We're doing this man

Me: so, like, people insist that Bro is Forever Bad and beyond redemption and no one is allowed to enjoy his character or else they’re excusing his treatment of Dave, but… why does no one say that about Mom Lalonde? who raised Rose while drunk off her ass 24/7? who raised her child in such a way that the child misinterpreted EVERYTHING she did as passive-aggressive mind games? (let’s not even talk about how Rose later tried to cope with the realization that her dead mom actually did love her by emulating her mother’s bad habits and blaming herself for being a “bad daughter.”)

Non-Homestuck friend: i’m wondering why people whose delicate feefees are hurt by people being horrible even LIKE this fucking comic!

Me: RIGHT? i love this fucked up comic and its fucked up characters but it’s about TERRIBLE PEOPLE being BROKEN AND TERRIBLE. they’re ALL Problematic Faves. but, you know, Bro’s the ONLY one we must boo and hiss at. let’s just ignore that Jade’s (senile??) grandpa let a toddler play with LOADED PISTOLS.

Friend: …the other examples. the children are girls.

Me: … … …i’d only been considering the genders of the adults.

Friend: nnnnnuuup. abuse is worse when it happens to their male fave.

So like…Rose’s drinking problem partially stems from Roxy’s drinking problem. Yet somehow in the retcon…this magically goes away? Like yeah I don’t think Rose would hold a grudge against Roxy for stuff her mom did, but the reunion wouldn’t be without its stress, especially with their respective issues.

But no, Rose and Roxy meet like it’s the next best family reunion with only minor comments about some issues Rose was having, while Dave and Dirk get this tense, emotional reunion scene dealing with their respective issues candidly? ‘Cause why, Dave’s pain matters more? Why was Rose’s development circumvented in such a way?

Anyway, I super agree with basically everything here. Rose had a complicated and angsty character arc going on, then we retconned and, poof, it’s gone because Vriska yelled at her apparently. (Did Vriska have to intervene more than once? Did she reason with Rose or just guilt trip her? Did Rose have her emotional needs met? We’ll probably never know.) There’s piles upon piles of text dedicated to carefully sifting through the Strider angst, while Rose and Roxy get… Dave butting in on their reunion. LE SIGH.

That’s just par for the course with most of the characters lately, but the female characters seem to be hit by it especially hard. Here’s a long-standing, difficult problem! Let’s just handwave it away and/or give it a simple solution instead of letting the character struggle with it.

The more I think about this, the more I realize that if I’m gonna complain that a male character is receiving extra angsty introspection while a female character has her depth casually shrugged off, I should probably point fingers at the author first. (Though there are still factions of fandom that I narrow my eyes at in a “you, at least, should know better” fashion.)

It's more interesting to me if Bro Strider was genuinely trying his best but is just not at all suited for caring for a child (plus the puppet mind control). We look at Dirk and he admits he has no interest in children and solving social problems is very hard for him.

This could be a chance to explore how being Neurodivergent the way Dirk seems to be ties into how effective of a parent someone can be, and what unique challenges that presents when it comes a child's emotional needs. One of Dave's complaints is that his brother seems like a robot, but when we see Dirk, we see that's just how he is. He's very monotone and flat in the face, robotic, almost.

Not only this, but we can SEE in the apartment and when we're exploring Bro's things with Dave that Bro Strider absolutely adores Dave. He gives him the only bedroom and takes a shitty futon. He saves every comic he's ever drawn and quotes them back to Dave. This doesn't excuse that his behavior was wildly off of the rails and he went way too hard trying to prepare Dave for the game + forgetting basic shit resulting in neglect.

One: The series did very well depicting children of abuse, as much as Hussie is a suck writer at times, they did that very correctly and I can't fault them for it. Rose and Dave's reactions to their abuse are fairly real all things considered, especially for the types of abuse they suffered.

Two: The fandom fundamentally mischaracterized Dave and Rose both. Rose more specifically and intentionally misunderstood her behavior. Mom Lalonde is not the worst parent one could have, however she's an absentee mother. She's not there physically and barely there mentally. Even if her love of the vacuum she bronzed and wizards is legitimate, it's hard to fault Rose for thinking it's performative at best, mockery at worst. Rose doesn't actually know her mom outside the performance she does at home when she's not blackout drunk somewhere.

Rose threatening suicide during their strife comes off as dramatic, and maybe it is to an extent, but it's because she's seeking attention from her mother. She's so alone, so isolated both physically and emotionally, that she's seeking anything she can get. Her emotions are actually very poorly regulated because she's actually not secure. She's not certain her life is stable, despite being in a luxurious house. Her mom is a drunk who doesn't care for her and their only interactions are strifes and seemingly passive aggressive fridge interactions. Mom Lalonde didn't bother trying to help Rose become an emotionally functional person and actually left Rose worse off. Rose has no real idea how to talk to people or understand them so she defaults to psychological analysis and pseudo-intellectualism because it's what she's had access to to learn human interactions.

Mom Lalonde comes off, at least to me, as the type of woman who makes wine drinking her personality and jokes about it with other moms her age. The type to forget about her daughter's events because she wasn't capable of composing herself long enough. She comes off like the type to wave a hand and scoff, saying Rose's childhood wasn't bad because Rose had everything physically she could ever want. A woman who buys things for Rose after upsetting her, as if that fixes the damage.

Mom Lalonde seems to be the kind of mom that believes pandering to her daughter's perceived emotions and gift giving is what it takes to raise a child, which is why she seems so unresponsive to Rose's threats of self harm. She probably thinks Rose is just being dramatic. And maybe she is, but it's clearly something any good parent would, and should, be immediately concerned about.

I think for the fandom, Dave's abuse is taken for what it is, but twisted how it is, because his abuse type is more common and relatable to many. And, tragically, for many their own abuse was worse, yet similar enough to Dave's that they latch on and expand significantly on it to the point of losing the plot as it were.

Dave is less neglected emotionally, as much as people like to claim Bro did nothing but starve and beat him. Dave isn't the most mature, but he's actually a pretty average 13-16 year old boy emotionally. He's goofy and rambly and likes annoying his friends. That's not to say Bro's actions didn't impact him, because they certainly did, but Dave's emotional regulation is actually okay? Not great but, better than Rose.

Bro in some ways is Mom Lalonde's opposite. He's physically present way more and as emotionally available as someone like him can be (not nearly as much as he should be). He doesn't just care about Dave, he actually shows it by taking interest in Dave's hobbies and interests, helping him set up his makeshift dark room, helping him get his webcomic online and uploaded, and clearly giving him the only bedroom in the apartment. Bro bought Dave his sylladex, specifically getting him the modus type that suited Dave best but was still within Bro's standards of "best".

Dave's trauma largely comes from a combination of food scarcity, exposure to sexual content early in life (that is NOT to say that Bro did something to Dave or even posted content of Dave), physical abuse, and a lack of emotional stability.

Dave's comfortable enough in the house and with Bro to use Bro's Xbox, computer, and generally fuck with anything in the house with seemingly no fear of consequences. Because Bro didn't just haul off on him for everything. Bro was doing exactly what we see Dirk doing later on, trying to help reach an end goal by going as hard and as stupid as possible. Bro has always struck me as knowing what he's doing, but fundamentally lacking the understanding that what he was doing was a problem because it was, "to make Dave stronger". Bro's own shit emotional expression and his actions to make Dave a better fighter absolutely made Dave feel like Bro hated him.

Bro also seemingly either intentionally didn't buy food, or forgot. I'm gonna say forgot personally because Bro has never struck me as all there. However, I do also personally think it's likely both Dave and Rose struggle with food security because I also think Mom Lalonde drunkenly forgot to a, buy food and b, teach Rose how to make anything outside of a new tiny self explanatory basics.

Both Mom and Bro are abusive, but they aren't abusive in the same ways. Bro is physically abusive and seems to not care about what the exposure to certain content might do to Dave. Whereas Mom is emotionally abusive and neglectful all around, unresponsive to Rose's needs.

the fandom distorted his character real bad, reducing him to a flat, nothing burger punching bag, who is stupid, too emotional and can’t do anything.

so, let me enlighten you and remind you of the way he’s actually portrayed by debunking the most popular lies about him:

“Tavros killed Grandpa to show off and flirted with Jade right after because he didn’t care about her feelings and just wanted to harass her” (usually not worded like this)

the whole thing with Grandpa happened because Tavros has no concept of grandparents. trolls don’t have grandparents, in fact they barely have any encounters with older trolls, so obviously he assumed Grandpa was an intruder and killed him to protect Jade.

i’m not saying Grandpa deserved it of course, but Tavros didn’t off him because he wanted to cause harm to Jade. he didn’t understand Jade’s justified emotional response because, again, trolls typically don’t have a figure even remotely close to a grandparent in their lives.

and for the people saying “killing was too much”, may i remind you that we’re talking about a troll from Alternia? Alternians are very quick to violence because that’s what their environment requires them to act like.

this is the same as people condemning Vriska for feeding other trolls to her lusus: of course it’s a terrible and grim thing, but it’s survival for them. Tavros made sure Jade would survive so that her session could happen and the trolls could get help from the humans in the future.

“Tavros has no character development and was only a doormat for Vriska”

Tavros had a huge character development when, in the dream bubbles, he snapped at Vriska when she mistreated him once again. he flew away and, when he and retconned Vriska encountered, he had formed a huge ghost army, something that Vriska (despite having mind control powers) didn’t manage to form.

this event made Vriska gain respect and trust in him: Gcatavrosprite exists because Vriska trusted Tavros’ abilities enough to know he’d be able to manage and control GCat with his powers.

plus, people act like Tavros only interacted with Vriska, Jade and Gamzee. he spoke to various other characters as well: Aradia (who, reminder, avenged him), Karkat, Kanaya, Terezi, Dave, Nepeta, Rose, John, Meenah… he even interacted with Equius off-screen. so no, his social life clearly doesn’t only revolve around his complicated relationship with Vriska.

“oh, but that’s the only thing he did!”

well, not really! Tavros wrote part of Doc Scratch’s code; only him, Vriska, Aradia, Terezi and Gamzee did this.

he may not be a main character, but this proves that he’s more important than many other fan-favorite characters that many assume have accomplished more than him.

“Tavros is stupid and weak”

Tavros canonically can fight, we even see him training to become a cavalreaper even tho he’s on a wheelchair (which i’m assuming takes a lot of physical and mental strength and resistance).

he just chooses not to fight.

is it because he’s lazy, or because he’s a pacifist? who knows. but what we do know is that he’s definitely not an idiot, and uses an alternative method so that he can still contribute during the game.

in Hivebent, we see him use his animal/beast communion powers to form an army of IMPs, making them docile and obedient so that they can help him with the puzzles, despite Vriska’s disapproval.

he basically cheated at the game. forming a plan like this doesn’t require you to be a genius, but it’s proof that Tavros isn’t as stupid as people claim he is.

“Tavros is just an innocent baby 🥺”

this idea that Tavros can’t even get himself to say curse words and is triggered by anything sexual is a HUGE lie.

Tavros swears multiple times in the comic and makes sexual jokes. plus, he literally has posters of half-naked fairy women on his respiteblock’s walls.

you can’t convince me this is all “innocent” behavior.

“Tavros is emotional”

…

i beg you guys to reread the part where Tavros burst out crying.

he was being pressured by a barely-alive Vriska into killing her himself, and she kept trying to convince him that was his chance to “prove himself” and begging to make her pain stop.

Karkat cried for way less, and yet Tavros is the emotional one?

anyways, thanks for your attention! i hope this helped you remember and understand Tavros’ character better! }:)

and then the hs team reaches out to you for the show, because, duh, you made sburban jungle, if they're not going to use sburban jungle in the show they might as well not make the fucking show at all. and then they hear about some of the stuff you and your wife said, and they say, hey, we can't really work with you if you and your wife are saying this shit? it's really unprofessional?

the validity of them saying this can be....debated for sure. your wife can do whatever she wants, she's her own person. really the hs team blundered here massively because the only comments of your wife's that should matter are ones where she's invoking your name to talk shit about them. but, fine, moving on.

and then the homestuck team makes the second dogshit play of using the passive voice while asking for an apology. they say an apology is necessary. they don't say from whom. so are they saying you should apologize for your wife? that's misogynistic. or are they saying you should both apologize, and they're just relaying the message through you because they're already in contact with you? 'cause that's.......mostly.....valid.

who can say. generally the hs team needs a pr team desperately and are stuck in a limbo between trying to be a corporation and trying to be a silly approachable indie gang. they phrased that shit badly, and the essence of the email was kind of stupid? they didn't need to send you, like, a callout post. they could've just said, unprofessional comments, and left it at that. the screenshots were totally unnecessary.

but either way, you have the absolutely MASSIVE brain play. the best idea. you SCREENSHOT EVERY PART OF THE EMAIL and post it to TWITTER with the caption, "Homestuck just sent me an email demanding an apology for stuff my wife said on Discord!". for, like, shits and giggles, i guess.

Like. Buddy. Brother. Pal. Yes fucked up if true. But that's a decent if. Perhaps more elaboration could've been sought? good luck collaborating with them now. i mean i guess if you don't want to collaborate with them anymore

god. you know the hs team could've made this SOOOOOO easy. they could've just said, "hey, you can work with us, but you can't be talking shit about us while working!!" boom. problem solved. goddddd EVERYONE HERE IS SO STUPID OH MY GOD.

Ironically the one thing Jane isn't in post canon is fat. She's referenced as having a "hour glass figure" somewhere in the epilogue (It was probably in Candy) and until very recently, Beyond Canon only drew her as skinny.

Human characters who are "aracial" but they are functionally white people!