curlicuecal:

theenglishmanwithallthebananas:

hypeswap:

i cant believe we watched dave’s bro kick his ass so hard that dave’s record icon (a representation of his Self) was broken in two and almost nobody realized what we were seeing for a long time

#hussie did a really good job of framing his narratives in interesting and unfamiliar ways#he would make fun of us for taking things Too Seriously#like huge weapons. things we thought were plot holes. he was good at pulling our heads out of our asses#and making us realize that shit we thought was important was only that way#because wed been trained by other media to think they really mattered at all#and then hed turn around and take the most ridiculous silly TRIVIAL shit#and say look at this. look what you ignored. this matters#he framed bros abuse of dave as a funny joke and a cool dynamic#and a lot of us didnt realize it for what it was until dave himself did#its cool 

[via @truereset]

these tags were just too good to ignore

You know, it occurs to me that this works on a couple levels.

The homestuck world is explicitly a little different than our own. We take our cues on what is normal and what humorous vs. what should be alarming from the text.

John strifes with his dad over cake and does a spin roll out of the room; Rose trades escalating passive-aggressive mockery about a fridge drawing with her mom; John and Rose take the household apart and drop the bathtub in the hallway…. the narrative and the character reactions cue us that this is funny, but not outside the realm of plausibility.

Dave has swords in the fridge and gets buried in an avalanche of ridiculous sex puppets—character reactions cue us that this is aggravating, normal, funny.

Here’s the extra level that this works on:

Kids take their cues on what is normal from their environment.

Dave’s Bro says puppets are cool and ironic, so they are. Other kids complain about strifing with their parents or getting over-the-top pranks/passive-aggression dropped on them, so that’s normal child-guardian interaction. Getting tricked into participating in a “puppet snuff film” makes Dave and the audience uncomfortable, but it’s funny. Right?

We, as the audience, get to be right there with Dave, not knowing that this isn’t normal. Not knowing how much weight to place on various things. Not knowing that those uncomfortable feelings were the ones we had a right to be prioritizing after all. Not knowing that this was abuse, until much much later, when we’re left looking back on everything with this new, revelatory perspective.

That is very very true to the experience of childhood abuse. And that is some very very excellent storytelling.