In My Dream

Just a blog full of random fandom speculation, mostly on Homestuck, but also on some other things.

[inmydreamimthestar]

The ending of Homestuck is thematically consistent.

This year, I reread Homestuck front to back, for the first time since 2013. It was also the first time I read it as a completed story.  Reading it as a serial story, especially during the gigapauses, the ending seemed to be disjointed, and to indulge in “random” internet humor, one-off jokes, and plotlines that went nowhere. But when I reread it as a completed story, it moved quickly, coherently, and had an easy to understand thematic point. It was almost too obvious.  The ending of Homestuck focuses on confronting the self. It does this using both its fantasy/science-fiction trappings, and also just normal narrative introspection. At the same time as Dirk confronts what his alternative selves did, Dave examines whether the mold of “hero” fits who he is. Jane Crocker and Nanna Harley talk about their different paths. Rose and Roxy talk about the difference between “poor poor adult dead sexy lady us“ and “kid alive sexy lady us“. And of course, a lot of the ending of Homestuck hinges on two characters that seem incapable of really dealing with their own selves: Vriska and Caliborn.  Where does this leave the reader? I don’t know. There is a lot to be analyzed in such a wide topic as “learning about the self”, and I have carried my own lessons away from it, but the one thing I will say is, the Homestuck ending seems surprisingly thematically consistent, and not slapdash, compared to what I remember about it. 

[inmydreamimthestar]

David Foster Wallace’s false dillemma

Something a little unexpected, but relevant: David Foster Wallace, and how he presented a false dilemma between sincerity and irony.  There are three important things I am thinking of when I am writing this.  First, David Foster Wallace was a very good, creative and original writer, who developed concepts of irony in his books, especially “infinite jest”, that are important to understand the 21st century. His critique of media consumption and the psychology of entertainment is also very incisive.  Second, David Foster Wallace was chronically mentally ill, with at least major depressive disorder, substance abuse issues, as well as what seemed to be anxiety and OCD.   Third, David Foster Wallace had a history of abusive behavior in his relationships.  Those are complicated things, so the entire question of how we should evaluate abusive behavior when it might be a symptom of a mental illness is one that I will not answer here, but it is one that I will keep in mind.  But the real issue is the dichotomy that Wallace developed between “irony” and “sincere” behavior, especially in Infinite Jest. Part of this comes out of his own experience in substance abuse recovery. Wallace was a prodigy as a child, and was always looking at the world through an air of cynical, ironic detachment. He was always the smartest one, until his substance abuse issues caught up with him. He then spent the rest of his life and career trying to find a way to be “authentic”, to be “sincere”, and to leave the ironic, intellectual detachment he grew up with behind. But in doing so, he creates a false dichotomy.  In Infinite Jest, Wallace has two characters with opposing lenses for viewing the world: Hal Incandenza, the ultra-intelligent prodigy (kind of an author avatar) who is paralyzed by his inability to be emotionally honest, and Donald Gately, the small time burglar and drug addict who decides to whole-heartedly embrace the philosophy of AA. (Alcoholics Anonymous) and other 12 step programs. And Wallace presents setting aside intellect and critical thought to do this. And in doing so, he sets up a false dichotomy, and sets people up for failure.  You can either be detached and intellectual...or you can erase your mind and accept, uncritically, a strict regimen of brainless activity. And while Wallace seems to be endorsing this at some points, it comes across as a backhanded compliment, and as an excuse for not being able to succeed with it long term. If not being an addict, and if in believing in morality, requires not thinking critically, then eventually it has to fail. If living a non-addicted life requires an exhausting and complete regimen of selflessness, then it is going to fail. (And that seems to be in contradiction to one of the main slogans of AA: “Easy Does It”).  And what that leads to is “sincerity” and “authenticity” being just another ironic pose. “Look at how I am playing along with being a person who just takes things uncritically”. A large part of Wallace’s portrayal of “sincerity” comes across as a very back-handed compliment.  Also, of course, this is a bridge to the discussion of irony in Homestuck, where one of the main points is that, of course, something can be ironic and sincere at the same time. 

[inmydreamimthestar]

Homestuck: Story or Game

Right now I am doing my third rereading of the entirety of Homestuck, my first since 2013, and I am discovering many new things. This rereading started before the epilogues, which have confirmed many of my thoughts about Homestuck.  Before the latest rereading, I would have said that Homestuck is a story, and that the game and multimedia aspects of it are merely embellishments on what functions quite well as a traditional story, with great prose and dialog.  I think I believed that because I wanted to take Homestuck as Serious Business, and to believe it as literature, not as a gimmicky internet thing.  But now I think that the “playing” aspect of Homestuck is a important as the “reading” aspect. After all, our final nod is “Thanks for Playing” not “Thanks for Reading”. Throughout Homestuck, the reader (I will use this term), is encouraged to solve puzzles. Sometimes this is in the minigames and free exploration segments, while at other times it is in the reader’s need to go back and explore past pages, and often it is just in the need to decode the text: reading Terezi’s quirk, or Serenity’s Morse Code, takes a mental engagement that reading plain prose does not.  Rather than being a plain text, static, that is read, Homestuck is an immersive text that the reader is part of. Part of this is established by the second person narration, while part of it is the unconventional format and enigmatic plot construction. But there are two things about this: first, it doesn’t make it a gimmick. People don’t call Shakespeare a gimmick writer, and Shakespeare never wrote prose. The writing is still great in Homestuck. Secondly, Homestuck requires reader participation, but *all reading* does that. All reading is an act of decoding and immersing, no book is a static text that the reader merely observes. Homestuck just brought that decoding to the forefront.  So to read Homestuck, the reader needs to invest in it, and if the reader hasn’t completed some tasks, they haven’t really finished it, even when they have read the entire thing. 

[inmydreamimthestar]

Homestuck is John Egbert’s story

Related to the Epilogues, and also to Homestuck proper: It is the story of John Egbert. This is an easy thing to forget.  The epilogues actually deal with this, especially as Ultimate Self Dirk describes John: “ My view is, the real tragedy with you, John, is that you never mattered all that much. To those on the level of the cherubs, and now my level as well, you were never all that special, despite the critical role you played. You were just a middling glob of human glue used to seal one glaring gap left in canon. A simple tool to be wielded by a mechanic whose consciousness has risen high enough to see the machine for what it is. Your complete lack of remarkability, specific motivation, drive, opinion on where to direct your own fate—these deficiencies are exactly what made you so useful, so susceptible to being endowed with the you-ness I’ve borrowed to satisfy my purposes. “ John Egbert is not the most interesting character in Homestuck. He isn’t even the most interesting character in the first two acts, when he is already confined to playing the straight man to the more sophisticated and funny Rose and Dave. As the story continues, John’s character is further overshadowed by the murderous eccentricities of the trolls, and later by the more “adult” lives of the Alpha Kids. At times, John Egbert just seems like a legacy character: the “normal American kid” who is introduced as an understandable conduit into the story.  It also seems that John Egbert is not the character closest to the author. Either one of the Strider’s (including, of course, Dirk) seems to be closer to Andrew Hussie’s real personality than John.  But I feel that in many ways, Homestuck is still the story of John Egbert, something that omniscient Dirk doesn’t realize here. In an earlier post, I talked about how stories have an emotional tone and feel. Homestuck certainly has one, and that texture seems to do a lot with the personality of John Egbert. John Egbert’s personality is marked by two things: a natural warmth and concern for others, and a goofy humor that helps put things in perspective. Also, related to the second: a certain amount of lateral thinking when it comes to problem solving. Homestuck, as a story, still reads more like it is based off of Egbert’s gentle humor, rather than Rose’s cutting sarcasm or Dave’s labyrinthine irony, or any of the other points of view that we encounter later in the story, even when those points of view are more immediately interesting and incisive. 

[inmydreamimthestar]

The Homestuck Epilogues: Kierkegaard, Ultimate Self, Shinji Ikari, etc.

Of all the charges made against the Homestuck Epilogues, I haven’t read one yet that said thet weren’t thought-provoking. Even though I have problems with them, I certainly have thought a lot about them since they were written.  In Meat 25, Dirk Strider responds to Rose Lalonde quoting Kierkegaard “Subjectivity is Truth” by saying “Wrong, but valid”.  So here is your wikipedia article refresher on who Kierkegaard was, and what he believed. Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher who lived in the 19th Century, and who is considered to be one of the founders of existentialism. Kierkegaard was a critic of Hegel. In the 1830s, Hegel developed the idea that history was a dialectic unfolding towards the idea of purely realized spirit. Kierkegaard reacted by saying that “spirit” could only be understood through the lens of our own lives, and the choices we make.  Where this is all relevant is that Dirk Strider’s idea of “The Ultimate Self” is pretty much the antithesis of what Kierkegaard believed. It is a replay of the idea of a Hegelian synthesis: the idea that there is an Ultimate goal where everything unifies. In Kierkegaard’s view, people had to realize themselves through their individual choices, not through an oceanic experience of oneness.  (I read a post on here comparing Dirk Strider to Shinji Ikari, and it shares this connection: Shinji Ikari was offered the chance to experience an oceanic union where “all hearts and minds become one”, or to carry on existence as a separate individual, with all the pain that entails. The two endings to Neon Genesis Evangelion were the Hegelian ending and Kierkegaardian ending, respectively).  Now, what does this all mean? Well, I am still thinking through the epilogue, so I do not know. 

[inmydreamimthestar]

The Homestuck epilogues: Canon, coherence and texture.

In the Prologue to the Homestuck Epilogues, Rose defines “Canon” as including three things: Truth, Essentiality, and Relevance. Rose’s explanation (Which may or may not be Hussie’s explanation) seems to be good at defining canon, and is obviously a very good starting point for the complicated discussion of canon that is presented throughout the Homestuck epilogues.  There is one, or possibly two things I would add though. And they are missing from the epilogue. Coherence and texture. Coherence is when the aspects of a story make sense together, whether a number of different plot points and character attributes and consistent and seem to fit into a larger pattern. And texture? That is pretty hard to describe, but it is the overall tone, mood, and affect of a work. Why was Vincent Van Gogh Vincent Van Gogh? It is nothing specific about his themes (he wasn’t the first person to paint flowers), and his medium and general use of perspective and composition were not anything special. But Van Gogh is still Van Gogh, because his paintings have a texture to them that is very hard to imitate.  A great example of something that is left out of canon because of issues of coherence and texture is the Star Wars Holiday Special. It isn’t included not because it is factually at variance with the Star Wars canon, or just because it is irrelevant to the larger plot of Star Wars, but just because the Star Wars Holiday Special doesn’t *feel* like Star Wars. There are certain tones and timbers we associate with Star Wars, and the Holiday Special just doesn’t have them.  And the Homestuck epilogues? It is possible that Dirk Strider and Jane Crocker could exhibit the negative personality traits assigned to them. It has certainly happened before. But does any of the epilogue feel like Homestuck? Is the emotional tone, the rhythm and cadence of the story, the same? And this to me is why it feels non-canon: it just lacks the coherence and texture of Homestuck. The brushstrokes just don’t fall in the right place, the guitar is tuned less warmly, the lighting in the theater is just a bit too glaring.  Which, of course, may be the point. 

[inmydreamimthestar]

The Homestuck Epilogues Weren’t Written in a Vacuum

With all of the analysis of the Homestuck epilogues, I haven’t seen a lot of discussion of what might have influenced their writing in the real world. Which is odd, because there have been some rather obvious events between April of 2016 and April of 2019.  It was impossible for me to read the epilogues without thinking of the past three years of Donald Trump and “the american political landscape turning into a nightmarish daily joke”. The epilogues deal with current political issues both in content (xenophobia, LGBT issues), and in meta issues (the ability of “narrative” to twist people’s thinking, people believing they can stay “apolitical” because of friendship), it seems to be obviously topical to current events. I mean, a big focus is reality television’s influence on the rise of right-wing populism. It isn’t exactly subtle here. Is Jane Crocker acting out of character in the epilogues? I have certainly seen more out of character behavior from real people in the past few years.  I am not saying that it is Hussie et al. sitting down to write a political screed, but the epilogues weren’t written in a vacuum. The things he wrote about are too closely linked to the political and social setting of the United States of the past three years for it all to be a coincidence. 

[inmydreamimthestar]

Homestuck Epilogue: That was not fun

One of the things that jumped out about me about the Homestuck Epilogues was that they were not fun.  At least some of the strongest content of the Homestuck Epilogues was present in Homestuck itself. Homestuck, as early as the second act, dealt with child abuse and neglect. Issues of exclusion, exploitation, extermination, genocide, war, oblivion: they were all there before. But Homestuck, even when it got long and boring and dealt with serious issues, always had an aspect of...not exactly levity...but something like that. Homestuck, for me, was always fun. Each new plot twist, novelty of presentation, or just meandering line of dialogue, felt *fun*, and nothing in the epilogue did that. Even though we did have some good Dave and Karkat dialogue that should have been funny, it just felt like it was...running short. 

[inmydreamimthestar]

Returning for the Homestuck Epilogue

I do not think I have written on tumblr for years.  I read the Homestuck epilogues, though. They have a lot of content. I am not happy with all of it. It was not the ending I was expecting. But it got me thinking.  One of the first things I have to say is: having read Homestuck as an adult, starting in 2012, I consider Homestuck to be “serious literature”. I know that it is fun, and colorful, and it has launched many games and memes and cosplays, but I still have treated Homestuck as a pretty profound work dealing with serious themes. So the fact that a lot of what is in the epilogue is disturbing, that it presents some really unpleasant things...well, this is a genre-busting work of avant-garde science-fiction and social commentary, so the fact that a character might do unpleasant things (just like in the real world!) is part of the story, and the fact that it might make certain cosplay and fanart that people had fun with less fun in retrospect is sad, but...well, books do that. 

[inmydreamimthestar]

Creativity Isn't an Emotion? Psychology of the Elves

One of the problems with reading the Silmarillion is that it is easy to picture the Elves as being prettier, smarter and longer lived humans. But there seems to be emotions that the Elves have that don't have an exact human parallel, or at least that we don't have a specific word (in English) for. One of the most obvious is the “love of beauty”. As a concept, its not hard for a human to understand, but we would need to put together a phrase to explain what, to the Elves, was a core emotion. It seems to be something more basic than an emotion, an immediate impulse.

For humans, we don't seem to have a word to describe the need to create, or the appreciation of beauty, as an emotion. When we think about these things, we don't usually phrase it as an emotion, but as a deliberate choice or act of will: we appreciate beauty out of intellectual or moral motives, but it isn't an emotion for us the way that hunger or tiredness is. For the Elves, desire for the beautiful, either in creating it or being close to it, seems to be an immediate and obvious emotional reaction. The equivalent human emotions, such as greed and lust, are tied up with other things. Greed isn't really about desire for an object, as much as it is for boosting our ego or providing some type of security. Lust is a specific biological drive, not an interest in beauty in general. Pride and vanity are about ego, not about appearance.

It is easy, when reading the Simarillion, to anthropormorphize the Elves, but the largest emotional motivation the Elves had, the motivation for all their accomplishments, is something that we don't have an exact concept for.

[inmydreamimthestar]

The Elves Were Pretty Impatient For Immortals

Tolkien sometimes refers to the Elves as understanding time on a totally different scale than humans do, and being wise and thoughtful, in comparison to the emotional and corruptible thinking of humans. But this hardly seems to be demonstrated in the text of The Silmarillion, The Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit, where the elves seem very impatient, impulsive and unable to deal with boring or frustrating situations. A short list of Elvish impulsiveness: - Feanor and the Silmarills. Feanor and the Ships. Feanor and Fingolfin. Feanor and his death. - Fingolfin's duel with Morgoth. It is reported as an act of bravery, but it also seems to be inspired by frustration, and to be irresponsible because Fingolfin left his people without a leader in a time of crisis. - Thingol and the Nauglamir. Along with greed and arrogance, his quick and unthinking reaction was a problem.

- Celebrimbor and the Rings. When confronted with a mysterious visitor with supernatural power, giving knowledge, he quickly accepts the help, not spending the time to consider the consequences. - Oropher and many of the Silvan Elves died in the War of the Last Alliance because they charged before given the order to do so. - Thrainduil in The Hobbit was impatient with Thorin and company. - Legolas in The Lord of the Rings doesn't want to trudge through the snow on Caradhras, instead running over the snow. It seems like a minor example, but it shows an example of elvish temperment with “normal” problems.

There are probably some more examples to add to this, but in general, the Elves, whether Noldor, Sindar or Silvan, don't seem to be fond of waiting, or able to constrain their emotions much. This is especially interesting because we have several examples of Elves who do exhibit extreme patience, and their patience was important to the history of Middle Earth. - Earendil's journey seems to have required a lot of patience. It was long, it failed many times, and it required tedious work. And the Valar rewarded Earendil's voyage more than they did all the other acts of Elvish bravery: the searching and struggle that Earendil undertook was impressive in a way that even Fingolfin's dual with Morgoth was not.

- Galadriel refusing the One Ring. The temptation might not just have been power, but how easy and simple it would have been to change her situation. - Cirdan's entire life, where he foregoes seeing Aman to help others travel there, seems to be an exercise in patience. Perhaps why Cirdan is considered one of the wisest elves!

[inmydreamimthestar]

Did Arda Become Brittle?

One of the many mysteries of the Silmarillion and the conduct of the Ainur is why they retired from the world fairly soon in its development. Look at all the things that the Valar and Maiar early on: they shaped the entire world, made stars, created at least two other sentient races, raised up mountains, moved entire islands across the ocean, and generally had a magical ability to change the world, and seemed to have an active desire to create. But what have they done for us lately? Even in the First Age, the Valar were mostly absent not just in the war of the Noldor against Morgoth, (other than Ulmo's indirect actions), but absent from creating, at least on a gross level. In the Second Age, as war waged across Middle Earth, they were likewise absent: until they sunk Numenor in their own defense. Their Third Age contributions were to send five weak spirits to Middle Earth. They seem to be struck by a type of lassitude and lack of creative spirit, which is in great contrast to the eagerness with which Aule, for example, created the Dwarves. Here is another question about Arda: how does magic work? And what are its limits? In the Lord of the Rings, when Gandalf lights a fire, he says it is an act of magic that will be clearly visible for hundreds of miles around. Given the power that Maia have exhibited in other contexts, it seems the magic needed to light a campfire would be rather minor. Before the First Age, Osse moves an entire island thousands of miles. And yet here, Gandalf doing the equivalent  of something that could be done with a one dollar lighter sends a magic ripple across the landscape. One way I view this is that the magic of creation that originally formed Arda as part of the music of the Ainur gradually ossified, and natural laws took over, and the physical framework of Arda became much less flexible. Possibilities narrowed, ways became set, and the ability to modify the world through sheer creative energy gradually became lost. Or, if it was possible to modify the world through the inherent power of the Ainur, it would break the world around it. Its hard to explain why Beleriand sank at the end of the First Age, and the idea that it was merely the trampling of Elvish feet wearing down a substantial portion of the continent seems unlikely. For two Ainur to struggle against each other would be like erasing pencil off a piece of paper over and over, and eventually the paper rips. This is somewhat attested to in the text: it is said repeatedly that the Valar were afraid of what their “war” would do, and I don't think it is merely the physical action of Tulkas and Morgoth wrestling that could cause trouble. And this isn't merely meant to explain the Valars' power as an RPG mechanic or mana system.  It is a philosphical issue. The Valars' power was creative. Their minds and beings were originally meant for pure creativity. But at a certain point, what they created took on a life of its own. Arda was given form, and that form took on an existence apart from the creative energy that shaped it. For it to be continually altered by further creation would undercut its own being. On a philosophical level, the Valar didn't have the right to continuously interfere with their creation. And on a “physical” level, Arda hardened over time, becoming brittle, and interference could break it.

[inmydreamimthestar]

Manwë is not Superman.

Many of the questions that have arisen around the Silmarillion and the Lord of the Rings in terms of the Valar's actions (or lack of action!) can be explained through the fact that the Silmarillion is a text written by a series of unreliable narrators. Even if we view the compilers of the Silmarillion as truthful, they still might be simplifying things, or reporting on things they don't have direct knowledge of. This is especially true when we think about the Valar, and increasingly so as they are written about people who had no direct interaction with them. But even for those who did, it was probably an irresistible temptation to write about the Valar and Maiar as if they were just super-powerful elves. So they ended up with an anthropomorphized political structure. Manwë is “The Elder King” because the compilers of the Silmarillion knew the Kings of the Noldor, the Kings of Numenor, and the Kings/Regents of Gondor. Manwë was then just a more powerful, more righteous version of the same thing. The battle of Valinor against Angband is thought of as the battle of Gondor against Mordor.

Except it isn't, clearly, from the text. For one thing, the Valar didn't seem to have a centrified command:  Oromë finds the elves on accident, Aule designs life without telling anyone, and Ulmo builds some secret kingdoms, all of which in conventional political terms seems like disorganization at best and treason at worst. Later on, when one of their servants goes rogue and takes over almost all of Middle-Earth, a realm that they are supposed to protect, the Valar do nothing, and then, when the same thing happens a second time, they send five of their relatively weaker servants. If we look at Manwë as a king, and Sauron as a bandit who has taken over half his territory and enslaved and tortured his people, it looks pretty bad. Why not just dispatch Oromë or Tulkas to punch out Sauron, and have Aule knock down the Barad-Dur with one hammer stroke?

One possible answer, supported by the text, is that the Valar were never meant to be political rulers of Arda, but were meant to be creative powers. They were meant to sustain and grow the natural world, and to add inspiration and spiritual power to people. The biggest blow against Morgoth was Varda's creation of the stars, and later the sun and the moon. There is no reason to think that this creative power failed to flow, and that the Valar continued to work that way. They were aware of the political situation in Middle-Earth, and continued to work on it, but not as a political power. But to scholars in Gondolin, Numenor or Minas Tirith, it was easy to take the reported cosmology and turn it into a version of what was going on around them. Rather than being creative powers, the Valar become political powers. But even with this, there are still holes that sneak into the political interpretation: the presence of beings that lay outside the standard cosmology (Ungoliant, Nameless Things, Tom Bombadil) and the seemingly apathetic political behavior of the Valar.

[inmydreamimthestar]

In Act 7, Terezi is the only one looking away from the main action of the Genesis Frog. This is usually seen as a joke, one of many made about Terezi’s blindness.

Along with being blind, Terezi is also a seer, and is one of the more cognizant characters in Homestuck. What if her looking away is a sign that there is something going on either literally, or metaphorically, that is more important than the main attraction?

[thejazzywaffles]

Holy Shit Hold Up

Just after Act 7, there was a detail everyone missed. The title of the final page. “==>”.

In the first several acts, ==> represented the four kids, with each dash as one kid. When the focus was on the trolls, it was altered to ======>. ==> again represented the four alpha kids until the beta kids arrived. When the eight kids finally met up, it changed permanently to ====>.

Except for the final page. The final page only has four dashes, not eight. HUSSIE WHAT SECRETS ARE YOU HIDING FROM US???

[inmydreamimthestar]

Yes, what of that? 

Interesting. 

[mzminola]

Okay I love “Rincewind hits Voldemort with a half a brick in a sock” and also “Sam Vimes and/or Captain Carrot arrest Voldemort” but you know what’s great?

“Sam Vimes arrests Dumbledore”

Heck “Sam Vimes arrests everyone at the top of the Ministry and school officials and pretty much everyone involved in the Triwizard Tournament for Child Endangerment”

“But the participants were of age-”

/pointing at Harry/ “THAT ONE ISN’T. AND YOU BROUGHT DRAGONS. INTO. A SCHOOL.”

“Yes but-”

“YOU TIED CHILDREN UP. UNDER. A LAKE.”

~

Nanny Ogg and Hagrid get along like a house on fire except for the unfortunate fact of Hagrid’s cat allergy and Greebo aggressively humping his boot (no one is sure if Greebo is trying ot romance or murder the boot).

McGonagall and Granny Weatherwax stare at each other very stiffly for a very long moment (like two strange cats that have unexpectedly run into each other) making everyone else nervous. Eventually they nod, exchange a few words, and go on their way.

Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg actually both get on really well with Professor Grubbly-Plank.

Magrat thought she and Trelawny were kindred spirits and is exceedingly disappointed at how much they are not. Then she finds the greenhouses and has tea with Professor Sprout and feels much better.

~

HAGRID VOLUNTEERING AT LADY SYBIL’S SUNSHINE SANCTUARY FOR SICK DRAGONS.

Hermione in the Unseen University library.

Ron learning to play Thud! along with chess.

Susan Sto Helit’s grandfather introducing Harry as the great-great-etc grandson of an old friend.

[inmydreamimthestar]

I’m sorry Internet, I had to tod o it.