curlicuecal:

betweengenesisfrogs:

OFF-THE-CUFF HOMESTUCK THOUGHTS #8: THE BALLAD OF VRISKA AND
TEREZI, OR: I BROUGHT MY GIRLFRIEND BACK FROM THE DEAD AND ALL SHE DID WAS BLOW
HERSELF UP IN THE FURTHEST RING

So.

Let’s talk about Vriska.

*earsplitting crack of ominous thunder*

I actually really enjoyed Vriska’s storyline in Act 6 and 7
of Homestuck, and I think it’s a phenomenal ending for the character.

*Screams ring out. Small children crying can be heard. Big
burly men are weeping and fainting. Rotten tomatoes start flying at me. The
juice begins to run down my previously spotless Rogue of Light outfit.*

I think it’s a phenomenal ending for Vriska because it’s critical of Vriska and everything she
believes about herself.

*brief pause*

*Tomatoes start flying at me again, but from the other side
of the room this time.*

Seriously, though, Vriska’s storyline in Act 6 and 7 not
only makes a fitting culmination for the character, but explores some of
Homestuck’s most essential themes. I’m going to explain my reasoning here,
which you may or may not agree with, but I hope you’ll at least find it
interesting.

First, though, we need talk about what Vriska is, and what function she serves within
Homestuck.

Because Vriska is a shell game.

Keep reading

This this this this this.

^^^^^^

Bless you for this meta, because THIS is the thing I feel like people miss, when they forget that Homestuck is a dissection of narrative arcs and storytelling itself.

And if you think Vriska never got a happy ending, you are buying into the same false assumption that the living Vriska bought into— that you are only as ‘real’ as your plot relevance and important deeds and status as a Player Character.

Dead!Vriska is not a ‘fake’ or ‘failed’ Vriska, and it is this Vriska who finally gets the chance to ask “Is ducking out of the plot in pursuit of my own happiness as criminally weak and selfish as I have been taught? Is happiness selfish?”

And it’s dead!Vriska who gets the conclusive happy ending with dead!Terezi, who has also gotten to grow (and decide that she did not want to make the ‘right’ Alternian choice of killing someone she loved in service to a greater narrative purpose).

Living!Vriska and Terezi? They’re left as the plot relevant main characters, with that unanswered question hanging over them.

why/how did I do this at least three separate times

so I learned from my sibling today that APPARENTLY there’s gonna be a new artemis fowl book about his little twin brothers, and while I’m mildly disinterested, I might borrow it from them when they’re done with it.

THE POINT however, is that I’m reminded about three book series where I started close to the end in the chronology for some fucking reason:

the first being the books that prompted this post, where I got the second book in the series, when I think there was only 3 at the most. that was a fun and confusing time with all these allusions to prior events I could tell I was SUPPOSED to know about but didn’t. that was elementary school

next was this other fucking series, the deltora series, which is weirder in structure, there’s like three different series? beltquest, spelunking/factoryquest, and dragonquest. me, being SUPER into dragons, of course started with the last fucking set of books. because the scholastic magazine promised a dragon pendant with it and I got to read books about dragons. reading all the preceding books was simultaneously hilarious and agonizing for knowing how it all ended. that was when I was 13, which was one of the heights of my dragon phase (that hasn’t really gone away tbh). I was slow to realize there even was any predecessors because all relevant prior events were explained in text, so I just assumed it was random exposition.

then finally discworld. when I was 13 a friend gave me the first two tiffany books for my birthday, WHICH while being near the end of the printed books, would’ve been forgivable because they were aimed at a younger audience and truly were meant to be even more stand alone than usual.

BUT THEN, in high school, I realized he wrote EVEN MORE books and I was hype. I proceeded to read making money and then thud! which are already like pretty towards the end of them all, but like it was 2009 and they were pretty dang recent! I read them because they seemed interesting and that’s what was at my school’s library.

i was expressing this all to my sib a while ago and they just thanked me
because with af and deltora at least, they didn’t get the chance to
make that mistake too, since they were borrowing my books. they also
read ¾ tiffany books but had less lasting interest in them compared to
me.

the worst part is I don’t even know if this is all of them? I might’ve done this with other series but I just don’t remember? pony pals? that series about that british kid with vet parents? I don’t know! probably! those in particular didn’t really have a coherent chronology as I recall. in any case, none of those other series I may have jumped into at the end didn’t make as lasting an impression I guess. I can’t even reference my book shelf because I donated a lot of those books I read in middle/high school because they just weren’t as interesting to me anymore

I don’t even know how rare doing something like this is. is this common? or am I part of the elite dumbass club who doesn’t research more before looking into books to read.

OH WAIT!!! THERE IS ANOTHER!! while I was editing this post for coherency and flow, while also vaguely
trying to remember the books I used to have, I ALSO did something like
this with the midnighters series!! it’s a trilogy and I somehow ended up
with the second book first! god damn!! FUCK!