homestuckposting

@penultimateapogee's blog for sharing my thoughts about homestuck. i write things occasionally

[expirequiem]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

hey, i haven’t really engaged with homestuck in a while, but showing this fic to my friend @penultimateapogee and her offer to reformat it really renewed my interest in showing this story to people again. this fic was originally posted when i was 14, in 2017, but i’m still really proud of it. hope whoever reads it enjoys it :)

[prospiting]

White Noise publishing Java code call that public static void

[tomatograter]

Okay, but then what about people who still draw Roxy as a girl when he's a transman? I am a June supporter but I feel like there's a double standard when looking at these two characters, I've seen the same arguments used for both sides of these debates but I feel that people are more lenient with still viewing Roxy as transfem or a cis woman and that doesn't really sit right with me no matter how you try to spin it, it should be the same treatment for both characters and it feels weird that people feel that they can cherry pick because they don't want Roxy to be a man

1) epilogues roxy is never stated to be a trans man, there are plenty he/they/she transfems, butch transfems, nonbinary transfems, experimenting transfems, agender transfems, and the argument that roxy is a binary transmasculine man and can only be that and nothing else is so far from roxy themselves as a character it genuinely makes me roll my eyes. Roxy's fluid, experimenting, and that's the main takeaway from the epilogues.

2) roxy lalonde has always had transfem subtext, in the same way dirk strider has always had transmasc subtext, but in her case it starts with something even more blatant:

And you know, evolves into a long running thread of her performing femininity, being closely linked to the idea of lab-assisted reproduction, cloning, and ectobiology as means of creating family out of an implied "nothing" because it is alluded again and again they don't quite have the means to carry a child biologically. (Roxy's quest eventually leads to assisting the recreation of the Mothergrub, pulling it from the void itself, further tying to how important this desire and themes are) It also includes roxy's love for a series of books whose protagonist is referred by "she/he" or "s/he" pronouns - written by rose no less, whose's relationship to her mom is legendary, and also hussie's commentary that chumhandles are supposed to be a play on chromosomes. He first loosely stabilishes 'girls have alliterations while boys have different letters' as a visual shorthand, then roxy and dirk are purposefully left switched (GT and TT respectively) and this very fact is commented on during roxy's introduction, further signalling she's not a cis girl.

Really we could spend even more time picking at the smaller details that contribute to this profile (The 'coding transfem' subset of lgbt internet culture, the freaking catgirls, because of course, and more) but im not intending to do a lorepost, just a clarification. This has been pointed out by transfems for as long as roxy has been roxy, and works seamlessly w/ their text.

3) the epilogues were not written in collaboration with any trans women, and did stumble for it. Jade's presentation in the epilogues is... not my favorite, nor is the general cissentric atmosphere. Peruse at your leisure, but I'm not taking dirk's joke involving a dick twitch as Literal Facts either, so why should i start here

If you think nonbinary identities only encompass the spectrum of AFAB experiences i *fully* reccomend you to exit my page and don't look back

[prospiting]

roxy and june listening to music together and roxy goes "uhh i think this ones a little after ur time but theyre one of my faves" and plays 100 gecs and june absolutely fucking cannot handle it

[thatneoncrisis]

IDK man even while the homestuck women are obviously incredibly relatable to so many people their trauma is very hyperspecific "raised by a magic dog on an island completely isolated for 13 years then spent the next 3-6 being punished by the entire universe for wanting to be happy with her friends" "developed a serious alcohol addiction in a vain attempt to try to connect to her long dead mother while dealing with the trauma of being one of the last two people on earth" "was forced to kill other children to appease her monster mom and was actively encouraged by her society to be a terrible person to those that were perceived less than" and once you separate them of that plot specific context you're either left with an incredibly heart wrenching fic about dealing with alcoholism, neglect, csa trauma, ect or like. shitty fanon mirrors of these girls that reduce them to their most basic interpretations so you can have a coffee shop au. and im not saying its IMPOSSIBLE but i am saying its a pretty daunting task to try and balance the two so most people end up defaulting to yet another davekat confession fic. its easy and palatable

[homestuckexamination]

It was incredibly liberating, as a fanfic writer, when I realized that the doomed/alpha timelines was entirely a construct of LE's design. Paradox Space is an infinitely more vast and versatile medium than that which pertains to Calliope and the Green Sun. Our only limit is our imagination

Oh yeah! Paradox Space is massive and expansive, and like, hell, Pesterquest even depicts a scenario in which the fans literally breach out of the Alpha Predetermination and make things go different, for good, so like, anything can happen in Homestuck!

[lesjade-moved]

homestuck canon is so wild that you can tell me virtually anything happened and i’ll believe you. like you can say “terezi murdered dave” and i’ll be like “that sounds about right” and actually i’m gonna have to refrain from writing the rest of this post because i just remembered that terezi did, in fact, murder dave

[penultimateapogee]

every reluctant hero deserves to have a trans awakening actually

[prospiting]

listening to fugunk towshe’s song and thinking about how good her route was. go play gearboxed friendsim by @p-pamda

[prospiting]

stream Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Ethics Violation (SBB Volume 5)

[prospiting]

we really need to talk more about how kanaya started talking to rose and just, fell head over heels in love with her immediately

[hairscare]

legit??? people who think that feferi is a horrible person bc “she manipulated eridan” or whatever are so stupid if you dislike feferi bc beforus shows that if she is not reeducated she would be ableist thats completely understandable but people act like feferi was manipulative and cruel to sollux and eridan bc she wasnt a complacent bubbly pixie girl and actually had a personality and teased people i dont remember there being anything in her dialogue (not beforus) that showed her ableism besides her keeping animals in her hive (which ive seen people say “she kept them in cages!!!!” which no, she did not, they could freely roam and she didnt care) so at 13 years old she is understandably not fully developed in her views and opinions yet and if she hadnt DIED could have been educated about the privilege she was born into

[brothfan1997]

homestuck at its core is really just about! how being a kid growing up is hard! and the specific realities of being an indoor kid who spent most of the time online, chatting with friends and playing games and writing dumb wizard stories. and growing and changing and leaving things behind and learning, and doing all this without coming to resent your past self for not having learned yet. there are so many instances of homestuck being about literally confronting the self at different levels of maturity and understanding, and overcoming the initial embarrassment and rejection, to understand, and forgive yourself! because you’re a kid! and growing up is hard!

[pondsquatter]

also it's very silly but whenever i see people be like 'terezi is a vriska apologist' it's like, i need to be very clear with you that terezi is both extremes of the vriscourse at all times. terezi believes that vriska has done nothing wrong ever and also that everything vriska has ever done is wrong

[landofsomethingsomething]

characterization, filters, and characterization to be found in the lack of filters

Talking about Jane earlier got me thinking, you know, Jane is not at all the only character that uses this device to show off the less desirable traits lurking in the psyche of all these damaged teens. Like. So many characters have these lurking deep seated issues that stay hidden deep down because the characters are pretty good at projecting a less damaged and more together version of themselves. 

If that sounds familiar it’s because it’s a fucking outrageously relatable quality and part of what makes the Homestuck characters RESONATE so much. Why they feel like they have all this dimension and depth that makes us grab on to them and never want to let go. 

I’m just going to run through some examples here while I’m thinking about it. The first OBVIOUSLY since thinking about her is what got me going on this – Jane. Crockertier Jane removing the layers of self-imposed filter on Jane’s festering insecurity, entitlement issues, jealousy and so on. I’ve already talked enough about that today.

Grimbark Jade! You notice Jade says what she’s thinking WAY more easily while she’s mind controlled, and she still sounds like herself – she sounds kinda like she does when she’s owning Karkat repeatedly, doesn’t she? Because angry Jade has that same effect of pushing her nice girl filter aside and letting the angry witch (not a cutesy slur, her literal witch class) within fly free. Grimbark Jade tells us that behind that nice girl front Jade Harley actually thinks some pretty uncharitable thoughts sometimes, she just keeps a tight fucking lid on it because – well, don’t most people? Relatable as fuck. 

Jadesprite! Since we’re talking about Jade anyway. Jade likes to think she has everything together, that her visions from Skaia and her scientific prowess and the tools her Grandpa left her are more than enough to handle everything that comes her way, she’s independent, she’s capable, she’s certainly never LONELY oh no of course not certainly never CRUSHINGLY OVERWHELMED by the responsibility of her own existence nah those are weak feelings for weak girls who aren’t as awesome as Jade! And then – Jadesprite. Why do you think Jade got SO ANGRY at Jadesprite? Because she was being confronted with something she knew deep down was a reflection of weaknesses in herself (totally normal ones that her later arc reinforced were a mistake to pretend weren’t there – Loneliness and fear and regret are all tied in with Jade’s character progression and learning how to deal with those things is where I imagine her arc would have gone if Homstuck’s ending hadn’t been the literary equivalent of chopping off a limb and cauterizing the wound.) Jadesprite is Jade without the filter of implacable strength Jade imposes on herself to fuckin cope with living on a hell island with the stuffed corpse of her grandpa who she grew up thinking literally killed himself at BEST.  god damn

Davesprite. Dave Strider with a slow long agonizing depressing arc wherein he realizes his coolkid persona won’t make anyone think of him as their best friend anymore, and in the absence of the security that persona afforded him when he was The Real Dave he has no idea what to do with himself. He’s lost, he feels aimless, untethered, incapable of being happy – and yes, Davesprite is his own character, but you can still infer a lot from Dave’s character about him – for instance, how he completely ties his self worth up in how useful he is to his friends or how worthwhile they find him and has no idea how to even BEGIN the hard journey of looking within for worth instead of relying eternally on changeable external sources. Davesprite is Dave not WITHOUT a filter but certainly with a VERY DIFFERENT one.

Homestuck does this with almost every single damn character on its roster at some point. Shows a version of them with a different or lesser or completely missing filter to highlight flaws and issues and internal struggles of all kinds. 

Homestuck is a damn deep dive into an exercise about analyzing nature vs nurture and what we’re predisposed to do and what comes from within and what is put upon us by forces out of our control, and how that line is blurry and messy and everyone has the potential to be either the worst or best version of themselves. Even Caliborn was given a choice. Hussie-The-Character explained it to him at great painstaking length. 

There are so many other examples. Jasprose is Rose without a filter, and the way Jasprose goes around gleefully calling every hot girl she sees hot and delighting smugly in knowing more than just about anyone else and lording over the information and playing smarter-than-thou games – that tells us a LOT about Rose! A LOT about what sort of urges Rose tamps down on every day in an effort to just be fucking cool! 

I bet you have things like this with yourself, right? Doesn’t everyone?

Tricksters! Look at how they act. They’re not themselves but there is plenty to glean from them. Jane immediately goes for Jake, the object of her desire, to pursue an exaggerated version of her idealized future. Trickster Jake is a passive fucking ragdoll who immediately acquiesces to everything everyone demands of him because their happiness becomes his happiness – Jake hates confrontation, so Trickster Jake is just a fucking doormat. Roxy goes for Jake AND Dirk because divorced from the guilt she normally feels for harboring desire toward either one of them she knows exactly what she wants! ETC ETC. Of course they would never do any of this shit if they weren’t high as balls and incapable of understanding the meaning of the word “consequence.” That’s the point. Seeing what they do in this situation is an interesting window in!

Brain Ghost Dirk is a version of Jake (yes, of Jake, not Dirk) without a specific filter Jake runs his own personality through before he’s comfortable presenting it to others, and you’ll notice, it’s EXTREMELY biting and critical sometimes. Jake knows what he’s about. He just buries it most of the time because that’s easier than dealing with it. 

I could seriously keep going. 

Homestuck loves to show us what our favorites do and say and ARE when basic filters go out the window. Those filters that most of us employ to make other people believe we don’t all have intrusive thoughts or bad desires or just plain old weaknesses we’re ashamed of and want to keep hidding at costs – or that we occasionally think things or think about doing things we would never ever ever do in real life are demolished or changed or temporarily suspended. 

It’s brilliant tbh. It lets us see facets of characters that would normally never really get full spotlight reveals by their very nature, especially with protagonists. 

Vriska vs (Vriska) – (Vriska) is just Vriska with some more self awareness and more willingness to let down her self-imposed filter and actually examine the shit she wants and why because watching Aranea fuck the timeline over out of motivations eerily similar to her own hardcore shook her enough to develop in that direction. (which makes sense since HER original motivations are copying Mindfang who IS alt-aranea lmao I love Homestuck)  (Vriska) is still Vriska, it’s just a very very different lens through which to view her character. 

blah blah blah blah etc there are so many examples

anyway I love Homestuck and good character writing what up

[prospiting]

sometimes i think about how tavros and nepeta and equius and eridan and feferi died at the age of 13 and never got the chance to grow up and mature and change at all, and how gamzee succumbed to what amounts to mental illness and brainwashing and had his life thrown away in service of a perversion of his religion, and how vriska’s upbringing forced her to believe that the only thing that gave her life meaning was throwing it away into ambiguity in search of a spotlight, and how aradia and sollux half-survived in their own ways but became so disillusioned with reality that they decided no thanks not for me

[the-hs-etaverse]

and how kanaya ultimately failed in all of her missions and could only reach a happy ending while being technically dead, and how karkat believed he failed as a leader because half of his friends died and ended up with literal self-hatred, and how terezi had essentially lost everything before the game and came so close to getting it back but couldn’t, and how everybody had to die at least once, and how there was so much pointless sacrifice just in search of winning a game

[prospiting]

you did it! you brought it back around!

[prospiting]

as a friendsim fan @distantquest really made me feel things. a lot of things.

[prospiting]

i never thought The Signless would make his way into the upper quartile of my favorite Homestuck Fanon-Extended Universe characters (that being every homestuck character plus Friendsim/Pesterquest and fansims/fanventures/fanmade epilogues/etc) but here we are!