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Post by obsidalicious on Feb 6, 2017 9:27:54 GMT
I don't know what it was that reminded me of this but when I did it pissed me off so much thinking about it. Does anyone else just find themselves completely unable to sympathize with Dave's character after the timeskip? Every other conversation he has with someone is some self-aggrandizing speech about something pseudo-intellectually "important", and is presented to the audience as if we're supposed to take what he's saying as gospel even though half of it is Tumblr-style new-age garbage, and at no point does anyone even for a second seriously challenge all the nonsense spewing from his mouth. Not to mention the absolute trashing of Bro's character, never before have I seen a fandom collectively suck a character's dick one minute then treat them like the spawn of Satan the next, all because Dave decided while he was moping and navel-gazing on that rock that his Guardian, who somehow knew that Dave would be in a dangerous situation beforehand when it came to Sburb, taught him how to fight in a manner that as I recall served him pretty friggin well when he actually got to playing the game! Plus, if we were to take ALL of that generation's Guardians as serious as Dave did, everyone got a pretty rough time! Rose's mom is clearly unfit to be a parent, John's father's Strifes with his son utilizes a copious amount of hammers, and Jade had to stuff her own Grandfather and place him in the living room. All of that is pretty messed up, but only Bro has his character assassinated like what happened in the comic. I more or less agree with you on this matter. It wouldn't be so bad if it was just one thing. But what we have is a vicious triple-combo of A) Bro Strider getting mauled by Cerebus Syndrome, B) Dave suddenly getting really preachy about a bunch of stuff and C) Dave having yet another component added on to his already complex character while others are starved for character development. All of this happening in a small span of pages at a time when many people were already skeptical/concerned about the quality/direction of the post-pause content. And if all that wasn't bad enough, this oddity is further exacerbated by the fact that, in contrast, every other character was unceremoniously rushed through(or in many cases, around) their remaining development when many of them could've really used some of Dave's screen time.
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Post by renegadeshroom on Feb 6, 2017 10:23:47 GMT
I don't know what it was that reminded me of this but when I did it pissed me off so much thinking about it. Does anyone else just find themselves completely unable to sympathize with Dave's character after the timeskip? Every other conversation he has with someone is some self-aggrandizing speech about something pseudo-intellectually "important", and is presented to the audience as if we're supposed to take what he's saying as gospel even though half of it is Tumblr-style new-age garbage, and at no point does anyone even for a second seriously challenge all the nonsense spewing from his mouth. Not to mention the absolute trashing of Bro's character, never before have I seen a fandom collectively suck a character's dick one minute then treat them like the spawn of Satan the next, all because Dave decided while he was moping and navel-gazing on that rock that his Guardian, who somehow knew that Dave would be in a dangerous situation beforehand when it came to Sburb, taught him how to fight in a manner that as I recall served him pretty friggin well when he actually got to playing the game! Plus, if we were to take ALL of that generation's Guardians as serious as Dave did, everyone got a pretty rough time! Rose's mom is clearly unfit to be a parent, John's father's Strifes with his son utilizes a copious amount of hammers, and Jade had to stuff her own Grandfather and place him in the living room. All of that is pretty messed up, but only Bro has his character assassinated like what happened in the comic. What the hell does "tumblr style new age garbage" even mean? Child abuse is bad? Queer people exist? Is "tumblr-style" supposed to be some kind of negative descriptor? Moreover, his post-retcon rants (I mean there were what, two of them that even cover this?) were important to him. Since he's talking about himself and his own life, that's all that actually matters when it comes to this. Nobody challenges him on it because there's nothing to challenge. People in this fandom have absolutely known that Bro was an abusive ass for years, since his introduction. He torments a child in his care with a puppet that clearly makes said child uncomfortable, films him in puppet porn, doesn't provide him with food, randomly assaults him in his own home, and kicks the fucking tar out of him in the strifes that are presented in a far more lighthearted and comedic manner with the other kids and their guardians, not even allowing Dave to attempt an escape, by way of slashing apart the 'abscond' command. Bro is a stark contrast to everyone else -- only Mom comes even close with her negligence. The dude is not fit to be a guardian, whatsoever. This isn't character assassination, that's what's literally in the comic. The only thing John's dad does is... bake too many cakes? John is the one wielding the hammers. And Jade's grandfather is dead, aka he cannot be held responsible for the shit Jade has to go through later on. Getting shot dead isn't child abuse. Nor is baking cakes. Note that somehow, the other three kids who hadn't been "trained" (beating someone who can't even land a hit on you into the dirt every day for thirteen years isn't training by any stretch, unless by "training" you mean "classically conditioning them to fear and hate you") were perfectly capable of handling themselves in SBURB. From a bunch of kids who's only "training" was attacking their parents whilst those parents attempted to dote on them. But nah, clearly Dave's "training" prepared him for SBURB like nobody else. Also, Hussie literally called it abuse way, way before Dave ever mentioned in the comic, back when Homestuck Book 3 was published in 2013: None of the other human guardians come even remotely close to this level of abuse. Bro was presented in this light from day one. It took the circumstances of the post-retcon meteor journey and spending three years with people who weren't utter shitheads and who actually like, showed affection in a reasonable manner for him to come to terms with it. This was always in the story, it was simply never elucidated upon until after the retcon, for whatever reason. By no means did it come out of nowhere, since it all came up specifically in response to meeting a younger version of his abuser. Those opinions are unpopular for a reason.
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Post by knightofvoid on Feb 6, 2017 15:11:39 GMT
People in this fandom have absolutely known that Bro was an abusive ass for years, since his introduction. He torments a child in his care with a puppet that clearly makes said child uncomfortable, films him in puppet porn, doesn't provide him with food, randomly assaults him in his own home, and kicks the fucking tar out of him in the strifes that are presented in a far more lighthearted and comedic manner with the other kids and their guardians, not even allowing Dave to attempt an escape, by way of slashing apart the 'abscond' command. Bro is a stark contrast to everyone else -- only Mom comes even close with her negligence. The dude is not fit to be a guardian, whatsoever. This isn't character assassination, that's what's literally in the comic. The only thing John's dad does is... bake too many cakes? John is the one wielding the hammers. And Jade's grandfather is dead, aka he cannot be held responsible for the shit Jade has to go through later on. Getting shot dead isn't child abuse. Nor is baking cakes. Note that somehow, the other three kids who hadn't been "trained" (beating someone who can't even land a hit on you into the dirt every day for thirteen years isn't training by any stretch, unless by "training" you mean "classically conditioning them to fear and hate you") were perfectly capable of handling themselves in SBURB. From a bunch of kids who's only "training" was attacking their parents whilst those parents attempted to dote on them. But nah, clearly Dave's "training" prepared him for SBURB like nobody else. The problem is that Bro's behavior was initially played up as dark comedy (see the Hilariously Abusive Childhood trope, since that is literally early Bro), and later on we're suddenly told to take it seriously. It just comes across as pandering to Tumblr, who constitutes a lot of Homestucks demographic. Original MSPA was chock-full of dark comedy (Jailbreak, Bard Quest, Problem Sleuth). Act 6 (and later parts of act 5 act 2) largely dropped this type of comedy, and instead replaced it with teenage drama. Something that once again, Tumblr likes. It's sad. When you compare the writing quality, it becomes glaringly obvious that Hussie is much better suited to silly comedy than teenage drama. Also, if we were to take early Homestuck's dark comedy seriously, then all guardians would be horrible: - Dad literally gave John a complex by force-feeding him cakes.
- Mom was an alcoholic and neglected Rose.
- Bro gaslighted Dave and was ridiculously competetive towards him and was just freaky in general.
- Jade should technically not even be alive. Barring the fact that Grandpa got shot, what we see of him (and to an extent) Jake, he isn't shown to be the most competent guardian, doing things like letting kids play with flintlock pistols while going on dates with blue haired dolls and training Jade to never leave the house without a rifle (and do note that Jade was ~3 years old when he got shot. That's right, Grandpa told what is effectively a toddler to always carry a weapon around.)
Early Homestuck (and MSPA) was really fucked up if you start applying real world things to it. Things like the captchalogue system could even be deadly. And that's not even starting with Problem Sleuth's casual murdering and Jailbreaks pissing on things.
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Post by sigh on Feb 8, 2017 8:12:45 GMT
Also I don't know how unpopular this is but Jesus did Hussie really drop the ball when it came to reuniting the original 4 kids together. Sure, everyone's there at the end and that's great and all, but aside from John who literally talks to everyone pretty much everyone involved abandons each other in favor of their own, personal trolls, pseudo-relatives, or cherubs. Rose and Jade may not have conversed many times before the jump into timeskip-space but by God I don't think they even say one real word to each other after they get out, whether that be before or after the Retcon.
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Post by obsidalicious on Feb 8, 2017 9:50:48 GMT
Rose and Jade may not have conversed many times before the jump into timeskip-space but by God I don't think they even say one real word to each other after they get out, whether that be before or after the Retcon. Yeah, In the entirety of all of Act 6 i.e. over 4000 pages, Jade saying 'BARK', 'BARK' and 'hey guys' to a group of people that included Rose was their only interaction. And prior to that, they only had 4 conversations in the first 5 Acts.
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3nights
Greentike
Hi i'm a nerd thanks for reading.
Posts: 2
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Post by 3nights on Feb 10, 2017 22:13:46 GMT
The walkaround flashes are unnecessary and boring. Cascade is such a photo collage of different art styles integrated and directed poorly so that it looks like hot garbage, and is also way too long for how few things happen in it. Everything including and after Game Over was ridiculous, unnecessary, and protracted the comic. The narrative should have been tying up plot lines at that point, not introducing new ones and reviving old ones through retcon. Also, Game Over was really cheesy and the deaths were cheap - amazing, coming from me who defends Murderstuck at every opprotunity
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Post by butternutpumpkin on Feb 11, 2017 1:19:55 GMT
Rose and Jade may not have conversed many times before the jump into timeskip-space but by God I don't think they even say one real word to each other after they get out, whether that be before or after the Retcon. Yeah, In the entirety of all of Act 6 i.e. over 4000 pages, Jade saying 'BARK', 'BARK' and 'hey guys' to a group of people that included Rose was their only interaction. And prior to that, they only had 4 conversations in the first 5 Acts. Jade doesn't haven't much close relationships with that many characters in general and really the only good relationships she has is John, Dave, Karkat and maybe Calliope now. Even then people only like her interactions with Dave and Karkat, which happen to be the only two characters she ever gets shipped with. I find this really disappointing honestly. I also find it sad how she missed out on having giant conversations with the alpha kids, which John, Rose and Dave got to have. I really wanted a conversation with her and Jake but we never got it. And then there's the fact that she's the only beta kid to never get an actual talk sprite. i'm just really salty about the way jade got treated after act 5
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Post by melonlord on Feb 11, 2017 5:49:34 GMT
Yeah, In the entirety of all of Act 6 i.e. over 4000 pages, Jade saying 'BARK', 'BARK' and 'hey guys' to a group of people that included Rose was their only interaction. And prior to that, they only had 4 conversations in the first 5 Acts. Jade doesn't haven't much close relationships with that many characters in general and really the only good relationships she has is John, Dave, Karkat and maybe Calliope now. Even then people only like her interactions with Dave and Karkat, which happen to be the only two characters she ever gets shipped with. I find this really disappointing honestly. I also find it sad how she missed out on having giant conversations with the alpha kids, which John, Rose and Dave got to have. I really wanted a conversation with her and Jake but we never got it. And then there's the fact that she's the only beta kid to never get an actual talk sprite. i'm just really salty about the way jade got treated after act 5 Jade had a nice little arc leading up to Cascade, and then it's like Hussie just...had no idea what to do with her. The screen time she does get in Act 6 is mostly used finding increasingly convoluted ways to keep her OP god powers from being too helpful.
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Post by obsidalicious on Feb 11, 2017 8:26:11 GMT
Jade doesn't haven't much close relationships with that many characters in general and really the only good relationships she has is John, Dave, Karkat and maybe Calliope now. Even then people only like her interactions with Dave and Karkat, which happen to be the only two characters she ever gets shipped with. I find this really disappointing honestly. I also find it sad how she missed out on having giant conversations with the alpha kids, which John, Rose and Dave got to have. I really wanted a conversation with her and Jake but we never got it. And then there's the fact that she's the only beta kid to never get an actual talk sprite. i'm just really salty about the way jade got treated after act 5 Jade had a nice little arc leading up to Cascade, and then it's like Hussie just...had no idea what to do with her. The screen time she does get in Act 6 is mostly used finding increasingly convoluted ways to keep her OP god powers from being too helpful. Which is made especially worse by the fact that Bec Noir suffered the same problem, but in his case Hussie decided to settle on just nerfing his "omnipotence" to manageable levels. Why couldn't he just do that for Jade? It wouldn't have been perfect, but at least Jade could've still been a character that contributed to the plot that way. At least we can take solace in the fact that this pretty much means that Jade is the most well rounded and capable hero, mentally speaking. Because if you think about it, many of the other Heroes' powers could be just as OP if used properly, but their wielder is either too incompetent, too apathetic or too afraid of their powers to reach their potential. Jade's fate as the ever-inconvenienced extra suggests that Hussie apparently couldn't find a way to fit Jade into any of these categories.
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Post by butternutpumpkin on Feb 11, 2017 8:42:52 GMT
What I found annoying is that instead of making her asleep 24/7 or going evil, she could have just had her powers not work or something. I'm sure Hussie could have found a way to do that. I'd rather her be powerless but have the screen time she deserved
And Bec Noir > Condy and Lord English
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Post by staircaseofkneecaps on Feb 11, 2017 18:14:07 GMT
The walkaround flashes are unnecessary and boring. Cascade is such a photo collage of different art styles integrated and directed poorly so that it looks like hot garbage, and is also way too long for how few things happen in it. Everything including and after Game Over was ridiculous, unnecessary, and protracted the comic. The narrative should have been tying up plot lines at that point, not introducing new ones and reviving old ones through retcon. Also, Game Over was really cheesy and the deaths were cheap - amazing, coming from me who defends Murderstuck at every opprotunity Agree with everything except the Cascade bit.
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3nights
Greentike
Hi i'm a nerd thanks for reading.
Posts: 2
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Post by 3nights on Feb 12, 2017 2:47:50 GMT
What I found annoying is that instead of making her asleep 24/7 or going evil, she could have just had her powers not work or something. I'm sure Hussie could have found a way to do that. I'd rather her be powerless but have the screen time she deserved And Bec Noir > Condy and Lord English No question: Jade, Sollux, and I would argue Aradia got completely shafted by the narrative after act 5. It's a shame because they're some of the most interesting characters but none of them do much of anything after the first part of act 6. In Jade's case, I feel like she's kind of a Gandalf character; as in, she is so powerful as a character that she ran the risk of being able to solve the story. I feel her powers should have had caveats and limits like the other main kids, but instead she just got sidelined.
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Post by ten11 on Feb 13, 2017 4:30:22 GMT
Skaian Skirmish is a top 10 worthy song.
(Cascade rocks)
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Salty
Mr. Snoozyprince Mcsleepypants
Dead.
Posts: 172
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Salty on Feb 13, 2017 5:28:15 GMT
Rosemary is not just an overrated ship, it's a terrible ship with terrible execution. I blame it for turning both Rose and Kanaya's characters to actual piles of putrid bat guano throughout the entirety of A6. It's just... awful. Like, really, really awful. I can't stress enough just how much I fucking hate Rosemary.
I might actually dislike it more than Davekat.
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Post by sigh on Feb 13, 2017 6:30:49 GMT
The worst part is that it could have been done so much better with so little changed. I think Hussie's biggest problem with relationships is that he runs into the trap of "once we're officially a couple all we do together is cuddle" syndrome. It's the biggest source of cancer with Davekat, Rosemary, Vrisknah, you name it.
The only iteration of this that was actually acceptable was with Nepeta and Equius, and that's because that wasn't an example of human-style romance.
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LunaWillow
Juvesquirt
i live in a constant state of tired
Posts: 16
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Post by LunaWillow on Feb 13, 2017 16:35:21 GMT
Rosemary is not just an overrated ship, it's a terrible ship with terrible execution. I blame it for turning both Rose and Kanaya's characters to actual piles of putrid bat guano throughout the entirety of A6. It's just... awful. Like, really, really awful. I can't stress enough just how much I fucking hate Rosemary. I might actually dislike it more than Davekat. Mind going into more detail? I thought Rosemary was executed rather nicely, for Homestuck standards.
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Post by amiabletemplar on Feb 13, 2017 17:23:13 GMT
Rosemary is not just an overrated ship, it's a terrible ship with terrible execution. I blame it for turning both Rose and Kanaya's characters to actual piles of putrid bat guano throughout the entirety of A6. It's just... awful. Like, really, really awful. I can't stress enough just how much I fucking hate Rosemary. I might actually dislike it more than Davekat. Mind going into more detail? I thought Rosemary was executed rather nicely, for Homestuck standards.Unpopular opinion: the two bolded words are an oxymoron.
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Salty
Mr. Snoozyprince Mcsleepypants
Dead.
Posts: 172
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by Salty on Feb 13, 2017 18:30:15 GMT
Rosemary is not just an overrated ship, it's a terrible ship with terrible execution. I blame it for turning both Rose and Kanaya's characters to actual piles of putrid bat guano throughout the entirety of A6. It's just... awful. Like, really, really awful. I can't stress enough just how much I fucking hate Rosemary. I might actually dislike it more than Davekat. Mind going into more detail? I thought Rosemary was executed rather nicely, for Homestuck standards. Sure. Long post incoming. I think the main reason I dislike Rosemary is for what it did to the characters in terms of progression; or, in this case, the lack thereof. Homestuck post-A5 always suffered from a certain kind of stagnation, wherein neither the characters nor the author really knew what to do next. John, Jade, and Davesprite stagnated on the Prospit battleship; the Trolls, Rose, and Dave stagnated on the meteor. Both of these derived from a lack of initiative to use this time in any constructive manner, i.e, not deal with the literal garbage fire of issues that they all had looming over them. Sure, they talked about Lord English and Bec Noir… kinda. Sure, they had a few confrontations with each other… kinda, and all those confrontations had to do with romantic entanglements which I can guarantee most of the fandom didn’t particularly care for. They didn’t even really have an antagonist–Gamzee never fit that role well, and was hardly utilized in such a way that made him anything more than another forgotten character, like most of the other trolls. Not only were these conflicts uninteresting, however, but they never went anywhere. Like the characters themselves, they stagnated, and any hope we had for them to be resolved was washed away in the actual shitstorm that was the Retcon. Everyone got a happy ending off-screen where nothing was solved; ‘show-don’t-tell’ is a good rule of thumb for a reason, even if Hussie was so fixated on 'subverting’ typical tropes like an A+ pretentious asshat too big for his britches. Which, along with stagnation, is a good way to describe A6 and beyond: too big for its britches. It tried to too much and stretched our characters too thin. Instead of being about four kids playing a game and being assholes on the internet, it became a teenage soap opera designed to pander to it’s most vocal demographic. And that killed the comic. Now, you may be asking 'but Salty, what does this have to do with why you dislike Rosemary so much? You’re just talking about the problems with the comic itself, not the relationship!' Well, like almost everything in Homestuck, these all correlate pretty close together. To simplify, we’ll start at the beginning: I think Rose Lalonde is the best character pre-A6. She had a level of depth and nuance to her personality that inevitably made her the most interesting character. We actually gave a shit about that happened to Rose. I mean, we gave a shit about all the kids at that time, but especially Rose. Her Grimdarkness? Coming to terms with the fact that her Mother wasn’t the monster she thought she was, and that she hadn’t had nearly enough time with her? Just watching the way she grew as a person? Act 5 and before, she’s honestly the reason I think the comic was so successful, or at the very least a large contributor. Her character helped tie the others together, especially Dave and John. Then we get to Act 6, and Rosemary becomes canon. All that development? Thrown out the window. Rose becomes a drunk, and it never gets resolved; Rose admits she was a terrible daughter, has tremendous guilt over the death of her mother, but who cares? Time to make her the comic relief! Her powers are never truly utilized again,nor her connection with the Horrorterrors: her personal growth is stagnated, her intellect and, quite frankly, most of her defining personality traits are cast haphazardly by the wayside. Her entire personality begins quite rapidly to revolve around two things: drinking and… Kanaya. Kanaya, her badass, chainsaw wielding GF, who has her own character slowly “develop” into a full-on Mary Sue. Kanaya, the troll she had the most contact with, but they were never shown to have anything more than an established friendship between them. Hell, their trope was originally supposed to be one of moirailship. Rosemary suffered, albeit in a far lesser sense, what Davekat suffers from: it came out of nowhere, and then never went anywhere after. Sure, they were friends, and sure, Kanaya admired her, but what about Vriska? What about John? What about her other friends, and the game she just lost her mind to? What about all this buildup to these other relationships that never went anywhere, and seemingly got dropped off the face of the paradox space? Are we to believe that Rose and Kanaya are really so callous as to forget the others even existed, going about their day-to-day in a sick mockery of 'second best?’ I wanted to see those story arcs come to something. I wanted to see John and Rose bond over losing a parent. I wanted to see Kanaya finally help Vriska turn her life around, and Vriska help Kanaya become less meddlesome. These are problems that were never solved because of Rosemary. Hussie wanted so desperately to appease his 'fans’ that he forgot about plot-lines; character arcs; relationships; story. He made Rose gay not because he wanted to make her gay, but because he backed into a corner and gave into the mouth-frothing rabidness of his following. He didn’t know what to do with her. This would be the first time Hussie changed his script, but would not be the last. This is the first step, as I see it, into the downfall of the comic; it’s maddening descent into stagnation and Hussie’s continued reluctance to finish the story the way he wanted, to the point where he handed the comic over to 'funny twitter man’ Cohen because he just couldn’t deal with it anymore. Honestly, I can hardly blame him. Do I have a problem with Rose, or any other Homestuck character for that matter, being gay? Of course I don’t. In fact, I would have loved it! I crave positive homosexual representation in the media. But for the love of god, what I didn’t want was forced, stagnated homosexuality just for the sake of having it. As a bisexual myself, I honestly found it insulting – are we really that easily pandered to, that easily placated? Is our community so obsessed with this backwards idea of 'representation’ that we don’t even care for it to be portrayed in a decent manner? Are we so desperate and shallow that we’ll scramble towards the most lackluster, half-assed content and call it genius just because it has two people of the same gender kissing? Others might – fuck, I know others will and have – but frankly, I like to think I have higher standards than the bottom of the barrel. No artist, no writer should ever have to jeopardize the integrity of their story in order to appease the arbitrary wills of some vocal group of fans who, frankly, don’t know jack-all about romance. Their story is their own; people read them because of what they wrote, not because of what others wanted, which is a lesson that Hussie seemed to unlearn post-A5 – hell, maybe even post-Problem Sleuth. I honestly attribute this to the massive decline in Homestuck readers overall. This kind of pandering, along with the stagnation that followed, and, of course, the frequent pauses, turned off at least 75% of the readers by the end of the comic, and that estimate is generous at best. A7 didn’t even reach one million views. 2011 through 2013, you couldn’t even go on the internet without seeing something Homestuck related pop up out of nowhere. /hsg/ got banned on 4chan, something that hadn’t happened since the rise of /mlp/. Tumblr was constantly pumping out new content that stretch as far and wide as Homestuck itself. The subreddit was at an all-time high. Homestuck and it’s huge fan projects dominated the internet like no other piece of media had done before. And then people couldn’t deal with it anymore, so they left. The fanfic writers, the artists, the theorists… almost all gone, with only a handful of good content creators still around to fill an ever-growing hole. And guess what? And it all started with Rosemary.EDIT: posted this to my Tumblr account 'Kantankerous' recently. Don't be alarmed, we're the same goddamn guy.
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Post by butternutpumpkin on Feb 15, 2017 0:16:49 GMT
I would have to disagree that it started with Rosemary. I actually think people started to drop the fandom because of the alpha kids being introduced at the wrong time. People were excited when the story went back to the meteor or the ship but werent as excited to read about the alpha kids because it was basically like reading acts 1-3 again but with far less interesting kids. I found it very boring to read and Roxy and Caliborn were what saved me from being completely bored. The early acts were fun to read because all the kids were lovable and provided a lot of humour, even Rose. Meanwhile Jane and Jake are considered the worst kids and they're two of the alpha kids and Jane was the MAIN. I think the comic in general stretched out far too long for people and the gigapause in 2014 was what really ruined the fanbase. I actually think that Vriska suffered the most from the act 6 mess since it really seemed like her arc was meant to end at act 5, but Hussie decided to bring her back but didn't know what to do with her, so he just had her fumbling about all over the place. That's what her whole arc in act 6 felt like to me. And as for Rosemary, I do like the pairing but I do think it could have been handled better. I hated how the two of them were stuck together like glue and didnt interact much with the others. Rose really only talked to dave and that was it. Kanaya was especually bad with this and i feel that Kanaya Karkat didn't happen because of the fact that kanaya was too attatched to rose to form any other relationships, which I think is unhealthy. The JohnRose ship got thrown under the bus quite quickly after it got brought up and I thought that was really disappointing since I wanted to see that develop. Davekat suffered in that it came out of nowhere, ditched an existing relationship that was teased since act 4 (and said ditch was handled horribly I may add. at least have one conversation!), and for the entire time it happened it was like 'are they in a relationship or are they not!?!?!'. It was just handled so badly, like Hussie didn't want it in their but still forced it in anyway just for gay singularity. And Vrisrezi is the worse of them all. I find it pretty bad how people even think its a healthy relationship and far better than Karezi or Daverezi, when Karkat and Dave actually cared about Terezi's well being while Vriska doesn't care about Terezi at all and Terezi is far too clingy towards Vriska. It's legit one-sided; Terezi kisses Vriska's feet and feels immense guilt about nearly killing her, and Vriska just uses Terezi to boost her ego. It just annoys me because I know for a fact that this would have been noticed if Vriska was male, but since its a same sex ship the abusiveness gets thrown under the bus. Oh and I still believe that the only relationship Vriska can be in that doesn't affect her negatively is John, and the fact that she became worse as a person when she was with Meenah and Terezi (i doubt she was any good with kanaya ether) proves this since all they do is boost her ego, especually terezi who has no backbone towards Vriska and its upsetting to see. Ooooh why did that pairing have to drop so badly for the sake of a ship that happened only a day too and ended up not happening ether :/ And about that whole 'happened a day thing', I was actually really annoyed when that happened in the comic because the comic was legit being a hypocrite. It tried to justify JohnVris not happening with the 'it happened only for a day' excuse, but JohnRoxy legit happened over a day too so it's no different. That whole speech felt off to me. :\
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Post by sigh on Feb 15, 2017 4:21:19 GMT
The fact that John/Vriska didn't even happen a little bit pisses me off to no end for the exact reason you stated, it seemed like he was almost the ONLY one able to bring her down off her high horse while also not dragging her through the mud, and it's not like there was a lack of hints towards it closer to the end of the comic! Heck, the lifesaving punch he gives her leaves her with starry eyes as she falls for him all over again due to his machismo, and she would've been the perfect character to sign John's relationship status off with by the end of the comic with how well they work together.
Really though that's the biggest misstep when it comes to relationships here. Interesting, fun, and quirky relationships were left in the dust in favor of "dramatic" ones, but the problem there is that the drama either comes out of left field, has unfortunate (I hesitate to say "problematic") aspects to it that are ignored, or is just poorly executed.
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Post by melonlord on Feb 15, 2017 5:16:26 GMT
And Vrisrezi is the worse of them all. I find it pretty bad how people even think its a healthy relationship and far better than Karezi or Daverezi when Karkat and Dave actually cared about Terezi's wellbeing and Vriska doesn't care about her at all and Terezi is far too clingy towards Vriska. It just annoys me because I know for a fact that this would have been noticed if Vriska was male, but since its a same sex ship the abusiveness gets thrown under the bus. Emphasis mine. I'm not experienced in the matter, but backhanded insults and attacking one's emotional weak spots (seriously, going after her guilt and self-doubt of her judgement is a low goddamn blow), followed up with compliments to keep them off balance and framing the whole thing as their fault is pretty textbook emotional manipulation, yeah?
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Post by butternutpumpkin on Feb 15, 2017 10:07:54 GMT
And Vrisrezi is the worse of them all. I find it pretty bad how people even think its a healthy relationship and far better than Karezi or Daverezi when Karkat and Dave actually cared about Terezi's wellbeing and Vriska doesn't care about her at all and Terezi is far too clingy towards Vriska. It just annoys me because I know for a fact that this would have been noticed if Vriska was male, but since its a same sex ship the abusiveness gets thrown under the bus. Emphasis mine. I'm not experienced in the matter, but backhanded insults and attacking one's emotional weak spots (seriously, going after her guilt and self-doubt of her judgement is a low goddamn blow), followed up with compliments to keep them off balance and framing the whole thing as their fault is pretty textbook emotional manipulation, yeah? Tell me about it. What Vriska did there was just outright awful and I really don't like how people love the ship so much and think it's progressive and draw/write the ship like it's fluffy and cute when in comic it was nothing like that. Like yeah it's good to have same sex ships and I'm 100% all for it, but not when it's handled like this. I know that people have their own opinions and all but I just can't help but find it disturbing. Especially since I've suffered from emotional manipulation myself and every time I wanted to back out, said person kept manipulating me into thinking I was a selfish bitch for doing so. :\ @ sigh: gotta agree about the fun, quirky and very interesting relationships being ditch for dramatic ones part. Not that dramatic ships are bad; the former is just more my taste. The reason I love Karezi and Davejade so much is because they're very fun to read about and the drawings you see of them are priceless. Karezi just because of their personalities being together in general and DaveJade for Jade's dog jokes and Dave's irony and being a furry jokes. They're both really quirky funny ships but also can get dramatic when the situation calls for it. Davekat and Vrisrezi just don't give off the same sparks to me. JohnVris can also bring up the same fun stuff with the whole nick cage stuff, but I loved that ship more because I found it an interesting one and the other side of Vriska can legit only be brought out by John.
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The One Guy
Rust Maid
Posts: 1,148
Pronouns: he/him/his
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Post by The One Guy on Feb 15, 2017 14:56:19 GMT
When Terezi started talking about needing Vriska just before [S] Terezi: Remem8er, I legitimately thought her attachment to Vriska was intended to be a character flaw, introduced out of nowhere, but intending to be something she's always struggled with (as many things that came up post-retcon were). Not good, but I figured it'd get addressed before the end and she'd learn to be her own self and not rely on others like her pre-retcon self did by the end. Then [S] Terezi: Remem8er came out "resolving" the issue in the complete wrong way.
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Post by melonlord on Feb 16, 2017 6:26:24 GMT
Tell me about it. What Vriska did there was just outright awful and I really don't like how people love the ship so much and think it's progressive and draw/write the ship like it's fluffy and cute when in comic it was nothing like that. Hm...well, to be entirely fair, fanart - especially ship fanart - sort of exists in its own weird quasi-canonical space that ignores the comic anyway? Like, I doubt a drawing of Terezi and Vriska being goofy in a harry potter AU is tacitly endorsing emotional abuse. It's about the idea of the ship, and the idea of these characters being together, more than the literal canonical execution of the ship, if that makes any sense. Of course then, like you said, some people write how they specifically loved canon vrisrezi and can't wait for them to reunite in the epilogue. Which really makes me wonder if they read the same comic I did.
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Post by alleywaycreeper on Feb 16, 2017 23:58:20 GMT
When Terezi started talking about needing Vriska just before [S] Terezi: Remem8er, I legitimately thought her attachment to Vriska was intended to be a character flaw, introduced out of nowhere, but intending to be something she's always struggled with (as many things that came up post-retcon were). Not good, but I figured it'd get addressed before the end and she'd learn to be her own self and not rely on others like her pre-retcon self did by the end. Then [S] Terezi: Remem8er came out "resolving" the issue in the complete wrong way. Everything else aside, Terezi's attachment issues didn't come out of nowhere, they have been in the comic since post-cascade. Hence her not being able to get over killing Vriska and her relationship with Gamzee. You could make an argument about whether or not this was purposeful from the start of it, but purposeful or not it was definitely there.
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