#writer commentary

I noticed a homoerotic jab or two during the exile exchange between Jake and Karkat, but for some reason my mind filed it under "all in good fun" or just "typical for Jake" who, as fitting for a Hope player, has always managed to make things sound suggestive unintentionally. Looked at holistically, though, there's a broader pattern I completely missed until it was pointed out for me:

Jake and Karkat constantly at each other's throats, jamming the same keyboard at the Exile Terminal just like Karkat and Terezi used to.

Them nominally sharing interests in the same thing in their argument, such as the alien romance system, and Jake throwing in comments like "For a boy so lovely" referring to Karkat in the same breath he alludes to pussyfooting.

Yaoi fannymph Del'fi using a hex to literally bind them together.

Previously in the Jadetok sequence, Jake being personally responsible for Karkat getting seriously injured TWICE, crying and laying a hand on his thigh while Dave stares accusingly at him.

Also back in the Jadetok, engaging in scantily clad (on Jake's part) wrestling while Jade comments on them being "such good friends".

(Thanks to the friend who pointed it out isolating the screenshots for me.) So, what are we looking at here?

If I had to guess, the writers are flirting with the pretty suitable idea of Jake <3< Karkat. Dave previously didn't make a polyamorous relationship work with Jade and Karkat in another universe, but that's not something that completely rules out Karkat having leanings in his other quadrants, or Dave being potentially more open to the idea if discussed properly now that he and Karkat are so much more emotionally open with each other compared to the Candy Epilogues. To be clear, I don't believe that infidelity is going on, but this leaning of Karkat's could reasonably cause Dave some discomfort that may be somewhat entertaining to have resolved, whether or not this black shiptease between Jake and Karkat persists. It's easy to imagine Karkat busting out a chart to propose Dave the idea.

(For a Romspec proponent sometimes I can be really dense to romantic overtones that don't fit my preconceived notions, I'm really grateful someone pointed all this out to me.)

On another topic, that friend also brought up that it's been commonly thought in the fandom that the three Satyrs don't just echo parts of Dirk's personality, but possibly his personality fused with that of each of the three friends he grew up holding dear. Swiss being something of a combination of Jane and Dirk, what with his ambition and responsibility and anxious head-to-laptop smacking; The Mountain resembling Jake and Dirk's martial overlap and showmanship, sentimentality; TC the Seer of Void representing a Roxy/Dirk mix. I honestly see merit in all of it, especially TC so far who has quite an understandable Roxy vibe given their incredibly likely Aspect overlap.

They also showed me the similar argument that Rose and her three Nymphs represent John (Ly'lac, as has been said she's this session's stand-in for in the Commentary), Jade (CC?) and Dave (AA?), but I honestly don't see it, no matter which way you flip CC and AA around. Drawing comics/doodles is the only superficial similarity CC shares with Jade or Dave IMO, and AA behaves more like a Rose/Kanaya fusion than any of the other Beta Kids.

I also completely forgot sometime in the past year that CT is likely the morphotype with wings. Absolutely slipped my mind somehow.

One more thing, I'm not sure I caught it at the time, but even though TC seems to be cooperating directly with Vriska and the Candy Kids to fulfill his "he's got to have his inside info from someone" quota the data suggested, I'd missed that there was other direct evidence connecting TC to Dirk:

Why has TC had a "front-row seat" to (presumably) Dirk's (and not some stand-in's) life for years? (We know he's the EXEMPLAR, I'm not sure if he's been specifically called the Founder though it's like a 90+% certainty.) Exactly how close is TC to Dirk Strider? Is it a one-way affair where he lives close to where he's doing... whatever he does? Have they spoken? I know Strider's gotten hands-on with his race throughout history, likely far more often than Lalonde has, but exactly how much immortal time has Dirk spent in real time with Satyrkind on and off to be relevant for "laps" at a time? Could this front row seat have been some sort of metaphor, maybe TC's giant compound is a place for time spent at some sort of study facility dedicated to Dirk's accomplishments despite that residence not sharing a Dirk-like visage/theme?

I'm not sure. Could TC be playing both sides? A Seer could plausibly strike that balance. Vriska and Dirk are doubtless at bitter odds in my opinion due to Vriska bringing in the pollution of the Candy Kids, but it's not out of the question that they could have some sort of hands-off truce to keep either side from interfering directly in the Session, and TC could have contact with both of them because of it somehow. It's puzzling, and I don't think it'll be fully resolved until we actually meet TC formally, if I had to guess.

OKAY THAT ALL TOOK MUCH LONGER THAN I THOUGHT. Let's get to the Artist Commentary:

Wait hold on, when we got a glimpse of those mountains, did I miss The Mountain's home inside a mountain cave? Lemme check...

Nope not quite, just the Frog Temple expected of a Space Player's residence. No clear sign there or in the pages before it exactly where he lives amidst it all. He DOES likely have wings however, so, high up is a perfectly valid option. Oh DUH, I just realized the giant green block that says "CT's House" is blocking out CT's house from our view since it'd be a spoiler, duh. So, probably not Cave House.

The artists go over the color experimentation and design of CT's home area, show off the first glimpse of The Mountain in-person and how they thought it "would be funny if it wasn't the typical MSPA style". (If you subscribe to the Patreon you can see a cleared-up, less blurry version.)

Then back to Del'fi roleplaying as a Satyr complete with shapeshifted ears...

And, their room!

Floral: I made the first floor the room around the time where we did the Derse update, so we’ve been holding onto it. Overall, I wanted to surround Del’fi in creature comforts scavenged from the remnants outside. Chumi: Lots of things going on here. The huge skull in the back is an edited sperm whale skull! The sweater on the ground is an edited Jiraiya sweater. We got some curious satyr skeletons, who knew they had different-colored bones?

You get to see close-ups of a ton of the posters they mocked up and Satyr-ified of animes, of the drawings Del'fi has on hand, including that gorgeous gift The Mountain rendered for them:

Floral: Little factoid, I actually drew this with actual charcoal pencils. When considering CT’s art, it just felt wrong to have him use a tablet. 

Moving up, lots of potion bottles in their potion room. They note that a couple are uncorked and stuff's floating out of them.

Oh, gosh, I never realized til they pointed it out that the third / top-level room is actually "bubbled" to remain dry and not damage some of the Satyr merch!

They go into how much effort they collectively put in to give us such a broad Yaoi collection/impression all at once.

They even give a list of all the pairings and properties they included, which could conceivably give some theory foundations, however it feels wrong to copy that out from the Patreon post so I'll leave that to subscribers to their Patreon to enjoy. I will point out just one they left special notes on:

ZADR (MILES note: this one was important to me.  We all immediately agreed that this was about as necessary a time capsule taste indicator for this specifically evoked era as it was possible to be.)

Which is... *looks it up* Zim and Dib romance????!? Ohhh, okay I get it. Del'fi ABSOLUTELY talks in chat like someone from that era.

There is a HUGE collection of the individual posters and figurines here they edited into Satyrs and/or compromisingly BL positions.

Skipping forward:

Floral: Ouran was recommended pretty early in conversation about Del’fi’s taste. And while that in-universe Ouran is a non-historically accurate AU, it was fun satyr-fying everyone. Andi: I’d recommend watching Princess Tutu. It’s pretty good. Pretty apt, I daresay.

I gather from the descriptions, and I've heard since they showed up in the upd8, that both of these are pretty important for understanding Del'fi.

There's her desktop background:

Andi: Are you a true fujo if you didn’t play DMMD at least once? 

Oh, and they actually give a list of what the puns are on each of the Application names! And while I won't post the whole list (you can subscribe for that), Trench2Peak IS supposed to evoke Second Life as it happens.

They get to the gift art Del'fi made for Ly'lac:

Haven: What’s fun to note with this image is the similarity it bears to Vriska taking the omega kids away. With the flames being changed to waves, and Ly’lac in the place that Vrissy would have been in previously.

And finally the design of the Happi Coats the staff wore at NYCStuck, and a huge thank-you from them to everyone who did and didn't attend. <3

On to the Writer Commentary of the month!

They emphasize how anticipated the CT and CC conversation was: "this conversation (and Del’fi’s general circumstance) has been one of our prominent through lines within Act 2". It's definitely one of the biggest connections and crossover-points between the Satyrs and Nymphs, that's for certain, even though TC and Ly'lac have a quieter friendship going on.

The writers go into detail about the nature of this dynamic they set up and what they enjoy about it.

There’s even a bit in this intro section where the two of them sort of overtly spell out a lot of their dynamic.

I know it's still theory, but after all the hashing-out I did on the forums I'm personally really inclined to think this is a Prince (of Space) and Bard (of Blood) dynamic here, the destroyer and the fire-fueler. I'm planning sometime to make a full post with a nice cover image setting my guesses down on all the aspects and classes of our 10 players like I did in that forum thread, so people have a nice date-marked image to send around Tumblr and judge what I was wrong about later. :D

I won't be photoshopping that together just today though, so moving on with this Commentary... Ooh, Miles mentions that part of the purpose of the photo CT shared was that this is a NEW MASK he's wearing, that makes so much sense!

MILES: [...] Del’fi spends a lot of this early half of the conversation encouraging CT to beat up and enslave the satyrs around him, urging him to be more confident and assertive, were such a thing even possible.

(COUGH COUGH inviting destruction COUGH bard insinuations COUGH)

FLORAL: Raise your hand if you picked up on this being a poop joke. I was trying to be conspicuous. MILES: Constipicuous.

I did not, in fact, catch the poop joke. That is a very good poop joke.

More on the way the conversation unfolds, skipping to when CT...

FLORAL: [...] But here we are, with another “puzzle piece” regarding this web of feelings and relationships between these kids. That while Swiss is begging to be consoled by CT, Dagger is pushing to support him through his embarrassment. 

Yeah, CT served as emotional support for Swiss to vent at, but that took a psychological toll on CT that he had to vent to CC about. I suppose from what we learned last upd8 about Satyrical ⍺/β/⍵ (or A/O/B), would that be more of a Beta or Omega role CC is serving, or perhaps flipping between them both throughout this conversation? Hmm... especially with CC urging CT to dominate, and presumably be more Alpha-like even though it's not domination-exclusive...

Okay, we're approaching an important bit. They talk about how the playing around turns into the serious emotional discussion about what Dagger really is, CT giving into doubt from the accusations Swiss made...

MILES: [...] and demands an answer, which leads to one of the more touching moments in any of the conversations we’ve had between the Delta kids thus far, even if it’s also one of the hardest to swallow:" FLORAL: This whole part is the foundation of this update, this escalation. This is such a fun log, but the whole time you can see CT avoiding thinking about Swiss’ words. [...] MILES:  There’s a lot of really tough emotions swirling around in this one.  A lot of the way we write CT and Del’fi is predicated on the feelings of really, really connecting with a person online in the sort of intense, almost dangerous way that can happen when you make an online friend and feel like you’re finding a real escape from your current circumstances in your relationship with them.  For reasons we only touch lightly on now with CT, and get more into with Del’fi in the coming pages, both of these kids are pretty anxious and dissatisfied with certain aspects of their IRL lives.  That feeling of getting to be “real” with someone online in the way that you can’t be in person is probably familiar to a lot of readers who discovered the magic of having an Online Life and Online Friends compared to the social constraints of your whatever your IRL circumstances/persona are; it’s a beautiful thing to have this space to play in.  Of course, it also introduces the issue of having to confront within yourself the reality of these two existences, and as we grow and flex them both we begin to sort through those two selves and try to triangulate the truth of who it is we really are from it.  Ideally, you reconcile and integrate them, and become authentically Yourself reflected in both realms, but it’s still hard, and I think at least for some people, it involves a lot of... I almost want to say dismantling of lies?  Or at least, the dismantling of Restraints, the lies of omission that we tend to wield unconsciously as kids in this space when first given the privilege of partitioning out which parts of ourselves we want to be known by in online vs irl space.  There’s a real need to be sure that you’re becoming Yourself online, and not a character, and it’s scarily easy to become a character before you even realize it’s happening.

I can absolutely relate to that in a few ways, and know plenty of people who would relate to it even more. It's pretty interesting that there's some serious dissatisfaction in THE MOUNTAIN'S life, too... it'll be fascinating to get into that.

Also, I don't want to miss that they capitalized Restraints -- a curiously Blood-like way to phrase this sort of phenomenon. Where Breath is being whatever you can imagine yourself to be online, with its associations with whimsy and freedom, and Blood is the ways we hold ourselves back or the constraints our acts put on us, though also ways we're keeping ourselves from fully being who we want to be, the shackles of reality and even those we put on ourselves...

Even classpecting aside, this is really good discussion for understanding these characters and, for some of us, understanding ourselves and how we've experienced living online through these characters as mirrors.

Continuing to quote again:

MILES: Anyway, that was kind of a weird rant, but the point I’m getting at here is that a lot of the core of this conversation between these two friends, ESPECIALLY from Del’fi’s POV, is driven by a lot of these feelings.  Del’fi getting to be authentically himself with CT emotionally, and also to play this character as a satyr, is this really precious experience for him, but at the same time, there’s so much about the Premise of Dagger that isn’t authentic at all, or is at the very least predicated on a pretty large lie of omission.  There’s this dear and REAL aspect of who he gets to be with CT that is wrapped up in the complicated anonymized construction of his aforementioned Character, which we get into a lot in the coming pages/next update, so I won’t go into it much more here, but behind all that, from both ends, is the yearning for something Real.  CT, for reasons that will become more apparent later, also blazes desperately for the Real, and the anxiety CT and Del’fi both suffer at the possibility of trouble in paradise hangs kind of sadly over the end of this conversation.  More on this later.

I do catch that Miles is using he/him for Del'fi! That's important to note. And yeah, it was important later on in the update to note Del'fi thinks Dagger is a dumb, early name and wishes to change it but can't because Del'fi's locked in this pantomime with CT, which they'll probably go over.

MILES: Ultimately, the two settle on a truce: CT will get the full truth eventually, Del’fi has more time to just Be Dagger without having to step fully out into the light for now.  CT is satisfied with this, and Del’fi is relieved, but the tension is only really being kicked down the line.  It’s hard, being a kid online and growing up.

:C

The fact that it's hard being a kid online and growing up is a real Homestuck staple theme, and I'm really glad we've been given such a great opportunity to return to that theme and tackle it in so many new ways.

Floral also uses he/him for CC now that the cat's more or less entirely out of the bag dancing in front of everyone, and:

We also wanted to make a point that, despite CT’s extreme show of violence and comforting himself with any betrayal brought to justice with death, CC’s major concern with meeting up is the death of The Mountain.

Yeah, Del'fi's confidence that The Mountain would absolutely be the one to die at Del'fi's hand was super well done to include, both parties assuming they'd absolutely destroy the other if the End ever came and Del'fi's assumption that it'd be the only option.

We have the mock introduction Del'fi gives for Dagger Tartarus, and:

MILES: [...] The degree to which Dagger Tartarus IS Del’fi, vs a character that he’s uncomfortable with and even has a little contempt for, is played with a lot in this update, but I always liked this bit for its very clear parallels to Del’fi’s actual life. [...]

Yeah, I could kind of read that in to how Del'fi's been in a large sense a similar sort of prisoner at the bottom of the sea like this.

There’s also a clumsy chuuni masculinity to it that I feel really dearly about.  I hope this doesn’t feel condescending to say, but the degree of almost satyrical (Ha ha.) manliness in here being a sort of “gender chicken” attempt at brushing up safely against masculinity in the context of playing out a caricature of it feels... I don’t know.  Authentic to the experience of being a kid and trying to figure stuff like this out.

Extremely, extremely Egg. (Personally, I'm going to continue to use They/Them a bit longer for current Del'fi, despite their egghood being obvious, in part so I can crack open the He/Him pronouns when Del'fi actually goes for them like tearing open a morphday present. Or maybe I'll change my mind and give in to he/him soon regardless, who knows.)

FLORAL: I think it says a lot about how gender works on Deltritus considering Dagger’s circumstances are completely flipped, in the sense of going from a prisoner to a warden. The position of someone fighting to escape and prevail versus being the person to maintain the status quo.

And some confirmation that Del'fi's not the prisoner, but rather the warden-- and the prison is not only that of isolation, but that of the responsibility (BLOOD) Del'fi bears in their cage of a deepsea world.

Finally moving further into Del'fi's intro:

MILES: [...] I do love the detail in here of 2000’s era leetspeaky livejournal cuteness being a classical dialect.  If there’s one thing artists are going to do it’s succumb to the siren song of nostalgia and glaze their childhood just a little bit.  It’s our right. HAVEN: I love “teh dignified dialects of yore” Ancient nymph society of leetspeaking nobles, long since lost to time.

Yep, as soon as they placed the date with Dib/Zim shipping it made perfect sense.

I'll skip past some of the continued commentary on how much fun Del'fi has in their room... consider chipping some in to the Homestuck Patreon to get the fun alongside the facts, and extra facts I may have missed!

FLORAL: [...] I just think the use of necromancy so a child can have a dance party is so cute.

OH OF COURSE, it's unclear how literal Floral is being but if so, I completely missed that the reason the skeletons were staying curiously well together and dancing was that Del'fi was using NECROMANCY. That could have been made a bit more clear!

(They also mention how Del'fi dismisses the Beta of the fictional relationship between room-skeletons and it's likely indicative of their shipping tastes.)

CT's charcoal drawing by Floral is "Hokuto no Ken/Baki-esque"

Ah, we've gotten to Del'fi being profoundly unsatisfied with the name Dagger, and:

FLORAL:  It was funny watching people speculate that we wrote this part after the previous update dropped because of the all the heated discussion but this has been here for months and months. We tricked you. Bwahahaha.

--confirmation that they'd always intended Dagger to be a discarded name. Whatever name Del'fi settles on, it'll be something he likely finds out as he finally finds himself and realizes the true options for who he can be outside of mere fantasies.

The writers point out that the Cauldron is obviously full of dense goop because it's not mixing with the water or rising...

We have Karkat coming in to join Jake at the terminal, and then the Yaoi room. "[MILES:] Karkat is predictably blown away."

There's the Uni-Nymph rant:

MILES: Well what’s this…! More mentions of the Uni-Nymph, and also more references to the way that nymph authors occasionally publish work amongst satyrs under pseudonyms/assumed identities. Sound familiar?

Yep, even more of the Gender Divide and how online publication bridges the gap. Floral goes on to mention that Ouran was foundational for them, and "Using this media to pick apart this kids psychology is such a great device." which I super agree with, and feels right at home with Homestuck even as it goes a fair bit further than even Homestuck Original did IMO.

A bit more Karkat/Jake banter... more fun discussion... then the reveal that Del'fi is The Beyond Anon who makes Beyond Canon inside Beyond Canon.

MILES: Another interesting reveal that Del’fi has been hiding the fact that he’s the author of Ly’lac’s favorite webcomic from her.  There’s so much that Del’fi keeps at arm’s length...!

And the call for user input...!

MILES: And here we ended with another ever-so-slightly passive aggressive call for reader input through the FRAF forums. This became even more special as it was also incorporated into the festivities we recently held at NYCstuck, so in addition to all the crazy submissions we got through the forums we also got a bunch of incredible submissions in person that I actually have in a physical notebook with me right now at my very own house!

That's really cool and engaging, I love that!

MILES: One of the things I hope I’m not too out of line when I talk about it here is that unfortunately, a LOT of the suggestions we got on FRAF were pretty fundamentally misunderstanding what kind of submissions we (and, in-character, Del’fi) were asking for, or they just weren’t playing as much in the space as we were hoping they would. Like, Del’fi is here asking fans for suggestions regarding HIS webcomic, Beyond Canon, which is not the same thing as Homestuck: Beyond Canon, but the vast majority of the FRAF submissions were suggestions for the plot of HS:BC itself, regarding people and details in Del’fi’s actual life (he’s anonymous!), not really adhering to the kayfabe of Being Beyond Canon Readers, asking for yuri (look at Del’fi’s room. Come On Now.), or some combination thereof. Maybe this is on us as writers for not making it clearer!

OH MY GOSH I THOUGHT THIS SAME THING SO HARD. That's part of why I couldn't resist sending in my own submission (possibly too specific of one!). Heck, considering that, maybe I have more of a chance than I thought of getting one of those suggestions included...

MILES: On the plus side... we did get some good ones, and a whole bunch more that were admittedly more on-task from the amazing audience at NYCstuck during our panel.  But I’ll talk more about that in the commentary when those suggestions actually show up!

That's it for the Artist/Writer Commentary that I thought was worth highlighting for speculation reasons (and/or a bit of fun) without spoiling the whole Patreon experience. I do hope I'm not quoting too much of these, and I'll gladly cut it down to paraphrasing or bullet-point revelations or something if there's any broad sentiment that I'm possibly quoting/including enough to undermine, like, the incentive to pay to read and experience and internalize some of this in-person.

She begins to grow in her role as his queen.

And putting aside some of the logic for her circumstances... there's the emotional stuff that just makes it insanely complex.

She begins to make bonds with people in their household, in the village. She's got her adorable, sweet, and feisty cats. She's got this new phase of life that she's growing into as the queen where she has purpose and resources and projects and things she wants to do.

And then she's got him. And he's him, you know?

And his insatiable nature with her? It's intoxicating. Because you have the physical aspects of the pleasure, but also the intensity of being so intimate with someone else so consistently.

So even when the idea might have floated through her mind, it's not something she ever seriously considered. But I feel like she will also get to live a life where she actually never would choose to. EDIT TO ADD: and what would he do to stop it?

A reasonable conversation. An unreasonably unfair seduction to remind her how good he makes her feel.

But it would never come to that.