Homestuck update...

[pseudogeek]

John is veering into the dark side. I can feel it.

What do you mean that things weren't that important and were made more important in your head?

Look, Jade fucking took a meteor for you when you two were "just" Internet friends.

And Dave, who also was your Internet friend, fucking saved your life by travelling back in time and turn into Davesprite. And you're sick of that.

John, what's wrong with you? Are you going to turn into the dark side in front of us? Is this like the Two-Face thing? You know, Batman? The guy who turned evil used to be the best of them thing?

If this keeps going, we might have Karkat and Dave as the new best friend duo (Dave is calling the mayor his best friend already, instead of second best friend after John) instead of Dave and John or John and Jade. Worse, we might have The Meteor vs. the Evil John.

I mean, we had glimpse of John's huge bastard side before, but here it's lying naked in front of us and it's very off-putting. He isn't even trying to hide it anymore. He is losing the impossibly good control of himself.

I really don't want to see a bloodbath. John, please don't go and kill your friends.

But even if he won't do that and now is just his frustration taking... saying things like want to push Karkat off friendship stairs or called Vriska "that troll girl" and brushing it off... This John is just so very scary.

John's a borderline sociopath. I knew that. But I've always thought he was the Sherlock Holmes type of sociopath. Not this jaded, were-friends-even-that-important sociopath.

This is also the moment where I realise that he was saved by his friends at least twice. But he hadn't saved any of them directly, unless you count the corpse smooch. When he helps, it's kind of... passive. He didn't know his Windy Thing when he blew out that fire and he initiated the Scratch as part of Jade's plan. He's the Heir, he only receives.

Well, he still stayed with Jade out of his own will... I hope this means he had some kindness, and hopefully still has, and all this is just frustration and boredom talking and that when he meets his friends he'll do more than just give them a hug.

Like, see them as the friends he actually have. They are not made important in your head.


Edit: Why is everyone worrying more about their ship being sunk than the possibility of a major protagonist going evil and doom his friends? Internet, what the fuck? I know that both death and revival are pretty cheap in this story, but what the heck?

Edit 2: I was off the Karkat ? John ship for a long time already, but just saying, I don't want anything in that ? anymore. Karkat deserves better. And Vriska, just stick with the John Terezi killed, that John was much nicer. You lucked out. You are really a lucky person, don't you know that? Stick with that John. Don't ever bother to meet the alpha John anymore. He's the god of Actually An Asshole.

Well... seeing that this is Homestuck, it's still entirely possible to have a nicer John later on. But I'll just prepare for the worst.

Karkat, when John's here, avoid the hell out of him. You can't shoosh pap that guy. He's going to take your heart out and beat it into a pulp. Don't try to become a friend with him, he has never taken you seriously (I'm not guessing here: he said so to Jade in a pesterlog few acts ago). Jade looks pretty ok though, so be friend with her.

To all the fanfic writers who got John's dark side right, kudos to all of you. Oh my god that was so scary. Like, >Connect-verse John, General Vantas 'verse John and any sociopathic master actor John out there. That was observant.

Edit 3: Guys? John isn't just brushing off romance here. He is brushing off friendship as well. I would understand that a teenager that age might not want to think about romance, but throwing friendship out is throwing the baby out along with the water. Look how he's treating Davesprite. That's not what a friend does, is it? He's like, classified him as the same as the salamanders and stuff. And he's not even grateful of Davesprite saving his life. John insisting calling him Dave instead of Davesprite doesn't seem to be out of compassion here. It's horrible.

Edit 4: Guys! It's not just shipping and romance here. Why don't you worry about their personality and mental health more than shipping?

Edit 5: Fuck? What's with people calling John's dismissal of interpersonal emotional issues as becoming more mature and as a good thing? The hell it's not. You don't grow into a healthy adult by calling heart things childish and dismiss them, you learn to live and control them in a way that you bring out the best of them. Granted at 14 you might try to do that, and it's normal at this age and am important phase to live through, but that isn't a good thing in itself, it is in fact bad.

I'm going to enjoy the General Vantas 'verse John more because that one learned to play both adult responsibility and all kinds of emotions to the max. But that John had all his friends with him his entire life. The canon John is living without his friends for an year. I can't blame the canon John, but it saddens me.

(All my edits are reaction to the tumblr mass. I might crosspost there, but better not?)

Comments

[littlelinor]

I am feeling... very uneasy about this.
ngl I love John. I love how he's both cute and kinda assholeish at times but still has good intentions. But he always failed at empathy and... yeah the way he's evolving is making me uncomfortable.
I think it's probably an effect of the isolation. Because he was veering more towards the cute and friendly side when they sent their bucket message. But regardless of the reasons... yeah.

[pseudogeek]

Words cannot describe how glad I am that a Homestuck is on my blog. Thank you, Lin.

Hussie is playing his fans' emotions like lyre strings or something.

John was veering towards the cute and friendly side when they sent their bucket message? I'm not very sure of that. He was excited at the prospect of to be able to meet his friends, but why? If he's a good guy, it'd be out of love (friendship love) for his friends. If he's a sociopath or a bad guy, it'd be able to meet his new toys. In both case, he'd be happy like that.

A sociopath can still love probably (you know, Sherlock Holmes as a functional sociopath thing and he loved Watson, whichever love it was), so the two are not mutually exclusive, but I've had this lingering fear of John actually turn evil eventually. Because you know, Hussie is the writer and he loves messing with us.

Remember Eridan? We all thought his "kill everyone" attitude was just an attitude and he won't actually kill anyone, but then...

So this John thing is scaring me. I've always thought that all the lingering hints of John not being an ideal human being was just a way to humanise him, but now I'm scared.

[littlelinor]

Actually I always had a feeling Eridan was gonna lose it. Especially by the time he started to antagonise Rose.

And yeah I get what you mean about sociopathy--amusingly this makes me think that John and Dirk are pretty much opposites. And have I mentioned how much I love Dirk? Because I do.
But for me... those hints are still what could humanise him. Because right now it feels like he's slipping further... into not human tbh. Letting himself be eaten up by time and fate and SHIT NEEDS TO BE DONE, and honestly the kid lost his dad (and unlike others he won't get to meet a magically younger version of him), and died several times and saw his friends die and now he's isolated on a ship in the middle of spacetime with a friend and salamenders and another friend--I think deep down he's scared of davesprite because he doesn't know how to deal with him and because he comes from a tineline where he's dead. So honestly? He was bound to snap at one point. And he seems to be snapping by NOT SNAPPING which in a way is even more scary.

[pseudogeek]

I guess I wasn't very observant then. Or I had too much hope for the goodness in their hearts.

Dirk is awesome. Too bad we don't see enough of him. We will though. Soon. +_+

But please elaborate on why are they opposites?

And to be fair... the kids were, well, kids when the whole shitstorm happened. Kids just aren't very sensible to certain things. Plus they were busy. But now they have a three years long break and they are growing up. All the trauma are going to slowly sink in. Rose and Dave are still somewhat busy of sort so it won't sink in so fast. But John and Jade are bored out of their mind now, so it will sink in. Jade lived in an island raised by a dog who played fetch with bullets, so she's relatively immune to this. John? He was the kid with the most normal life. It's going to affect him the most.

At this point we can only wait and pray for Hussie's mercy.