Episode 13: TH3 T3R3Z1 3P1SOD3

Chelsea joins Kate for a discussion of Terezi Pyrope. Topics include guilt, licking walls, ASMR, “you don’t need him,” internal emptiness, and John Mulaney.

Listen to this episode at https://perfectlygenericpodcast.com/updates/episodes/13

Transcript
Kate: The Perfectly Generic Podcast contains spoilers, occasional adult language, and Vriska. You've been warned.

[intro]

Chelsea: ...Yes. This is just—it's free ASMR.

Kate: It is! The Perfectly Generic Podcast is free ASMR, and this is—

Chelsea: Oh my God.

Kate: —the thirteenth episode of it, and we're just starting right now.

Chelsea: Gotta do like MBMBaM, when they did... episode. A total—an ASMR Homestuck podcast

Kate: Yeah, yeah.

Chelsea: [Laughs]

Kate: [In a soothing, quiet voice] A young man stands in his bedroom, it is the 13th of April—

Chelsea: [In a whisper] Today we're gonna—

Kate: —2009.

[Both laugh]

Chelsea: [Whispering] Today we're gonna talk about Gamzee.

[More laughing]

Chelsea: [Whispering] This is the clown episode, also the ASMR episode.

Kate: [Whispering] Quickly retrieve arms... Quickly retrieve arms from magic chest.

[Even more laughing]

Kate: Okay. You already have arms, numbnuts!

Chelsea: And then you just start tapping. [Laughing]

Kate: So we're starting a little loose, and audience, listeners? You've stuck with me for 12 goddamn episodes; this is the 13th. And so in celebration—

Chelsea: Woo!

Kate: —and the fact that I'm recording at night instead of my usual ungodly morning hour which I use to catch my guests off-guard.

Chelsea: [Laughs]

Kate: I am a little tipsy, this is the Perfectly Generic Podcast... happy hour edition, I guess. That's a really stupid thing that I just said.

Chelsea: Woohoo. [laughing]

Kate: but anyway, fucking... Chelsea is a wonderful guest, who is deigning us with her presence here tonight. Chelsea, legislacerator on tumblr.

Chelsea: Thank you. Woohoo!

Kate: Welcome to the show, thank you for coming on.

Chelsea: I'm so glad to be here, I'm actually really honoured that I was even asked, so I was like, ooh, okay. I mean, this has kind of like, always been the sort of thing I wanted to do. I'm just like the kind of person, like I have so many good things to say. People need to hear this. And other people are like 'do they?' and I'm like yeah! They really do.

Kate: Yeah they do, that's why I have a podcast, because I want people to listen to what I have to say about every inane subject.

Chelsea: [unintelligible] ...honestly, podcasts are the ideal medium. Look I get like...that makes sense.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely

Chelsea: [unintelligible]

Kate: So whenever someday new comes on the show, I sort of always ask them like, what is your journey with MSPA, like how did you get to Homestuck? And how did you fall in so deep to the point that you are now on a podcast talking about it?

Chelsea: I started reading Homestuck about... oh my God, I guess it must have been 8 years ago now. I always date when I started-ish to when I first ordered merchandise from WhatPumpkin which is in March of 2011, so somewhere in that vicinity, and I started reading because I was on a forum—which for all you youths, that was how we communicated back in the day—and they were Final Fantasy forums. And a bunch of my friends there started reading Homestuck. And this sounds fake, but I'm serious, I asked my friend, because she was like yeah, the trolls, which was the arc that was happening, Hivebent, y'know it was very popular. And y'know, she—

Kate: I've heard of trolls yes.

Chelsea: —she told me, like y'know, trolls.

Kate: Yeah!

Chelsea: But, she was telling me they're all based on zodiac signs and I'm a Scorpio, so I was like "well is the Scorpio troll, like, cool?" And she was like "yeah!" And I was like, "is she? She's like well she's kind of like not good, but she's cool." And I was like, "is she gay?" And that was the question and friend was like "actually yeah" and I was like fuck I gotta read this right now.

Kate: Wait, how does your friend know that in 2011?

Chelsea: Because of the scene with Kanaya. [unintelligible] Remember Kanaya had given her the dress and they were really close friends, remember, they were moirails?

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: and it turned out Kanaya was in love. And so my friend was like, there's some implication, y'know what I mean, it wasn't—

Kate: Yeah, uh huh.

Chelsea: Listen, she was trying to talk me into a longass webcomic.

Kate: Okay fair, you gotta give the scraps, that was all we had back then!

Chelsea: It was! But it was true though, back then we had the scenes of Vriska and Kanaya and that... some kind of implication, that there was something going on there. So she actually was telling the truth. Kanaya was the first, she did all of that. She threw the first brick at Stonewall.

Kate: She did, Kanaya Maryam threw the first brick at Stonewall.

Chelsea: She did.

Kate: So you got in from the, like, shreds of gay content. So presumably you were thrilled with the fact that there literally no non-gay content by the end.

Chelsea: Oh my God, I mean, let me tell you, it was like the only—I remember saying this a couple of years ago, obviously I wouldn't consider Homestuck like a perfect work of media. But the fact that it was that gay was like, it was like it was a gift. I mean, and I'm serious, like back in the day, like you really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for gay content. I mean seriously like, you didn't have a lot. I mean, there was just nothing to work with, so it was really cool that not only was I gay; I got into Homestuck because I was gay and let me tell you it wasn't immediately gay obviously, y'know, I watched Daverezi and JohnVriska and all these things happen but I didn't hate it then. I mean it was still good, but the fact that it managed to get gayer was like really cool.

Kate: Yeah, and it ended up settling into this place where it was this genuinely—like, I know it sounds so silly, because this is a very silly comic, but it was a genuinely revolutionary piece of popular media to be that gay.

Chelsea: Yeah! It really was!

Kate: Like, that was genuinely courageous, it was genuinely well-earned and it was genuinely written very well.

Chelsea: Absolutely.

Kate: And it was very on purpose, and that's extremely admirable.

Chelsea: Right, right, I mean, no, it's interesting too because I was telling Kate—I keep bringing up my age, but y'know I'm 27, now everyone knows. But man, you really... it's been a long time coming to have media this gay. I mean even other things like Steven Universe and those other pieces of media that have gay stuff, that's really new. It really is and it's all within the last like, 5, 7, maybe 10 years. I mean, growing up I didn't have anything like Homestuck at all.

Kate: Yeah. And you look at a lot of the media that's like that, that's suffused with you know, gayness. And some of it draws direct inspiration from Homestuck. I mean, y'know—

Chelsea: Oh absolutely.

Kate: Both the Craggs worked on Homestuck before working on Steven Universe.

Chelsea: Yeah! I think about that a lot too. It really was kind of this undercurrent. And a lot of more popular media and even Undertale—I mean it didn't necessarily draw from—I mean I guess it did draw inspiration from Homestuck, but there's that familial connection there that's really interesting. There's a lot of really heartfelt pieces of popular media that come from that same, like, line of thought and that same inspiration. So it's really cool! It is. It's really neat.

Kate: Yeah. Like, so in sports, there's this concept of the coaching tree, which is—

Chelsea: [Laughs]

Kate: —So if you have an individual coach's assistants that go on to become coaches of their own, like the legacy they lead, that's called their coaching tree. And Homestuck's coaching tree is huge and it's only to get bigger and more influential.

Chelsea: Yeah!

Kate: Because there were so many collaborators on this project. And y'know there's like Aysha Farah got hired to write for Starship Iris, the fiction podcast, the sci-fi podcast.

Chelsea: That's so cool.

Kate: Yeah, after writing a significant chunk, I guess, most of Hiveswap Friendsim. And y'know, these sort of things are happening. The folks that collaborated on music or visuals or writing for Homestuck and Hiveswap are like... it's only going to get more influential from here. It is genuinely a titanic thing. So, y'know.

Chelsea: Yeah, absolutely. And y'know, there's like an even larger, unsourced sort of, like nobody would make this connection unless you knew them for a long time, but there's a lot of media creators who didn't even professionally work on Homestuck, but got their 'in' to creating or to writing or to being in any kind of fandom before creating their own works, through Homestuck.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely.

Chelsea: I mean, I know so many people who like, even if they didn't work on Homestuck itself, they started creating because of Homestuck, and from there they became professional content creators. Or y'know, whatever it is that they do now. It's just really interesting. It really was this strange and very powerful thing.

Kate: Yeah. And y'know, there's like multiple published novelists, who started writing Homestuck fanfiction, like Arkady Martine

Chelsea: Hey y'know. Margaret Atwood read Homestuck, which I thought was the coolest fuckin' thing I've ever heard of, like that's so funny to me. She read Homestuck and she stans Vriska. Anybody who doesn't believe this, we will provide the link, it's very real.

Kate: Stanning Vriska makes you a better writer, that is a genuine fact. And by the way, we got our government-mandated Vriska mentions like way out of the way, like super early. There will obviously be more, because, as we're going to get to, the topic of this episode is...

Kate & Chelsea: Terezi!

Kate: Yes! So you know, Terezi's a pretty good character.

Chelsea: She's the best character. Like, oh, she's the best, she's one of the best characters in this comic. And like, I think that, y'know we were talking earlier about I was talking about 2-part episodes for certain characters. I definitely think like, Rose, Dave, Dirk, lot of the Strilondes, are definitely like... shit, you could make five podcast episodes about them and not even scratch the surface. But the same is true of like, especially Terezi and Vriska. They're just very, very complicated characters. And emotionally, they serve a very important role in Homestuck.

Kate: Yeah, and we're also going to have to circle back on all these characters after the epilogue ruins all of us.

Chelsea: Exactly! Exactly, I can't wait. I personally am waiting on the day.

Kate: I am so nervous.

Chelsea: This political science major is just wasting time.

Kate: Uh huh.

Chelsea: 'Til Homestuck finally has the epilogue, and then I'll be satisfied.

Kate: My day job, this podcast even, it's all just wasting time. I'm just waiting to read the Homestuck epilogue.

Chelsea: Every morning I wake up and I'm like, when will the epilogue be here? [sighs]

Kate: I fear it. I fear it, I do.

Chelsea: I do too!

Kate: I fear it like the arrival of God.

Chelsea: Right, yeah, it's like y'know, you've settled comfortably into Death of the Author and then you realise that he's still out there, he's going to be writing something

Kate: Oh, he's very still out there.

Chelsea: Yeah I know. In the shadows, where you least expect him.

Kate: Uh huh. Yeah. So Terezi is... God, how do we even begin? Terezi is maybe the most important character in Homestuck.

Chelsea: She really is. I'll never forget, I wanna say it was Shelby Cragg who made a post, and I tried to find this post numerous times, can't find it. But it was on tumblr, and she said like, if Homestuck was like a love story, it would be about Vriska and Terezi. And there's like this whole undercurrent of Homestuck's story that revolves around the two of them. And so much of the plot is like directly done by Terezi—I mean obviously like, parts of Vriska's arc are entirely determined by Terezi. But like, Terezi took the narrative by the balls, and she was like fuck all of this, you're all incompetent, this is what we're doing.

Kate: [Laughs]

Chelsea: And it was insane! And it worked! And it was like weirdly metatextual and insanely in-character. And she's like—there's so many different ways to approach the understanding her character, like the role that she played in Homestuck.

Kate: Mhm. So we should start with her introduction.

Chelsea: Her introduction.

Kate: We should start with what we know about her at the start, which is sort of as Dave's "patron" troll.

Chelsea: Yeah and very we-[unintelligible] One of my favourite early Terezi conversations —[laughing]—is the one she has with John, where she acts like deliberately weird and John is like "hahaha" and she's like "oh you would laugh at a blind girl? Okay. OKAY."

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: And it's so funny because even John—and I feel like John is more quick on his feet than people give him credit for—and even he was like okay, no, no I wasn't doing that and she was like I'm going to slit your throat.

Kate: Yeah yeah, "John, why would you laugh at a blind girl? You have no idea how much you disgust me. You're a total disgrace to the field of ectobiology. If we ever meet, I am going to cut your throat..."

Kate & Chelsea: "and listen to you bleed while I smell you die." [Laughing]

Chelsea: And it's funny because I know that, and I think Hussie mentions it in the book too, I was just reading through the most recent of the Homestuck books and he mentioned I think on his Formspring as well and I know Kate that you've read a lot of his Formspring as well which I really like because I've read it all many times. Hit or miss, some of the things that Hussie says.

Kate: Oh boy, for sure

Chelsea: Yeah, but it's an interesting wealth of information. And he does talk about how Karkat and even Kanaya, they weren't really good at the job that they were given, Sollux didn't particularly want to do it, but Terezi was very good at it. And so was Vriska, but I don't know how intentionally good at it Vriska was, I think she's just an infuriating person, but she's great at what—She's great at trolling. But Terezi's very good at it, and I think that actually tells us a lot about her as a character, like she isn't—unlike Vriska, she's not accidentally good at this—she's very good at it because she's very clever. And she's very manipulative when she needs to be. Which doesn't make her a bad person, it's just a talent that she has, and we see that very early on in the comic. Before we're even introduced to her, we know this about her, so when we do meet her, we realise how eccentric she is.

Kate: Oh for sure.

Chelsea: She's a very strange girl.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: And the funniest thing to me about how eccentric she is—because y'know you meet her and you see all of her scalemates, her chalk drawings on the wall. And y'know, she likes justice. I wish I had her introduction page pulled up in front of me.

Kate: I have it. Do you want me to go ahead and hit you up with that reading?

Chelsea: Thank you, yes. Hit me up with that! Actually message it to me as well, because I wanna take a look at it. Because I always go off of memory, because I've read it so many times. [laughs]

Kate: "Your name is TEREZI PYROPE. You are pretty enthusiastic about dragons. But you have a PARTICULAR AFFECTION for their COLORFUL SCALES, which you gather and use to decorate your hive." That never got explored further by the way.

Chelsea: I know, it was one of those dead ends again.

Kate: Uh huh. "Though you live alone, deep in the woods, you surround yourself with a variety of plushie pals known as SCALEMATES. You often spend your days with them in rounds of LIVE ACTION ROLE PLAYING. You used to engage in various forms of MORE EXTREME ROLEPLAYING with some of your other friends before you had an accident."

Chelsea: Other friends, Other friends, that means Vriska.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Continue.

Kate: You take an interest in justice, holding particular fascination for ORCHESTRATING THE DEMISE OF THE WICKED."

Chelsea: Aha.

Kate: Uh huh. "You have taken up study of BRUTAL ALTERNIAN LAW, and surround yourself with legal books. You have no need for copies printed in TROLLBRAILLE, because you can SMELL AND TASTE THE WORDS. You hope one day to join the honorable ranks of the LEGISLACERATORS. Your trolltag is gallowsCalibrator and you SP34K W1TH TH3 NUM3R4LS TH3 BL1ND PROPH3TS ONC3 US3D. You are presently the leader of the RED TEAM, poised to begin a mysterious game with 5 other friends, in direct competition with another 6 of your friends, comprising the BLUE TEAM."

Chelsea: "What will you do?"

Kate: "What will you do?" What will you do? Well, as it turns out, what she does is quite a fucking lot.

Chelsea: Right? God. The funniest thing, I think, is y'know, obviously we're introduced to Terezi and she's very eccentric and she's also very morbid, which I think a lot of the comic is morbid, so it's kinda difficult—Y'know I remember actually, sidenote, I remember I was telling you earlier today, my first update, was when Tavros died and Terezi was investigating his body and a lot of people were outraged. They were like he just died, he went through all that awful shit with Vriska, how could she do this? And for me it was funny. Like it was morbid humor. That's a lot of what Terezi is. She's just equal parts caring and empathetic as she is just really morbid and funny. Like, it's just something about her and eccentricity is a huge part of this girl, like we were saying with the dragon scales. We never really go back to that, but we can assume Terezi does all kinds of weird shit we don't hear about.

Kate: Yeah. She licks walls—

Chelsea: But—she licks walls, that tells you enough. But she's also later in the comic—she's also like the only sane man, or only straight man, you know like the trope where everyone else is totally batshit and she seems to be played pretty straight.

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: like—I remember this scene, again I wish I had this on hand, but it was when John shows up. All the trolls were there acting absolutely insane. I believe Karkat was screaming because of, I think the bucket.

Kate: Karkat was just having a mental breakdown.

Chelsea: He's having a complete episode. Sollux is being weird. Kanaya—I think Kanaya was clown-hunting at that point. Everyone was being super weird and Terezi—"I am so sorry that we're being like this. I promise we're usually a lot cooler than this." And John was like, "are you?" And she's like, "No. No we are not." [Laughs] But it's just funny! She had this level of self-awareness, and you know what I mean, she in a lot of ways is like less embarrassing than Karkat or Vriska, like she has this sense of like—she almost has a level of like, social talent or interacting with people that the other kids in the comic don't.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely.

Chelsea: You know she does have great social skills, even though you wouldn't think it, because she's so weird. But it's definitely a thing that carries you through this comic is like she's great at interacting with people, and that ties back into her being manipulative and again not in a bad way, but she's really really good with people.

Kate: And it sort of embodies what I think is a core theme of this comic, is that like, the self that you determine is the ideal self. And it is the one that is going to lead you to the best outcome in your life. And Terezi, from the very start, is determined by herself. She grew up in the woods, she made up her entire own personality.

Chelsea: Yeah!

Kate: She doesn't live under the yoke of external definitions of self to the degree that nearly every other character in this comic does. She still struggles with it, to be clear. She struggles with it first in her conception of justice and then in comparison to her ancestor/dancestor, later in the work.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Kate: She still has challenges, she's not challenge-free, in fact she faces just as many if not more challenges than most every other character in the comic. But she faces them with a self which is like unimpeded by someone else defining it.

Chelsea: Exactly. And you know, the interesting thing though, that's such a strength, but it also is kind of a downfall. Like one of the only—and we're gonna get, pretty soon here, more into Dave and his friendship with Terezi and his relationship with her. But like, he also—I mean obviously he had a guardian, a terrible one. And he also has a lot of like, Dave has a certain—he's really built himself up into the kind of person he wants to be perceived as, he wants to be seen as, and both of them have this problem where they're so incredibly self-determined and they've truly built themselves into who they are, but it also means that they've buried their flaws under a lot of layers.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: because they never—y'know with Terezi being—she was a very lonely child I think. You know what I mean. Well that's — I think anybody who's going to become best friends with Vriska probably doesn't have a lot of other options.

Kate: Yeah, yeah.

Chelsea: So, y'know, because of that, she's never had like a guardian figure to walk her through—or to allow her to be soft, and things like that. I mean she has and she hasn't. Not quite enough. Not only has she built up her own self and her own image, she really is truly her own individual, but it also means that she suffers from this almost duality where it's like any of her flaws she's buried, because she had to, because she wanted to.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: Nobody ever had to see that part of her. And so because that duality in her mask versus her insecurities is this almost constant theme of her character in the comic. And we see that in Dave too. Where y'know, he wears a mask and then there's something underneath there, but I think for Dave it's less clear where the line is, whereas for Terezi I feel that it's very obvious. Y'know what I mean, where her perception of herself—y'know the image that she projects to others—starts, where it ends and where her insecurities are.

Kate: Mhm. Yeah and y'know she has that constant sort of two-faced motif, absolutely.

Chelsea: Ooh absolutely yeah. It's such a—thematic thing for her.

Kate: And that does sort of speak to her origins, as described in one of these aforementioned Formsprings. She was like a sort of a synthesis of Daredevil and Twoface, was how she was intended.

Chelsea: Twoface. Y'know one of the interesting things—so I, okay—so as a heads up, I don't know a lot about Marvel, but I know enough about Daredevil and I looked it up a little bit, especially because I like Terezi a lot.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: And y'know, obviously Matt Murdock's inception story is very similar to hers. He was blinded by chemicals I guess when he was a child.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: And he's a lawyer by day and he defends—he represents the oppressed, and then by night, he's a vigilante, y'know, what have you? But given that I haven't seen the show or y'know read the comics apparently, to my understanding, one of the biggest parts of his story like one of hugest thematic elements of Matt Murdock's continued story in the Marvel Universe is guilt—

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Like he's Catholic, so there's this whole element of like Catholic guilt. But guilt is just a huge part of his story and it makes sense, given the circumstances, of y'know, his inception as a hero and what he does, that guilt is a tremendous part of it. And the interesting thing is that even if Terezi doesn't have a lot in common with Matt Murdock, first of all that she's just better—

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: —But those themes of guilt definitely are present in her story as well which I think is really interesting because guilt is an overwhelming part of Terezi's narrative, like it's huge.

Kate: I think guilt is an inherent thing that comes coupled with having a strong sense of justice because you get that sense of—

Chelsea: Yeah.

Kate:—obligation and duty.

Chelsea: Yep.

Kate: And y'know, especially when you think of the Friendsim trolls as sorta like, individual components of the original trolls that defined their archetype.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Kate: Like Tyzias sort of occupies that guilt zone of like...

Chelsea: Tyzias is like the first ever Marxist troll so... good for her.

Kate: Yes. Y'know, Fozzer who? Tyzias was first.

Chelsea: Yeah, right? Exactly. Like, she really get that.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Absolutely. And I—it's interesting how Friendsim sort of like expands on the world in a weird way and it also—all the individual trolls. Like I feel like it's so funny because—I don't follow Friendsim super carefully, because I don't have time—for a lot of reasons. But I do, I have picked up on it and I really like Tyzias and I just—the funniest thing about her is I always think like, she would like Terezi so much.

Kate: She would.

Chelsea: She would hate that Terezi loves Vriska but God she would love Terezi. [laughter]

Kate: No, here's the thing! Here's the thing. I think—

Chelsea: [Unintelligible]

Kate: No let's get into this. Let's get into this

Chelsea: Okay, okay, let's get into this.

Kate: In a later route, have you played Tirona's route?

Chelsea: No, I have not.

Kate: So in a later route she like, completely forgives somebody who's trying to like break into her office and get her culled for being a revolutionary because she understands that this troll is like a product of the system that created her.

Chelsea: OK never mind. Tyzias—

Kate: She would understand that Vriska was a product of the system that created her. She would be pro-Vriska.

Chelsea: Okay. This episode of Perfectly Generic Podcast, we've discovered that Tyzias is a Vriska stan.

Kate: Tyzias is a Vriska stan.

Chelsea: We're having revelations here. Incredible.

Kate: Now to be clear I think that Tyzias, who's very serious, would be very sort of baffled by like how strange and off the wall Terezi is, especially if they meet in some sort of circumstance like—

Chelsea: Yeah

Kate: 'cause they'd be like wait. This is the descendant of Redglare? And I actually—I tweeted this the other days but it made me think of this John Mulaney quote which was like:

''John Mulaney: “We kind of had that rapport of like, mmmmm, we’re not so different, you and I. You have your law practice, and me, I have all these fuckin markers. [Audience laughs] I guess we both have responsibilities when you look at it that way.”''

Chelsea: [Laughs] Yeah.

Kate: And that's Terezi compared to—so like Friendsims expand on the fact that like most tealbloods, like, go to a law school equivalent—

Chelsea: [Laughs]

Kate: —Like most of them have this very formalised and like strict schooling system? And Terezi is just like playing with stuffed animals in the fucking woods.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah! But y'know the craziest thing though is that it's absolutely true, and it's hilarious. The funniest thing though is that throughout the comic you realise that Terezi is more than smart enough to—in fact she's probably the cleverer than those people who—y'know what I mean like—

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: It's so funny watching her evolve—and I do think that one thing we watch in Homestuck is her evolve into a more clever character. Like, not evolve into—but the reader discovers more, how intelligent she is.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Because we know like I said, we're— to her through John... y'know, and like you can tell that she's manipulative and that she's funny, but it sort of drops off there because we take—we see the story through Karkat and Karkat doesn't like—he loves Terezi and cares very much but I don't think that he sees her as being tremendously deep.

Kate: I don't think he respects her enough. [Laughs]

Chelsea: No, I don't—

Kate: Well I think that's just text. Let's just be real, I think that's just text that he doesn't respect her enough, and it causes a lot of problems for them.

Chelsea: It is. It is. It's just text. Yeah. It does. I like—I bring this up a lot but like, Meenahbound. She asks to be left alone and again I don't think—I mean I don't think Karkat has a bone of ill will in his body.

Kate: I know.

Chelsea: I mean, even Vriska, who he hates, he's very forgiving towards. And eventually— y'know, who knows who Karkat really hates? I think Karkat kind of loves everyone but in the scene—

Kate: The only person Karkat really hates is... himself.

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah. But y'know even though he's trying to talk to Terezi and I think that he's trying to comfort her but he ends up overwhelming her.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: And she's like, Karkat, leave me alone. I don't wanna talk about this, just leave me alone. And he starts talking about like, their relationship and I was like—and Terezi like, shuts down like, she doesn't want to talk to him.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: And I think that it's not just that Karkat doesn't respect—he doesn't respect Terezi and he doesn't—I don't think that he finds Terezi awfully deep. Like I don't think he's really—I don't think Terezi's opened up enough to him for him to realise like, her thought process, y'know what I mean, like I don't think that he even knows [Unintelligible] surface-level. But I don't think he's seen her vulnerable enough times to understand, like what she might be thinking and the funny thing is that Dave does.

Kate: Yeah Dave absolutely—I was going to say that. Dave absolutely does and he sees it and they see each other and they understand each other and they're just like, can't handle that.

Chelsea: [At the same time] Dave— exactly. Dave absolutely knows that. Intimately. Yeah. Exactly, and that's—I think a lot of Dave and Terezi's conversations are like that. Like, both of them have a y'know—earlier like this parallel between them where y'know they wear this mask and underneath that they have a lot of pain, y'know or a lot of insecurities but a lot of the friends—and much like Dave—Dave's friends don't seem to pick up as much. I think Rose does a little bit, but I think in a lot of ways Dave has successfully masked his insecurities from his friends.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: And his pain, from his friends.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: And Terezi's the same way. Now Vriska... [Laughs] Vriska doesn't really have friends so y'know, not so much, but Terezi's interesting because she is a very good friend. She does have very good social skills. But none of them seem... like with Dave, they don't seem to understand like her vulnerabilities like on an intimate level. I don't think that they would know how to comfort her.

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: Or like, understand what was wrong with her. And I do think that's part of what's wrong with Karkat and I think that's also like, a part of what brings her and Dave closer, that they're both like that. And the funny thing is, who knows if they ever had a conversation about it, given how they are?

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: But, they both know this about each other and there is a level of understanding there that helps carry both of their arcs.

Kate: Mhm. But in the end, y'know, in the Game Over timeline, they do grow apart. Like Terezi grows apart from both Karkat and Dave.

Chelsea: Yup.

Kate: Yeah and I guess we should probably talk about the fact that y'know this is an upsetting subject that we're about to get into. We're about to talk about an abusive relationship. We're going to do it with typical Perfectly Generic Podcast sensitivity and charm, but y'know we're going to do that so if that's a thing you don't want to listen to, go ahead and skip over. So she does end up falling into an extremely abusive relationship.

Chelsea: Yeah I y'know when you look at that relationship there's a lot that we can take from it and the interesting thing is that—

Kate: I think we should say it's Gamzee just in case there was anybody who wasn't picking up on that.

Chelsea: yeah. Just in case you guys, for some fucking reason, thought we were talking about someone else, we're talking about Gamzee.

Kate: We are talking about Gamzee.

Chelsea: I think that there's a lot of really interesting things like, about that relationship, the way that it is presented. I mean on the one hand you don't really see anything, which is kind of good, but at the very end we see too much, almost.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Y'know what I mean, we're presented with it all at once in a way that's very visceral and horrifying. Y'know when you look at the relationship—it's just interesting, the—Vriska coming back after the retcon was just this such—it had this strange impact on the whole comic, y'know what I mean, on that whole meteor—story and so when you look at the original it's almost difficult post-retcon to understand like what was going on, y'know what I mean? You have to let your brain forget the later Vriska fixed everything and just try to deal with what happened in that timeline. If that makes sense?

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: Like y'know remembering that Vriska just fixed everything makes you think that it all just had to do with her but it wasn't that, there was a lot of things at play.

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: Obviously for Terezi, nearly all of it had to do with Vriska. Not all of it, but a great majority of it. But y'know, when you look at like—I do feel like her relationship with Gamzee in a lot of ways, I feel like it was punishment for herself. Like...

Kate: Mhm. Yeah, absolutely.

Chelsea: And I. Right, I can never decide. And I guess there's no real way of knowing like—was she punishing herself for killing Vriska or was she punishing herself for feeling bad about it? Or punishing herself for caring about Vriska. Y'know what I mean like which crime was it she perceived she committed? That she did this? And again it's not that—I mean what happened is explicitly Gamzee's fault; he abused her and that's obviously what abusers do. They will abuse you regardless of—y'know what I mean whatever outside sources. But when you look at like Terezi's motives there, obviously she had—she was in a tremendous amount of pain. And I feel like she stayed because she felt like she had to, because she was afraid of him, because on some level she was—not necessarily in love with him or in hate with him—well I guess she was in hate with him, I mean she was—she was consumed by him, if that makes sense?

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: I think that in some ways she was looking for someone to fill the void that Vriska left. But the difference is that her feelings towards Vriska whether she liked them or not, were overwhelmingly positive, but they shared that same sense of—they were consuming. Y'know what I mean, they were just, it was almost an obsession. And Dave actually touches on that in multiple conversations with her. He says you're obsessed with Vriska, like when are you going to stop talking about Vriska? So y'know, that was definitely a thing that—was gone and y'know you can kind of see almost this hypothetical line of thinking where she's like, okay I was consumed by Vriska, y'know what I mean, I was very close to her, I cared about her, but she was evil, like—Y'know on one hand she's punishing herself almost, and then on the other hand it's like she—Gamzee's bad. Vriska's bad. Surely—great dynamic. And I'm not saying that's what happened but it's a weird way of looking at things. Y'know the way that she fixates on someone who's really really bad like that, but unlike Vriska, Gamzee has no redeeming qualities whatsoever and is evil down to his core and I know that she must realise that almost immediately. And that's what I mean by like, she stays out of some sense of self-loathing, a strong sense of self-loathing.

Kate: Absolutely. And by the way, listeners, if you're upset at it being said that Gamzee has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, you can go ahead and send your feedback to your Notes App and not send it to me.

[both laugh]

Chelsea: I'll never forget— Anecdote really quickly, it was shortly, I think it was ipgd, reblogged some picture that somebody did of Gamzee where like they edited Gamzee and Tavros to be like Vriska and Terezi and I think about this all the time. 'Cause it's just such a minor thing, but I remember ipgd specifically reblogged it and they said something like "uh, he beat his girlfriend dude, like he's not a good person."

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: and I remember that because ipgd at least at one time was fairly close to Hussie so it's like y'know dude come on like y'know again I don't want to cast any aspersions on Gamzee I don't want to start that conversation, but—

Kate: We've got an episode on clowns next week, so we'll get into Gamzee probably.

Chelsea: We will get our fill of clown, but my point is that if nothing else about Gamzee is meant to be wicked, his interactions with Terezi are explicitly evil.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: And they are meant to make him look evil. Like, in a narrative sense and there's no reason we're shown this, other than to hate Gamzee and to empathise with Terezi.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Like, in the textual sense, that's why the author showed us that.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: So, y'know, with that out of the way, that's definitely a huge part of her arc and watching her deteriorate like that really impacts the way the viewer sees Terezi, like the way us as readers perceive her. Like—

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: You wouldn't have expected this from her. Like I mean—

Kate: What you were saying about it being like an equivalency drawn from a black and white conception of evil. I actually want to bring this in. I want to bring this in because there's a lot of speculation, including like in text about why did Terezi have John go back and like fuck with the scalemates and all sorts of other minor shit, in the retcon, why was that? And I think it was to undermine her sense of justice and to provide a little bit of absurdity and uncertainty towards her like, cut-and-dry, black-and-white, good-and-evil roleplaying.

Chelsea: Exactly. Yeah it's like—

Kate: That would allow her to see the situation more completely

Chelsea: Yeah. It's like the message she leaves. Because I remember when the update came about where it said "you don't need him." And everybody asked, who is she talking about, Karkat, is she talking about Dave, is she telling herself about Gamzee, is she talking about John? Like, who is she talking about?

Kate: She's talking about them all.

Chelsea: All of them. She's talking about all of them, first of all.

Kate: Terezi didn't word it like that ambiguously. Like, she was sending the word of god to past self, and she was saying don't bother with boys.

Chelsea: Yeah exactly and it's like it's so funny because like, on one hand, it isn't ambiguous, she'll know what she means but on the other hand it is ambiguous in the sense that like, in this black-and-white thinking y'know what I mean, no this yes that no that. In that sense it's like she knew what she would take from it, but at the same time past Terezi could've taken anything from that.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: If that makes sense. Like, she knew herself well enough to know what she would take from it even though as viewers looking at the message, shit, we could take anything from it. Like, that could mean anything. So it's like in that sense like, she plays into her own black-and-white thinking but she also—throwing ambiguity at herself is how she solves her own problems. Like she has to introduce some level of like, grey morality. Like, in order to like, let herself rest. Y'know what I mean, like give herself a break. She's so fuckin hard on herself.

Kate: [Laughs]

Chelsea: And you just mentioned something that I really wanted to get back to. Boys, the boys thing. There we go.

Kate: Ah, yes. Boys.

Chelsea: Oh you know what this is. Boys. One of the most interesting parts—and I like it 'cause, I was telling Kate like, I wanna kind of go chronologically through Terezi's arc, but one very interesting thing about the retcon and the way that she did this—the way that she shifted her timeline, through sending herself a message that says stop dating boys. It's really interesting and it's—In Homestuck there's a lot of things that are like taken at face value, y'know what I mean like we know what we're looking at. However, actually, those things are few and far between. A lot of things in Homestuck we can really read into, I mean look at even Dave and Vriska, when you look at their abusive guardian figures, when we look at like how Doc Scratch interacts with young teenagers, there's a lot of things that are obscure, especially—topics, they're obscured by humor.

Kate: Mhm

Chelsea: And I think that, honestly, in a lot of ways it's very unique, I can't think of a lot of media that does that. Like, takes heavy topics and makes them into this gag, but you don't really laugh at that. Y'know it's very interesting. It's just a strange way of presenting these things.

Kate: This is maybe someone who grew up with these books speaking, but it does remind me of Lemony Snicket, a bit.

Chelsea: Absolutely, actually that is a great comparison because I was trying to think—I know that I've seen this before but I haven't—y'know J.K. Rowling's on my shitlist for a lot of reasons.

Kate: Oh for sure.

Chelsea: But when you look at like, y'know back when she could write books, without fucking them up, when you look at, for instance the Dursleys are very funny, but it's very sad.

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: Although I don't think that J.K. Rowling can actually write that well but y'know, that's the thing for me. And Lemony Snicket especially encapsulates that. It's very sad. I mean it's very, you know that it's sad, but it's very funny, y'know what I mean. Again it ties into that like morbid humor, but at the same time underneath it, like I said, A Series of Unfortunate Events really captured this where it's like underneath, it's a funny veneer. But it's sad.

Kate: Mhm

Chelsea: And you know that it's sad. And the reader hurts. It makes you sad. Even though it's like layered with y'know, everything else, but Homestuck does that a lot with any kind of heavy topic I think. With gayness, with everything else, this is all leading into me saying: I think that Terezi's decision to bring Vriska back, is really interesting with the message that she leaves herself. Like, after Vriska was gone she almost had this like, black hole to fill because y'know she didn't know what to do. I mean at one point she goes through the y'know, she goes through the dream bubbles and she finds Aranea [A-ray-nea] who I hope I'm saying her name right.

Kate: I think it's Aranea [A-rahn-ea]

Chelsea: Though I say it very weirdly. Okay, okay, that works. Hold on one second, gotta hydrate.

Kate: This... this podcast is brought to you by water. The official sponsor of the Perfectly Generic Podcast.

Chelsea: Ah, please drink water everyone. All you youths, drink water, you'll go far in life.

Kate: Yeah, you will.

Chelsea: Water, it's good for you.

Kate: People ask Kate, how do you have so much time in the day to do things? I drink a lot of water.

Chelsea: Drink a lot of water. The secret to everything.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Anyway, she finds Aranea and—Aranea's a—wait, god, there needs to be a second Vriska episode so we can get into Aranea.

Kate: Oh, I'm gonna. No we're—We need to get into Aranea more because Aranea's probably the most under-talked about part of Homestuck.

Chelsea: Oh my she's so interesting. She really is.

Kate: Let's just talk about how she impacts Terezi's narrative right now

Chelsea: Yeah. Yeah yeah and really quick going into this, I mean you need—we will expand on this day for sure on this podcast.

Kate: Mhm

Chelsea: Kate will about— Aranea is like the perfect like— a lot of characters are the other side of the character's coin, but I think Aranea's an insane like other side of the coin to Vriska like—

Kate: Oh yeah—

Chelsea: —Vriska is like—

Kate: Everyone just thought oh she's just nice Vriska.

Chelsea: Exactly. Yeah

Kate: She's like a siren. She was a siren specifically for Terezi too.

Chelsea: Exactly. Oh exactly. Terezi's like oh you're like Vriska but nice. The interesting thing and again, you've briefly— Aranea's evil almost by nature, because by nurture, Aranea's life wasn't particularly difficult.

Kate: It was not.

Chelsea: But she turned out very wicked and Vriska's life was tremendously hard. And all things considered she turned out better than Aranea.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: So there's this weird like nature versus nurture question, because I truly believe that Aranea's very very down to her core evil in a way that Vriska absolutely isn't, like at all.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: And so because of that, she's like this figure that comes to Terezi and she's nice on the surface to Terezi which I think is always something that she wanted from Vriska, she's like oh you're nice Vriska. But, y'know, what is it, the Trojan warhorse?

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Yeah, like. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. She didn't. Turned out very badly, but y'know healing her eyesight was one of those things that was like, y'know she undid what the impact of Vriska had on her life and that's a whole other can of worms, but—

Kate: She reversed the evidence that she had ever encountered Vriska Serket.

Chelsea: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah and she felt that that would be good for herself.

Kate: And by the way I want to mention, because I was just reading this log before this episode, she mentions that specifically like, what pushed her over the edge in making that decision, was Gamzee's mockery of her blindness.

Chelsea: Yeah. No, absolutely and I did find it interesting that Gamzee was the character who—okay, so just from my point of view, Gamzee giving her the letter, whatever Gamzee wrote, the letter that's supposedly from Vriska

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: And Terezi didn't realise it was from Gamzee not Vriska—okay I think Terezi knew, but I also don't think Terezi knew that Vriska killed everyone, she only thought that.

Kate: Mhm

Chelsea: For you know what I mean, but she knew that the letter was from Gamzee. I don't believe Terezi's stupid enough not to notice that it was written in purple ink, but whatever, y'know, that's neither here nor there. But, he did—Gamzee was always—Gamzee was very scared of Vriska, this is well established in the comic and for good reason, because at the end, Gamzee is very fucked, because Vriska had anything to say about it. And so his—the best way that Gamzee had of meeting his master's plans, y'know, Lord English and defeating Vriska is by pitting her and Terezi against each other.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: And so that comes to play later because she undoes the blindness and so, y'know. And what this all goes back to is that she finds Aranea because she's searching for somebody and she knows that it, like the answer at the bottom of the bottle, like figuratively, is Vriska. Like she knows that, on some level this is what did everything. And in text the reason that Terezi is so beleaguered I suppose—water. [drinks water] So fresh.

Kate: [Laughs] That was good, you got it on the mic there.

Chelsea: ASMR. So, the reason that she's so beleaguered by Vriska and by everything surrounding Vriska because it was a question of morality which it was, Vriska does this, she's wicked, Vriska does, y'know she's—y'know.

Kate: As it turns out, the discussion about Vriska's morals is so difficult that we're still having it today.

Chelsea: I know. [Laughs] As it turns out—locked after thousands of pages of heated debate.

Kate: Yes.

Chelsea: But, y'know she—like metatextually, as a reader, it's interesting that—I don't think that it's far-fetched to read Homestuck and assume that Terezi's in love in Vriska, I think, I mean, good god, Dave says it. Like, Dave says it multiple times. He's like what are you, like in love with her? Are you in hate with her? Like love her? And she's like no it's fine, it's not like that. But, it's very easy to read Homestuck and see things that way. I mean again, Terezi's arc closes with that very intimate conversation with Vriska and when you look at like, y'know she was—none of these boys are any good for you.

Kate: Terezi Remem8er is literally the last romantic beat of the comic.

Chelsea: It really is. It really is. I mean—

Kate: They meet on a red quadrant.

Chelsea: Yeah, yeah! And I love, I saw a post aboutthat fuckin blew my mind, she's wearing the red slippers that she stole from Jade, which was fuckin hilarious.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: Talk about morbid humour.

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: True to the end. But she follows the yellow brick road. And y'know what I mean like—[Unintelligible]—she has... and it leads her home.

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: And so she's—[Unintelligible]

Kate: There's no place like home and Homestuck's a story as it turns out about home.

Chelsea: Yeah! Absolutely.

Kate: And so many—and I do want to transition to this point, so many of our characters find that sense of home, but Terezi doesn't, you mentioned earlier that losing Vriska left a black hole in her life and as it turns out....

Chelsea: A literal one.

Kate: Yeah, she lost Vriska again, to a black hole.

Chelsea: Yeah and...

Kate: And that's where we're at right now.

Chelsea: Yeah and—

Kate: She spends literal years. Seven years searching and very rarely spending time planet-side based on the fact that years after the game she asked what's Halloween?

Chelsea: Yeah. She was— okay one of the secondary sources show Terezi at Rose and Kanaya's wedding, but I don't believe in the canon snapdates that she is actually there. Like I don't think Terezi is even there for that.

Kate: It's ambiguous whether she was there.

Chelsea: It's ambiguous yeah, like there's, she's so distant from everyone, which is really sad.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: That's horribly sad, like let her have something. But, y'know you look and I think that all of her arc was like, y'know in a y'know as a reader it's like oh, y'know compulsory heterosexuality, I'm going to date some boys because I don't wanna be in love with this girl but she was in love with Vriska and she overcame that and—sad because it came to nothing, because Vriska went out and did what she did and it—y'know that's a whole 'nother Vriska episode to talk about it but we're...

Kate: It came to nothing for now but, to quote—

Chelsea: For now but—

Kate:—OptimisticDuelist's essay, I'm rooting for them.

Chelsea: I am. I really am, you better believe I am and that—and it's I really am to be—because I do feel like logically that's where her arc lead, like literally in text we saw that y'know with [S] Remem8er but like, beyond that, like it has to go further I mean the canon it did—if it was anyone's love story it was theirs and this—Terezi's arc after everything she's been through has to reward her at some point, if that makes sense? Like, nobody can watch anyone suffer that much y'know what I mean, without inevitably like giving them at the very end, a happy ending— [unintelligible]

Kate:I guess that the question is, will the ending of Homestuck be fair? Or will it be kind of—like so I guess, to sort of advance a further metatextual theory about Homestuck like it's first half, being by Andrew Hussie and its second half being by Caliborn, like—

Chelsea: [Laughs]

Kate: Will the ending be by y'know an author? Like, y'know an Earth-bound author, like tying up narrative threads gracefully and satisfyingly? Or will it in the end be Caliborn's ending? Like will it be—

Chelsea: Yeah.

Kate: —Like nasty and broodish, and occasionally totally irrational. That's a great question! I don't know!

Chelsea: It is, yeah, we really don't know that. And I mean, we see that—Terezi's ending tied to Vriska's ending. Like, will Vriska be punished for her wrongdoings or will she be—I don't feel it's fair to say Vriska's rewarded, for doing bad things. I think at the end Vriska tries to do a good thing.

Kate: Very few characters in this comic are punished as much as Vriska is.

Chelsea: Nobody is. Exactly, yeah.

Kate: The comic occasionally—and I'm gonna go ahead and say this in response to both the comic like, post her injury from the exploding cueball and also like the side comic Vrisky Business, that follows it, the comic occasionally luxuriates in Vriska's pain, to a degree that it does not for any other character—

Chelsea: Oh for sure. Yeah.

Kate: —y'know, the shots of her collapsing crying after being dumped by Meenah, like, Vriska is punished extensively. I don't get the idea—

Chelsea: Oh yeah.

Kate: People say, oh Vriska just coasts with everything. She doesn't! She doesn't.

Chelsea: Absolutely not. no and I totally agree.

Kate: And at the end of the—and then people are like, oh well post-retcon Vriska doesn't, well she's literally disappeared for seven years, I'm sorry, like she's paid her dues man.

Chelsea: Exactly, no and—I wish I could—I meant to reblog it but y'know, I—I don't remember any specifics, but one thing they imply is that Vriska's ending is almost like—like Vriska was willing to be a martyr and it's because she wanted to be a hero but, I mean I think a part of her was like she felt like it was penance, like it was something she might have deserved.

Kate: Mhm

Chelsea: Like if she has to die, so that everyone else can live, she's okay with that, not because—

Kate: Well that ties in—

Chelsea: —she wants to be famous, but because like, she kinda hates herself, like viscerally.

Kate: Right, one of the last conversations of the comic is her yelling at herself, like, her breaking her own self's heart—

Chelsea: Yeah, it's so—Yeah!

Kate: —in pursuit of this greater goal of saving the universe.

Chelsea: Exactly. And so it's like y'know, we don't know where the epilogue will—like how it's going to interact with Vriska and Terezi's arcs, which is very terrifying

Kate: I know, I'm so scared

Chelsea: Both of them deserve very good things, they really do. God they do. Were we going to tackle some questions?

Kate: Yeah, yeah let's get to some questions. So—

Chelsea: [unintelligible]—question.

Kate: Yeah so first off, Mr. M/Peak Yeet on twitter asked—great name—How do you think the retcon actually changed Terezi's life besides saving Vriska? so we sort of touched on this one a little bit, but in general I did want to talk about, because we didn't talk about like her last conversation, the one Terezi had—

Chelsea: Oh man.

Kate: —with Vriska where she talks about the emptiness within her.

Chelsea: God. Y'know—

Kate: Sorry, go on?

Chelsea: I was gonna say you read that bit in the Vriska episode and I [unintelligible] became emotional

Kate: Yeah I do every time I think about that page.

Chelsea: God every time, like you were reading it out aloud and like I just started crying like don't do this. Don't do this bitch it's been like three years you need to relax

Kate: Yeah, I got multiple messages on Twitter like, fuck you for reading that, you actually made me cry

Chelsea:God I know.

Kate: And like, sorry. Me too.

Chelsea: I really did cry, like I was like oh my God, it's so heart-rending.

Kate: That part of Homestuck actually makes me cry every time.

Chelsea: Same! Like it's just like so like—oh god it's so sad, especially coming from Terezi cause like that's just, with Vriska's one of the few times she willingly lets herself be vulnerable.

Kate: And they're always so close to being vulnerable with each other—

Chelsea: God.

Kate: You see the way both Terezi and Vriska share their insecurities separately with John, which by the way, great job embodying Breath, John, as always.

Chelsea: Right yeah.

Kate: Both of them share their insecurities with John and don't with each other, in the Game Over timeline and like it's—

Chelsea: I know...

Kate: —they're like, they're always so close and again it's like one of those things where it's like this has to end well doesn't it? They're always so close.

Chelsea: Right?

Kate: It's just gonna hurt so much if it doesn't.

Chelsea: Alright and the crazy thing is that I think that both of them like, really hate themselves but think really highly of the other. And obviously Terezi's had her ups and down with Vriska, but at the very last conversation you can see like, she really thinks so highly of Vriska, which is insane, because I think that Vriska's a lot stupider than Terezi gives her credit for.

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: But, Vriska obviously really likes Terezi, I mean, just like as a person she just thinks that Terezi's a really cool person, like Terezi's like, what if I'm not good enough for this and Vriska's like you're the coolest person I've ever met so like I don't understand why you're so worried about this, like...

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: ...you're literally the smartest person here. Like y'know what I mean? She doesn't that literally, but Vriska's like very willing to level with Terezi and listen to her—she doesn't exactly treat other people like that, but Vriska on some level like, deeply admires Terezi. She likes Terezi, she thinks that she's super fucking cool like obviously in Hivebent, she thinks that she's the coolest fuckin' person.

Kate: Yeah and Vriska flaunts their relationship, like Vriska—

Chelsea: Yeah.

Kate: —literally says the phrase "We'll throw our diamonds in your face." Vriska like flaunts this, she's like the proudest of this relationship with Terezi of anything in her life.

Chelsea: Yeah Vriska's like did you guys know I have a girlfriend I have a girlfriend I have and she's really cool—

Kate: I have a girlfriend.

Chelsea: because Terezi's my girlfriend and she's cool. Yeah it's like that but she's really like, she just thinks that Terezi's the coolest person. It's so funny because like, they hate themselves, both of them do, but they care about each other a lot and I think that that barrier between them they just can't talk about shit. They really just can't.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: Like, it's like y'know the phrase like "god you are so close to getting it." You are so close—you read their conversations and just wanna tear your hair out, like you guys are so close to getting it, like you're almost there.

Kate: Yeah. We have sort of two combined questions now. tactlessAnalyser on Twitter and Pip on Discord both asked about Terezi's blindness. tactlessAnalyser asked: "why do you think Terezi's blindness was treated differently than other characters' disabilities, for example, Tavros's paralysis? Why do you think Hussie gave Terezi heightened senses to compensate for being blinded?" So I think first off, it's 'cause Daredevil.

Chelsea: Oh yeah—

Kate: I mean—

Chelsea: Oh yeah.

Kate: I don't think there's actually a more complicated answer than that. I think it's 'cause Daredevil.

Chelsea: That was my first response, yeah. Obviously, like Daredevil's the obvious example, like y'know that's definitely why Hussie decided to do that. He drew y'know a lot of inspi—I say inspiration loosely, I think like, the concept of her character is loosely based on his. I don't think like in terms of actual character traits or even arcs, they share a lot. There's just similar thematic elements, I think, but that's one of the—I also think that it's just a common, like an ableist trope. I think I mean you—the cleanest example of this besides Terezi and Daredevil is Toph Beifong from Avatar. I think that, she also has that y'know, she's blind but she has superpowers. Like y'know what I mean, [unintelligible].

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: That a lot of it is just rooted in ableism and kind of like, what's the word, like fantastifying, y'know what I mean.

Kate: Yeah absolutely.

Chelsea: Disabilities are different things like that. I mean, there was another person that was going to be on this episode.

Kate: Sis.

Chelsea: They are really insightful about that, Sis, and I'm hoping that you will bring them back 'cause they had a lot of really interesting things to say about that and I—

Kate: Yeah, Sis remains a valuable member of the panel and we just couldn't—we just had some timezone issues. Sis will be back for dis—we're going to talk about ableism in Homestuck because it's like a complicated issue.

Chelsea: It is. It's really complicated.

Kate: One that deserves to be discussed in a sort of understanding way, from somebody who's a more experienced disability activist than myself.

Chelsea: And me too, that's why I brought them up. Because I was like, they have a lot of really really insightful things to say about it, so I feel like I'm just kinda putzing around here, but definitely ableism is a big part of it. But y'know, in a metatextual sense it really—Justice is blind, I think like that's also the Daredevil thing, like Justice is blind.

Kate: Yeah, absolutely.

Chelsea: Y'know she can't see so she can't—but in a literal sense in the text that isn't really a problem.

Kate: Right.

Chelsea: Terezi's biggest enemy is her own self.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: So y'know. Next question.

Kate: So Eromancery asked on Discord—actually about 90 people asked this on Discord because it became like a meme to ask me this, so here, we're going to answer you you fucking heathens.

Chelsea: [Laughs]

Kate: How do you suppose Terezi got her name, considering her lusus was a fucking egg? [Pause] Don't think about it. I don't know! You got an answer for this one?

Chelsea: [Exhales and laughs] Actually, one of the things she wrote on the scarf was like, let them know my name is Terezi, so he went all the way back, into the caverns and he was like hey her name is Terezi—

Kate: Mhm—

Chelsea: —and the Jadebloods were like, what the fuck are you talking about? But like they wrote it down and that's actually how all of that happened. Every single timeloop—

Kate: It was y'know. There was probably some bullshit.

Chelsea: Yeah, like I don't have a genuine—I have no fucking idea.

Kate: Yeah we can't—we absolutely cannot

Chelsea: I have no idea.

Kate: I have no fucking idea. There's no actual way to answer that question, I don't know who—like, that's actually a question for Andrew fucking Hussie, yeah. None of the rest of us can answer that one.

Chelsea: Listen here man. What the fuck is this?

Kate: Yeah what's up with that? Hey so I love your comic, great comic. I have one issue. Who the fuck named Terezi?

Chelsea: Yeah, yeah. I think there's one other question I have but I never remember what it is. There's one other burning Homestuck question like, what the fuck man? But that's definitely a good question like, who the fuck gave her that name? I mean obviously like I think we kind of figure out how they named Karkat, because that's also a very good question, but Terezi remains a mystery because like, we know how Karkat was given the name but—and we know that Terezi must have been given a name in the same way but Karkat had a lusus to tell him his name so like, I dunno, like I dunno. She—maybe she heard of what she was dreaming about on Prospit. Like maybe—I dunno. I dunno. We'll never know. None of this makes any sense.

Kate: We'll never know, we'll never fuckin know, we'll never know it's alright.

Chelsea: We'll never know

Kate: Maybe she picked her own name, you never know. Hexxy asked on Discord—

Chelsea: Hexxy! What's up.

Kate: Chelsea, as resident Vriska expert, how much do you Terezi influenced Vriska and her actions pre-Sburb, and how much of a hand do you think Terezi had in Vriska feeding her lusus?

Chelsea: Oh man. Okay. [Drinks] Can of worms, I think about it a lot.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: My question always is—we know that Terezi helped kill these kids and then y'know, she did this, and that she was a part of the games that Vriska played. But at some point, Vriska started killing pretty much anyone she could get her hands on, because as the text tells us, as her lusus started growing, she became insatiably hungry. And Vriska was, poor small troll, like she couldn't keep up with it, so she needed to get anyone she could.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: Because Spidermom was hungry, and as we know from Vrisky Business, she threatened to kill Vriska if she didn't do it, so Vriska had to bring as many as she could. So when we see the revenge arc, Terezi talks about how she was like, you lied to me, you said these people were guilty but they weren't, you were just killing everyone blah blah blah. But you know, that seems to be mentioned less times than Vriska hurting her friends. And even when Vriska talks about hurting her friends with Doc Scratch, she says like, those were my friends, like I'd never want to hurt them and that seems to be the peak—like, most of Terezi's anger [unintelligible] Sollux and Aradia and like, y'know what I mean, Aradia.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Not sure how you guys pronounce her name, I always pronounce it wrong.

[Both are pronouncing it a-RAY-dee-a.]

Kate: Well I know Andrew says it Aradia, so I feel justified in continuing to say Aradia.

Chelsea: Ok good, so it is Aradia. Okay, good. Thank you Hussie. Y'know, given all that, I think that seems to be the bulk of Terezi's anger, but we know that she helped Vriska at least killings, but... y'know I think the biggest question for me in regards to this question, like the bigger question here is like, how much did Terezi know about what was going on with Vriska? Because that really impacts like how Terezi views herself for committing these crimes, or like how she weighs Vriska's morality. Like, how much does Terezi know about what Vriska's lusus was doing, like, what Doc Scratch was doing to Vriska? I mean obviously Terezi knows Doc Scratch is talking to Vriska, I remember distinctly there was a conversation, where Doc Scratch is talking to Terezi and he's being a dick and Terezi says the words which are really interesting she says, no wonder Vriska snapped, she has to deal with you all the time, which was like this weird like, really heavy handed comment, y'know what I mean about like, the way that y'know, a pedophile impacting—y'know what I mean, the way that Vriska interacts with her friends and everyone and that—indication that as soon as Terezi started talking to Doc Scratch, she was like, okay well this dude is fucked up

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: like, what? And y'know from there we glean that Terezi has some kind of understanding at that point of what is going on on Vriska's end and I think that whatever hand played in Vriska's childhood and feeding her lusus, weirdly enough she weighs this as Vriska's crimes a lot and she definitely on some like, deeper level that she barely even confronts in the comic, she must weigh it as one of her own sins.

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: But, I think she's so wrapped up in trying to figure out if Vriska was evil for this or not that whether or not she is evil 'cause I think Terezi's already like resigned to hating herself, that she's like—she's more worried about whether or not this makes Vriska evil.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: And so I think that what Terezi genuinely like—y'know obviously like, the way that Terezi feels about Vriska is so complex we could spend, so much of the comic wondering about it and seeing it in all these different ways, but at the end of the day whenever we really know for sure, what did Terezi know about what Vriska was going through? Like, how much did she understand like, how much weight of this burden does she put on spidermom? Like what—how does she actually weight this moral conundrum that Vriska was born into? And from there she can weigh her own guilt—

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: —in what was done and again I do think it's significant that while you know, Terezi talks briefly about it, y'know, you lied to me, you killed all these people who weren't bad people, but that never meant anything to her the way Vriska hurting her friends did/

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: And the same for Vriska, she's like I killed lots of people, but when it comes to like, hurting Aradia, and Sollux, even Tavros, then she felt really bad. She even says to Doc Scratch, like I said she—those were my friends, I never wanted to hurt them. So y'know that was really when her hand was forced too, which is an interesting thing about Vriska. But again, Terezi—god, if they would just fuckin talk to each other.

Kate: I know right.

Chelsea: That would be so much easier. But y'know, I guess my answer to this question's like, y'know, how much of a hand Terezi's black-and-white morality—like I don't know if it's ever something that she's really confronted about herself because she's given herself twenty-six other moral conundrums to deal with, and I think that this is something she weighs into Vriska as a person moreso than herself. Again, she's resigned herself...

Kate: Mhm.

Chelsea: To being a bad person, to hating herself y'know what I mean. So what the—how Terezi feels about this comes down to how guilty she's found Vriska to be. If that makes sense.

Kate: Yeah and I mean that's a complicated question that consumes Terezi for a great deal of this comic and consumes—

Chelsea: Oh absolutely—

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: I think consuming is a good way to like describe everything Terezi has to deal with like morally.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Like it's just consuming.

Kate: Yeah. And even after the game is done, even after the story is done, she's not done being consumed by this yet. Terezi's story has not ended—

Chelsea: No. Not at all.

Kate: And—

Chelsea: Yep.

Kate: And so—

Chelsea: which sucks man. Like, when are we gonna know?

Kate: Yeah. It's true. It's true. She does—

Chelsea: [Sobbing]

Kate: So let's—our last question, moirail asked on twitter, why's Terezi so perfect?

Chelsea: Oh man. Okay, so there's something that—okay, Terezi's perfect for a lot of reasons.

Kate: [Laughs]

Chelsea: I don't even know where to begin. I mean first of all like there's the whole like metaphor for compulsory heterosexuality which slaps. She's gay which is awesome. She's a lawyer. I mean I say gay loosely. Y'know you could headcanon her as whatever you want, I don't think there's any particular way to read her character, but she does love Vriska very much.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: And y'know, there's a lot of reasons but I did want to say one thing. Kate, I'm sure you have some thoughts on why Terezi is perfect but...

Kate: Uh huh.

Chelsea: I did want to say, Terezi is this really interesting subversion of the manic pixie dream girl trope.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Like, she really like—when she shows up on the scene and Dave starts talking to her and she so easily fits—She's eccentric, but just enough to be like, cute. And she's like clever but just enough to like, attract, y'know she's drawn in Karkat and Dave, y'know what I mean.

Kate: Uh huh.

Chelsea: And so she fits into that trope, y'know all like the indie flicks with like the y'know, the manic pixie dream girl.

Kate: Yeah and that was a lot of the fascination for like, Dave and Terezi as a ship in the early days of Homestuck was y'know there was a—

Chelsea: [Crosstalk] But—absolutely. Yeah!

Kate: Let's just rewrite Fifty Days Of Summer and—or hundred day—whatever the fuck that movie was

Chelsea: Literally, no that's what it was and a lot of the fandom's preoccupation with her as like—[unintelligible] which boy are we gonna ship her with she's so y'know, she's just such a manic pixie dream girl, but then, she was this insane subversion of that trope. [Laughs] First of all like, y'know, there's different ways to interpret us seeing her suffering, but seeing her suffering and seeing her at her lowest definitely already subverts that trope, like she isn't perfect. And on top of that she does this, like outside of, it's a weird phrase to use I guess but like, a lot of the manic pixie dream girl stuff is like consumption for men, like the way men look at female characters like, nothing about her breakdown, or like, anything like that, was particularly attractive, like it's not presented as attractive, like she was allowed to suffer and hurt, and we get to see that and it wasn't presented as sexy or cool like it was literally very ugly.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: Y'know what I mean it's so—because she subverts that trope and she also like, her whole fixation at the end of the day y'know Karkat actually—this fairly early on, given how long the comic runs, but even—I think it was the original fruity rumpus—what was it, the fruity rumpus asshole factory? In the original one, it's Karkat John and Dave. It's the three of them and Karkat's like giving them the rundown on everything and he's like, he says—god I wish I had that open, I don't have it on hand, but he says something along the lines of, leave Vriska and Terezi alone, they're more obsessed with each other than they will ever be with either of you. You know, maybe not so dramatic, but he says something along those lines. He's like leave them alone, like, they are caught up in each other, and you will never get anywhere and then part of me [unintelligible] fell in love with Terezi I think at that point still.

Kate: Yeah.

Chelsea: But, he really does like kind of, it's kind of a very, definitely foreshadowing, like tucked into the narrative, in this really funny conversation I mean, John's joke—John asking how many quadrants there are is like, one of my favorite lines in the comic.

Kate: [Laughs] That's probably like the peak John Egbert line. How many quadrants are there?

Chelsea: And Dave's like, okay, first of all, they're quadrants, there's four of them jesus christ John.

[Both laugh]

Chelsea: Of course there's fuckin four of them. [Laughs] But y'know within that conversation though, Karkat kind of lays the groundwork for what will eventually be Terezi's arc. And it's so funny because he says that to throw Dave off, like he's like, no no no, she's way more obsessed with Vriska than she ever will be with you, but the truth is, he was right. She didn't care—not that she didn't care about either of them but romantically, all of that felt second to Vriska. And Dave mentions this many times during the course of their relationship.

Kate: Yeah

Chelsea: So it's like—her fixation on another female character, like just she—nothing about about her relationships with any of the boys ever—it's not that it didn't mean something to her but romantically, in the way that manic pixie dream girl operates within text, like it's very different than that, she subverts all of that, she shirks all of that off. It's not that she didn't care about Dave or Karkat, she did, but romantically, she never belonged to them. In fact, I think that it's pretty dope that they just ended up with each other. I think that's awesome.

Kate: Yeah no it's absolutely fucking awesome. It is—

Chelsea: That was like, peak—

Kate: Undeniably amazing.

Chelsea: God, thank God.

Kate: And, that's our show. So—

Chelsea: And that's it!

Kate: Yeah that's our show, so first off—

Chelsea: Thank god God for Davekat thank fuck man.

Kate: Yeah right! Thank God for Davekat.

Chelsea: Thank God for Davekat. Anyways—

Kate: We haven't talked about that on the show very much, we should at some point.

Chelsea: You should!

Kate: I'm just— I'm so lesbian, but..

Chelsea: I know.

Kate: Davekat's really good.

Chelsea: I know. This is my like—This is like my offering, like as a lesbism mega-lesbian like Davekat thank you for your services and contribution to my community.

Kate: I'm also pro-Dirkjake, so like I'm really rackin' in the points.

Chelsea: Right yeah, we gotta like the solidarity is there and it's real.

Kate: Yeah. Well Dirkjake is just is MLM Vrisrezi and that's just how it is.

Chelsea: Yeah okay—we're figuring things out. Alright we got two things now. Tyzias stans Vriska, Dirkjake is Mlm Vrisrezi, we got it, alright!

Kate: So the Perfectly Generic Podcast is gonna be live, from the Guildhall Bar in Burbank, California,

Chelsea: Oh fuck yeah.

Kate: March 24th 2019. [outro music begins playing] You can RSVP at perfectlygenericpodcast.com/live I would absolutely love to see you there, despite the fact that it is in a bar, it is going to be all ages, y'know if you're underage we'll give you a little wristband at the door.

Chelsea: Awww.

Kate: It's going to be me, Vast Error co-creators Austinado and Sparaze, Heather. Let's see, Gingerslappin, Paige a member of our panel, James Roach is going to be providing the audio and y'know you can high-five him and apologise for all the weird shit you say to him on Twitter. And possibly more panelists and guests, any member of the panel who can make their way down for the show, will be involved as well.

Chelsea: Yeah.

Kate: It is going to be fun, it is going to be probably pretty loose, and I just cannot wait to see you there in Burbank in March. Let's see, the music for this episode, the intro was Light and Mind by myself, the outro was Nothing Special, by Goomy, the president-for-life of the Perfectly Generic music team, you can find their music at FruityTeeMusic. F-R-U-I-T-Y-T-E-E M-U-S-I-C and Nothing Special is also from Vast Error Volume 4, but Austin it was in my podcast first.

Chelsea: [Laughs]

Kate: You can find the show at Perfectlygenericpodcast.com, twitter.com/Pgenpod, or Pgenpod on Tumblr, you can find it on your favourite podcast client, on the itunes store, in Google Play, if you give it a subscription and a review in that client, that really helps us out, I really appreciate it. You can find me, twitter.com/gamblignant8 and y'know, if you can't spell that, read Homestuck again. Or you can find my main—gamblignant8 is my Homestuck account—KateMitchellOW on Twitter is my main, where you can find my exploits in esports and y'know, various, like, commentary on the world chess championships or whatever. Chelsea, where can people find you?

Chelsea: I'm Legislacerator at tumblr.com, I know, I still use Tumblr, haven't quite migrated to twitter yet, I know a lot of you are on twitter, I do have a twitter, if you guys wanna add me, that's great, at some point, I will start tweeting, it's onlunatichigh all one word, on twitter. And other than that just legislacerator, on Tumblr spelled y'know, if you can't spell that, the MSPA wiki will tell you how.

Kate: Yeah exactly, it's like my username, if you can't spell it, read it again.

Chelsea: Just Google it, MSPA wiki has your back.

Kate: Yeah, Chelsea thank you for joining the panel, thank you so much for coming on the show, I really appreciate it.

Chelsea: Thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Kate: Next week, clowns.

[outro]