brushing against infinity

Oh hey I guess you DO want to hear my thoughts on Akio and Dios and Anthy and the patriarchy! Conveniently this is basically always a thing I want to talk about, so LET’S GO.

Augh. That was beautiful, and now I really want to watch Utena again. :[

I saw the series years ago (second-hand fansubs, on decrepit VHS casettes, sent by a friend I never thanked properly) and… I thought it was enchanting and mysterious and I always had a strong impression there was more going on, but couldn’t articulate what or why. So I can’t add anything to your post, or really even claim to agree or disagree with it, but I can absolutely say that it’s the sort of analysis I wish I’d been able to do at the time.

It’s all online! My Utena binge this summer was enabled by Go-Go-Anime (and a couple of other sites, it’s up in a lot of places - just google.) You should definitely rewatch it, series and movie - this was the first time I’d seen them since 2003 and it turns out that the intervening eight years have given me all the words I wanted but didn’t know existed last time round. I have so much to say. (Things I will talk about forever if anyone asks: The Terrible Tragedy Of Juri Arisugawa, The Meaning Of Mikage, What The Fuck Is Up With Touga, and many more!)

harukaandherlemon-deactivated20

Oh, man. I had no idea it was that easy to find! Thanks, I am totally going to do that when I have the time. :]

And... since you're apparently fishing for more excuse to talk about Utena, would it count to say something about how it influenced you? You mentioned that briefly in responding to the ask about Utena/Anthy as a pairing, and it was one of the biggest influences on me as well, despite how much of its depth I missed at the time, haha. I guess the reason I felt the need to gush over your analysis of the series quite so thoroughly is that, in a way, it made some vague thoughts finally fall into place for me, if that makes sense? Ways of using symbolism, narrative themes and character motivations that I find particularly compelling, &c., various things that I now realize I probably picked up from Utena without entirely realizing it.

It's particularly amusing to me at the moment because I... sort of just realized that an ostensibly unrelated fic I'm working on (for Homestuck, actually), which I've been listlessly poking at the concepts for over the last few weeks, perfectly fits like 90% of what you said about Utena/Anthy, plus some significant elements of your thoughts on Akio in a slightly twisted way. Kind of banging my head now and wondering why I didn't see that earlier, in fact.

this! so much! (Utena spoilers)

Oh hey I guess you DO want to hear my thoughts on Akio and Dios and Anthy and the patriarchy! Conveniently this is basically always a thing I want to talk about, so LET’S GO.

#mokushi kushimo #shimoku kumoshi #moshiku shikumo #why can i type that from memory

Augh. That was beautiful, and now I really want to watch Utena again. :[

I saw the series years ago (second-hand fansubs, on decrepit VHS casettes, sent by a friend I never thanked properly) and... I thought it was enchanting and mysterious and I always had a strong impression there was more going on, but couldn't articulate what or why. So I can't add anything to your post, or really even claim to agree or disagree with it, but I can absolutely say that it's the sort of analysis I wish I'd been able to do at the time.

azirae

ANIMATION TEST. Six seconds of octopus (photoshop)

beyoursledgehammer

Will never not reblog your animation tests <3

mogonvarchive

That’s adorable! Lovely brushwork *3*

#homestuck #dad crocker #this is not a post #this is not a pipe either #but i guess that one goes without saying

This is relevant to my interests. In a completely dignified and respectable way. Of course.

ohmygodsocutesocuuuuuuuute

This is totally the picture hanging above Jane's couch.

Dad clearly has a copy of this painting:

I know there doesn't seem to be a caption on the one in Jane's living room... but it's a picture of a pipe and it's the right shape and everything so that's good enough for me and I will hear nothing to the contrary.

Oh noooooooo! Where are the ashes?

Compare:

vs.

Does... does this mean no Poppopsprite John? :[

EDIT: Aaaand then we find out why a few minutes later. What I get for being too hasty I suppose. :T

#john crocker #poppopsprite #nannasprite #johnsprite #oh nooooo #but i wanted a 2x grandparentsprite COMBOB...

byzantienne

whether there are sexy words for “purple”

whether there are sexy words for “purple” that anyone but Eridan Ampora would use

why I am writing fic in which Eridan Ampora would have reasons to use sexy words for “purple”

why I am writing fic in which Terezi Pyrope has already used sexy words...

Almost every single word for "purple" is the name of a purplish flower or fruit of some sort. Most people are liable to just sound silly that way. Not that this would stop Eridan, mind.

That said, I've always felt "heliotrope" and oblique references to Tyrian purple had a nice, albeit slightly corny, poetic flourish. Those shades also happen to be nearly exact for Rose and Feferi's colors, respectively. The irony of "heliotrope" is a bit much, though...

historical-nonfiction

This is a map of the world, showing all the nuclear explosions from 1945 onwards. It is color-coded, to scale, and differentiates between atmospheric and underground/underwater detonations. Honestly, I don’t know how the world still exists, but hey, I’m glad it is.

galileo--galileo

Whoa.

jesus fuck, look how small the circles for Hiroshima and Nagasaki are compared to what we’ve come up with since then

You noticed that the size of the circles isn’t a linear scale, right? It’s actually understating the difference significantly. If the circles were proportional to the radius of effect around a detonation, the biggest ones should be a bit larger than they’re drawn.

Not that I think the map is trying to be misleading, though. It’s actually pretty obvious why they didn’t use a linear scale, and this is why. Would make the map a littler harder to read, don’t you think?

I did notice that, although I didn’t quite process its significance. Thank you for the visualisation, I will now sleep slightly less soundly of nights o_o

If it's any comfort, that's my estimation of the comparative thermal damage range for the largest bomb ever detonated, and very few bombs existed anywhere near that size. A testament to the absurdities of the Cold War, rather than a reflection of modern nuclear devices, I suppose. The radius of destruction is also completely out of scale to the world map behind it, of course--the actual damage caused by that bomb was largely confined to an area of "only" a hundred kilometers or so from the detonation.

...yeah, it's pretty amazing humanity hasn't wiped itself out yet, isn't it.

historical-nonfiction

galileo--galileo

Whoa.

jesus fuck, look how small the circles for Hiroshima and Nagasaki are compared to what we’ve come up with since then

#gentlemen please #you can't fight in here #this is the war room #purity of essence #h'okay so here we have the earth

It’s the middle of the night and I can’t sleep so

LET ME TELL YOU MY FEELINGS ABOUT ROSE/KANAYA

Okay first off: a confession. I find Rose/Kanaya the way it’s written in most fic super super boring. Cute! But dull. And so for ages I was all, eh, not my pairing, to each their own, I’ll be over here shipping Condesce/Psiioniic and Dave/Terezi. Conflict! Friction! COMPLICATED CONTRADICTORY FEEEEEELINGS. These are the things I am into when I ship!

But recently I had a ~revelation~ which was basically: holy shit they are all set up to be the most conflict-heavy pairing of them all, and suddenly I am super super interested.

Hear me out! The core mechanic of the game sessions in every universe is a conflict between black and white, as on a chessboard. This colourcoding in the first instance is heavily skewed to suggest the traditional fantastical battle of light vs dark and good vs evil. Skaia is all things good: light and creation and visions of the future and gold pajamas, hooray. On the other end of the scale you have Derse, the Horrorterrors, and Jack Noir (originally a Dersite, do not forget.) Boo.

Of course all this gets turned around in the course of the story - in a not hugely unexpected way, I think. It’s not a new idea to go, HEY GUESS WHAT, THOSE ARE JUST NAMES FOR SIDES. The developing story of the Exiles shows us that the carapaces on both sides are basically getting a really raw deal. And as we get more information about the Horrorterror/Squiddle thing (mostly through Rose, Jade and Feferi) we come to a new understanding of the role played by ‘darkness’ in the game. The Horrorterrors are ultimately the ones calling on the kids for protection against something that’s killing them. (I totes cannot be bothered to find the relevant chat, it’s a Rose-Dave one.) It’s obvious now that the threat they face is Lord English - please note, he has a pegleg like Skipper Plumbthroat, the bad guy in the Squiddles cartoon.

WHAT HAS THIS TO DO WITH ROSE AND KANAYA. wait, wait, I’m getting to it.

So! We have a new set of colourcoded associations to play with now: on the one hand, darkness and Horrorterrors - and on the other, light and Lord English. Don’t forget that Lord English is summoned at the creation of the Green Sun: that dude is all about light. (The Green Sun is like the ultimate evil lightbulb.) We’ve gone from being on the side of light, to light and dark being names for sides, to being, cosmically speaking, on the side of darkness.

AND NOW I AM GOING TO TALK ABOUT KANAYA.

Kanaya is heavily, heavily associated with light. She’s the only diurnal troll: she enjoys light and colour and open air: she’s a Prospit dreamer: in that one conversation with Rose she expresses serious reservations about anyone who’d turn away from Skaia’s light: and after her rainbow drinker transformation she glows in the goddamn dark. This isn’t subtle, folks. But what I find interesting is that her association with light goes along with her association with Doc Scratch, who has been manipulating Kanaya from childhood to enjoy the light. If you bear Doc Scratch’s influence in mind the troll story in Act 5 part 2 looks suddenly very suspicious. As far as I can tell the main point of murderstuck was Kanaya’s transformation into a rainbow drinker. (I find myself wondering if Doc Scratch didn’t suggest abandoning hope to Eridan. It strikes me as something he would do.)

This means Kanaya in the post-scratch world remains Doc Scratch’s creation and an agent of the forces of light. Given that the trolls and the original kids are now mostly on team Horrorterror (though who knows what Jade and John are up to right now?) - guys, Hussie’s set us up. I think she’s a sleeper agent. Calling it now: Kanaya is Scratch’s ace in the hole and she’s going to find herself in the position of an antagonist in the near future.

AND NOW I COME TO ROSE. If Kanaya is an agent of light, Rose is an agent of darkness. Rose literally went grimdark - which involved doing whatever the opposite of glowing in the dark is (shadowing in the light?), speaking in Horrorterror language, and becoming invisible to outside viewers. Rose stands in the shadows and can’t be seen: she’s the Seer of Light and thus outside its influence. She belongs to darkness.

So here we have Rose and Kanaya, about to meet for the first time, and they are suddenly on opposite sides of the cosmic conflict that defines them both. If Rose’s behaviour before was grimdark, Kanaya’s behaviour right now is the exact inverse. She’s gone grimlight.

Hence why this is suddenly the most interesting ship! I want to read stories about their similarities and their frustration with each other and their enjoyment of each other’s company and the fact that ultimately they are enemies. I want all the goddamn kismesis fic in the world, because these two are fated to be each other’s greyscale inversions. I want the stories where they fight, and where they can’t possibly understand, and where they both accuse the other one of being brainwashed. I want Kanaya to beat Rose up for her own good. I want Rose to keep Kanaya imprisoned in the Furthest Ring because she is too dangerous to be allowed loose. This could be the most terrible, the most painful, and the most fascinating relationship.

THOSE ARE MY FEELINGS ABOUT ROSE AND KANAYA. DISCUSS. (oh god it’s four in the morning, why can’t I sleep.)

also: have we seen Kanaya even talk to anyone after she turns into a rainbow drinker? I AM SUSPICIOUS.

#blah blah #i'm rambling again #oh god so many words #kanaya maryam #symbolism in homestuck #the wordcount of this post is symbolic of how much i like rose ok

(WHOOPS LOOK OUT incoming tl;dr!!!)

We have. A fair amount, even--for instance, she set up the memo with Jade and Karkat when they were talking about frog breeding, Dersites and their antipathy about amphibians, Echidna's request, &c. If I'm interpreting the timestamps correctly, that would be Kanaya from several hours after the 3x Showdown and her little Sylph Diplomacy rampage.

In the same memo it's also mentioned that Kanaya has visited the ongoing dream bubble party since becoming a Rainbow Drinker, which we've seen at least once. Jade also mentions Kanaya telling her about the transformation, which implies another post-transformation conversation that I don't think we've seen in the comic. Given that the dream bubble party was apparently organized by Feferi, probably with help from the horrorterrors themselves, it doesn't seem like Kanaya could be that much of a potential concern.

Incidentally, that memo also has one of my favorite Jade quotes ever, describing Kanaya:

?GG: kanaya means she is a very pretty girl with pointy fangs who has a bright sunny complexion and wears fancy dresses

I think it's the "bright sunny complexion" bit that really gets me. (Jade is adorable, ok.)

Anyway, I'd argue that a simple reversal of expectations for light vs. dark isn't what's going on here--consider the above, and the fact that the horrorterrors showed Rose and Dave the path they needed to follow in order to create the Green Sun, and especially the following bit of uncharacteristically direct exposition from Scratch:

He's more deadly. But the danger he poses is sanctioned by paradox space. It is a known quantity. His very existence in a universe will mean it will inevitably be torn apart. But there are rules to his entry, and his grim procession through paradox space is rather orderly. The present equilibrium has accounted for him, and will continue to.

I would suggest that what's really going on here is that there is no good vs. evil. There is only a timeless balance of creation and destruction, churning together in the vast and amoral machine that is Paradox Space. Entities such as Lord English may personally be quite evil indeed, but the role he plays out simply exists, and can't be given moral weight any more than could gravity.

So the relevant symbolism here is of two halves, joined. The double helix of DNA, perhaps, or yin yang, or just two fragments combined into a loop, and possibly even a prophecy of uniting two races.

As such, I'd very much enjoy seeing Rose and Kanaya both embracing their respective alignments, with the conflict that entails but no moral judgement either way, and overcoming that conflict to be together anyway. The resulting symbolism is a charming microcosm of an underlying theme of the entire story.

odditycollector

3 NICE THINGS, AND WHY YOU CANNOT HAVE THEM ON TUMBLR

WHY TUMBLR IS THE WANKIEST PLACE THAT DOESN’T REQUIRE A CREDIT CARD NUMBER

That awkward moment when you’re backreading your tumblr dash and you find yourself in the middle of yet another spiraling fandom argument involving from all perspectives people you enjoy and respect.

And you think, not for anything like the first time, that tumblr is TERRIBLE for this. It is. It is an awful, bewildering venue for fandom any conversations and I’ve yet to see signs it’s ever going to improve.

Before I get into why, I want to make a disclaimer, because people have been hurt, and I 100% do not wish to add to that. I’m not admonishing people for taking tumblr interaction too “seriously”, or that the offense caused isn’t “real” enough, or arguing that if you know what’s REALLY going on you’d see that everyone is blameless in everything and no one is behaving badly ever (lol, right).

I’m just going to talk about a pattern I’ve seen repeat itself over and over again, and suggest a possibility for why people have been getting so hurt, so quickly, in tumblr interactions specifically. We’ve been in a persistent state of COMMUNICATION FAIL (yes, more than I’ve ever noticed in past fandoms, and that’s a high bar as it is), and any attempts to solve this via communication have been of little use because they are lost in the underlying COMMUNICATION FAIL.

(Note: Sometimes people really can’t communicate with each other! Their world assumptions are too different, or one or all is not interested in listening! That’s no surprise, and not what I’m talking about here, which is why people who *generally agree* and are to some extent interested in allowing other opinions end up upset and attacked by each other.)

(Q: So why are Homestuck fans so terrible?)

(A: I don’t believe that they are, but what they are is part of a feral fandom that has reared itself largely in tumblr space.)

My History:

When it comes to means of (open) fandom conversation, I started out in a mailing list based fandom, then message boards, then (live)journals, and lastly tumblr. (Jeez I sound old. I guess I am, comparatively, but in my defense I found the holdover LISTSERVs when I was like 11? I have no “before I fandom” story.) So those 4 things are what I’m going to compare for my argument!

And my argument, which I will argue on tumblr, is that tumblr is the worst for arguing productively! Oh, this is going to work so well.

#also reblogging because it is awesome #and adding superfluous remarks as tags #hahaha oh man i am so funny #hahahahahahahaha #wait why is nobody else laughing

Think I'm gonna just... mindlessly reblog this, because irony. Irony is why.

Johnny Stone, huh?

Hmm.

Poppop Crocker was a LEGENDARY COMEDIAN, following in the footsteps of his grandfather who of course was the greatest southern pranking legend of all time. One day, you hope to follow in poppop's too. But then, if the whoppers you have been told recently have any truth to them, maybe you will get to meet him after all? It seems too good to be true. The only relationship you have ever had with him are through video footage of his VAUDEVILLIAN ANTICS on stage. Or through his role as Judge Johnny Stone on one of your favorite old sitcoms, NIGHT COURT.

Quoth Wikipedia:

The setting was the night shift of a Manhattan court, presided over by the young, unorthodox Judge Harold T. "Harry" Stone (played by Harry Anderson).

A conversation here:

EB: thanks for all the help. bye, ms. serket! AG: 8ye, John........ AG: W8. AG: John what? EB: Anderson. AG: Ok. Til next time, Mr. Anderson.

Thus: John "Anderson" --> Johnny Stone

Is this ridiculous enough to be plausible? I think it kinda is.

#homestuck #john crocker #jane crocker #what the hell hussie #is this seriously what you were thinking

Hussie's attention to detail is beautiful

[Now](http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=006036):

GG: As for this Strider business, hrmmm. He's an elusive guy Jake. You know that.

...and [then](http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004737):

DAVESPRITE: see if i can catch up with bro maybe DAVESPRITE: elusive bastard

As incredibly minor as that is, I would be extremely surprised if Hussie didn't do that intentionally.

#homestuck #homestuck act 6 #bro strider #bro is elusive #elusive is definitely a thing that bro is #hussie you magnificent bastard

darrencalvert

Halloween desktop: Problem Sleuth’s Candy Corn Vampire, Tootsie Roll Frankenstein, and Gummy Worm Zombie.

High-res here: http://darrencalvert.com/ps_desktop.jpg

#homestuck #homestuck act 6 #crockercorp propaganda #OBEY #jane crocker #damn you foul batterwitch

Well now, this suddenly looks very familiar. Hoo hoo!

Today's subliminal messaging brought to you by CrockerCorp (tm).

unpopular-hs-opinions

#homestuck #jack noir #SBaHJ #sweet bro and hella jeff #this villain is so unspeakably shitty #why is this actually kind of scary #but just imagine what the droll's hat would have looked like

It's the smile, of course. Whoever submitted this clearly has a fetish for dorky buckteeth. And also types in all caps. *Hmm.*

What if Jade's kernelsprite had been prototyped with the SORD... instead of with Bec?

introducing, the SOVERGIN SLAYER............ HELLA JACK

(This is another edit I did ages ago. I'm reposting it here for no particular reason.)

unpopular-hs-opinions