Let us tell you about Homestuck

Presumably they can't block off the vents because that'd interfere with ventilation. We don't know if any of the areas in the meteor are airtight excluding vents but it's a possibility!

 

I'm pretty sure Gamzee's immortality is initially a running joke, and then at some point was described by Hussie as basically being "he's a plot mechanic and plot mechanics can't die" so....tbh I'm not sure there ever was or will be a genuine reason for his immortality beyond "he's a highblood and they're supposed to be hard to kill if you don't literally sever their body" and "it's basically a joke Hussie made in the comic".
that said, it pretty much only applied as far as Gamzee getting attacked--so he presumably still needs....food. and water. and the like.

 

ahhhhhhh his fingerwork is so impressiveeeeeee

 

If I recall the convo between Gamzee and Damara, Karkat was trying to go find Gamzee at first but Gamzee was avoiding him. And in who knows how many potential thousands of feet of crawling space only air ducts, how does one propose "go in and drag him out" is going to work on someone who doesn't want to be found?

The "fuck that guy" and Karkat and Dave making fun of Gamzee's religion happens toward the end of the meteor journey, so actually a couple years later, and Karkat is very much the pissed off jilted ex.

 

Gaah, my bad, gettin' unreasonably angry over shit again. Maybe I should go back and reread so I can at least keep straight what the hell was going on at any point.

 

Does anyone know enough about RPGs to advise me should I choose to write a FLARPing version of The Binder of Shame? I feel like there really ought to be one.

 

They did get upset about their friends trying to murder them (and over their friends being dead), actually. We see this even before the game started, because the whole reason that the revenge cycle involving Vriska, Tavros, Aradia, and Terezi kicked off is because 1) Vriska seriously injured Tavros during what was supposed to be a friendly FLARPing game and if they'd survived to conscription, his injury could have gotten him culled as a result, and 2) Terezi found out that Vriska had been lying to her about what happened with the people who lost against Team Scourge. This led to 3) Vriska lashing out at Terezi and using Tavros (again) to at least maim her and possibly kill her, and 4) Aradia losing patience with Terezi's desire to wait it out and let the consequences catch up with Vriska, and siccing the ghosts of Vriska's victims on her, which led to 5) Vriska grabbing Sollux and siccing him on Aradia and killing her in the process. This led to 6) Terezi contacting Doc Scratch and letting him know that Vriska had one of the eight-balls (which he then exploded). The revenge cycle only sort of petered out after that because no one knew for sure what had happened to Aradia for a long time, only that whatever had happened had caused her to stop caring about anything - and with Aradia's emotions sidelined, everyone else was too tired and injured to be interested in spending the resources it would take to keep the cycle going or even finish off Vriska.

Vriska's murder of Tavros, Terezi's Just killing of Vriska, Eridan's murder of Feferi (and attempted murder of Sollux), Kanaya's murder of Eridan, and Gamzee's murder spree all happen fast enough that I don't think there's really enough time for any of the kids living through it to really process what's happening - the timeline seems to suggest that the sudden explosion of murders does happen very quickly, probably over the course of a few hours at most, and it comes at a time when all the trolls were already under serious stress and unsure of if they were going to survive. Which suggests, to me, that we don't see them mourning or being seriously distraught because they don't have time to do any of that on-screen - by the time they can take a breath and start processing, they're a couple days into the meteor voyage already. And we only see snippets of that, most of which come at the midpoint or near the end - all well after any funeral rites or grieving rituals are most likely to have taken place.

Plus, with how lost-child the troll kids seem to be, it's entirely possible that they don't know what the right funeral rites are. (On the other hand, I know I'd have been hard-pressed to explain Proper Funeral Procedure at 13.) I'm pretty sure that from a Doylist perspective, Hussie just plain didn't want to have to come up with alien funeral rites. From a Watsonian perspective...the trolls are traumatized, under stress and probably still not sure if they'll survive (they certainly don't have any reason to believe they aren't the last of their species at this point), and I don't think any of them have really good coping mechanisms. And the story cuts away to something else as soon as the meteor gets under way, so the next time we see them, they've had about a year and a half to process things and try to build new coping mechanisms.

 

Man it seems like Feferi got the dream bubbles up and running pretty much instantly too. So even though their friends were dead they never... actually stopped seeing them? And with as wacky and crazy as the rules of death were in paradox space to begin with, what with god tiers and all that, they couldn't know that any of that was permanent. I think most of them, like our audience, assumed or believed that they would restore everything once LE was defeated and the day saved.

 

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

Thing I want to either write or read (or co-write if anyone's up for it); takeoff of Herding Cats and similar fics in which they must Ship All The Trolls, but they don't slot neatly into a grid and end up with quadrant mishmash and polyamory all over the damn place. It's not what they intended to do, but it turns out to work better and be more fun.

 

And should I ever write that, I'm using the cliche-as-title theme and calling it "Like Talking To A Brick (Shipping) Wall".

 

I agree with an analysis that I saw that Davekat works very strongly thematically but it still just doesn't appeal to me at all and I can't put my finger on why.

And I do see the point about the bubbles, but... I feel like the ending should have had some kind of acknowledgement of "all our friends are dead" and/or some kind of attempt to Do the Lifey Thing.

 

i think the thing about davekat (and all ships, really) is that it's going to appeal to some people more than others by the very nature of it, and if you're not interested in it or don't like it, that's okay! i might be misparsing here, and feel free to let me know if i am, but you definitely shouldn't have to feel like you need to enjoy it, and anyone who says otherwise is an fuck.

 

I know, right? They had someone who can bring people back at least once, and no one went "hey, let's see if we can revive any of our dead friends so that they get to share this reward all of us should have had". I'd understand if they tried and couldn't revive some of the other trolls, or if the others didn't want to be brought back (Sollux seems pretty disinterested in being dragged back into things, for example), or if there was a debate about if they should bring a specific person back (Eridan's a big issue there, and the Dancestors are all distant enough that I don't think any of them who would want to be brought back would know the main cast well enough, with the possible exception of Meenah - and Aranea and Kurloz fall into the same category as Eridan, too, as does Cronus).

Heck, even a debate over which versions of their friends they tried to do the Lifey Thing on would be worthwhile, because how do you pick? Do you select based on whether they were in the alpha timeline? Do you get a Heart player involved to try and synchronize the various selves into one whole that's sufficient enough to be all the multitudes of themself, and then try to bring that unified self back? (I've thought a bit on this, actually.)

 

My question is, do you need a body for lifey things? Because Jane resurrected by healing, but I'm not sure how well that would work on three year decomposed corpses or no body at all in the case of the dancestors.

Though, my current pet head canon is that Roxy can bring them back. they have to have every last ghost destroyed by the blackhole first though. Then they'll be nothing and she can steal the nothing like she did with the matriorb.

 

My personal headcanon is that it's doable, but you'd need several players working together to pull it off. I'm thinking Jane, Feferi, and possibly Meenah, as well as Dirk (who would technically be destroying souls by merging them all into one cohesive whole, since there would then be fewer souls) and/or Nepeta, and probably Roxy and Sollux (so that there's bodies to shunt the souls into, and someone to make sure there's no lingering doom).

 

Fraymotif! And was anyone bothered about Karkat being not God Tier and thus going to die, either? Did anyone try to fix that?

I sort of want something where they bring the guardians back too; Dave says it's okay to bring Bro back on the condition that he never has to actually see him again, because Bro fucked him up but Dave doesn't feel he deserved to die. Could make something cool out of that. I'm also inclined to say they should try to bring the dancestors back just because nobody deserves to be stuck in the dreambubbles forever. Mituna deserves to be somewhere he can successfully avoid Cronus, Cronus deserves to not be stagnating forever and have a chance to grow the fuck up, Rufioh and Horuss deserve a chance to actually talk to each other instead of having their relationship stuck forever and being in a new environment would help them there.

I know I'm not required to like Davekat or any pairing but I just wish I knew why it was so "meh" to me. Maybe because they're too superficially similar? Both characters putting up a front of bizarre metaphors... Maybe the thematic strength slots too neatly together?

 

I feel like I'd have preferred the endgame ships to have either stronger hints of multiple ships going on or nobody is romantically with anybody and they're all better off for it because they're all a hot mess and need to sort themselves out first.

For that matter, I feel like if it was me I'd be frantically throwing myself at the game and trying to see if I could help all the billions of people it's fucked over throughout the multiverse. I always thought of SBurb itself as the antagonist here, and this stuck with me. There's still so much more for them to do! (Yeah, see, I totally am a Rage player.)

 

Yeah I think my issue is that the ending felt like... It removed all the interesting tensions that made the ships work. So you get some bland straightforward romance which is not what I signed up for.