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I apologize for all the Homestuck posts but the epilogue is really good and I can’t stop thinking/talking about it. (as usual, beware of SPOLERS!)

This is basically a continuation and clarification of my last post. In that I took the position seriously that everything in the Candy universe is meaningless because it has not relation to canon. That is the position Dirk and Calliope (and John) take. What I think I didn’t make clear enough is that I think they are wrong about that.

To Dirk and Calliope, things that don’t matter to canon do not matter, period. But of course these things do matter. They matter to the people involved in them. Whether someone leaves an abusive relationship does matter, the rise of fascism matters, how people raise their children matters. In the reality of Candy Earth C, Jake’s and Tavros’s suffering is not any less real because it doesn’t matter to canon. They still exist as people who go through some horrible things and to them that most certainly matters. This is something that Dirk and Calliope can’t understand. They are so merged with canon that they have become the physical embodiment of the narrator, of course they cannot conceive of something mattering outside of canon. If you wanted to be mean, you could say they can’t conceive of anything mattering, that is outside of themselves. How is that for narcissism? Not being able to entertain the thought that things are relevant that have nothing to do with you, that things are meaningful because they are meaningful to someone else?

In a world that has no outside meaning provided for us, meaning is what we make of it. That also means that my meaningful life can look very different from yours. I think that is part of what John struggles with. His meaning was fighting Lord English and he struggles with finding something else to replace that. He also can’t see that the people around him do exactly that. He can’t see Roxy struggling to become more self-assured or finding out new things about her gender expression, he can’t see Rose’s happiness in starting a family. All he can see is that it is ‘wrong’ because it’s not serving the higher purpose of canon. To someone who is already struggling with depression loosing the one thing that gave his life purpose must be horrible. But on the other hand, there are plenty of worthy things on Candy Earth C that could give John’s life meaning, if he would allow them to. He could be a good father to his kid, he could join Karkat, Kanaya and Rose in their fight against an unjust regime, he could be there for Jake (instead of starting some kidnapping scheme that is more about himself playing the hero again, than helping others). All these things matter, but only if you let them matter.

So, fuck higher purpose, fuck canon. Make your own meaning!

Soooo, this has been gestating for a couple of days, since I finished reading the epilogue, so I think it's time to bring my jumbled thoughts into a coherent (hopefully?) text. Maybe this is all super obvious, but I want to write it down anyway.

As it says in the title, basically it comes down to Candy being the portrayal of a world without god. Let me explain. (SPOILER ALERT!)

There is a lot of analysis out there, talking about the relation of Gnosticism to Homestuck. For more on that you should definitely check out the amazing youtube videos by optimistic Duelist. But for purposes of this text I'm going to propose that the ultimate source of creation and meaning within Homestuck is the game itself - Sburb. The players can become creators, but ultimately, they are interchangeable. What remains is the game that always ensures its own existence by facilitating the continued creation of new universes.

So when John decides against using his retcon powers to ensure the integrity of the game (the integrity of canon, of narrative coherence),he severs the connection of his universe to the game, to the force, that gives his world meaning and purpose. Without the influence of the Sburb (of canon, of god), things just happen, forever, until the heat-death of the universe. I don't think there will be another session of Sburb in the Candy universe. Caliborn might or might not one day live on earth C, but he won't play Sburb. After all, nothing that happens there has any relevance to the canon anymore. In the same vain it makes perfect sense that Dirk's goal in Meat is to bring about another session of Sburb. The narrative has to be continued, so that it can continue to give the world meaning. What's the point of being an anime villain, if there is no more story to be the villain of? That's also the reason why there are sequel hooks. The narrative always continues, that's the whole point of Meat.

So, let's look at how the different characters react to the meaninglessness (the absence of god) in Candy:
John is the most fascinating and the character that first made me think of all this. He seems to me like a man who is losing his faith and not dealing with it very well (which is where the title of the post came from). He is like someone who just found out that, instead of being created by God for a purpose, we are in fact just sequences of genes brought about by coincidence and the uncaring forces of the laws of nature. We live on a small rock floating through endless space and then we die. No higher power is guiding us, or judging us. For someone who spent his formative years in an epic battle between good and evil for the creation of the universe, of course that feels 'wrong'. If there is no narrative, no meaning, then that means that even if he is one of the creators of this universe, in the end, he is nobody special. Because no-one in this universe is special. He is no longer the chosen one, because a universe without a narrative doesn't have any chosen ones. And without the guiding had of god (of canon) people do not live narratively satisfying lives, they just kind of live and shit happens. Just as in our world, in the world of Candy there is only the meaning you make for yourself. John is really bad at this, he is used to having meaning provided for him, being the hero of the story. No wonder he is depressed.
Rose on the other hand seems to really enjoy living outside of canon and so does Roxy. This makes a lot of sense when you think about the fact that both characters always rebelled against the constrictions of the narrative anyway. Especially Rose always tried to break Sburb, but of course never succeeded. For her being outside of canon means freedom to live her life as she wants.
Dirk, who's ego is so enormous in Meat that it takes over the narrative, can not imagine living in a world without meaning. He is rather the villain of a story then being just some guy in a world without meaning. This nicely illustrates how perceiving a greater meaning in the world relates to your sense of self. It's a hard blow to the ego, to accept that you are in fact just one speck of dust among a billion others and that on a cosmic scale nothing you will ever do matters, no matter how grand your plans.
And similar, old Calliope can't even conceive of a world without canon having any value. She is so bound up the the mechanism of Sburb that just living your life and making your own meaning with your own choices is not something than even occurs to her as being an option. She has to get back to canon to continue the narrative.

The longer I think about it, the more I like Candy. It's not an epic story, but it has more to say about the world we actually live in and how to cope with it than Meat does. Like, after leaving a terrible abusive relationship, dance around the kitchen in your underwear, because what else can you do? Nothing means anything in the end, except for the small joys we make for ourselves every day.

Thoughts on the epilogue:

It’s an extremely painful read. If you care about the characters (and why would you still be here, if you don’t?) you will be hurt by this
It’s funny
It’s clever
It’s weird
Whatever you were expecting, this will surprise you in pleasant and unpleasant ways
To put this another way: this is as homestuck as it could possibly get and exactly the kind of epilogue, you would expect from a work like Homestuck
Now for the spoiler stuff
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soooo, a lot of fan stuff seems to be happening all at once.
first things first, my thoughts on the upd8 (even though I'm three days late):

1) of course the epilogue has a prologue, because of course it has!
2) of course everything happening on earth c takes the form of an Ao3 fic, it's outside canon after all
3) I love the whole over-signified meat/candy symbolism
4) the end of the john/rose scene might have broken my cold, shriveled heart... again ...huuussieee *shakes fist*

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I spent quite some time in last last month rereading books I already knew and loved (mostly Harry Potter and Dresden Files audiobooks). Getting back to stories I already know and spending time with characters I know I like has something deeply comforting for me. But since I spent a lost of time on the train everyday I also need new material. So here are my thoughts on the books I read last month:

1) Quidditch Through the Ages: Short and nothing too special. I only read it because I needed to read a book about sports for a reading challenge and this is as close to reading about sports as I’m likely to get. Rowling really likes her alliterations, doesn’t she?

2) The Tea Dragon Society: Another short one for a reading challenge, but considerable higher quality. A cute little comic about small dragons that grow tea on their scales. It’s fluffy and sweet and just very lovely all around.

3) The Basilisk Murders: The third book last month I read because of a reading challenge and the worst one. It’s a murder mystery set in a conference of Silicon Valley dudebros and similar people. It’s full of libertarians, tech millionaires, red pilled internet trolls and rationalists and there are obvious stand-ins for people like Elon Musk. And if you now think that the basilisk is Rocko‘s you would be exactly right. The thing is, I don’t know who this was written on for. It’s an obvious parody of the Silicon Valley culture, but if you’re not already in the know about it, the references will go over your head and if you do know the people referenced, you will probably be offended. Not least of all because the parody paints with very broad strokes and frequently goes the "Big Bang Theory"-road of „look at the smelly nerds that can’t get girlfriends“. It also doesn’t help that the protagonist is a polyamorous lesbian written by (as far as I can tell) a straight man. Her identity feels more like a coat of paint then something meaningful. As if the protagonist was written as a straight man and then the pronouns were just changed and a couple a sentence put in about how the dudebros really personally offend her because of her identity.

4) The Calculating Stars: Alternative History in which a meteorite hits earth in the 50s and the human race has start the space program in order to flee to other planets to survive, written from the perspective of one of the first female astronauts. A really solid hard scifi book and a surprisingly insightful portrait of someone suffering from anxiety.

5) The Machineries of Empire: Yes, I read the whole trilogy in a couple of days. It was that good. I probably missed some things because I raced through the books and a reread will probably be necessarily at some point. But with these books something happened that only comes along maybe once a year, I just fell in love with the world, with the characters and when I was done with the books, it felt like I lost a friend. So what are these great books about? It’s a military space opera about math and revolution. To massively simplify some very complex world building: The books take place in a world where you can basically do magic by using calendrical math. However, this only works if all the people in an area practice the same calender, so the society this takes place in has to brutally repress anyone who deviates from those calendrical norms, otherwise their weapons and space ships an so on don't work. And in this system we of course have people, who will try to challenge the current repressive order (and anything more gets into spoiler territory, I think). The books are written largely from the perspective of people in power, mostly military leaders who make the "hard choices" to sacrifice some people to safe others. What makes this series special, is that it never lets you forget the real human cost of these choices. Even the people you might like and root for will make some horrible decisions that get a lot of people killed and this series will not gloss over that. The moral stance of the books might be best described as "a life is a life, no matter who you are talking about, it's always worth preserving" and then it takes that stance and puts it in a world that where thousands of people are habitually sacrificed to keep society running. Also, fair warning, these books have all the triggers. There is a lot of death and torture and also some pretty heavy physical and mental abuse. In my opinion those themes are handled with care and taken serious in their implications, but your millage might vary on that count.

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So among other, more personal things that sucked this weekend and that I don’t want to make public to strangers on the Internet, my earphones broke yesterday. Yay!
So today already starts pretty terribly. No music on my commute means I have to listen to other people.
Then I get home after work and get a call from a colleague... I missed an important meeting. No excuses, I just plain forgot. So after that I decided to walk to the post office since I need to pick up a package... that I have to pay customs duty and additional fees on.
So I get home freezing cold but at least I can watch my new blue-ray now, right? Wrong! Apparently while ordering I deluded myself into thinking the disc wouldn’t have a region lock because I can’t read. So now I’m out of about 40 EUR for a completely useless piece of plastic.
Anyway, how’s your Monday going?

Current Mood: irritated

If the fact that I only now got around to watching it wasn’t a sign in itself, I will spell it out: I don’t like the new season of Doctor Who.
At this point it just makes me sad, that a show that was such a constant in my life keeps disappointing me.
The Witchfinders wasn’t even that bad. It’s not like Kerblamm, after which a had to clean my palate by watching Futurama of all things. It’s just more of the problems that have been plaguing the season. The Doctor is more or less useless, the companions are completely devoid of any character development, and the politics are confused at best.
I feel like Amy yelling at 11: “What is the point of you?”

Current Mood: disappointed

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I’ve been re-listening to the Harry Potter audio books. For one they always feel christmassy to me and they are also one of my happy places I go to when real life sucks. And the thing is, I still really like Harry Potter. I know it has flaws. It’s far from perfect as far as things like representation are concerned, it suffers from all the biases you expect from a work written by a middle class English woman. But they (especially the early books) are also really well written children’s fantasy novels. They are imaginative, funny, exciting, sometimes scary, sweet books.
But with recent discourse around JKR that seems to get lost. It seems that a lot of people have decided that since Rowing has turned out to have some very problematic opinions, that means Harry Potter was never good in the first place. These books have become so popular that they have to be either absolutely perfect or are complete garbage, probably responsible for the miserable state of society these days.
I get that Rowling has been a disappointment with her constant meaningless gestures toward progressivism and the new movies are just bad. But on a human level I kind of understand JKR. I mean, it’s unlikely that she will ever do anything that is as important or popular as the Harry Potter books. I can understand that she can’t let go of that. That she might want to keep going and continue exciting fans with constant new information. Basically what I’m saying is, I imagine that writing Harry Potter is a hard high to come down from.
That doesn’t mean anyone has to like the new movies or JKR twitter (I’m personally avoiding both), just that I wish people were a little more forgiving sometimes. Just to make clear, this is not me feeling bad for JKR. She is one of the richest writers on the planet. She going to be fine no matter what people say about her. It’s more about a general tone of discussion that makes people feel bad for liking a thing and that I have grown tired of lately. I could go on into a whole rant about the obsession with certain parts of progressivism on the internet to condemn everything that does not adhere to their standard of purity as terrible, but that’s a topic for another time.

tl;dr: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good

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I’m walking somewhere and I have all these thoughts in my head that want to be written down into a blog post or a story or whatever. Like, I cannot stop myself from formulating long paragraphs about whatever.
And then I sit down to actually write the thing and it’s all like... what are words even? How do you language?

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Soooo. In theory using the train to get to work is a good idea. Even though climate change is probably going to end us all in the foreseeable future, I can at least feel smug about it not being my fault. Also I can read or write instead of listening to the same 10 songs on the radio every morning. Also, I hate driving.
And yet, in actual practice it’s a total nightmare. The train comes too late, if it comes at all. It’s full with a lot of people, you don’t ever want to in in a small enclosed space with. The amount of coughing going on here is scary. Urgh....
I just want to be at work on time and get home again. How is that to much to ask?

Current Mood: cranky

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I watched the new Dr. Who and after getting to “Kerblam” I have a lot of feelings and thoughts and I need to write it down somewhere. So here goes:

First of I really like Whittaker as the new Doctor. That’s basically what kept me going through the season so far because the writing wasn’t that great. Until “Demons of the Punjab” not a single story really excited me. They where fine, but that’s it. It’s fine.

Until “Kerblam”. I don’t think I ever came away from a Dr. Who episode feeling so terrible. I watch Dr. Who because it’s one of the few shows where now matter what happens, there is always hope at the end. But this was just bleak. What is the takeaway from this episode? That now more people can work soulcushing jobs for endless hours under constant surveillance? That is our happy ending? That as long as you keep your head down and don’t question the all powerful AI or the emotional abusive manager, you might get enough time off the see your kids twice a year? That the only purpose people can hope for in this world is doing menial jobs that could be done better by machines? That an AI will look out for you that kills innocents to make a point? This might be the bleakest episode of Who I have ever seen.

The worst part of it might be that the Doctor doesn’t even acknowledge any of that evil that is happening around her. And for a her righteous outrage against killing in other episodes, she doesn’t seem to care about the murder of Kira by the AI in this episode. No she even defends the system because it’s not evil. No Doctor, the AI just killed a woman to make a point, just like a terrorist would… and they are bad, aren’t they? Or is it only terrorism when people try to change the status quo?

Seeing as Tumblr is doing everything it can to die a slow painful death, I decided to make an account here and see what happens.

Hopefully, this will mean more actual writing and less spending ungodly amounts of time scrolling though memes and getting into 'discourse' on my my part.

I'll probably repost my old ASoiaF Meta on here, purely for archival reasons, even though I'm not really in that fandom any more.