#sonnetstuck

Dirk is a pretentious character, especially 14 year old Dirk, and he deliberately writes in a convoluted style, hiding his meaning behind layers of symbolism and allegory without actually explaining anything.

But rather than use this as an excuse to mock the reader or show off, the narrative punishes this deliberate obfuscation.  Sonnetstuck meticulously documents the references, and Anna directly calls Dirk out for it, attributing the quotes and allusions to their rightful sources in the process.  Language, and the ways it can be twisted or used to obscure, is a major recurring theme that is addressed repeatedly and directly in the later part of the book.  The narrative tension derives from the conflict between Betancourt’s almost painfully straightforward narrative about ponies and Dirk’s literary maze of paradox, deception, and concealment.  Is it better to be ignorant and happy, or miserable and complex?  Is it possible to find a balance?

The story works perfectly as a standalone, as an exploration of the psyche of a messed-up kid arguing with himself over the meaning of control, responsibility, and choice through the vehicle of a gift to an unseen friend.  The reader gets a good sense of his internal world and sense of self, and the story feels complete.  There are no outstanding threads, no incomprehensible references, nothing to necessitate the existence of a true frame story beyond the alluded to world where Dirk, Jane, and multiple works of literature exist.

But when the context is added the story only grows richer.  When Dirk argues about responsibility and creation, the shadow of an Auto-Responder just beginning to diverge into its own unique identity looms.  If Dirk cloned his brain when he was thirteen, and gave the book to Jane four months after he turned fourteen, then AR was likely beginning to show signs of being more than a copy of Dirk Strider, Age 13.  At the very least, he made it obvious that Dirk had grown up a bit, enough to cause friction.

Further context as to why Dirk felt the need to spill his thoughts on the page: he can’t have these conversations in person.  The only people he talks to are other teenagers, all with their own issues.  Roxy is an alcoholic (possibly this was only just becoming a serious problem; Rose developed her own drinking problem at around the same age) and tends to hit on him at every available opportunity.  Around Jake Dirk is committed to an all-knowing coolguy persona, and Jake isn’t exactly observant.  Jane knows almost nothing about his life.  Caliborn hates him and is just really weird.  Calliope idealizes him and his friends.  His Bro has been dead for centuries, he has no neighbors, his robots (who might not even have been built yet) only rap, and even they frequently leave him alone.  His only other contact is with alien drones trying to kill him on a regular basis.  Dirk has literally never held a conversation with an adult human, and he hasn’t physically met another sentient being since he was an infant.  No wonder Book!Dirk ends up isolated, cut off from the rest of the characters and only able to communicate through easy-to-ignore written words.

I know it’s been brought up before, but I also find it interesting how the Pony Pals themselves parallel Dirk’s friends, even in ways that he couldn’t possibly know.

Anna Harley, of course, is Jane.  They are explicitly compared on the very first page, “Anna” is one letter off from the title of Jane’s pre-scratch counterpart, and “Harley” is the chosen surname of her pre-scratch brother and ectodaughter.  She dies and resurrects in a manner inexplicable to the characters involved, only realizing what is going on much later.  She is the protagonist, but one tied up in others’ machinations, one whose story cannot exist without the destruction and remaking of worlds.  She’s at first content to follow Dirk, she is used as a weapon without her consent, and her arc revolves around freedom from control and the act of inverting and reclaiming.  Both Jane and Anna use the tools and power given to them by their oppressors to forge their own paths.  Jane becomes the CEO of Crockercorp, but one free from the influence of her wicked ancestor.  Anna uses Dirk’s references and the traits he gave her to reject his view of reality and reclaim the narrative.  Theirs are stories of reclamation.  Anna is also tied to John, Jane’s dancestor.  She is described using the terms of the breath aspect (wind, freedom, change, moving forward heedless of consequence) and also associated with arms.  Hers is replaced three times throughout the story, while in Homestuck proper arms have always been connected to John.  John retrieves his arms from the chest.  John’s patron troll loses an arm.  John’s sprite is the reason Jack only has one arm.  John’s arms appear throughout the narrative, unbound by narrative causality.  Anna’s arm even takes on some of the characteristics of John’s during her confrontation with Dirk.  It glows.  It is something taken from the wrong part of the story.  It does not belong.  It indicates a major change in what has been previously understood.

Pawnee, likewise, is obviously connected to Roxy.  “She has a serious drinking problem” which is treated like an amusing quirk even as it most definitely is not.  Unlike Dirk, Pawnee is a member of a community, but she is an outsider.  Anna and Pam have lived in Wiggins all their lives.  They accept Pawnee, but as a girl/township with identity issues she is inherently other.  Roxy has neighbors, but all of them are carapacians.  She’s friendly with them and they get along, but, like Pawnee, it’s obvious that she isn’t one of them.  Roxy is the only one to understand Dirk’s situation, and as the closest of his friends her counterpart is the one most corrupted by his influence.  As Pawnee isn’t Lulu, so Roxy is not the same person she would be if she didn’t know Dirk.  They’ve been so entangled for so long that her story can never be fully removed from his.  Pawnee would not exist without Dirk.  He is responsible for her current state, and yet it is her choice whether or not to be free of him.

This leaves Jake as Pam.  The comparatively normal one, who is still really freaking weird by objective standards.  There’s an animal connection there, with Mr. Crandall’s job as a vet and the beasts inhabiting the island Jake inherited from his grandmother.  Pam is the one who guides, whose powers are mysterious and at first dormant, with the potential to tip the scales.  Jake is the Page of Hope.  Without Pam, Operation Palimpsest would be doomed to fail.  This is, admittedly, the shakiest connection, and all three girls display traits of all Dirk’s friends.

Opposed Meanings in Detective Pony: The Supplement and Différance in Transformative Works

Detective Pony is a strange work; a pastiche of a children’s novel and a meta-fictional fan-work. There are, in fact, two Detective Pony’s: There is Jeanne Betancourt’s lighthearted tale of a group of girls and their love of all things equestrian, and there is Sonnetstuck’s (a pseudonym, to which I can find no signified) tale of little deaths and authorship subsumed, which is pasted over Betancourt’s original as glaring orange text. The resultant plot begins as the story of a lost cat that harbors a dark power and the girls’ quest to destroy it, and ends as a commentary on literary ownership, wherein the girls must decide whether they should rebel and return to Betancourt’s authorial intent or accept the new story produced by Sonnetstuck’s changes.

Sonnetstuck’s text is supplementary, but this should not be taken as an indication of lowered stature relative to Betancourt’s text. Indeed, in many places Sonnetstuck’s text dominates the page, giving its meaning primacy over Betancourt’s. Take the first paragraph of the selected page in the Appendix; the original text is still partially present, and it gives the general outline of the physical action of the passage – the pony pals search for the cat while riding their ponies. However, the meaning of the passage, the tone and purpose, are given by the secondary orange text. It is this text which gives us insight into the girls’ motivation and desires: Pam’s hatred, Anna’s morbid curiosity and Pawnee’s deleterious drinking problem. Beyond this, Sonnetstuck’s text gives an internal life to Pam’s pony, Acorn, which was not present in the original text, and changes the fundamental nature of Pawnee from a girl (whose original name, Lulu, is wiped away) to a small township, whose paradoxical nature is the source of her serious problem. The question then arises: if Sonnetstuck’s text is dominant, why is it designated the supplement?

The answer is that it is a necessity if we regard Betancourt’s text as original. In regarding Betancourt’s text as “original” we, by necessity, treat Sonnetstuck’s addition as secondary, but why accept Betancourt’s text as the original? It is because while Sonnetstuck’s text presupposes the existence of Betancourt’s, Betancourt’s makes no such concession for Sonnetstuck’s. Though it is certainly supplementary, in that it adds meaning to Betancourt’s text, it is by no means merely supplementary. Betancourt’s text should not be regarded as the primary source of meaning in the text; neither should Sonnetstuck’s. The meaning of Detective Pony is contained not within the aggregate of the two texts, but in the opposition between them. The term supplement, then, is misleading, though not inappropriate. Sonnetstuck’s text is not simply an addition to Betancourt’s, it is a transformation of it, a substitution of Betancourt’s meaning with a new message, thus encompassing the second meaning of the French suppleer. The mechanism of this transformation is opposition; the familiarity of Betancourt’s inane children’s story is given an ironic meaning outside of itself by the contrast of Sonnetstuck’s editing, and likewise Sonnetstuck’s fable of meta-fiction is meaningful only because there is a story which it has changed, and which its characters long to return to.

What is true in Detective Pony can be applied to all transformative works: in these cases, neither the original nor the supplement take primacy in their shared meaning. The meaning of both is found in Différance, in the opposition between their individual contents. This is not, however, the Différance of Mutton and Sheep, because while in this classical example there is a signified which both pre-suppose, and which both share, the Différance of the transformative work (the signified) is pre-supposed only by the supplement. Per Derrida the supplement “may always not have taken place”, and it is tempting to conclude from this construction of the transformative supplement that the original text does not contribute to the meaning of the transformative work, but this is an unnecessary conflation of intention and result. While the original does not pre-suppose the supplement and the transformative meaning, it does leave room for it. By writing a naïve children’s story, for instance, Betancourt leaves room for a subversion of this message by works such as Sonnetstuck’s. Thus, the standard order of the signified-signifier is altered; whereas Mutton/Sheep must emerge simultaneously to have meaning, in the case of transformative works, the original signifier emerges first with a different signified and no indication of the coming Différance, and the signified Différance and the supplement signifier emerge simultaneously, subsuming the original signified and co-opting the original signifier.

To the casual observer of this process the Différance seems to emerge solely from the addition of the supplement, but because the supplement pre-supposes the existence of the original, depends on it even, the Différance takes its place suspended between the two signifiers. After all, Différance only emerges when concepts conflict. Though this relationship between original and supplement is necessarily lopsided (the supplement depends on the original, but not vice versa), in the context of the transformative work they are equalized. The meaning of the work seems to exist independently of either individual piece, and, paradoxically, it depends on both.

To what extent, then, can the original claim ownership of the meaning of the transformative work? One last concept is necessary to answer this question. We must distinguish between the active and the passive text. Because the original cannot possibly anticipate all its possible supplements, it is implicitly passive in the transformative process. The original’s message is static, it cannot adapt to the supplement, but the supplement, succeeding the original, responds actively. Thus, the original can claim ownership only of what remains unaltered, while the supplement can claim ownership of not only the supplementary text, but also the meaning produced by its addition, i.e. the Différance.