tragic! trans person no longer merely tolerating the act of existing just now realising their entire wardrobe is ass

tattoo work by needleshark

to be clear, this is how i'd give a casual synopsis, which is usually what people who act like explaining homestuck is really difficult are ostensibly trying to do. if i was, like, describing homestuck's themes in a more analytic register, i would be more inclined to focus on how it's a multimedia hypertext fiction bildungsroman deconstruction with several layers of metanarrative that's ultimately focused on the experience of growing up queer and online in the 2000s through the frame of gnostic allusion, pop culture bricolage, and the author-audience relationship as seen through the lens of said author's idiosyncratic quasiplatonist theory of fiction

Can that be explained for someone who doesn’t know all the jargon? Not trying to be insulting, I just don’t know what a lot of that means.

main difficulty phrases/parts:

bildungsroman

gnostic allusion

pop culture bricolage

idiosyncratic quasiplatonist theory of fiction

so first of all i want to be super clear that, like, this 'jargon' is not simply obtuse for its own sake, but just like any specialized topic with centuries of theory behind it, literary analysis has developed its own vocabulary with which very specific and complex concepts can be communicated succintly

that said: a bildungsroman is a type of coming-of-age story that puts a lot of focus onto a certain notion of 'growing up', a somewhat romanticized vision of the transition from 'childhood' to 'adulthood' with a strong focus on the emotional maturation of the protagonist. when i say homestuck is a 'bildungsroman deconstruction', i mean that homestuck is, in some ways, an entry into this genre, but takes pains to highlight, interrogate, and sometimes outright reject a lot of the underlying philosophical assumptions that go into defining it.

gnosticism is a dubiously historical (as in, it is an exogenous post-facto grouping made of faiths and interpretatins of christian doctrine that is often described as though it is a coherent and continuous religious tradition) constellation of beliefs mostly bound togeher by a focus on personal enlightenment in the face of an illusionary or deceptive world and by a quasidualist cosmology separating an invisible, omnipotent divinity and a lesser, malevolent or flawed creator divinity ('demiurge'). homestuck is full of gnostic allusion, from the surface-level aesthetic incorporation of gnostic vocabulary and concepts (the monster yaldabaoth, a character's username being gardengnostic) to a more thorough thematic engagement with the ideas of materiality being a deceptive shroud over an immaterial 'true world', or malevolent/absent creator divinites emanating forth from higher-ranking ones.

bricolage is an artistic technique focused on repurposing and melding existing objects -- 'pop culture bricolage' here is me saying that huge parts of homestuck rest on the recontextualization and incorporation of both "low" and "high" cultural objects, aesthetic, visual, and narrative elements from stuff like saw, starsky & hutch, the sims, dungeons & dragons -- allowing plot beats and images (sometimes, literal, jpeg images) from all these pop culture works of art to form loadbearing parts of everything from indivdiual panel composition to story arcs.

the 'quasiplatonist theory of fiction' here is a reference to the beliefs about art and fiction that hussie expresses, with varying degrees of facetiousness, through homestuck and outside of it. i call it 'quasiplatonist' as an analogy to platonic idealism, because a central element of it is the notion of the 'pure', immaterial, 'essence' of a character being separable from their depiction in the work and the circumstances of that work's creation, and i call it idiosyncratic because hussie's take on it is very singular and leads to some very strange conclusions.

in loving memory of tumblr's april fools' pranks 💐 2014 - 2024

icymi, tumblr used to do an elaborate april fool's prank every year, but this year they suddenly stopped. here's a somewhat detailed recap of everything they did over the decade:

2013 - mishapocalypse (honourable mention): tumblr staff didn’t start doing april fools until 2014, but the mishapocalypse happened on tumblr in 2013 and i feel like this list would be incomplete without it

2014 - tumblrpro: upon opening your dash you were greeted by an “inspirational” video, that ended with the option to get “tumblrpro (for free)”. all it did was put a top hat on your icon.

2015 - tumblr executivesuite/coppy: a copying machine appeared in the corner of your dash. it would offer tips on how to use tumblr, like clippy the paperclip used to do in microsoft word. as the day went on, it slowly broke down and died right in front of your eyes. many people hated him (but not me). you could also make a (small) spreadsheet. @executivesuite2016 is the official blog.

2016 - this is decision/lizard election/tumblrdecides: a parody of the 2016 US elections. there were 4 lizards (well, one of them turned out to be a salamander in a scandal) to vote for. the dash looked different and there was a live news report with election updates, as well as an election blog for each lizard. they all had their own slogans and you would get an "i voted" button after you voted that would get slapped next to your icon. there were built-in functions to make an election poster for your favourite lizard and to create a text post that supported your lizard of choice that autogenerated a statement for all your followers to read. imo tumblr’s april fools peak. @thisisdecision2016-blog is the official blog, @mop-2016-blog @wretchedtooth @timefordeborah-blog were candidates. rick also had a blog (rick-official) but that now seems to have vanished because he ended up dropping out of the election. mop won, if you're curious. by far the most elaborate prank tumblr ever did.

2017 - horse friend: a tamagotchi-inspired game where you had to take care of a little horse in the corner of your screen. it came with a randomly generated name, and you had to feed and clean up after it. if you didnt take good care of it, it died. you could then hatch (yes, hatch) a new one. there was also an option to look at the names of all your dead horses. this is now available to buy in the tumblr shop. @horse-friends is the official blog.

2018 - tumblcoin: a parody of cryptocurrency (this was the year bitcoin took off). you could ‘invest’ in tumblcoin, with which you could in turn buy things with to spice up your dash, including last year’s horse friend, coppy from 2015, and a frame for around your icon. you could share the amount of tumblcoin you owned in an automatically generated gif post which would be tagged #tbc2018 and #tumblcoin. @tumblcoin is the official blog.

2019 - @memories: this blog still functions the way it did on april fools itself! it's like mad libs, where it takes post templates and then adds in tags you use a lot and users you frequently interact with on your main blog. like a personalized shitpost bot.

2020 - group chat prank/@storybot: it was so hard to find info on this because it was contained entirely in the now-defunct group chat function, which no one used. i had to go through the notes of this post for information because no one cared enough to actually write anything explaining it. turns out, you could write a story with your mutuals by adding storybot to your group chat. it also kept working after april fools (well, up until the group chats were deleted) just like memories. many people missed out on it entirely because they did not use the group chat function.

2021 - tumblcryptids: tumblr allowed you to adopt “non-fungible tumblcryptids”, a parody of NFTs. clicking a button that said "Summon thy Tumblrcryptid" would spawn an image of a little blob-shaped creature with a short description, which would always read "Hi! My name is [randomly generated name]. I love [thing most people like]. I hate [thing most people dislike]. Like my parent, I can't get enough of #[tag from your main blog]." you could share them in a post, which would automatically add the tag #NFTumblcryptids to your post. and yes, people on the piss on the poor website freaked out about it because they thought they were real NFTs harming the environment. @tumblcryptidadoptioncenter is the official blog.

2022 - click-a-thon: when you clicked a light switch on your dashboard, a bunch of colourful things showed up, like a sponge you could move around, an "engagament meter", clickable buttons, and a “Summon Crab!” button, which would summon a crab when you clicked it. you could. the crabs, like horse friend, are still available in the tumblr store as of 2025. here's some screenshots. there were various ways to share your crab activities, which would all get tagged #april fools 2022. the prank was presented as a marketing technique created by Brick Whartley, a fictional businessman character created by tumblr, who (afaik) originated in a post on the official blog of the 2018 april fools prank, albeit originally in a different role. around this time he also started functioning as the mascot for tumblr's shop ( @emporium )

2023 - abstract reactions (emoji reacts): buttons were added to every post that allowed you to add emoji reactions, many of them based on tumblr inside jokes (horse as a reference to horse plinko/horse friend, vanilla for the vanilla extract meme, pikaman, bug for bug race, and brick whartley, who wasn't a meme but staff really wanted him to be). if one specific emoji was used a certain amount of times it would add an effect to the post, eg many cheese emoji reacts would cover the post in cheese. this was also attributed to Brick Whartley ("his" blog @brickwhartley also documented the day)

2024 - boop-o-meter: allowed you to “boop” other users who had opted in to the booping, like facebook’s poke feature back in the day. depending on how long you held the button, you would either boop, super boop, or evil boop. on the dashboard there was a counter for both how many times you had booped others and how many times others had booped you, as well as how many boops were given side-wide. when booping someone, an image of a cat paw appeared. you would get badges (which can still be used) for booping 1, 100 and 1000 times. if you got more than 999 boops, the counter would simply say “WOW”. this was brought back for halloween 2024 (as BOOp-o-meter. get it), with a ghost, skeleton and mummy paw. no official blog, but here's an official recap for april first from staff. i believe this was the only april fools prank that was mobile user friendly.

2025 - @fandom is running some polls, i guess

is this anything

for april fools we’re deleting this entire site sayonara you weeaboo shits

it’s so deeply sad that helly probably longs to be a bush girl but helena absolutely keeps that thing bald as hell

best tag award goes to

every morning I get up and remind myself I need to dress like someone's rakish and prodigal youngest son or perhaps a wanton lesbian prince of sorts so that the admitted students touring my campus will see my trench coats and self-select for the dyke freaks and against the Barbie movie fans. And thats why I'm wearing a tie at 10 am.

I do this for the miserable transgender 18 year old richard papen kinnies only

happy tdov never kill yourself

we could be gigantic feral boars who gallop through the forest together & impale people with our tusks in our next lives if we play our cards just right

- Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor. Bryan Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, Eds.

iive been so obsessed with this video for days

generally you shouldn't write run-on sentences because they get confusing and it doesn't give the reader a break. that doesn't apply to me though my run-on sentences are fun and understandable and they have a rhythm to it that makes you want to keep reading

Really insightful and hard-hitting analysis on my sisters copy of the secret history that she annotated when she was 13