Episode 54: The Lady, or the Tiger?

Aysha U. Farah talks directing Pesterquest and writing Rose Lalonde. Topics: Sans. ICP. Fight club. Guns and stumps. John's mail man problems. Roxy at her worst. MSPA Reader's gender.

Listen to this episode at https://perfectlygenericpodcast.com/updates/episodes/54

Transcript
Kate: The Perfectly Generic Podcast contains spoilers, occasional adult language and Vriska. You’ve been warned. The music for this Episode is by James Roach on the Pesterquest Soundtrack, you can find his previous album “Hiveswap Friendsim” on homestuck.bandcamp.com. This show is listener supported, and I want to thank our Crockertier patrons: [names] for their support per episode. You can find out more at patreon.com/pgenpod.

[Intro]

Kate: I’m having a podcast and the podcast is you. This is the Perfectly Generic— that’s a shitty introduction— [laughs]

Aysha: [laughs]

Kate: Even by my standards. I’m just in the mood to love and celebrate all of Toby Fox’s work even his homestuck mpreg album.

Aysha: God, I’m so proud of that boy. He’s doing so well.

Kate: [laughs] Proud of that kid, Sans Undertale.

Aysha: Yeah, Yeah! I’m real proud he’s really coming up in the world.

Kate: Yeah [laughs] so this is the Perfectly Generic podcast. This is episode 54. I’m your host Kate Mitchell. I’m here with Aysha U. Farah the internal president of homestuck. The new Andrew Hussie.

Aysha: Yup, That’s me.

Kate: And it was a light week, really not a lot going on in homestuck this week.

Aysha: No content.

Kate: Yeah, No content at all. So let’s talk about other stuff instead. For example, in the world of homestuck adjacent media, The Steven Universe movie came out this week.

Aysha: That was really good.

Kate: I still haven’t seen it.

Aysha: God-

Kate: Yeah, I know.

Aysha: I cried.

Kate: I need around to watching it. I know that there’s— Like the main villain is old school animation style which is very cool.

Aysha: Yes, she’s pretty clearly based on Steamboat Willie, I think.

Kate: And I know that there’s an electro swing villain song so like, I know I’m gonna like it. I’m just taking my time.

Aysha: Yeah it’s like, “Be Prepared” level-disney-good. So it’s one of the best villain songs ever, I think.

Kate: Alright, Excellent. And then also, of course as we were talking about at the top; Sans Undertale is in Smash now. You can fight Cloud Strife as Sans Undertale for the low low price of 75 cents.

Aysha: I can’t— I was at my coffee job when that got announced, and then I checked my twitter after putting some bread on a shelf and it was all just: “Sans, Sans, Sans, Sans, Undertale? Sans. Megalovania!”, and I was like, “What happened?” [laughs]

Kate: [laughs] I mean, it’s absolutely surreal to see Masahiro Sakurai saying “Toby fox came to my house and beat me at Smash," while Megalovania played in the background loud enough that you almost couldn’t hear him. It was one of those moments where it’s just like: “Are we taking over the culture?”

Aysha: Well I think it’s only a matter of time now that we have Vriska in Smash.

Kate: Yeah, Absolutely.

Aysha: But we gotta have a full character for Vriska. We need all of her incredible moves.

Kate: Yeah, what character in Smash kins Vriska the hardest?

Aysha: Hmm. Young Link.

Kate: [laughs] What!? Hold on! What?

Aysha: I do not accept constructive criticism. [laughs]

Kate: You’re not going to explain yourself on this one. Alright, well listeners, feel free to let me know what character in Smash you think kins Vriska the most. Alright let’s talk about the thing that actually happened this week, which was Volumes 1 and 2 of Pesterquest, the sequel of Friendsim, the next visual novel in the Homestuck universe came out. You’re the director.

Aysha: Yeah.

Kate: How’s it feel? What’s the vibe? Vibe check.

Aysha: The vibe’s been really surreal. It’s when we debuted number one on the indie charts and number four globally, or whatever, eight whatever it was. I was just like “Uh… I guess magic is fucking real?”

Kate: Yeah, the highest I saw it was four and it hung around on the top 25 all day.

Aysha: Yeah and it’s still on— I think it’s still on the chart that is decided by people’s wish lists.

Kate: Nice!

Aysha: And so it’s still on the front page—

Kate: Homestuck is a story about wishes.

Aysha: That’s true. [laughs] Miracles, man.

Kate: Miracles.

Aysha: How do they work?

Kate: [laughs] Y’know the thing about that song— Let’s ignore Pesterquest and go on a fifteen minute sidebar about juggalos.

Aysha: Ok, that’s fine.

Kate: The thing about that song is, I think people got unreasonably mad at it. Y’know, I thought it was in general, it was not an anti-science song. It was saying that things in nature are so spectacular as to be indistinguishable from miracles. And the study of them is awe inspiring.

Aysha: Yeah, plus, that video kicks ass!

Kate: It does kick ass! It rules! Shout outs to Eromancery who will certainly be enjoying me saying that an ICP thing unironically rules.

Aysha: I’m pretty sure that when Andrew was here last time, when we had our New Year’s Eve party, we watched that video.

Kate: I feel like it’s the sort of thing that you do with Andrew. I feel like most of our conversations end up—

Aysha: —Being about clowns?

Kate: They end up being about clowns, yeah! I’m a bit of a clown enabler.

Aysha: God…

Kate: [laughs]

Aysha: Who would have thought?

Kate: I certainly didn’t see it coming.

Aysha: I remember in our first conversation you told me you’re gamzee-phobic, and now how the worm has turned.

Kate: Let me be clear, I am still extraordinarily Gamzee-phobic. I just don’t think that Gamzee is an accurate representation of what a clown can be.

Aysha: That’s true.

Kate: If you look, all of us have a little bit of clown inside of us, some of us more than others. And clownery is a way that we can shed shame and embrace our whole potential.

Aysha: That’s true.

Kate: And Gamzee, he only uses clownery to live in a society more and that’s—

Aysha: Yeah, that’s true.

Kate: Like the Joker.

Aysha: God... [laughs] Yeah, the Joker definitely kins Gamzee.

Kate: Yeah, the joker absolutely kins Gamzee. So I watched that trailer for the new joker movie and I was like “This looks really good” and then I logged online and all the worst people in the world were all like “This looks really good” and then I got really sad.

Aysha: Yeah.

Kate: You’re not allowed to like things that I also like.

Aysha: Yeah.

Kate: This is the fundamental problem with clowns, right? Is that to embrace clownery is to be associated with the Gamzees of the world.

Aysha: It’s like Fight Club, the point of Fight Club got so buried in the people who did not get it. Like all these frat boys love Fight Club because they think that it’s unironically presenting them with their world view when really it’s like: “This is garbage.”

Kate: Yeah you can only reclaim masculinity by punching each other in a basement. I started laughing because I was picturing a clown fight club, where they're—

Aysha: [gasps] Oh my God.

Kate: —beating each other with rubber mallets and shit.

Aysha: [muffled] Oh my God!

Kate: [laughs]

Aysha: This is our next game. Clown fighting game!

Kate: I feel like that’s sort of— That’s basically what ‘Whistles’ is, right? Like, it’s a circus that underground has sort of a horrible combat ring where the losers get eaten. You haven't read Whistles, cause you're—

Aysha: Guys I’m a fake fan.

Kate: You’re a fake Andrew fan. [laughs]

Aysha: Andrew, I got a lot of stuff to do, okay? I’m kind of busy.

Kate: And what do you mean an unfinished graphic novel about clown cannibalism isn’t at the top of your priority list? [laughs]

Aysha: [laughs] So far this Pesterquest episode is going great!

Kate: What the fuck did you think was gonna happen?

Aysha: [grunts] No. Whenever the two— I’m surprised neither of us brought up Eridan yet but, now I just did. Bam.

Kate: [groans]… So Volume 1 came up, MSPA reader is alive, finishing Homestuck. So I guess we see sort of a divergence from canon space. Actually no wait we don’t. ‘Coz in >[S] “MSPA Reader: mental breakdown” we never actually see them shoot themselves.

Aysha: That’s true.

Kate: So it seems like they decided against it, they went to go find Doc Scratch and then they fucked up everything as per usual.

Aysha: Initially we were gonna involve the stump and the gun but I feel like there’s already been enough graphic suicide scenes recently so we kinda just skipped that.

Kate: Yeah, That’s fair. It could have been like a Persona thing. 

Aysha: Yeah, could be.

Kate: [laughs] I can’t believe I just suggested that!

Aysha: They only shot themselves in the head in one game though.

Kate: Ok, well. That at least shows how much I know about anime. [laughs]

Aysha: It was pretty metal though.

Kate: It seems pretty metal. But MSPA reader instead went the mundane route of finding something in the hallway.

Aysha: Yeah, it's also easier—

Kate: Also is that a yonic thing? Are we in the era of yonic symbolism now?

Aysha: I think we’re getting there.

Kate: Yeah [laughs] Homestuck has been ruled by the tyranny of the dick for far too long.

Aysha: Yeah, well I mean, with Dirk in the narrative seat, I feel like that’s gonna keep going for at least a little while.

Kate: Oh fuck that guy.

Aysha: [laughs] He fucked off to space, right? Yeah, whatever.

Kate: So far I’ve enjoyed Pesterquest because so far it’s a Dirk-free Homestuck experience.

Aysha: It's a Dirk-free zone.

Kate: Pesterquest is a no-Dirk zone. [laughs]

Aysha: For now.

Kate: So for the first question, let’s talk about the origins. sordidCondition asks on discord: How/When was Pesterquest conceived?

Aysha: I think it was conceived on dms. Last December, right after we finished Friendsim. And we’re sitting, me and Andrew, and we’re like: “Okay, that went pretty well. Uh, should we do it again?”. Well obviously, everyone’s been kind of clamoring for a homestuck Friendsim. And People were doing fansims and stuff with all of their favourite characters and there was like, no reason that MSPA reader can’t hang out with all those crazy kids.

And after that, Andrew actually wrote the first script pretty early, before we even had a concept for it. And I kinda went back in and tied it into the main plot of Pesterquest which we have really yet to discover, I guess.

Kate: Yeah

Aysha: But yeah, I wrote the prologue and I wrote some stuff here and there, like I wrote the instant death ending with Dad.

Kate: [whispers] “Stern Fatherly Disapproval”

Aysha: That’s the worst. Yeah, and then we went to the team and was like “Hey, you guys wanna make another one?” And they were like “Yeah!” And that’s how we did that.

Kate: And so the second part of that question was “What was the process for finding writers and artists like? There are a few new names on the list this time— I’ve heard. I’ve been told that there might be some new writers.

Aysha: Mostly it was just people that I met through homestuck twitter, mostly. People who I’ve met through fandom, so I had a far smaller circle of writers to pull from in Friendsim ‘coz it was just kind of people that I knew so far. And then I met all these new people through Friendsim and there’s just a really talented group of fans out there, workin’ nowadays.

Kate: It’s true, It’s true. It’s like, I’m constantly looking over my shoulder like “Holy shit, these kids are so talented I gotta keep fuckin’ running!”

Aysha: God I know. I’m thirty and there’s all of these twenty-three year olds who write on the same level as I do and I’m like "Oh gosh, well…"

Kate: You’ve got experience

Aysha: Yeah that’s true.

Kate: And also the inherent superiority of sitting in the chair right now. For somebody to get to you, they have to pick you up out of the chair.

Aysha: Yeah, I’m in this chair. I’m pretty heavy.

Kate: You have an incumbency advantage.

Aysha: [laughs] Yeah, that’s true.

Kate: Zandraxofnebulon asks on discord: “What do you think about Pesterquest assuming to a certain degree that players have read Homestuck? Do you think that in the future there will come a point that the sheer volume of Homestuck content might become impossible to absorb for new fans and might become too difficult to keep a handle on for all but the most devoted? Should we be making more stuff as an entry point, without the requirement of having read/played previous content, to keep continuity balanced in a way?”

Aysha: Well, I kinda think that Homestuck in itself is already too much volume for anyone to get into [laughs].

Kate: Yeah, and yet people do it.

Aysha: It’s already too much! It’s been too much for years.

Kate: That has the same tenor to me of being like “Well how can I start reading comics when there’s been ninety years of Spiderman” or whatever. —I know it’s not ninety years, please don’t correct me. [laughs]

Aysha: Just pick one, buddy. I think I did write Pesterquest assuming that you’ve read Homestuck. I think that it would be very hard to go in completely cold with about anything. I feel like if you played Friendsim, though, and haven’t read Homestuck, then it would be fine. I feel like, you’d miss a lot but, y’know…

Kate: Yeah. And this is something I thought a lot about on Snowbound Blood, because y’know, vast Error is already 900 pages or something and it’s only gonna get longer and I was like, “Let’s give people another onboard spot. Where they can see how we’re doing in 2019 and get another way in”. Obviously, it’s enriched if you’ve read the comic itself. But, I think people can enjoy Pesterquest even if they are just getting on the Homestuck train. You know, Visual Novels and stuff are always more accessible—

Aysha: —and there’s significantly less fetch modus fuckery.

Kate: Yeah! And there’s significantly less fucking around in a room! Even though the John route is pretty much just fucking around in a room. [laughs]

Aysha: Yeah, God. People were complaining about the John route and I was like “Did you guys not remember Act 1?”

Kate: I saw a piece of feedback that was like, and I’m sure you enjoyed this one: “The Rose characterization was spot on but John just seemed way out of character.” [laughs]

Aysha: [laughing] Andrew wrote that, dumbass!

Kate: This new writer Andrew Hussie just has no handle on John Egbert at all.

Aysha: Y’know this young kid, this up-and-comer. I just thought it was very— it was peak Andrew with his writing, which is lots of words and not a lot of forward momentum.

Kate: Well there was an absolutely massive amount of religious symbolism in this one, which I found nice and juicy to just sink my incisors into— why am I doing this? [laughs]

Aysha:  [laughs]  Not that Andrew doesn’t do forward momentum, but usually his style of— let me just riff a little bit on Andrew’s writing style. Andrew’s plot movement style is usually mainly visual. Big plot events in Homestuck happen via either flashes or gifs. I think that his writing excels in character depth. That’s how you get to know the people, through talking to them.

Kate: A lot of times in Homestuck, you find out stuff happens because characters who have already internalized the event discuss it in the past tense.

Aysha: Right.

Kate: Which I think is very fascinating. But it’s very matter of fact, the way these things get advanced. Also I am absolutely certain that when the narrative text started talking about Lucifer, optimisticDuellist nutted. [laughs]

Aysha: [laughs] I think he came to me and talked to me a little bit about all the witch and wizard stuff in Rose’s route and I was like “Yup, this is peak— this is Taz bait.”

Kate: Yeah it’s so— sometimes you just write something and you’re like “This is Taz bait! This is great! This guy is gonna eat this up!’

Aysha: Might be Lucifer himself.

Kate: "I write for Taz." [laughs] I write for the lesbians and Taz only.

Aysha: Yeah! I feel like that’s a good demographic.

Kate: Yeah exactly. I write for one boy and every wlw in the world.

Aysha: [laughs]

Kate: Banjo-Kazooie asks on discord— First off, great name, Kazooie is my wife.— “Art for major characters must be really tricky to nail down, considering everyone has different interpretations of how they look. For Pesterquest, was there a lot of back and forth between the directors and artists on how a character should be drawn? Or were the artists given free rein on interpreting characters in whatever way they see fit?”

Aysha: Um… Yes [laughs]

Kate: [laughs]

Aysha: Yes to all of that, I guess? So yeah this was a— I’m gonna level with you guys— This was a thing that I thought about, a lot. And even me and you came to blows a couple of times on it. [laughs]

Kate: Yeah, it happens.

Aysha: As happens when you work with anybody on any creative project that you care about. So going into the project, I had fantasies of completely doing away with the sprite work as it currently stands. I wanted to give characters canon races and then I realized after talking to some people, that like, no this is a ten year old IP and I literally am not allowed to do that.

One of the rules laid down was that we have to keep the sprites as the canon Homestuck sprites. And even after knowing that I had to do that I was like, ok well now I basically I wanna let the artist draw the characters however they want and all of our sprite artists are people of color.

And I’m mixed race— I feel like most people know that. And then I started thinking about it and I had come up with races that I wanted to make the kids, and then I started to think about how kinda weird that was, that it was just gonna be my headcanon of what races the kids are, and how potentially loaded that is. And like sitting down and picking up these characters that have had headcanons for years and just kind of assigning them races is just like— opens up this whole— Could just get very problematic, is what I’m trying to say.

And I don’t wanna say that if we made Dave black, I don’t wanna erase some Latino kid’s headcanon of Latino Save. And at the same time, it’s gonna have— y’know I’ve always imagined Jake as Arab. I love Arab Jake, because I’m Arab. But then there’s the inherent, problematic-ness for making the kid who's obsessed with guns the Arab kid, y’know?

And then it came down to, y’know what, I’m gonna let the artists decide what they want the characters to look like. And that said, I don’t think John looks very white.

Kate: Mhm, No.

Aysha: Coz I know that there’s another question that was asked about how saying that Rose has blonde hair is affirming that she’s white. I don’t— that’s not true, my hair was dyed red when I was 13.

Kate: Yeah, I don’t know— I didn’t put that question in the outline because it’s solved by a simple fact of “Have you ever been in a store and walked in the hair dye aisle?” I don’t know if you’ve known that it’s very accessible. [laughs]

Aysha: Also, you’ll notice that her eyebrows are thick and dark, partly because it looks better.

Kate: Also so are Dave’s. [laughs]

Aysha: Yeah, yes. So basically... [sigh] I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that Homestuck does not have a rocky relationship with race.

Kate: It’s not your job to pretend it doesn’t, y’know.

Aysha: But I’m not gonna say that there’s no inherent— that there’s no issue with ‘aracial,’ scare quotes. Because aracial in a lot of people’s minds equals ‘white’. Just like, default body type to a lot of people equals ‘skinny’.

Kate: Yeah.

Aysha: ‘Coz that’s the world we live in. That’s what you see on TV. But I know that the initial intent behind the characters looking the way they do is that— and this was especially true in 2009, is that you don’t know what your internet friends look like.

Kate: I always think of them like, the platonic solid humans.

Aysha: Yes, they’re the platonic idea of kid, kind of.

Kate: Yeah!

Aysha: Just like Dad is the platonic ideal of a dad, even though most dads don’t smoke pipes nowadays.

Kate: Right and it’s like a visual shorthand—

Aysha: Right, exactly.

Kate: Every Homestuck character is built around using the fewest number of details possible to communicate what they are.

Aysha: Right. And that’s really hard when you, move from sprite work to like, anime-as-fuck-looking Visual Novels.

Kate: Yeah [laughs]

Aysha: So, we’re trying to walk the line of still keeping the native Homestuck visual language but also giving the kids, making them interesting to look at.

Kate: Mhmm.

Aysha: I think the two sprite artists we’ve seen so far have done a great job of that. I think they both look great and are very expressive.

Kate: Yeah!

Aysha: And it was a decision that had to be made and I’m confident that it was the right one but I know some people might not agree with that, I sympathize with that and I get why.

Kate: Yeah and I mean, you know, that’s also the thing about any decision you make in the Homestuck world is that, these characters have meant so much to people, and have been expressed in so many different ways for a decade, that I think it’s very easy to have a knee-jerk negative reaction when the thing isn’t exactly how you imagined it for the last decade.

Aysha: Right

Kate: And I want people to examine that dissonance and that feeling and I don’t want people to treat it as a discouragement for continuing to make the things that they want to see and interpret the characters the way that they want to see them.

Aysha: Oh right, absolutely not, I have retweeted a bunch of— recently, screenshot redraws with white Johns, with black Johns, with brown Johns, with I mean like—

Kate: With Junes— [laughs]

Aysha: Junes! Yes! There’s a lot of people who’ve been redoing the sprites as June which I love. Not you know— 'coz John and his mailman problems—

Kate: Yeah, right! John is just now discovering that somebody who says that they are a "mail" "man" might not be a "male" "man". [laughs] Actually true.

Aysha: [laughs] Yeah Andrew was like “I wrote this before the June thing.” And I was like, “I don’t— I don’t think you have to worry about it not coming through.”

Kate: The thing about Andrew’s writing is that it doesn’t take one specific headcanon for it to be absolu— “This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gender,” I say as I upturn the barbeque. [Laughs]

Aysha: [laughs] Right, and I gotta give Homestuck its props when I say that it’s been problematic with race, it’s always been pretty good at gender, for its time.

Kate: Homestuck and Problem Sleuth before were just absolutely drenched in gender.

Aysha: Yeah!

Kate: Like, basically every moment has some sort of intentional gendered symbolism to it. And there are characters whose entire purpose is to subvert fictional gender stereotypes.

Aysha: Creating a bisexual, intersex alien race to interact with teens from the internet is like, fucking inspired. [laughs]

Kate: Yeah it is. [laughs]

Aysha: Especially in 2009.

Kate: Yeah, y’know, right! And that’s what is part of what drew me to Homestuck and what kept me there for so long was like, just how fascinating it is to peel it apart from the gender angle and think about it. And the reason the popularity of the June headcanon, and then the magic Toblerone.

Aysha: [laughs]

Kate: You know, I think that all of us in the audience who are trans have had big feelings about Homestuck in the past. Even if it hadn’t coalesced on one character or another in particular. When I came into the epilogues I was… surprised by Roxy, in a way that— I hadn’t thought of Roxy as trans in *that* way before.

And I had— and what I think some people also had, and what I was talking about earlier, that knee-jerk reaction of “Hey, wait, that’s not right. That’s not how it is in my head!”

Aysha: Right.

Kate: You have two choices there, right? You can either fill your diaper online about it or you can get over yourself, because it’s a story and the character didn’t do the thing you wanted.

Aysha: Right. Or you could write DMAB Roxy fanfic, and that’s also fine. [laughs]

Kate: [laughs]

Aysha: Like that’s—

Kate: I personally choose not to do it and I dropped my Roxy is a trans woman thing, just because like, I don’t wanna take this moment where trans men got this explicit textual representation in Homestuck and be like “W-well what about me though…” [laughs]

Aysha: Yeah.

Kate: I think that’s boring. I obviously would love for there to be a transfeminine story in Homestuck, or Hiveswap, or the universe at large at some point.

Aysha: [laughs]

Kate: Just any- [laughs]

Aysha: Anyone besides Lup? From Adventure Zone.

Kate: [Yelling] Is that a Homestuck Universe?!

Aysha: That’s one other trans woman. [laughs]

Kate: Well I meant the Homestuck Universe,

Aysha: [laughs] Oh—

Kate: Not in general. [laughs] Yes, I am aware that trans women exist outside of Homestuck. But as of yet we have no evidence that they exist in it. [still laughing]

Aysha: Well, except Nervous Broad, right?

Kate: Yeah well, [laughs] Except the Nervous Broad and Hysterical Dame. Which are—

Aysha: [laughing] Great! Great representation!

Kate: Great representation! Well, you know I have a lot of thoughts about gender in Problem Sleuth that I’ll maybe talk about with you once you’ve actually read it. [still giggling]

Aysha: Oh yeah. Hahahaha. Jokes.

Kate: Aaaaa good. I’m sorry to roast you. [laughs]

Aysha: Maybe I’ll read it on stream or something.

Kate: Uh-huh, we could raise some money for… the charity for people shot by 20’s mobsters.

Aysha: [laughs]

Kate: [laughs] Um, fuckin’— So let’s talk about the John route. [sighs] Man, I love that kid.

Aysha: He’s a good kid.

Kate: [laughs] I just loved how immediately trusting they were of MSPA Reader. John and MSPA Reader, they got one brain cell to pass back and forth between the two of them.

Aysha: Yeah, the thing that I kept thinking with the screenshot when they’re behind the text box, watching the epilogue kids was that like “Share if you don’t think” meme.

Kate: [laughs] Yeah, the idiot express is on the way. [laughs] It’s— also to watch John— John is a massive assumer. John takes in a scene, immediately makes an assumption on that and then just sprints off with that assumption. That assumption either being that MSPA reader is a mailman, the glimpse of the future weird pyjamas means that he’s joined a travelling troupe of performers. [laughs]

Aysha: Yeah…

Kate: Like, John—

Aysha: “I hear those kids talking about English, maybe I’m teaching them. Maybe they speak a foreign language.”

Kate: [laughs] Like, John— John is very clever but he uses that cleverness to zero in on one idea and then just go one track, full steam ahead on that idea. An expert at compartmentalizing.

Aysha: Yeah. He’s very sassy and he’s very— And also I think John is a little— Like, he is not very good with strangers, is something he always is a little bit like... so when he starts riffing with Dave, he can give as good as he gets and like, with Rose. But with new people he’s always a little like “uh… how do I handle this?” Especially with women. [laughs]

Kate: Me too John! [laughs] John, around new people— This is funny what I’m about to say, but John, around new people, very much defaults into being the ‘straight man’.

Aysha: Yep.. [laughs]

Kate: Which is actually not a role that he’s super comfortable with. Like, he’s a jokester, he’s a bit of a bitch. There’s that constant struggle between trying to be normal and react to strange people normally with the actual internal desire to be weird as shit and constantly clown on people.

Aysha: Right, like, when your best friends are the Strilondes, sometimes you have to be the straight man.

Kate: [laughs] Yeah, it’s true. I mean, that’s the thing, is that John has that Kermit energy, where he’s surrounded by these figures that are weirder than him and somebody’s gotta keep the fucking show on the road.

Aysha: Yeah John would have been the class clown in any group besides a group with Dave and Rose in it.

Kate: Yeah [laughs] And, compared to like, the outright prickliness and meanness that the Derse kids can show, a lot of people underestimate how much John and Jade can be bitchy. [laughs]

Aysha: Oh yeah! [laughs] Oh yeah, John can get very nasty.

Kate: As can Jane and Jake. People underestimate the capacity of all four of them to be mean, because they’re much better at putting on a bubbly exterior about it.

Aysha: Right.

Kate: Or, y’know, an innocent face.

Aysha: I think that their writing is a little subtler than the Strilondes’ writing is. In the first read-through, I completely missed that John was so funny, because I was so busy just being overwhelmed by all of the personalities. But going back and reading it, he’s extremely funny and most of the time he’s acting like a dingus 'coz it’s funny.

Kate: Yeah exactly. [sighs] Like, that’s the thing, John isn’t stupid, but John knows— this is a comparison to Jake too— John knows that playing dumb is often very funny and very endearing.

Aysha: Right, Jake does it as a defence mechanism.

Kate: Yeah, and John just does it ‘coz it’s hilarious.

Aysha: Yeah.

Kate: John has an appreciation for actual comedy.

Aysha: Yes, he does. Y’know, all of the stuff he’s into, he likes Night— Which is like, this thirteen year-old kid from Seattle watching Night Court. [laughs] That’s very funny to me.

Kate: I loved these kids growing up precisely because I was like, the weird internet kid that had a bunch of older person interests, and that describes so many of the characters in Homestuck. There’s just constant jokes, that are not even that gettable by the actual age group that Homestuck is targeted at.

Aysha: Right, well it’s a story *about* kids. It’s never really been a story *for* kids.

Kate: No, and I think that creates a sort of conflict in the community where—

Aysha: I agree.

Kate: —every once in a while people can convince themselves that this is a story for kids. That notion is immediately disabused as soon as you look back and actually read any part of the story other than Hiveswap Act 1. But overall—

Aysha: It’s not even like, adult content. The themes are just very— [pretentious voice] It’s got some complex themes.

Kate: Uh-huh.

Aysha: [pretentious voice] You have to have a really high IQ to understand Homestuck. [laughs]

Kate: [laughs] On the 54th episode of a podcast about Homestuck, we say “Maybe there’s some depth to this comic!” [bursts out laughing]

Aysha: [Laughs as well]

Kate: Well, Let’s move onto the Rose route.

Aysha: Yay, my girl.

Kate: So Rose— Sort of introduce me to the Rose route. Tell me, what were your thoughts coming into it?

Aysha: Well my thoughts were, I wanted to do two routes. Both routes, good and bad ending were basically just about Rose’s relationship with her mother. It’s just that the bad ending is a little bit harder to spot. Coz the wizard thing has always been about Roxy, in my opinion.

Kate: Yeah.

Aysha: Yeah, Rose is a little bit interesting, you see, on the surface— I think people forget what fucking mess Rose is, because she constantly tries to make sure you know she’s not.

Kate: Her character’s defence mechanism is big vocabulary.

Aysha: She’s always been a disaster.

Kate: Yeah.

Aysha: And I, I don’t know. Deeply, I think I said something about “Wow, you’re so glad Rose is telling you about her gay wizard OCs. She seems so much more interested in them than she is in herself.”

Kate: Mhm.

Aysha: And that was like me, when I was a teenager, I was like, I would love to talk to you about my gay wizard OCs but I could not talk about myself.

Kate: And we see that in Rose’s introduction. That’s part of what I enjoy about Pesterquest so far; is it really allows us to explore the parts of these characters that we didn’t get to spend a lot of time with, what they were doing the moment before their lives got completely upended by this thing. This thing called... game.

Aysha: Yeah.

Kate: And like with Rose, she puts off this very intellectual figure and this, like, logic and reason kind of mindset, but is also obsessed with fantasy in all sorts of ways.

Aysha: Right. Rose is kind of like, what would a 13-year-old goth think is sophisticated?

Kate: Yeah!

Aysha: —is kind of how I wrote Rose. Which is good because I was a 13-year-old goth about seventeen years ago. [laughs] I think writing young Rose as opposed to writing older Rose is similar, except as young, she’s a little more insufferable, I think.

Kate: You’re preemptively answering a question by Cinomari, who asked, “what’s the difference between writing those two characters?”

Aysha: Yeah, right, I mean even in the epilogue she’s still up her own ass but it’s almost in a self referential way now. It’s just her brand. But even in the epilogue she continues to be ridiculous. She has spent like— Kanaya is just, so over her just languishing around the house.

Kate: She’s got very Victorian affliction.

Aysha: John comes in to find her passed out elegantly on the chaise longue or whatever.

Kate: Uh-huh.

Aysha: Which I’m sure she did for effect before he came in.

Kate: Right! That’s the thing

Aysha: [laughs]

Kate: She’s expert in— there’s this part of her that absolutely loves being the tragic woman dying of consumption in a penny dreadful.

Aysha: Right.

Kate: [laughs] Because she’s just kind of that bitch.

Aysha: Oh, she’s always been that bitch.

Kate: She's always been that bitch. One of the things I liked about the Rose route was your description of her sort of theatrical nature where she’s really constantly putting something on.

Aysha: Right, and she spends the first few acts of Homestuck doing that. Before the Broodfester tongues get her, she spends all that time making magic wands. and crystal balls, and being a wizard, and... [laughs]

Kate: [laughs] It’s funny—

Aysha: It’s very strange off all by herself…

Kate: And it’s interesting to me too because I think about that a lot in terms of what I see in the earlier acts as an almost envy from Rose towards Jade. Y’know Rose’s preoccupation of predicting the future and making crystal balls, et cetera, like witchy shit. And then this girl who’s always known the future because of just some clouds gets to be the witch, right? And I think that’s very interesting how Homestuck almost always gives what you want to somebody else and then makes you look at that other person and think about what that is.

Aysha: Yeah! I think Vriska even tells John that Sburb does that. Sburb doesn’t give you what— It gives you something to challenge you, so y’know it gives the goth the light planet and the light power, which is completely antithetical to everything she is.

Kate: Uh-huh! And I think it’s interesting though that Vriska said that because Vriska was not particularly challenged by being a thief of light.

Aysha: Oh no, I agree.

Kate: I wanna be fair, Vriska’s challenges came from many, many other angles

Aysha: That’s true. I mean 'coz I think that ideally if Rose was going to choose her own— I think she would wanna be Void. Because Rose’s aesthetic is shrouded in mystery but then her power is literally “I know everything”. Like, that’s so boring for Rose!

Kate: Right! She’s someone obsessed with the mysteries, of the unknowable, of the Eldritch.

Aysha: Right. And then Roxy who’s just like very matter of fact and like “eh…” Is the one who gets Void, the one whose power is literally to make something out of nothing.

Kate: Yeah and you know, we got to explore pre-Scratch Roxy a little bit more in this route.

Aysha: [chuckles]

Kate: Which as a milf connoisseur I obviously appreciate. Also you managed to sneak in a reference to a 19th century short story.

Aysha: Yeah! “The Lady or the Tiger” I was initially gonna call it that before we decided to go with quotes. I guess they do say “The Lady or the Tiger” in it.

Kate: Yeah.

Aysha: But I think “The Lady or the Tiger” is— If you don’t know what it is, you can just Wikipedia it.

Kate: Yes.

Aysha: But it’s like basically a short story about a king who, the way he decides on someone’s guilt is he does a game of chance so he puts the accused in front of two doors. Behind one is a beautiful woman that they can marry but behind the other is a tiger.

Kate: Mmhm.

Aysha: It’s just a fifty-fifty chance whether they get married or they’re devoured.

Kate: Uh-huh. And if you don’t wanna read the short story, there’s also the They Might Be Giants version where there’s no man and the lady has laser-eye vision.

Aysha: Yeah that’s also— I mean, yeah that’s a good one too. So the point of it is like, it’s an unsolvable problem. And I think that that’s what Homestuck is? Kind of? An unsolvable problem. And here, we’re kind of doing a different work— We’re picking another door now. So maybe Homestuck proper was the lady, and now we’re picking the tiger. But who knows, right?

Kate: So are you saying that MSPA got tiger?

Aysha: He may have— They may have got tiger.

Kate: [laughs] I found that one of the things that was the most illuminating to me of course was that we got to see John and Dave immediately use “he” pronouns for Reader and have Rose, who had already at the age of 13 in 2009 written a fictional character that used “they”, like, neutral pronouns.

Aysha: Yeah, Calmasis.

Kate: Yeah, using that for Reader, and the girls’ chat using it for Reader.

Aysha: Right, and yeah! I thought it would be completely unrealistic for these two kinda-edgelord 13-year-olds in 2009 to default to they/them pronouns.

Kate: Yeah!

Aysha: [Brief pause] So… yeah. I saw people being upset by Reader being misgendered. I mean, also, I don’t know if I— Reader is pretty genderfluid. So I don’t particularly think it would even bother Reader. But yes, they are canon they/them pronouns.

Kate: Yeah, and I mean y’know, when Reader has worn clothes, they have all been either neutral clothes or very feminine clothes.

Aysha: Right.

Kate: [Brief pause] Man, I love MSPA Reader.

Aysha: I mean like, are there real masculine clothes?

Kate: I mean, yes. Because you see the boys, you see like John and Dave make these very masculine outfits.

Aysha: Oh, like suits.

Kate: Yeah.

Aysha: Yeah, Yeah I guess the reason why MSPA tends towards femme is because I tend towards femme. [laughs] And I was writing a lot of their outfits. But yeah, maybe we have to put them in a suit at some point.

Kate: That’d be choice. I would—[laughs]… That little orb would absolutely slay in a suit. [laughs]

Aysha: Ah, I love my orb…

Kate: I love that orb!

Aysha: That's a good orb.

Kate: They’re really going through it right now!

Aysha: Yeah.

Kate: I guess they’re sort of always going through it. They’re really is no rest for the reader [laughs] of MSPA, which is a metaphor for how we’re being constantly tortured by Homestuck.

Aysha: Right. You’re here forever.

Kate: [laughs] But you know there was a lot of pathos about not remembering their friends over the first two volumes.

Aysha: Yeah…

Kate: Sad. [chuckles]

Aysha: Yeah, on a story level it would be very hard to navigate this plot if Reader remembered everything. Because the first thing Reader would do would be like: “OH HEY! Let me tell you everything that happened in Homestuck”. And then John would be like “What?”

Kate: Let’s speedrun this shit. Sburb Any% no depression run. [laughs]

Aysha: [laughs] Remix, yeah. But yeah, when I think Rose’s home life, what is it? Alcohol and wizards.

Kate: Alcohol and wizards. [Sighs] Mom’s drinking was one of those things that at the start of Homestuck— both Mom’s drinking and Dave’s abuse—

Aysha: —The assorted dickbutt?

Kate: Yeah, the assorted dickbutt. And Jade’s lack of a parental figure at all. These things were sort of treated in this textually silly fashion, like encouraging you to go “Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha. What?” and to prompt that discomforting reaction of not knowing how to react to something, so you laugh.

Aysha: Right.

Kate: And I think for the first— For years, the fandom, this comic, took that dissonance and took that discomfort with these characters' situations and they just tried to keep laughing at it, and made Bro and Mom these very silly figures. You see that in the initial characterization of both Roxy and Dirk, where Roxy’s drinking at first is sort of treated as this silly, fun, funny thing. Like her typos are like funny jokes.

But with this route, you got to immediately grapple with, “well how does Rose actually feel about this? How does her alcoholic single mom actually impact her life?” She got real raw with it. You got Rose Lalonde’s armor off, which is a skill of MSPA Reader.

Aysha: Right.

Kate: [grunts]

Aysha: It’s pretty easy to be honest with a cardboard cutout.

Kate: With a friend-shaped being.

Aysha: Yeah… I thought a lot about Mom when I was writing this, just because, obviously, not a good mother figure.

Kate: Yeah.

Aysha: Bad mom vibes. But also, thinking about and knowing that to a certain extent, the guardians probably knew what was going to happen.

Kate: Yeah.

Aysha: And in knowing that, you can kind of sympathize, though not excuse, Roxy’s alienation from her daughter, knowing that she is going to lose her.

Kate: Yeah and Roxy also— obviously we don’t know how this ends but Roxy had previously lost a daughter that was in her care as well! Like Joey just disappeared out from under her.

Aysha: Yeah, Yep.

Kate: So that also, presumably, impacted her feelings towards Rose. And of course out of all the guardians, Mom most obviously knew it was coming; she had a whole lab dedicated to Sburb, and tracking its impacts.

Aysha: Yeah and like with Bro, a lot of what he did was probably preparing Dave for the game but that doesn’t excuse it. It's a cool moment of—

Kate: It’s like Dirk’s philosophy in the epilogues, which is “Conflict is necessary for character development and character growth and for anything to mean anything.”

Aysha: Right and yeah, Bro did a terrible job, but from his perspective he thinks he was helping. But the stuff that makes you able to get through Sburb are not the same stuff that makes you able to grow into a healthy adult, with healthy relationships.

Kate: Yeah, it basically wrecked everybody.

Aysha: Yeah, so —

Kate: It’s— [sighs] It’s a game that directs your development as a person but in a kind of nefarious way.

Aysha: Yeah it’s like, what if you were brought up to win a video game rather than have a life.

Kate: And it sort of deconstructs this idea that you see, of, what are the protagonists of our video games like, right? They become these people who face incredible challenges and they have to respond to them with violence almost all the time. And the figures — The NPC figures in this game are stupid little salamanders that don’t mean anything, right? And the game tasks you with caring about them, in a way that I don’t think is particularly effective at building empathy.

Aysha: Right. The only person who’s ever managed to deeply empathize with their denizens was Arcjec Vast Error. [laughs]

Kate: Mhmm. Arcjec just loves his little snakes. To be fair, John also cared about the salamanders a lot.

Aysha: And he did go and live with the salamanders in the epilogue.

Kate: He did.

Aysha: He felt most at home with them.

Kate: And that’s interesting to think about, in terms of John’s ability to ignore depression for 10 years, and compartmentalization, like, John preferred the company of these one-note NPC figures.

Aysha: Right. Everybody’s issue with the epilogues is pretty much: “I am going to ignore my problems until they go away. Oh no. They didn’t go away.” It’s like how Dave and Karkat can live together for seven years and never even hold hands.

Kate: Mhmm..

Aysha: It’s just like, we can pretend it’s not there and everything will be fine.

Kate: Yeah. The status quo becomes extraordinarily appealing when you have temporary comfort. When you’re used to being hurt, it is very easy to settle into a routine that doesn’t hurt, even if it’s not fulfilling.

Aysha: Which is why I think that Karkat is the one who systematically kills it through both routes in the Epliogue; because he’s the one who is not afraid of conflict, He thrives on it.

Kate: “Imma go instigate.”

Aysha: Yeah exactly.

Kate: [laughs] “I gotta get shit poppin’.”

Aysha: Yeah! That’s Karkat.

Kate: [laughs] J.R. Hyde asks on Discord, “From the first decision in Rose's route, neither choice leads directly to a bad end. How did you decide to write it that way, and from how early on in the writing process was that planned?”

Aysha: Pretty much when I sat down to write it, I just— I dunno, It was less of a story convention and more of just like “Oh this would be cool, if there was no bad ending. It’s just a longer end.”

Kate: Mhmm

Aysha: Just because I’ve messed with the formula before. Like with Chixie’s route having three good ends, or two good ends, or whatever. I just thought: “What if this didn’t have an instant death ending?” and when your character can literally pop in and out of existence and go anywhere, that is easy.

Kate: Yeah, I’m gonna have to imagine that some of the writers are going to take very unusual approaches to structuring their routes.

Aysha: Yeah.

Kate: Y’know obviously it’s interesting to see, as we talked about the first time you were on the show, when Friendsim started, it was very by the books before being broken down, right? Everyone was sort of trying to find their legs and wanted to stick to the formula for a little bit. And that also fits with how Homestuck started, right?

Aysha: Yeah.

Kate: Like the first character introductions started are all pretty much the same set of motions and the same sort of silly gags, and it repeats and repeats until it starts getting weirder and weirder each time, and then eventually breaks completely. And Pesterquest is a game that starts much more confidently in its knowledge, like: “Oh, we know what we’re doing here now.” [laughs]

Aysha: Yep. We’ve been down this road.

Kate: We know some lore. [laughs]

Aysha: [laughs] Yeah. MSPA Reader is just so mad that the Epilogues were so unsatisfying there at the end, that they just fuckin’ yeeted themselves into the story.

Kate: Yeah! They didn’t get mad at Homestuck, they got even.

Aysha: [laughs]

Kate: This is the message. [laughs] Let’s see here— We’re almost done here. You’ve been sort of elucidating your process for writing Rose the entire time, but let’s condense it into a set of principles. @girlsanddavekat asked on twitter, “tips for writing Rose?”

Aysha: Uh.. I don’t know— What I would do is, I would come up with a big word, an unnecessarily large word for something, and then I’ll be like: “Lemme make sure if I’m using that correctly.” And then I’m like: “Wait, I will use it even if it’s not correct.” [laughs]

Kate: Mhmm

Aysha: [chuckles] Because Rose, I feel like she could just play anything off because her confidence is so— Her outward confidence is so much. So basically just act like you swallowed a dictionary, is my first piece of advice.

Kate: Mhm.

Aysha: And also, we’ve all— not all, but many of us have been sad... gay... wierdos, sitting in our room... trying to be cooler than we are, and that’s just, y’know, I have a deep well of that. [laughs]

Kate: Mhmm… I think that Rose is also constantly probing for weaknesses in the people that she’s talking to.

Aysha: Yup.

Kate: Under the guise of psychotherapy often.

Aysha: Right.

Kate: But she amasses conversational weaponry, just in case it becomes necessary.

Aysha: She maneuvers Reader into a position for them to call her out on the wizard thing and then gets mad.

Kate: Yeah!

Aysha: Because she’s like “Hey I hate wizards, look at all my wizard fic.”

Kate: Yeah! [laughs] Y’know—

Aysha: It’s a wizard cry for help,

Kate: Yeah, exactly. This is something that I always think about— this is something that I think about with Lunar Sway, where I find Derse characters are almost always wanting something other than what they’re saying and like, playing a different angle. Whereas Prospit characters are often— pretty much want exactly what they’re saying but they’re often extremely awkward at expressing it.

Aysha: Yes. I’d say that that’s probably accurate.

Kate: [laughs] That’s my general shorthand for thinking about it, I really do keep that in mind when I’m writing. Partially because when I, fuckin’ scuba dove back into the Homestuck fandom, the Extended Zodiac was one of the newest things so, thanks for that.

Aysha: Oh yeah.

Kate: [laughs]

Aysha: You’re welcome.

[Outro music begins]

Kate: Well, Yeah! That’s our show! You can find this show at perfectlygenericpodcast.com, on iTunes, Spotify, Google-play Store, Overcast, wherever you get your podcasts. This show is listener supported and I wanted to thank our Skylark Patrons [names]… and Zack.

Aysha: AAAA Zack!

Kate: Zaaack! We love you Zack! [laughs] Let’s see… You and I and Cro are gonna be at a live show in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. October 26th at The Pit in Chapel Hill.

Aysha: Yeah!

Kate: That’s a ticketed event. You can go get tickets at pgenpod.com/live. There’s a link right there. I am— I am mega excited. It’s gonna be fun, we’re gonna have a lot to talk about that day, y’know the Homestuck renaissance is alive and real and I just— I love seeing you guys, I can’t wait, uh…

Aysha: Yeah…

Kate: [laughs] You know, as I’ve mentioned last week on the show, I’m gonna be doing, fewer shows in the future. I want other voices to do— I want you to hear from other voices as much as possible but imam keep doing live shows because I love meeting people. And uh, let’s see here… Next week: Jennifer Giesbrecht joins us to talk about her new novel “The Monster of Elendhaven”—

Aysha: [gasps in excitement] Oh my God!!! Guys It’s so good! I’m obsessed with it.

Kate: I got a review copy, I gotta read it, and I’m gonna sit down and start reading it right after we get done here. I can’t wait to talk about it. We’re also gonna talk about her work on the Homestuck Epilogues, so I’m really excited for that episode. Y’know, the Homestuck Epilogues happened like, six and a half months ago and you are still the only one who wrote any part of it who’s come on this show to talk about it. [laughs]

Aysha: [bursts out laughing away from the mic] I’m so glad that Jenn is coming on the show, I didn’t know that. Jenn is awesome!

Kate: Yeah, I’m really excited to talk to her. And let’s see, You can find me on twitter.com/gamblignant8. My main got suspended and I guess I’m just never getting it back. Due to my phone number— My phone number got added to a different account for a podcast and then I just couldn’t reassign it and then they locked me out and now they’re just never giving me my account back. So now I’m just— my main is gamblignant8, I guess. [laughs]

Aysha: I mean, as it always should have been.

Kate: Yeah, it’s true. We knew where this was going a while ago. Aysha, where can folks find you?

Aysha: Oh, I’m on twitter @ayshaufarah. I have a website which is just ayshaufarah.com, has a lot of my writing. I had a story come out this week in “Uncanny Magazine”. It is a queer retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I think that you could buy the issue now for four bucks or you can wait until October 1st when it would be up on the website for free.

Kate: Mhmm… I can’t wait. Also please contribute to Aysha’s Patreon because then you get to join her Discord server, which is a PvP enabled zone.

Aysha: Oh my god. [sighs]

Kate: [laughs]

Aysha: That is a… It’s a demilitarized zone.

Kate: Yeah it is effectively— It really is! It’s Camp David for Homestuck.

Aysha: Yeah we really— we got an eclectic bunch in there, lemme just say.

Kate: [laughs]

Aysha: Well thanks so much for having me on!

Kate: Oh thank you! See you next week!

Aysha: [faint laughing] See ya!

[Outro]