#ask to tag...?

[illegaltruffle]

i forgot i coloured some on-site colouring pages a while ago was trying to go for the whole 90s cheesy horror book cover vibe with them

[dingodad]

if the humans are all incest why are the trolls not all incest, they meet the categories of all growing up together and sort of being a slurry around the same time, with weird parents. is it the alien thing? I'm gen curious

I don't know if I've ever explicitly said that the human relationships are incestuous in a way that the trolls' relationships aren't...? I presume you're comparing remarks I have made at different times about how a) relationships between trolls aren't 'really' incestuous in a way that is comparable to human siblings and b) the relationships between the human characters are intrinsically incestuous regardless of genetics - and I think I would stand by myself here and say that these two things can still be true independently of each other. but I also think this is still an interesting question so I wanna talk about it.

off the bat, yeah, troll relationships often ARE incestuous - even if the trolls we know aren't actually from that "incestuous slurry" we hear about, the incestuousness of the slurry is called to attention for a reason. but I think the ways in which those relationships are incestuous are distinctly different to how the humans' are...? like, I would make chiefly the argument that the trolls just did not grow up together in the same way the kids did. they are a far more disparate and mismatched group of characters (and deliberately so!). their relationships aren't defined by their proximity to each other, but rather by their proximity to their forebears: vriska's relationship with tavros has incestuous undertones because it's an emulation of their ancestors' relationship; put another way, they're kissing because their parents are kissing. and i think this is also largely what makes the slurry itself incestuous - not because all trolls coming from the same giant insect is actually incestuous, the story itself knows this is silly, but because Alternia as a culture is obsessed with culling off deviations from the norm so they can just keep on pumping out generation after generation of the same old trolls. it's ideologically incestuous, in the same way Dirk making a new Homestuck by just genesplicing together a bunch of shit from the old Homestuck is incestuous. (and I've talked about it before, but this theme runs through Beyond Canon's omega kids, too - Vrissy and Tavros are the only romantic pairing among those children who have no real familial ties between them [setting aside of course their difference in species], but the very fact that they are named Vriska and Tavros is what makes them a masturbatory regression on their society's part. they're just another example of doing the same shit again.)

to put a finer point on the trolls being deliberately more at odds with each other than the humans, though... where the human kids were groomed - for lack of a better word - by Sburb into a tight knit social group broadly resembling a family unit because their purpose was always to get together and repopulate their race, so far as Homestuck is concerned the purpose for which our 12 young trolls were groomed was distinctively non-familial: it was as warriors. though all trolls live with the expectation to participate in reproduction, they are separated from their potential offspring by a span of centuries specifically to avoid the possibility that they might come together and form anything close to a "family". Lord English's plan is for them to create the universe which will give birth to him and then simply cease to exist - Gl'bgolyb is put in place as a measure to make sure even the ones who escaped the Reckoning will be wiped clean from the boat, and the Condesce's attempts to resurrect her race are treated as explicitly mutinous! so I think this paints a dichotomy between the humans and the trolls, where the former are weighed upon by the social expectation to start a family and thus encouraged by the readers to break free from that expectation, but the latter are shackled by the expectation that they never have a family, and therefore any attempts by troll characters to find family are, inversely, encouraged.

in both these cases the end goal is to find happiness outside of the one's native cultural norms and restrictions, and to this end I always find the interspecies relationships to be the most fun and have the most potential. but among trolls, a relationship like Karkat's and Kanaya's stands out as healthy not because it isn't "romantic" and therefore avoids implications of "incest", but just because it's two trolls finding common ground completely outside of the established structure of their society, which dictates that a troll should have a certain number of romantic relationships and a certain number of platonic bonds and they should all be strictly separated and follow a given pattern. I guess what I mean is that there are much more profound reasons for the troll characters to avoid defining themselves by sex and romance than just "it's kinda gross cus they're technically sorta related" so my discussion of troll relationships will naturally tend toward the former points over the latter

[g1ngerbeer]

chomp chomp

[teratocrat]

you have failed me. precisely how is immaterial. my displeasure is not. on the command deck i slap you, backhand, with enough augmented force behind the blow to drive you to your knees. one of my maids steps forward briskly, holding a silver tray with a pistol on it. i reach backward to take it; my eyes are locked on yours, looking up at me, tears welling. i decide that i've always hated the rather stupid and pathetic way that you look at me, and i bring the gun around and fire.

something has gone - well. it would be dishonest to say that something has gone wrong. but the simulations did not prepare me for your lolling lower jaw making way for the black void of your trachea, the remains of one cheek flapped over teeth, the back of your skull an ivory cup. all else across the command deck in a rapidly spreading pool of garnet. i realize that the ship has been messaging me - something has gone wrong. executions aren't, generally, supposed to look quite like this. enough of your brainstem - i see it now, like a bloody grey fist emerging from the gore - has remained intact to maintain certain very basic bodily functions. blood will pump, bubbling breaths will be autonomously drawn, for several more minutes at least. possibly up to an hour. neither the ship nor i especially want this. i wave off the maids with one hand and pace a quick circle around your body. i might as well take the chance to see this from every angle. treading blood back to my starting position i crouch down, brace my left hand on your shoulder, curl my right around your pons, and pull.

[wumblr]

something doesn’t sit right with me about the point that “rubber bullets are designed and intended to be aimed at the ground.” i mean, i believe that’s factually accurate and i think it’s important to circulate that information, because it is indeed shocking to learn that they’re being used improperly, but other questions i have are... why was this munition designed that way in the first place? did manufacturers really think it would never be used to aim at somebody’s head? is this just another way to make excuses, from the very beginning? what are the possible effects of a rubber-sheathed metal projectile flying around the streets, explicitly designed to prevent people from advancing? was it designed to break legs instead of skulls? what difference does that make? isn’t this the exact same “maybe it would be better to shoot them in the leg” argument biden spent a week coming up with? if a rubber bullet bounces off the ground and then hits someone in the head, is that supposed to be better?

[canonlucidia]

Ba’el + Fatherhood

[ For the Character + Word Ask meme found here ]

[[ For More information about Ba'el and the Royal Family, click here ]]

It is not difficult, realistically speaking, to sire a child. At best it is a moment of mutual pleasure, at worst, it's a dispassionate transaction between two parties.

The difficult part, of course, is what comes after the fruits of those labors are born.

Out of all the things that Ba'el thought to learn as a newly crowned King of Hell, how to be a Father was simply not high on the list, if it was ever on it at all--a footnote to a footnote, a half legible scribble tucked into the bottom edge of a page.

He hadn't thought much in the way of heirs, his own throne just barely won, the blood of the previous king still tacky on his claws, the sound of their death still resonating in his ears, but that hadn't meant his freshly inherited court didn't have designs for Ba'el's eventual, inevitable fatherhood.

He married quickly, decisively to his favorite general, and quickly produced a child. He saw little of the boy, (Vasago, Ba'el had named him) half out of true avoidance, and half out of the reality of governing an entire realm truly being a time sink. It didn't bother him overmuch-- his Queen Consort had always been capable, and.... Really, what would Ba'el have to offer them?

He would not be what his Mother, the late King, was to him. He would never disown, disavow, or dispute his own child's lineage the way his Mother had. But on the same token... Ba'el would never have half of the kindness of his Parent, who had raised him in bitter squalor, who had fed him on promises and hope and helpless affection.

At such an impasse, Ba'el found himself uncharacteristically at a loss for direction... And so, decided to table the concerns of Fatherhood for a bit longer, until he had more time to devote to thinking the matter over.

Time passes so quickly when one stops paying attention to it.

Ba'el marries again, and again, and thrice more after that. Alliances are power, and blood pacts are the price to pay for an iron grip on the throne. Children are born, and named, and sometimes they have his hair, or his eyes, and it probably makes him feel... something, truly, but...

Ipos is born not long after Vasago, an early, bloody thing. Ba'el does not suppose they will survive their first few years, and is nearly shocked that they do. (They are his child, did he not survive as well?)

But Ba'el is careful with his time and his affections-- it's dangerous to favor any of the children over another, and best for him not to grow overly attached, when he himself made manifest the current rights of succession. Most of them will die in combat, he reasons, so it is not imperative he spends too much time with any of them.

His third born, Beleth, seems so far to have the best chance at surviving to adulthood with minimal interference, and is thus the most promising heir. It's safest therefore to indulge a bit with him, instructing and teaching him, carefully, subtly maneuvering the right teachers into the right positions for his son to learn from.

The boy is even near by-- with his mother's position as second consort, and therefore Head of Staff, his second wife has no need to leave the Demon King's palace to attend to other duties, and therefore, has no need to ship their child off to a distant villa with some maternal family member to mind them away from the dangers of the royal court.

Ba'el wouldn't go out of his way to call it pleasant, but the proximity settles something unknown and restless in him.

A fourth child is born (Seere, who barely resembles Ba'el at all apart from the determined, resigned set of her brow), and then a fifth, and a sixth, and a seventh, and finally, an eighth.

Paymon, Ariton, Rosier, Amaymon.

Ba'el names all of them, looks into the faces of the lives he helped create, and dooms them in the selfsame breath.

[shadeswift99]

hey shade!

im not having the best time rn

can i have some vague void writings if you can/want?

As usual, I just sort of started and didn't stop, and I have no time to edit so: here! And thank you. Writing this helped me, too. Sometimes you don't know you need to calm down until you have.

I hope you enjoy my ramble, and I hope your time gets better. 💙

I have thought and talked a lot about the experience of the Void to a player, both the player in the world and the player sitting in the chair holding the controls...but I was building a farm in the End recently, so today I am thinking about the Void through the eyes of an Enderman.

The Void is nothingness. Pure nothingness. A question with no answer, destruction with no resolution, a fall and a breath and a loss and a nothing you can do, no way of saving yourself without wings and no way to recall lost items or lost experience. That, for a player, a being made for creation, who hasn't experienced true nothingness since the day they spawned, is one of the most anxiety-inducing things the Universe has to offer. The pull of the Void is terror, the thought of oblivion repellent, even with the knowledge of respawn. As nature abhors a vacuum, the player simply can't reconcile the idea of pure nothingness in a setting so reliant on freedom and the power to shape your surroundings.

An Enderman, though?

An Enderman is not a player.

An Enderman knows nothingness each time it teleports. It was born from nothingness, spawned with no explanation and no purpose to its existence - and it doesn't need one. Its existence is its own explanation. It lives, and that is enough. It wanders, it collects blocks, it guards the End, and it is content, knowing that if it should ever fail to do those things, a hundred or a thousand more of its friends would carry the load. It does not fear nothingness, because the idea of void is a haven, a thing to return to in danger, skipping away from an arrow or a raindrop or whatever might come to harm it. It dissolves into nothingness and reforms itself on instinct. For an Enderman, the Void is simply like the air.

No pull. No fear. Simple normalcy. An endless pool of a thing so much a part of themselves that they barely feel a separation between it and the base fabric of reality.

So, when an Enderman falls, it does not teleport away. The Void will take it, yes, but the Void is not death to them. The nothing will condense around its limbs as it falls, gently stripping layers of code from its body, laying each line bare with a tenderness a player could never hope to feel past the fear. It will unspool the threads of that Enderman's reality, just the same as when the being teleports, and it will not hurt. It will not hurt. It will just Be. And the last thing that Enderman will know, as it begins to know Nothing, is the expanse of a space devoid of water, devoid of eyes, the embrace of a thing that loves it as the Universe loves the player, a place where the Nothing is so pure that wherever it looks and wherever it moves there will be not even a whisper of a player's blade or a raindrop or any of the things it knows to fear. There is simply Is, the thing it will soon not be, and Isn't, the thing it is surrounded by. And that Enderman will cease, surrounded by love and cold.

And it will Be.

It will Be again after a minute, after five, after an age. The Void will recycle its code, piece it back together like building blocks, set it gently down on a yellow rock plane or an obsidian obelisk or a stoney platform to be felled by a player in a farm and set back down anew. And that Enderman will continue. The Nothing it knew was simply a hibernation, sleeping peacefully in the realm of unmaking, the worst nightmare of a player with so much to lose, and the comfort of a creature whose existence is loss, and gain, and continuing regardless.

No, the Void does not scare the Endermen. The Void is them, and they are it.

They are far older than the player. They know that everything is temporary, just as they know that nothing is ever really lost. Their code is as old as the rock they stand on, and its individual arrangement as new as the last breath.

And the Void loves them. Just as it loves the player. Just as it could love anything, if the thing it loved chose to know it. Because there is no love in the Void, not really. There is no love, or hate, or fear in the Void. There is no...in the Void. It is simply an echo. A reflection of what it is given. A question that answers itself. The thoughts and feelings of whatever observes it returned as a ghost in the eye of the beholder.

Here is your fun fact for the day, one which you probably already know, but one that feels important right now, somehow. An Enderman sees in reverse of a player. Where a player sees darkness, it sees light. Where a player sees light, it sees darkness.

To an Enderman, the Void is a glowing hearth, the home-fire of their world.

To an Enderman, each of their friends shine like moonlight.

I love you. The Universe loves you. I hope that change will be your friend.

[theliveinfograph]

If Blake wants to be a man, then that’s her choice. His. Still her, actually, because she’s not actually- anyway-