no guys the problem with pilot dave is not that he's an asshole. dave strider has always been an asshole 😭
the problem is that canonically, he's an aloof bastard forced into hypermasculine stoicism. remember? the whole point of his character arc...? he's supposed to LEARN to express himself LATER...
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I love to headcanon that as much of a soft hearted sap Karkat is with his love of romcoms, that while Karkat fell for Dave first, Dave was the one who fell the hardest for Karkat.
Karkat is emotional but that also means he's emotionally intelligent. He knows himself, so when he realizes he's fallen for Dave, it's surprisingly easy for him to adjust to his new reality.
Dave, on the other hand, has grown up repressing certain emotions (through no fault of his own). He has a lot of Bro's influence to unlearn, but more importantly, he has a lot of feelings he needs to learn how to express openly and unabashedly for the first time ever —many of which only surfaced when he realized he was in love with Karkat.
It's terrifying.
There's this butting heads of affection for the other and despair of what that means for him and his future. It's overwhelming. He short-circuits. He needs time to work through it all which results in a lot of conflicting expressions of interest and indifference. Physical touch accompanied by spoken denial; actions that go against his words. The love he feels is unexpected, loud, and even at times devastating, and he does. not. know. how. to. function.
But it's Karkat.
The other sticks with him through his descent. He doesn't "endure" the untangling of emotions, but rather helps Dave unravel these thoughts and feelings with surprising care and patience. (But is anyone surprised? It's Karkat).
As hard as the fall is, there's a thrill to it too, because Karkat is there to catch him with open arms and that beautiful, goofy ass grin.
The Aberrant Mothers Of Beforus (or: Yuri Essay The First.)
Her Radiant Compassion (Feferi) and The Designer (Kanaya), in short, put the current culling system in place. And destroyed their interpersonal relationship in the process.
Her Radiant Compassion’s title is intended to evoke the idea of a shining future, of a love for her people so effusive it radiates like the moonlight off of the Empress. The Designer’s title is twofold; both an actual fashion designer, and a social architect. Straightforward, practical, prefixed by ‘Honorable’ in some of the history books. And half the time, on HRC’s tongue. Friends from the beginning, with.. Ideas on how to improve the world.
The conditions that make the culling system necessary may tie directly to the explosive amount of grubs born, and the varying vastness of troll lifespans.[1] Of these grubs, many will be born with some form of mutation or other variation on what is considered “standard”. Some of which could negatively affect quality of life, some of which might just be considered unsightly. Given the sheer number of trolls out there, who’s to say they’re getting the help they need to live? Surely, it could be solved with resource distribution... Resources that a lot of highbloods have, including Feferi herself. Perhaps she spends her youth using those resources to help. Perhaps not.
Either way, the day that Feferi succeeds the throne, she sets about trying to fix this awful problem. By... Incentivizing highbloods to take care of trolls that are beneath them. Warm blooded trolls with their shorter lifespans, trolls disabled by their mutations. They don’t need to die! They’ll be cared for! After all, Feferi has no problem with it, and neither does Kanaya. Why should anybody else chafe against this? Surely, now that nobody has to fight for scraps, and cold-bloods have something to *do* with all their years, everything’s better! …Right?
Of course, being in the midst of the hemospectrum, Kanaya is first in line to watch their policies fail, watch the best intentions pave the road to hell as some take their resentment out on their charges, as some simply aren’t prepared to act as carer, as freedoms are removed, as lies are forged to excuse the culling of political dissidents... But they work perfectly, top looking down. Feferi doesn’t listen, because they solved it, and from her vantage; —Everybody is s)(oal )(appy! The coolbloods have something to do, the warmbloods and mutants are taken care of.
A Witch of Life is somebody who manipulates life (agency, power, growth), and a Sylph of Space heals space (creation, distance, motherhood.)... Conversely, the role of “Mother” for trolls is split into the parent that raises you (Lusii Naturae), and the parent that begets you (Mother Grub).
[1] While a comparison to r/K selection (quantity vs quality) could be made here, trolls appeal to shoot for both, what with taking decades to mature and having approximately a million grubs at a time. That said, given the implied high juvenile mortality rates, they’re probably r-selection. Further reading here: https://www2.nau.edu/lrm22/lessons/r_and_k_selection/r_and_k.html
Today on Diagnosing Characters I Like With BPD : a homestuck analysis
AKA : Lets talk about Equius
EMOTIONAL INSTABILITY ✔️ & DIFFICULTY CONTROLING ANGER ✔️ : Equius is easily angered and expresses it through VIOLENCE (usually breaking items) He is also easily frustrated and easily embarrassed.
UNSTABLE EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS ✔️ : Someone complicated to analyze due to the quadrant system - especially Kismesistude. But id say his relationship with Gamzee and Aradia both show a swing between Idealization and Devaluing (IE: SPLITTING✔️). His relationship with Vriska isn’t very stable either.
RECURRANT SELF HARM ✔️ & HARMFUL IMPULSIVE BEHAVIOR ✔️ : Builds robots to fight and get injured fighting. Breaks his own possessions. Arguably SELF SABATAGES his friendships. Is a porn addict.
CHRONIC EMPTYNESS / DEPERSONALIZATION AND DEREALIZATION: Tends to “lurk” in the background and not directly interact with others. Being Heir of Void seems a lot like a metaphor for DEPERSONALIZATION ✔️ to me. Equius lives primarily in a hyper-sexualized FANTASY WORLD and acts as though the real world should follow those rules.
EFFORTS TO AVOID ABANDONMENT : unclear, but he does put in a lot of effort into CONTROLING HIS RELATIONSHIPS ✔️ Bosses Nepeta around and puts a chip in Aradiabot to control her feelings..
i REALLY like the open that goes from cinematic to john jumpscare, that is suchhh a good way to do this, and literally what i always imagined for a homestuck show.
characters directly acknowledging the narrator / the narrator bit in general is perfect actually, i can’t believe they really are trying to translate homestuck’s meta jokes into this medium!! really well done!!!
WV is there. serenity is there. no notes <3
i liked rose’s VA much more than i expected i would, but dave’s delivery being so punchy still definitely bothers me when he’s like… a ‘nonchalant’ monotone mumbler. it’s possible they either change this or i get used to it though
the cussing occasionally felt misplaced (mailbox gag was annoying) which is hilarious knowing this was entirely written by hussie, not viv
keeping the sylladex and strife specibus gags (as well as dave being the tutorial character) made me so happy!!!
i’m not sure how i feel about the strife scene being so dramatic, but the animation was GORGEOUS. and it started as a frame by frame recreation of the original flash which made me so happy. THE MUSIC WAS CRAZY GOOD
the animation in general was so pretty the entire time, i actually really like all of the colors and detail in the backgrounds. the entire thing is BEAUTIFUL!!!
it of course became fast paced towards the end, but it’s clear that since this is a pilot they’re just trying to pitch general hype for what’s to come, and that they’ll walk through act one more slowly if this gets greenlit.
CAMEOS FOR EVERYONE HOLY SHIT THEY’RE HANDING THESE THINGS OUT LIKE CANDY. it doesn’t make much sense but it’s clearly, you know, to build hype, and i love it
overall i’m REALLY happy with it, there are gripes i have of course but mostly things that either will be smoothed out or i’ll get used to. most of it was worth it to see how genuinely great homestuck looks brought to screen like this.
please please PLEASE go support the show so we can see it greenlit for a full series!!!
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i've alluded to many times on my blog my theories about jade harley's particular affinity for hatemance, and it's time i finally delved into this.
jade harley is, as we know and love, a silly, cheerful girl with a lot going on under the surface. because of that, most popular jade ships are cutesy and lovey-dovey.
but i'd argue that this isn't what would actually be healthiest for jade, or what she would truly prefer. in homestuck, jade is self-assured, and not at all afraid to steamroll other characters or take charge. despite her penchant for silliness, she does not tolerate nonsense.
the thing is that jade considers negative emotions themselves to be nonsense.
i think saying that jade is walked over by other characters would be a mistake. it's incredibly obvious that the one person who isn't letting jade talk about her feelings, is, in fact, jade. jade is holding herself to impossible standards, believing that the entire course of the game rides on her shoulders due to her skaian responsibility.
you can see it so clearly in how she talks to herself, and even in how she speaks to others-- despite her penchant for silliness, jade holds an unmistakable no-nonsense attitude when it comes to productivity.
emotions make her uncomfortable when they deter that progress... and this follows her into her relationships in a serious way.
we don't get to hear much about the specifics of how davejade fell apart. dave's gayness nonwithstanding, it's very clear from the dialogue that davesprite had extreme depression issues that jade was, understandably, not able to handle.
this isn't something that comes out of nowhere- it makes sense for jade to get awkward when situations get too mushy for her; even without knowing that grimbark jade was working off her real desires. jade dislikes discussing negative emotions because she thinks they're unbecoming, and that makes her red relationships fall apart.
this happens with "cheerful" characters too- jade has friction with characters too similar to herself, too "silly", who aren't taking things seriously enough.
overall, jade has a lot of difficulty with emotions and talking about them-- hers and anyone else's. so she awkwardly humors them, hoping that it'll stop, and slowly builds frustration, as seen with tavros (and maybe davesprite).
this brings me, finally, to the flipside of things: blackrom, and a jade who doesn't have to be mushy.
jade is at her best when she's 'allowed' to be an asshole to people without feeling guilty about it: most famously, towards karkat.
jade thinks of karkat of someone who deserves her ire; in fact, he might be the singular person in the world who she can be productively angry towards. telling karkat to fuck off is always the right thing to do to proceed to her goal- whether that be blocking an annoying troll or getting the frog timelines in order.
jade and karkat's relationship starts off extremely toxic. years of anger and bullying make it hard to believe these two could ever be friends, but strangely, something happens to tip those scales- two interesting scenes that i'll highlight here.
what's happening here is auspisticism, a blackrom relationship that diffuses a previously toxic romance. and that is not my theory, that is something explicitly pointed out in (and out) the text several times.
it seems jade harley's healthiest, realest relationship is a (strange, rotating, time-travel-based) auspisticism where she gets to cuss someone annoying out all the time.
she's finally free to bitch at someone. which is kind of adorable??
[i'll write a longer post about these two another time.]
but it's visible in all of the jade redrom attempts as well. what's clear is that jade needs to confront and express her emotions. what jade really needs is an outlet- jade needs to feel like her negative feelings are the goal, so she doesn't feel guilty for impeding one. this is why blackrom could be more healthy for her!
think of popular jade ships; jadekat, davejade, even jadenep. all of these characters deeply frustrate her. why bottle that up when she could make it a healthy romantic outlet instead!?
of course, jade was always allowed to boss her friends around- it was a pretty big part of her early character, in fact! (though she should learn to do it more!) but she was scared of the "immaturity" of involving negative feelings, and that was what she was missing.
she deserves to embrace and celebrate smacktalking people!
so that's my analysis. make davejade and jadenep pitch now <3<
also, once again, hilarious to see the “loud annoying public gays” trope being used on davekat for the 37484827th time as if they weren’t canonically a very private pair
it’s funny because rosemary are famously very loud and public about their occasionally messy relationship, as we see in the comic, but for some mysterious reason nobody talks about them
via the last ask, is Karkat a freak or would it just be a form of troll polyamory? or am I forgetting some important quadrant lore or smth and this is a dumb question
KIDS REALLY DON’T KNOW THAT KARKAT’S GAY ANYMORE… i joked about this earlier but i didn't think it was true 😭😭
ok i don't blame you for not knowing since, imo, fandom seems to have forgotten this when it comes to karkat and alternian analysis. somehow. even though it's his whole thing.. let me explain.
basically, karkat vantas is queer.
his arc sort of pointedly mirrors dave’s in that it’s about how hard he’s compensating for that - constantly obsessing over romance and “doing it right”, then enforcing that on himself and others.
karkat starts as a bootlicker. he wants to be in the military, he wants to fill his quadrants, he wants to lead, he wants to be the best and most successful troll that's ever lived... to make up for the fact that he's mutated. this isn't just implied, it's stated; karkat is desperate to prove he can be the Standard Alternian Troll.
karkat is a mutant marked for extermination, which obviously is different to sexuality. but it's worth noting that karkat's arc is already about putting up fronts for things about him that are "wrong"...
...especially when it's revealed that his sexuality is also "wrong".
trolls believe in having one destined partner per quadrant- four separate relationships that must not mix. it's enforced both culturally and by drones. but the concept of a troll romance that goes "beyond the four quadrants" is introduced to us by karkat's ancestor. we come to realize that karkat's romantic issues might not just be circumstantial-- they might be a legitimately different form of attraction he feels.
towards the end of the story, when davekat is officially canonized, the story plays a little cheekily about "nobody knowing" which quadrant dave and karkat settled in.
because just like how dave came to terms with how bullshit the cultural restrictions of human sexuality are, and talks about this at length; karkat may have realized that it's okay to break the rules.
while some people think that this means karkat was destined for "human romance"... i personally think that's a bit silly, since karkat has proven he can't stick to pure red feelings for someone. it's more likely that his new relationship involves all those quadrants he loves, simultaneously. who cares about rules?
TL;DR: yes, karkat vantas is queer for a troll and that's all there is to say on the matter.
