i really don't get the edgelord types who say stuff like 'love is nothing but a chemical reaction' as a way of trying to like, devalue love or dismiss its importance. like ok and ?
it's like this idea that intellectualizing and demystifying what's happening in our body somehow makes those processes less meaningful, as though they are opposites somehow. odd!
Idk man some of us have been deeply traumatised by love and don't see the point in romanticsing it I guess?? Like ok love is like. Cute and all, happy for you or whatever but let's not pretend it's as magical and unconditional as everyone likes to say it is 😒 but sure boil us down to an edgelord caricature if that makes the concept of ppl not liking the thing you do easier to process idk
jakob and anathema lay in bed: jakob over the covers, anathema under. both of them were hungry.
“you know,” jakob said like a thief, “freud once said that every sexual act involves four people. the two lovers, and each lover’s projected fantasy of the other.”
“only four?” anathema said mildly.
jakob’s brows became anxious. see, jakob? that’s what you get for trying to be clever while naked. “yeah, only four. unless you got more?”
“i read, i don’t remember where, maybe lacan, that it takes a minimum of nine.”
“nine!?”
“mmm-hmm.” and she yawned.
ah, anathema: you’re one of those girls who hates to try, but loves to win. how brittle your seashell heart must be!
anathema’s voice went professorial. “first, there’s us: two atomic, untouching intelligences. then, like you said, the fantasied objects of desire. you didn’t mention, but, usually oedipal.”
“okay,” jakob said, then with a twitch of the mouth decided he had conceded too much. “maybe.”
“then there’s the repressed part of each person.” a solemn nod. well, at least grad studentorial. “often the most revealing part, sexually.”
“i don’t repress,” jakob said, “do you repress? maybe you repress.”
“of course you repress, jakob,” anathema said, stroking his hand. “whatever you aren’t, your unconscious is, you know? so if you’re a skinny, sensitive, poet-type, then your unconscious is obese, uncouth, illiterate.”
“i bet he eats pussy like a king though,” jakob said, “what’s yours?”
anathema touched her cheek. “dunno. i’m well-integrated.”
“coward,” jakob said.
“well, fine,” anathema said, “if i had to guess, she’s sickly, nervous, complains a lot, an aging nurse with eau de nicotine and chronic cough, holding a coffee mug that warns against conversing with the holder before the liquid therein is consumed.”
“you lost me,” jakob squinted, “is this like, your aunt, or something?”
anthema flushed. why who can say? perhaps, like many girls whose beauty is mathematical, she was guarded against even the mention of numbers that didn’t add up.
“doesn’t matter. that’s six,” she said.
an imperceptible nod.
“then there’s each person’s identification with the other person,” anathema said, “the empathic radar sweep—pleasure? pain?—which rebounds into narcissistic gratification, ‘i am making them feel this way.’ ”
anathema pulled up the sheets. “that’s eight. it’s kind of cold in here?”
“the thermostat says 72. but c’mon, is empathy really needed to enjoy the music of mutual orgasm? i mean, just from the you know, pavlovian…ah…”
jakob trailed off.
“you don’t empathize?” anathema asked.
“no, i’m autistic,” jakob said.
pause.
“i guess i knew that,” anathema acknowledged. “anyway, last, but not least, is the excluded third party.”
“huh,” jakob said. he scanned her eyes to see if any excluded third parties were present, but could see nothing clearly in her black coffee eyes. “you mean excluded ninth party.”
“sure.” anathema smiled without humor. “the excluded ninth party includes everyone not involved in the sexual act, who by their exclusion, are thereby included: referee, nightmare, voyeur.”
jacob looked out the dust-dried window, then at his the weather app on his phone. the sky was bright and blue, but the air was rumored cold. thus a distinction between light and heat was implied.
“ ‘who by their exclusion, are therby included,’ ” jakob said.
“that’s what i said,” anathema replied coolly.
“given that such a quorum is required,” jakob said, “it’s a wonder anyone has sex at all.”
“actually, they don’t.”
“they don’t?”
anathema shrugged. “i mean, according to lacan.”
silence seemed to enter through the window, although there was doubtless more noise outside than within. by degrees, the earth turned its face away from the sun.
“so this is the power of french philosophy,” jakob mumbled, “damn.”
jakob and anathema shifted pointlessly in the bed.
remember, they were hungry. remember, they were young.
“you said a minimum of nine,” jakob tilted his head. “could there be more?”
anathema sighed.
“there is a tenth,” anathema said: “God.”
“GOD!?”
“yes,” anathema said, “in the sexual act, each of the aforementioned persons contributes to a single massive superego that in each moment rolls a kantian gut check: are they fucking in a manner that they would will to be a universal law?”
“if yes, there are ten, and god blesses their intercourse with love and sacred warmth. if not, there are nine, and they have to fill their doubt with hormones and mantras to the effect that You Only Live Once.”
both of them scanned the other’s eyes.
“seems complicated,” jakob said.
“well, life is complicated,” anathema said.
both of them scanned the other’s eyes.
“but it doesn’t have to be that complicated,” anathema, as fantasized by jakob said.
“i could make it even more complicated,” jakob, as fantasized by anathema, said.
“the numbers don’t add up,” anathema’s unconscious said, “i want to want this. i want to want to want this. so why can’t i…?”
“there ain’t no universals! that’s some dumb shit!” jakob’s unconscious said, “now let me get back to going kobayashi on that gash!”
both of them scanned the other’s eyes, looking for something.
“a girl like a videogame, perfectly just in her correlation of effort with reward,”
“a boy like a cop who never catches the criminal,”
“a girl like the punchline of a joke, or a secret,”
“a boy like a promoted pawn,”
“a vampire, but not for blood,”
“a kiss, but not for love,”
“light, without heat,”
“heat, without light,”
“what i can’t get from you i will…” the part of anathema that identified with jakob and the part of the part of jakob that identified with anathema said.
and here the excluded ninth party opined: “in the penultimate act, the young two lovers curse each other with society’s labels. made strangers by this crude understanding, the lovers separate; but with distance, they realize that what is true in the abstract, misses the point entirely in the particulars. they reconcile. they face us, in defiance of our labels. and we approve. we approve of their match. we always approve when people turn to face us, for we are lonely, and we crave their gaze.”
“so it goes in most judd apatow movies, but perhaps your case is different.”
“i don’t know what to ask from you and i don’t know what to ask from the world,” jakob said quietly.
“what?” anathema said.
“NEVERMIND ALL THAT,” God said, “I AM THE LORD THY GOD, WHO BROUGHT YOU UP OUT OF THE LAND OF EGYPT, OUT OF THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE. YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME. YOU SHALL NOT MAKE FOR YOURSELVES AN IDOL, NOR ANY IMAGE OF ANYTHING THAT IS IN THE HEAVENS ABOVE, OR THAT IS IN THE EARTH BENEATH, OR THAT IS IN THE WATER UNDER THE EARTH: YOU SHALL NOT BOW YOURSELF DOWN TO THEM, NOR SERVE THEM, FOR I, YOUR GOD, AM A JEALOUS GOD, VISITING THE INIQUITY OF THE FATHERS ON THE CHILDREN, ON THE THIRD AND ON THE FOURTH GENERATION OF THOSE WHO HATE ME, AND SHOWING LOVING KINDNESS TO THOUSANDS OF THOSE WHO LOVE ME AND KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS.”
jakob and anathema sat up in bed and listened, expecting discourse on graven images and maybe some life advice.
but God only said: “SO ISN’T THERE SOMEONE YOU FORGOT TO ASK?”
and the eyes of jakob and anathema were opened, and they knew that they were naked.
id like to live in the pokemon world because i like the idea of finding a mystery egg on my adventures and taking it with me and after a while it hatches and theres just some sentient car keys in there
pokemon eggs are really interesting because theyre all the same size shape and colour regardless of what species it belongs to so if you just obtain an egg youll never know what you could get. could be pikachu. could be god. could be a crocodile. you just dont know and thats half the fun
oh my god oh my god shut up "the pikachu gods dont come from eggs" "the gods cant breed" oh my god i get it youre the superior nerd lorekeeper of piss mountain just say you never read the pokedex entry for arceus or ever had arceus bestow upon you an egg containing the god of time, space or antimatter in heartgold soulsilver and move on oh my god shut up
Alright I have been enabled so I’m gonna say somethings.
Fatalistic sarcasm is a thing, however, it usually hides deep feelings of insecurity, and whether you consciously recognize this or not, it validates them. Seriously, I used to constantly make jokes about how other people’s work was better than mine, and it did nothing for my self-esteem, it was a tool to deflect from my own feelings of inferiority and it actively worked against me thinking critically about my own and other people’s work. If it was a joke I could put myself down instead of analyzing why someone’s work was better and trying to incorporate that into my own
As someone who took creative writing courses I was constantly surrounded by other brilliant people, if I hung my head in shame every time I read something as good or better than mine I never would have lifted it.
As someone who has watched a lot of writers with very good idea’s crash and burn I mean it when I say you either develop a healthy sense of respect for your own work or you stop writing.
There’s three things I really wish more people consider
1. Do you think their work is better because it’s a different style, one that you like? There’s an element to ‘the grass is greener on the other side’, I have seen people work in some amazing styles that I wished to god I could replicate, some I managed, some I never did, but there’s nothing wrong with either. having a different style Is Not the same as having a bad style, each has their own strengths and you can admire one without putting yours down
2. Knowing someone who is a better writer is a blessing and if they knew you were using their work to bring yourself down they would not be happy, mooch off that friend, analyze their work, ask them to edit your shit, as long as you’re not annoying them be shameless about it. the best thing creative writing did for me was give me the confidence to ask people to critic my work and shamelessly better each other for that sharing
3. People need to normalize being confident in their work, the quality of your work has literally nothing to do with your worth as a person, the quality of your work has nothing to do with your worth as a writer. You can write something really shitty and the only thing I’d say to you is that your trying and I respect you for that
The entire reason I started writing fic was because I was too sick to be anxious about it, and after that, whenever I would get down on myself my work would stagnate, so I learned to follow sick Magpie’s lead and just say fuck it.
I write because I enjoy it. I write because I love it. And I write because I want to share a piece of myself with the world and say this is me, take it or leave it.
Learn to give yourself grace. Learn to get better at writing because you love it, not because you hate what you create. And most of all, learn that no one is able to write exactly like you do, and that is amazing.
I had a dream I was able to time travel and I went like 10,20,100,1000,2000 years into the future but the instant I went to 4,000 I got stuck in a time dilation jail set up by the American government in the year 3,877 in which anyone that tried to time travel back or forth across May 23, 3877 while on Earth would end up stuck in this time dilation chamber trap to stop time travelers but like it was so crazy and mismanaged because it was legit capturing like every single time traveler ever and the place had only been open for 12 minutes and was already getting overpopulated with nonstop multiple recursive instances of this one other guy trying to break previous versions of himself out of this god damn time traveler jail
The peanut butter in Reese's cups has the taste and texture of like a vitamin enriched paste you squeeze from a tube directly into your mouth when you've been living in a bunker for 30 years bc aliens invaded and it's your birthday treat. I say this with love
'how kafkaesque' i say waiting in line at the taco bell. you think im talking about the alienating bureaucracy of waiting in a single file line for food premade in another state but actually im talking about the dead cockroach in the corner
not to be starting homestuck race disk horse in 2019 but yknow what? I Will.
being an asian fan in the hs fandom is kinda, not great actually. in fact, it not only feels like we’re not here at all, that we’re erased, but its honestly? downright harmful. people treat the trivialization and fetishization of your culture to be,,, like a Big Joak. yall joke about weebs like these people havent been literally grooming and abusing asian girls, like we havent been made fun of enough for Their actions, like we aren’t already viewed as the strange punchlines to jokes that still seem somehow acceptable. its somehow funny to joke about how you hate every sign of asian culture that shows up throughout the comics, like how dirk’s kotatsu was dumb and pretentious as if people in japan dont literally live with one and use it every single day!
even asian-coding in characters get swept away in favour of other headcanons. even the megidos, who are as close to canonically asian as they possibly can be in a medium like homestuck, are often drawn white or something completely different altogether. the stridlondes are also heavily asian-coded, and the fans who do pick up on that, who finally feel comforted by someone like them as protagonists? they often just.. give up on that, because they see so little representation in the fandom. (theres only like one popular artist i know of that draws the strilondes asian? but like, hats off to u pal, youre fighting the good fight). also, it seems strange, to be represented so little considering almost 3 billion people on earth is asian, which is, Quite A Lot to be not represented a lot.
dont get me wrong, i adore the outpouring of more diverse art of the kids, but a hard truth to swallow is that pocs being weebs/fetishizing asian culture, is just as harmful as white people doing the same. there is a world of difference between japanese dirk, trying to interface with his lost culture by clinging to the most performative and popular parts of it, than another dirk, appropriating people’s cultures because he thinks its funny or interesting based off a show he watched once. i love how people are like “wow the striders like anime and care about traditions and use japanese words and overall just seem like diaspora kids” and the conclusion they draw from that is “clearly,, they cannot be asian” bc a non-asian person being interested in those things is better than an asian person whose interested in their own culture i guess??
in fact, a lot of these narratives are so much more interesting once theyre looked at through their coded lenses!
Dave’s struggle with coming to terms with his emotions strikes such an interesting chord when the striders’ concept of irony and never showing their emotions Correspond so well to the idea of honour/face, where youre not supposed to show that youre Ever Sad or anything that isnt a positive emotion because it shows that youre a Failure and You Failed and that makes you a Bad Person, which is exactly what dave struggles with because hes So Guilty about it, which ties to the guilt and shame a lot of asian people feel about not being able to live up to impossible standards set by their parents, which is another theme we see reflected in all four strilondes.
rose’s strained relations with her mother are mirrored in so many of our second-generation lives and makes so much more cultural sense when looked at that way. the weird distance you hold from your parents, where you cant look each other in the eyes anymore, because every interaction feels more like a business transaction. you hand in your good grades and praise from teachers, talking about how mature you are, and they return with some present or gift that you don’t really want. you dont know anything about them, and they dont know anything about you, Not the person you Actually Are, anyways. but there is a yearning, to be close, to know eachother, but you only feel it in return when its too late. as well as her Obsession to be mature, to be smart and adult-like because thats what shes praised for, because you Need to be academically the best always and that means reading dictionaries until the sun goes down, repeating each word until they are engraved into your mind. always finding competition, subtle or not, because if you are not the winner, what are you?
dirk’s wild performative love of japanese culture (which also, in turn, lead to non-asian fans literally trashing it like it was a funny joke to call someone’s culture lame and stupid) seems like ‘ironic’ weebism, but its also being Exactly the type of over-the-too performative reclaiming of our culture that so many asian diaspora kids do when they’re teens! they feel bad about pushing away their culture as youth, but they’re not quite mature enough to actually care about the rich history and ‘boring’ parts, so they cling to pop culture, to social media and something so much more easily consumable, like anime. which is not even to mention the idea of him trying desperately to connect to a culture that he has never grown up in, but still belonged to by consuming mass amounts of media, being Such an immigrant story. as well as his massive competitive streak and need to make other people as good as he is (but not better), is the type of internalized pressure that a lot of asian kids feel as well.
and all the stridlondes have various anxieties about not performing well enough, of not living up to a standard that they have set for themselves, feeling like even a single step back or even one mistake is a catastrophic failure that’s branded to you for life. Which is just as much of a mental health thing as it is like,,, an asian thing
this is getting really long so im cutting myself off here but please if you want to hear more about my Thoughts and Hot Takes feel free to shoot me an ask.
in conclusion: please treat asian people better hs fandom i literally beg you. like,, im Not tryna make waves but,, asian erasure in fandom is a huge issue and no one ever talks abt it!! dont trivialize, fetishize and erase cultures blease
big thanks to @ernikerr and @wyndryga for encouraging me to go Off and helping to write this.
anyone please feel free to rb but non-asian people please watch your mouth
Detective Pony pages 21 and 46, as written by detective-pony
Click here to see yesterday’s page. Click here for high-contrast black and white pages. Fullsize images and transcribed text under the cut. (These pages have small-ass, dense-ass text, so you might want to read the transcription.)
In celebration of Canon Day, let’s look back at the dumb joke page I thought of in the shower that turned into a critical plot point and became a (beyond) canon meta-meme.
I woke up with Dirk's voice in my ear going "Don't ask questions. Shower immediately. Grab your things and start working. No time to squander around; just do as I say."
God damn I mean, I know I have college admission tests today, but I didn't need that, overactive imagination.
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
gummygunk
romaincrisis
