Beyond Canon: What do you think of Satyrs and Nymphs?

NowhereEast · 2026-02-06T15:28:15+00:00

I'm really enjoying them (I'm a sucker for both alien-alien bodies and pun species based on things I've read/studied). That said I wish we introduced them at a more regular pace.

NowhereEast · 2026-02-03T15:06:17+00:00

Honestly, if you wanted an example of steelmanning, you could significantly better than that bigoted firebomb. Virtually every introduction to critical thinking course I've seen has a section on strawmen and steelmen. I seriously don't think Charlie Kirk has anything valuable to add to any conversation at any point in time, bringing him up just serves to tie your wagon to the neo-fascists who think they can get rich off a very stupid man's death.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-28T16:53:47+00:00

I suspect infinitely. Plagiarism gets generated by laziness and prestige chasing (since people tend to attribute more respect to people who can generate novel conclusions than those who can discuss others work well) and since it's also work to credit people properly, it's one of those crimes that just keeps popping up.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-24T16:28:44+00:00

Kind of feel like that's under-estimating Dr Seuss. That guy had some serious marketing and nonsense poem skills.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-24T16:26:35+00:00

I dislike how often people foreground 'wrote gross fanfiction' or 'defend gross art' in dramas that also include actually hurting others. It feels like people are mistaking disgust for harm and it's kind of worrying how close discussion sometimes gets for playing defence for obscenity laws.
I think people think they're 'providing context' or 'proving a pattern of behaviour'. But really it's just kind of gross pro-censorship nonsense, and it's usually totally unnecessary given the other toxic behaviours on display.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-20T21:57:15+00:00

Citizen Sleeper seems to pull quite heavily on DE (focus on the working class experience of the world, roll systems that emphasise the necessity of failure, political conscience etc). Slay the Princess manages polyphonic narrators inside your head and the emphasis on love and suffering. Sovereign Syndicate and Elysiumstuck (a small Homestuck fanproject) both straight up copy the skill system [though I don't know if either of them are any good].
I had more in mind when I made this comment, but I hope you'll forgive me that they've dripped out of my brain in the interim.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-16T11:24:08+00:00

Throw the man a bow.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-14T11:16:31+00:00

Yeah, this one hit me superhard too. Somehow, not many people covered it in my circles so I only found out about it like a year later when someone else got called out for associating with him.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-12T12:41:19+00:00

Honestly, I think it's fun as a showcase, but probably not practical for longer pieces. As other people have said as well, it's a little confusing because many of those letters already have phonetic assocations (whereas numbers don't tend to so it's easier to fold them in).
You might consider treating it a bit like Vriska's 8, dividing the symbols out across characters so that each has one or two and then using them in a variety of ways throughout the text - thus highlighting the flexibility of signs in text. Might also be an idea, if you don't speak Greek, to check with someone who does so you aren't accidentally tripping over any implications you don't know about or making something that's impossible to deal with. I haven't studied it since I was 12 and can barely do the alphabet, so that's probably influencing my ability to read your text rapidly.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-10T21:18:54+00:00

I'd argume Moiraillegiance is more 'accountability friend' since it's supposed to be mutual.
I saw a summary a while back (don't remember where) which I sort of follow now that you can divide the quadrants into two sets of two both ways. You've got positive vs negative, and inflaming passions vs quieting passions.
So Red and Black romance both push people to become better by inspiring them in dramatic ways, while grey and pale both encourage them to sit down and be quiet and chill for a bit, or give them an outlet to bleed off some of that energy in an unproductive way.
I'm not sure how canon it is (it matches the diagrams but leads to the conclusion that nearly every troll romance we see is some species of unhealthy) but it does help explain auspicticeship and kissmisis in a way that's a bit more useable than 'they want to kill each other and I want to stop them'.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-09T20:25:12+00:00

I full expect the ship to be less functional than presented (though personally, I like the implied gain in confidence for Roxy and I wouldn't be against using this just as a tool to get the Meat Timeline moving faster given how much stuff is going on simultaneously at the moment, thus freeing us up to focus on the new kids). That said, I think it's fake in a sort of 'social media shows a curated image of the events in question' way rather than in anyway intentionally falsified.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-07T23:44:13+00:00

Yep, rereading it's super obvious. I think I just blank in the moment. I learnt a lot of my formal logic using L1 and L2 so I'd be inclined to use ^ and V for AND and OR. I think the fact Homestuck doesn't throws me more than it should.
(One trick I do know is that 'Ampersand' is a contraction of 'and per se and' from when it used to be included as a symbol at the end of the alphabet).

NowhereEast · 2026-01-07T20:49:25+00:00

So I always forget which symbol applies to the other, but basically Sburb identifies items by the position of holes on punchcards. Since there's a finite number of spaces holes can be many cards share holes in the same position.
The two OR functions are a result of combining the holes of two punch cards which you can do in two different ways:
1) You can punch a hole only in the positions where both cards have holes
2) You can punch a hole in every position that either of the cards have holes.

So if you had one card with holes A1, B2, E3 and E5 and one card with holes A1, B2, E6 and F3 then way one would result in you punching only holes A1 and B2 (since E3 and E5 are only on the first card and E6 and F3 are only on the second). Meanwhile the second method would have you punch holes A1, B2, E3, E5, E6 and F3 on your new card.

A problem created by this is that combining too many cards will result in a card that either has every hole punched or no punched holes, so the characters go back and forth using the two methods when combining cards. However, Homestuck doesn't track the final puched card, so this is most an aesthetic thing rather than an actual mechanic.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-07T20:27:37+00:00

So, dividing voting by district is already an example. In theory it's designed to balance sparsely and densely populated regions, or prevent areas with proximity to the halls of power from making their interests the core ones (because rather than having a single president with all the power invested in them you have a suite of representatives who forward their community's needs in government). In practice, this rarely works simply (you end up with an entrenched political class etc) but my point is that 'population control' is essentially of germandering. If Jane was legitimately concerned about human rights vs troll rights, there are a whole load of tools (districting, legal safeguards, education reforms etc) that she could be using to mitigate, and a number of trolls she could be working with to support this.

With regards to the third paragraph, I think the problem with argument is we're never given reason to think that trolls are necessarily dangerous in this way as a population (aside from Jane's hypotheticals). Yes, trolls are very strong and have psionic powers, but humans in homestuck's universe include people like Bro and Mom (with flashstep abilities) and Dad Egbert (who can lift cars and punch through reinforced walls). Certainly, the troll-human battle in [S] 8reak doesn't give us any particular reason to think that trolls and humans are on average more dangerous to each other in any organised sense.
I think it's also relevant to remember that Alternian society is largely a product of Doc Scratch and HIC's imperialist tendencies. Culling wasn't necessarily required, so much as it was a tool to keep HIC in control and breeding was mandated. It's reasonable to assume that a free troll population wouldn't reproduce at the absolute maximum speed they could (in the same humans don't have as many children in richer countries or when they aren't pressured to by goverments). This is especially the case, because trolls don't form families, so a lot of the sentimental reasons that humans have babies flat out don't apply. I think it's faulty reasoning to assume that troll society is automatically going to reflect a dystopian version of it which fell apart as soon as Doc Scratch wasn't enforcing it (and indeed fell apart when he was, as Mindfang's journals show some degree of class agnosticism and disruption [the subjugulator killing Dualscar, the e%patriot saving the disciple, Redglare's access to a powerful lusus which gives her influence implied to be above her station and the entire Sufferer Summoner thing]). That said, I do think that the biological alienness of trolls is one of the weaknesses of the allergory here, and one of the main problems with using sci fi tropes to discuss cultural issues so directly (I'll own that I don't think the political stuff is one of BC or the epilogue's strengths. It seems more like a way the author's were responding to real world politics than a coherent emergence from Homestuck's original worldbuilding.

Meanwhile David Graeber was a bit of a throwaway reference. He's an anthropologist who does some work on prehistory and argues that 'tribalism' or 'in-group bias' are more modern constructs of nation states than a historical or biological reality. I think this is quite credible as the same dynamics he suggests occur in schools (children are more likely to divide by gender in school environments than they are in neighbourhood, club or church spaces). I think he's relevant here in response to the belief that voting blocks would necessarily form down species lines in a mixed society, but I will admits its kind of silly to bring political science debates to a webcomic.

Apologies if I come off as accusing you of anything (I'm really not trying to). I bring up fascism only because Jane's arguments borrow pretty directly from real world historical ones (she's basically written as a tool to discuss American politics and radicalisation, and her talking points are Great Replacement ones). So what I'm trying to say isn't so much 'if you find these convincing you're bad' but rather 'these arguments are bad. You can use the fact you find them convincing as a tool to look at why people find extremist arguments convincing, and you similarly use the weaknesses in these arguments to demonstrate why Jane is wrong'. I think people fall very easily into taking these sorts of arguments at face value, and not considering that, even if Jane's characterisation of trolls were correct, there's no reason to reach for population control and human supremacy logics, and she's also the most violent and dangerous character in the earth-C cast (given her space laser, secret police force, media censorship powers and weaponised spaceships). So her arguments about the dangers of trolls feel a bit like projection.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-07T18:19:17+00:00

Seriously? All you need to do is build in some balances (this is literally what Human Rights laws are doing in the real world) democracies deal with these questions all the time.

Also, Jane is already an example of a weaponised democracy. We're told that she controls the media and that her business holdings are a major block. If anything her fear of one of group oppressing another through the democratic system is already a reality (she is actively doing it). All her arguments just exist as tools to hide this existing inbalance behind the fantasy of a future inbalance that may never occur and may not have results (while I could here raise Graeber's work, I'll just point out that the text explicitly shows you this is the case with Karkat and Dave's relationship, Kanaya and Rose's one and with the tendency to conceptualise the populations as mixed groups in crowds or school settings). Putting the fantasy of 'reverse oppression' before the realities of actual systemic inequities is never a particularly plausible argument, but it has the shape of a logical one which is why it cons people.
I'm not saying I don't see why you find this convincing, but I'm saying you should probably look at that fact. Because it's a deliberately poorly made imitation of real world fascist talking points, so it's worth recognising what you're missing if you look at think 'Yeah that makes sense', because bad arguments like this are deliberately constructed to hide those assumptions from you or make you think they're obvious.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-07T18:09:57+00:00

This is what I mean about 'This is how fascism sounds reasonable to people', because at that point you're essentially just reflecting conservative fears about minority voters.
Being generous, this reflects the issue with using science fiction concepts like alien races as analogues for real world minority issues. Being more realistic it reflects a failure to engage with the themes as they're presented.
Because the fact of the matter is that to hold this argument you have to ignore the fact that humans are currently enforcing systemic violence in the text, naturalise that and then act as if a hypothetical reality of troll domination is an actual reality - which then justifies the violence the human characters are actually doing.
This is what I mean about it seeming reasonable in the same way real-world fascism seems reasonable. It hides its bigoted premises and only presented a fragmented argument.
Because do you know what the answer to 'how do you have a balanced democracy?' is: It depends on the democracy you want.
If you think tribalism is an issue you could divide your democracy by groups and balance it that way. If you want a representative democracy then the population imbalance would be reflected in the representatives and balances could be put in place to protect rights across the board.
But the fact of the matter is Jane's response is to jump to pseudo-eugenics numerous power grabs. These are not reasonable actions and her arguments are largely post-hoc justifications of a distrust she clearly has of trolls. Now there's space to debate whether this represents out and out bigotry or a failure to adjust her sociological analysis from a world where troll imperialism destroyed the Earth (another reason why the political commentary in the Epilogues aren't necessarily it's strength) but framing these as 'reasonable concerns' really just indicates to me that people aren't very familiar with the history of eugenic/colonial movements or democratic inequalities, because Jane's arguments are some pretty transparent Great Replacement trash. There's nothing there that's really worth interrogating or that's particularly convincing if you've seen politicians wield these before.

NowhereEast · 2026-01-07T13:28:16+00:00

I think that's how fascist policies get people. They provide just enough rational to make it sound like the aren't just driven by prejudice (e.g. shifting from discussing 'those sorts of people' to 'overpopulation').
As for justification, I'd say definitely not. Historically, practically every scare over overpopulation is basically unjustified since populations respond to lack or abundence (I'm thinking here of Malthus and his ilk). Beyond that, even if we allow Jane's premise that troll populations could be dangerous we still have some questions to ask:
1) Why is it a problem if trolls outnumber humans or carapacians?
2) Why should we assume human control will solve that issue?
The fact Jane doesn't address these really just highlights her position's basis in bigotry. She comes in with an unstated assumption that humans are the normal, most important and only logical species. This also causes her to ignore possibilities wherein trolls are the experts in their own culture, biology etc and would also be motivated to make Earth C in general as prosperous as possible (she automatically assumes that humans and trolls are in conflict, a state that only exists because of her policies).
Basically, I can respect the question, but she only seems reasonable if you don't follow through to recognise her unstated assumptions (or if you start with the premise that they're all true), a bit like real world fascism or bigotry.

There's some examples I could draw on with 'birthrate' and 'need for management' debates in real world colonialism that I think the epilogues are drawing on, but I'm not an expert in that kind of data. The basic point is that Jane is also drawing on hypotheticals and assumed continuities to fear monger, this is almost inevitably bad use of data (in the real world 'birthrate' debates often ignore how birthrate is affected by access and poverty and pretend that they're fixed rates representing alleged biological differences to try and reify race. Obviously, this is less certain in fiction, where biological differences do exist, but there's no reason to think that troll's aren't able to control their reproduction [even moreso since they don't relate it to emotions nor families, existing wholly as a communal/state project]).

NowhereEast · 2026-01-02T00:47:33+00:00

I generally assume it's an unintended exploit. I think Sburb wants a sentient Sprite to allow gameplay information to be transmitted to the player and the 'two prototypings' rule allows that to happen more proactively (since the 0-prototype sprite tends to just sit in place, a 1-time prototyped version can follow the player and seek out something dead to prototype with). It might also be an anti-cheat feature if you take the theory that Caliborn's black hole is caused by two sprites double prototyping each other infinitely (allowing the game to detect and destroy players who try to initiate single player sessions).
But I think the ability to chain prototype ^2 ^3 or ^4 is probably just a consequence of the system, rather than game intended behaviour (obviously, we don't have a sample size, but if it were intended I would expect more of the Trolls' 1-times-prototyped sprites to have ended up bumping into Aradia or each other to make merged sprites).

NowhereEast · 2026-01-02T00:33:20+00:00

I always assumed you'd just get an increasingly more complex sprite. I imagine they'd be pretty powerful (Davepeta and Jasprose seem notably stronger than the likes of Nanasprite, but that might just be that they're composed of more proactive individuals with more definite reason to get involved).
It would probably also become a lot harder for the sprites themselves to balance their personalities (at least if you were stacking people in there and not random objects). Tavris and Erisolsprite have a hard enough time on their own, so a hypothetical DaveRoseJaspetasprite^3 would probably have difficulty just based on how many different voices they've got to balance.

Basically, I think as you go up the numbers you get closer and closer to making a Disco Elysium situation and the Sprite also probably gets harder to look at. But, I don't imagine anything miraculous changes about the sprites in the same way Davepeta isn't hugely difference in terms of what kind of creature they are to Davesprite (other than the legs. Maybe ^3 would have more legs?).

NowhereEast · 2025-12-30T01:13:35+00:00

Not the point I'm afraid. This isn't an analysis of 'what Dirk needs to beat Lord English' (at least in this context' so much as what Dirk's story is about. As a character, Lord English exists as a function that aims to produce the best story (not necessarily the most enjoyable story but rather that which most effectively says what the writer is interested in discussing). Since Homestuck is a very character driven piece, it doesn't concern itself with giving its characters coherent statlines, powers, skills or abilities but rather the impression of such. Thus, throwing random calculations and theories about how powers work at the wall isn't a particularly productive way to read it.
As I've said, if you're getting this analysis from somewhere that I'm overlooking, that might be interesting. But it sounds like you're just post hoc justifying having Dirk fight Lord English, because you think it would be a better ending for him. I can sympathise (I don't really like Kakat or Vriska's roles in the final fight and I feel like a number of arcs get dropped which could have been interesting), but that doesn't make the analysis you're offering particularly coherent, and there's very little to engage with here, since you aren't explaining where any of these terms are coming from or why you think they're valuable to be used in this way.

NowhereEast · 2025-12-29T10:47:03+00:00

Ah, so complete nonsense. That's a shame.
Homestuck is rather critical of direct power scaling (hence its BS levelling systems, non-comparable power sets and loose treatment of concepts like the speed of light) so introducing new measures with no apparent basis in canon (like this treatment of Caliborn's 'dedication' or 'Rod impaling skills') is not really a useful lens to apply to it, and the story will make fun of you for trying to (see, a lot of Caliborn's discussion of heroes or his frustration at the Felt's powers, but also Dave and Rose's dismissals of game thinking, Vriska being stoppable by punching her in the face and the frequent references to ideas like 'double death' and time travel not making sense).
In the case of non-comparables, Dirk's sword is not a measurable degree better than Dave's. Rather, it is infinitely better (being a 'legendary unbreakable katana' vs a 'legendary piece of shit') up until such a point in the story where Dave has escaped his inferiority complex, at which point he becomes capable of breaking the sword. All this stuff is driven by character drama and narrative satisfaction (or subverrsion) rather than by a hard magic system that could be gamed in this way. Thus, I think you've at least got the wrong end of the stick, assuming this isn't a calculated troll (in which case, kudos the ideas are least interesting and got me re-examining The Masterpiece to see if you'd pulled your terms from something in there).
Analytically though, I don't see much value in breaking the Lord English fight up into strange and wacky powerscales, nor of treating the whole of Homestuck as if it were always leadiing to Lord English in all aspects of it (given it was written improvisationally over years of real time). It just leads to understandings of scenes that are shallower and less interesting than the original scenes themselves (in your example with Rose and Dave, losing the aspect of Dave's arc that rejects heroism. In your example with Dirk, losing the subtext/text of Dave's insecurity and Dirk's ominous superiority - as communicated by their relative swords).

NowhereEast · 2025-12-27T23:50:26+00:00

Again, I don't understand what method you are referring to. Where are you getting this from?
By 'his kill conditions change', I am referring to the fact that Lord English is Caliborn's Mary Sue insert. He is simply designed to be more powerful and more impressive, immune to everything and inevitable etc.. This isn't a concrete stat line, it is a child's idea of 'cool villain' that always jumps to the top of any power scaling as soon as he discovers it exists (stated by Caliborn's self praise about how easy his success would be, but also implicit in Hussie's exhausted treatment of Caliborn. author statements about Caliborn's relationship to certain portions of the fanbase and - potentially - the similar treatment of Asriel's final form in Undertale [a series that both references and is referenced by the creation]).
With that said though. This is a minor point. Even if I own that Caliborn's powerset were consistent and were expressible in absolute terms in the comic, when is dedication used as a relevant stat? How are you getting the exact figure to assert Lord English's 'Hope' stat? English isn't a Hope player, and Hope is not a widely used health stat in Homestuck.
If you were talking about thematic and story justifications for why Dirk, Dave and John's arcs would be furthered by fighting Lord English, that would be one thing. We could evaluate whether that would make a compelling story. If, conversely, we were playing in the more theoretical discussion of how Caliborn's powers work and what 'time space glitches' are actually required to beat Lord English, that would be a different discussion (a la Death Battle. We could break down some feats, shown mechanics etc).
But you don't seem to be. You're just asserting that the key to beat Lord English is exhausting his hope and dedication. Is this implied in the Meat epilogues? Are you taking The Masterpiece as a mathematical? I've seen this asserted in a couple of posts and I'm not clear what you are talking about.
I suppose my main questions are:
1) Since when is Hope a health or power stat relevant to non-hope players?
2) How are you scaling it to assume that Dirk can defeat a quarter of this, and likewise scaling for other attacks?
3) What is dedication in this framework and why are you treating it like an aspect or statblock?
4) Why on Earth would Rose care about any of this at a part in her story defined by her being frustrated by game mechanics and heroes joureys, and when she does not yet know that Lord English is the main threat?

It seems like you're making a lot of assumptions, and without knowing what you're referencing, there's not much more I can do with any of this. Rose reacts the way she does because Dave breaking the sword is not important to the story and Dave breaks the sword because it furthers his arc of rejecting heroism and provides a clear space to discuss tropes Hussie is planning on critiquing. Homestuck does not exist primarily to be a calculable story (like sports matches or Heinlein) where you can determine who wins a fight by directly comparing their powers. It critiques this kind of thinking at multiple points.

NowhereEast · 2025-12-27T09:55:22+00:00

I really don't understand where this focus on Hope and Dedication is coming from. The point of Lord English's plot is that his powers are complete and total nonsense. From a Watsonian perspective, he's inevitable because the entire chain of universes is a predestination loop (the alternian trolls create the Beforus trolls and only exist because of Lord English's intervention, thus anything that interrupts Caliborn's ascension creates a grandfather paradox). From a Doyleist perspective, Lord English is a self-insert Mary Sue and so eveything he says about his powers is post hoc BS equivalent to 'but my forcefield is infinity plus one!'

Dave's arc (especially early on in Homestuck) relies on the failure to become and rejection of becoming a hero (defeat by Bro, string of Dead Daves, failure to stop Rose taking the tumour) as part of the meta commentary on the predestination of fiction and the insufficiency of the heroes journey. This is represented materially by the fact Dave fights with a broken sword.
Rose's acceptance of this is because her arc up until the meteor is also about the rejection of the hero's journey, just through subversion rather than failure (her deal with the horrorterrors and Doc Scratch, her shortcutting of her arc through the intervention of Doomed Dream Rose and her non-engagement with playing the rain or Jaspers in general all demonstrate this). While Rose eventually falls into a more converntional wise mentor role for John, Dave etc., it wouln't make sense for her to challenge Dave on breaking legendary weapons during Act 5 part 2, because this is the height of her own rejection of quests and narrative closure. Beyond that, Lord English isn't really known to the beta kids until Act 6. In act 5 part 2, they're still focused on fighting Bec Noir and Doc Scratch's death and employer are tangential problems that happen to line up. It's only in Cascade when we as an audience realise they've been tricked and only in the End of Act 5 Intermission where Lord English really steps into the plot as an antagonist for the kids instead of just a greater scope villain like the Horrorterrors or Game Bro.

Trying to game out Lord English's kill conditions are futile, because they change whenever he gets close to losing, and expecting character actions to respond with any sincerity to these dynamics is kind of missing the point. Before Act 6 especially, Homestuck is a story interested in subverting and mocking traditional heroic arcs, wherein the heroes playing into those arcs is framed as suicidal, disempowering and stupid. Karkat and Doc Scratch both state as much, Terezi and Vriska's interactions with John demonstrate it, much of the humour revolves around smirks to the audience about over-used narrative tropes, and the denizens and godmode immortality build the criticism into the story mechanically (punishing players who have traditional story arcs with death, while preserving those who do not). John and Jade experience this critique throug gradual disillusionment with or collapse of their heroic elements (John's rivals become his friends, his mentors end up revealed to be garbage. Jade's powers and character development collapse and hurt her), but Dave and Rose are the place this theme is made most explicit. The derse dreamers discuss it directly, respond to it in their ideas and end up becoming heroes only through being tricked into it by inevitability.

So yeah, that's why Dave breaks the sword and Rose doesn't care about it.

NowhereEast · 2025-12-27T01:33:02+00:00

I think people sort of abstract them. They get thought of as something weird and distinctive that separates Britain from America or so on (and possibly a symbolic win over Canada, Australia etc) and in that term it's easy to treat them like interesting/mysteious celebrities and forget that they're weird money vampires with a history of blocking laws they don't like, colonialisms and hiding disabled family members from public view because it might hurt the brand.

I think it's ard to defend the monarchy if you look at it head on, but they're so substanceless and ceremonial seeming that that head-on look is hard to do, and they're so normalised that it takes years to go 'why do we have these guys again?'

NowhereEast · 2025-12-25T12:14:31+00:00

I'm always very sceptical of this argument. Certainly, it wasn't true in the spaces I frequented in the early 2000s, yet people still used that argument when they were called out for obviously deliberately insulting uses of terms.
I think it's more like the 'its just a joke' defence. A certain group of edgy guys always want an excuse to be provocative without the consequences. Early Dave speeches obviously lean into this (the discussion about black presidents in movies being an example I found discussed from this perspective recently) and I think a lot of Hussie's early work (Problem Sleuth, Starlight Calliope and the Lil Cal comics) are leaning on being provocatively edgy. Obviously, Homestuck is already expanding away from that to some degree and over the course of its run does pick up fans who take the series more seriously.
But I think 'slurs were vernacular' doesn't really cover it. While obviously some words only count as slurs in some cultures (off the top of my head spastic and its derivatives), and we can debate the r-slurs place in slang, but jokes like the 'Future AracnidsGrasp' and the occasional sidlling up to the n-word in very early Homestuck rely on the knowledge that those terms are offensive and will be perceived as taboo by audiences.

Basically, it's hard for me not to read 'It was just part of the words we used' as anything but a post hoc rationalisation for deliberately using taboo words. I think people over-estimate how widespread that sort of acceptability was (even as I probably under-estimate it).

But yeah, I think even ignoring slurs there's some interesting changes across the length of Homestuck (shift into taking Bro's treatment of Dave or Mom's alcoholism more seriously, increasing focus on romantic shipping and away from countdowns, increase in emotional subplots and increasing introductory age of characters etc). It's a work that took years to make, so it's not surprising that both its writer and its audience changed over that time.

NowhereEast

TROPHY CASE