#homestuck.pdf

[nekropsii]

yo, since people listen to you, can you confirm that the alpha trolls are infact described to be the alpha trolls in the comic and that "dancestor" refers to both alpha and beta trolls? I've seen so many people lately act like you can't call them "alpha trolls" and you must refer to them solely as "dancestors" and it's ridiculous as hell lmao

That's fucking wild, especially considering "Dancestor" is coined by an Alpha Troll specifically to describe the Beta Trolls, lmfao.

Illiteracy strikes again!

Also, denying that the Alpha Trolls are the Alpha Trolls is a ridiculous position that people keep trying to endear to me. It won't ever work. I've seen people try to deny it by saying that, essentially, "Beta and Alpha purely refer to Scratch Iterations", but that logic holds as much water as a sieve. "Pre-Scratch" and "Post-Scratch" are terms independent from "Beta" and "Alpha". The relation that Beta and Alpha has to each other is purely that one comes before the other, specifically that Alpha comes before Beta, because they're referencing Development Versions of specific plot-relevant programs.

LIGHTNING ROUND:

The Beta Kids are the Pre-Scratch Humans playing the Beta version of SBURB.

==> Homestuck, pg. 1 The Beta Trolls are the Post-Scratch Trolls using the Beta version of Trollian.

==> Homestuck, pg. 2009 The Alpha Kids are the Post-Scratch Humans playing the Alpha version of SBURB, and were initially known to the audience as the Guardians of the Beta Kids, meaning they came first.

==> Homestuck, pg. 4115. ... And The Alpha Trolls are the Pre-Scratch Trolls that were presumably using the Alpha version of Trollian, and were initially known to the audience as the Ancestors of the Beta Trolls, meaning they came first.

Logically speaking... Why would they not be called the Alpha Trolls?

This isn't rocket science, and takes way less mental gymnastics than saying, "Actually, everyone's been wrong in calling The Beta Trolls 'The Beta Trolls' this entire time, because 'Beta' and 'Alpha' just has to do with Scratch Iterations", even though the version of Trollian being used by the Beta Trolls is literally referred to as the Beta Client in the text of the comic. Which is a real argument I've been presented with. Several times. And it's a bad one. Every time.

It also takes way less mental gymnastics than saying that The Alpha Trolls are purely "The Dancestors", despite the term applying to almost every main character in the comic and specifically getting coined to describe The Beta Trolls, and saying that The Alpha Trolls isn't a valid term because 'they aren't explicitly called that in the comic' even though they don't need to get explicitly called. Like. Anything. In order for the reader to intuit that this is following the same very consistent train of naming logic that the entire rest of the comic has been following this entire time.

So, yeah, that argument is stupid. It is also bad, dumb, and silly. And a myriad of other terms.

[nekropsii]

Hello, pardon and I don’t want to be a bother but I would like to ask for your take on something. And if you’re not down to answer this question, that’s completely fine, you seem to make large opinion posts on a noteworthy basis so I understand if you don’t have the energy or motivation to give an opinion right now.

But I wanted to ask for your take on the ethics of enjoying Homestuck in the modern day. Many people such as myself and seemingly you as well enjoy Homestuck but are painfully aware of all the gross stuff in it. And as I see the comic pop up in more and more dni lists, with people claiming that enjoyers of Homestuck are supporting these things inherently, no matter the fact that most of us stand against Hussie and attempt to reclaim Homestuck as something to express joy and our identities in, it makes me wonder more and more the ethics of enjoying Homestuck. Since you seem to have thoughts on the matter, I was wondering if you’d like to share your take.

I once again want to stress though, absolutely no pressure to answer. I am not entitled to your time or hearing your opinion. You don’t know me, I don’t know you. I was just asking in case you wanted to speak about it.

Hi, Anon! This is a very interesting question, and you were right to assume I have thoughts on it. They might not be as long and complicated as some of my other essays, but they still exist, and I would quite like to share them. Thank you for the opportunity.

My opinion on The Ethics of Enjoying Homestuck is that I believe it's perfectly fine to do so. I also think it's perfectly fine to dislike, or hate, or not want to associate with it or any fans of it. This is a personal boundary set by and for the individual, and it's not my business to question, nor my place to cross it. However, I don't really agree with the way some people go about communicating or enforcing this boundary. I've seen some people put Homestuck and Harry Potter on the same level before. I've seen some say that enjoyment of either piece of fiction is, at least in part, comparable. I heavily disagree with this- and the fact that this is a point that comes up shows to me that there's quite a few people who don't actually fully understand why so many people are saying to stop supporting Harry Potter.

The conflation of the two things reads to me as if some believe that Harry Potter has been "cancelled for having a problematic creator"- and that's not wholly true. Yes, J.K. Rowling is, by definition, problematic, and she is the creator of the Harry Potter franchise, but people have drawn such a hard line against supporting the series not just because J.K. Rowling is Transphobic, but because she has honest to god legislative power. She is, as it stands, currently the backbone of the TERF movement, and is spending a lot of time and money to ensure that Transphobes dominate the government. Monetary support of Harry Potter pools into her funds, which adds to her ability to further Trans Genocide. Communal/Fandom support of Harry Potter increases her visibility as a public figure, which adds to her ability to further Trans Genocide. J.K. Rowling has made very clear statements saying that she takes any support of the Harry Potter franchise- any at all, including Queer/LGBT+ Friendly fan content- as support of her beliefs. Support of Harry Potter is a method of legitimizing and validating Transphobia, and is being used as a way to further Trans Genocide.

If J.K. Rowling was just an average Transphobe, the outcry would not be nearly as severe, and the line wouldn't be nearly as clear cut. It would just be disappointing, bring to mind the phrase "same shit as always", and many would make the personal choice to distance themselves from it. But that's not the reality we live in. We live in the reality where J.K. Rowling has sway on the government, and is getting real people hurt and killed.

Andrew Hussie, creator of Homestuck, however, is just some random asshole with no political power outside of his own vote. Yes, Homestuck is filled with plenty of unsavory elements- random out-of-place interjections of Hussie's own past bigotry included- but at the end of the day, Homestuck has no influence over government action. Hussie has no tangible political influence, and does not want to have tangible political influence. We don't even have evidence that Hussie still holds the same beliefs as he did during and prior to the creation of Homestuck. This is just some random indie comic, made by some random guy in 2009. J.K. Rowling is dangerously close to billionaire status, and using that power for evil.

It's fine to like something that's not very morally clean- or something made by a not very morally clean artist, during a not very morally clean point in time in a not very morally clean place in this world. It's okay. The fixation some have on this is OCD-inducing. The best that can be asked is that one recognizes the bigotry, and doesn't perpetuate them. That's all. You can read, watch, play, and enjoy just about anything, as long as you don't make the more unsavory elements out to be a good thing. Don't start acting like Racism is awesome, or Antisemitism is cool, or Transphobia is based, et cetera, and you'll be totally fine.

The ability to find value in something impure or unsavory is a valuable one. Some may not want to associate with that, or find the particular flaw in the work in question to be too uncomfortable to stomach, and that's fine, too. Not everyone can just sit through Era-Appropriate Casual Homophobia or Racism and come out feeling fine enough to keep going. I'd argue- hope, even- that most feel at least a bit bothered by such things. It's all about personal tolerance levels. No one's committing a moral crime by either enjoying it or not wanting to even look at it.

[nekropsii]

do you still do session analysis?

I've never really done that, so no.

I appreciate the value placed in my opinion, truly, but I guarantee you it will be way more fun and satisfying to write things like that on your own than it is to get some stranger to do it for you. I don't feel good depriving someone the joy and learning experience of figuring out Character + Classpect Dynamics on your own. It's hard, for sure, but it's completely worth it. I'll give my thoughts on Individual Classes, Aspects, and Classpects now and then, if the mood strikes me, but the way that will affect a Group Dynamic is far more dependent on the individual characters involved and the narrative they're in than a lot of people seem to give credit for. Yes, the Classpect of a character says a lot about them, but it doesn't really express their Moral Alignment, the full breadth of their Personality, any specific Traumas or Neuroses that may afflict them and affect their relationship with their life, surroundings, and the people around them, et cetera, et cetera...

Basically, a Classpect says a lot, and a Group of Classpects can also say a lot, but I find it personally difficult to make very solid statements on the Viability of a Session or the Dynamics within it without having a deep understanding of not only the characters involved but also what kind of story is being aimed for. What a Classpect can mean or entail depends a lot on the Hero in question, and the specific Meta of the Session. You can keep the Meaning of all Classes and Aspects nigh completely Canon Compliant, but still have them imply and result in totally different things within a Session, purely because the Story and Character demands something that isn't, like... Just a straight up repeat of things already tread upon in source material. You could have a Seer of Light that's evil. You could have Bard of Rage that's a pretty good guy, all things considered.

For example, Sovereignstuck has a very particular Meta with its Classpects, and it's going for a very particular narrative. The characters in it are also very much so their own beasts - though their Classpects may say a lot about them, it doesn't really tell you anything about their morality, or how willing they are to hurt people or even just ascend to godhood in the first place, which is a really big deal in what is essentially a literal Deus Ex Machina Death Game Horror/Drama RPG setting especially. To use a particular example from Sovereignstuck - Bards of Mind tend to be billed as chaotic forces and, due to being a Bard, inherently bad people, with some even suggesting the best way to write a Bard of Mind is to write a straight up Bigot. We've got a Bard of Mind in the Player Session, Emeric Sargas, and while she is a complicated person - as is the truth for everyone ever - she is, generally speaking, a very child-like ball of sunshine that basically no one has beef with because she's just very sweet. Odd, yes, definitely, she does have a litany of very strange beliefs about how the world works, but overall a nice person. We have two Maids of Space, even, and they're extremely, extremely different people.

It's not as simple as saying "Princes of Void and Witches of Heart are guaranteed to not get along!", or "This Session will fail because it has an insufficient Player count!". Hell, it's difficult for me to even say a Session is doomed to fail if they have no Time and/or Space Players. Maybe the Meta of your Session simply doesn't abide by typical SBURB rules. I know my Fanventure sure doesn't, it's running on a fucking spinoff game with no Universe Building aspects to it - it's just a God-Making Machine. Maybe you don't need a Time or Space Player. Maybe you don't need a Knight, or an Heir. Maybe you can have five Pages. I literally don't know. Write whatever you want. Get creative. You truly do not have to abide by the rules set by SBURB if you don't want to write a Creation Myth. My only recommendation is that if you're breaking the mold, make that clear - explain what the purpose of your game is. Hell, explain the purpose even if it's just SBURB 2. The Characters are gonna have to learn what it is, even if the reader is aware of it already.

I could talk more, but this is already a long enough response to a pretty simple one sentence yes or no question.

TL;DR: No, I don't, sorry.

[nekropsii]

man what I hate about the fandom excusing the Dave blog with the n word like "it's not IN the comic so it's not canon" is that in THE comic, Hussie was way too obsessed with having Dave rap about segregation and slavery as quips one of the first raps even referenced the slur negro, which textually went over many people's heads (because "it's just "black" in French") when the context was racist white men in segregation-era and how they pronounced that very closely to the well-known slur, pronouncing it with "knee" these types of raps weren't just in Act 1, it was even in Act 3 it's so uncomfortable considering Hussie said "I just type out how I'd talk" when it came to Dave's dialogue, considering his humor and how those raps and the blog came into light it's so annoying how people keep suggesting it's not IN the comic at all- like it's giving "read it once 5 years ago and never freshened up on it while still debating it", y'know?

I'll give as many sources to what you said here as I can, just so people listen more. Wasn't able to track everything down, so some things are more up in the air, but overall, you're on the money.

[Blog of Dave Strider- February 17, 2010.]

I heavily agree and identify with your frustration. Just because it's "not in the comic" doesn't mean Hussie didn't write it and that it's not worth evaluating. This isn't a case where you can disregard it for noncanonicity reasons, like Post Canon. This was written concurrently with canon, and therefore it reflects the political mindset of Hussie during the time of writing Homestuck. That much is valuable information. What I will point out is that the next paragraph here contains yet another phrase that is rather telling of Hussie's... Racial vocabulary.

Definitely not the most comfortable thing in the world, to put it nicely. Haven't personally seen it get mentioned, and I feel like it's apt to bring up here, since this is the closest I've seen Hussie get to the big Hard R. Typically, they default to Soft A, which doesn't make it less racist, but does have a different... Vibe, so to speak. It's more hateful sounding.

Moving on.

[Andrew Hussie's Formspring- Feb 24, 2010 - Mar 7, 2010. Exact date unknown.]

The fact that Dave is a near exact emulation of Hussie themself in speech mannerisms, down to the lifting of entire chatlogs, is telling. As we've seen from Hussie's past work, he was clearly... excessively comfortable with throwing around the N-word, as a white man. Why would Dave be any different? It's hard to argue that Dave's racism is "not indicative of Dave's flaws, but indicative of Hussie's", when Dave as a character is both a product of Hussie's mind and a direct extension of her. You can't truly divorce the two. Dave is racist because Hussie is racist. Dave is an extension of Hussie.

[Homestuck, Act 2, page 294- June 23, 2009.]

I believe this is what you were talking about in reference to that particular version of the N-word being used, as well as the references to slavery. This is in Act 2. I couldn't find much in Dave's other raps, outside of his fixation on the idea of Black presidents as a novel concept... Other than this.

[Homestuck, Act 5 Act 2, page 2825- November 1, 2010.]

Apparently using the term "Urban" to refer to Black people, culture, art, and music is a recurring Hussie-ism, even in Homestuck. Rose also uses this a couple times, notably more than Dave does. It sees more usage in Problem Sleuth as well- unsurprising, considering it is an older work than Homestuck is.

[Homestuck, Act 4, page 1590- March 17, 2010.]

[Homestuck, [o], page 3879- July 2, 2011.]

[Problem Sleuth, page 62- March 15, 2008.]

TL;DR: I don't think there's any real excuse to leave Hussie's racism out of genuine discussion of the contents of his works. It's obvious. The only valid defense for leaving it out of analytical conversations is ignorance, because... Well, some people just aren't that observant. Homestuck does not exist in a vacuum. Hussie did, in fact, write this, and Hussie is, in fact, bigoted. Bigotry shows throughout their works not because they're spinning a grand narrative of overcoming your moral failings, but because they kind of just suck. Dave isn't an exception, and shouldn't be divorced from the context of having been written by Andrew Hussie. There's no debate to be had over the existence of Hussie's bigotry, because contesting such a clear cut fact is pure stupidity. It's like arguing that evolution isn't real because you, personally, do not understand it, or don't find it comforting. Hussie's bigotry is one of the only things we can be 100% sure is a real part of his personhood, rather than another figment of his ironic online persona. The level of "Well, Actually"-ism people will engage in over this is mind-numbing, quite frankly.

Thank you for the ask- people being aware of the racism in Homestuck keep me sane. Have a lovely day.

[nekropsii]

🔥

Dancestors

[For the Unpopular Opinions Ask Game!!]

Okay, this may come across to some as harsh, but I don’t care. You asked for Unpopular Opinions. This is one of them. It’s heated. It needs to be said.

The way people continuously searched for reasons to get mad at the Alpha Trolls and still to this day continuously search for them to the point of literally fucking making shit up is embarrassing. The fact that people- fans!- use them as their little scapegoat for “everything wrong with Homestuck” is embarrassing.

The way people will make up and pass around straight up lies about the Alpha Trolls just for the sake of Outrage Farming is embarrassing. The fact that these are all taken as truth, more so than the literal text of the Alpha Troll plot lines, simply because people didn’t have anything else to yell at that week, is fucking embarrassing.

I once watched a pretty good Homestuck video essay on YouTube. It was a great time. The premise of it was basically a retrospective on Homestuck and it’s plot in broad strokes, and why the whole thing is good and cool and you should read it. Very nice. The speaker had a lovely voice. And then, for some ungodly fucking reason, right at the end, they started going on some very long winded, incredibly wrong diatribe about the Alpha Trolls and why they’re the worst thing that’s ever happened- parroting, with rage, common lies I’d seen for years and sprinkling in some brand new brain fungus, all like it was fact. The dude called Porrim, Porrim fucking Maryam, an MRA. Porrim fucking Maryam was reduced down to a whiny Men’s Rights Activist who didn’t know shit, and Kankri Vantas was correct about everything, suddenly. Horuss’s main problem was that he was a mockery of Otherkin people. Otherkin people! As if the fact that he’s a mockery of Systems is less important!! The reason for this is clear- that motherfucker, and every god damn other person making essays about how the Alpha Trolls are The Worst in the whole ass 2020s, have not actually read or played through the Alpha Troll segments for shit. They have no go damn clue what they’re talking about, and they don’t care. They don’t care about being right, or making good points and observations, they care about being mad and getting engagement. It is literally completely performative.

It completely ruined the entire essay. And for what? And for fucking what? The Alpha Trolls are, for the most part, wholly irrelevant to the story, sans Aranea and Meenah. You can skip over them and miss nothing. They are not “the worst Homestuck has to offer”, they are a skippable fucking footnote, and everyone needs to get a god damn grip. Holy shit.

At this point, it really feels like most of the anger and hatred is only still parroted around blindly because it’s just tradition at this point. No one knows what they’re talking about, and no one cares. Why would they? This is what gets them the little guaranteed dopamine rush of other idiots just looking to be angry agreeing with them blindly, just for the sake of being really mad at something that doesn’t matter and no one will face check. God damn. Grow some eyes and read the comic you’re criticizing before criticizing it. Grow a damn spine and get your own opinions. This is not hard.

The Alpha Trolls are rife with things worth criticism. No one is talking about any of them, because no one cares to actually read it and gather an insightful, meaningful opinion on them from literal direct observation and analysis. They just care about being mad, and saying something very outrageous confidently enough that they seem right. It’s not that they don’t have anything worth criticizing, it’s that almost everything people are criticizing them for either doesn’t matter, is wrong, or is a lie.

[nekropsii]

VERY IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: I am saying this as someone who has Vriska as one of my favorite characters. She is a deeply complicated, very well written character who, yes, has done a lot of fucked up things... But she was ultimately a severely troubled 13 year old girl who grew up on Alternia who, in being completely disabled from the ability to heal from abuse and trauma, perpetuated the cycle of abuse because it was all she ever knew. I love how she is written. I think she is a very good character.

With that out of the way...

A major reason why the position of "Vriska did nothing wrong" provoked such a harsh reaction from fans back in the day doesn't just have to do with how controversial she was as a character. It doesn't just have to do with people already hating her, or thinking she's irredeemable. It's not irrelevant by any means, but there's a lot more to the reaction than just "Vriska Bad, and I disagree with you" than I think a lot of younger fans especially do not realize. The online culture in and around the 2000's and 2010's was rife with extremism and bigotry. Yes, it still is, but it's genuinely hard to compare how things are in the online political landscape right now to how they were in the 2000's and 2010's. It was fucking severe. Naziism was a substantially more open and honest part of meme culture, and shockingly bigoted phrases were parroted left and right like it was a serviceable punchline. A major part of what contributed to this culture was 4Chan, particularly /pol/- these were back in "the glory days," when 4Chan was considered an internet giant that wasn't to be trifled with, rather than just... A bunch of anonymous nerds on an imageboard.

This exposition is necessary, but I won't keep you here all day. Onto the main point.

"Vriska did nothing wrong" is a troll position. It has a lot of... Political charge behind it. Intentional political charge.

A part of why it invoked such a nasty response was that it was directly and intentionally echoing an oft-repeated phrase at the time, born directly from 4Chan's /pol/: "Hitler did nothing wrong."

Again, I need to stress this: This parallel is intentional. It was literally part of the bit. That was the entire meme, that's why people said it- it was extremely shocking to say, not just because of how contrarian it was, but because it was literally parroting Neonazi Rhetoric. I see a lot of people using that phrase as a defense still, or saying it as a joke, but from the way people talk about it, it seems like the history behind it has been forgotten.

This post is a reminder. This is not an attempt to stir the pot, this is not an invitation to start more Vriscourse, nor is this post Vriscourse in itself. I am reminding everyone that this phrase is loaded for reasons that have nothing to do with Vriska being controversial. Tread a little more carefully. At the very least, be aware of what joke you're making.

[nekropsii]

Not to be controversial, but I do think it's quite silly to knock on Homestuck: Beyond Canon for having references to internet memes in it, saying that this will "inevitably date it", and calling that an inherently bad thing. I understand if that's just not your personal taste, modern pop culture/online culture references is definitely something that will turn a lot of people off, but... Homestuck itself was filled to the brim with those same kinds of references. It's truly just keeping in the spirit of the original work, people only find it jarring now because they aren't experiencing it in a state of being a beloved time capsule.

Homestuck, as a piece of fiction, is fundamentally extremely derivative, referential, and reactionary, completely chock full of inside jokes and references to at-the-time modern media and memes. The level in which HS2 is engaging with current memes and media is honestly substantially lighter than Homestuck itself was. During early Homestuck in particular, it's difficult to go even one page without some kind of reference being present in it, especially considering a major point of the setting design and character writing is their relationship to other media. The posters on their walls, the games they play, the fact that Dave is living in a Saw trap, et cetera.

I find this train of criticism to be particularly fascinating, as to me it shows that, in some way, it doesn't really feel like a lot of people ever look at Homestuck as something that was ever new. The time period it was made in is almost never taken into consideration when analyzing the work. Homestuck never was, it just is. HS2 has current-day meme references because it is a current-day Homestuck story. This is exactly how things should be. This is just how Homestuck is.

[nekropsii]

on the topic of Hussie's racism translating into the comic itself: the origin of lil Cal's name came from a racist comic Hussie made in his TeamSpecialOlympics line It's titled "Rollin with lil Cal" and depicts a black character adopted by a white dad that just goes "Shit! I be 29 years old mutha-fucka!" he either re-used this character itself throughout these comics or was just lazy, but what appears to be the same og lil Cal was in his comic "Underground Funk Railroad", which ended with "Slaves Recaptured: funky swagger to blame" as well as mocking systematic racism and segregation with the racial slur negro (which, historically by white people in that time frame, was pronounced similar to the well-known n word [re-stating out of habit to keep clarification of why it's bad/an actual slur])

From my research, "Lil' Cal" as a name actually seems to extend a little farther back than that. Looks like the origin of Lil' Cal as a character- or at least as a name belonging to a Black character- dates back to around 2005-2006, with the creator being Andrew Hussie's brother, Byron Hussie, also known as Byrobot. You'll see that username a lot when poking around archives of Team Special Olympics comics. I give the estimate of 2005 or so, because Byrobot's Lil' Cal strips predate Hussie's, and not only was Hussie's edition of "Rollin' Wit Lil' Cal" posted in (late-ish) 2006, but Byrobot closed his website in around early 2006, which is where that strip was originally hosted. Plus, I've seen a couple anecdotes that it was around 2005 when that first started being a thing... Either way, though.

Unsurprisingly, Lil' Cal wasn't exactly illustrated with much... Class. Here's Byrobot's first Lil' Cal strip. This is the first iteration of Lil' Cal ever posted online.

Yikes. Yikes on bikes.

To fortify your points, though, I'll post the strips you're talking about here.

Here's Hussie's "Rollin' Wit Lil' Cal", which depicts exactly what you said. This was posted on 08/01/06, as a part of the "Scribblettes" series on the Team Special Olympics website.

And here's Hussie's "Underground Funk Railroad", once again depicting exactly what you said. This was posted on 11/02/06, but is the same story otherwise.

I understand the anxious urge to do it, but I don't think most people really need an explanation as to why any variant of the N-Word is bad. Though, since you brought it up...

Have this. 12/20/06. I needed to curse someone else with it. Same story again, this is still a part of the Scribblettes series.

Regarding the speculation on whether the reusage of Lil' Cal was an act of laziness or not: TSO's Scribblettes have many recurring characters and recurring bits, Lil' Cal just happens to be one of them. Now, applying that same train of thought to Lil Cal's appearance in Homestuck... Homestuck is chock full of references, both to random things/media, and to Hussie's older works- like Problem Sleuth, Humanimals, And It Don't Stop, et cetera. Lil Cal, the puppet, was named the way he was as another throwback for longtime fans. Lil' Cal, the TSO character, was reused during the runtime of Scribblettes just for fun.

I have nothing profound to say about any of this. This guy sucks, lol.