#a6a5a2

[cellberry]

Oh the Trickster arc is over already, and now we get more Caliborn… Hooray…

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[5872-5877]

bye bitch

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[5830] TT: And I'd feel safe concluding that. Except for a feeling that's been gnawing at me. [5831] TT: It's the feeling that it would make perfect sense if a session like this had a dark horse leader. TT: A leader who was invisible to us all along. Fittingly, a void player to lead a void session. TT: She would be a leader not in name or in spirit or in function, whatever that means. TT: But more of an emotional leader, who would selflessly try to hold everyone together while the rest of us did our best to fall apart. TT: And Roxy has been that for us every step of the way, going unnoticed and unappreciated. TT: Think of how much shit she's had to put up with from all of us. TT: She never complains, never turns it around and makes it about her problems. TT: She just works her ass off making sure we all stay friends. TT: If that isn't a leader, I don't know what is.

as it has been a little bit, i went back a little ways. This bit jumped out at me. I think this might be another example of the duality themes in Homestuck. This session is very yin, very dark, very passive. very little happens. the last session was very yang, very active, very bright. so much happens. In the last session, John was the friendleader. Even though he does not order his team around like Karkat does, his role in the plot is a lot more direct, a lot more central to the motions of the story. The other characters who are important also command, direct, alter things with various degrees of directness. Vriska and Terezi change things. The plot is packed with agents. By contrast, Roxy is a very passive friendleader. She does not initiate the things which happen. She has a side role in the Dirk-Jake-Jane drama, she is captured by the baroness, freed by the agents, and her late-game new power involves becoming less in relevant to the plot.

In a way, this echoes the wider godlike roles that the cherubs play later on. John as the active class, Roxy as the passive class, both of whom are less pure embodiments of that duality than the Lord and the Muse (I notice that John’s title, the Heir, is conceptually related to lordship, as one inherits the command of an estate). And in the end Roxy and John are the ones who survive Game Over.

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[5746]

Y’know, I had the thought that Roxy might have been able to quit in part because there was so little grist to make more booze, so the supply was small or gone after a while, but no, she had a huge barroom filled with all sorts of shit but she kept resisting her addiction. That isn’t easy; you basically need to rebuild all of your habits when the old habits are just lying there in front of you, so easy to pick up.

I appreciate the erisol apology, stilted and bizarre as it is. The minor troll characters get shunted to the back in a way that feels kind of strange, but I am glad that there is at least some sort of redemptive gesture. It feels weird though. After vengeance is earned and satisfied, what is there left? if a person can grow and mature after death, murder is the same as any horrifically violent act. if they are trapped in the stasis of the grave, how can there be forgiveness?

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This is a weird bit isn’t it? Usually, the trope is that the disapproving parent intervenes, or at least confronts, their wayward child. and while that is sort of impossible at this distance, the choice to show that the father sees and disapproves is a deliberate choice.

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[5719-22] YOU LOVE ME TOO RIGHT JAKE?

I’ve never been able to get excited about the tricksters like some other fans, it may be simply a result of how I was introduced to the concept, but then, maybe I just don’t get what other people find particularly attractive about it. I guess colorful characters are fun, and drawing fanart that way is fun, and maybe that’s it. Maybe my own straight-edgedness makes me less receptive to, like, drug-coded stuff? That doesn’t seem to be the case in other situations though.

Maybe it’s just that it doesn’t solve their problems, but suppresses them, and creates new ones, much like an actual drug might. This conversation in particular treads on some touchy territory. Jake seems pretty uninterested in Jane here, but this trickster Jane seems to be willfully ignoring signals she doesn’t want to hear, (which I guess makes her more like Jake in a way. Irony?) and the tricksters successively force this transformation on unwilling. 

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[5770] Yeah this is still just Dirk’s sword.

I like this panel. Just the expressions that that they wear as Dirk’s inescapable weebshit intrudes into their shared madness.

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[5730-5737]

So this obviously pretty creepy, but the humor in it sort of tempers it. I’m having a fairly negative reaction to this right now, but I remember having a fairly normal reaction when I read it in the past (not entirely normal, as I will explain when I answer an ask I just got). But I’m having kind of a weird night right now.