Momestuck

A reread and then general Homestuck blog by canmom. Contains: reactions, commentary, criticism, frustrations; expressions of feelings over the course of the reread; and detailed summaries of every flash as well as attempts to contextualise most other events. To read in chronological order, go here. I reblog Homestuck fanart to CM/tagged/homestuck instead of here!

[momestuck]

Hi! I seem to have some new visitors in these parts recently.

I’m afraid to say, if you’re looking for an active Homestuck blog, there is none to be found here. It has been some years! But I can heartily recommend @thewertsearch, who is doing a very entertaining blind liveblog with a lot of astute commentary. Mind you, if you’re here, there’s no way you don’t know about her is there?

If you’re looking for my liveblog of Hiveswap Friendsim, you may find it here in chronological order. Despite promises, I never got around to commenting on the sequel.

If you’d like my at-the-time commentary on the Homestuck Epilogues, there is an index here.

And... if you enjoy liveblogs of enormous, complicated visual novels with a quirky metafictional mystery, I am currently about 3/8 of the way through Umineko no Nako Koru Ni. If you like Homestuck, I highly recommend it. However, it is literally a million words long, so you might prefer to read my summaries. Which are... not actually much shorter, once all the commentary and tangents are totted up. But hey! If you like what I had to say about Homestuck and friends, I hope you’ll find I have even more interesting things to say about this one~

[momestuck]

this blog isn't gonna spring back into activity to liveblog the homestuck cartoon for the record but i couldn't like, let it pass unacknowledged x3

[momestuck]

vivziepop.

ok sure!!

[awellreadmannequin]

A favourite bit of mine is matching a person with a car that fits their overall vibe. Back when I was on twitter I did this with historical philosophers, but now it is finally time to bring this bit to homestuck characters. As an aside, I put a shocking amount of work into making this post for how shitty it is.

John Egbert - Base model C4 Corvette

Some quick googling revealed that Con Air has not one but TWO Chevrolet Corvettes in it. The first is a C2 from the 1960s but, as a millennial, John will never be able to afford a classic American sports car. So he’d wind up with a base model C4, the other generation featured in the film. But why a Corvette? John is absolutely the kind of guy to see a car he half remembers from a film and go, “oh sweet! I always thought these were sick!” So that’s how he winds up with the most 1980s looking sports car a person can buy, complete with the shittiest malaise era small block Chevy had to offer.

June Egbert - 2000 V6 SN95 Mustang

Yeah, June gets a different entry because estrogen changes your taste in things. Unfortunately, June is still an Egbert and thus has terrible taste, which is how she winds up with this heavily used hunk of junk. Frankly, this choice is mostly down to how easily I can picture her big stupid grin as it wobbles down the highway with the top down. The interior is falling apart, but that’s just part of the charm. So is June’s complete inability to drive a rear-wheel drive sports car. Do not let her drive you somewhere.

Rose Lalonde - Mercedes 500e

In contrast to the Egberts, Rose actually has taste. Excellent taste. And nothing says taste like a Mercedes designed by the Maestro himself, Bruno Sacco. Just look at it. The subtle tear drop shape, the timeless styling, the brutal 5 litre V8. Wait, what? That’s right, this beautiful piece of German muscle is the Mercedes 500e. Rose can’t drive stick, which is perfect because this DOESN’T HAVE ONE. Unfortunately, she is like the Egberts in that she also shouldn’t be driving a rear drive car and, unlike June, this one actually has enough grunt to get the her sideways if it loses the rear. Good thing it has state of the art (for 1990) stability control.

Dave Strider - EG Civic

Nothing says “I created SBaHJ” like a clapped out EG Civic. Enough said, really. The FF drive train says “I know how to have fun on the cheap" while the bullet proof reliability says “I was raised in an unstable environment where I was responsible for meeting all of my own needs.” Also it looks cool. There are more ironic choices out there (PT Cruiser, looking at you), but even a shoddy craftsman needs dependable tools.

Jade Harley - 2002 Subaru Outback

Look, we all know that Subarus of this era are lesbian cars. But that’s purely incidental to this choice. Jade picked the Outback for its spacious cargo area and all-wheel drive capability. It’s the perfect car for the girl who wants to go anywhere and still have space to get laid. Sure it smells like dog, but it was like that when Jade bought the thing. Plus, she’s easily the most responsible driver out of the gang, so you’re gonna want her behind the wheel on any and all road trips.

Karkat Vantas - Shotgun in Dave’s clapped out EG Civic

Frankly, I don’t even know if Karkat’s legs are long enough to reach the pedals. Even if they are, he’s definitely never passing a driving test if he keeps swearing at the car, the other drivers on the road, the test administrator, and himself. He’ll never admit it, but he also just likes being a passenger. It’s nice not having the responsibility of keeping everyone in the car and around the car alive.

Terezi Pyrope - VW Polo Harlequin

Hey Claire, what the actual fuck am I looking it here? That, ladies and gentlemen, is a VW Polo. It’s like a Golf but smaller. Oh, you meant the colour scheme? What can I say, Germans are fucking weird. Just like Terezi Pyrope.

Kanaya Maryam - NA Mazda Miata

Look at it. Tell me that Kanaya would drive literally anything but this. You can’t. Everything about the original Miata perfectly compliments her. It’s elegant, light on its feet, and achingly beautiful. Like, picture it: Kanaya with her hair tied back with a kerchief, driving beside the ocean at sunset. It’s sophisticated in ways that the imposing 500e never could be. Rose would die to see her wife behind the wheel of one these things. Honestly, I might too.

Vriska Serket - Porsche 911 930 Turbo (Stolen)

To understand why Vriska drives a 930 Turbo, you first need to understand what a 930 is. The 911 is, in many ways, an anachronism. It traces its origin to the Porsche 356, itself a sports car built out of VW Beetle parts. As such, the 911 has its engine mounted behind the rear axle, which is also its only driven axle. This leads to unique handling dynamics. In corners, the weight of the engine initially pushes the 911 to understeer until it begins to pivot whereupon it will rapidly begin to oversteer. At this point, an inexperienced driver will lift off of the throttle. This is a mistake. The 911 has liftoff oversteer, meaning that it needs power to keep itself steady. Without power (i.e. lifting off the throttle) will cause it to spin. Now this is what 911s were like before Porsche strapped a big ol’ turbocharger to the engine. A turbocharger pushes more air into an engine which allows it to create more power. However, it cannot do this until the engine reaches a certain RPM. In older turbo engines, this power came on very suddenly. This characteristic of turbochargers combined with the already skittish nature of the 911 earned the 930 an infamous moniker: the Widow Maker. Liftoff oversteer + a sudden wallop of power a few seconds after you press the accelerator = a lot of dead yuppies. There’s no way in hell that Vriska fucking Serket isn’t going to be behind the wheel of the most dangerous car she can steal. It goes without saying, she drives exactly how you’d imagine Vriska fucking Serket would drive. Is she a good driver? Well, she’s not widowed Terezi yet, so…

Jane Crocker - Aston Martin V12 Vantage

For those who don’t know, the automotive prestige hierarchy looks like this: America (shitty quality, poorly engineered) < Korea (getting appreciably better lately!) < France + Nissan (respectable but weird) < Japan (legendary reliability at a budget price) < Italian (beautiful, vascular, so unreliable that it wraps around to being charming) < Germany (cutting edge engineering and reliable so long as you are meticulous with maintenance) < Britain (aristocratic class, respectable power, truly terrible build quality and worse reliability). Yeah, I know, it’s weird. But among those legendary British luxury brands is Aston Martin, notable for being the signature automotive marque for Agent 007. But that’s not why Jane drives a V12 Vantage. No, this car was her Dad’s dream car and he pulled some strings to get one for her for her sweet 16. She doesn’t really get why it makes him so happy, but it does. And it’s not like she’s complaining about how easy it is to overtake people on the highway with twelve cylinders of pure British gumption at your disposal.

Jake English - Jeep Wrangler YJ

Yeah. It’s the Jeep from Jurassic Park. And also Clueless. Come on, this is Jake English we’re talking about. Vriska? Vriska’s ride needs a whole history and vehicle dynamics lecture to appreciate. Not Jake. Not our man English. He drives a car from a movie. A car from TWO movies. *le sign*

Roxy Lalonde - Citroën DS

Look at it. This one is pure vibes. Roxy drives this weird, frog looking thing because she’s the kinda girlie who looks at a weird, frog looking car and thinks to herself, “ong look at this little guy this funky lil fella i gotta own em!” Fun Fact: people used to rally these things. Like. Off road. And they were pretty good too. Food for thought, I guess.

Dirk Strider - 1986 Toyota Pickup (yes it’s called that in the NA market)

On one hand, it’s ironic for philosopher rap prince to drive a pickup. On the other, the bed is really useful for hauling around robot parts, carrying dj equipment, and helping your friends move. Plus, the towing capacity means that when Jake’s stupid Jeep breaks down (again), he’s not stuck on the side of the road forever. He feels like a Japanese pickup is on brand for himself. Which is sort of ironic since a real ironic rap ninja eschews brand integrity. Idk, my brain doesn’t operate on irony levels high enough to comprehend this bullshit.

Callie - Shotgun in Roxy's DS

Unlike Karkat, Callie probably can drive. It's just that she likes it when Roxy drives her places. It basically takes two to figure out how to make this damn thing work anyway. The French were really on something when they designed this thing. Callie doesn't know what the French are, but if the DS is any indication, she's pretty sure they were a nation of madmen and possibly perverts.

[madmonksandmaenads]

Now, I'm not very familiar with Homestuck, but I overhear a lot of conversation about its minutia. There are lots of conversations about HS', I have heard about classpects, multiverse games, troll biology, etc, but I don't have a clear idea what the actual themes of the work are.

It's a creation myth yes? A grand narrative about the birth of a world, complete with primordial evils and children in strange lands, initiated through death to divine power. What is this met to say about our own world? Would you(hypothetical Homestuck fan) consider the work Gnostic in character? Is the takeaway here that reality is all the result of an uncaring and deeply flawed mechanical demiurge(Sburb) and orchestrated by childish and occassionaly deeply evil archons(the players)? Should we try to reach past the imperfection of this world and stop trying to engage with the rules of this cruel world and instead seek out loopholes? Or perhaps is it more Hermetic? Does it see the world as a craft of artifice, made by humans who are not perfect but aspire towards a greater good? Does it prompt the reader to create their own more perfect world? Homestuck is a massive text, it a vast communication from an artist, what is being communicated? I'll admit one of the reasons I haven't read Homestuck is I don't see it discussed as a poetical work. I want to know what makes it beautiful, about what message is straining through the it's pulpy medium. I grew up on schlocky sci-fi, the alien sex politics, the cosmic shenanigans, these are all rather pedestrian for me. I got bored of these around the same time I stopped reading Piers Anthony but I recognize Homestuck is an important modern work, and it feels baffling to me that I have no idea what its actual philosophy is. There must be more to it than titillating science fiction, and funny message logs. What is it from Homestuck that you carry with you into the trials of your day to day existence?

[awellreadmannequin]

You’re in luck, because I think in coming across my dash, this post found just the right person to speak to.

First off, the notion that Homestuck is mythic work about the nature of the world, its creation, and the people who inhabit it is a mistaken one. It is not a creation myth. While this is a common assertion about the text, I think it represents a failure to see beyond what is immediately obvious. Homestuck is neither about Sburb nor is it about paradox space. These are merely set dressing for the actual ideas and themes the narrative wants to play with. There is a lot to be said about the ways in which Homestuck’s universe is built on a very platonic framework, with the author even admitting that the characters function as expressions for certain elemental ideas in differing quantities. However, Homestuck as a text has very little to say about metaphysics beyond that they exist. No, what Homestuck is about is stories and persons.

It is also not Modern, in the sense of modernist literature and philosophy, but very concretely Postmodern. In fact, I would argue it is among the most important works of postmodern art to be created in the since the turn of the millennium. Modernist readings of Homestuck will dead end very quickly in incoherence or absurdity because the text sets out a critique of the very underlying structures of modernist thought and art. Homestuck is a narrative, it knows it is a narrative, many of its characters are aware that they exist within a narrative, and several of them become explicit authors of that narrative. Every metaphysical structure present with the text exists only insofar as it serves the narrative for them to do so. The narrative does not explain or expand on the metaphysical structures it presents anymore than is absolutely necessary because they are mutable in the face of its demands. This is made most clear by ways in which various characters ‘hijack’ the narrative itself to direct it to their own whims. Indeed, the only metaphysical structure of any real note is the text itself as a narrative. The only absolute in the world of Homestuck is narrative inevitably. The plot hurtles towards resolutions that make sense narratively first and then can be understood (or not) through the in world metaphysics second. How does John’s retcon power work given the rules of paradox space? It is impossible to say because it is a narrative feature not a metaphysical one. In fact, it is literally impossible for such power to exist given what is known about paradox space by the time John receives it. However, its nature as a ‘power to rewrite narrative’ allows it to supersede such trivialities as natural law in order to author a better ending for the story.

Once you make it to Act 5 Act 2, Homestuck’s self-awareness begins to heighten from occasional comedic fourth wall break to commentary on the nature narratives themselves. Prior to this point, Homestuck very much seems to be a story that sets up rules about the world and then forces the characters to contend with those rules as they constantly fuck things up. However, in Act 5 Act 2, we begin to meet characters who possess authorial power. There have been hints at the existence of players in the narrative with control over it previously in the form of Hussie’s gratuitous self-insertions, but these were largely limited to intermissions. By Act 5 Act 2, Hussie’s silly and seemingly irrelevant intermissions become incredibly relevant as it is made clear that they occur within the same reality continuum as the plot itself. Further, we are formally introduced to Doc Scratch, an omniscient narrator who commandeers the narrative so as to bias it towards his perspective on the events that are occurring in order to carry out his agenda. Here, the rules of the game are less and less relevant as the story focuses more and more on the actions of characters and their emotions about those actions. From this point on, Homestuck is less and less interested in the rules its established about itself and more and more interested in the ways in which those rules can be transgressed and the ways in which those rules have shaped the characters, their world-views, and their relationships. It is here that we can begin to see that Homestuck is less about the world it builds or the meaning of that world and more about the ways in which the world is shaped by and shapes the stories that take place within it. In particular, I read Homestuck as being immensely interested in social normativity and the problem of identity.

For context, I am an academic philosopher, a PhD student whose work specializes in feminist accounts to remembering, history, and personal identity. So I have something of a leg up on the average Homestuck fan in piecing together readings of the text that understand Sburb and paradox space to be framing devices for deeper explorations of the social world. And make no mistake: Homestuck is very much interested in the nature of the social world, as much or even more so than it is interested in the nature of narrative and authorship. The text goes out of its way to portray a large variety of social frameworks through which its characters are conditioned to understand themselves, each other, and their life-worlds. In placing this large cast of characters with vastly different beliefs about social norms in relation with one another, I read Homestuck as trying to say something about the ways in which normative beliefs shape how we relate to the self/Other/life world in ways that hurt and traumatize. I suspect that because the narrative is so front loaded with a systematizing of the world (in order to set up the ‘twist’ later that this systematization is illusory), many people walk away from Homestuck failing to appreciate just how wrapped up in is in trying to depict the complex ways in which we become entangled in the world and our relations to it.

Homestuck is interested in two very particular questions about the social world: how do we live together well and how do we become ourselves. The first is a question of relationships, while the second is a question about the nature of identity. The relational question is a moral question but also a practical one. Homestuck seeks to understand what kinds of relationships are possible, what is possible through those relationships, and how they can go wrong. For this, it employs a large cast with a diverse array of perspectives about the world and places them in situations where they are forced to relate to one another under less than ideal circumstances. In the process, their answers to that question — how do we live together well — come out in and through their actions. The second question, the one about identity is much more complicated. Here too, people often get stuck on the mechanics of Sburb, imagining that the game shapes the kind of people the characters are and will become. However, since the mechanics of Sburb serve the narrative first and foremost, the opposite is true. The characters and who they become shape the game and the world around them. Calliborn, for instance, shapes the world of the trolls into a violent, misogynistic, and cruel place as a consequence of having become both immensely powerful and the kind of person who finds such a world useful and desirable. That he can do this is only possible because the rules of the world bend to the whims of the narrative and the narrative tends to differ to the wills of the characters. Thus, the question of identity is explored not through how the metaphysics of the world shape persons but rather how persons shape their life-worlds. Indeed, the strongest metaphysical claim and the one that Homestuck most consistently upholds is made by Terezi in a conversation that fans absolutely overlook in these discussions and then reasserted by her later on at the Critical Moment of the plot: HOW MUCH OF YOUR R34L1TY DO YOU TH1NK 1S M4D3 OF WH4TS 1N YOUR M1ND? In the context of the entire work, the claim she makes in asking this question is not one of Subjective Idealism à la Berkeley, but a hermeneutical one. The objective world, real or not as it may be, can only be perceived in and through our interpretations of it, which are informed by the contents of our mind. Here, the two questions bleed together as we contend with the notion that who we become and how we live with others are not, in fact, distinct issues. They feed into and out of one another in ways that are both narratively and philosophically interesting.

There are several examples I could draw on to justify these readings. Firstly, Homestuck has, from its first panel, a strong commitment to characterization. In that first half of the comic, wherein the world is systematized, the other important thing that is happening is that we are learning about our principal cast. We learn about their personalities, their values, and their relations through their interactions with the systems that Homestuck is developing but also through their interactions with one another. This strong characterization is necessary because the latter half of the comic is about those characters reacting to and changing in light of the fallout from their actions and interactions during the first half. As these children grapple with loss, grief, and learning to love and care for one another, that work characterizing them becomes all the more relevant because we can understand and appreciate why they say and do what they say and do. This commitment to characterization is also relevant because most of what we learn about the social world in which the characters (human and alien) live is filtered through their own understanding of it.

For instance, certain kinds of relationship with troll society are codified into a system of quadrants. While we do get an account of this system from the narrator, most of what we learn about how it works in practice comes from how the trolls talk about. Which is notable because the trolls are still children. They are aware of romance, but like any child, their understanding of it is limited by the media they consume. Karkat considers himself a master of the romantic sciences because he watches romcoms. But the only romantic relationship we know him to have engaged in ended in not just abject failure, it left both parties emotionally unprepared for what was yet to come. So disastrous was it that Terezi uses John’s aforementioned retcon power to prevent it from ever having happened. Likewise, we presented with two characters, Nepeta and Equius, who are considered the purrfect example of a moiraillagence, a kind of platonic soulmateship. Despite being told that this is the case, observing their relationship reveals it to be wildly unequal and verging on psychologically abusive. Equius is completely dependant upon Nepeta to regulate his emotions and in turn forbids her from engaging in activities and relationships that wishes to engage with. That this relationship is normative in troll society is presented without commentary, however later relationships that are either explicitly or implicitly of a kind provide a contrast which suggest that the norm itself is harmful to those who adhere to it. While presented in and through an ‘alien’ relational framework, the toxicity of these relationships is nonetheless recognizable in our own world. By abstracting these dynamics from a familiar context and the codifying them into another, Homestuck presents us with a chance to reflect on the norms which govern how we relate to one another.

These relational frameworks in turn govern who we take ourselves to be. If we accept the Hegelian thesis that we recognize the Self in and through the Other, then it follows that the interpretive frameworks that govern our relationships with the Other will also reflect back on our relationship to ourselves. Every character in Homestuck embodies this notion to an extent, however some are much more obvious about it than others. Vriska is, perhaps, the best example. Her relationship to herself is informed by her understanding of her place in the social hierarchy (as a noble), of her relationship with her abusive caregiver (in which she consistently reified), and of her relationship to her friends (as conceptualized through the quadrant framework). Her actions throughout the narrative reflect the ways in which these relationships inform who she is becoming. In the first timeline, she is completely lacking anyone who genuinely cares for her and about her, which leads to her hubristic death. In the later timeline, she survives not due to a difference in who she was at that decisive moment but instead because there was someone who cared enough to intervene and stop her from hurting herself. Both Vriskas, the one who died and the one who lived, persist and we follow the divergent ways in which they change after this moment. They both come to appreciate and value their friends more than they did before that moment. This emboldens the living Vriska to once again attempt something heroic, albeit with help instead of on her own. The dead Vriska instead gives up on heroism, instead realizing that she has reasons to live other than a single minded pursuit of victory at any cost. Even after this decisive moment, both of these Vriskas are continually becoming throughout their narratives in relation to their peers. Dead Vriska finds herself willing to give up on being important and heroic because she has found comfortable relationships that give her purpose which she lacked in life. Living Vriska, forced to exist in close proximity to her peers for three years, remains brash and commanding because she’s found that this role suits her within a collaborative social context.

Through Vriska, we can catch a glimpse of the answer that Homestuck has for these questions. Who we are and how we live together well are questions that it poses together because they wind up being inseparable from one another. Vriska learns to live well with others by becoming a person who can see herself as having value in and for them. Likewise, she becomes a person capable of defeating an unkillable skull monster in and through learning to live well with others. This pattern is, I think, repeated throughout the text. Rose becomes a person capable of loving and being loved by Kanaya because she has a community of caring friends (okay, its mostly just Vriska, but the point stands) who can support her through a substance abuse problem. Likewise, in order to live well with her friends, she must learn to let go of the beliefs and anxieties that caused her to become an alcoholic in the first place. Karkat becomes the kind of person who can let go of hubris by learning that his beliefs about leadership and his place in society are constructed through his relationship with Dave. Likewise, he is able to have a relationship with Dave by recognizing that those beliefs have often put him at odds with people he cares about and can be let go in order to live well with others.

I could go on.

This brings me to your final question. What do I carry from Homestuck into the world? My answer is the observations Homestuck makes about the relationship between how we relate to others and how we relate to ourselves. These are questions that haunt the narrative from its first panels to its last. Homestuck is, in a lot of ways, a postmodern epic. Like the epics of yore, it sets to capture the zeitgeist of a time and a place. Within its characters, structures, and narrative, it serves as a compendium of the knowledge of that time and place. However, as a postmodern epic, it questions everything about itself along the way, including that assumed knowledge. We can take from it a great many things, including readings about gnosticism (a subject Homestuck is definitely aesthetically interested in, especially in relation to Dirk) and the artifice of the world. However, I think any reading that doesn’t ultimately focus on the ways that the narrative, its systems, and its metaphysics exist to facilitate explorations of relation, identity, and the intersection betwixt cannot capture what Homestuck is really trying to say.

[electricabsolution]

this homestuck discourse shit is easy

[abcq2-deactivated20250911]

gamzee kills people because he is trying to spoil the show; he's going off script because he wants to be written out.

before murderstuck, gamzee has no idea that he is a clown. sure, he anoints his face with greasepaint, rides a unicycle, and juggles, but these are serious religious sacraments to him. and, sure, sometimes he trips on his giant floppy shoes and lands face first in a pie, but that's just being blessed with a miracle, because he was just thinking about pie. and, sure, sometimes his friends say things like "HEY ASSHOLE. CLOWN ASSHOLE. YOU WORSHIP A CLOWN RELIGXON. FOR CLOWNS." to him, but he's too zonked on sopor slime to extract any meaning from it.

when gamzee sees the ICP miracles video, he's too sober to dismiss it as a mere coincidence; for once, he gets the joke, and realises that he was the butt of the joke the whole time. he understands that every time he fell face first in a pie, it was the work of an unsen riddler. he grasps that he is, in a cosmic sense, a clown, and hates it.

the next time the curtain rises and hussie says "everyone look! he's about to do something stupid!" gamzee goes shithive maggots and starts mauling his friends and fondling corpses; every time hussie says "don't worry, folks, he can't hear us making fun of him! everyone point and laugh!" gamzee gets angrier. that's what the "are you next?" bit is about - gamzee is aware of, and hates, the audience.

when the murder spree is over, gamzee's beatific grin returns; no longer a look of blank ignorance, but a knowing smirk. he's successfully ruined his character forever - no one wants to see him and no one thinks he's funny. hussie seems to say: jesus you are such a shitty clown. and gamzee's impassive face seems to say: i know.

gamzee refuses to clown out of spite, and hussie refuses to remove gamzee from the story out of spite. it's a committed relationship of reciprocal, mutual antagonism. what i'm saying is that hussie and gamzee ar

[strawberrynightmere]

[lime-bloods]

had a really interesting conversation with a friend this week about the Ultimate Self versus character growth, particularly in relation to Vriska and the hell tiers. in the past I've advocated pretty strongly for the Ultimate Self as core to Homestuck's themes, and as part of that I've been pretty defensive against its detractors because I think the idea is largely misunderstood and unappreciated. and while I still believe an appreciation for what the Ultimate Self represents is a really important tool for understanding Homestuck proper, now that we've moved out of Homestuck and into a new fictional framework I've come around on the importance of being able to critique the concept as well.

there's been a lot of talk lately about whether classes and aspects are really reflective of "reality"; whether Homestuck really says that someone might be defined by arbitrary labels applied to them by a video game - even if that video game literally is responsible for the propagation of reality - or if these are merely roles that we are expected to play but are free to break away from. I've always been in the latter camp; I've made quite a few posts now about how the class-based roles assigned to heroes of Sburb are reflective of the class-based roles assigned to trolls on Alternia, which are themselves biologically-essentialist assumptions that play a similar role to sex and gender among humans. and the Epilogues attest to the queer reinterpretation of such biologically-essentialist social structures; gender is an arbitrary label perpetrated only by cruel, self-serving cycles, and can be cast off if one's self-liberation calls for it. so the conclusion one might draw from this is that the Ultimate Self and the classpect are in a way opposed to each other; that the Ultimate Self is androgynous, without blood, and without class.

however.

it must be recognised that while Homestuck is one story, the Epilogues detail the exploits of characters who have stepped outside of that story and - depending on which Volume you're reading, and the outlook of each individual character - either into another story or outside of "narrative" altogether. and within a narrative, the roles assigned to each character do have special significance. just as one labelled "Thief" is expected to play the role of self-interested antagonist, and one labelled "jadeblood" is expected to live out her life looking after larvae underground, the "narrative" places certain expectations on characters designated as "boys" and "girls". as far as the narrative is concerned, characters are not "people", but rather ideas to be played with, and that's exactly what the Ultimate Self is - the "idea" at the core of a character's being. so it could equally be argued that a character's class, aspect, blood colour or gender are part and parcel with their Ultimate Self, and therefore that, stepping outside of the rules that govern Homestuck, shrugging off the Ultimate Self could be just as important as - or interconnected with - shrugging off gender.

crucially, Homestuck is a story about teenagers, and there is baggage that comes with this conceit. the coming-of-age story is one of self-discovery; the disrobing of the cocoon of childhood and the uncovering of the "true self" underneath is core to the genre. but importantly, at least in Homestuck's case, this never actually means becoming an "adult". coming-of-age stories are about teenagers because teenage makes for great stories, and as such it's only natural that a Lord of Time interested in creating a neverending story would try to engineer neverending teenagerdom. allusions to this abound, particularly surrounding Alternia, a planet populated entirely by teenagers who awaken from literal cocoons every evening only to return to their cocoons of a morning when it comes time to sleep. their quadrants seem hand-designed for the express purpose of making not "healthy" relationships but compelling ones, driven by the confusion of teenagers learning about themselves for the first time. by pretending to be a story "about" reproduction, Homestuck uses the fact that its heroes "enter right around the cusp of sexual maturity" as a smokescreen for the truth that Homestuck characters are expected to "come into" their genders in just the same way they "come into" their class and aspect roles.

in this sense, while the attainment of the Ultimate Self may superficially represent the dispersing of narrative contrivances like "timelines" and "alternate selves", it also follows Homestuck's "children coming into themselves" script to the letter. and to uphold our "full potential" as the Ultimate version of Self, as Hussie describes it, is to fetishise the prenatal kernel from which our entire life grows, untouched by any worldly corruption; to insinuate that we grow forward by stripping away our outer layers like insects, rather than by embracing each new layer as it comes, is a romanticism of childhood that borders on the reactionary. when viewed through this lens, what is "true" is also what is "innocent" - just as the world Before-Us, before Lord English's "corrupting influence", is innocent, Edenesque before the fall brought on by a serpent's bargain.

the Epilogues and more pertinently Beyond Canon, meanwhile, are very essentially not about teenagers at all! breaking free of the old cycle of storytelling also means breaking free of that expectation to stay a child forever, and in a world no longer inhabited primarily by children, how much need is there, really, for a "true self" that determines everything about your being? within the bounds of Homestuck, we can accept that characters like Meenah and Vriska must by their very natures be selfish because selfish teenage girls fill a vital narrative niche, and because when you grow up in a situation like Vriska's, being selfish isn't necessarily the same as being a villain. but becoming an adult means growing up, and among grown ups, on a planet where selfishness is no longer a survival mechanism, being selfish often does make you a villain, and there is an expectation that in order to continue being a hero one must learn and change. and in a world where a Thief no longer has to be selfish, how then can it still be said that every character has an immutable platonic Truth at the essence of their being?

the presence of the sprites in Vriska's purgatory illustrate this idea perfectly. because a sprite is an "idea", they represent a step toward the Ultimate Self, just as the sprite^2 is another step closer. but a sprite is also a ghost image; a photograph captured of a person in a particular moment in time, forever unchanging. this is why the sprites seem to simply disappear at the conclusion of a game of Sburb: while they are immensely powerful and vastly knowledgeable, their significance is tied to a specific purpose within a specific context. whether they simply cease to exist or commit deliberate suicide-by-meteor on the dying battlefield of skaia, they demonstrate an understanding that as great as it is to be an immortal and omniscient sprite, they lose their purpose for existing once the game of Sburb ends: just as the Ultimate Self loses all significance and purpose once the game called Homestuck ends. Davepeta demonstrates this exact superfluousness within the Plot Point; while they may have been a fountain of knowledge about all things arcane within Homestuck, when it comes to actually "growing up", there's not a single piece of advice they can give!

finally, and probably most crucially of all, Beyond Canon has not merely stepped outside the bounds of the rules of the original Homestuck, but outside of its authorial purview altogether. if escaping into Universe C means escape from Lord English's expectations for what it means to be a "man" or a "woman" or a "Page" or a "lowblood", then escaping into Beyond Canon also means leaving behind any of Andrew Hussie's expectations for what it means to "be your Ultimate Self". this is exactly why the story is CALLED Beyond Canon, and is central to exactly the kind of questions it is asking about canon; if Hussie is no longer in charge, why should "the Ultimate Self in Hussie's Own Words" (as linked above) remain the "canon" answer? and these characters' new home, in the custody of a diverse team of new creatives, is reflected by the multiple competing narrative forces within the story; it's probably significant that the character who shows the most reverence and concern for his Ultimate Self is Dirk, the very same character who wishes to bring Homestuck back to its heyday with throwbacks to nostalgic and outdated plot artifices like Sburb! no doubt the story's other key schemers, like its various Calliopes, have their own points of view on the meaning of the Ultimate Self and Homestuck's other mysteries, and the writers responsible for this story in our own world should be allowed to have their own views as well. in order to live up to its very premise, Beyond Canon can and must be allowed to offer up different opinions and interpretations to those of the original text.

ultimately this is key to understanding why Beyond Canon is not a traditional "sequel" and should not be thought of as such; why it was never Homestuck 2, only Homestuck^2, and then dropped the 2 altogether. in much the same way Homestuck was a story not "controlled" by its fans but rather written in continuous conversation with them, Beyond Canon, now finally under the control of fans, is a story in conversation with the text that came before it. in the end this is what any narrative-about-narrative boils down to; there can be no "reality" in fiction, only a version of reality as told by a given narrator. and while we are forced to take a narrator at their word when offered no other options, that doesn't mean every subsequent narrator is going to narrate the same story from the same point of view! it's important to have an understanding of the Ultimate Self as portrayed by Andrew Hussie because it deepens your appreciation of the original Homestuck, and a well-formed appreciation for Homestuck will in turn increase your understanding of Beyond Canon: not because HS and BC are the "same story" by any means, but because better knowing HS will make us better prepared to engage in the conversation being made when BC deconstructs, subverts, and even critiques the story we already know.

[officialspec]

highblood: and why the fuck should i let you tell me not to kill people

lowblood whos about to invent moirallegiance: oh, havent you heard?

[baeddel]

I have no idea what this is referencing but this is definitely the plot to Nietzche’s Genealogy of Morals

[mmmmalo]

[thewertsearch]

You have a head full of ideas, a box full of tech, and a couple hundred Grist burning a hole in your pocket.

What will you make?

Keep reading

[thewertsearch]

You don’t know how he does stuff like this. What does this even mean? It’s nonsense. Is it even syntactically viable?? Are you allowed to color text like that??? ARGH. Maybe you should ask him about it some time.

…hm.

You see, at first glance, this code does look syntactically viable, but only if we don’t pair the brackets in the way the coloring implies. If we write the code like this:

Then it’s a loop bound to the lifespan of Universe 1. Inside that main loop, it’s running a loop bound to the inverse of Universe 2′s lifespan - my guess being that this loop only runs while Universe 2 is dead.

If Universe 2 is ever registered as ‘alive’, the program waits for the blue THIS to die, and then continues. And when the main Universe 1 loop ends, it will wait for the red THIS to die, and finally exits. 

In other words: This program will exit when U1 is dead, U2 is alive, and both ‘bifurcated’ iterations of THIS are dead. 

However, the red/blue coloring implies that the brackets are paired in a completely nonsensical way. 

I’m with Karkat here, This is nonsense. You can’t put the top half of one code block inside another - at least, not in any language I’ve worked with. I’m sure there are weird, esoteric languages that do it, but it’s definitely not the syntax du jour.

This ‘merged bracket’ interpretation is probably the correct one, though, since the colors match up. The reason this compiles at all is probably due to the special behavior of bifurcate THIS[], which we’re not privy to. 

I do have a theory about what bifurcate is doing here, but… oh my god , guys, this is so silly. Will I post it? I’m going to post it. 

TA wears 3D glasses, right?

What if we’re meant to do the same?

If we view these two loops as not inside each other, but adjacent to each other in 3D space, then this code makes a lot more sense. Suddenly we’re just looking at two simple death loops - one which which exits when U1 dies, and one which exits when U2 lives. 

They’re not blocking each other, because they’re probably executing on different threads, which may be the true function of bifurcate. Viewed like this, this code becomes a simple, multithreaded script that works similarly to my original interpretation - the difference being that now, the colors match up properly. It’s kind of beautiful, to be honest. 

Now that I’m viewing this program as two threads, it seems as if the blue loop waits for the red thread to die before it can exit, and vice versa. 

If I’m right about this, it means that this program is deadlocked - neither thread can exit, because it’s waiting for the other one. The two threads are back to blocking each other, and this program will never exit.  

This code, when executed, immediately causes the user’s computer to explode, and places a curse on the user forever, along with everyone he knows, and everyone he’ll ever meet.

Not surprisingly, later on you would run this code in a fit of stupidity.

None of this, however, explains why it curses the user. 

I think I need to borrow Karkat’s ~ATH manual. 

[ethereal-business-cabaret]

you…might have been the first person to publicly crack this, actually

[overtrolled-liveblog]

Before I dive into Act 6, I want to take a second and talk about a phenomenon that caught on in the fandom: the Lyricstuck. Since Homestuck is a webcomic with very little in the way of footage to make AMVs, Homestuck fans on tumblr created lyricstucks, audio posts with hand drawn images that tied scenes in the webcomic to the lyrics, so that you could play the song and then scroll down to read the lyricstuck along with the music. These were super popular, and at the time tumblr culture was a lot more used to super long posts, often with part of it under a readmore. Many of these lyricstucks were adapted into video format and put on YouTube, thus preserving them when Tumblr started cracking down on copyrighted music. However, many of these have also been taken down from YouTube, leaving fandom history somewhat lost in the lurch.

The one above, based on My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up) by Fallout Boy, is one of the surviving standouts of the genre. Another I am partial to is the one based on The Highwayman by Willie Nelson and the Highwaymen, which explores the in-universe idea of ancestors

This one, Blue Lips, is famous within the fandom, one of the most popular audiovisual examples of the sort of angsty melancholy fanworks that the fandom put out that was given the moniker “sadstuck”

[canmom]

Someday we will be free of Homestuck (and not literally Stuck at Home ha ha ha) but not today! The new chapter of this adventure game series just dropped, and tonight and most likely Tuesday I’m going to be streaming both chapters of this extremely troubled adventure game. Come drop by if that sounds like a good time; no prior knowledge assumed!

[canmom]

haha well so it TURNS OUT

if you treat Hiveswap as a kind of combinatorics puzzle wherein, having seen that they went to the trouble of writing unique text for every single combination of inventory items and interactable objects…

you read these things out til your throat is sore and don’t even get to the Alternia section in one stream! so that’s where we’re picking up on Tuesday.

the second act is apparently a bit less wild with filling out that spreadsheet, so we will probably pick up the pace once we reach that one

[canmom]

Tuesday is today! we’re leaving the 90s to go a-trollin! come head on in :)

[canmom]

ahoy there friends, today we embark on the new part of DOMICILEBOUND MOUNDEXCHANGE! starting v shortly, we’re going to be wandering a fantasy world of fantasy oppression, hopefully a welcome contrast to our real world of real oppression!

we will begin with a recap of the previous game. hope to see you there ^_^

[canmom]

all right nerds across the hemospectrum! who wants to see the second half of Snowpiercer: Homestuck Edition? we’re making our way up a class-stratified train, but rather than badass axe fights, we have to unpick lesbian drama. much scarier. hiveswap chapter 2, going live now

[canmom]

is this it? the final chapter? or will we have any sequence to rival that courtroom epic? I have no idea what this game’s going to throw at us, except that it’s probably not gonna leave this train… hiveswap act 2, finishing today (probably)

[canmom]

Someday we will be free of Homestuck (and not literally Stuck at Home ha ha ha) but not today! The new chapter of this adventure game series just dropped, and tonight and most likely Tuesday I’m going to be streaming both chapters of this extremely troubled adventure game. Come drop by if that sounds like a good time; no prior knowledge assumed!

[canmom]

haha well so it TURNS OUT

if you treat Hiveswap as a kind of combinatorics puzzle wherein, having seen that they went to the trouble of writing unique text for every single combination of inventory items and interactable objects…

you read these things out til your throat is sore and don’t even get to the Alternia section in one stream! so that’s where we’re picking up on Tuesday.

the second act is apparently a bit less wild with filling out that spreadsheet, so we will probably pick up the pace once we reach that one

[canmom]

Tuesday is today! we’re leaving the 90s to go a-trollin! come head on in :)

[canmom]

ahoy there friends, today we embark on the new part of DOMICILEBOUND MOUNDEXCHANGE! starting v shortly, we’re going to be wandering a fantasy world of fantasy oppression, hopefully a welcome contrast to our real world of real oppression!

we will begin with a recap of the previous game. hope to see you there ^_^

[canmom]

all right nerds across the hemospectrum! who wants to see the second half of Snowpiercer: Homestuck Edition? we’re making our way up a class-stratified train, but rather than badass axe fights, we have to unpick lesbian drama. much scarier. hiveswap chapter 2, going live now

[canmom]

Someday we will be free of Homestuck (and not literally Stuck at Home ha ha ha) but not today! The new chapter of this adventure game series just dropped, and tonight and most likely Tuesday I’m going to be streaming both chapters of this extremely troubled adventure game. Come drop by if that sounds like a good time; no prior knowledge assumed!

[canmom]

haha well so it TURNS OUT

if you treat Hiveswap as a kind of combinatorics puzzle wherein, having seen that they went to the trouble of writing unique text for every single combination of inventory items and interactable objects…

you read these things out til your throat is sore and don’t even get to the Alternia section in one stream! so that’s where we’re picking up on Tuesday.

the second act is apparently a bit less wild with filling out that spreadsheet, so we will probably pick up the pace once we reach that one

[canmom]

Tuesday is today! we’re leaving the 90s to go a-trollin! come head on in :)

[canmom]

ahoy there friends, today we embark on the new part of DOMICILEBOUND MOUNDEXCHANGE! starting v shortly, we’re going to be wandering a fantasy world of fantasy oppression, hopefully a welcome contrast to our real world of real oppression!

we will begin with a recap of the previous game. hope to see you there ^_^

[canmom]

Someday we will be free of Homestuck (and not literally Stuck at Home ha ha ha) but not today! The new chapter of this adventure game series just dropped, and tonight and most likely Tuesday I’m going to be streaming both chapters of this extremely troubled adventure game. Come drop by if that sounds like a good time; no prior knowledge assumed!

[canmom]

haha well so it TURNS OUT

if you treat Hiveswap as a kind of combinatorics puzzle wherein, having seen that they went to the trouble of writing unique text for every single combination of inventory items and interactable objects…

you read these things out til your throat is sore and don’t even get to the Alternia section in one stream! so that’s where we’re picking up on Tuesday.

the second act is apparently a bit less wild with filling out that spreadsheet, so we will probably pick up the pace once we reach that one

[canmom]

Tuesday is today! we’re leaving the 90s to go a-trollin! come head on in :)

[canmom]

Someday we will be free of Homestuck (and not literally Stuck at Home ha ha ha) but not today! The new chapter of this adventure game series just dropped, and tonight and most likely Tuesday I’m going to be streaming both chapters of this extremely troubled adventure game. Come drop by if that sounds like a good time; no prior knowledge assumed!

[canmom]

haha well so it TURNS OUT

if you treat Hiveswap as a kind of combinatorics puzzle wherein, having seen that they went to the trouble of writing unique text for every single combination of inventory items…

you read these things out til your throat is sore and don’t even get to the Alternia section in one stream! so that’s where we’re picking up on Tuesday.

the second act is apparently a bit less wild with filling out that spreadsheet, so we will probably pick up the pace once we reach that one

[canmom]

Someday we will be free of Homestuck (and not literally Stuck at Home ha ha ha) but not today! The new chapter of this adventure game series just dropped, and tonight and most likely Tuesday I’m going to be streaming both chapters of this extremely troubled adventure game. Come drop by if that sounds like a good time; no prior knowledge assumed!