homestuck meta

Here's my general impressions of the failure modes of the various classes:

Maid: Vulnerable to falling into or being pushed into roles other have set out for them rather than making their own path.

Page: Unrealized potential and growth. Vulnerable to stagnation, being afraid to grasp their growth with both hands, failure to just pick a point to grow from and do so rather than just navel-gaze about how they'd like to grow.

Mage:

Knight: Dedication, compassion and commitment wrapped in an aloof or otherwise removed emotional armor. Vulnerable to failing to realize their own heroism or else trying to hard to be the unreachably perfect hero, or both. May get too trapped in their emotional armor.

Rogue: Avoidance/hiding from what needs done?

Sylph: Vulnerable to just meddling around in other people's business because you know better! boundaries be damned.

Seer: Vulnerable to lack of self-insight and overconfidence and recklessness, followed by crises of faith regarding themselves and their abilities.

Thief: Vulnerable to failing to realize the needs of other people. Even worse at "helping" than a bad Sylph.

Heir: General obliviousness? (e.g. Equius failing to realize he's inherited nothing of worth from the hemospectrum system)

Bard: Vulnerable to dealing with crises of faith in the worst possible way for them and those around them, and then throwing all that faith into something new and toxic.

Prince: Vulnerable to arrogance and entitlement, and attempting to control things and thereby destroying them.

Witch: Vulnerable to becoming removed, misanthropic and malicious. ("cackling," to use Pratchett's term)

 

Mages i think are probably vulnerable to getting so focused on a goal or task that they just more or less self destruct.

 

As a sylph myself, wow do I agree with that description. Wow yes.

 

You're god fucking damn right I know better. ME. I AM THE GOD OF HELPING AND I WILL HELP BECAUSE YOU NEED ME.

And then I will entirely ignore my own boundaries and not at all enforce them. I thank my stars I never had a Vriska of my own. Instead I had an Aranea which is arguably worse though it isn't now.

 

... Now in addition to my Dirk/John classswap desire (Heir of Heart/Prince of Breath) I also want a Karkat/Equius classswap (Heir of Blood/Knight of Void).

Also poking in to say that I can't even read Homestuck right now because Vriska is wigging me out too damn much. Like, even if I wanted to I couldn't.

 

As a Seer, I sadly agree with this. I CAN TOTALLY DO THIS followed by oh shit I cannot in fact do this and now I'm committed and everything will be awful forever if I don't. :(

 

I am the knight it is me.
Look at me go 'NO I AM A NICE PERSON WHO CARES DEEPLY FOR EVERY LITTLE SOUL ON THIS PLANET AND I WILL DO EVERYTHING PERFECT' while I inwardly go 'GRRRR I SUCK I SHOULD GET NUKED FROM LOW ORBIT I CANT DO ANYTHING RIGHT AHHHHHHHH'

 

That's entirely understandable. Love her as I do Vriska is very. Yeah.

Now then I kind of want to ramble about how I am making Handmaid<3Dolorosa work. Working within the canon. Save for like the whole "And the Handmaid and the Dolorosa had a weird convoluted time hopping romance" thing obviously. I will do this today I think and a bit now.

Because of a friend of mine the Handmaid really likes poetry. That is just a quality she is stuck with forever in my head. Poetry and singing. That is her one hobby and one joy in life really, and it's not really that big of a joy because Doc Scratch continues to exist and be the worst person ever. Which leads to how she even has this hobby at all and the answer isn't "Doc Scratch is one part Equius and one part the Autoresponder which makes him one part brain clone Dirk". It is a book.

This book was given to her at a young age by an older Dolorosa. One who just escaped from the caverns with the Signless grub. It was handed off to her because wow look at this small child who looks oddly like the creepy Demoness woman who has someone gone from being the most horrifying thing ever to a friend. Maybe??? ??????? Also little Handmaid was alone. This doesn't get burned because it plays a part in stupid time shit, but she does get insulted by Scratch for having the stupid thing and trying to hide it. LIKE THE IDIOT CHILD SHE IS.

Anyway that leads to how Dolly has the book and the answer is an older Handmaid dropped in on a seven sweeps old Dolly in her hive and was like "Boo". Which was all very horrifying because wow the Demoness has DROPPED INTO OUR HIVE OH GOD SHE LITERALLY SAID BOO. She came to deliver a book instead of murder her though. The book of stupid time bullshit.

This madness has been written in part and I really need to get to typing it up. Urgh. That and posting it in the order I write it which is to say whatever order I feel like. Eventually things will be strung together and presented in chronological order from the Handmaid's perspective but for now mad hopping along everyone's lives.

 

Soooo I kinda wrote a rant about Nepeta on my tumblr (I think this is the right thread)

Spoiler: I get really emotional about this catgirl

Asker: Nepeta is often simplified or trivialized in a lot of fanfiction over all, I find. She had less 'camera' time than some and fans tend to minimize both her strength and her being more than a cat roleplayer/crazy shipper.
Me:
YEP. A lot of the time she’s turned into a joke, like “oh wow Nepeta is such a crazy catgirl, look at how wild and catlike she is, isn’t she completely inhuman?” (or, um, introll-an??) or “lol what if Nepeta was secretly really filthy!!! What if she had sex and said bad words!!! Isn’t that wacky!!!” And it’s just like. Ugh.

I mean, to clarify: I have nothing against the idea of Nepeta being sexual or saying bad words, that’s fine, but I fucking hate turning characters into one note jokes, especially when they’re characters like Nepeta, who’s kinda awkward and vaguely autistic and kinda doesn’t seem to have many close friends. (Fuck, Terezi basically admits to hanging out with Nepeta out of pita I am pretty sure.) Even if she is one of the characters who doesn’t have a lot of dialogue, there is, in fact, more too her then “cat” and “shipping” and “hunting”. Even all the stuff that presents her as strong and tough ends up dehumanizing her or removing any sympathy to her character because it’s all “Nepeta could rip x’s head off!” “Nepeta eats the bones of her enemies” “Nepeta hould just murder Karkat to get over her crush” or w/e. And don’t even fucking get me started on “NEPETA IS STRONG SHE WOULDN’T CRY” like FUCK OFF
http://seaseren.tumblr.com/post/119974513819/nepeta-is-often-simplified-or-trivialized-in-a-lot

 

I've seen a ton of posts on Tumblr about how John is bottling up all his sadness. Is there actual evidence for that? Because I'm not seeing it. I just figure he has a naturally cheerful personality, even in the face of bad stuff.

 

I'd say there's room for argument but we'll never know one way or the other. He does have feelings and he explodes with them sometimes (that one panel of him Doing The Windy Thing with the glow glasses, or that time he punched Caliborn's teeth out), but I haven't seen anything that would explode into depression or anything. If he's bottling up sads, they're not going to come out as sads. Like with putting pressure on carbon, what's going to come out is a diamond. John is a gem okay that's what I'm saying. Usually his response to people saying "I am sad" type things is "man, that sucks." Empathy but not really like "I am sad too" kind of things. Sometimes he's not even that sensitive to people doing a sad, like with Davesprite I think he got sick of it after a while. Not that he's being a dick on purpose but that his emotional range isn't very broad and his emotional displays aren't very nuanced.

My personal favorite neuroatypical headcanon for John is that he has panic attacks or at the very least agoraphobia. Get it? Agoraphobia? Stuck at home? Har har. No but seriously. And panic attacks because you cannot fucking breathe during one of them and it's so irrational and dumb and then when he gets his Breath abilities he's like. yes. no more of that bullshit.

 

there's been a lot of evidence for john's repression... with the earliest being the clowns on the wall and the latest example being the blatant "i'm going to ignore my black crush on terezi forever" and dave calling him out on it

 

Everybody had stuff on the wall, I figured Sburb makes kids write stuff on their walls.

As for the black crush thing, he literally didn't know his feelings could be considered a black crush because he didn't know enough about alien romance. How is that repression?

 

I think john egbert is the type who goes *has a feel*-->*oshitfeels!*--->*NOPE*---->*haha what? :D*

As opposed to *has a feel*-->*guilt, toxic masculinity, self-flagellation*--->*8|* like Dave does.

 

YEP. that's definitely how i see john. doesn't wanna feel so he just tries to stay positive. you might say he is the type to blow things off B]

 

I saw that more as "I'm aro and uncomfortable that you think I want a romantic relationship with someone" tbh, especially considering that Terezi killed him once. (Not, like, in this timeline, but I still think there has to be at least some memory bleedover.) Of course, I was also skeeved off with the entire discussion of relationships in that log because I feel like it normalized the "love sucks" message that's actually really fucking unhealthy. And Karkat was also really uncomfortable. Throw himself off a cliff uncomfortable. Like good job Dave you've made your two best bros incredibly uncomfy because you keep harping on something they don't want to talk about.

Not happy with Homestuck right now tbh.

 

haha yeah dave was really awkward in that conversation, it was like he was trying to push them together with the "look karkat you might have a chance" "john why do you assume you're straight" it was a trainwreck tbh. dave you could have left a LITTLE filter up and it would be fine... john has definitely shown reservations about dating and seems to feel pressured into doing something he 'should' do w/ relationships though he doesn't give off major aro vibes to me like jake does

What else is disappointing to you in Homestuck right now? I'm really hoping hussie will fix this cherub shit tbh. so this is how you decided to handle the 'gender' part of the growing up story? masculine/feminine a strict dichotomy and always in a struggle? wtf are you doing

 

I'm not happy with it for different reasons. My favorite part (besides when Eridan destroyed the matriorb) was when Terezi killed Vriska, because of how horrible it must feel to have to kill a friend. Her self esteem issues afterward were like the icing on the cake. Now that it's gone, it's like Homestuck is all sickly sweet sunshine and rainbows. : ( I hope it doesn't end as badly as Problem Sleuth did with that godawful "taunt me with the prospect of main character death then blueball me" thing.

 

oops i missed your post, for the stuff on the wall i meant kinda the way he reacted to it...

etc.

and again with the terezi thing, it's not whether or not he actually had feelings, but the way he decided to deal with it

aaand that's about as blatant as you can get