Saffron and Sage

A’ight. Let’s talk Homestuck 2. Part 1 of god knows how many.

First thing’s first: While Dirk’s glasses always reminded people of Kamina from Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann, he’s now in full cosplay. I’m not sure if this “means” anything beyond a reference for the sake of a reference/joke, but Homestuck 2 wants to be arty so I’ll assume I’m meant to think about this comparison. And it’s an interesting one because Dirk and Kamina are polar opposites. Dirk is chatty, coldly rational, deeply intelligent, thinks he knows better than everyone else because he’s ascended and powerful, and takes people’s agency away from them. Kamina is dumb of ass even by the lofty standards of anime protagonists, is the least competent person in the show, and mainly operates by being a cheerleader and empowering everyone around him to realize what they’re capable of. Which is, I suppose controlling every else through force of heart.

And, of course, Kamina’s main achievement is not doing anything himself, but inspiring his friends generally and his little brother specifically into becoming the heroes he knows they can be. So from that angle, you can kind of see why Dirk thinks of himself as Kamina-like despite being so superficially different.

Of course, in that metaphor, the role of Simon is presumably played by Dave Strider. So that’s a comparison worth keeping in mind.

So anyway, Dirk opens up by talking hypocritically about his most intimate and private feelings for two hundred thousand fucking words, and then holds up Act 1 as a high-point of Homestuck which, if Dirk is supposed to represent people who hated the ending, seems like maybe a misread of those people, since basically everyone hates Act 1 precisely because of all the faffing about. I have gotten the sense that the Homestuck team maybe doesn’t fully grok why people rejected the ending, and I’m a little worried Homestuck 2 will be beating up on a strawman Bad Fan, but let’s let it play out.

They do at least seem to be aware of how fucking tired we all are that Homestuck keeps going and that we still like it on some level too much to leave.

Anyway, Dirk’s flying through space on a ship called the Theseus, which is pretty obvious symbolism,  and three years have passed since the epilogues, meaning that everyone’s 26. This mirrors the three years it took a John and Jade to fly from the original game to the Alpha Session.

Which might be foreshadowing that Dirk is going back to the original game to interfere in the events of [S] Cascade, since that’s when a lot of people feel Homestuck peaked. The reveal at the end is him going to a planet that looks like Earth with the continents all wrong, and I’m not sure if it’s another planet or it’s literally supposed to be Earth (Earth A?). I have to admit, I’m kind of hoping for a new game with a new race and new players

Terezi shows up, having found a command terminal. There’s a slight hint that the creepy sex stuff from the epilogue might rear it’s ugly head, though this might be a reference to

From the original Homestuck, since Dirk is kind of part Equius now.

There’s also an awful fucking lot of this kind of thing. I don’t really like how Homestuck dropped the metaphor and just started started calling the Alpha Timeline “canon”, but I guess that ship has sailed. And since Dirk’s establishing this “for the sake of precedent”, I guess it’s going to be relevant later so let’s note it now in this liveblog thing I’m apparently making.

This is the one joke in this update that got a laugh out of me.