister, cast in the shadow of conspiracy.

First, the canon ending of Homestuck - right before Act 7 and the end credits - is literally Act 6 Act 6 Act 6 - 666, the number of the devil, to which Doc Scratch/LE are regularly compared. (Yes, you SHOULD start substituting "the devil" for LE/Doc Scratch when they come up, in addition to everything else. We are thinking in symbols and layers!)

[Doc Scratch]'s a fairly conventional devil figure in this way, as well as a nefarious alt-author, with the power to stand in for me, or subvert the narrative. These are his top-level qualities as a character and narrative device, which are explored much more intensively late in Act 5 during his story-hijack move. But there's an awful lot more to say about him than this. You'll see.

Second, the Condesce fight in [S] Collide feels weird, doesn't it? This character is supposedly completely immortal so long as LE has use for her, and LE being in the bubbles means he's not 1:1 aligned with time within the session, so him being defeated there wouldn't necessarily correlate with that being the moment his magic supply cuts out. It's enough to make one suspect that perhaps the Condy's death was a result of her outliving her usefulness...

Third, DaveKat becoming canon is actually a grim omen of ill portent (sorry DaveKat fans). First of all, Caliborn and Hal are two of LE's primary constituents. Caliborn is the OG DaveKat shipper, and Hal is shown as having a penchant for canonizing yaoi ships for shitty men, as he’s the one who got Dirk and Jake together. I'm just saying. (I feel like this take, more than any other, is going to lose me readers. Please keep reading, it all gets so much weirder, I promise.)

Finally, characters in Act 666 are CONSTANTLY alluding to the fact that they never addressed their emotional issues, like Terezi's monologue here:

GC: 1 N3V3R F3LT WHOL3 GC: 1 ST1LL DON'T GC: 4ND YOU M4D3 1T SO 1 D1DN'T H4V3 TO F4C3 TH4T F33L1NG GC: FOR 4 WH1L3 4T L34ST GC: 4ND NOW TH4T 1 TH1NK 1 KNOW TH1S 4BOUT MYS3LF GC: 1 TH1NK 1 G3T 1T GC: TH3 F33L1NG W1LL PROB4BLY N3V3R GO 4W4Y GC: ONLY COV3R3D UP 4T MOST, M4YB3 GC: W3 COULD W1N TH1S F1GHTGC: CR34T3 4NOTH3R UN1V3RS3 GC: SUCC33D 1N 3V3RY W4Y POSS1BL3 GC: 4ND 1'LL ST1LL F33L 1NCOMPL3T3 GC: V1CTORY WON'T F1X M3 GC: M4YB3 NOTH1NG C4N GC: M4YB3 TH3R3'S TOO L1TTL3 SUBST4NC3 1NS1D3 M3 TO 3V3N B3 F1X3D

Or never completed their character arcs, like Karkat admitting he has no idea what Blood is:

KANAYA: You Really Dont Have Even The Slightest Sense Of What You Stand ForKANAYA: Some Concept That Speaks To You In Some WayKANAYA: Or Represents Ideals Important To You KARKAT: I DUNNO KARKAT: UHH KARKAT: BLOOD? KANAYA: Blood KARKAT: NO, NOT BLOOD. KARKAT: I MEAN, NOT REALLY. MAYBE. KARKAT: HONESTLY I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS OR WHY I SAID IT.

That they're still acting shitty and cruel toward each other, like Dirk refusing to acknowledge Hal's personhood:

DIRK: Via my shades. DIRK: Which he incidentally used to be. DIRK: Like, as a computer, which he lived inside as my Auto-Responder.

And even Hussie breaks his "Vriska is my waifu" characterization to comment on how the Vriska/(Vriska) meltdown paints a portrait of a unhealed person:

Vriska has a few really, really epic meltdowns throughout Homestuck, right up to the end. The meltdown to end them all of course happens between Vriska x (Vriska). These incidents always expose a deeply sad and broken person.

And also, though this is in the end credits, John literally develops depression?

The story is blaring at you, in big bold text, that this ending is not a good one, that something has gone awry, that something is deeply wrong. The triumphant veneer is a trick - one of LE's misdirections, a shitty twist - to make YOU, THE AUDIENCE, accept the swill that LE is feeding you. 

But wait! LE's creation is inevitable anyway. Even if the characters did become aware at the end of how badly screwed over they were, it wouldn't change the fact that there's only one viable outcome. Why doesn't LE dispense with the pretenses, and go ahead and start taunting the audience? We know he has constituent parts that LOVE to brag (Caliborn, Gamzee, and Hal all indulge in this). Why bother with making the end of the story SEEM like a triumphant victory for the forces of good?

Peter Pan is why.

CLAP YOUR HANDS IF YOU BELIEVE

Here we get into our first major instance of intertextuality. Now, Homestuck draws on Peter Pan for a multitude of its themes and ideas - for example, the kids' planets are basically 1:1 conceptually lifted from the Neverlands - so I'm only going to enumerate them as they become relevant.

(I skipped one earlier, so I'll quickly go over it now: the narrator in the Peter Pan books is practically a character himself, opining very blatantly about the other characters in the story, and at one point flipping a coin to determine what vignette to tell the reader. This subjectivity clearly inspired Homestuck's own use of not only unreliable narrator, but also of the author-as-character, which Homestuck takes to an extreme. Moving on.)

Right now, what's important is this:

Peter Pan was a stage play before it was a book, and there's a part near the ending where Tinkerbell has saved Peter by drinking poison in his place. As she lays dying, she tells him that she can be saved if children express their belief in fairies. There are no children nearby, and so Peter instead turns to the audience.

(He rises and throws out his arms he knows not to whom, perhaps to the boys and girls of whom he is not one.) Do you believe in fairies? Say quick that you believe! If you believe, clap your hands! 

Remember, reality is like a story, and thus "the narrative" can be considered synonymous with the comic's objective reality. Two characters thus far have possessed overwhelming influence over that reality, which stems from their profound knowledge of it - Hussie being the author who initiated the narrative in the first place, and Caliborn gleaning his understanding from the terminal he unlocks that allows him to see anything, anywhere, anytime, superceding even Void obfuscation. 

However, there's a third character in possession of such narrative-spanning insight:

YOU THERE. MSPA READER.

The reason LE has to make the ending seem triumphant and victorious is because he needs to trick YOU. His ending can only stand unchallenged if nobody challenges it. He needs YOU to accept the ending as true and real in order for it to be so.

You see, a second work is referenced in Homestuck to the same extent as Peter Pan, if not moreso: the 1991 movie Hook, which can be described as a Peter Pan canon extension genfic, complete with original-character-do-not-steal Rufio. Both Peter Pan and Hook are formally heralded into the story by Tavros, signifying their equal import.

Hook's inclusion and elevation to the same status as the original Peter Pan raises a very important question: at what point does a derivative work become as "real" as the real thing?

The answer: when the audience believes it to be.

This is why, though Homestuck primarily references such works as Alice in Wonderland or Wizard of Oz in their book forms, the comic contains references to their adaptations - Jade still wears ruby slippers, despite them being silver in the book. Homestuck is making an explicit stand that derivative works can rise to equal standing, equal "real"ness, to the originals, if the audience buys into them as being "real".

In fact, this idea that believing in something "fake" hard enough can make it "real" is literally the stated power of Hope, and why it's framed in-universe as being the most powerful aspect.

[T]he power of belief is the key to everything. Believing in things reduces their fakeness attribute. It's the force that shapes your reality, used to snatch personal meaning from the jaws of a cynical and nihilistic environment. Could this be why Hope is framed as the most fundamentally powerful aspect?

The shitty ending of Homestuck, the one where LE triumphs and everyone else loses, is "real". Any deviation from this ending, apropos the laws of reality, must necessarily be "fake". But fake things can become real things if you believe in them, and MSPA Reader (you!) is in a position of mastery over reality, same as Hussie and LE. 

And so LE must prevent you from realizing this at ANY cost. He must make you give up on Hope and cosign the characters to their fates by accepting the "real" ending as-is. The ending is shitty, and it will stay that way so long as you never challenge it and its author.

And again, we are thinking in terms of symbols and layers. Remember what LE stands for? Oppressors and abusers. This is commentary on real life. This is commentary on how those forces, in real life, shape our society and convince us that there's no other way to exist than the way it's been laid out for us. This is commentary on how they can only rule unchallenged if nobody steps up to challenge them.

When the Childlike Empress and the Old Man of Wandering Mountain initiate their Circle of Eternal Return, it’s with the explicit caveat that the one thing that can break the cycle is a human entering into the story from beyond the fourth wall to breathe new life into it. So, too, can the characters in Homestuck only break free of Lord English’s control with our interference.

I know this is a radical idea to start the essay out with. Traditional stories, at most, treat the fourth wall as something to wink-wink, nudge-nudge about. Almost never do they engage the audience as a part of the story itself.

But Homestuck is not a traditional story. It's postmodern. And postmodern stories are built on meta, on awareness of the outside, and they utilize things like intertextuality. Let's take a look at another passage from The Neverending Story.

"You ask me what you will be [in the real world]. But what are you here? What are you creatures of Fantastica? Dreams, poetic inventions, characters in a neverending story. Do you think you're real? Well yes, here in your world you are. But when you've been through the Nothing [to get there], you won't be real anymore." [...] "[H]umans hate Fantastica and everything that comes from here. They want to destroy it. And they don't realize that by trying to destroy it they multiply the lies that keep flooding the human world. For these lies are nothing other than creatures of Fantastica who have ceased to be themselves and survive only as living corpses, poisoning the souls of men with their fetid smell." [...] "In fact, that's the heart of the matter. Don't you see? If humans believe Fantastica doesn't exist, they won't get the idea of visiting your country. And as long as they don't know you creatures of Fantastica as you really are, the Manipulators do what they like with them." "What can they do?" "Whatever they please. When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts." [...] [Bastian] now realized that not only was Fantastica sick, but the human world as well. The two were connected. He had always felt this, though he could not have explained why it was so. He had never been willing to believe that life had to be as gray and dull as people claimed. He heard them saying: "Life is like that," but he couldn't agree. He never stopped believing in mysteries and miracles.  And now he knew that someone would have to go to Fantastica to make both worlds well again.

Listen: I, too, am an unreliable narrator. I, too, am someone who is telling you a story. I, too, am trying to convince you of a certain belief, of a certain way of thinking, of a certain kind of "truth".

But I think I make a compelling argument. 

HOMESTUCK = REAL LIFE IN MICROCOSM

The "Homestuck = Life" model of interpretation is often clarifying. The story itself is indistinguishable from the alienating, hostile realm the kids are attempting to grow up in. It fully embodies the conditions of adversity, along with all its backdrops and stage props, including the various prescribed challenges and regimented metrics of growth such as quests to fulfill and gods to conquer. So when Karkat is impatient with and aggravated by these storytelling patterns—the various linguistic tics, beats, and refrains we now recognize as idiomatic to Homestuck—he's actually being impatient with life itself, as defined in this metatextual way. Resisting and subverting the various traditions and orthodoxies that Homestuck has established as integral to its own telling is the same as resisting and subverting the organic flow of one's own journey through life and personal growth.

SBURB is a metaphor for adolescence, the embarkation from childhood to adulthood. Think back to how each of the beta kids' entry artifacts signify both coming-of-age and loss of innocence (or better yet, here's Hussie explicitly saying so):

Each one is symbolic in some sense of a departure. And each has things in common with some of the others. [...] The symbolism of killing her dangerous dog to enter (i.e. a step toward growing up) borrows notes from the Old Yeller story, but in this case, it's a dog that can't die (though nevertheless would assume a death-like state through prototyping).

The safe, known world of childhood is irreparably destroyed, and there's no way back. They must navigate a world trapped in a war betwixt light and dark, creation and destruction, grapple with politics and cooperation, and ultimately design and birth a new universe.

The children of today become tomorrow's voters, politicians, revolutionaries, law enforcement. There's a reason SBURB requires at least two players to make a viable session: society is a group effort. We literally cannot do it alone. We have to care about each other.

Remember what LE stands for? Lest we forget, John and Karkat's weapons are a hammer and sickle. Politics are baked right into the very foundation of Homestuck. This is how you have to think of the comic: not as some simple tale about some goofy friends going on a fun adventure, although that is one layer of its metatextual cake (and, in fact, a very important layer, though we'll get to it later) - Homestuck is a grand statement about life and society. What it takes to build a good society, and what it means to live a good life. Nothing about it is extraneous, nothing about it is simple and straightforward. Every character is significant; nothing can be discarded.

And this is Homestuck's most interesting trick of all: all the ingredients for a true happy ending are present within the canon itself. Homestuck is a jigsaw plot sans the final picture. Classpects, soul mates, and final character arc resolutions are all entirely solvable mysteries. As we continue on, I'm going to show you the conclusions I reached. Even if you disagree, I hope you're able to see things a bit differently. This is, I believe, the way Homestuck was meant to be read, the way Hussie - the real life guy - wrote it. Symbols and layers. Often, the idea of something takes precedence over its material reality.

What we gather from [Rose creating actual magical wands by alchemizing a shitty wizard statue) is that wizards, even shitty statues of wizards, are inherently magical, and their inherent magical properties can be harvested through the process of alchemy. This is yet another reflection of the fact that in this particular fictional realm, and especially where alchemy is concerned, the fundamental ideas the objects represent are more important than the objects themselves. But magic is fake, you say? Wizards aren't real? And cheap fake wizards statues and figurines ESPECIALLY aren't real? It doesn't matter. They carry the IDEA that they are magical, and so, producing conceptual concoctions where the idea is in play will yield real magical results.

There's one last piece of terminology I want to define before we wrap up part one of this giga-essay. 

AFTLIGHTING

Aftlighting is a term I made up to describe an idea Hussie calls "narrative marginalization and abuse". It's an equal and opposite concept to foreshadowing, hence its name. A piece of foreshadowing can be defined as something within the narrative that seems innocuous at first glance, but becomes significant in the story later. Or, as Caliborn puts it:

THE FORESHADOWING OF HIM, IS PRE-IMPORTANT FOR LATER.

Therefore, it follows that a piece of aftlighting can be defined as something within the narrative that seems significant at first glance, but becomes narratively marginalized and shunted into irrelevancy.

It's a term I had to develop to describe all these little hints and clues littered throughout Homestuck that point to its "fake" happy ending, all these little threads of potential that are ultimately left unresolved by the canon story. For example, Hope itself, and the incredible power imbued in it, is aftlit. Ultimately, it never ends up really mattering in the story, and our only surviving Hope player ends the narrative as an emotional wreck who meekly accepts being nicknamed "Joke". 

And yet, it's vital to any "fake" happy ending, to the point where the invocation of Hope, this power to make fake things real, is a prerequisite. Thus: aftlighting. We are looking back and shining a light on these things that SHOULD matter.

As these essays continue, and especially as we begin talking about Hal, the Homestuck Meta Final Boss, the concept of aftlighting (and aftlit details) will come up again and again, so I want to define it early. 

And so we conclude the first essay in this series, which provides us with the framework and mode of thought that will support and inform the rest of our reading moving forward. Hope to see you in the next one, where we cover everyone's favorite topic: classpecting!

... Is how this section of the essay originally ended, but then the classpecting section got so big that it's going to need to be split up into parts.

So, hope to see you in the next one, where we cover PART ONE of everyone's favorite topic: classpecting!

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

what could the prescratch trolls have done rather than accepting enchidna's false choice of an ending or dystopia? Also did we ever hear from the ghost prescratch trolls who chose death?

They could have become kind to each other.

They were still in the Medium, and still had a Time player. By all laws of reality, they could theoretically have apologized, made amends, and asked Damara to go back in time and help them fix the situation. Her being a Witch actually makes it even more possible for her to do.

This was, in fact, always an option.

The reason they never considered it to be an option is the same reason their session ultimately failed.

Selfishness, ego, apathy, laziness, cruelty, complacency.

The answer is as simple as it is difficult, and it is always the same. Kindness is always a choice.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

I was wondering, in light of your theory that denizens are actually evil - does that mean that Karkat accidentally got it completely right when he decided to just kill his denizen instead of listening to him? The way he explains this event to Kanaya, it sounds at first like he made another bad choice out of impatience and insecure bravado. But then you remember that this is all coming from Karkat, Past!Karkats Nr. 1 Hater and Detractor. In that light, the way he describes the incident is really interesting, almost like he had a flash of insight into the denizens true thoughts/intentions? But later doubted his own perceptions and thought he was the problem as usual. Could this possibly even be connected to his latent blood aspect powers somehow, although I'm really not sure how. Thoughts?

Both yes and no. There's kind of this interesting idea in Homestuck, encapsulated in Blood and Breath especially, that even though there are kind of "right" answers, mistakes are just as essential, and required to make it to that "right" ending.

Anyway, sometimes when Mario's running sideways he gets a star that makes him magic and invincible. OH. YOU MEAN HE BECOMES TRICKSTER MARIO. Yes, but less stupid. So for a while he becomes flashy and hyperactive and nothing's challenging anymore. He just starts barreling over mushrooms and leaping over pits as fast as he can, then gets to the end and jumps on the flagpole and that's it. Mario "wins". But the point is, he didn't really win. That magic star was actually devastating to his development as a human being. WHY. Because he skipped over many critical trials on his spiritual journey. Mario NEEDS to stomp on all those mushrooms. He NEEDS to bonk those bricks with his head, for the sake of his personal growth. By using the star, he is denying himself many powerful moments of catharsis.

So, first of all, let me clarify what I mean when I say "right," because I'm NOT saying that Homestuck has ontological, objective "good" and "evil". In fact, much the opposite: each character's "correct outcome" is entirely subjective and personal; the same things that would be good lessons for one character to learn may, in fact, terrible lessons for another. For example, Rose could stand to be a little less egotistical, while Nepeta could stand to advocate for herself more. Meanwhile, these lessons could be totally irrelevant for other characters: Sollux wouldn't really benefit either way from a change to his egotism stat, because it's just not particularly relevant to his personal journey.

This subjectivity, this personalization - this sense of identity, if you will - is the center of the aspect of Heart. We are, all of us, unique individuals, with a unique cocktail of desires, preferences, talents, and flaws. This doesn't mean we can't change, can't make choices going against our natures; it just means that that innate nature will still always be there.

And because we are not blank slates, because we have these innate predilections, there are choices we can make that will lead us to greater or lesser happiness. For example, Jade is a deeply closeted furry. She's very ashamed of this part of herself, to the point where she assumes that Nepeta, who is a VERY out and proud furry, is trying to make fun of her. Let's all be so real with each other for a second; is there literally anything else that Jade would find more fun than doing some nasty furry RP? Ergo, you could say that Jade learning to be okay with her furry side is a "correct" choice for her. This idea is echoed in Serendipity, Karkat's favorite movie, which serves as a treatise on Blood and what Blood is about.

Sara: I first came in because of the name. Serendipity. It’s one of my favorite words. Jonathan: It is? Why? Sara: ‘Cause it’s such a nice sound for what it means: a fortunate accident. Except I don’t really believe in accidents. I think fate’s behind everything. Jonathan: Oh, you do? Fate’s behind everything? Sara: I think so. Jonathan: Everything’s predestined? We don’t have any choice at all? Sara: No, I think we make our own decisions. I just think that fate sends us little signs, and it’s how we read the signs that determines whether we’re happy or not. Jonathan: Little signals. Fortunate accidents. Lucky discoveries.

Peter Pan is another work that Homestuck draws deeply upon to establish its themes. If Serendipity is a close look at Blood, then Peter Pan is a close look at Breath. Peter is the quintessential Breath player: he's irresponsible, he's capricious, he's free as the wind itself. However, above all, he is young: he is the boy who never grows up, and the narrator speculates that his youth is tied in large part to the fact that he never learns his lesson: no matter how deep his pain, no matter how great the consequences, no matter how deep the connection, Peter will eventually forget.

But people aren't capable of just snapping their fingers and getting over it. That's what the entire Trickster segment goes out of its way to comment on. embarking on the "correct" path only has meaning because we are also built to stray from it. If Jade could simply stop being ashamed of being a furry, what would she lose by having that granted for her? The answer is "a fuckton": familiarity with the emotion of shame, and how shame makes her act; experience with re-evaluating her choices, alongside the results of that re-evaluation; a deeper understanding of herself, where her shame stems from, and what actually makes her happy. These are all lessons she can't learn if she didn't make the "incorrect" choice to begin with.

Eve: Sara, you know, it’s a wonderful thought. The idea that all of life, that every event, is all part of some master plan designed to lead us to our universal soul mate. But if that’s really true, then what’s the point of living? Of making decisions? Hell, why should we even get up in the morning? Sara: For the cake? Eve: No, not for the cake. It’s so that you make mistakes. Mistakes like this trip. And if you’re smart enough, you learn from your mistakes. You figure it out - you think - you realize that life isn’t some elaborate stage play with directions for the actors. Life’s a mess, Sara, it’s - it’s chaos personified. Sara: I have to give it all up now, don’t I. […] Eve: It’s not giving up, it’s growing up.

Quick as thought he snatched a knife from Hook’s belt and was about to drive it home, when he saw that he was higher up the rock than his foe. It would not have been fighting fair. He gave the pirate a hand to help him up. It was then that Hook bit him. Not the pain of this but its unfairness was what dazed Peter. It made him quite helpless. He could only stare, horrified. Every child is affected thus the first time he is treated unfairly. All he thinks he has a right to when he comes to you to be yours is fairness. After you have been unfair to him he will love you again, but will never afterwards be quite the same boy. No one ever gets over the first unfairness; no one except Peter. He often met it, but he always forgot it. I suppose that was the real difference between him and all the rest.

Breath is about that irresponsible freedom. It represents free will, independence, the youthful exuberance with which we, innocent and heartless, go out into the world to experience what it has to offer, both good and ill. In that case, Blood, its equal and opposite, is about responsible maturity. It is about the lessons we learn, the shackles that bind us, the arduous, unpleasant, unfun, and yet wholly necessary path towards adulthood.

And these ties are reflected in the Blood player profile: Karkat and Kankri both feel deeply responsible for others, with Kankri positioning himself as a spiritual guide, while Karkat expresses direct personal responsibility for everything bad that ever happens. And it also presents itself in their sheer tenacity, where Breath players tend to be loose and laissez-faire. Karkat mentions that he believes a certain unbreakable "warrior spirit" is a part of Blood, and I believe it: Blood is about the unshakeable faith that something better than what we have now is both normal to want and possible to achieve. It's promises, it's oaths, it's binding ties. It's lessons that can only be built up over time by straying away, and then returning back.

Karkat fluctuates between two extremes, usually as a result of his deep insecurity. There's idiot!Karkat - Karkat who gets so worked up that he turns stupid and cruel - this is the most common Karkat. But every so often, the angry fog lifts a little, and we get a glimpse of Kindkat. In this state, Karkat proves himself over and over to be an incredible judge of character, naturally introspective, deeply empathetic, and constantly trying to puzzle out how to improve himself. He's very... mature.

It wouldn't shock me if Kindkat would instinctively understand what actions need to be taken. Reading the Serendipity-esque "signs" is the entire crux of his classpect. But he's also someone who needs to make mistakes and learn from them. His insight is constantly clouded by his own insecurities; by blaming himself for everything always going wrong, he's never able to accept the things he does right or well, nor can he identify the truth within all the lies being fed to him.

Now, with the denizens specifically, they aren't just "evil". That would be too simple! Serpents in Homestuck, while they do unilaterally serve a "demiurge" function, are also an explicit bridge between the material realm and the realm of divine concept. Angels speak prophecies of mythical figures, sprites are endowed with knowledge of the game that can only be expressed through riddle, and while the denizens are sinister and unhelpful, they do also appear to possess similar foresight, perhaps even omniscience. We must eschew simple answers when we can, and pursue the nuanced, subjective, imperfect, undefineable.

It isn't just that Karkat is "correct" to kill his denizen. That's too easy an answer, and the world of Homestuck is more complex than that. Rather, you could say the "correct" solution is coming to understand that the denizens are demiurges - or, perhaps, in more familiar terms, they're unreliable narrators.

And the thing about unreliable narrators is that the fact that they're unreliable doesn't immediately mean that their testimony is worthless. Rather, it means that information must be gleaned by doing a bit more work than taking them at their word. An unreliable narrator often reveals truth by virtue of being wrong or misleading. For example, when Hussie uncritically praises Vriska in the exaggerated way he does, we as the audience learn that Hussie is easily blinded by petty personal biases, that Vriska is not the blameless entity Hussie makes her out to be (and thus, we cannot consider her such, either), and that any time Hussie affects a similar exaggerated, cartoonish tone, he's likely wrong about whatever he's talking about in the same way - for example, when he speaks about Eridan, showing cartoonish disdain.

So, it's a true statement to say that denizen Choices are bad for you, demiurge tricks designed to prevent you from reaching enlightenment.

It's also true that there is potentially great value in speaking to a denizen and hearing their Choices. Perhaps, by listening to what offerings they present, you can figure out what secret third option they don't want you to take. Perhaps you can trick them into answering some greater question about reality, tapping into their omniscience. Perhaps they are, themselves, not helpful guides nor hindering boss monsters, but some secret third thing.

And it's likely that all those paths will eventually lead to fighting and killing a denizen. At the end of the day, their goals are in direct opposition to the players', and they aren't likely to give up their seat as false gods without a fight. But there's fathoms of nuance between "denizens are good and you should listen to them" and "denizens are bad and you should kill them".

I think Karkat never manages to shake his own emotional baggage to the point where he can start coherently piecing together "the truth," especially not in the canon ending, where he goes on a big diatribe about how he has no idea what Blood is about. I think the comic leaves it deliberately vague what his denizen might have been trying to say, at least in some part because it doesn't really matter: we know what function the denizens serve, and what kind of Choice they might offer. In that light, what we're meant to ponder is why Karkat's was weak. Perhaps it's because, as a Blood player, Karkat is so naturally close to the concepts of maturity, nuance, and destiny that a denizen simply holds less sway over him? If he had stopped to listen to the Choice being offered him, the demiurge-like, society-like crushing of all nuanced reality into a single binary decision, if Karkat wasn't hampered by his insecurities, what would he have decided to do?

Maybe he would've gone to hang out with Eridan, like he promised he would.

I'm sure he's thought about that a lot.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

How is Feferi going to overcome her casteism if she isn't in a kissmessis with Nepeta?

They can still have that clawnversation without being hissmesises

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

I’ve been reading your mega homestuck essay on AO3 and I have been loving it! Just curious on how many parts you plan on adding to the essay?

A rough idea of what comes next:

- intertextuality (the big hangup is a couple of books i still need to read)

- Hal is the Homestuck Meta Final Boss

- the highly controversial shipping chapter

im doing shipping last because i fear the wrath of the fujoshis

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

So I’ve seen your shipping charts, and in the fixed story Karkat would actualize himself, understand Blood, and as prophesied would be personably responsible for bringing the ‘true’ ships into being, but how do you think he would actually do that? I can only imagine the shipping chart. It would be beautiful. Because I honestly can’t think of any other way to force these characters who would resist and push towards their crushes into the correct situation that directly involves Karkat, unless he uses his Knight powers to use the Blood aspect in such a way that like, pushes them more together or something? I just think it’s much funnier that he brings everyone together into an emergency meeting or something and has a crazy pinboard behind him and raves about Serendipity for hours while trying to ship people and almost no one having it and either leaving or it becoming a huge shouting match while they occasionally reflect just a little or something. This thought just kinda came to me and if you haven’t thought of it before I NEEDED to inform you(I imagine you have but better to be on the safe side).

P. S. You are literally the best Homestuck Theorist(do you call yourself a theorist or something else?) and I will die on that hill

Yeah, this is basically what we've been imagining, hahaha. Karkat already has a propensity in canon itself for making shipping charts, remember?

(Plus the penis ouija originally began as an attempt by Karkat to once more tap onto his innate shipping magic.)

This is why I keep saying things like "everything in Homestuck turns into shipping" and "shipping is actually the most important thing in Homestuck" - the endgame ships are deeply tied to Karkat and Blood, and Blood is tied to the concept of fate. In a work like Homestuck, where free will is real and branching timelines exist, "fate" is more like the idea that there is actually a "best" outcome for people, in the sense of "living your best life". It contrasts Breath's freedom and especially how important "mistakes" are: you need to make mistakes in order to grow up. You need to try things you wouldn't normally try, you need to step out of your comfort zone, you need to cause problems and then deal with the consequences of your own actions. But the idea that, at the end of that journey of self-discovery, you can actually find the "right" path to walk for you - that's what Blood and fate are all about.

Karkat worries that Blood is an insanely weaksauce power, and I think that this "sleeper" nature of it is why: it doesn't, and can't, pop off until people are actually ready for it. Moreover, Karkat only measures power through the rules his society has imposed on him: he views strength in terms of personal power level, the ability to administer an asskicking. The thing is, he's always been an innately powerful Blood player, the same way Dave's always been an innately powerful Time player - who else but Karkat could've united that pack of bloodthirsty morons long enough to win a session of SGRUB? Who else but Karkat could've convinced them to connect with the humans through space and time purely to sate his own idiotic hatecrush on John? Karkat's power lies not within himself, but within his ability to - like destiny itself - move the people in his orbit. He's always had an uncanny romantic acumen, and when he isn't freaking his shit, he's also always been a very incisive and accurate judge of character. When he isn't so mad he turns stupid, he's incredibly empathetic and kind. People listen to him because, at the end of the day, he cares about all the jackasses on his team, and they can sense his love and compassion for them.

Breath is all about free will, independence, and youth. Blood, its yin-yang matched pair, is all about destiny, relationships, and maturity. It represents the forces that bind - our interpersonal relationships, platonic, familial, and romantic, but also our own relationship to ourselves, our innate proclivities and personalities, the things that would make us happy.

Karkat also speculates that Blood has something to do with an "undying warrior's spirit" he's always felt within him, and he's right: Blood is about holding on. It's about doggedly refusing to let go of hope and the idea that something beautiful is out there. It's about being willing to stick it out until you can reach a happy ending.

Sara: I first came in because of the name. Serendipity. It’s one of my favorite words. Jonathan: It is? Why? Sara: ‘Cause it’s such a nice sound for what it means: a fortunate accident. Except I don’t really believe in accidents. I think fate’s behind everything. Jonathan: Oh, you do? Fate’s behind everything? Sara: I think so. Jonathan: Everything’s predestined? We don’t have any choice at all? Sara: No, I think we make our own decisions. I just think that fate sends us little signs, and it’s how we read the signs that determines whether we’re happy or not.

Ergo, Homestuck's concept of a happy ending is intrinsically tied to its romantic relationships, especially as those romantic relationships operate on an allegorical level. There's definitely criticisms to be made about how Homestuck doesn't really acknowledge aromantics and asexuality, but I'm not personally interested in making them; just know that, yeah, I acknowledge that Homestuck's assertion that romance is its end-all be-all can rub people the wrong way. But since my approach to analysis is to primarily engage the work on its own terms, Homestuck's romances are highly allegorical, and thus, proper configuration is basically a requirement for the true happy ending.

Not only that, but Hal becoming a Real Boy - itself a requirement for that true happy ending - is also fully contingent on the romance shit. Karkat places such cosmic significance on his black quad - and shit, dog, when it's a Blood player doing that, pay attention - that Hal's Realization is basically guaranteed to have something to do with Karkat finding true hate. After all, Karkat boasts that his hatred is powerful enough to hate a hole through reality into a fresh new one, free for the hating.

Perhaps as to be expected by the Romance Jesus of the team, but Karkat's quads are crazy. Calliope, a cherub, in red, the insane genocidal sea dweller prince guy in pale, and the magical white rabbit that was a computer that became Real in black. But I also don't think Karkat, who so idolizes the idea of soul mates, whirlwind romances, and the magic of true love, would have it any other way.

Anyways, in the book commentary, Hussie jokingly called my ilk "Homestuck scholars".

This collection in the ideal universe will serve as a set of handbooks for the Homestuck scholar, both providing illumination into the series, and containing it entirely, if also approximately. And for those of you who choose to possess the work for mere enjoyment, I hear you. I feel you. Let's you and me direct our combined enjoyment at the notion that there is such a thing as a Homestuck scholar. It's true. They are real.

Some people call themselves this unironically. You are free to call me one, but only if you are, bare minimum, lightly roasting me for it. At the end of the day, I am doing something pretty objectively cringe, and I'm happy to admit to that. If you told me face to face that what I'm doing is both embarrassing and a waste of time, I'd be like, "yeah". Not to disparage the other Homestuck Scholars, but let's be so real about what we are doing here.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

So I stumbled upon an old meta and I was wondering about your opinion on this. Basically, it pointed out that the caliborn we follow in parts of act six references several events in that happened in the Game Over!timeline, but that happened differently in the retcon timeline. Even though him growing up at all on Earth C only happens because of/ in the retcon timeline. Here is the link if you are curious: https://www.tumblr.com/cruxitedowel/140956814848/artistcaliborn-doesnt-become-le

Idk if I just missed something obvious, but do you maybe know an explanation for this?

There's a pretty simple explanation for this! Okay, it's not simple, but there is an explanation for this.

So, first of all, just to clarify the timeline, Caliborn/Calliope are explicitly born on Earth C, billions of years in the future, in the post-retcon timeline.

WHAT'S THIS PLANET, I MEAN. It was called Earth. EARTH. THAT'S IT? Yes. Weren't all the Statues of Liberty a dead giveaway? If you see one or more shitty old Statues of Liberty on any post-apocalyptic wasteland planet, that automatically means it was Earth all along, as a rule. Then when you realize that, you're supposed to have a mental breakdown. I AM UNFAMILIAR WITH THIS RULE. AND SKEPTICAL OF ITS VERACITY. TELL ME MORE ABOUT EARTH. It's the place humans are from. But that was a very long time ago, with respect to the planet's current age. Earth has been through a lot. It was even relocated a couple times. YES. I BROUGHT IT WITH ME, I THINK. INTO THE GAME. Yes. But it was relocated once even before that. It was moved from its native solar system, where it circled around a little yellow sun. Then it founds its way to a new system, around your big red sun. It stayed there for a good while, until your sun started dying. WHY WOULD SOMEONE MOVE A PLANET. Its universe was about to explode. So its proprietor closed up shop and got it the hell out of there.

So, at the very least, it is #confirmed that Caliborn/Calliope are from the post-retcon timeline.

This means that the actual plot of Homestuck is, in fact, one neat time loop. I have written about this in exhaustive detail before (see the first chapter of the giga-essay, this blog's pinned post, if you want the long version), but the short version is that tracing the actual chronology of the characters reveals that the canon ending is a "rocks fall, everyone dies" certified Bummer Ending. Every single character ends up trapped forever or dead of old age, thus fulfilling LE's win condition: destroying as much as he can for as long as he can. The kids claiming the Ultimate Reward is actually, explicitly, all according to keikaku (t/n keikaku means plan).

In order to understand this particular tangle, we need to consider a few things: John's retcon (Breath) powers, Aranea's Sylph of Light powers, and Caliborn's Lord of Time powers.

First of all, Caliborn's abilities as a Lord of Time are literally to just make reality do whatever he wants.

uu: I THINK PART OF MY PERSONAL QUEST. IS TO BECOME AT EASE WITH THE FORCES OF INEVITABILITY. uu: INEVITABILITY THAT ALL THINGS SHOULD AND WILL FALL IN MY FAVOR. THAT ALL CAUSALITY ANSWERS TO ME. AND THAT ALL OUTCOMES NOT ONLY SERVE ME. BUT CONSIST OF MY BEING. uu: SO I FEEL THAT. THE MORE I GROW IN POWER. uu: THE MORE STUFF IT SHOULD TURN OUT I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR. uu: UP TO AND INCLUDING. EVERYTHING THAT EVER HAPPENS.

Caliborn and Calliope take major inspiration from The Neverending Story; Lord powers map to the ability of the protagonist to bring whatever he tells a story about to life, to shape reality to his liking in every which way, even if it's a story about the past.

As part of his game session, Caliborn interacts with a series of terminals on his planet that give him access to any timeline and any event, irrespective of Void or Rage obfuscation. This functional omniscience thus allows him, and the souls that end up combined with him, to plot out a series of events that ties the stability of the timeline directly to LE's creation. Time, you see, only remains stable so long as every loop closes; any timeline with a broken loop is doomed and withers away into nothingness.

AG: Think of it like circulatory system, where the veins and capillaries that do not help the overall flow of 8lood through the system are likely to wither and die. Those are doomed offshoots.

This means that John's retcons are, in fact, explicitly factored in to Caliborn's planning. By challenging John in the end credits, taunting him into gathering the god tier humans for battle, which results in him getting himself sealed into Lil Cal, Caliborn kicks off a chain of events that results in Doc Scratch's arrival to Alternia in the distant past. By doing so, Caliborn functionally sandwiches all the events of the story into the time loop of LE's creation, ensuring that said creation definitely happens, and any attempt to avert this outcome automatically results in a doomed timeline. This is what Doc Scratch is referring to when he describes the alpha timeline as the one that boasts exclusive rights to both his birth and his death, and this is the true nature of Caliborn killing Hussie and "taking over the narrative". Remember, Lord English is ALREADY HERE.

This moment where I'm sort of pretending to be [Doc Scratch] [...] is just another leg in AH's long journey where he transitions from "the author as a limited, goofy, fallible human being" to "the author as a nefarious, destructive, non-human entity, which thrives in his absence, if not outright trying to kill/replace him, and itself has several different forms."

[...]

[T]he individual segments start making a lot more sense when you start reading them as installments of "the increasingly derelict, maniacal author is gradually phasing himself out of control over the story, and/or is BEING phased out of control over the story by dark forces beyond his control."

Caliborn takes over the "author"'s spot, and uses his virtual omniscience, his mastery and instinctive understanding of Time, and very clever plotting, to ensure the inevitability of his own creation, and, through that, the destruction of everything.

Now, what this means for John's Breath-based (freedom, independence) retcon powers is that the creation of the post-retcon timeline was always part of Caliborn's evil plan. Many people mistakenly believe the triumphant veneer of the canon ending, and therefore believe that John is heroically providing freedom from "the narrative" to the post-retcon cast via the retcon, but the literal opposite is true: the retcon actually reroutes the timeline such that it directly gives rise to Caliborn, and several hints point to this being the case.

First of all, it literally just gives rise to Caliborn - the post-retcon timeline is how Earth manages to make it to Universe C in order for Caliborn/Calliope to be born on it in the first place. Secondly, the Condesce explicitly has a form of immortality that only runs out when she's outlived her usefulness and LE revokes it. While there are potentially abilities that may be able to override this (the Princes come to mind), none of these abilities were used within her boss battle - meaning, LE had her die there on purpose, most likely as a ploy to trick the cast (and audience) into thinking that they had "won" and could let down their guards.

Third, John's mastery of his powers only comes about as a result of a deal with a denizen. I've written about it in more detail elsewhere, but once again, here's the short version: the denizens are based on the Gnostic demiurge, with one of the Big Deal Denizens named Yaldabaoth, after the actual demiurge himself. The demiurge's goal is to prevent mortal souls from realizing their own innate divinity and achieving true enlightenment, which would allow them to escape the confines of material, imperfect reality. As such, the fact that John's control over his retcon abilities comes about not via introspection and self-discovery, but from having a denizen arbitrate his path, means that anything he does with those powers can be understood to be from a place of ignorance, of non-enlightenment.

Calliope brings up the idea that a player who rejects their aspect - or who is, in my words, not doing particularly well at self-actualization - may end up displaying abilities that are the opposite of their aspect. For a particularly explosive example, Eridan's crashout is marked by blind fury and nihilism, both associated with Rage. As such, John in the canon ending winds up binding the cast to their fate, opposite Breath's independence. Ironically, the characters he provides independence to are actually the versions that have been retconned out - the (irrelevant) characters, like the version of Vriska that got groomed by Meenah. They are, explicitly, free from the binding force of the alpha timeline - but because nobody has reached enlightenment, especially not John, who made a deal with a demiurge, nobody realizes this about (them).

Now, what's really important about John's retcon is that the (irrelevants) still exist - while they are a doomed timeline, they're also kind of a secret third thing as well, not quite the same as a timeline cosigned to oblivion by the rules of Time, being a fundamental part of the alpha timeline to a much greater extent than, say, the doomed timeline that Davesprite came from.

This is perhaps a bit of a reach compared to everything else in the essay so far, but I'd like to posit that the Game Over timeline's significance is a direct result of Aranea's meddling. Light, as we know, governs the idea of "relevance" - screentime, the spotlight. Aranea, as a Sylph of Light, has the ability to grant that light in a positive direction unto other objects, usually in the form of healing an injury or supplementing a deficiency.

When she takes over the Game Over timeline, she explicitly invokes her Sylph abilities.

ARANEA: I am a very powerful Sylph of Light. I have had millions of sweeps to hone my a8ilities. ARANEA: As one gifted with the aspect of light, certain outcomes will 8e prone to 8r8king in my favor. ARANEA: And as an ancient, highly experienced sylph, I wield an unprecedented a8ility to heal. ARANEA: A doomed timeline is really just an anatomical feature of a much larger organism. Like a capillary which comes to an end, 8ecause it has withered and died. ARANEA: I 8elieve I will 8e a8le to heal this offshoot. ARANEA: And with enough time and patience, I am confident I can restore its vitality to such a gr8 extent, it will effectively take over as the alpha timeline, thus reducing English to a lost footnote of paradox space.

The truth is, she's got the right idea, but the wrong aspect. Unfortunately for her, Light does not hold any particular sway over causality - which sequence of events cascades towards certain outcomes. That would actually be the realm of Mind, though the significant of that is a whole other essay and this one's already long enough. However, though Aranea cannot heal the timeline's causality, she CAN buff its Light - as in, its relevance. Ultimately, I believe that this is why the Game Over timeline winds up being so incredibly instrumental to the alpha timeline, in spite of otherwise being like any other doomed offshoot: Aranea boosted its relevance, made it artificially significant, but was not able to override the karma (Mind) or the laws of Time that bound the alpha timeline to its ultimate result. Given Light players explicitly serve as beacons, it's also possible that Aranea's presence within this timeline contributed to Caliborn/Calliope being in contact with the Game Over iterations of the characters, when we see from the Davesprite timeline that cross-dimensional communication (in their case, human to troll) generally only works alpha-to-alpha.

In any case, all of this tied together is why Caliborn references Game Over stuff despite existing in the post-retcon timeline. He has mechanisms by which he has a sort of omniscience over all possible points in time, and the Game Over timeline has an artificially boosted level of relevance due to Aranea's interference (she does manage to make it part of the alpha timeline after all!), though it is ultimately still doomed.

What's really interesting to me, however, is that the (irrelevant) characters have seemingly been freed from the normal rules of spacetime, relevance, and karma. I wonder what that means for them?

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Hey, so I read that comic you made about all the alpha kids using their powers together to bring Hal to life, and dirk stabs him on a quest bed or slab, and I was wondering who’s slab it would be? Do you think due to slabs only visually having marking of aspects that any player with the same aspect could use another’s slab? Idk if this is really pertinent to anything you are doing, but it seems interesting especially considering the slabs aren’t destroyed or anything meaning a game with double ups on aspects(idk if it’s possible) or just the cross session stuff that happens in comic means it’s an exploit(?)

So, a loooooot about my understanding of Homestuck and its mechanics have changed since I drew that, and I have some other ideas that are a bit difficult to explain... I will do my best though.

Basically, Homestuck primary philosophical/theological framework is that of Gnosticism. The basic description of Gnosticism is:

There is a realm of pure, divine creativity overseen by the Monad (god), a world of true immortality and ideals (as in, the ideas of things, versus their material manifestations. For example, the conceptual idea of an apple, as opposed to a physical apple. Rose goes on a drunken rant about this at one point). From the Monad come several emanations, "aspects", if you will, which usually come in pairs.

Pretty far down the chain of emanations came one emanation in specific, Yaldabaoth (you may recognize him as the Big Deal Denizen, next to Echidna). Yaldabaoth, sometimes called "the demiurge", believes itself to be the one true god, and created the imperfect material realm to rule over. In doing so, it trapped shards of the divine realm into physical bodies - that's us, specifically, our souls - and in doing so, has made us forget our innate divinity. Yaldaboath's goal is to keep us so distracted by mortal, physical woes and pleasures that we never remember our true divinity, and therefore, submit to his authority and his illusory material plane for all eternity.

Ergo, the goal of Gnosticism - the "good ending", as it were - is to break past Yaldabaoth's illusions, come to terms with our innate divinity (our true, "ultimate selves", you could say), and reconnect with the realm of the Monad. To "achieve enlightenment," you could say.

So let's put a pin in that. A second thing Homestuck is very invested in is using narrative conventions and game mechanics as metaphors for "the unspoken rules of society". For a very blatant example, Hussie in the book commentary explicitly compares Karkat being impatient with the tropes used to introduce new characters to him being impatient with life itself, impatient to grow up.

This culminates in one of Homestuck's greatest themes of all - the "narrative" being a metaphor for "reality", and Caliborn/LE's hijacking of it to be a metaphor for the way the oppressive forces LE symbolizes - fascism, patriarchy, abusers and predators - directly shape the reality we live in and our understanding of it, by seizing control of its tropes and conventions. Caliborn, after all, is directly characterized as being the one that "follows the rules". In his chess match with Calliope, he cajoles her into letting him switch his king and queen, then doesn't actually do so, instead just making decorative caps for his pieces that make it look like he swapped them. He proceeds to play a completely legal game, and, in fact, mocks her at the end of it for being more of a cheater than he is, because she allowed the swap in the first place.

Not only that, but Caliborn's victory is also purely dependent upon rules that heavily skewed his and Calliope's conflict in his favor. A cherub wakes up when their name is called, and so it is taboo for a cherub to provide their name to others. But let's actually think about this rule for a second. First of all, cherubs are a completely asocial species by nature; they grow up on dead planets orbiting dying stars, and are psychologically equipped to handle living alone for their entire lives. Therefore, the only time a cherub would ever even be at risk of having their name called would be if that cherub were to be in contact with a social species.

In that case, the rule only favors the more malicious personality: it's natural for a social species to prefer the more socially harmonious half of the cherub. In such a situation, the only way that the malicious side would even survive would be via adherence to the rules, like how a rule that punishes both bullies and their victims for a conflict is advantageous for the bullies. Given cherubs normally never even have the chance to meet another individual... one wonders if these are actually rules passed down cherub to cherub, or if they're things Gamzee made up to give Caliborn an advantage.

Ergo, one of Homestuck's big ideas is that rules MUST be challenged. Sometimes, they're rules for a good reason: it's a good idea to tackle your emotional problems, to mature and grow up. But often - and maybe even more often than not - rules are illusions. They're limitations crafted by people with agendas, designed to enforce those agendas, and worse still, to make that enforcement seem like it is the true nature of reality. Consider how Vriska's murder of Tavros is so deeply rooted in her belief that it's something she "must" do in order to live up to Alternia's societal standards.

Once you understand that this idea is in play, you start to notice some very strange incongruities with Homestuck's "game mechanics". For example, the sylladex system: initially set up to seem like a completely inescapable facet of the world, we see Karkat pick up a book and read it normally, and we see Gamzee simply reach into his miracle modus directly to take out his computer. Hussie in the book commentary jokes that anyone could probably do so, but Gamzee's the only one high enough to consider it - but let's be real, that's not actually a joke, is it?

It's the same with the "gift of gab" god tier badge. In fact, we see loads of characters chatting it up in person without the badge. Almost like it was something anyone could do, actually, but there was an arbitrary rule in place saying you weren't allowed to without it, which people shrugged and followed because that's just how the world works, right?

So, let's go back to our pin on Gnosticism. With one of the two Big Deal Denizens being named after Yaldabaoth, it casts every denizen in a demiurge-colored light. And, indeed, if you actually look at the Choices they strike, none of them ever offer a boon that the players could not have accomplished on their own. Hephaestus offers to reforge items, which can just be created with alchemy anyway. Echidna's quills can just as easily be harvested by taking a picture with a captcha camera, or killing her, as striking a deal with her. John could've learned to control his retcon powers in any number of ways, Typheus just forced a sink-or-swim scenario on him.

If the denizens are, in fact, demiurges, then that means that the game itself runs on Gnostic logic: the game mechanics are an illusion, and players can only achieve REAL enlightenment by finding a third option, by breaking free of the "rules" imposed upon them.

God tiering is one of these illusions. Levelling up in general is. Hussie himself is pretty explicit about it; the idea of levelling up, hitting these milestones, going god tier, are all metaphors for the way we tell ourselves growing up is supposed to work. Finish high school, go to college, get a STEM degree, get a job, work your way up, have 1.5 kids and a white picket fence, yadda yadda yadda. You can hit all the milestones and never do any emotional maturing. You can get a driver's license without ever needing to confront your trauma. You can go god tier without ever needing to actualize as a person.

The actual path to enlightenment, in Homestuck's universe, is Ultimate Selfhood - is coming to terms with one's true, innate, divine nature, one's connection to the realm of concept and creativity. It's no coincidence that Ultimate Selfhood is sought via aspect, the half of classpect connected with the conceptual, and that the sprite^2s that achieve a facsimile of ultimate selfhood are back in their dreamself jammies, with dreamselves also being connected to the conceptual and subconscious.

Ergo, for a true happy ending, god tiering is actually the cheap way out, and I'm not actually looking for that to be what does it. Plus, it's a bit too simple for Hal to become Real just by having a few people use some magic powers on him.

Instead, I've been toying with an extraordinarily convoluted sequence of events, of which I only know a few beats. He's still a Sylph of Mind though

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

calliop is literally dressed as the wizard of oz lol

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

do you guys think about how rose is in red with a vampire and in pale with a werewolf and in spades with a prep

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Regarding the dancestors and their relationships in the group. Are they really all so bad that nothing could be fixed except Meena and Cronus and Porrim and Latula? It seems like these idiots mostly make each other worse, but hypothetically, who else could have been with whom in the quadrants without it leading to the apocalypse?

So (and I know this is a controversial thing to say), Homestuck is actually a work that has "canon" soulmate pairings. This is NOT to say that you can't or shouldn't ship whatever you want, because frankly, who really cares, and fandom is transformative anyway. It's just to say that the work itself was written with these endgame pairings in mind. It's like me saying the ATLA writers wrote Zuko to be straight. Like yeah, it's probably true - probably "canon", but literally when has fandom ever cared about that, and why should we start. This is just a canon discussion blog is all, so I will talk about canon.

The reason for these canon endgames existing is that Homestuck is heavily allegorical; the quadrants aren't just Fun Romance Worldbuilding, they actually appear to carry symbolic connotations. Ergo, it's not really about characters "not being able to work it out" so much as characters "not being right for each other in the first place". Most of the time, anyway.

Redroms appear to have ties to the idea of "the ideal", as each canon redrom pair has a focus on each individual being the other's ideal type. Rose, a gothy Freud fangirl, dates a vampire with major motherhood themes. Kanaya, who loves dangerous women and sunlight, dates a dangerous Seer of Light. If you go down the line of the identified redroms, you see this pattern repeating: Roxy loves broody evil wizards and Princes, Eridan hits on bubbly pink cat-themed Rogues. Jake loves spunky blue spider-girl aliens; Vriska's three redcrushes are Tavros, John, and Nic Cage, and if you put them in a blender and turned the resulting goop into a person, it'd just be Jake English. So on and so forth.

Blackroms, meanwhile, have ties to the idea of "irreconcileable opposites," and to Rage, which itself has ties to nihilism, a philosophy centering around questioning knowledge, or even the ability to hold knowledge - the "destruction" of "ideals". Terezi is a lawyer whose job on the team is "keeping everyone out of trouble"; Gamzee is a chaotic sabateur who "always appears at the right (wrong) time to do the right (wrong) thing" (to quote Hussie), which results in fucking things up for everybody. And again, you see this pattern repeating: Karkat is Jesus and Hal is the Devil (Doc Scratch's primary personality component), Vriska is The Taking Guy and Roxy is The Giving Guy, Eridan is an angel-killing Real Wizard hipster, and Calliope is a cherub who is a Fake Wizard and an all-loving fangirl.

Pale, meanwhile, is "constructive harmony" - two conflicting ideas coming into conflict in a healthy way that improves them both, removing the negative and increasing the positive. Vriska is Evil Good, and Terezi is Chaotic Lawful; John is a Superman-esque paragonic hero, and Dirk is a Batman-esque broody antihero; Roxy loves to break the rules, and Calliope feels bound to follow them. When brought together, they find a dialectical balance - the synthesis of two contradictory ideas.

In contrast, Ashen is actually kind of a trap. I go into greater detail in a different essay, but the short version is that Ashen represents "degenerative harmony", or perhaps "don't rock the boat" - complacency, apathy, and bystanderism. If moirallegiance can be said to be a healthy resolution of conflict via confronting that conflict and working through it, then auspiceticism instead represents the idea of just smoothing the problem over without actually fixing anything, which causes the problem to fester and grow - like cancer. You'll note, Universe A ended because Doc Scratch auspiceticized between Jack and Sn0wman, and Universe B ended when Clubs Deuce blew up Jade with shaving cream, causing Bec Noir to go on a grief-filled rampage.

I note in that essay as well that the dancestors have functionally been trapped in an auspiceticism ending, with Kankri jumping in to moralize at anyone who ever might have a conflict with anyone else, a major contributing factor of their failure.

Now, all that being said, this is actually not a particularly good way to FIND these endgame ships; they were patterns we observed well after identifying the bulk majority of them. It's super duper easy to describe any two characters as being in any of these quadrants. I've done it myself with some of my false positives. So how do you actually identify who pairs with whom?

The first thing you need to do is watch Serendipity, Karkat's favorite movie, which also serves as an intertextual thesis on how Blood - and the concept of fate or destiny - work within Homestuck. Most pairings are identified via very Serendipity-esque "signs" rather than any concrete character interactions. For example, sharing a magic number (Eridan and Calliope both being associated with 311), perhaps being associated with certain media (John kissing a poster of Liv Tyler, an heiress saved from meteors, and Feferi developing a redcrush on Sollux for saving her from meteors), and, in general, recurring patterns and motifs.

But we don't really get enough time with the dancestors to establish that, which is why the only two pairings I feel comfortable putting forward are Meenah/Cronus and Latula/Porrim, because moirallegiance specifcally has a very distinctive indicator: characters who are destined for moirallegiance, even when they don't know it, have their most harmful attributes mitigated by being in the presence of another person, assuming they aren't being manipulated by external factors (cough Doc Scratch driving wedges between Vriska and Terezi & Rose and Jade cough). In Hussie's own words, "it's not about being platonic soul bros forever, it's about mitigating harm".

For an easy example, Karkat's a total basket case, and one of the biggest problems he has is his self-loathing. This self-loathing most distinctively manifests as his long arguments with his past/future selves, which Hussie says outright in the book commentary is Karkat externalizing the rejection of himself that he feels inside. Past/future Karkat are obviously just Literally Karkat, but he hates himself, so he compartmentalizes them and acts like they're different people.

Hussie also notes explicitly that Karkat will also do this to other people in his team, pointing out the way he tells Past!Gamzee that Present!Gamzee's murderous rampage has "nothing to do with [him]". This is reflective of Karkat's general inability to grasp the bigger picture as a result of being unable to see past his own emotional issues, which itself causes him to act irresponsibly and even cruelly. As such, we can consider this bad habit of his to be "a behavior that causes harm to himself or others".

Anyway, literally right after telling Past!Gamzee that Present!Gamzee has nothing to do with him, Karkat says this to Eridan:

CCG: YOU ARE DEAD TO ME

CCG: PAST YOU, PRESENT YOU, FUTURE YOU

CCG: AND ABOVE ALL, UGLY SCARFNECKED DOUCHEBAG HIPSTER YOU

CCG: WAIT I FORGOT, ALL OF THE YOUS ARE THAT YOU

His usual bad habit simply doesn't happen when he's talking to Eridan. Eridan is a dumbass incapable of artifice or guile, who thinks Karkat is the funniest guy ever and loves hanging out with him. Furthermore, Karkat's other obvious bad habit - getting so worked up he turns stupid - doesn't happen either; he starts the conversation with Eridan completely losing his shit in terror, and over the course of talking with Eridan, is so baffled by Eridan's idiocy that he actually calms down. He starts just calmly being like, dude, you're such a fucking idiot.

CCG: IS THIS REAL, ARE YOU BEING IRONIC OR SOMETHING, I CAN'T EVEN TELL ANYMORE

CCG: THE PROBLEM IS, I CAN'T PUT THIS SORT OF BEHAVIOR PAST YOU AT ALL, SO I DON'T KNOW.

Like. It's giving

Meanwhile, Eridan has a lot of issues, but the worst is his useless and insane, anxiety-driven posturing, constantly trying to present himself as the epitome of a big bad sea dweller. This, also, is noticeably dropped when talking to Karkat; Eridan speaks in a super chill, kind of frat guy-esque tone that he doesn't take up with anyone else.

PCA: just send past you ovver man wwell hang out

PCA: its not like im doin anythin right noww

Ultimately, Karkat was a shitty friend to him and never actually hung out with him, and Eridan just spiralled and spiralled, so they were never able to work out, but that's what we're looking for in a pale match. You can see it again and again: Gamzee tells Tavros that he feels "at chill" with him, while Tavros is so inspired by their rap session that he tries to stand up; Rose defeats Jade's tendency to make kneejerk emotional judgements by pointing out that horrorterrors aren't necessarily evil, just because they're sinister, while Jade is the one person whose advice Rose seeks out and defers to, and who actually tried to engage with her about her dead mom. Dave gets Equius to drop his snootiness and start getting silly and rapping, while Equius is the only person who directly confronts Dave's relationship with his Bro and his broken/whole sword symbology.

So that's how you can identify Porrim/Latula and Meenah/Cronus. Latula's main issue is a terrible anxiety that she has no unique identity within the team, hence her aggressive gamergrl posturing; she literally tells Porrim that talking to Porrim calms her down and helps her to not get so anxious and worked up. Porrim, meanwhile, has good ideas but terrible prioritization, and a tendency to get too into a crusade to notice she's actually hurting herself (ignoring frog breeding entirely Was A Bad Thing She Did); Latula's able to interrupt her such that she makes a Good Point, but doesn't go overboard.

Meanwhile, Meenah idolizes the Condy; she loves the idea of being a ferocious girlboss baddie who takes whatever she wants, whenever she wants it, and shows basically zero remorse for any bad thing she's ever done, including the fangirling she does for Literal Sea Hitler. Except when she's talking to Cronus.

CRONUS: just admit it. you havwe it vwithin you to be just as harsh to our behelmeted buddy as i am, if not more.  #helmchan MEENAH: man MEENAH: a girls gotta have fuel for her pimp ride know what im sayin MEENAH: like MEENAH: i probably took care of him good MEENAH: you know how it is someones gotta take care of the guy anyways MEENAH: and... yeah  #38( CRONUS: oh, howv the rationalizations begin to flowv vwhen it suits your ovwerinflated ego. so vwery typical of the kind of people vwho reject me.  #i.e. literally evweryone

This is the closest Meenah ever gets, EVER, to having second thoughts about the bad, terrible things she does. And this tendency to mitigate bad habits goes the other way, too. Cronus's humankin stuff is a clear cope for the ennui and directionlessness he experiences now that he's lost his faith in his bullshit wizard backstory. Rather than address that real problem, he's attempting to make up fantasy problems to have instead. The person who gets him to reconsider and be honest with himself? Meenah.

CRONUS: to be honest, she might be right. sometimes i think i might only be saying im a human to get attention. maybe i should givwe it up.

Now, with regards to all the dancestors' extant relationships and why they can't work out... it's because the people on their team who are in charge of their romances, and who set things up this way in the first place, are totally cracked.

There are 3 aspects heavily associated with romance: Heart, which governs feelings and identity; Blood, which governs fate and relationships; and Rage, which governs hatred and thus has ties to blackrom.

Classes, meanwhile, indicate character arc. Princes, as Hussie states, tend to have a "villainous profile" that includes a lot of "teen boy diva bullshit", which results in them destroying their aspect or destroying with their aspect. Meulin says she leaves the blackroms up to Kurloz, and, noticeably, the dancestors have none. He's destroyed their Rage.

Mages are the most esoteric, but they're prophets - Meulin is called a matchmaker outright, and matchmaking is considered a form of divination. They have the ability to force a certain future outcome to definitely happen, which looks like prophecy when experiencing time from a linear perspective - for example, Sollux saying they will all die, and he'll die twice and go blind, is likely what forced that outcome to happen. The catch is, because they have such a negative self-image, they can only see shitty futures (it's noted several times that Meulin is secretly miserable). Let's remember that the only ship Meulin matchmakes onscreen is Meenah x Karkat. Which is a 19-year-old with a 14-year-old. Meenah then proceeds to develop a "manic obsession" with the child. EEYIKES! So, purrsonally, I would not trust a single one of the extant redroms on the team, because Meulin is really tipping those scales, and she herself being stuck in an unwanted situationship with an abusive guy who uses nonconsensual mind control on her and calls her his "kittybitch" (and is in a second, equally abusive moirallegiance with a guy who keeps calling her slurs) have not exactly helped her have a clear view on what a healthy relationship looks like.

Seers, paired with Mages, have an equal and opposite problem: blindness induced by hubris. Because they are so convinced of their own competence and judgement, they wind up missing the whole picture and have massive blind spots without realizing it. Terezi outright admits that she painted herself into a corner where killing Vriska was the only option, and Rose only realizes at the very end that fortune-neutral events are completely outside of her purview. So Kankri, our bonds and relationships player, doesn't consciously realize he has some pretty major crushes - red for Latula and pale for Cronus. Since he doesn't acknowledge these feelings, he often tends to act in extremely negative ways as a result of them, without the ability to check himself - for example, sticking himself between Meenah and Cronus and guilt-tripping the latter until he continues the humankin thing:

KANKRI: I'd 6e extremely disapp9inted t9 hear that, if it were true. That w9uld 6e such a slap in the face t9 all th9se wh9 kn9w themselves t9 6e an alien while trapped in the pedestrian 69dy 9f their 9wn race. It w9uld 6e unspeaka6ly invalidating 9f their struggles and massively triggering t9 their em9ti9ns.  #TW #invalidated struggles #triggered em9ti9ns KANKRI: 6ut f9rtunately, I kn9w y9u w9uld never st99p as l9w as that.

Or lashing out at Mituna out of jealousy because he's in red with Latula. Kankri says some seriously vile stuff to the guy, and I think people don't really acknowledge it because Cronus is ever so slightly worse, lol.

Blood - if you watch Serendipity, you'll understand - is pretty directly tied to the concept of "fate", which, in Homestuck, refers to the idea that there are happier endings than others, a sort of universal harmony one can enter for maximum fulfillment and actualization. Ergo, it also governs these endgame ships. It's a lot more complex than that, and really delving into it requires also delving into Breath (independence, free will, and also the value of making mistakes and straying from Blood's "correct" path), but suffice to say that Blood governs soul mates.

Well, our Seer of Blood is basically completely blind, both by his own arrogant certainty that he knows the True and Correct Path, and by choice - Seers often like to inflict self-blindness, like Rose drinking herself stupid (opposite Light and knowledge), or Terezi throwing herself at the mercy of the evil clown (opposite Mind and judgement/karma, as it's basically rewarding Gamzee for his terrible behavior). Kankri's celibacy, opposite Blood's ties to relationships, is another entry in this pattern.

So, basically, the existing dancestor relationships are all totally fucked, and that's an intentional takeaway. Everyone whose cosmic role involves ensuring the right people end up together in a healthy way are totally derelicting their duties. Meulin literally ships Meenkat. Come on. The fact that none of the right people are together, and a lot of really wrong people are together, is a contributing factor to their overall failure. Like... Mituna's injury is totally healable, or it was when they were still alive. Aranea's a god tier Sylph of Light who explicitly tells Jake that she can heal his physical and psychological wounds. Aranea comes up in conversation with Latula, and she feels no need to go "oh yeah, pretty shitty that Aranea never healed Mituna". Latula explicitly states that the main reason she's with him is because "he needs me", and isn't even the one who calls out Kankri for how shitty he acts toward the guy - Meenah does. Like Latula's literally dating someone with a healable TBI, and not seeking out treatment for them, because her anxiety is lessened by knowing that someone is dependent on her and therefore incapable of rejecting her. EEYIKES!!!!

Kind of a reflection of Meulin's own shitty relationships, though, no? Her experiences have taught her that romance looks like codependency, control, and ego death. She's the one who gives Horuss the advice to stamp out all negative emotions beneath a veneer of pawsitivity.

Homestuck is a work with very strong Themes and Meanings, but it obfuscates them behind a lot of postmodern tricks, like unreliable narrator, achronological storytelling, implications rather than outright statements, and the usage of symbol and pattern rather than literal explanations. As such, it's really easy to approach it like it's a less purposeful work, like the average Saturday morning cartoon, where ships are only ships and have no deeper meaning than "the writers thought it'd be fun drama for Alice to have a crush on Bob" - or to simply relate it to real life, where soul mates don't exist, and there's no greater cosmic significance to who you date.

Like I said at the beginning, you're totally allowed to write a fic where Latula and Mituna work things out and end up happy. That's the power of fanfiction, and I genuinely don't consider who you ship in Homestuck to have any bearing on your moral fiber as a human being. Because that would be kind of insane?

But this is just a canon discussion blog, and my personal guiding philosophy when writing shit on this blog is to try and come as close as possible to the work's endemic intentions and messages. What the canon is laying down here is that the established, existing relationships between the dancestors are COOKED. They're so fucking screwed, lmao, holy shit. Meenah please stop grooming kids Jesus Christ, and Meulin, stop encouraging it! Latula, bother Aranea into healing Mituna and then stay away from him, and Aranea, what the hell girl, why haven't you done that already, and also stop encouraging Meenah to become Hitler. Meulin I'm begging you BREAK UP with those shitty men and stop talking to them, they do not respect you!!!

Now, while Meenah/Cronus and Latula/Porrim are the only two I'm comfortable with putting forward for sure, I do want to note some interesting dynamics that could be taken in a romantic way.

First of all, for some reason, Horuss actually LOVES Kankri's lectures, and Kankri also lets him get away with using slurs on him. Kinda weird, right? Given Horuss's fetish for dating down the hemospectrum, I don't know if I'd call this red or pale, but it's definitely... interesting.

Kankri also has an incredibly contentious relationship with Porrim, freaking out at her when she tries to mother him, telling her misogyny isn't real, and slut-shaming her. She's also the village bicycle, while he's celibate, and would probably still be a prude even if he got over that. A budding blackrom, maybe.

Latula secretly has a low opinion of Aranea, while Aranea outright makes fun of Latula's disability for no reason. It's implied via classpect that Latula's job on the team probably should've been whipping them into shape, given Mind is all about manipulating peoples' behavior, karma, and justice/judgement, and Knights are leaders who wield their aspect like a tool or weapon. Sylphs, meanwhile, are enablers, and Aranea is constantly enabling Meenah, most notably by shifting the narrative to make her horrific actions seem less bad. So... maybe another blackrom that Kurloz is preventing?

Aranea and Porrim did have a fling. I have no idea what that's about.

Mituna actually really manages to get under Meenah's skin when he calls her a wader, which is pretty notable since she's usually 2cool4school, and not even Damara pisses her off that much. He also clearly sees her as a sexual interest, happily undressing while convinced she's coming on to him. So that's interesting.

I'm sure there's more, but our time is ultimately so limited with the dancestors that I don't feel comfortable making confident statements about these. I'm always worried that shorthanding things like classpects makes this stuff hard to follow, or feel like it's on shakier evidence than it is, so always feel free to ask for clarification (most of it can already be found in the giga essay on Ao3, which is linked in my pinned post).

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What will be the focus of each chapter in your homestuck analysis?

what topics are you hoping for

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Yeah no there's something so fucking funny about how Rose is obsessed with freudian psychology and her red quad is Kanaya, The Ultimate Mom Friend, and her black quad is Feferi, The Mean Girl Version Of Her Actual Mom

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Something stuck out to me while reading your writings, specifically your focus of an harmonious/positive middle path as a goal for the characters. That combined with the Denizen of Hope being Abraxas, your questioning about the inherent "goodness" of any and all actions and the nature of Hope itself (the Aspect), made want to ask something. How relevant do you think is "Demian: The Story of a Boyhood" for analyzing Homestuck? Is there any theme or idea from there that you think can be applied on Homestuck in a useful/enlightening manner?

So, I think you can do a very interesting comparative analysis of Demian: The Story of a Boyhood and Homestuck, and there could be something "enlightening" as a result of this, but technically, Demian is like, completely unrelated to Homestuck, the two just happen to hit upon very similar themes and ideas, which appears to be because they also draw from the same philosophical framework. Gnosticism existed long before Homestuck and long before Demian, so it's not a big surprise that two works heavily based on Gnostic texts have similar, Gnostic ideas.

I want to make clear that when I reference outside media as foundational texts to Homestuck, it's because Homestuck is the one that first invited that text into the discussion. This is the postmodern literary technique of "intertextuality", a deliberate deployment of outside, existing media in order to establish and/or reinforce themes, construct symbols and meaning, and otherwise establish what the work is "about".

What separates intertextuality from references and shoutouts is the depth to which the new work draws from the extant one, such that understanding the new work is impossible to do without also engaging the extant one. An intertextual reference is to the work deploying it what the Roman gods are to the Aeneid - sure, the story technically makes sense if you know literally nothing about the gods, but you'll be missing out on huge chunks of vital context and major themes.

The rest of this post gets a little English class-y (when doesn't it), so I put it under the cut.

Despite how often Homestuck likes to make references, it's actually fairly picky about which works it uses intertextually (this is the "required reading" list, which is actually quite short). You can tell which ones they are because they show up constantly, over and over, and the parallels are even more stark when you actually bother to read the referenced media.

The Neverending Story is dropped by name by Hussie multiple times, and he's constantly making direct references to it within Homestuck itself - the wolf's head he's afraid of, the scene of the sad horse dying, the imagination spot he has of riding the luck dragon into battle against his bullies. In fact, he outright calls it a "mascot movie" for the more meta elements of Homestuck's plot, highlighting its significance. You could literally call Homestuck a Neverending Story fanfiction, and that wouldn't be inaccurate.

The Wizard of Oz has been around from the beginning in subtle ways (all the beta humans map to an Oz character with a reversed problem - John = Dorothy (his house gets isekai'd, he's associated with twisters, and he's stuck at home vs. Dorothy wanting to go home), Rose = Cowardly Lion (cat-themed, lives in a forest, she's overly brave and reckless), Dave = Scarecrow (associated with crows, constantly getting the stuffing beaten out of him, overly cerebralizes his problems), Jade = Tin Man (has a robot body, makes kneejerk emotional decisions)).

It starts getting really blatant near [S] Cascade, where it's revealed that the Witch of Space god tier outfit has striped stockings and ruby slippers.

And Jade gets a house dropped on her.

I mean, the comic makes it pretty blatant.

Peter Pan and Hook (2006) are also constantly brought up by Homestuck itself, mostly in relation to the Nitrams and Vriska (with her Captain Hook thing).

Alice in Wonderland (and Through the Looking-Glass) are also there from the beginning in more subtle ways - the chessboard world that is Skaia's battlefield, even being staffed by "chess guys" in Renaissance Faire garb, is basically lifted straight out of Through the Looking-Glass. In the same way the beta kids all map to the Wizard of Oz characters, the alpha humans map to characters from Alice in Wonderland. And, like with Oz, the comic makes this relationship obvious.

This is seriously some Alice in Wonderland shit going on here. And soon you will send the rabbit on its way through the looking glass.

Homestuck is literally named after Earthbound (and the Mother series by proxy).

Saw has also been there since the beginning, with Bro - who's spent his whole life under Lil Cal/LE's influence - making several references to the film.

These references come roaring back when Caliborn takes the stage.

SO IF YOU REMEMBER JUST ONE THING I SAY, OF SO MANY GREAT THINGS SAID BY ME, THEN PLEASE REMEMBER THIS. I WANTED TO PLAY A GAME.

What Homestuck achieves via this usage of intertextuality is the creation of its own mythology, its own symbolic framework. Aeneis's troubled journey, for example, is more or less the result of a slapfight between Venus and Juno. If you took the gods away, the Aeneid still functions: Aeneis wants to get to a safe place to call home, and a bunch of shit happens that complicates that. However, by adding the gods into the mix, new meaning is formed.

The Aeneid, to be clear, is a propoganda piece, commissioned by the emperor Augustus to help legitimize his lineage and right to rule. Emperors and kings are, obviously, granted that privilege by divine mandate (or so they say), and with this context in hand, the Aeneid becomes, in addition to a romp about a guy having a lot of problems, a very clear message to the audience: the gods (and the emperors they favor) can do whatever petty bullshit they want, can make your life as miserable as they want, and the correct response - the one Aeneis chooses, and is ultimately rewarded for - is to accept that, and defer to them with utmost respect anyway.

But you only understand that when you have the context, and that's what the intertextuality creates. By invoking Saw, and making Caliborn/LE the stand-in for Kramer, the entire story - the "narrative", if you will - is recontextualized as one big Saw trap that the players are stuck in. By invoking Alice in Wonderland, Hal's discreteness from Dirk is given mythological weight, because Dirk is the Queen of Hearts, and Hal is the White Rabbit, and those are not the same person. By invoking Oz, Calliope and Caliborn - the person "behind the curtain" - are made out to be false wizards weaving an artifice called "the narrative". What else are they hiding?

So, I mean... there's value in comparative analysis, so you might very well learn something by doing one between Homestuck and Demian. Strictly speaking, however, Demian is irrelevant to Homestuck. Its similarities appear to be the result of drawing from the same genre tropes (coming-of-age) and the same philosophical framework (Gnosticism), and these mean they can be very similar. But that's not the same thing as Homestuck deliberately invoking a piece of media to use as part of its symbolic context. I hope that makes sense?

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hi! may i ask what’s the reasoning/context for roxy♠️vriska?

the girls are fightingggggggggg

So, the most obvious cue is that Jake <3 Vriska is extremely foreshadowed, and part of that foreshadowing is Jake's reaction to seeing Aranea, who looks just like her descendent. Pretty much as soon as he sees her, he freaks out over how hot and exactly his type she is, while she is watching and listening and politely not saying anything. So, Jake's redcrush on Aranea = Big Indication of Red VrisJake, yeah?

Well, when Roxy sees Aranea, she has a similarly strong reaction.

ROXY: no no ROXY: no no no no ROXY: oh man i rly hate you ROXY: i cant even explain it i never hated somebody so much by just a few smarmy words outta their grody chew hole ROXY: eugh yechh ick ick blarff!

And Aranea does, in fact, take it as an expression of pitch attraction.

ARANEA: That was quite the 8lack solicit8tion though.

And, in fact, directly compares it to Jake's flustered freakout.

ARANEA: It does get to 8e a little 8othersome having people fling themselves at you all the time. It's always 8een my curse. ARANEA: Did you know just earlier today, your friend Jake could 8arely keep his hands off me? ;;;;)

So, yeah, like, if we're accepting that Jake losing his shit over Aranea is red foreshadowing of VrisJake, then Roxy's similar hatred freakout at Aranea puts black VrisRoxy on the same level.

But, like VrisJake, there's more than just that. Who is the other person that Roxy hates more than anybody else, to the point of bombing Jane in protest? The Batterwitch, of course... a Thief. And we know from several other pairings foreshadowed by crushes (VrisJake, DirkTav, EriRox, JaneEquius) that classes are often a huge indicator of a character's "type".

The Vriska side of thing is a bit murkier, because Vriska is kind of just desperate for attention, and tends to take both negative and positive attention indiscriminately. As a result, she's got a major problem with antagonizing nearly everybody, and people are overwhelmingly hostile to her in turn. As Karkat says, she does a lot of poser-hatred without actually hating people.

So when dealing with a character who has a pattern of acting hateful and antagonistic to people she doesn't really hate, and who also clearly loves and craves positive attention, and can therefore be seen trying to win it from people she respects, then what we're looking for vis-a-vis someone she actually dislikes will be avoidance: Vriska doesn't even WANT their attention. And there's one person who fits the bill.

AG: Now I have to contact you through Rose, thus exposing me to the risk of actually having to taaaaaaaalk to her........ AG: Your carelessness has put the Heroes of Light in a very awkward position, John. I hope you're satisfied. AG: Hahahaha, just kidding. She's o8viously a little too "preoccupied" at the moment to 8e sassing me.

Now, again, another common indicator for foreshadowed endgame ship is a character showing a milder form of interest in a family member - John and Dave almost have a pale thing, Dirk and Jane almost have a pale thing, John and Vriska have their red fling, Tavros can't seem to make up his mind whether he loves or hates Dave.

So, Rose is the only person Vriska doesn't actually want to talk to, implied to be because Vriska - the spotlight hog - feels displeasure at the idea of sharing with someone who has a similar role.

Well, Roxy isn't exactly a hero of Light, but Void is Light's matched opposite, and a Rogue is a passive Thief. As Calliope says to Roxy directly:

UU: for instance, a hero of life and a hero of doom have aspects as different as can be. UU: bUt if their classes are different enoUgh as well, that is, one active and the other passive, remarkably there is a chance they coUld end Up with very similar abilities!

Rogues, especially, are all about subversion. Roxy literally has the ability to steal the Void from stuff, which makes it exist/be more relevant. If Vriska's problem with Rose is that she has difficulty grappling with someone who shares her spotlight, a Rogue of Void is actually much closer than a Seer of Light. Plus, they share some major personality traits - recklessness, willingness to take a stand, stubborn refusal to listen to authority...

Plus, there's something interesting to note in [S] Past Karkat: Wake Up - Vriska, multiple times, tries to entreat people to interact with her and give her attention. Multiple times, people either decline, or show her outright hostility. And multiple times, even though she's obviously hurt, she's able to put on a brave face and persist.

Except for when Nepeta has a go at her.

VRISKA: How a8out my spidersona? It's adora8le! NEPETA: :33 < no its not! you only do terrible things as your spidersona too NEPETA: :33 < i changed my mind, why dont we just not do any roleplaying instead VRISKA: ::::(

Nepeta is, after all, a cat-themed Rogue.

And finally, something to look for in blackroms is some degree of irreconcileable opposites - using GamTer as the most canon example (a parallel relationship to RoseMary), Terezi is obsessed with law and justice, and her role on the team is explicitly "keeping everyone out of trouble". Gamzee, meanwhile, is described by Hussie as "inscrutable", "chaotic," "capricious", and a saboteur, constantly showing up at key points in the story to ruin everything.

Most of the classpects don't work out so neatly, but Vriska is literally a Thief of Light going up against a Rogue of Void. She causes problems on purpose for everyone else so she can take the credit, while Roxy quietly and unassumingly fixes her own shit in the background.

They also both represent extreme opposites in terms of parenting style: Vriska is defined by her tough-love (abusive) spidermom, and the way she's taken on and embodied those traits. Much of her poor treatment of Tavros comes from a misplaced desire to see him rise to the challenge and become "worthy" of her. Meanwhile, Roxy as Mom is overly doting; she's happy to give Rose whatever Rose wants (literally buying her a pony), and we see her magically fix Kanaya's problem by just giving her a new matriorb.

In fact, you could say that Vriska's entire powerset revolves around being able to take things for herself, while Roxy's revolves around being able to end scarcity and distribute things to others without limit. That's not to say that Vriska's self-importance is purely bad: self-importance is also self-confidence, the desire to work hard and earn what you deserve, it's the willingness to pursue higher ideals than mundane, complacent acceptance. Likewise, Roxy's altruistic nature is not purely good: Rose is often very cruel and lacking in empathy (her mocking Dave while Dave is genuinely freaking out about his Bro's weird fetishy puppets and psychological torture comes to mind), and part of that was likely fostered by Momlonde's doting and subsequent lack of consequences. We see the worst of it in Roxy post-retcon, who fixes Kanaya's matriorb situation by just giving her a new one, which means Kanaya never has to reflect on her own actions, what being a Sylph of Space means.

But it does mean that they'll likely never be able to see eye to eye. The things they believe in, which are core to their characters, are irreconcileable with the other person's. And that makes for a great black romance.

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Is there anything from the 2019 video game disco elysium we can apply as tools to analysing the 2009 homestuck or vice versa?

Both seems to take cues from the never ending story -e.g. disco elysium’s pale being the Nothing and the constant loop. They also have other similarities like Lord English being locked into to the settings, and Disco Elysium’s Endurance and most fascist skill is also your health meter so impossible to set to zero. Disco Elysiums politics are more forelighted vs homestuck’s more backlighted references - e.g. John’s hammer and Karkat’s sickle.

I know some fans of disco elysium analysis so it’d be nice to have a springboard for them into Homestuck deep analysis.

Alternatively if you already know of anything look into it, I’d be interested in knowing about it.

So, like, literary analysis and critical thinking skills are universally transferrable. But Homestuck is actually the denser work. It has more unreliable narrators, it has more metatextual layers, it has more intertextual required reading, it requires more interrogation to make sense of, and also, it's just way too damn long. Being "denser" does not in any way equate to being "better", it's a quality-neutral attribute (and you could argue it works to Homestuck's detriment a lot of the time). It's just that Disco Elysium will, at times, be pretty direct about its ideas, in a way you have to beat Homestuck with a large brick first in order to get it to do the same.

Moreover, they're barely related, they just touch on a few similar themes sometimes, and I don't even think they come to the same conclusions. Personally, I wouldn't expend too much effort on trying to convert Disco Elysium fans into Homestuck fans; they have pretty discrete target audiences, and there's not really that much overlap in terms of style, subject matter, tone, or even themes, aside from politics (and even then, barely).

A common behavior I notice in fans is a desire to relate the media they like to every other piece of media that ever exists (the more benign version of "guy who's only seen boss baby: getting a lot of boss baby vibes from this"). I personally think there's a lot of pitfalls to this, primarily that it naturally engenders a Procrustean reading of both works - trying to twist the evidence to suit the concluding argument, rather than allowing an argument to arise naturally out of the evidence.

While both works take broadly antifascist views, Disco Elysium is primarily interested in pondering human nature as seen through the lens of the impulses within a person that leads them to adopt more fascist or more communist stances. It possesses a more cynical tone, a broad admission that being a communist is more about the fruitless and unceasing pursuit of communism, while being a fascist is a primarily an attempt at salving a wound of animal instinct and anger. As such, it has a great emphasis on imperfection, futility, and how even in the face of such futility, there is value in the effort.

In contrast, Homestuck's ultimate message is overwhelmingly idealistic: a better world IS possible - in fact, anything is possible - if you're willing to believe in and fight for it. Homestuck's deployment of politics is actually fairly detached from political theory itself; the dichotomy is less communist/fascist and more compassion-responsibility/selfishness-apathy, with communism and fascism simply being the logical endpoints of those attitudes.

Their genres are entirely different, too. Though it has a few cheeky moments where it plays with the interface and fourth wall, Disco Elysium is primarily interested in its diegetic story. Within that framework, it's primarily a crime drama targetted at adults. In contrast, Homestuck is a metatextual postmodern clusterfuck where the audience and author are both characters within the story, and if you had to nail down any single genre, it'd be coming-of-age, primarily targetted at older teens and new adults. We aren't quite in the realm of "getting a lot of Boss Baby vibes from this", but we're ekeing dangerously close.

Again, media literacy and critical thinking skills are universally transferrable and useful - the ability to recognize bias or unreliability in a speaker, the ability to catch sarcasm and irony, the ability to understand meta-layers of symbolism and recognize themes, the ability to hold contradicting information at the same time, or accept that two contradictory statements can be simultaneously true. The ability to understand that a character's viewpoint may be different from your own, and furthermore, different from the author's, the ability to make logical deductions and draw conclusions from incomplete evidence, the ability to understand more than what is being explicitly stated, the curiosity to explore other works on their own terms, without being compelled to fit them into an existing box, and, most pertinent to this mini-essay, the ability to take a step back from oneself and one's own feelings and desires.

But yeah technically you need a higher level of literacy to understand everything Homestuck's putting down. I don't necessarily think Homestuck is a more complex story than Disco, and I certainly don't think it's "better", but apropos all its postmodern BS, you just need to be wielding media analysis like a spiked baseball bat in a way that Disco (thankfully) does not require. God could you imagine if every story was as dense as Homestuck. we'd never read anything ever again. it'd be exhausting. i'm so tired