Episode 36: I Am Ascending, and It Is Terrible

Cee L. Kyle joins Kate to talk about the epilogues, mental health, and our community. Topics: Mob behavior. 4chan. How our actions impact the creation of independent art and survivors of abuse. Kate's personal story of growing up online. Piss Christ. Issues with Homestuck's ending. Sadstuck. The Homestuck Cinematic Universe. Trans narratives. Psychosis. Essentiality. Ownership of characters. Jane. Dirk and self-harm. Vrisrezi. Catharsis. Manic pixie dream girls.

We discuss this thread by Pip D and Overcast.

Listen to this episode at https://perfectlygenericpodcast.com/updates/episodes/36

Transcript
Kate: The Perfectly Generic Podcast contains spoilers, occasional adult language, Vriska, and (Vriska). This episode additionally includes discussion of internet abuse, psychosis, depression, abusive relationships, transgressive art, and suicide. You've been warned. I wanna say thank you to our Crockertier supporters on Patreon, [names], for their incredibly generous support per episode. It wouldn't be possible without you.

[intro]

Kate: Welcome to the Perfectly Generic Podcast, the number one podcast in the world about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Here we're gonna be getting —

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: All into Avengers Endgame, the touching story of a struggle between woke Joe Russo and homophobic Anthony Russo.

Cee: [laughs] God.

Kate: [laughs] I have not seen this film.

Cee: Me neither!

Kate: I'm of the impression —

Cee: We're just going to talk about it for an hour.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. I'm under the impression that it's just a rip-off of the Homestuck Epilogues.

Cee: Yes, that's been confirmed to me.

Kate: [laughs] Alright, so it's been one *hell* of a week gamers.

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: God. I don't even know where to begin. [sighs] Anyway, our guest this w— I'm your host, Kate Mitchell.

Cee: Right [laughs]

Kate: Our guest this week is — I realized where I could begin: the introductions to the show! Our guest this week is Cee L. Kyle, writer of a number of Friendsim routes and former guest on the show. How you doin'?

Cee: I'm doing pretty good, you know it really has been one hell of a week, but y'know. You'll come out the other side of that eventually.

Kate: Yeah. Y'know there was a not insignificant amount of controversy this week that [sighs] to put it frankly, really disappointed me and frightened me.

Cee: Right.

Kate: The community — the Homestuck community engaged in what I would describe as a sort of witch-hunt-y rooting around in receipts from years and years ago, attempting to tie a writer of the Homestuck Epilogues to controversial past work made when they were much younger. And this discussion hit a fever pitch and it led a lot of us in the — what I would say the quasi-professional Homestuck space —

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: [laughs] To have to —

Cee: Sorry. [laughs]

Kate: [laughs] No it's fine! I mean what can it be called other than quasi-professional? [laughs]

Cee: You're right.

Kate: To, y'know — I chose to drag some shit — some skeletons out of my closet to talk about them and talk about why this kind of conduct is inappropriate. And I wanna be extremely clear with the listeners. First off, if you don't know what I'm talking about, that's fucking awesome. You should maintain that at all costs! And second, if you have participated in harassment, in spreading years-old content and undermining the ability of individuals to create art anonymously and undermining the creation of controversial and transgressive art, I want you to evaluate what you did and how the actions that you took contributed to a mob mentality that severely hurt not just the target of your mob but a number of other people and bystanders. And — I know that sounds harsh, but like, I really need folks to do better than this. Because quite frankly, the only difference between my early work and the early work that's being dissected and used to tear a person apart on the — is just that I was a worse writer at 17 and my shit didn't get popular in a big fandom!

Cee: I think it was hard to look at what happened this week and not think, oh god that could be me.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: And I was thinking that because I am also a writer, however tangentially, on the Homestuck writing team. But also I think even just as a person that's been on the internet for about half my life, the internet was such a different place fifteen years ago, ten years ago, five years ago. It's such a swiftly changing space and such a swiftly changing community, and the contexts of things often just is totally gone a few years later.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: And we're all different people than we were when we first got online and started putting things out there. And [sighs] it's frustrating to see mob behavior being justified with this veneer of empathy, whether the justification is oh we're worried about the kids, or what you're putting out there or whatever, when the end result is that you're not displaying *any* empathy for what we might've gone through to get here.

Kate: And here's the thing that like, I want folks to understand, like this isn't about adults versus kids —

Cee: Yes.

Kate: Especially since this stuff was made by a person at a young age. Like, if you make mistakes on the internet at a young age, I also don't believe you should have a life's — like, that's the thing is —

Cee: Agreed.

Kate: I'm not saying that — like, in 2019, if you are a young person and you do something regrettable online, I don't believe that that should follow you and haunt you for the rest of your life.

Cee: Exactly. Yeah.

Kate: I believe fundamentally that people have the right to grow and change as people, that we should display empathy, and that when — and doing anything other than that and constantly attaching people's past lives and actions in abusive circumstances to them harms not just that person but all of our abilities to move on from the abuse that we've received in our lives. And like, I've posted a thread on Twitter about this where, y'know, I disclosed some stuff about my past online, which was very similar to some of the stuff that we've been talking about here, which is that, like a lot of folks in the modern internet landscape and the modern creative landscape, I grew up online in places like 4chan and places like Something Awful. And also in darker places. And if everything that I wrote and said from that time, being frankly exploited by regressive communities, was available for you to read and you decided that it was morally necessary for you to see and morally necessary for you to never let me move past, I would not have a career. [laughs] And I'm not gonna share — like, I'm lucky in that I don't think you'll find that shit! I certainly can't fuckin' delete it, 'cause it's attached to emails that don't exist anymore, it's — you know what I mean? Like —

Cee: Right.

Kate: And I just wish that people wouldn't constantly try to bring it back to 'but it wasn't okay though'. Because it's — *because*, quite frankly, it's not your business what somebody did under a different name online as an exploited youth. Like, it's just fucking not.

Cee: Right! Like part of me doesn't even want to get into the semantics of like —

Kate: Yeah exactly.

Cee: Arguing about whether the content itself is okay or not, because to me I have such a big problem with the justifications of how people got there in the first place. I don't think —

Kate: Exactly. The only justification for discussing this at all is if you think that you have a moral entitlement to the past of every creator in media, and to their complete stories of personal trauma. And I — that's absolute nonsense. That would — that is —

Cee: Yes.

Kate: That's the kind of absolute nonsense that is eating alive a generation of young queer creators.

Cee: I definitely agree. And I will also say that, y'know, I think there's a real difference between this kind of thing and trying to protect people from actual predators in your community —

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: And it really alarms me to see people conflating the two, because that just tells me that people don't know how to recognize actual harmful behavior.

Kate: Yeah. It's — here's the thing that's really important to me, which is that if you are making — if you believe in the freedom to create independent art, that means you have to put up with stuff that isn't just stuff you personally like or agree with. I think about how like, the Republicans — like, how the Republican party used the existence of, y'know, works of art like Piss Christ to undermine federal funding for the arts by highlighting controversial works of art that are difficult to defend and using them to paint the creation of transgressive art, period, as a moral wrong. And quite frankly, like, whether you like it or not, just creating media that addresses serious topics and includes things like queer characters and characters that have — frankly are — y'know, like queer characters that are in any way sexually active, is considered controversial by a wide swath of the populace. Like, we are like fundamentally — like even the stories that I tell and that I post under my name online are cons— like, would be considered transgressive by a number of people. And Homestuck itself is a transgressive work of media, the Homestuck Epilogues continue being a transgressive work of media, and to pick fights with those who are a step beyond us in transgressiveness in creating art and not the culture that creates marginalization, that creates these serious issues that people dissect and process their trauma through in their art, is fundamentally non productive.

Cee: I agree. Like it makes me feel like we're doing the rights work for them.

Kate: Yeah. Exactly. We are. And when I say that, and when you say that, we don't mean you're literally a right-winger if you're participating in this.

Cee: Of course not, yeah.

Kate: Right. Like what I'm saying is, evaluate how — like, who — how what you're doing hurts people, and how what you are doing impacts the space of creation of media in the long term. Do not underestimate your voice's impact on all creators of media. [sighs] Y'know, like it is not just about the individual person that you are attacking for not being the perfect victim. And I — look, I've been around — I've been on a lot of internet hate machine rodeos. I was a minor target of Gamergate when that was an active — when that was a more active movement. And I am close with a number of the people who were primary targets of that movement. And the simple fact of the matter is that most of the work of that movement was done by highlighting specific things that are difficult to defend that the targets of harassment did. Like, almost no victim of online abuse, almost no victim of online hate mobs, is blameless in every way, in every action that they've done.

Cee: Right.

Kate: And I think asking folks to never ever do anything controversial and instead just, I don't know, silently create pleasant content for you, is outright — it's saying "smile, sweetie". [laughs] Like it is outright that!

Cee: Yeah, I really appreciate the thread that Aysha made about that —

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: In which she specifically said that. And it's not just —

Kate: And yeah, to be clear — that line of thinking comes from Aysha, who I respect a lot and was — and said much better things than me about this. [laughs]

Cee: I mean I love both of the things you guys have said and I'm really grateful that you're saying them. And I also just wanna say that it's fucking heteronormative to expect creators to just exist in that pleasant, sweetly smiling box.

Kate: Yeah, it is.

Cee: Like, it's not —

Kate: It is, and this is part of —

Cee: If you want us to create transgressive media you have to allow for the fact that sometimes we have transgressive personalities.

Kate: Yeah, and this reminds me too of the like, sanitization of Pride.

Cee: Mhmm.

Kate: You know, you look at Pride now and it's like, oh here's the Wells Fargo float in Pride, and it's like, there was actually a specific purpose served by having like, weird shit at Pride!

Cee: Yeah.

Kate: Like, because we're supposed to be proud of being queer! We're not supposed to assimilate! Like, Pride *means* something, and to say no you can't have, y'know, weird or transgressive, or like — god, I'm — this sort of shit really gets to me as I think you can probably tell.

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: I think I've probably said my piece on it, if there's anything else that you wanted to say.

Cee: No, I mean it is the kind of subject that I think I could and have ranted endlessly about, but after a certain point I keep — I feel like I start repeating myself because, y'know, either people agree with your central thesis or they don't. And this is one of those things that I feel like tends to be really divisive in online communities, where people will get on one side of it and feel like they can't like, consider the other side without reevaluating their entire value system.

Kate: This kerfuffle has sort of made me very intimately realize how entire art movements start beefing with each other.

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: [laughs] I —

Cee: Right!

Kate: It's like, oh I understand the anti-transcendentalists now! Like — [laughs]

Cee: It brings it home! [laughs]

Kate: Yeah! There's — there can be real important diff— y'know, I mean obviously I knew this from an intellectual perspective, but there can be real, important intellectual differences in artistic philosophy. And that doesn't mean the people on the other side are bad, but it also doesn't mean that I'm gonna stop having, y'know, artistic integrity, and what's important to me in art, y'know, fire me up. Like I'm not going to stop caring about what's important to me in art.

Cee: Yeah. Yeah.

Kate: And I don't know. I just wanna make shit that's brave and weird and good and sometimes fucking gross! [laughs] Like —

Cee: Yeah. Nothin' more to say.

Kate: Nothin' more to say. Alright, so speaking of good and weird and sometimes fucking gross, the Homestuck Epilogues [laughs]

Cee: [laughs] Oh yeah!

Kate: Oh man. Alright, so what's — this is a simple question that I've been asking folks who come on in the last few weeks: what did you think of 'em?

Cee: Oh I loved them. Y'know I have criticisms of parts of the Epilogues. I don't think I've ever had a really strong reaction to art and not had things that, y'know, I didn't feel as positively about —

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: So to me it's not, y'know — I'm glad I have criticisms.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely.

Cee: Like I'm glad there are things to discuss to improve on. That's part of what I like doing as a fan. But yeah, I would say overall I loved the Epilogues honestly even more than I expected to, which maybe sounds a little bit bad considering that —

Kate: [laughs]

Cee: [laughs] Considering that I write alongside a lot of the writers that worked on it. But I just mean in the sense that I feel like I can now admit publicly, years after the fact, that I was a hater of the Homestuck ending. And —

Kate: Oh you *were*!

Cee: [laughs] I did not like Homestuck's ending! And y'know I found it personally really disappointing. And so I wasn't sure that I was going to like the Epilogues. Y'know, I didn't know how they were going to build off the end of Homestuck in a way that I found satisfying. And —

Kate: I'd actually love to talk you about this. What were the sort of structure of your criticism with Homestuck's original ending?

Cee: Right. So I think why it disappointed me was that it felt very predictable but not satisfying. Both in the sense that I feel like it sort of made this attempt at living up to a lot of the post-modern scaffolding that made Homestuck really great, but then didn't — I feel like there's a way to have that sort of post-modern open ending, what does a story mean, metatextual — to do that whole thing, while also being satisfying and gratifying to the reader on some level. And to me Homestuck's ending didn't do that, but the Epilogues really succeeded in that respect. They don't really answer a lot of questions, I think that's what the criticism that some people have of the Epilogues is that they ask more questions than they answer and they leave a lot of things sort of up in the air in this really unsatisfying way, but to me the radical nature of how the Epilogues do that is what — it's kind of this like paradoxical thing of like, how unsatisfying they are is what makes them satisfying to me.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: And then on a character level with Homestuck's ending, first of all I just thought that it was an unsatisfying ending to Vriska's arc. And I also found the idea that the kids and trolls were just gonna live forever on this planet that they created just kind of really depressing!

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: Like, I had a hard time seeing how that could come out happily for them, and not even in a way where I was like, okay now I want to like, write sadstuck about this, but in a way where I was just sort of like, oh god that's gonna be such a downer for them! And then the Epilogues confirmed this feeling of mine but did it in a way that made it really interesting to me —

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: And the way it played out in each of the routes, sort of, was equally interesting [to me]. So yeah, I don't know, I just — sometimes I feel like, with really dark or heavy content, I don't know how much I want it until I'm in the middle of it.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: Then it's like, oh yeah this is miserable and I *love it*.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: But like I never feel like I'm in the mood to read a truly miserable story! [laughs]

Kate: Well, and it's the thing that Homestuck has always done, which is that it has balanced its most miserable and darkest moments with irrelevant — with *irreverent*, at times flippant humor. Which is —

Cee: Exactly. Yeah, it — even when it's —

Kate: Sorry, go on.

Cee: I was just gonna say — even when it's really grim it's still engaging and it's still entertaining.

Kate: Mhmm. Like — I laughed uproariously at numerous parts of this epilogue. I thought that they were so fucking funny. And some of the parts that I laughed at were like, smack dab right next to some of the parts that I *hated the most* and —

Cee: Right.

Kate: And that's always been the case in Homestuck, y'know, which is a tragicomedy and always uses the dual masks of tragedy and comedy as a, y'know, signifier. And like, proximity to clownery is something that like —

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: Is something that is a signifier for infuriating you in Homestuck.

Cee: Yeah! [laughs] Yeah.

Kate: Or to put it in a more sort of, y'know, I guess Homestuck-masturbatory way, clowns are Rage-coded for a reason.

Cee: [laughs] God. Yeah! Yeah, that's actually very well put.

Kate: [laughs] Yeah. Like I personally found — I personally was very pleased with Homestuck's ending, but not as an ending, right? Y'know, I think I've talked about on this show a lot that like, I believe that Homestuck is making an argument for continued relevance and Homestuck is a world of multimedia and numerous different stories that rivals in complexity, scope and ambition, y'know, major comic book universes or y'know, like universes of major novel series and film series, right? The Homestuck Cinematic Universe, as it were.

Cee: Right.

Kate: And it does that without abandoning its roots in independence and bravery and strangeness. And y'know, in connection to the issues of the modern internet age in a way that most mainstream media does not. And this also includes a commitment to telling authentic stories of representation. For example, the transgender stories in the Homestuck Epilogues are messy and complicated like actual trans lives are, and not the perfect like, oh I've known since I was 12 trans narrative that we too often see in media. And that's — y'know, I talked a little bit about this in the most recent Intermission, but like that's part of why Roxy's story was so affecting to me, which is that it's — I think it's genuinely unprecedented in media with this level of attention —

Cee: Yes.

Kate: To have a character who the audience already had an existing relationship with then undergo this journey of understanding their own gender and doing it either, y'know, in their mid twenties in one of the routes, or not until their thirties in another route. And I think that that's an absolutely, like — that's an absolutely vital — to use Rose Lalonde's terminology, *essential* thing to depict. And, y'know I think it's important to return to those themes of truth, relevance and essentiality because I think that it is both relevant and essential to depict difficult topics, and Homestuck always did, and the Epilogues represent a maturation of Homestuck to dealing with the issues of 2019 and the issues that affect us as adults growing up in this world that we live in now. Y'know, for example, like there's a depiction of like — the villain — the antagonists of a number of plotlines of the Homestuck Epilogues are fascism and xenophobia. And that is extremely relevant to our day-to-day lives.

Cee: Right. Yeah. And I definitely — like, it really is unprecedented, and I think that that's part of — when people see representation like that, that hasn't been done before and feels almost like it's too niche and obscure — I don't know, in a sense I always feel like the backlash to that comes from a sense of like, almost embarrassment? I don't know if that's the right word for it, but the sense of like, oh gosh they're taking things that we see and struggle with in our community and putting them up for like, a brighter light to shine on them, these stories that a larger audience will read. And it's almost like, y'know, you don't feel like you're ready for that.

Kate: I've talked about internalized Homestuck-phobia a lot —

Cee: [laughs] Yeah!!

Kate: Which is that like, it is wi— like, it's actually important to acknowledge and evaluate why liking Homestuck is seen as shameful, right?

Cee: Right.

Kate: And it's because it's so emotionally intimate and so, like, raw and willing to access difficult issues. It's — y'know, for a work that discusses irony so deeply it is *frighteningly* sincere.

Cee: Yeah, exactly! And it depicts nerds on the internet, not through metaphor but through like, themselves, you know? And it can feel hard and weird to see that, especially when they go through all of the embarrassing, angsty, tragic bullshit that you yourself are going through.

Kate: Yeah. Absolutely. Like, I'm — I don't know about you but a lot of my friends from when I was younger sort of disappeared into this tragic tangle of bad politics. [laughs] And to depict characters in Homestuck doing that, I — like, I think it's important because it's rare to see media address this fact that in like, the modern era, especially the modern era of online radicalization, that like we lose friends that were good people, with the potential with the potential to be good people, like, with the potential to do so much good in the world, to hate! And I know it must be tough for people who have like a strong — y'know, the thing about Homestuck is, again, it's been going on for 10 years now.

Cee: [laughs] Right! Right.

Kate: People have these strong connections with the characters, right? Like you get very strongly attached. I mean I — y'know. You have — y'know, I'm sure someone could make a supercut of all of the times that I have anguished-ly said 'Vriska' on this show.

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: Like you form a strong personal connection to these characters and it can be really — it can be a massive gut punch to see them suffer, it can be a massive gut punch to see them do bad things, it can be a massive gut punch to see them change in ways that you wouldn't want to change, right? And that I think sometimes leads to this feeling of possessiveness.

Cee: Mhmm.

Kate: Like, fans feel like they own the characters and they get upset when a decision that they wouldn't have made with the character is made. And I don't think it's r— I don't think it's bad or wrong to feel a sense of, y'know, ownership over media like Homestuck that exists as a conversation between authors and audience, right?

Cee: Right.

Kate: The things that we do and make impact the story moving forward, as you saw from the fact that like, the Homestuck Epilogues incorporated a wide amount of like, fanon interpretations of characters. Y'know, both good and bad. And included some direct references and quotes to — of popular fan works. Popular or infamous fan works — can't sleep without holding on to a motherfucker. [laughs] And that's the thing, is when the story goes in a direction that you don't like or that you don't agree with, I think the message here is, okay, make shit. The Epilogues felt like Homestuck throwing down the gauntlet and saying: here's our idea. What have you got?

Cee: Oh yeah, yeah.

Kate: Like, we're describing a world of infinite possibility. We are describing, y'know, a world that is defined by the choices that the characters make. If you want to explore what happens if characters make different choices in your fan works, please do! There have already been so many excellent Epilogue-themed fanfics. And I cannot wait to see more, I'm hoping that this presentation of prose in official content creates a sort of revitalization of the Homestuck fic scene because there's some incredible — there's been incredible work out of that community over the last ten years.

Cee: Yeah, I would love to see that too. I would also say, sort of on the topic of people who didn't like the Epilogues or couldn't connect to them because they feel like they ruined their favorite characters — I do have a lot of sympathy for that actually, because in a way I feel pretty lucky as a Homestuck fan that the characters that I have that I feel protective over, that I have that I feel like a real person that I relate to — like, none of those characters came out of the Epilogues being worse people than I thought they were in the first place. And if I was a Jane fan, if I y'know was a Dirk fan, if I was a Jake fan — even if I was a Jade fan I think I could see myself reading the Epilogues feeling like no matter how much I like them artistically, that I couldn't have fun with Homestuck again.

Kate: For me, I *was* a Jane and a Dirk fan coming into this, and I thought that their characterization in the Homestuck Epilogues was extremely strong. Like, y'know, to use the shorthand that Xtine developed, like — Jane Crocker listens to Taylor Swift, Jane Crocker lives in a society —

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: And she listens to Taylor Swift and lives in a society more than ever before now, and it's so easy to see how that can happen.

Cee: That's true! That's true. Jane — yeah.

Kate: That combination of inherited wealth and a sort of — and a sense of moral superiority and correctness that informed basically all of her actions, when handed the powers of a god and the powers of a social leader, can be insidiously destructive. And that's also true for Dirk. Dirk plus power is a dangerous combination! And y'know, we've already seen that like — that he's capable of great acts of manipulation and great acts of — y'know, and an extreme lack of humility, right?

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: Like, and Dirk is one of the only characters I think that is fundamentally capable of taking the formulated idea that a narrative needs a villain to continue being relevant, and then deciding with a fuckin' martyr complex to *be* that villain so that everyone that has ever mattered to him remains relevant.

Cee: Right. Yeah, it's a really twisted sort of love. And Jane — okay, I know that all of the Homestuck humans are aracial, but Jane always has been and continues to be kind of the embodiment of white feminism. Y'know, I feel like she is white feminist-coded, whether or not that's explicitly on purpose or not, but — and that was always kind of there as subtext in her character and then it became *text* text in the Epilogues. And — so I can absolutely see — y'know I really don't have a problem with the characterization of any of the characters in the Epilogues. Well, except that I do think that the JohnRezi was made — played maybe a little too close to face value than I would have preferred. But — but yeah, I don't — I think I can see how people would come out of the Homestuck Epilogues with their sense of fandom having shifted in some way.

Kate: Yeah. Yeah.

Cee: Y'know, and I think that's perfectly valid.

Kate: Yeah absolutely, and here's the thing, is that's been happening for ten years now. There were dramatic twists and changes and development in characters —

Cee: That's a good point!

Kate: Over the course of the original run of Homestuck as well, right? Like, y'know, if you were an OG fan of Gamzee when he was first introduced —

Cee: Oh god.

Kate: As the y'know, chill stoner boy —

Cee: Yeah.

Kate: Like, that understanding of that character was appended. And y'know to argue, well Gamzee was acting out of character in the second half of character is bullshit! 'Cause it's like, that's what his character is, that's what the author made his character to be.

Cee: That's what his character is! And at this point he's been more like that for more of the canon —

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: Than he ever was, y'know, a quote-unquote "nice person".

Kate: Yeah. [laughs] Y'know, like [sighs] I don't know if anybody noticed, but like in Homestuck proper, Gamzee beat his girlfriend! Like —

Cee: Yep.

Kate: He's a bad — he did it — he's not suddenly a bad person now! [laughs] Gamzee people have no — Gamzee stans have no rights.

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: If I see you stanning Gamzee it is absolutely on sight.

Cee: [laughs harder]

Kate: And I say this as a fully ascended Eridan stan.

Cee: [laughs still harder] Man, what has been attaining *that* ultimate self been like?

Kate: I — y'know, it's been a difficult — I'm ascending, and it is terrible. [laughs]

Cee: Right! [laughs] What robot body can even contain that?!

Kate: I know, right? Like, just all these shitty fish boys living rent-free in my head.

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: 'Cause it's like, I've got the fucking Vast Error shitty fish boys that have been living rent-free in my head for even longer than Eridan has at this point. I mean it's just like, I can't *deal* with it any more, all these Republican fish!

Cee: God. Title of your memoir:

Both together: All These Republican Fish.

Cee: That's rough, buddy.

Kate: [laughs] I feel like, again, I just manage to bring up Eridan every fuckin' episode.

Cee: [laughs] It's — y'know it's gotta become a calling card at some point.

Kate: Yeah. So let's talk about Vriska.

Cee: Right! [laughs]

Kate: Speaking of things I have to mention every episode — oh god, so —

Cee: That's — you're actually contractually obliged to mention and not just —

Kate: I am genuinely — actually have to, like I made a bargain with a warlock a long time ago to give me the power to create this podcast [laughs] and the deal was that I have to mention Vriska every episode. And that was a deal I happily took. So Vriska's story got advanced by about 45 minutes in the Homestuck Epilogues —

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: And what a 45 minutes they were! So you said you were someone who was unsatisfied with Vriska's ending in the original — y'know, in Homestuck. What do you think of Vriska's story in the Epilogues?

Cee: Well I find it exciting because I'm always most — my reactions to Vriska and Dirk are always are that I like them best and I find them most interesting when they are in a place of being underdogs in the story. Because, y'know, that's less challenging to the reader, right, than when you have a bully who is bullying over the narrative. That's supposed to be hostile to the reader so I react to it with hostility!

Kate: Right.

Cee: And so Vriska in the Epilogues in both routes was in total underdog mode. I think the scene when she — well, I read it as a death until I read Candy and realized it wasn't a death, but the scene when she gets sucked into the black hole, that scene and the scene where Dirk kills himself were the two hardest scenes for me to read. I think those two characters go through sort of the most — in terms of the prose, the most brutal kind of violence.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: Well I guess Gamzee also goes through a brutal kind of violence, but I don't care about him, so —

Kate: Yeah, but he earned it! [laughs]

Cee: Yeah! So I didn't like, react strongly to that. [laughs]

Kate: Right, that like — the like — Gamzee undergoing that brutal violence was the most triumphant part of the whole story. Like, it really was!

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: It was like the — this was the heroic victory at the end.

Cee: It was the only — one of the only moments of like, real genuine catharsis that I felt in the Epilogues [laughs]

Kate: Yeah. Absolutely. I just — I was absolutely living for it.

Cee: Right. But yeah, so Vriska — so when I was reading the Epilogues I was really on Vriska's side in a way where, y'know — when I watched the Homestuck ending, this sense that I got about Vriska's arc was that it was just too pat, like she thinks she's gonna be the hero that saves the universe and then she does it and that's her arc. And so the Epilogues naturally problematized a whole lot more. I was really on board with it. I love it any time Vriska has a conversation with an alternate version of herself, I eat that shit up every time it happens in Homestuck.

Kate: Griever asks on Discord: "what was your favorite part of the Epilogues?" Cee, what was your favorite part of the Epilogues?

Cee: Good question. I think the chapter when DaveKat kiss, and Roxy gender.

Kate: Oh yeah.

Cee: Just everything that was about Roxy gender in both Meat and Candy —

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: That and like, Terezi eating shaving cream.

Kate: [laughs] Terezi being a weird, gross goblin, like —

Cee: [laughs] Yeah!

Kate: God.

Cee: I mean, I could say like, every — almost every line that Terezi had, but that, y'know like, I'm biased.

Kate: Yeah, I mean I'm a Terezi dyke and that's just how it is.

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: [laughs] Like, I — yeah, personally for me it was either — I think some of my favorite dialog in Homestuck ever was that John and Roxy conversation at the end of Candy. Y'know, the —

Cee: It was some good shit.

Kate: Yeah. And I guess that actually sorta comes into something that I wanted to talk about which was that like, John's story in Candy, y'know, about this depersonalization and detachment from like, the reality of the world that he was in —

Cee: Mhmm.

Kate: Was really affecting to me as someone who has been affected by psychosis in my life.

Cee: Mhmm.

Kate: And I thought that that was a, like, fascinating, like, exploration of the consequences of feelings like that, right? And, y'know, to see John go through that journey in Candy over the course of a very long time of like, how to value like, experiences that seem surreal or difficult to process, is really important to me.

Cee: Yes.

Kate: And that's overall, like — there are so many themes of mental health in this story, and you know you see like — like fundamentally, like Dirk taking over the narrative and Dirk becoming a villain is an act of self-harm, right, it's an act of believing that his only worth is establishing the continued relevance of the story. And y'know, you see that in Candy when he feels he's no longer relevant he kills himself, right, and that's fucking tragic. Like — it is very difficult to watch because it is just — why did Jjonak trance there? I got distracted by sports, I'm so sorry.

Cee: [laughs] Sports?!

Kate: [laughs]

Cee: Got distracted by sports?!

Kate: I did, I'm the only person — I'm the only Homestuck person who knows what sports are, and I think that's very brave of me. [laughs]

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: But like, you know you see so many themes of this, right? And I mean like —

Cee: Yeah.

Kate: To see, like — and y'know you see it either explicitly mentioned with John talking about having depression, or metaphorical with like how Kanaya's story in Meat is like, she's been the victim of gaslighting! Right, like Dirk explicitly describes gaslighting her and making her like, doubt her own like — one of the fundamental truths of her life which is that, like, she and Rose love each other.

Cee: Mhmm. I'm gonna go so far as to say one of the fundamental truths of the universe.

Kate: Yeah, it's true. One of the things that is true in every timeline.

Cee: Yeah.

Kate: And it's like — so Dirk has like, broken so many constants of every timeline, right? Like so many things that we took as signifiers of like, the baseline universe in Homestuck of like, when — Vriska and Terezi are separated, Kanaya and Rose are separated, and Gamzee's dead. [laughs]

Cee: So fucked up (!)

Kate: And it's like, that's a pretty good signal that shit is *way* off the rails here.

Cee: Yeah. Well, and also I tend to be very excited when I find metaphors for or references to psychosis in genre fiction, because in my experience as a reader and as a liker of things is just that metaphors for depression and sort of fictional depictions of depression are a lot more common, but it's not too many pieces of art that have sort of — where I can read about my particular history, like on the page.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: And one of the things that really struck me about John in Candy was the way he was constantly feeling like, is my sense of unease about what's going on related to things I'm actually experiencing, or is it just in my head? Like, are these patterns that I'm noticing real? Or is everyone actually out to get me.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: Or no, wait, I fucked that up, but —

Kate: Or did I ruin it? Did I, like — right —

Cee: Yeah, yeah.

Kate: Y'know, and there's a sense of guilt there too, right —

Cee: Yeah!

Kate: Where you make yourself responsible. And actually this reminds me of like — punkinMars asked a question on Twitter: "how different do you think the Epilogues could have been if the characters learned how to address their mental health issues with their peers instead of isolating themselves from each other for such a long time?" And this reminds me of a thread of analysis that I really loved, some of the best thought I've seen on the Epilogues so far, by Pip D., panelist and friend of the show. And, so the Epilogues are — [quoting] "The Epilogues demonstrate what happens when people are left to their own devices for too long, left to fester in the worst parts of themselves without a proper community structure around them to actively break them out of bad behaviors. The Epilogues are stories of community failure, of community collapse, and of the absence of community altogether. They show the kids, now adults, scattered, divided and struggling to communicate. They show characters seeing real and dangerous problems and either failing to do something to do something about it as individuals, or ignoring the problem altogether. Characters are hurt by each other and do not communicate this fact until it is too late and things are worse. [...] It's important to recognize that our impulses to argue with people in this way, one-on-one, are not as productive as engaging with the community around us and trying to build a better environment. [...] At the end of Meat and Candy both, I think we can all agree that things are at a low point for pretty much everyone. As so often happens in Homestuck, the ability of all sentient beings in all real and hypothetical planes of existence to give a shit is being challenged. And yet, there is still hope to be found. And that hope is expressed, for the moment, in our anger, our frustration at the characters and their actions, their treatment in the story. This speaks again to our underlying perception of their potential. Just as being hurt by a friend speaks in part to the love which you have for them, so too does our frustration with Homestuck speak to the love we have for its characters. And that frustration can be a motivating force. Conflict can be productive. Because if there's one thing I believe the Epilogues want to suggest, it's that conflict is not abuse. Conflict is not evil. Conflict is an inevitable part of life, and sometimes is the only way to reach a better place. So I invite you to enter into conflict, both with Homestuck and the people in your life that you care about. Come at it from a place of compassion and love, and strive to make things better. Engage with your community, find solutions to problems, and communicate. The work is never over. The end is not the end. And that's okay." Alright.

Cee: Yeah, I think that last point about conflict rings so true for me, especially when you look at Karkat in Candy.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: Part of it — it's so fuckin' Karkat that he sort of ascends to one of his best selves in the irrelevant route, but he's so good in Candy and it's because he's being his like, shouty mcnubhorns self, you know. He's like, one of the only ones who is not afraid of conflict.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely. Like — Karkat — man, I cannot believe Karkat in Candy is! I mean he's —

Cee: He's **so** good!!

Kate: Oh my *god*! He's got an eyepatch and a grappling hook! Where — like, I've only seen some art of this!

Cee: [struggling for breath, overcome]

Kate: Where is the art of like — of black bloc antifa DaveKat? Like — [laughs] oh my god.

Cee: [laughs] For real!

Kate: God.

Cee: Like, Candy made Karkat sexy.

Kate: Yeah it did.

Cee: Like —

Kate: [laughs]

Cee: But like as far as the actual question — I mean I think the Epilogues would have been much different if the characters had learned how to address those mental health issues among community, but I guess I have — and this is bleak of me, but I have a hard time imagining how that would even come to pass, y'know, I think part of the reason that I was depressed by the Homestuck ending is that you have this pretty small group of people coming out of a whole lot of trauma, and different kinds of trauma — not all of the characters in Homestuck went through the same things, and some experiences they had are just completely unfathomable to the experiences of other characters. Like, how — and then they go and live on a planet where they're gods and there's this fundamental difference between them and all of the other people on this planet! Like how are they even gonna *get* to a point of being able to process things in a healthy way? Like I never could have imagined a Homestuck Epilogue that would've been happy or nice.

Kate: Yeah. And also like, any sort of — like, if the — like — personally I don't want Homestuck to be over! I find these characters fascinating and I think there's so much more to explore, both with the characters and with the rules of this world. And asking for everything to be tied up and tidy and no — is asking for these characters and their struggles to no longer be compelling; to be resolved. And — eh. I don't know, maybe call me selfish because I really like doing this show about Homestuck —

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: But like, I have loved this webcomic that turned into a like, multimedia experience, for a decade of my life. Like, in a couple years it's gonna be half my life that I've liked Homestuck! [laughs]

Cee: *Damn*!

Kate: And like, it is — [sighs] I just — I'm not done with it. I'm not done thinkin' about it, I'm not done wanting new things from it, and I'm extremely impressed with the fact that the Homestuck Epilogues were boldly saying like, we're not done either. We are going to introduce new and compelling wrinkles to the characters that you know, we are going to realistically explore like, the adulthoods of traumatized teenagers, right?

Cee: Yeah.

Kate: Like, not to get too fuckin' personal, but like I was one of those! And it's really nice to see a story where it's like, oh they didn't just figure all their shit out magically. Like, you can overcome challenges while still facing more, and like it is — adulthood's difficult! It's tough —

Cee: Yeah!

Kate: Especially in a world as unfair as the one that we live in now feels. So if you think it's — y'know, like it is unfair what happens to a lot of the characters and what happens to a lot of the characters in the Homestuck Epilogues. And it's important for us to recognize our ability to persevere through unfair conditions.

Cee: Yeah man. [laughs] I got nothin' to add to that! That was — that was good.

Kate: Uh, so you were talking about, y'know, Terezi's story, and I've already beefed with Terezi's story —

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: Like, on a number of — like, actually on a lot of these episodes so far, but I'm gonna keep doing it.

Cee: [laughs] Yes, I've heard you! [laughs]

Kate: Yeah. Ultimatekomaeda asks on Twitter: "I'd like to hear y'all discuss Terezi and John's mutualism/shared experience with depression, as well as whether y'all think more insight into Terezi's experience with it would be interesting to see/explore." So for me personally —

Cee: Well I always want more Terezi —

Kate: Yeah!

Cee: Like — [laughs] so yes!

Kate: Like, we only see Terezi through the lens of John in this story. Like, Terezi was originally introduced as this sort of manic pixie dream girl for Dave and Karkat, and she kind of falls back into that pattern of like, being the manic pixie dream girl who's only seen through the perspective of, like, the male protagonist in the Epilogues.

Cee: Right. I really liked a lot of what was there between John and Terezi in Candy — I kind of wish that the relationship had played — had been played a little less straight in Meat — [laughs] not like, literally straight, but in the sense of like, I feel like —

Kate: I would've appreciated if it was a little less literally straight too!

Cee: [laughs] Also that, yeah! But just in the sense that I felt like, am I expected to take it at face value that John really is suddenly in love with Terezi when she hasn't been around for years? Am I expected to take at face value that Terezi has had a thing for John this whole time? Has she had a thing for John this whole time? Does it make sense that like, she would be like carrying around his like, body with her after the fact, and that she would be like the sole like — the only person that knows he's dead? Like some of those aspects I liked, and some of them I felt like — eh, this is hard to buy from a character point of view! Which is maybe just me being picky about Terezi, but —

Kate: Well right, like I think that like, it's good if Terezi has a play. And I think that — like, that's the same thing that I talked about with Rose's story —

Cee: Right.

Kate: Like if the Seers have a play here then it's good.

Cee: Yeah.

Kate: If they don't have a play then it's just two of the strongest female characters in Homestuck are weak now. And that sucks.

Cee: Yeah!

Kate: Or are weak now and have their stories defined by their relationship to men.

Cee: Yes. Yeah.

Kate: Which sucks! That'd be bad! I don't — that's the thing, is like Homestuck has built up a lot of goodwill for me with its relationship to women and to female characters. So I have, like — I continue to have high hopes, especially since Homestuck proper, like, initially seemed — like, subverted a lot of expectations that it set up for itself about female characters and what their stories would be about, right? So again, again this goes back to what I've said before which is that like, if — like, this isn't any kind of ending. And if Homestuck just went gently into that goodnight now then that would actually suck! This is a really compelling setup that makes me invested in, and want, more.

Cee: I agree, yeah, and the way it set up further Vrisrezi developments was really exciting to me.

Kate: I *know*! 'Cause the mirror!

Cee: Even though — I did — Yeah! And y'know I didn't even hate, in Candy, when Terezi said that she was letting Vriska go, because I felt like she was literally searching through space for Vriska —

Kate: Yeah. And she thought that Vriska didn't care.

Cee: Yeah! And y'know, I just want what's best for Terezi.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: Like I want her to live. And if that means letting Vriska go well then that's the healthy choice.

Kate: Yeah, it's like — here's the thing, is —

Cee: It's very tragic, but — yeah.

Kate: It is tragic, and to depict it as abuse is like — Vriska had no choice that she was sucked into a black hole, like, doing a thing that was essential. Like — [laughs]

Cee: Right!

Kate: But Terezi doesn't know that. And Terezi needs to take — made the right choice to take care of herself because she would've starved to death looking for Vriska otherwise, and that's not healthy behavior, right?!

Cee: Right.

Kate: That can be both not healthy behavior and not Vriska's fault. [laughs]

Cee: Yeah. Yes. Agreed.

Kate: And y'know, it's true that Terezi is prone to, I would say, a sort of love-based codependence that can be extremely self-injurious.

Cee: Mhmm.

Kate: Which — big mood! [laughs]

Cee: Right!

Kate: Well, it was also really — but that's the thing, is that's the — we got the dramatic irony of seeing — and y'know, the cathartic experience of actually being exposed to Vriska's true feelings about Terezi, and having all of my wildest dreams about what those are being confirmed! [laughs]

Cee: Yeah! That was a lot.

Kate: Yeah. And so we saw at the end of Homestuck, Terezi bare her soul about how she felt about Vriska, and at the end of the Homestuck Epilogues we saw Vriska bare her soul — and then Terezi had a years-long vigil to try and find this person that she loved so much, right. And then at the end of the Homestuck Epilogues we saw Vriska bare her soul about her feelings about Terezi, and now beginning what will — like, what seems to be a like — a journey that we don't know the ending of yet to reach, y'know — to find this connection again. And so they're — these stories are mirrors of each other in a way that I find really, really satisfying.

Cee: I agree, yeah, and in that way where Vrisrezi have kind of always been these sort of mirrors of each other.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: Well, and to take it back to mental health, I really liked that depression was sort of one of the things that brought John and Terezi together, not in this like, literal sense where they were both thinking, oh let's bang because we're both miserable, but in both Meat and Candy it was the thing that they bonded through. And I liked that it was expressed very [audio cuts out]. Because in Candy, John's struggle with his mental illness was like, he was trying — for most of that epilogue he was trying to hide it. He was trying to fit in with society, he was trying to just sort of pretend that nothing was wrong even when everything felt wrong. And Terezi was sort of the other side of that, where she had just decided she didn't give a fuck and she was totally separate from everything, and she wasn't even trying to like, be a part of their society. In Meat, when she goes back to the world, she doesn't really rejoin the world.

Kate: Yeah.

Cee: She's still just kind of — like, she doesn't even like, give John's body to his friends, she doesn't play by that societal rule because she's too messed-up and she's not interested in pretending to not be messed-up.

Kate: Yeah. [quietly] God, Terezi's so good.

Cee: [laughs] Terezi's so good.

Kate: [laughs] And that's our show!

Cee: [laughs] Yeah! [laughs]

Kate: That's gotta be the message you end on. Oh man. So you can find the Perfectly Generic Podcast online at perfectlygenericpodcast.com; on Spotify, on iTunes, on the Google Play store, wherever you get your podcasts. Personally, if you are interested in — if you're using an iPhone — and this is not a sponsored message of any kind! — if you're using an iPhone and you want to listen to podcasts on something other than the kind of shitty built-in podcast app, check out Overcast.

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: It's a free app on the app store, it's created by an independent developer sustained by donations and contributions — an independent developer and podcaster! It is a beautiful application that works really really well, and respects you. It doesn't collect analytic data, it doesn't collect privacy data, anything like that. It's a fantastic app, it's what I've used to listen to podcasts since its launch. You can find that at overcast.fm, and it's a free — it's a totally free app and we are on the Overcast podcast directory as well and I'd love a recommendation there. So you can support the Perfectly Generic Podcast on Patreon: patreon.com/pgenpod. Not only are our supporters creating this content — helping bring this content into the world and supporting the analytic discussion on independent media that they wanna see, they also get access to [I]ntermission, which is a bonus weekly show that contains looser discussion of Homestuck and other related media. We're gonna do an episode on Sonic this week — I dunno, I just wanna talk about Sonic I guess. [laughs] And will eventually expand to include music, podfic, memoir pieces — it's gonna get weird y'all, and it's gonna be fun. Right now there's already 4 episodes of [I]ntermission for you to enjoy, and you get access to all past episodes immediately as soon as you become a patron, even at the 1 dollar level. I wanted to thank our 4.13 Skylark tier donors: [names] for your support of this show. You can find me on twitter.com/gamblignant8, where I post hot takes and shitposts about Homestuck pretty much constantly. Where can folks find you, Cee?

Cee: They can find me at @ceekylewrite [spells it out], and I also have a Patreon that I am trying to remember the URL for. It's [patreon.com/]ceelkyle.

Kate: And you can find links to both of those in the description. The music for this episode — the introduction was "perfectly generic" by goomy — goomy is President for Life of our music team — and the outro is "another noir" by goomy which you can find on their bandcamp which is also linked in the description [smoothiefruitee.bandcamp.com]. Thank you so much for comin' on, Cee!

Cee: Thank you for having me, it was a blast!

Kate: Join us next week for a roundtable on Dirk Strider!

Cee: [laughs]

Kate: Yeah, get ready for that one!

Cee: There is no getting ready.

[outro]