Also something interesting about Dave Strider vs Dirk Strider is that Dirk does this douchey ass move where he intimidates the shit out of his opponents before he begins, both as Bro, and as Dirk.
We see that Dave is taught to do this as well, and does it when he strifes with Bro, but we also see that he doesn't really keep up with the habit after he starts fighting for real. Dave is more concerned with efficiency and doesn't really waste his time on the aesthetic.
Dirk's whole ninja bro thing is largely about the aesthetic. He loves being a warrior, he loves swords, he loves being the kind of guy who is in control, who is cool as fuck, and who has total control of every situation. Dave Strider, on the other hand? Born into it, knows how much it sucks, and does it anyway because if he doesn't, no one will
Dave once called his upbringing the ultimate form of ironic performance art, and that's the thing with Dirk Strider. He's a LARPer. His whole existence is a form of performance art.
I think when I try to imagine how early life was with Dave and Rose I often imagine Mom and Bro acting fairly similar to each other if you take out the gender coding of each. If that makes sense. Like the big unique thing of Bro is there being some amount of physical abuse, and with Mom it's the alcoholism, but otherwise I can think of something like Dave being forced to participate in covertly fetishistic smuppet videos and imagine that Mom could have been dressing Rose up in cutesy outfits she was uncomfortable with and taking pictures and sharing them around, and ultimately, isn't that a pretty similar thing? And the known thing of Rose being given too many gifts she doesn't like, Dave got a lot of gifts too, just the difference there is he appreciates them because he more readily identifies himself as a mirror of Bro with similar interests. But Rose does actually like wizards.
Anyway when I get to this line of thinking I feel like I can edge towards being too derivative about them somehow, like I forget that they are two very different people because I am thinking too hard about how they are or could be similar, mostly because I am drawing on experiences from my own childhood and projecting them onto each. Not everything is My Childhood. But Dave and Rose are both very relatable to me in different ways and also often the same ways. I could probably say more about this, but what do you have to say, actually? Do you see it this way?
Gotta write this down before I forget: Just reread Vriska's death for the first time since I first read Homestuck, and like, in the timeline Terezi saw where she and Karkat die, is that actually technically a timeline that is doomed? Like the thing that completes the cycle that is the most important is that Lord English/Doc Scratch always has to be made, and that just requires Gamzee, Caliborn, Hal, and Equius(sprite) to be around in some way. So look at this:
He's talking about Terezi making a choice for the narrative that he himself would not. Which is strange, considering he is the author. Second time (to my memory) that Terezi seemingly pulls one over on him, the first being when she informs him that Vriska has the cue ball. Terezi is capable of knowing things about the story that the author doesn't, and taking actions that he wouldn't approve of.
And of course, he wouldn't approve of killing Vriska, would he, because we know that that does eventually result in a doomed timeline that requires the retcon to fix. Because it kills Gamzee, who we need. But also it doesn't, because Terezi had to kill Vriska first in order to think of the third option of getting someone to punch her, and so theoretically that is less doomed than we can assume the dead Karkat and Terezi timeline to be. Maybe. But can we assume that a timeline where Vriska fights Jack is not one where the Alpha timeline gets created (required for Hal to exist)? Anyone who thinks they understand this better than me feel free to chime in. I am gonna reread the entire comic eventually, but I will not have time for a while probably.
Anyway though, I will be thinking about the hypothetical of Successful Hero Vriska And Dead Karkat And Terezi timeline now. Is this related to Terezi scratching Disc 2 or am I getting mechanics mixed up again. Scratch is implying he doesn't like fanfiction here. He doesn't like hypotheticals, he doesn't think about them. It's the Caliborn/Calliope dichotomy here again, but this time Terezi is Calliope for daring to think of a reality where she gets to survive. Just like the end of Homestuck is a reality where Calliope gets to survive. I can make anything be about anything else if I draw enough lines.
Homestuck Reread: Act 5-2, Part 1/12 (p. 2626-2787)
Read the previous post here.
Act 5: an Act so big Hussie had to split it in half. And it's not even a perfect split because Act 5-2 is a lot bigger. More than double the page count of Act 5-1 in fact! But, y'know, this is when the kids returned so people weren't complaining about the length this time. But I just might. We'll see.
Wait, hold on, why is the meteor's impact so massive? When we're shown it the first time, it only destroyed the joke shop Nanna Egbert was in. Now it was able to completely wipe out that entire city block.
So Dad Egbert and Mom Lalonde would've definitely been in that impact zone. And yet they survived when there is no trace of any of the surrounding buildings or streets. I already expressed disappointment that Nanna's death was changed from a comical accident to being indirectly John's fault, and now it feels like it's been changed again to be more destructive for some reason. Not a fan of this!
Y'know, when Grandpa Harley's meteor landed, the only casualty was Sassacre. John's meteor now killed a whole bunch of people. But hey, they weren't made of magic slime, so their lives don't matter!
Karkat watching a time lapse of all of John's antics and falling in hate with him is so relatable. Like yeah, me too, king.
No but wait, let's actually examine the reasons why Karkat might hate John after watching the events of his life. There might actually be a deeper reasoning that goes beyond a simple dislike of silly antics.
Karkat is a mutant blood, a pariah within his heavily stratified caste-based society. His red blood is a mark for death if it's ever discovered, so he needs to keep it concealed. Here, John falls off his pogo ride and injures his knee badly enough that blood is drawn, prompting his dad to rush to his aid. Karkat would've gotten culled if something caused his red blood to shed, but John is instead provided with parental love and care. He watches John have a happy childhood with a guardian who always supports him, whereas Karkat's home life involved him having to tame and feed his own guardian in tiresome strifes.
Karkat then proceeds to watch as John essentially fails upward into success throughout the course of playing Sburb. He blunders through figuring out his sylladex and how the game mechanics work, and most of his progress is due in no small part thanks to his allies. From Karkat's perspective, he's watching this privileged, coddled (and red-blooded) alien make great strides through the same game he himself just recently beaten. Only instead of undergoing the thankless and difficult task of asserting himself as a leader and strategizing with his teammates to surmount a month-long campaign, John is going through the game on easy mode being carried by his teammates and doing little work himself all in about the span of a day.
This has got to foster some intense bitterness and envy inside of Karkat. It's little wonder he's fully smitten with pitch hatred by the end of this flash. He sees a version of himself in John, but one who was granted all the comforts and love and success he never received.
Karkat tries to get Vriska on his side to get everyone on board with his scheme to troll the humans. It's kinda funny because, what, does he think she has more sway with everyone else? Would they all agree to participate in the plan if Vriska said so? I'm pretty sure most of them don't like her, so probably not. I think it's cute that he wants her as an ally, though.
I think the reason John and Vriska have such fun chemistry is that they're both big nerds. We get a lot of silly moments like this in this very first log between them. I love that Vriska continuously acts like John is the dorky one, as if fixating on eights and her spider/pirate theme isn't also extremely dorky.
Vriska wants to treat this partnership as if she's clouding John through a FLARP campaign, even assuming her character's name for this purpose. It's at this point in the story that she has abandoned all romantic designs for Tavros and has chosen a new nerdy Breath player to mentor/court. Unlike Tavros, John doesn't have any prior negative interactions with Vriska since he's meeting her for the first time. He doesn't have a clue about her or her history, so he's ready to be friendly with her and even adopt her quirks. It must be a refreshing change of pace for Vriska to have someone being nice to her.
Continuing the roleplay, Vriska wants to act like she's this super powerful force that's crucial to John's success, but he doesn't play along with her at all. He just keeps teasing her, which is great because who else would Vriska tolerate talking to her like this?
What's going on here is actually quite insidious, with the benefit of hindsight. Vriska's the one implanting the idea of contacting Jade in John's mind; he didn't even think to contact her after the events on the battlefield.
But as soon as John tries messaging her, she's asleep. Of course, we know that Jade's "narcolepsy" is actually the result of Vriska forcing her to sleep. It would've been easy enough for Vriska to have just put Jade to sleep without remarking on it at all, but the fact that she urged John to contact Jade in the first place shows a level of concern she wants to convey to John. She wants John to believe she has the interest of him and his friends in mind, and that involves getting them in contact so they can continue the game. But, whoops! If Jade's asleep, then John is going to have to wait and in the meantime Vriska has him all to herself. How fortun8 for her.
This is how you manipulate someone. Vriska's putting in the extra effort of ingratiating herself to John, acting like they have the same goals in mind, and all the while isolating him from his friends so she can further endear herself to him without any outside interference.
I know Vriska's saying this to try and establish more of a closer bond with John, but it makes me wonder if there's any Derse dreamer in particular she's trying to insult. I honestly can't imagine Vriska having anyone else in mind other than Aradia. Who else would she even have beef with? Eridan? Vriska is so over him that I doubt that he occupies much space in her head. Besides, Aradia had just recently killed her. Also, anyone else she has an antagonistic relationship with like Terezi, Tavros, or Karkat are all Prospit dreamers, funnily enough.
Chalk this up to yet another important thematic aspect of Aradia and Vriska's rivalry. On top of everything else I previously mentioned about them, they even have opposing dream moons! I'm never going to shut up about what a wasted opportunity it would've been to pit them against each other!
Vriska is scandalized about John's bucket, but when he acts nonchalant about it, she takes a step back and acts like it doesn't bother her that much. It's like she's worried that he might see her as some kind of prude. Great detail here.
What an awkward exchange... Moments like this make me wonder why people act like the Beta Kids have this amazing incredible friendship between all four parties when their conversations are full of weird moments like this where it's clear they don't have much in common at all. Maybe it's for the best that the majority of logs going forward are going to be dominated by kid/troll conversations instead of kid/kid ones.
I like Kanaya reusing that Rose quote from Act 1. "Personal mythology" is a great phrase I should be using more often.
Kanaya really called Rose a basic white girl.
Mark this as the second time someone has mistaken Kanaya for a boy. Her stilted, prosaic way of speaking doesn't really read as particularly feminine.
By locking in on only one specific human, each of the trolls gets a wildly different impression of what human culture is like. Karkat sees John getting coddled by his dad and views humans as weak as a result. Kanaya gets to experience Rose's competitive, passive-aggressive jabs and concludes that humans are an inherently antagonistic species.
John is unconsciously adopting Vriska's quirks into his own typing style. This occurs quite often between characters who are close to each other in this comic. I love Vriska's response to it, too. She's so ecstatic that someone actually likes her.
There's a fun contrast between these two human/troll pairs. John is being led by a dangerous and unpredictable guide while Kanaya struggles to rein in a dangerous and unpredictable player. Light players, am I right?
Fandom doesn't know how to write Kanaya, so in fanworks I often see a lot more "Dear"s and "Darling"s (words she NEVER uses) in her dialogue and a devastating lack of "Ur"s and "Urrgh"s. She is not slick or sultry, she is an awkward dork doing her best to sound articulate and composed even when she's out of het depth. Stop trying to turn my girlfailure into a girlboss.
Reminder that Jegus isn't a thing in troll society and it's just an in-joke Terezi picked up from Dave!
Vriska has been keeping her real name a secret from John this whole time, and here he gives her a fake last name in return. For all of Vriska's attempts to be in control of everything within John's session, she can still be misled and pranked by him.
Dave acts aloof and unbothered, but really he's the only one trying to keep this whole session from falling apart. I don't assign much importance to mythological roles, but the Knight class is one where I see a recurring theme between the two characters who bear that role. Karkat, a Knight of Blood, acts irritable and antisocial but is actually the only one on his team who recognizes the importance of working together. Dave, a Knight of Time, approaches things with a relaxed demeanor but is constantly working out complex time management in his head to make sure that he doesn't utterly fuck up the timeline. He doesn't want another Davesprite situation, after all. He may want everyone to think he doesn't care about anything, but his real problem is that he cares too much.
John and Dave talking like their crushes. It's so cute. Dave also reveals Vriska's name to John before she had a chance to do so herself. It makes her mad when she later learns he was able to find this out on his own, making it clearer that she doesn't have as much control over him as she'd like.
If Vriska views John as a substitute for Tavros, Terezi views Dave as a pawn to compete with Vriska. I think it's also implied she views Dave as an appealing alternative to Karkat, as it's suggested later on that his and Terezi's relationship is stagnating while the trolls are all hiding out on the meteor. She likes that Dave has Karkat's wit without his anger and insecurity.
Both of them are manipulating the boys to serve their own interests at first, but the gradual bonding between them leads to a much deeper relationship for both pairs.
The three patron trolls have all been exposed to "pornographic material" by their kids. Vriska is shocked when she sees John's bucket out in the open, but tries playing it cool so John doesn't think she's lame. Kanaya is extremely embarrassed when she sees the bucket on Rose's head and covers the viewport so nobody else can see. Terezi acts offended by the bucket-like appearance of the Kool-Aid Man in Dave's comic, but actually likes it the most. It's a good spectrum showcasing how these kids react to that kind of imagery.
Unlike the other trolls, Terezi grew up without a proper lusus. Her dragon was able to communicate with her while she was asleep, but Terezi said this only started happening after she became blind. For most of her life, she grew up completely alone with no guardian to guide her or even interact with. I believe it's this moment, while under the mistaken assumption that the dead pony is Dave's lusus, where she forms a unique kinship with Dave. The possibility that she finally has someone who can relate to her lived experience is enough for her to want to seek him out.
Just like Karkat and Kanaya, Terezi also makes sweeping, inaccurate assumptions about human society from only observing one human in particular. She sees Dave and Bro's frequent strifes and determines they must be a warlike species, which is a vastly different takeaway compared to Karkat's view that they are all weak and incompetent.
Dave has no qualms sending "porn" to a six year old. Then again, he has grown up around pornographic material for pretty much his whole life, so it's not like this kind of thing would be that shocking to him. Even if he hasn't quite realized that there's a sexual component to Bro's puppets, he's still desensitized to this kind of imagery. Aside from the vague ethical sense that he shouldn't show Terezi because it would be "wrong" to do so, he doesn't see any real harm in showing her because he's already seen worse, and he doesn't even see it as "worse" because it's just the norm from his perspective.
Shout out to the old Youtube layout. It's forever immortalized in this Homestuck flash. It's a funny flash, too. I love Vriska's infatuation with dorky, hunky Nic Cage with his dirty wife beater and ridiculous mullet. She has the worst taste in men and I love her for that.
The beginning to this half of the Act is so dense that I didn't even get to write down a lot of what I wanted to. Like, there's a whole bunch of Daverezi stuff I didn't mention because I was so focused on the JohnVris stuff. But already we've established the main character dynamics going forward, all in the attempt to syncretize the first four Acts with the trolls' story we've just finished. John-Vriska, Rose-Kanaya, and Dave-Terezi all have strong chemistry at least, so we're off to a promising start.
I'm on Act 4 of my Homestuck reread but I want to go back and share my thoughts on previous acts so here we are!!
While the layers of resentment Rose has towards Mom is insane and chunks of it is indeed projection, it’s also not particularly unfounded. Let’s look at how Jaspers’ death was handled as an example, which is likely a foundational moment of where these feelings stem from.
Here, Rose outright calls Jaspers’ resting place a “mockery.” And frankly, it kinda is!! Even though it’s miscommunication and misreading of intention, the whole tailored suit and mausoleum and funeral procession can be totally read as Mom not taking Rose’s very real pain (very real pain that Rose continually tries to ignore into adolescence) about the death of her cat seriously. The whole thing is like. Camp, to tbh honest. And the irony of it all is that what’s actually happening is that Mom takes Rose’s pain to cartoonish levels of seriousness which loops back around to being utterly unserious. It reduces Rose’s grief into a game, a play at what a funeral “should” be. Why wouldn't that breed resentment!!
I remember being a little girl with my dolls and I were to ask my dad to play with me, he would get so SILLY with it. He never took how I wanted to play seriously, completely warping my intentions with it. As a terminally serious child, this would upset and frustrate me. It made me not want to play with him! I’m assuming that Rose was a terminally serious child, too. However, the difference between me and her is that my dad didn’t take what I wanted to do seriously while Mom Lalonde takes it too seriously. And of course Rose’s circumstances are far more grave given the context, but the point is that it’s upsetting for a child's wants/needs to be twisted into a whole different game. Or maybe it was never a game at all! Her resentment is understandable, especially given this is possibly one of, if not her FIRST brush with death.
In Act 3, we find out that the circumstances surrounding Jaspers’ death: he suddenly disappears, then washes ashore weeks later, having drowned. This would be shocking for anyone, but especially a child. This is a foundational part of Rose’s own anxieties surrounding water, which manifest the geography of LOLAR.
It’s easy to imagine Little Rose asking her Mom if they could have a funeral for her cat, but this ends up getting blown out of proportion. Just like every other thing Mom tries to indulge her with. Like the bronzed vacuum, like the 15,000 dollar frame for her drawing, like Maplehoof. Even if it stems out of a place from love, it’s too easy for her to read it as ultimately insincere
None of this even touches on the alcoholism, which is easily its own post—and many more! MAN LIKE Rose is such a fascinating character and I wish there was more consideration for these nuances beyond Cool Snarky Goth Girl!!
The fact that Eridan is basically a troll prince and his aspect is Prince, but Feferi is a princess and her aspect is Witch implies that Sburb is sexist and ascribes to the "any girl who fails to become a princess must instead become a witch" school of metanarrative. Like in Revolutionary Girl Utena. This of course applies to Jade and Damara as well.
I still need to do a proper Candy write-up but I've kind of felt like shit and not had the brain power for it yet, but right now as I'm thinking of it I gotta say that Dave in Candy, just like in Meat, still reads like he is repressing way more shit about himself than just being gay. Like his potential gayness discussed so closely to his issues with Dirk, and right before he finds out about Dirk's suicide there is an innuendo made about how going to Dirk for advice means he will get some "solid dick." And it's like, even trying to forget what I think of the davekat kiss scene in Meat, I don't know how you can read about his relationships in Candy and come away with the idea that if only he'd just taken the plunge and been gay with Karkat everything would have been fine, or that the issue with Jade is that she wasn't Karkat. Because in the end, the thing that actually pulls him away from Jade was the Obama hologram, and am I stupid for thinking that thing was fake and created by Dirk before he died? That's the implication, right? Obama offers the simple solution of being gay, and relates it by implying he had sex with Bro. Like, Obama is the guy Dave is looking up to so it's like implying that the heroic thing to do is go fuck Dirk. Karkat and Jade become irrelevant the moment Dave decides this reality is irrelevant.
I am less confident in this post than usual and probably I will rethink some of this stuff when I work on my actual reflections post. Gotta skim that part again to make sure I am not making this shit up. Because I shouldn't have gone looking at other people's Candy thoughts right after I finished it because it muddled my own thoughts and confused me because I didn't see people saying much about Davebot that's close to what I'm saying. And maybe Homestuck^2 will enlighten me, but I haven't gotten there yet.
All this to say though, if you permit me to insert more of my own agendas, I think a lot of Dave's relationship dissatisfaction actually stems from other people's inability to dom him properly. Canon Homestuck Jade aside, Candy Jade does not appear to be written like someone who could do that, despite pushing Karkat's boundaries. Because she's doing the thing that Dirk did in Meat. Why doesn't anyone talk about how Candy Jade does shit that Dirk does in Meat?
But you know who is also kind of Dirk and is really careful about domming people? Terezi. Yup, this was another daverezi post all along. Sorry everyone. I'd like to explain this better later, but like, some of you get what I'm saying, right? Do you see it? This isn't even me saying that Terezi should be around, I have no narrative qualms with her being off being miserable in space and distancing herself from everyone, because I get why she's doing that. I am just pointing out that Dave has a horrible Dirk-hole inside him, and probably the only person who can fill that who's not Dirk himself is Terezi. Though if they were actually gonna deliver on the whole "we are making Jade into an anti-Dirk" thing they have going on that could be another thing too. But given what I am aware of about the direction Beyond Canon goes, I dunno if the new writers actually picked up on that particular implication. I'll see though. If there's one thing the Obama scene taught me it's that every screenshot I've ever seen of this shit was wildly out of context and the poster was not thinking about it in the way I would think about it if I had all the surrounding details.
Ok well now I'm 3/4 of the way through Candy, really got sucked in, I suppose it helped that I didn't feel much obligation to be doing anything else today since the main objective was to just avoid breathing in outside air. Air quality's allegedly gotten up to 303 "Hazardous" around here and it's expected that tomorrow will be bad too; I really wish I'd gone to the grocery store yesterday when I had the chance.
Anyway, I think I like Candy? Like, it's engaging at least. It's hard to know whether I think it's "good" or not, that's a really complicated question and one I even struggled to answer about original Homestuck when I first read it. I suppose right now I'm just really resonating with how depressing it is. And like, the prose is good. It's a book, I've missed books. I really don't have it in me to be mad about things that I may or may not later perceive as character assassination, because I already used up all my mad feelings thinking that the retcon caused character assassination (and I've since partially turned around on it). So like, I already was not attached to the setting of Earth C and didn't see it as a viable place for the characters to have a happy or thematically satisfying ending, so why not burn it all down?
Terezi's good in this. Like I can't say I think any of this is anything she wouldn't do, and I think I felt that about the event of Meat as well, but I do have to revisit. Like it's miserable and I hate seeing her like that, but that is not a new thing to think about Terezi that I didn't already think in the later parts of Act 6. I'll probably make a separate post about the daverezi crumbs I noticed because I have to be in a more conspiratorial mood to properly be excited about something like that :p I will say I guess that though following John here has been alright and not too frustrating, there are a lot of plot beats here that would be so very interesting if they were Dave's responsibility instead. Which has kinda always been a thing though, hasn't it? That Dave's supposed to be the protagonist but he side-stepped it somehow. That's how I feel at least.
Tavros (human one, I know in BC he gets called Tavvy) probably intrigues me the most of the kids. Plausibly deniable sexual abuse and all that, you all know what I like to think about that. Something for me to latch onto now that Dave is boring. This was also something I was thinking back when I was reading Meat, but I think he's actually somewhat more interesting here. Once again I am not entirely convinced that all his issues are just that he's gay and not attracted to Jade even though that is basically what he's saying in a literal sense. He's still acting molested, he is so molested, so much so he's minimizing his own responsibility for minor violations against Jake, that's great. He sucks. Like don't think I didn't notice the innuendo around him trying to go to Dirk for advice (not to mention I know who co-wrote this). I wish it was more out in the open though.
I am going off on a tangent though, because I had planned to say something about how I have barely seen discussions of the actual plot shit in here when I see discussions of the Epilogues, but there I was just going back to interpersonal drama stuff to justify how I personally feels about ships. But it is connected to things like Jade and Dirk and how I noticed that in both timelines, Dave and Karkat are forced to kiss by either Jade or Dirk. And then Alt Calliope has Jade's body, and I unfortunately don't remember enough of Meat to try and figure out what that is actually supposed to mean. Because it feels like it should mean something, but currently Jade's body just literally seems to be Meat for AC to pilot around and it doesn't matter that it's Jade specifically. But if it does matter, then Candy Jade being framed as an invasive fujoshi-like character probably means something.
That's another thing I was surprised to see. I had seen so much discussion of how Jade and Dave got married in the Candy timeline, unfairly ripping Dave away from his one true love Karkat, and obviously I'd already read Meat where Jade tries to get them all to date each other but they push her away. But I'd never seen anyone mention that they all do date each other for years in Candy while Dave and Karkat continue to play miserable gay chicken with each other. That's interesting. Because the way it's framed, especially at the beginning, makes Jade pretty explicitly into a Shipper Of Davekat. Just like Dirk in Meat, just like Terezi with the retcon, just like Caliborn in homosuck, and presumably even like Calliope, who is a shipper in general even if I don't think she ever explicitly references davekat. It's just that she generally had functioned as a commentary on the more shippy side of the fandom, so when I see another character trying to literally force a ship, I have to draw parallels. And of course there's the stuff about Calliope being the one to allow John to make the Meat or Candy choice in the first place, and being the one to tell him to go get Gamzee. How much of all this can we presume to be literally Gamzee's fault vs like, nebulous cosmic forces shifting due to John deciding to stay behind and then Dirk killing himself.
It feels weird speculating on this, knowing that it's not going to really come to many conclusions once I reach the "end." And it's even more weird that what I have to look forward to after is a few hundred pages of an infamously poorly structured comic that was allegedly going to try and reach a conclusion more in line with what the epilogues where trying to do, and then an ongoing comic people say is good but from my distant vantage point looks like it's trying to shed the epilogues as much as it's comfortably allowed to and doing some OC stuff.
There's a lot more I could say, but I might as well wait until I finish it to make another post, as it probably won't take long.
