bonus

i hope you can see it i think theh have it turned off if youre not logged in www.tumblr.com/caligvlasaqv...

theres this REALLY good essay on tumblr that basically explains how homestuck is a direct rebuttal of ts eliot's The Waste Land and modernist pessimism as a whole. i think about that essay every day because its true. homestuck is a rebuttal against irony poisoning and modern cynicism. tldr It's Good

so yeah hussie is flawed and u can feel how u like abt him, but he fucking COOKED writing HS and im lowkey tired of people dissing the writing when it ABSOLUTELY did everything it set out to do, and should legit be seen as a landmark, genre-defining piece of metamodern literature

we can def look back and criticize things like the fat jokes, the usage of the "adult dating minor to show how immature the adult is" trope (scott pilgrim uses it too), the r slur, etc.
but i dont think he was worse than contemporary mainstream media & hs is explicitly feminist, antifascist, & gay

ppl are under this weird spell where they go "hussie is a bad person and therefore is a bad writer"... i don't even think the first half is true. i think hes a pretty normal, averagely flawed guy who was also bananas progressive for both the time and his cultural demographic

like... the ending being bad is why peter pan keeps being referenced. the stage show ends with peter breaking the 4th wall and telling the audience that they can save tinkerbell if they believe. making fake things real by believing v hard is the explicit power of Hope. this rabbit hole goes DEEP

hs lvl6 take: "and that's why the golden ending of homestuck sees hal becoming a real boy, a bunny furry, and also having sloppy hate makeouts with karkat. this pairing is fundamentally jesus/devil, as well as jesus/easter bunny, making it The Ultimate Yaoi, in this essay i will - "

hs lvl5 take: homestuck is metamodern, sharing a genre with EEAAO, as it makes an aggressive statement about how the cynicism of postmodernism is fatal if untempered by the naïve idealism of "lowbrow" media, while still maintaining that the maturity of postmodernism is also vital, in this essay i wi

(i'm not even kidding, hussie talks abt how the souls in LE were explicitly picked for their tendencies to uphold toxic masculinity and patriarchal/fascistic attitudes, and the comic literally calls out condy for being an evil fascist, like john & karkat's weapons are a hammer & sickle on purpose)

hs lvl4 take: hs uses postmodern storytelling devices to tell a story about how the malicious forces of fascism, patriarchy, and abusers/predators will seize the narrative to twist reality to their own ends and the canon ending sees the bad guy win as a dare to the audience to defy it

hs lvl1 take: hs is a funny story w/ mythological references
hs lvl2 take: hs is a satire of common tropes in both myth/epics and "lowbrow" media
hs lvl3 take: hs is a postmodern work that uses tropes as an analogy for society's expectations as the setting for a coming of age story

whether or not you LIKE the ending is totally subjective though. "an ending that's bad on purpose is still fucking bad" is a valid take. it truly just depends on how much you like Meta Postmodern BS. i like it a lot so the ending is f'n brilliant to me but it is definitely not everyone's cuppa

having basically memorized his formspring and book commentary, i can say with horrifying certainty that hussie is one of the smartest and most accomplished writers i've ever read. like, there are so many layers to homestuck, i rly wish i could explain but character limit haha

sorry for the rant, i know TOO MUCH about homestuck, if it werent for the char limit i wouldve written a full essay with sources. and i still basically have. anyway this is what the web looks like as far as i can tell as of today (subject to change as i continue reviewing the source material)

the comic is full of these ships that get set up but never actually happen, and ships that do happen but aren't good, bc the comic is signalling "hey this ending is not actually happy"
think about it, the guy with the Romance aspect (knight of blood) goes "idk what blood means" at the end