I just had this idea in my head that their respective bugaboos (blood and gender) and their obvious actual relevance on beforus (mostly bullshit and worrying) indicated a highly problematical belief that race problems don't exist irl but gender ones do
I think Kankri did have a point about how Beforus's system of taking care of lowbloods was carried out in a rather condescending and demeaning way. The narrative even drew a direct comparison between that system and those pet cuttlefish that Feferi kept in cages back on Alternia. It's just that, even when he has a point, Kankri states it in the worst possible way and draws the wrong conclusions from it.
I think Kankri did have a point about how Beforus's system of taking care of lowbloods was carried out in a rather condescending and demeaning way. The narrative even drew a direct comparison between that system and those pet cuttlefish that Feferi kept in cages back on Alternia. It's just that, even when he has a point, Kankri states it in the worst possible way and draws the wrong conclusions from it.
yes
god he is such an ass, he skeeved me almost as much as greaser creep
To me, Caliborn and Calliope represent not only opposite ways of looking at other people's creative works, but similarly opposite ways that fans become authors and authors perceive their characters and worlds.
Caliborn is the author as arbiter, the escapist whose focus is on power fantasy. He writes fiction as a way of expressing desires and emotions that he cannot execute in reality through inserting himself into the story, whether as a character of incredible power or as god and final say in his story-world. He is every impotent egotist who writes terrible self-insert fic, but he is also the writer who prioritises plot over character. He is efficacious and active, but also a cruel, petty, immature twerp. His intelligence is primarily mechanical, plot-oriented, objectifying.
Calliope is the author as conduit, the escapist who seeks to live vicariously through others. She writes fiction as a way of being other people and experiencing emotions and events which she is too afraid to execute in reality due to crippling shyness, whether as an idealised version of herself or by simply taking a group of characters of her own creation or from another work and just "letting them do whatever," divesting herself of authorial power. She is every introverted enthusiast too crippled by social anxiety and awkwardness to actually live her own life, but she is also the writer who prioritises character over plot. She is sympathetic and thoughtful, but extremely passive and unwilling to take personal responsibility for the repercussions of her actions, good or bad. While she appears more intelligent than Caliborn, she is simply intelligent in an entirely different way: She is mostly lacking in guile where her twin is abundant in it, yet is far more knowledgeable and wide-ranging in that knowledge than he would ever choose to be.
To me, Caliborn and Calliope represent not only opposite ways of looking at other people's creative works, but similarly opposite ways that fans become authors and authors perceive their characters and worlds.
Caliborn is the author as arbiter, the escapist whose focus is on power fantasy. He writes fiction as a way of expressing desires and emotions that he cannot execute in reality through inserting himself into the story, whether as a character of incredible power or as god and final say in his story-world. He is every impotent egotist who writes terrible self-insert fic, but he is also the writer who prioritises plot over character. He is efficacious and active, but also a cruel, petty, immature twerp. His intelligence is primarily mechanical, plot-oriented, objectifying.
Calliope is the author as conduit, the escapist who seeks to live vicariously through others. She writes fiction as a way of being other people and experiencing emotions and events which she is too afraid to execute in reality due to crippling shyness, whether as an idealised version of herself or by simply taking a group of characters of her own creation or from another work and just "letting them do whatever," divesting herself of authorial power. She is every introverted enthusiast too crippled by social anxiety and awkwardness to actually live her own life, but she is also the writer who prioritises character over plot. She is sympathetic and thoughtful, but extremely passive and unwilling to take personal responsibility for the repercussions of her actions, good or bad. While she appears more intelligent than Caliborn, she is simply intelligent in an entirely different way: She is mostly lacking in guile where her twin is abundant in it, yet is far more knowledgeable and wide-ranging in that knowledge than he would ever choose to be.
...that wasn't particularly concise.
that's reasonable
i read caliborn's writing as self-parody (since hussie has a tendency to the mechanical and probably used to be more dude-bro-y) and calliope's as self-consciously pathetic (the "callie OC tries to wake people up and help at critical moments but doesn't have any effect" bit, particularly) but that works too
I think both are ways of parodying some of Hussie's own bad habits to some degree, but people overlook that because, well, Caliborn's an incredible fuckwad and Calliope's mostly benevolent if ineffectual.
Upd8. (If mspaintadventures,com crashes, it's on youtube. If youtube crashes, I don't know what we're gonna do.)
That was just so good, I was so giddy through the entire thing. Although I did kind of get confused at a climactic moment because I was asking myself "Wait, which legendary sword is that?" and it took me a while to remember Roxy had taken Bro's sword.
Something that did bug me is the fact that Team Dave should have waited for Lord Spades and Spade Slick to finish fighting and then take out whoever lives.
Maybe she did the mindy thing and realized that course of action wouldn't go well, for whatever reason? Maybe they would have talked out their differences and realized how much they had in common after stabbing each other a few dozen times.
It occurred to me that, for most of the fight, characters just wailed on each other, without those blows really seeming to affect anyone, until arbitrary points where they suddenly did. (In TV Tropes terms, it's How Much More Can He Take.)
And then I realized: it's because they're video game characters. In many games (especially from the 16-bit era that the pixel art references), you die when your health drops to zero—but up until that precise moment, you can fight just as hard as if you had full health. It's just less clear in this animation, because we don't get to see anyone's health bars.
yeah, this was way more video gamey. like, in GAME OVER people die when they are stabbed, whereas this is obviously supposed to look sort of like a video of playing the xmen arcade game (seriously, all that walking)
Something that did bug me is the fact that Team Dave should have waited for Lord Spades and Spade Slick to finish fighting and then take out whoever lives.
for that matter, before steeling up to attack both, maybe they should have just started attacking English!Jack? Spades was a former ally, and might have sided with them against Lord English
i realize Spades attacked them, but they were showing every intention of attacking him, and also stabbing people is just kind of what he does
Something that did bug me is the fact that Team Dave should have waited for Lord Spades and Spade Slick to finish fighting and then take out whoever lives.
for that matter, before steeling up to attack both, maybe they should have just started attacking English!Jack? Spades was a former ally, and might have sided with them against Lord English
i realize Spades attacked them, but they were showing every intention of attacking him, and also stabbing people is just kind of what he does
Terezi was directly involved in betraying and exiling Spades Slick during the trolls' session. Hence why Spades spent so much time fighting her specifically. So if Terezi recognized that this was her SS, then she knew he ultimately wasn't going to leave her alone.
I went back and re-read the end of Caliborn's "masterpiece", and I notice that all four alpha kids are alive at the end...and we don't get to see what happens to them. If it's true that the beta kids have been sealed away in the juju, I wonder if it works like a lotus flower, and they'll just pop right out at some point, then zap back to wherever the beta kids are to win the game after (somehow) defeating LE.
So much of Homestuck is about characters' separation from each other--physically or otherwise--so seeing everyone come together like this really is the perfect epilogue.
People on tumblr are convinced that this is a trick of some sort, but I think they just can't believe that it's over unless there's a tragedy. Thing is, we saw the potential tragedy already (Caliborn's "masterpiece"), and I'm sure that Vriska and the sprites will think of something to bring LE down, it's just that we haven't seen it yet.
I was kind of expecting more of a bang after Collide, but then maybe he's saving the best for last? I dunno. All I know is that tumblr needs to apply calm balm
Comments
I just had this idea in my head that their respective bugaboos (blood and gender) and their obvious actual relevance on beforus (mostly bullshit and worrying) indicated a highly problematical belief that race problems don't exist irl but gender ones do
on further reflection I was being silly
"WHAT"
god he is such an ass, he skeeved me almost as much as greaser creep
Kankri is an awful person but he has an adorable sweater
but I do not remember you mentioning such a thing, no
and should I know what murder stuck means because there's a lot of murders.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
i read caliborn's writing as self-parody (since hussie has a tendency to the mechanical and probably used to be more dude-bro-y) and calliope's as self-consciously pathetic (the "callie OC tries to wake people up and help at critical moments but doesn't have any effect" bit, particularly) but that works too
especially the feared Summon Perfectly Generic Object
I also liked Karkat fighting Clover.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
oh yeah and the walk animations. that is SO video game
this does also raise the important question of what various characters Undertale bullet patterns would be, and what their spare conditions would be
So, that end of act animation.
HOLY CRAP DAD EGBERT/CROCKER RIGHT OUTTA NOWHERE!
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
It's how he befriended Karkat after all.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
in particular englishjack's spray bit
i realize Spades attacked them, but they were showing every intention of attacking him, and also stabbing people is just kind of what he does
relatedly i think the deaths/apparent deaths in this video would have more impact for me if it weren't for the long pause
i got to thinking of Homestuck as something i used to enjoy, and we've seen all these kids die so many times . . .
i'm kinda hoping something dramatic and unexpected is gonna happen, even though i'd like to see a happy ending