jk i’m working on something about the kid guardians right now!! not all the ideas are there but it’s rotating in my brain very often so it’ll come at some point
mitski album announced so i have thoughts about rose lalonde.
in MY opinion rose lalonde grew up as such a reactive little spitfuck because she was never reacted to as a child. nothing she did got an active response from shit-faced-drunk mom, so she learned to escalate and lash out and verbally annihilate people to prompt something from them (see: grimdark, see: suicide threats). she pokes and prods because it will keep them engaged, because genuine sentiment can be rejected but nobody likes to be mildly condescended towards. the delusion with which she approaches the "one uppmanship" game with mom, and the amount of attachment she has to it, stems from the fact that it's a stable reaction. every time she makes her move, she anxiously waits for the next ten days to see if and how mom will react. every time mom makes hers, it's this cathartic adrenaline rush and reassurance that she is worth at least that much to her mother. she has learned to sustain herself off practically nothing, grasping at any emotional thread and evidence that she is a daughter to her, and later even recognizes this insanity as her mother's best shot at love, just like how mom might have grasped at grandpa harley. to the core she is her mother's child. killing myself.
you know shits about to be long as fuck when i add the keep reading line like four lines in lol
anyway anon all this is 4 u!! feel free to talk ab this by just tagging instead of rb i dont want 2k words to be posted over n over again
Grandpa Harley being some kind of pseudo-omnipotent deity figure who somehow figures out/guesses (my money's on guesses) extremely intricate details about the game and does everything he can to make things go right is something that we don't talk about enough. It's one of the only plans in Homestuck made that are orchestrated entirely by one person then ends up going right. It's that pattern of hoping that the cards fall into place in the right way (unless we're taking the Grandpa is practically God perspective, which is interesting in its own right)—but notably, he makes a lot of preparations beforehand. He's so... active. It fascinates me. I'll have to talk about this on the Jake English as Jesus Christ trope post (it's coming, I swear, brainrot's a bitch) but the sheer amount of things he does is astounding. But, lo and behold, he wasn't always like this. Cue: the Skaianet Systems Incorporated texts.
Quick note about all that. A very large portion of the things Hussie wrote for SSI is 1) dubiously canon, and 2) a bunch of anti-semitic bullshit that he probably never should have fucking released to the public, at least not like that. Like, holy shit, keep that and your weird comments about sexual slavery in your Notes app dude, we don't need to hear it. For this reason I suggest reading the actual material with extreme caution. Cool? Cool. On with it. Here's a lil' review of Jake Harley before the session.
Funny enough, Jake had always been kind of pathetic in the Beta session as well.
So Skaianet was actually established by HIC as a front for laundering technology from Alternia and Sburbian ruins. The key of SN was not to actually develop tech, but make it look like it so that people will believe you when your company just re-defined gravity for the hundredth time. Jake has to play the "famous genius shtick," but he doesn't do so well. When he fully inherits SN at 21 he runs it hands-on, and "believes" his success is due to hard work and diligence. He also "believes SN is now a considerably more distinct entity from Crocker Corp, and his leadership of the company is a result of his hard work and competence. Neither is true." He's manipulated by his at-the-time boyfriend (Charlie Chaplin, somehow) into letting a rebel force into the Crocker manor, though the effort is ultimately thwarted by HIC.
He also has a disastrous love life. His relationship at sixteen with Chaplin consists of Chaplin finding him "obnoxious and thoughtless" though he "can't seem to quit him," and Jake ultimately "[toys] with his heart, and [abandons] him." This later (much later, think decades) manifests into something way worse when Chaplin appears in an outing Jake has with one of his families (he's had many, though not at once) and tries to kill Jake for not just his involvement with SN/HIC, but for breaking his heart as well. Notably, in this scene, upon having a gun aimed at him Jake reflexively hides behind his wife, who ends up being shot in his stead. He's out-strifed so badly that he'd have died in the jungle (oh yeah he takes his wife and 5yo son to a jungle btw) if Chaplin didn't have a divine intervention moment afterwards.
At 32 he also abandons his post at SN for fucking around Europe. "[H]e's out exploring and adventuring, completely oblivious to whatever's going on in Europe. He hops from site to site, looking for Sburbian ruins to plunder." One, the "whatever's going on" is WW2, again, somehow. Two, he has a daughter there that he "takes custody of, apprentices as an adventurer, and takes all over the place on his adventures." When he takes her to Hawaii she ditches him because she's sick of her "douchebag dad." And there's that Jude family too, obviously.
Oh, and all the Beta guardians are also meteor babies. It's how Jake ends up finding Dirk and Roxy to begin with—he sets them up with trust funds in Texas and New York so that they can be of use to SN later, though whether he knew their importance in the larger context of SBURB is unclear.
All caught up? Great.
The exact details of how every event goes down aren't as important as the lessons you can draw from it, namely: Jake Harley is an absolute fucking mess of a human being. He continuously creates families—notice how he keeps having children with his wive—then is bereaved of them. A few times he abandons them, a few times they abandon him, and sometimes they get killed by your ex-boyfriend. It's a neat little insight into just how neck-deep these commitment issues lie, but it's also fun to consider that he seeks it so desperately. This man has on record has had:
one wife be shot dead in front of him
a son who was technically kidnapped from him by the man who almost beat him to death (his ex-boyfriend)
a daughter ditch him in the middle of hawaii for being a shitty dad
a daughter (joey claire) be teleported by portal to alternia, who hated jake so much she took her dead mom's last name
said dead mom/wife whom upon her death leaves her children "Semi Orphans" because he just straight up ditches his kids to go work on hellmurder island
probably more
And he still considers himself a grandfather to Jade. TBF, I guess the easier way of explaining it is that it's simply the natural explanation—they are sort of related after all. But considering that he once sired an illegitimate daughter and not only took her into custody but tried to raise her as his liege, I still find it the fact that he tries over and over again to the point of rending the family meaningless interesting. I think it's viable that Jake wanted a family—not one where he and Jane were raised by HIC and poorly—but a real one. His attempt to raise that first daughter to mirror his habits reflects the way HIC raised Beta Jane to mirror her. Yet after relationship after relationship goes horribly wrong, this desire fades into a kind of apathetic unsureness to the point where this is what he says about his last "full" family, the Harley-Claires:
He's been making good headway on his quest for the mysterious island in the pacific. Once everything is taken care of here, he'll leave this family behind and set up shop on that island permanently. That's when the real work begins. The discoveries on that island will finally unite him with the destiny he's been in search of his whole life.
Two things of note. One, his first recorded instance of permanently setting up jackshit anywhere is at first with SkaiaNet then at Hellmurder island. Both locations share that theme of "destiny" in common—notice how he considers SN divorced from Crockercorp because of his efforts and tries to make the place overall less HIC-controlled, but ultimately fails. And sure, he later achieves this kind of destiny by having his Sburb plan go "right" but before this not a single "plan" he established went correctly. Jake in either timeline isn't a guy who regularly makes plans for multiple efforts—they zero in on one goal that appears as part of their calling and makes it happen, damn it. To him, that's a success. Whether he "actually does" is up for interpretation.
See, HIC actually wanted the Beta kids to play the game. She'd been using the Beta session as a "testing" timeline, knowing which events and people to avoid and keep in mind so that she can play everything out exactly the way she wants it to. Part of the reason why Crockertier Jane was so firmly for marrying Jake and having children was because that had been HIC's idea of what Beta Jake's purpose was once he landed on a Meteor (after B!Jane). So he saw the "big picture" in a bigger way than quite literally anyone else, but it still isn't enough, at least not in the way he thought it might be at first.
Prior to his discoveries on the island, Jake has no idea this will result in some kids using the software he's unearthing, which will destroy all life on Earth. Nor does he have any idea that those kids will be using this same software to reboot the universe with different starting conditions, thus ending this "trial run" timeline for HIC, and giving her a fresh start. Exactly as she planned.
This implies there is some moment that Grandpa Harley realized that everything he was doing would end up playing into the HIC's hands anyway. This also implies that he carried out those actions regardless, Hoping that Jade would someday win the game in the process. Are you seeing the parallel for my interpretation of Ult. Jake yet? Fuck.
What was the moment he realized? Did he power through anyway, hoping there was a bright light for Jade at the end of this all?
He's also a hoarder. He keeps items and objects instead of people. He hangs onto the past to the point where he's seemingly unable to let go of it—trophies, guns, artifacts—but throughout the entire Harley Manor there is not a single picture of his families. And that's where his dolls come in—dolls are just human enough but not too human, you can control them however you'd like yet delude yourself they are company. I'm not saying all doll-enjoyers are this way, but the specifics in which Grandpa (and Bro to an extent, for that matter) interacts with his dolls makes me believe he's turning them into pseudo-human entities because at the end of the day he again craves company. But, unlike Jake, Grandpa Harley's had a lifetime of experience reinforcing over and over again that this will never happen with a real person. And fuck, don't even get me started on the taxidermy—it's the very act of taking something, bereaving it of life and subjectivity, then keeping it for yourself. You can see how this has even affected Jade in the sense that she thinks about her taxidermied dead Grandpa (who she taxidermied himself, by the way) like a living, breathing person. And Jadebot? A robotic, perfect replica of his granddaughter, designed to monitor her at all times instead of him? And the parallels that has to Brobot. Ughghgh.
Also, quick digression. You know how Beta Dad & Mom were on the Battlefield? And how Grandpa landed just to recover Jade's dead dream body, then left Dad and Mom behind. Sorry, I'm just not normal about that at all. How did we collectively miss the sheer tragedy of that situation, God, I wonder what Roxy was thinking. Digression over.
All in all, what these files tell me is that the way Jake was written was no way accidental. Yeah he got fucked over in the Alpha session, yeah he's tragic, but he's tragic for a reason that I ultimately appreciate even as I clutch my heart and dramatically fall over from pain. He knows just enough about the meta-reality to cause feelings of absurdity but powers through it; he's supposed to be put in seemingly insurmountable situations and emerge, through one way or the other, victorious. He's supposed to have the strangest relationship known to man regarding other people and, as a result, try to find compromise between the two halves of "complete fuck-all isolation" and "the company of any developed adult human ever." He's goal-oriented only when it presents a clear-cut destiny to him, when he can see the significance of it, and otherwise floats around doing fuck-all in this world. This goal is, most of the time, people: Dirk for LE Jake, and Jade for Harley. It's also fun insight into where Jake could potentially end up going—as this post by Cooper already pointed out, Ult. Dirk's actions mirror Bro's need to micromanage and control everything in his life to the point where he, much alike Bro, secludes himself in an apartment while running his inner machinations unknown to most others. I wouldn't be surprised if Jake ends up in a similar way to Grandpa, giving his all to a dreary situation and maintaining Hope through it with the desire that it'll eventually succeed.
It would also be fun if his Hopes only came true after his death.
Alright, analysis over, everyone clock out. Good work, people. [Vaguely gestures to the reader.]
Been thinking about this concept for a bit now. LE Jake wants a happy ending and he wants it with Ult Dirk. His method of audience-defiance isn't necessarily defiance as much as it's symbiotic "control"—he doesn't care who's voyuering him so long as they give him something he's happy with, and he understands the need for a story to be kept alive by having it hard-earned. This doesn't mean he lacks standard, or that he's unaware of the potential that his story will go the Candy route, but it does mean he's fundamentally different from Dirk in the sense that so long as the "author/Narrative" puts them together at the end, he's fine. The ending Dirk's looking for doesn't exist, because in his eyes, a relevant ending is one where he's dead and it's out of his hands. He's played his part in continuing the story, it's up to Davebot's crew now, but at least he gave them something to work off of later. It's that classic Dirk method of I want the best for you and I'll do whatever it takes to get that combined with I specifically know what that looks like, so it's my way or kill yourself. Jake is trying to get this motherfucker to microdose on Hope through various means of manipulation often enough that he'll cave and just accept his ending. No villains, no heroes, just people making it work. But this, again, effectively places him in the position of Jake Christ even if he's the last thing from cut out for it—he can't demonstrate his flaws because Dirk will find them, all on his own, because this is a hard sell to begin with and Jake knows that. So from there it's not will he cave, but when, and much alike their original dynamic Dirk's testing the waters with him, seeing how far he can push and how much he can resist being ensnared before it fucks Jake up. In some strange way he's trying to break Jake out of that Happy Ending mindset too, prove that he's right, there's no such fucking thing for people like them. And they do all this without actually talking to each other, because of course they don't, they're DirkJake.
What's hard from a story standpoint is selling this arguable woobification while maintaining the fact that these two are very much assholes to each other. They're both trying to get their way, not by coaxing and communicating, but by pissing each other off and saying shut up and kill yourself and destroying each other in ways that is the most effective—Jake by throwing Hope at Dirk's feet, and Dirk by refusing it. Funny enough, for me, them being physically violent to each other is kind of a neutral ground they've settled on—they both know the real damage can be done by talking. Dirk doesn't tell Jake he knows what he's trying to do by inviting him to a dance, he just stops at "fuck you" and strifes him instead. I could talk about them for hours. Eughgh.
if you actively dislike jane or jade but you're a huge fan of the striders/think they're soooo much more complex compared to the others kids i'm fucking frowning at you
