Jade is astonishing in Cascade.  Just like that, she is a powerful, forceful, incongruously sexy earth goddess who can calmly and peacefully kick ass with a smile on her face.  She finally answered the question of whether she's fundamentally her histrionic and disempowered dream self, or whether she can be more than the silly girl she was introduced to us as.  Star of the show. 

And you win forever for knowing what I'm talking about. 

Oh wow this is fantastic! I'd seen some Utenastuck before, but... this is just great

Also I now can't stop thinking "Utena got Dios Tier"

satyreyes wrote:

Almaser wrote:

Oh wow this is fantastic! I'd seen some Utenastuck before, but... this is just great

There is more??

Man, Homestuck... it's just amazing in the level of obsession it creates in its fans, myself included.  (Homestuck was the second cosplay of my life; SKU was the first.)  People create more fanstuff per capita for Homestuck than... certainly than for any other media since Gargoyles.  Or maybe ever.  Is it because it started out with a suggestion box?  Is it because we all have zodiac signs, and thus a personal troll to react to?  I'm not asking why Homestuck is so awesome, though I'd like to know that too; I'm asking why Homestuck's awesomeness is so interactive. 

MiRaClEs, MaN.

No but seriously I think it's got to do with its embrace of new media modes of artistic production, especially things like the suggestion box. For me, it's also the way everything in it is a surprisingly carefully-crafted puzzle. Everything points toward some other event or some other bit of information, and slowly you begin to piece together this grand, impossibly complicated tale. (That said I have some SERIOUS beef with the ableism and awkward treatment of some sexualities in the comic. But I still think it's great.)

Homestuck thread in general? ?

I only got into Homestuck in the Doc Scratch's House portion of Act 5 Act 2, so I'm definitely not strong enough on my Homestuck-thinking to be certain of what'll happen next (Jake being dreamdead totally caught me off guard!). Which kind of increases the fun! There's always more to learn and know about it.

I've seen some good critical discussion of Tavros and Vriska on tumblr, but nothing I remembered to save (because goddamn some of it is great). I really think the best example is how Vriska bullies Tavros relentlessly in a really disgusting way (she demands he apologise for a disability that she directly caused him to have, for example). Her rhetoric of disability as a personal failing isn't really held up to any critical light: it's just there, and it's not challenged by anyone. And the fandom comfortably defends that with discussion of culling as a part of troll social order, conveniently ignoring the way that sort of attitude is a real thing in the world that leads to huge amounts of physical and emotional violence against people with disabilities. And don't even get me started on how fans try to defend Vriska against the charge that she abused Tavros because "he wasn't strong enough to kill her when she needed him to." That shit makes my blood boil.

Terezi is... a more complicated situation, because she is comfortable with and embraces her disability, and she's not really marginalised by it... except that her disability basically doesn't exist because she's a Magical Disabled Troll. Instead of directly dealing with the specificity of life as a blind character, or having different accessibility needs, Terezi's position in the team/narrative is smoothed over by her Smellovision, which lets her function just like any able-bodied person, but with the added Hilarious Bonus of sniffing and licking everything. So yeah. Terezi: almost an interesting blind character, but Hussie dodged having to actually deal with a blind character.

Sexuality stuff is a whole other bag, but suffice to say that there is a whole lot of Look At How Straight These Characters Are that was going on right up to Act 6, until AutoResponder joined in. The trolls are a different situation again, and at the very least there's clear flirtation and romance between same-gender trolls shown in the story. But it's not great on sexuality all up. And the fandom is terrible (case in point: I saw someone argue that Kanaya being attracted solely to women is thematically important because she will always be 'technically a virgin.' There are like 5 million things wrong with t hat.)

But even with all this said it's a generally good narrative, just one that had the potential to be better on gender and disability.

EDIT: Five seconds later and: found it! http://awyeahmona.tumblr.com/post/79185 … ng-ableist Really good summary of what's not going on re: ableism in Homestuck and its fandom, and also touches on Sollux's mental-illness-as-a-gimmick thing, which I missed.

EDIT 2: SON OF EDIT: SPECIAL EDITION: http://tralalonde.tumblr.com/post/13131 … people-are Mona to the rescue again! She's really articulate about what doesn't do so good in Homestuck. Also the quote from twinmachines is pretty much exactly the problem.

Last edited by Almaser (11-29-2011 04:04:00 AM)

Almaser wrote:

I really think the best example is how Vriska bullies Tavros relentlessly in a really disgusting way (she demands he apologise for a disability that she directly caused him to have, for example). Her rhetoric of disability as a personal failing isn't really held up to any critical light: it's just there, and it's not challenged by anyone. And the fandom comfortably defends that with discussion of culling as a part of troll social order, conveniently ignoring the way that sort of attitude is a real thing in the world that leads to huge amounts of physical and emotional violence against people with disabilities. And don't even get me started on how fans try to defend Vriska against the charge that she abused Tavros because "he wasn't strong enough to kill her when she needed him to." That shit makes my blood boil.

Hmm.  I don't want to be the guy defending perceived ableism, because if I'm wrong then I'm part of the problem.  But for me, there are a couple important distinctions I'd want to make before I started throwing accusations about ableism or homophobia towards Homestuck:

1) The distinction between the message of a story and the beliefs of the characters in the story, and

2) The distinction between the message of a story and the messages promulgated by the story's fans.

Let's start with #1.  To Kill a Mockingbird has a number of characters who are overtly racist, and a ton of characters who are implicitly racist.  But you would never jump from there to the conclusion that To Kill a Mockingbird is a racist story.  Racism is used to illustrate how it can make good people cruel, and blind racism in particular is a characteristic of villainy.  Using racism this way makes To Kill a Mockingbird an anti-racist story.

So when Vriska bullies Tavros, does the story portray this as a heroic or morally neutral thing to do?  Or is it presented as disgusting and villainous?  I think the answer is obviously the latter.  During Act 5 Act 1, Vriska is obviously the most evil troll out there.  She's an egomaniac, she collects doomsday devices, she mind-controls her acquaintances into blinding themselves and killing each other, she slaughters thousands of trolls to get treasure and feed her lusus, she creates the kids' and trolls' universe-destroying nemesis, she cheats at board games, and yes, she abuses the disabled kid.  Over and over and over.  I am having trouble understanding how you read her abuse of Tavros as somehow legitimized by the text.  On the contrary, her abuse and ultimate murder of Tavros is one of the most poignant reasons we're all eager to see her downfall by the end of the act.

I'm not sure how much more explicit the text can be in condemning Vriska's ableism without AH making a special guest appearance to talk about how we shouldn't abuse people in wheelchairs.  But if you need something even more explicit than seeing the evil troll build a world out of stairs for Tavros to climb, how about Kanaya's reaction to that event?  Kanaya, who is consistently presented as well-intentioned, threatens Vriska with a slime dousing when she learns what she's been doing to her client player.  Their dialogue is very revealing.

As for Terezi, I guess the question there becomes whether AH -- having created a blind character -- is obliged to deal with her blindness, or whether he's allowed to give her superpowers that pretty much obviate it.  I don't really see how Terezi's smell-o-vision marginalizes actual blind people.  It's not as though anyone is going to read Homestuck and then go out and mistakenly treat blind people as though they can see.  I might suggest that this is a case of some fans wanting to see their favorite story create and deal with a character's actual blindness, but AH gets to tell the story he wants to tell, just like every other author, and if he's not trivializing real disabled people then I don't see anything wrong with that.

Similarly, we want queer kids.  Absolutely.  But I don't think AH is obliged to give us queer kids just because we want them.  That would change the kids' story in ways that might distract from the point, from AH's perspective.  (Think love triangles.)  I can see how Dave's apparent homophobia is a little problematic, since he is in other ways a hero.  But that's all complicated by his irony.  Is he really homophobic, or is he ironically homophobic?  I doubt even he knows, and the way his irony interferes with his expression of a genuine personality is a recurring focus in his scenes.

So the most serious charge I think is left to level against Vriska and Dave is that they can leave a reasonable viewer with the impression that ableism and homophobia are funny.  I can't respond to that one in good faith, because I think Vriska and Dave are hilarious.  What can I say?  I also think that attributing English romantic poetry to African-American sports legends and screen actors is hilarious.  I don't know how we create humor without making fun of someone, or without offending the people who might identify with that someone.  AH is doing much more than most comedians to put that humor in a context that at least doesn't promote the behavior.  Perfect?  No.  But I don't see how we get to perfect without renouncing humor entirely.  It's an old problem. :-/

Okay, what about #2?  I would hope this one would be self-evident.  AH is not accountable for fanstuff that he doesn't put in the comic.  There are SKU fans who think Touga was a real prince who acts selflessly to save Utena from her own girlish naivete, but you don't blame Ikuhara for it or call SKU a sexist work as a result.  Similarly, if there are Homestuck fans out there saying that Tavros deserves what he gets for being so weak-willed, or that Kanaya will always be a virgin because she only likes girls, feel free to give those fans a smack o' righteousness upside the head from me, but don't take it out on Homestuck!

This is a lot more than I usually write about this kind of issue, but I've just overall been so impressed by how well Homestuck handles all this stuff that it took me by surprise to hear that someone had a SERIOUS beef with it. 

Hiraku wrote:

Just wondering, what do you guys think of our latest new characters? (Jake, Jane, Bro, Lalonde)

I like 'em, but I don't know them well enough to be able to compare them to the old ones.  When Act 5 Act 1 started, I was like "wtf who are these douchebags."  It took a while before I cared about the trolls.  I expect the same will be true of Jake and Jane and the others.

Hiraku wrote:

Also, I have a feeling that UU is actually the Empress in the pre-Scratch world. In pre-Scratch, Feferi was probably the most... pleasant troll next to Nepeta (Well, not really).

Let's not use spoiler tags in this thread.  There's just too much to spoil.  Those reading this thread should be assumed to have read the whole comic to date, or else to not care about spoilers.

The Empress -- you mean the Condesce?  I think the Condesce is pretty firmly established to be Betty Crocker.  (This shocked the hell out of me when I first heard of it too.)  Here's the logo on the side of her Battleship Condescension (BC).  Compare to Betty Crocker's new logo, unveiled with Jane's introduction.  The Condesce could be UU in addition to Betty Crocker, I guess.  I'm certainly not vouching for the purity of UU's motives! 

Oh, Feferi seems nice, I couldn't agree more!  She's probably the second nicest troll after Tavros.  But the Condesce is pretty evil, going around destroying whole civilizations and such.  I think it's a mistake to connect the trolls too closely to their ancestors.  Their stories often parallel each other in some ways, but I don't think we can jump from there to saying "Feferi is nice, so the Condesce must be nice."

I don't think there's a new group of trolls.  The kids scratched their session, but the trolls' session had already been scratched.  The trolls we know -- Karkat and his crew -- they were their universe's second try.  Let's review.  This is my understanding of the cosmic chronology.

The "first" universe for us, in some sense, was Troll Universe 1, or T1.  In T1, the twelve players were the individuals who we now think of as the troll ancestors.  These players also had ancestors, and those ancestors were Karkat & co.  Unfortunately, their session was spawned unwinnable due to the machinations of Lord English.  Echidna gave the twelve players a choice between letting their universe die quietly, or scratching their session.  If they scratched, they would switch places with their own ancestors, and those ancestors would be given enough power to win easily.  The players chose to scratch and try again.  Their scratch spawned Troll Universe 2.

Troll Universe 2, T2, is the one we were introduced to in Act 5 Act 1.  The twelve players are Aradia, Tavros, Sollux, Karkat, and so on; the players of T1 have been reincarnated in T2 as the players' ancestors, the Handmaid, the Summoner, the Psiioniic, the Signless, and so on.  Most of the ancestors were already dead as of the beginning of Act 5, because of either their naturally short lifespans or various other executions and deaths.  (Exceptions: the Handmaid, the Condesce.)  True to Echidna's word, our twelve trolls beat the game without much trouble, interrupted only at the last second by Jack Noir.  In the process of winning, they engineered Bilious Slick, who embodied Kid Universe 1.

Kid Universe 1, K1, is where we began the story in Act 1.  The four players are John, Rose, Dave, and Jade, and each has a guardian, though these guardians aren't always who we're initially led to believe they are.  (They are Grandma, Mom, Bro, and Grandpa.  It's not clear to me where John's dad fits into all this.)  Like T1, K1 was spawned unwinnable, possibly because of user error by the trolls in T2, but certainly because of Jack Noir's rapid ascent to power.  Also like the trolls in T1, the kids chose to scratch when Jack's Red Miles appeared in the sky and it became clear they could not win.  Unlike T1, the Medium of K1 was saved by Jade, who tucked the Battlefield and the kids' planets away safely at the last second before flying through the Fourth Wall.  John likewise completed the scratch and evacuated.  By scratching the session, the kids created Kid Universe 2.

Kid Universe 2, K2, is where we are now as of Act 6.  The players this time are Jane, Jake, and the yet-unnamed DS and Lalonde.  These are simply Grandma, Grandpa, Bro, and Mom, reincarnated as players in the same fashion as the ancestors after the troll scratch.  Each has a guardian, and while nothing is canon yet, it's a pretty safe bet that their guardians are reincarnations of John, Jade, Dave, and Rose.  As an extra monkey wrench, all four kids from K1 are still hanging around somewhere!  They had all safely escaped K1 when Jack obliterated it.  So in some sense, there are now two Johns, two Jades, and so on -- the set we know from K1, and the adult set we haven't met yet in K2.

All of this is a long way of saying that there are no new trolls.  There is no cosmological necessity for the kids of K2 to have their own original group of trolls the way the kids in K1 did, and there's no remaining way we know of for there to be any kind of T3.  So who the hell is UU?  A few possibilities.

- UU is not a troll.  She's an established character, such as one of the escaped kids from K1, or Betty Crocker in disguise.
- UU is not a troll or a human.  She's from a different race altogether, such as the one the kids in K2 are destined to create when they win the game.
- UU is someone native to K2.  Maybe K2's White Queen got a Pesterchum account.
- UU is a T2 player.  Maybe Aradia has decided to use what's left of her spirit to help the kids in K2.
- UU is a T2 ancestor.  This would pretty much have to be the Handmaid or the Condesce, since the others are all likely to be dead.
- UU is a T1 player or ancestor.  This is maybe the most interesting possibility, since we know virtually nothing about T1.  It's plausible.  With the weird time shit that goes on in Homestuck, there is no reason the K2 kids couldn't end up creating the T1 universe, closing a stable time Mobius loop.

None of these possibilities really explains why UU uses a caduceus symbol, a snake sign that suggests Ophiuchus, the thirteenth sign of the tropical zodiac.  I'm waiting with everyone else to see what goes down.

Last edited by satyreyes (11-29-2011 09:55:53 PM)

Yes to all of it!!  Except:

Hiraku wrote:

As far as timeline logic is concerned, I originally assumed that the troll race also did their reverse like the way the kids did, so that it's now the ancestors playing the game again.

I don't understand much, but I'm pretty sure this isn't what's happening.  The kids' universe is a different session from the trolls', so the kids' Scratch should not have caused the trolls' universe to scratch as well.  Instead, it looks like the trolls' universe was destroyed outright when the trolls' Jack Noir shot Snowman.  A few of the trolls survived by not being in their universe when that happened, the same way the kids survived their scratch.  And some of the dead trolls may still exist in dream bubbles in the Furthest Ring.  Death in Homestuck is frequent but not very permanent.

I think the most natural way to explain Ophiuchus -- you're totally right about UU and uracil, by the way -- would be to guess that there is, somehow, a thirteenth troll (and presumably an accompanying ancestor).  That's crazy and I don't even know how it would work, but it's the only way I see to explain why UU gets a zodiac sign.

That all sounds reasonably convincing, 7SR.  When UU started talking about "paving the way for gods," the Handmaid is the first person I thought of, too.  But yes, if UU is the Handmaid, then she's committing shenanigans -- lying through her teeth to the K2 kids about her intentions, or else planning to betray her employers.  (Which is not unlikely; the Handmaid is not shown to have any fondness for Doc Scratch or Lord English.)  What's more, Doc Scratch would have to have been lying when he said that the Handmaid would be allowed to die after recruiting the Condesce -- and Doc Scratch never lies.  So I dunno.  I feel a little lost about UU. 

Hey satyr, I'd write a longform response, but work kicked my ass today. I think the big point I want to make is: queer and disabled people are saying this stuff is ableist and homophobic. They are not saying that Hussie is obliged to treat these topics in any given way. They are saying that the way he chooses to treat them resonates with and mimics culturally dominant narratives that produce oppression. That's not asking for AH to give a Very Special Lesson about why Vriska shouldn't bully Tavros, it's saying that the narrative arc, as played out, does not actually challenge any narratives about disability and in fact repeats a lot of them. The abuse of Tavros may be given at the least a "not-so-good" moral stamp, but he's still victimised and stripped of his agency throughout the text, and that's not great.
Terezi's portrayal is part of a long history of poor literary portrayals of blindness that trivialise visual disabilities. The Seeing Blind is an old and dodgy literary device. Again, no obligation for him to step out of that, and no one is actually arguing that he should. They're critiquing the story as written, and exploring how it is influenced by and repeats particular marginalising and oppressive ideas. Same thing goes for queerness in the text, and yeah, Dave is ambivalent (as is Bro/AR), but that's still not the same thing as actual visible queerness, it's just an almost-departure from a position of assumed heterosexuality.

I should have been more clear in my asides about the fandom, and that one is my bad. My point was more that there is a problem situated in both the text itself and in the fan discussion and response, which makes it doubly hard for queer and disabled fans who have difficulty with the problematic elements of the text. Also, it presents an additional barrier to articulating and making these critiques accessible to the writer, since AH does draw heavily from the most vocal parts of fandom to shape the story.

And if you are impressed by the way the text has dealt with things, that is fine! You are welcome to that! I personally think that Kanaya is, despite a lack of explicit textual acknowledgement, a well-developed femme lesbian character, and I appreciate that. But, uh, you wrote a lot of words defending perceived ableism and homophobia, instead of acknowledging the perspectives of queer and disabled fans that you yourself asked to hear. And just to make it clear: these critiques are not demands that Hussie tell the story a certain way. They're discussions of why the way he is telling the story can be harmful and unpleasant to disabled/queer readers.

---

I am pretty excited about UU, though I think at the moment I am just going to take hir at face value. I read the "paving the way for the gods" line as more of a reference to our God Tier Scooby Gang, which makes me think that zie is part some session that is set after (and yet is circumstantially relevant to) the victory that all the kids have in K2. But I am pretty much totally clueless as to what hir true identity could be.

It took me so long to realize that the tiara Jane was wearing... Why didn't I see that sooner

Well, D. is a bit more self-assured than Dave was, I think. More comfortable in his own skin. I always saw Dave as struggling with himself in a quiet way-pretending he's cool but really, he's got this little nest for himself, this comfort zone. He is afraid of dying (which Terezi's coinflip showed) and simultaneously admiring and hating Bro. On the inverse, Bro can be okay with Dave's terribad movies and do things his own way. He's not apologetic but nor is he as cutting as Dave was. In a sense, he seems warmer. England counts him as his best friend and is adamant about his 'friend, real friend with real feelings'.

Lalonde on the other hand seems both more daring, capable if just as flawed as Rose was. She'll take the dares she perceives even if it's not something too smart. I put it forth that Lalonde is also a THIEF of VOID right here and now. The first part is pretty obvious-the second part is conjecture but I would bet money that Lalonde is a THIEF. Bro/D. is certainly a 'dickprince' lulz.

Also, whore bibles. That is all.