#race mapping

[mmmmalo]

I'm reading one of the textbooks for my hip-hop media class, called "Prophet of the Hood." It analyzes the political and literary art form of hip-hop (It's extremely insightful, and I recommend it).

In the chapter, “B-boys, Players, and Preacher,” Imani (the author) breaks down black hyper-masculinity and white American's contemporary media “obsessions with the size of black male genitalia show us that an earlier era’s paranoid fixation on black male sexuality and the fear of black humanity” (Imani 120). It made me think back to how you explore Homestuck’s anti-black imagery in Slurquest.

Spectically, Gamzee serves as its manifestation (or at least Karkat's manifested envy for Blackness). Homestuck's BBC obsession can be applied to Gamzee’s Codpiece from reactions of ridicule, aggression, and sexual fixation.

Like one of the Myststuck with Jane; if you click on Gamzee’s codpiece, she becomes transfixed by it and expresses her inability to look away (4827). Karkat and Dave's conversation centers around it for a bit, to laugh at the sheer absurdity and joke about gamzee sexually defiling the Utopia.

KARKAT: I DON'T KNOW!

KARKAT: I DON'T THINK EVEN HE KNOWS.

KARKAT: MAYBE TO MAKE A "GOOD IMPRESSION" ON HIS FAKE ASS RELIGIOUS IDOL, AFTER HE THRUSTS HIS SACRED COD PIECE THROUGH THE GATES OF SHANGRI LA.

DAVE: ahahaha the best thing we ever do together is slam this assholes dumb religion (5937)

I apologize for the length and quality, and I'm wondering about your opinion on this? Or if you have made previous posts regarding the subject? I’m still new to exploring your blog.

This racialized reading of the cod piece def works in the Epilogues, where trolls face discrimination and Gamzee plays the stud to Jake's cuck under the cover of blackrom... But I needed some time to assess whether race is central to the codpiece's symbolic function in Homestuck proper. I think I basically agree, though I have some qualifiers

1 - To your point, the Myststuck appearance is sandwiched between two anxious fantasies of phallic inferiority: Hussie's empty wand/pistol losing to Lord English's staff/AK-47 (declaring magic fake is here a sour grapes expression of the loser's impotence) and Tavros remarking that he "attacked [Vriska] with [his] bogus self-esteem... and paid the ultimate price." No clear racial polarity in the latter encounter, but the first could pose Hussie's whiteness against the blackness of LE's pimp/pharaoh affectations. I also think that scene might reference Drop It Like It’s Hot lyrics? But anyway, these being on either side of the Gamzee's appearance could imply that the codpiece itself is rhetorically positioned as an object of envy (as with Karkat) -- most likely envied by Jane (a transmasculine sentiment like her mustaches), but perhaps also envied by the reader, who gets positioned as the cuck by dint of watching Jane express interest in the package.

2 - But before we get ahead of ourselves, we should also note that the codpiece itself could be the link between the "fake" phalluses on either side. The story later dwells on how Gamzee's godtier costume and his wings are fabricated -- this also calls his codpiece and its contents into question. This preturns us to the eternal question of whether Gamzee "is" (or represents) a black guy or if he "is" (or represents) a white guy affecting blackness... and I don't have an answer for that! Sometimes he seems to occupy both terminals of that binary at whim.

I had a similar problem apprehending Karkat post-Slurquest -- does he represent a trans dude with his Bloody gash aspect symbol and blood-covered planet insulting his efforts to conceal himself, or does he represent a white cis dude who is being ruthlessly feminized by the racist porn tropes that inform the story? I'm not sure that question can be resolved, but both perspectives are useful in apprehending the story around him. The story is engaged with the gendering of race, and narratives around race bleeds into the presentation of individuals' genders.

3 - Bonus: if we narrow our scope for "codpiece" parallels to Myststuck itself, the closest in form (and rhyme!) are probably the "seedpods" that litter Jane's planet. Karkat jokes about thrusting the codpiece into Shangri-La, while seedpods fly up into heavenly Skaia. The pods shoot out water/seeds to fertilize the ground as they fly. The name "seed pod" was earlier applied to Demon Mobster Kingpin's weakpoint, which was some sort of thorny baby/penis.

The potions Gamzee sells are ALSO shaped like the seed pods, but troll "genetic material" is linked to blood so the implicit sexualization of blood vials doesn't really surprise me at this point. And I have a whole other post dealing with the decapitation motifs that involves, but we don't need to get into terrorism theming here I think...

4 - More bonuser bonus: worth noting that the initial penis to haunt Jane was on the Dr. Manhattan poster that Jake gave her. One of Gamzee's functions was to sell love potions to Jane (to coerce Jake into returning her feelings), so his codpiece feels loosely connected to the GIANT MUTANT PENIS jokes that Jake gets from Manhattan and Hulk. If the ambiguities of attraction/identification seen with Gamzee apply, we might infer Jake gives Jane gender envy.

[mmmmalo]

have you ever written any meta analysis wrt "I still think his character arc is an allegory for the obama presidency"? I'd love to know your thoughts on it/its merit

I have, but I can't find it atm. TL;DR Most of it is silly nonsense but I think the basic assertion that the Hope aspect has ties to Obama's campaign slogan HOPE is feasible.

Obama is initially brought up in relation to Deep Impact, in which a black presidency is (subtextually) treated as a cataclysm on par with meteors flooding the world, exterminating much of humanity. The movie's emotional beats revolve around the possibility of surviving the flood (of minorities) that threatens to overtake. When WV walks the decimated Earth and declares himself mayor, a major point of his reverie is a chess game in which Black mates White, whereupon Brown soda explodes from a Pink can -- a sexualized narrative of racial domination, attached to a democratic leader presiding over a wasteland. That's an Obama joke, by my reckoning.

So Eridan being a sea-dweller that seeks the extermination of an opposing race (while also having the hots for them) seems consistent with the racist mischaracterization of Obama that the story satirizes elsewhere -- all the more since Eridan is thematically entwined with Feferi, whose goals are progressive. You sort of see them reconciled in the figure of HIC, a black-inflected tyrant who explicitly floods the earth and annihilates humanity while her implicit crimes are like, The Supreme Court Is Gay Now (Guy Fieri = Gay Fairy, which I've talked about elsewhere)

[mmmmalo]

on reflection, do you think the bit in skaianet systems about hitler doing the holocaust out of personal beef with einstein could have been a sendoff of / a hint towards the idea that the limebloods were wiped out purely because of caliborn's disdain for calliope?

There's certainly a resemblance... I wish I could substantiate it more, but even after rereading I'm at a loss. I suppose it's striking that the cherubim's mom was observing all of that

By my own reckoning, the standard account of the limeblood genocide is misleading... the grudge Caliborn holds toward Calliope personifies a misrepresentation of either race relations (where kind, innocent white is stamped out by vile, scheming black) or gender envy (where vile, scheming boys are attacking kind, innocent girls and stealing their aesthetics). So the limeblood genocide describes negative fantasies regarding black people and trans women, imagining that their flourishing entails the doom of white people and cis women.... at least that's been my default since Slurquest.

By that standard, one might expect the conflict between Einstein and Hitler to offer a distorted personification of the group dynamic of an antisemitic narrative... If I had to guess, I'd say that the notion that Einstein's intellectual contributions aren't really his own most closely resembles a Nazi pretext for seizing Jewish wealth, by way of framing that wealth as illegitimate? Historical Hitler claimed that Jewish people grew rich off of stolen German wealth, so the process of Aryanization could be framed as reparations for Germans. So in the same way that Obama's timeline hopping "legitimizes" the racist birther conspiracies that questioned his legitimacy, the matter of Einstein laundering innovations from an alien "legitimizes" an antisemitic narrative designed to de-legitimize Jewish people.

So I'd say there's structural commonality in Hussie's use of character drama to offer an inside-view of bigotry, I guess

[mmmmalo]

First command after "a black president. Now you've seen everything!" is "> check calendar", fittingly enough

[mmmmalo]

could the condesce partially be a reference to condoleezza "condi" rice? warmongering imperialist black woman playing stooge to president english... not sure how this fits into your existing conspiracy framework-- "the anti-islamic torturer was working for muslims the whole time" perhaps?

Pft... so Caliborn's predomination becomes the Bush/Gore election huh. No wonder alt!Calliope wants us to call her Al. Though even if Rice's nickname did set precedent for "Condy", the only salient feature linking Caliborn to Bush would be like... the dumb-boss-with-smart-subordinate angle via Scratch/Cheney?? Anyway,

"Condescension" acquires its initial racial characteristics on page 294, when Dave refers to the notion that he would be shocked by Deep Impact's black president (Morgan Freeman) as "condescension" on the part of the film. Freeman was used for a joke expressing incredulity about Obama's election on page 21, so Dave's subsequent joke scans as a defensive response to the same, framing Obama's election as a trap to make him feel racist. Why do you think I wouldn't be cool with this?? Insulting much. This basic dynamic follows Dave into the living room of the apartment, where he pretends to be cool with a bunch shit that freaks him out in order to maintain an aura of coolness and thereby avoid Bro's scorn.

Alternia is by some measure the exact sort of racism trap that Dave is paranoid about -- a cutthroat alien society tinged with hints of black cultural ascendance in a way that causes readers to unwittingly engage with racist precepts. It makes sense for Her Imperious Condescension to reign over the planet both for her role as a black-inflected leader and for the sense of superiority that the prankster (author) feels over the pranked (reader). Condoleezza Rice was a target of racist objections to her position of power (in addition to legitimate criticisms), so she certainly fits the mold? But I'm not aware of anything that would extend the comparison further than that, if it's applicable

[mmmmalo]

I'd gathered way back that Typheus's lair was surrounded by pipes because they're a Dad symbol, making John on some level fight Dad again. But I learned a moment ago that the disease 'typhus' derives its name from a Greek word for smoke, so it appears the same logic might apply to the denizen itself... 'typhus' is also a relative of 'typhoon', which others have linked to John's wind powers, but that's not really my focus here.

Cetus then represents Mom, based both on the use of whale as a sexist epithet (Blubber, huge bitch) and the mass slaughter of the fish in the sea which reflects/asserts Mom's infertility. Rose also alludes to massacres at the hands of 'whales' in the excerpt of CotL we see: the fat wizard Smarny (whose name suggests a kind of pancake) looks guiltily upon the dessert-textured corpse pile, and the final line is a Moby Dick reference via Jaws. These would seem to be the abstracted continuations of Rose spelling out 'shrew' on the refrigerator

Hephaestus then, must represent Bro...? His status as blacksmith connects to the Striders' fixation on swords obviously, but it would become a contradiction that Hephaestus repairs what Bro breaks? There's also some sort of racial angle I think, there's tidbits here and there that associate Hephaestus's charred black skin with his "lameness"... Dave says Mr. T's lameness is what makes him ironically cool -- which via Hephaestus becomes an implicit indictment of Bro? Dave says he's training to be a "lame gothy supervillain" when goth-as-black has been racialized by Oglagoth ("black ogle") -- which contains a note of bitterness about his emulation of Bro and the lame shades that darken his leer? There are numerous references to sunglasses (or other dark screens) as "lame" throughout the story that feel loaded now... and sexually loaded at that, since the racialized appearance of blindness (shades) is itself an unbreakable katana, and apparent lack (a disability or lameness) that signals comprehensive sight (total potency, ninja sword as BBC)... or something like that. The Mr. T rant seems to encompass some of the ambivalence around regard for blackness, and Bro's been chained to that line of thought like a Chuck Norris puppet

This all implicates Grandpa as Echidna, but I'm unsure how to connect the two. The Dr. Moreau epithet would mark him as a mother of monsters? Some accounts locate Echidna's cave Arima on a volcanic island? The matter of calling Grandpa "she-viper" (feminine phallus?) might align with how depictions of Grandpa as a sexual threat have a certain homophobic tint... I don't know. Unlike Hephaestus, I don't have a convenient word to latch onto to search for repeated motifs, though Joey's hatred of serpents would seem to retroactively encourage the she-viper angle

Hm... the lack of insult in Typheus-as-smoke feels off too, in the wake of the other three. Maybe it will all click later

[mmmmalo]

If the lotus is a symbol of enlightenment, but Homestuck elsewhere uses third eye iconography to indicate mind control (Zodiac signs hovering on the forehead, the logos on the Peixes' slave crowns), then does the lotus-themed spirograph also become a symbol of control...? The spirographs usually seem act as portals (Sburb's gates, time capsules) and/or genies (the kernels creating sprites, who resemble Disney's Genie and who seem to embody characters' wishes) so the connection isn't obvious to me. You could argue that sprites being beholden to their players is akin to the genie-as-slave being beholden to its master, I suppose... Also the notion of the transforming spirograph from Sburb's boot sequence being an abstracted hypnosis spiral is deeply appealing to me

[mmmmalo]

I never thought of Equius being coded/headcannon as indigenous/

the idea of the classist, casteist, boy who submitted to his socially assigned supieor and was killed.

but it was the Saggtirus coding, he also is coded as a white/ nobility. a literal blue blood

Nobility yes, and Equius is accordingly confused by the compulsion to submit to someone he views as inferior -- he expresses this conflict in conversations with both Gamzee and Aradia. I tend to think that the noble status of rap on Alternia serves a similar purpose, offering the impression that social inferiors (from a racist POV) have achieved cultural dominance. The same goes for the nobility of archery, if you buy into the idea that the bow and arrow can be deployed in Homestuck as a stereotyped symbol of indigenous peoples (obscured though it may be by the unobjectionable motif of Sagittarius).

My strongest direct example of association between archery and Native Americans is probably this series of puns by Roxy, in conversation with Dirk. More abstract examples would involve Hussie's use of the 4th wall to depict racial tensions and the related use of the command arrow ==> for colonial motifs.

Tangentially, I'd note re: Equius white-coding that he owes his design to Nicolas Cage in Con Air -- the mullet, widows peak, and wife-beater are all very Cameron Poe. Vriska later underlines this resemblance by calling Arquius a "national fucking treasure", which is the title of another Cage flick. Hussie's deployment of racial ambiguity is still something of a mystery to me (outside of its ability to invoke anxieties about race mixing), but I'll say that stuff like the Cage-coding forms an interesting contrast to Equius's racially-charged inability to touch various feminine-coded items (milk, "bows", Karkat) without destroying them