Your name is unimportant. You will however, say that you fan of the webcomic HOMESTUCK. In addition to that you have NO ONE IRL to talk to about said interest. So you let your FAN FLAG fly here! You didn't expect anyone to actually FOLLOW this, and the fact that people to is both SURPRISING and GRATIFYING!Welcome, and I hope you enjoy! |Mage of Void | |Derse Dreamer| |27|
Homestuckis an Internet fiction series created by American author and artist Andrew Hussie in the first half of the 2010s. The fourth and best-known of Hussie’s four MS Paint Adventures, it originally ran from April 13, 2009 to April 13, 2016. Though normally described as a webcomic, and partly constituted by a series of single panelpages, Homestuck also relied heavily on Flash animations and instant messagelogsto convey its story, along with occasional use of browser games.
ive been posting the same sappy shit on twitter all day but i feel like most of the people that interact with my twitter don’t actually Care about homestuck so im gonna get it out here where maybe someone will understand
homestuck has been SO special for me for most of my teen and adult years. it’s fucked up sometimes and i can’t remember a lot of it most of the time but it has brought me joy time and time again unlike most of my interests over the years. it was never something that other kids in my high school liked (we love living in a small town) and so all my homestuck friends were people i’d never meet in person but cared so deeply for from afar (hm, sound familiar?) and i loved living in the virtual walls of our community. every interaction i ever had was so good, everyone i met so kind, and when the community started to die out a bit after the end of the comic proper it was kinda hard on me and i stepped away for a couple years,if not lurking on the sidelines.
i’ve always loved the way any of us gather on 4/13, it’s always wonderful and always brings me back into the fray, but this year it feels special if that makes sense? i guess its because of the renaissance in recent years and the requiem event this year (it’s still absolutely insane to me that we got an official event after all these years) but the community feels so much closer this year and it makes me a bit emotional, we’re all just out here living for the nostalgia and having a good time and it’s so wonderful.
i love homestuck and i love what we’ve built with it.
Oh yeah since it’s Homestuck Day here’s a post I’ve been sitting on for a bit.
Davesprite’s tragedy is even deeper than is immediately obvious.
The scale, time-wise, of the base game - the Alpha Timeline - is something of a joke. It pokes fun, I think, at the concept of Webcomic Time - that an event taking place over dozens of pages over the course of months is, in-canon, only taking place across a day or two.
But Davesprite. Oh, Davesprite.
Dave-the-sprite came from a timeline 4 months (chrono) past Day 1. He’d been hopping enough for it to come out to maybe 1 year for him. He’s very lanky in the animation, and when Rose’s dreamself merges with her Alpha self, the sprites are very slightly different sizes. Future Mutie is visibly older.
But then The Alpha Timeline? The Course Of The Game?
One. Day.
What an absolute whiplash, you guys. He’s been grinding and prepping and mentally readying himself and fucking grieving for his pretty much only friends for nearly a year. Remember how Dragon Ball Z had the Hyper time chamber and it was mentioned that it’s hard to use alone? Because being in there on your lonesome, that’s tough. That’s Dave. He had Rose, who was also grieving and having her own crises that he may or may not have been equipped to help her through at all, and he’s doing all this.
And in like, maybe 12 hours, it’s suddenly all over.
And then he finds out it’s gonna be another three years, but hey, this time he has Jade and John, the people he missed so desperately that he was willing to give up being The Real Dave, a real human, for.
And to them? He’s an extra.
He’s Bonus Dave. He’s Davesprite. He’s Basically Dave, (almost) As Good As The Real Thing!
Like, it’s very hard for me to articulate, but the way that both of them refer to him during the course of their cruise is… dehumanizing, in differing ways.
John calls him Dave, because He’s Basically Dave. (This is after John asked him to let The Real Dave in on their convo, recall). He doesn’t need to be treated any different, because he’s indistinguishable from The Real Dave, Pretty Much!
Jade isn’t as bad - possibly her stint as+fusion with Jadesprite helped - but the way Grimbark Jade loses her temper with Dave post-jump is… telling. She blames a boy she hasn’t spoken with in 3 years for something that a person who is not actually him did.
And he just! Fucking gets forgotten! I know Davepeta feels like an asspull to many readers, but honestly, it’s probably the best thing to happen to Davesprite since his John bit it. Like, was he the one from John’s timeline, or did he not die when the rebooted planet blew up or what? I’ve never understood that.
At least as Davepeta they have multiple people who are genuinely glad to be around them. At least Equius cares about one half and AR doesn’t not-care about the other and they’ve basically got a bestie in Arquiusprite! Getting fused with a reanimated alien catgirl in an alternate timeline(????) was probably the best thing to happen to Dave for a long, long time.
And I’m not even done!
Let’s talk Terezi.
Once we get through Act 5 and the trolls connect with the humans, we get a whole Fairy Godtroll situation that’s kinda cute. John gets Karkat and Vriska in his ear, Jade gets Tavros and Feferi and Kanaya and Karkat (Jade gets a lot of new people, doesn’t she?), Rose still has her Kanaya convos.
And Dave.
Gets.
Terezi.
They’re a great duo, very fun to watch - even with Vriska and Terezi’s weird rivalry shenanigans getting tangled up in it from time to time. As far as he knows, she’s just a bit of an internet weirdo who’s fun enough to hang out with.
As far as Alpha Dave knows, that is.
Davesprite came back, remember, to fix the timeline after Terezi got his John killed. Dave comes back, and argues with his John - that’s the first thing he gets to say to his best friend, one of his only friends, after a year of grieving in a dead, lonely session with only Rose for company. If he loses the fight, John dies.
After some effort, he gets his dumbass (beloved) pal to stop doing the stupid thing, then gives up his humanity (his existence as a core player, his role, his autonomy) and jumps into the sprite. Calsprite was a void of dead-eyed laughter and horror, so he wants to give the kids the best shot they can get, and having a non-cagey sprite on their side is a huge boost.
And Dave, Alpha Dave?
He ignores this.
He takes Terezi’s advice, over and over. Davesprite gives him the medallion, and we never see it used (we never see any sprite medallion used, as far as I can recall). Davesprite has to actively contact his player (his luckier, prime, Alpha self) and make him accept help, like guarding his body in his sleep. Meanwhile, Alpha Dave is getting codec support from the person who killed John, precipitating Davesprite’s entire existence in the narrative.
With the way the comic is structured, it’s really easy to blip over this, but this is what’s happening. Davesprite’s POV must be a goddamn horror movie, complete with futile shouting at the protagonists to stop going into the scary tunnels and following the advice of people who are blatantly out to hurt them. No fucking wonder he eventually fucked off the find Bro, who despite being an abusive piece of shit (did Davesprite ever get the chance to work that one out for himself?), is at least a constant. He’s the sole tie to the life this Dave left behind. Damn. And Dave doesn’t even come looking for him after he “dies”! If Davesprite didn’t vandalize that poster, would Alpha Dave have even known he was live?
….fuck, is that why he keeps pasting orange text onto things? And provoking John into anger? Is he just doing his damnedest to keep from being trivialized and forgotten?
In the story, in the grand scheme of things, Davesprite is key to keep John from getting killed, and past that?
He has no purpose.
There’s no point to his existence.
His player seeks neither his advice nor his protection. His friends consider him part of the game they’re playing, rather than (an iteration of) their friend. The trolls mock him by doing nothing he can stop or really argue against. His rage has nowhere to go, so he has no rage.
No wonder he chases after Bro. No wonder he chills with Jadesprite. No wonder, no wonder. What a mess. What a disaster. He spends three years on the damn ship and as soon as the groups meet up, Jade begins projecting the time he spent with her on a guy she hasn’t seen since she was 13! And Alpha Dave just says “well, he’s bird me” and accepts this, except when he might get blamed for something he didn’t actually do!
