Tag: homestuck

rhythmic-idealist:

commanderfraya:

wizardshark:

commanderfraya:

i hate that i can unironically say “has some of the most psychologically complex and compelling characters i’ve seen in any media ever” about a comic that includes the line “bleat like a goat and piss on your turntable”

#homestuck is the modern equivalent to shakespear#incredibly compelling and layered#and chock full of dumb ass humour

I HATE THAT “HOMESTUCK IS THE MODERN EQUIVALENT TO SHAKESPEARE” HAS UNIRONIC TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

Homestuck contains:

1. a scene in which a child slave, raised to be a time-traveling instrument of death, whose duty it is to shape the course of the universe, stabs her abusive custodian in the head. it is not successful. she loses, for a few seconds, the right to breathe. we go from this scene to onscreen suicide attempt.
2. an NPC who becomes conscious of the fact that she is an NPC, decides it is her destiny to be the very best NPC there has ever been, and then finds no Chosen One to her liking and so fine, if you want something done right, you just need to do it yourself.
   (this remains the most interesting use of genre-savviness I have ever seen.)
3. two different versions of a young teenage boy, and their distinct reactions to the death of their abusive and neglectful guardian. one of these boys grows up to grow past the things he’s been fed about masculinity, figure out that he is both allowed love and allowed to love boys, and come to understand his PTSD. the other grows distant and acts like kind of a jerk, who is pretty sure his friends can never like get close to him now because sometimes he acts like a jerk.
4. a girl who has cycled through an unreasonable number of existences, who has been an emotionless ghost, and then a game construct, and then a robot designed and programmed by a boy who wanted her to want him and who built her this body with ulterior motives – who, before this, was being raised very likely to be a slave – who finally wakes up back inside a body that is hers and has not stopped smiling since
5. a guy who time travels inside an oven at a speed of one second per second
6. a really cool wolf head because there was one in The Neverending Story and huss thought that was pretty nifty
7. penis ouija

curlicuecal:

theenglishmanwithallthebananas:

hypeswap:

i cant believe we watched dave’s bro kick his ass so hard that dave’s record icon (a representation of his Self) was broken in two and almost nobody realized what we were seeing for a long time

#hussie did a really good job of framing his narratives in interesting and unfamiliar ways#he would make fun of us for taking things Too Seriously#like huge weapons. things we thought were plot holes. he was good at pulling our heads out of our asses#and making us realize that shit we thought was important was only that way#because wed been trained by other media to think they really mattered at all#and then hed turn around and take the most ridiculous silly TRIVIAL shit#and say look at this. look what you ignored. this matters#he framed bros abuse of dave as a funny joke and a cool dynamic#and a lot of us didnt realize it for what it was until dave himself did#its cool 

[via @truereset]

these tags were just too good to ignore

You know, it occurs to me that this works on a couple levels.

The homestuck world is explicitly a little different than our own. We take our cues on what is normal and what humorous vs. what should be alarming from the text.

John strifes with his dad over cake and does a spin roll out of the room; Rose trades escalating passive-aggressive mockery about a fridge drawing with her mom; John and Rose take the household apart and drop the bathtub in the hallway…. the narrative and the character reactions cue us that this is funny, but not outside the realm of plausibility.

Dave has swords in the fridge and gets buried in an avalanche of ridiculous sex puppets—character reactions cue us that this is aggravating, normal, funny.

Here’s the extra level that this works on:

Kids take their cues on what is normal from their environment.

Dave’s Bro says puppets are cool and ironic, so they are. Other kids complain about strifing with their parents or getting over-the-top pranks/passive-aggression dropped on them, so that’s normal child-guardian interaction. Getting tricked into participating in a “puppet snuff film” makes Dave and the audience uncomfortable, but it’s funny. Right?

We, as the audience, get to be right there with Dave, not knowing that this isn’t normal. Not knowing how much weight to place on various things. Not knowing that those uncomfortable feelings were the ones we had a right to be prioritizing after all. Not knowing that this was abuse, until much much later, when we’re left looking back on everything with this new, revelatory perspective.

That is very very true to the experience of childhood abuse. And that is some very very excellent storytelling.

honl:

roxys:

Aries: And he was wearing reading glasses to show that time had passed.

Taurus: Why do people shush animals? They’ve never spoken!

Gemini: Shut up! You’re all gonna die. 

Cancer: Top three collages? I thought I would be dead in a trunk.

Leo:  I try to stay optimistic, even though I must admit, things are getting pretty sticky.

Virgo: Just raise your hand and be like “I think Emily Dickson’s a lesbian!” and they’re like “Partial credit”

Libra: My wife is a bitch and I like her so much.

Scorpio: 13-year-olds are the meanest people in the world.

Sagittarius: There is a horse loose in the hospital!

Capricorn: Something happened here. You hope it’s a miracle, but probably not.

Aquarius: I’ll keep all my emotions right here. And then one day I’ll die.

Pisces: I am damp all the time. I am damp now and I will be damp later. Like the back of a dolphin, my back.

Op im gonna steal your knees