Row! Row! Fight the power!
The EP "Land of Dogs and Oil" showcases my musical contributions as a "newgen" (blind reactor) to the 2025 re-release of Homestuck. I shall publish one of these compositions every day until I run out of them.
A definitive collection featuring selected fan music from everyone in the newgen community is yet forthcoming.
#4: Zathura Ultima (vs. BRO)
Zathura (2005), the sequel to Jumanji, stars two brothers on uneasy terms who play the titular sci-fi board game that catapults their house into space. The first obstacle they encounter is a meteor shower bombarding their house. SBURB is like the ultimate Zathura, hence the name.
It's fascinating that new readers clocked Bro Strider's vile and abusive nature immediately when the old fandom apparently treated him like slightly more attractive version of Spencer from iCarly.
There's a tendency in any given fandom to overplay the character archetype as innately pathetic or perpetually embarrassed, like casting a spell on a boggart to elicit laughter instead of dread (e.g. Mouthwashing). This is why we kept calling Dave's brother "Gilbert" and produced this speculative design based on his silhouette:
It's harder to make Elmo ahegao than most people give credit for. Truly a team effort.
Then Bro Strider swiftly and irreparably forced us to respect him. He' a goddamn force of nature. He's the anti-Kamina.
As in, Kamina from Gurren Lagann, the unadulterated badass and epitome of "supportive older brother" whose sunglasses do not adorn Gilbert's visage by coincidence.
Instead of fostering and nurturing Dave, Gilbert shut him down and groomed him. If Dave is akin to Simon the Digger, then his older brother is the power to row against, to touch the untouchable, to break the unbreakable. "Zathura Ultima" embodies the anathema that someone so horrid could not only be anime-tier badass, but justifiably indispensable.
Dave still loved him. Maybe Bro really did love Dave deep down. But to other people there is no deep down. Not really.
Yours truly was able to correctly "romainticize" (our word for classpect) Dirk Strider before his first appearance via mental algebra. If the anti-Kamina outputs a Knight of Time where a Vanilla Kamina would output Simon the Digger, then by identifying what domain (aspect) Simon struggled with most, we find out what Bro stifled or took from Dave, assuming this oppression was indicative of role (class).
The easy answer would've been Hope, but what Kamina really instilled in Simon was not belief for its own sake but the self-esteem Simon needed to facilitate belief in himself, whereas Gilbert crippled Dave's sincerity as an individual. Ergo, his post-scratch self could be a Prince of Heart — for our understanding was that, in the end, a domain lived or died at the Prince's mandate.
I could not wait to get into Bro's head and see what kind of deranged moon logic made him tick, just to find more reasons to be disgusted and then to revel in his aura that overshadowed all else. Dirk Strider proved surprising, but the opposite of disappointing.
