Hi I'm Mal/Casey, they/them, radical queer game developer for social justice. I also love to bake things
Just go here and sign up with your college email. You can install it on up to 5 PCs or Macs and on other mobile devices, including Windows tablets and iPads.
GOD BLESS.
I PAYED UGH. REBLOGGING TO SAVE U GUYS SOME MORE GAS MONEY
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Pretty sure there are some college students following me that could use this.
YAAAAS
Andrew Hussie’s Homestuck is a deconstruction of typical narrative form in Derrida’s sense of the “unseen”. That is, Homestuck allows the audience view the “unnatural frame” that Derrida claims surrounds many feigned natural states. He does this through the inclusion of the fourth wall as an actual, physical element within the story, allowing it to interact directly with the events transpiring in canon. Derrida’s ideas of “being” are also questioned as he allows each and every part of the Homestuck experience to play a part in the formation of the plot (including the website the web comic is hosted on). Hussie also places himself within the story as a self-insert character, interacting with his creations and altering the story to a point where his involvement becomes plot-crucial. This kind of deconstruction is important, as Hussie plays with deconstruction in a light-hearted yet serious manner, presenting it in a way that makes it more accessible and more comprehensible to the masses. Hussie is very aware of what he is doing, claiming that “there is not much distinction between the layers of abstraction and the reality they are meant to stand for,” (Hussie, 2012). Through this kind of self-aware attitude, works like Homestuck introduce youth, non-academics and academics alike to deconstruction in a way that is clearer and more understandable as a literary form. This will eventually allow for much more diversity in the collective oeuvre of post-structuralism literature, as youth are able to experience and critique literary works that are not meant to be judged solely by academics.
In an interview from the documentary Derrida, the interviewer invites Derrida to extrapolate on his ideas of deconstruction. But before he addresses the interviewer’s request, he remarks, “I want to make a preliminary remark on the completely artificial character of this situation… I want to underline rather than efface our surrounding technical conditions, and not feign a “naturality” that doesn’t exist,” (Derrida, 2001). Derrida expresses that there is always an unnatural frame surrounding many forms of life (and, more specifically, media), and this frame is very rarely discussed. In Homestuck, Andrew Hussie chooses to address this frame in much the same way that Derrida chose to address the artificiality surrounding his interview. This “unnatural frame” takes shape in the form of the fourth wall—an often unseen, metaphysical idea that is rarely discussed in a literary work. However, Homestuck takes it one step further. It does not simply mention or draw attention to the fourth wall: it gives it a physical form, and has it play a crucial part in the actions and motivations of characters. In the end of Act 5, the fourth wall is broken through by two characters in a break to the “real world”, in the hopes that they can escape their universe. Hussie is clearly very aware of the distinction between the “real” world and the fictitious one, as well as the way in which these two worlds interact. He states in an interview, “Homestuck-time and real-time have always been married in a strange way. I started it on 4/13/09, and by my own rule, that became locked in as the date in the story too. And then it became stuck there, for one day of Homestuck-time, while real-time flowed normally for two and a half years… When they crashed through the wall… They have gone from HS-time to real-time. Given the schism between clocks, you could say they are faced with a rush of lost time, all at once. Like massive temporal wind resistance. So in crossing the yellow yard, they are forced to live every second that passed here in the real world which they did not experience in their fictional adventure. It’s the toll they have to pay before breaking through the other side and joining the others.” (Hussie, 2012). The ways in which he addresses Derrida’s idea of a “frame” are not subtle. Hussie has no qualms in regards to presenting these ideas to his audience rather than attempting to mask them, as he takes the unseen and presents it in a very blatant and obvious challenge to typical narrative forms.
While discussing Heidigger, Derrida mentions that he “reminds us that ‘being,’ as it is fixed in its general syntactic and lexicological forms within linguistics and Western philosophy, is not a primary and absolutely irreducible signified,” (Derrida, 1967). In this way, Derrida (and Heidigger, indirectly) express that the idea of “being” is not a fixed constant. It is a fluid, abstract concept that can be toyed with and experimented with, and in many of the ways in which Hussie approaches Homestuck, it is obvious that he is questioning this idea of “being,” playing with it in different ways within his narrative. One of the ways in which he does this is through the website on which Homestuck is hosted. Very rarely does one see a work of literature in which the host of the work plays a role in the story, especially to the extent that Homestuck’s host (the MSPA website) does. On multiple occasions in the story (though it has been more frequent as of recent updates), the website is directly impacted by plot developments in the story. At one point a character beats the narrative prompt with a crowbar, sending the website into chaos to the point where it’s nearly impossible to navigate—and once again Hussie is very aware of what he is doing. He is intentionally taking the audience on a ride, anticipating their reactions and coursing the plot to influence them accordingly. He says directly to the audience in one panel, “You decide that’s entirely enough of that. If this website becomes any more self-aware in a playfully self-deprecating yet weirdly self-aggrandizing manner, you’re going to go drown a bag of puppies in a sewer,” (Homestuck, p. 1681). Hussie guides the audience to consider what “being” means, both in terms of experiencing a piece of literature and how the piece of literature itself exists within a space. By having the website malfunction as a result of character intervention, he is demonstrating that nothing within Homestuck’s “being” is fixed; there is always a chance that this fluidity of existence will manifest itself in new ways within the web comic.
Derrida’s idea of an unnatural frame is not the only way in which he addresses the unseen in works of literature. In his article “Of Grammatology”, he comments that “writing is that forgetting of the self, that exteriorization, the contrary of the interiorizing memory,” (Derrida, 1967). This ties in with Derrida’s notion of “centring concepts” in terms of the “building blocks” of deconstruction based thinking, specifically in regards to how an author is considered to be in the centre of their oeuvre, but in a way in which they do not exist within the story itself, caught in a state of existing and not-existing at the same time. While authors have a history of appearing within their own works (see: Thomas Moore’s Utopia), it is rarely in a purely fictional sense, and rarely with the amount of self-awareness that takes place within Homestuck (Moore’s story included non-fictional correspondence between him and several colleagues). However, Hussie chooses to play with this idea very openly, nearly mocking the idea that an author should, in theory, exist as an “effaced trace image”. His multiple self inserts within the story, often viewed from beyond the visible frame of the fourth wall, are so frequent that they begin to change the course of the story. Hussie interacts with his characters directly, proposing marriage to one, arguing with another, and in the end it results in his death (at the hands of an indestructible character of his own creation). He does, however, allow himself to be bound by many of the rules of his creation, including his being cast into the afterlife of his own design. Despite this, he does allow himself a little bit of creative freedom, tricking the readers in a lighthearted way at multiple points in the story, claiming things such as, “While I did promise to influence the story over only 1 yard and 3 ns, I didn’t say it would also be 1 yard and 3 ns in their relativistic frame of reference!” (Hussie, 2011). In a page that was put directly into the comic, he addresses his self inserts directly with the fans after a good deal of controversy sprung up in regards to these insertions, stating, “As the indulgent self inserts grow in frequency, you may find yourself increasingly afraid that my direct interference with canonical events approaches inevitability. But you should understand that I understand I am dealing with forces which if handled recklessly will nullify the basic ability of intelligent beings in all real and hypothetical planes of existence to give a shit. It would be stupid of me to mismanage these forces… When the time comes, I will interact directly with the events of this narrative. But this moment will be responsibly confined to a passive intervention. It will be compact, surgical, and essential,” (Homestuck, p. 2657). The insertion of Hussie as a character is not one done recklessly or without cause; it was done very intentionally, and it was done in a way that invites readers to question not only other works of literature, but the way in which the author does or does not interact with it.
Andrew Hussie addresses multiple forms of deconstruction in his web comic Homestuck, namely in the ways in which he calls upon and mocks the idea of the “unseen” which Derrida often refers to in terms of both media and literature. Hussie invites destruction through his lack of adherence to typical narrative form, and through that destruction he is able to build something completely new. In this way Homestuck can easily be considered a deconstruction work of literature. It eliminates the unseen “frame” that Derrida describes, incorporating it into his story and allowing it to play a literal part. It questions what it means not only to exist as an author, but what it means to exist as a part of the literary experience—specifically through use of the website itself. The author himself plays a role as well, no longer existing as a “trace image” in the centre of his oeuvre, and instead participating actively in the story of his own creation. None of this is accidental; Hussie is very aware of what he is doing, and has no qualms about bringing it to the reader’s attention multiple times within the story. At one point in his first self-insertion, he asks the reader what he should do, and in response he replies with, “How about if I drag the content from one of the John files under the fourth wall layer, so we can make a more graceful transition out of this ludicrous, highly disruptive self-insertion arc?” (Homestuck, p. 1679). In this way Homestuck acts as a textbook illustration of classic Derridian deconstruction.
Now, the question becomes: why? What benefit is there to creating a work so laden with deconstruction ideas and principals, only to make it so incredibly obvious it can’t be ignored? In fact, it’s a very simple question to answer. Homestuck’s reader base consists mainly of youth, and as such they have likely not been exposed to much in the way of deconstruction, especially on a more academic scale. In this way, Homestuck allows these readers a clear and concise overview of deconstruction on a scale that is much more manageable and comprehensive to a younger audience. More so, it allows for its reader base to consider more unconventional and unorthodox methods of approaching literature. By viewing such blatant deconstruction at a young age, it opens the idea of deconstruction up to a new audience, which, for a school of thought dominated by older academics, is extremely important. Andrew Hussie allows for a new generation of deconstruction-based thought, as well as proving that Derrida’s ideas are not meant to merely rest confined within the pages of textbooks. In this way, Hussie can guarantee that more deconstruction critique and literature will emerge from younger minds, and that these ideas will not be lost with the minds that founded them.
Skitty
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Good post OP!
Do you ever wanna talk to people you super-duper admire and haven’t really talked to much but you’re worried that they’ll be like
FOR ARTISTS AND WRITERS WHO NEED IT IT’S AMAZING
I know some of you need this! (you don’t need to have giant or tiny characters either. it’s a great ref for everyone!)
Holy shit
Courtesy of Sincerely Tumblr on Twitter
This is the greatest post I have ever laid eyes upon.
as a scientist I can confirm that this is definitely how percentages and fractions work, and yes, the ocean is 10% celery, which is why we cannot drink ocean water, for we would choke on the celery
But keep in mind that since celery is 90% water, that means any water/celery mix would be comprised of a percentage of non-water celery c represented by:
c = (1/10)C
where C is the percentage of celery including its water in the mixture. Clearly, if we plug in 1/10 or 10% for our non-water celery value c, we get
1/10 = (1/10)C
Solving for C then gives us
C = 1 = 100%
As you can see, the ocean is in fact 100% celery, which is why we cannot drink ocean water, because celery is not strictly drinkable unless it is first put through a blender, and we have yet to invent one large enough to hold the entire ocean (or rather, the entire celery)
“What are you doing?”
“I’m coming with you.”
“You are? But… I thought –”
“You thought what? You come to my tree, you wake me up, I give you my blessing, and you go on your way?”
“Honestly, yes.”
“Sounds boring. Hold on a sec – let me get my stuff together.“
“…”
“What?”
“That’s a… very large hammer.”
“Well, what did you think the whole ‘Strength of the Great Tree’ bit was about?”
“I assumed it meant some sort of mystical power.”
“Hah – close, but no. What it means is that you point me at the problem and I hit it with this hammer.”
“That doesn’t seem very maidenly.”
“Very what now?”
unionhack