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sometipsygnostalgic · 5 years

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Suicide and the Homestuck Epilogues

I don’t really want to make a super long post at this time. Turns out, I did so anyway! I don’t have too much to express on this topic that you might not have already figured out for yourself. But I feel like what there is to discuss about suicide in the epilogue is important, so it’ll do well to get this off my chest.

One of the most serious themes in the epilogue, explored THOROUGHLY in Candy, is about the Will to Live. The will to move on with your life and see the next day. This is disguised as a metaphysical battle with non-canonicity and irrelevance, but multiple characters in the epilogue have metaphorical and literal battles with their own hopelessness. Characters on the cliff-edge of suicide.

These depictions of the characters caused an extreme reaction in the fans reading the story. It can be incredibly distressing to read something from perspective of a suicidal character, especially if you’ve been fighting that battle yourself. However it can be therapeutic if you read a story about someone actually discovering a light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how dim. A fictional depiction that hits so hard, ending with a candle of hope, can flip a switch in your mind.

Let’s get into the nitty gritty of how Homestuck both failed and succeeded at giving a light at the end of the tunnel.

Skip to the end if you don’t want to read the whole thing - I’ve done a TL;DR.

So there are five characters I would like to touch upon:

Dirk Tavros (jr) John Terezi Dave

All of these characters warrant discussion in the context of hopefulness and hopelessness.

Dirk:

Dirk is the first character I want to get over with. Dirk’s an example of homestuck giving a hopeless ending to a character.

Despite Canon!Dirk’s struggles with his self worth, with the ideas that he’ll become a bad person, getting a nice enough resolution when he met Dave, epilogue!Dirk has lost that battle against himself due to means entirely out of his control. Because of how close the square root of Dirk is with “bad”, in the form of his prescratch self’s carelessnes and his offshoot connections to Doc Scratch, Dirk’s cursed with the inevitability of becoming that evil ultimate self no matter how hard he tries to be a good person.

Dirk is not entirely evil. He’s lost his humanity but still clings to some memory. I’m pretty sure he kills John??? But he wouldn’t kill Dave, and I don’t think - no matter what he does to him - that Dirk would ever kill jake.

Now, CANDY!Dirk. Candy!Dirk sees no point existing in a world where he cannot maintain canon relevance and seize the narrative. It would also be dangerous for him to continue existing in the world.

But the way Dirk’s friends see his suicide, the way this is played out in Candy if you’re isolated from his shenanigans in Meat, is a very significant depiction of people struggling with a friend who killed themselves.

There’s the critical failure from Meat in retroactively making this look like one of the best things Dirk could’ve done. Even if his friends led shitty lives, they led their own lives. But his friends in Candy don’t see it that way, and it wouldn’t be that way if Dirk didn’t become his ultself. As far as they believe. he maybe saw himself as a hopeless case and died.

Because of Dirk’s death Dave in particular is dealing with a lot of feelings. He’d known Dirk as a better version of his really nasty bro-dad. Because of Dirk’s death, Dave feels deprived of his friend and family member, he feels like if Dirk had been alive he’d have taught him about love.

I found this touching. Knowing how suicide impacts others can greatly affect a decision. Even Dirk, who was distant from all his friends and whose suicide protected them from his influence, ended up being missed for all the good things he could’ve given the world.

So, all in all: Dirk’s relationship with suicide is depressing. It was better depicted in the comic, which had a hopeful resolution. This epilogue shits all over that. There’s still some important messages however, in that Dirk being alive would’ve given everyone very different lives, some ways for the better, some ways for the worse. Dirk’s existence is not meaningless.

Talking of meaningless existence, let’s move on to....

Tavros:

Nope, not John yet. John’s going to take a lot of thinking. Let’s deal with baby Tavros.

Tavros is not a depiction of a suicidal character. He is however a key player in the “hopelessness” of the Candy timeline. John sees Tavros, and his father Jake, as in a hopeless situation. Tavros and Jake’s changing situation influence’s Johns thoughts on his timeline at the end.

Tavros is born into a world that is not canon, into one of the worst households imaginable where all the cards were held against him from the start. His name is fucking Tavros. That’s immediately dooming him to a life of being treaded on. Tavros lives with his mother, the domineering Jane Crocker, and her fuckclown, and while the other kids - Harry Anderson, Vriska - live spoilt happy childhoods, Tavros is never allowed to be a child expressing his individuality. What is his personality? It’s pretty much being a bit smart and doing exactly what he’s told.

Tavros reminds me of a more muted Gohan in the Dragonball Z universe, if Goku was a fragile human dweeb instead of a saiyan and ChiChi became Space Hitler. If Gohan never got those tastes of freedom when fighting against the Saiyans, then he’d have no capacity to stand up to his mother.

John fantasizes about helping him, and Tavros catches onto that fleeting fantasy, but it ends in disaster as Jade tries to reason with John that there’s no way he can keep Tavros safe, then John gets into a fit of rage and nearly injures him as well as all the other kids in the room. Tavros becomes scared of John.

There’s something here about John seeing himself in little Tavvy. They’re nothing alike personality wise, but Tavros is John’s full blooded brother, and what he might have become like had he been brought up in a dysfunctional home.

At the end of the story, after years of this treatment has led to Tavros becoming a very passive boy who has an obsession with faygo, Jake finally makes the decision to leave his wife and go live with John. Even though Tavros is 15 and his personality or lack thereof is mostly realised, he’s given this spark of hope that maybe he will develop a bit of individuality. After all, John sees him as one of the most important, devastating consequences of the timeline, and somebody that he must help out.

It is fitting that Tavros finds a record player at the end and put on some fun music, a self-expression of sorts.

Right okay, time to get into the meaty part.

John and Terezi

There are some parts of these characters that I want to write about in isolation, but their relationship is the major distinguisher between their internal battles and, say, Dirk’s internal battle. John and Terezi are examples of two suicidal characters who interact with each other. The interactions between them cannot be isolated from their suicidal subtext, because they influence each other’s outlook on the world and their futures.

I’m having difficulty, however, figuring out how to structure this part. There’s too much beef to get into if I’m going to discuss their histories. So let’s try to make it brief:

Terezi’s Context: Terezi has history as a character with suicidal subtext, especially in the Pre-Retcon universe. She was overwrought with guilt and grief, became alienated from her all friends, spent all of her time either in the dreambubbles looking for vriska or unhealthily warrowing in her orrows in her abusive relationship with Gamzee. She then goes on what appears to be a suicide attack against Gamzee, wanting him to fight back.... until he does, at which point she tries to break free, indicating a will to live in there somewhere. In the pre-retcon Terezi finds herself having both a “hopeless” and a “hopeful” resolution. She dies by her own knife, under Aranea’s influence - yes, Terezi stabbing herself with the other half of the cane sword is ironic on like 12 levels - but in watching everybody else die, ABSOLUTELY REFUSES to fade away. Terezi is filled with determination, and will not rest until she sees to it that John’s on his way to fix everything. After this though she backs into her depression again. One of these Terezis tries to use her powers and does not see the effect. Even though she must’ve known there’d be a timeline where the effect hasnt happened yet she loses all self esteem and tells John to go leave her to die. The other Terezi, in seeing John return, is filled with a glimmer of faith and sends John off to follow her instructions. I’m pretty sure the depressed didn’t die. The one who died in the chalk outline however walks sadly in paradox space, seemingly hopeless now her story’s ended, before reuniting with Vriska. POST retcon Terezi has a plethora of self esteem issues, many of which were exposed by the knowledge of the pre retcon existing. In the body of A6A6I5 she’s chasing the idea that the other her had “figured out” all those self esteem issues, which we know to be false, and Terezi cannot connect with others properly despite being so good at reading them. This lack of strong connections and lack of self esteem makes her feel a bit empty inside. After remembering the pre retcon then seeing the vision of herself and Vriska reunite, Terezi decides to chase after Vriska, refusing to let her die against Lord English. But because of Furthest Ring shenanigans, she can’t find her.

So Terezi ends Homestuck as a character with... not a whole lot of light in the tunnel, but there’s something there. That something takes the form of

1. The hope that she’ll find Vriska some day 2. Her friendship with John, a growing connection with somebody other than Vriska.

John Context:

You know what? There isn’t a fucking lot! John throughout the majority of homestuck, completely opposite to Terezi and pretty much every other character, has NO SUICIDAL SUBTEXT WHATSOEVER. Hooray, no 500 word expository essay! It’s not until the CREDITS where John looks miserable.

...John in the credits, now living on a peaceful new planet after focusing for 3 years on his sburb adventure, feels completely lost. Where his family and friends have met with the alternate versions of their parents, Dad Crocker isn’t actually John’s family, so that relationship doesn’t work as a surrogate for his lost dad. John doesn’t know why he feels so empty inside and depressed, when his friends are trying to make him so happy. But as soon as he starts recieving messages from Caliborn you get an indication that John WANTS conflict. He wants to serve a purpose. And the prologue of the epilogue (ha!) supports this.

He’s captivated by Rose’s discussion of “canon”. Since he’s tied to canon, he feels some responsibility for preserving it. But Rose and Roxy’s reactions imply that John is about to go on a suicide mission. John laments that he’s spent so much time being depressed when he could’ve been enjoying life instead. This implies here that John wasn’t suicidally depressed at this stage, and he starts to lament how he hasn’t put his life back on track.

So John, at this stage in the prologue, is a depiction of a hopeful AND hopeless character. However the hopelessness does not derive, yet, from any lack of will to live. It’s lamenting how he has so little time left. This lament is still related to the discussion of suicide. John thinking of how much he’d miss out on if he left the world and died. So, altogether, John in the prologue is someone who has a light in the tunnel that someone else might sniff out. But that light might still shine on some readers who relate.

CANDY:

This is Terezi’s chronological start, and the “meat” of John’s suicidal subtext.

As soon as John splits the world into Candy and decides to enjoy his life on Earth C, he begins trying to appreciate the world and get a taste of all the things that he thought he was going to lose out on had the suicide mission started. However, things seem “off” to him. He thinks Roxy is not in-character, Jade’s fucked up Davekat, Jane’s becoming a nazi, GAMZEE’S HERE which is an IMMEDIATE red flag, and everything is starting to go off the rails. John wonders if this is all his fault. He sees everyone on earth C as not being themselves, as being almost like “NPCs”. They don’t have the same reactions to stuff as him. They don’t have the same feelings. Except for ONE person - Terezi, who is isolated from all these shenanigans and is the perfect venting post, giving John grounded feedback that he agrees with based on his previous knowledge of the kids. This is not yet an interaction between two obviously suicidally depressed characters, but the idea of the world being “fabricated” and people acting “fake” is already here, and THIS is something a lot of people who have struggled with depression may be troubled by. The fuel to John’s theory is his position in an actual fictional world where the events are not canon, but even so, it’s still something real people go through.

I think it’s worth pointing out that John and TZ are going off completely different time scales, emphasizing the disassociation they have with the timeline. John only feels grounded while talking to Terezi, who is stuck in the past. Terezi is seeing her friends grow up into crazy-ass adults without her.

John’s depression escalates dramatically when he has a go at everyone on his son’s birthday party and nearly hurts the kids, then he felt like everybody hated him. This scene was powerful, but was also just like something out of a DBZ fic I read where everyone forgot Gohan’s birthday, he upset baby Goten (the only person who he felt unconditionally loved by), and then he goes to blow himself up somewhere. Yes, THAT scale of melodrama. And John wants to float up into space, to leave the earth, maybe freeze up there. He is now suicidally depressed. He feels awful. It’s only going to get worse for the time being.

After that point John turns to Terezi again and we find out she’s the same fucking way. Her journey to find Vriska, which looked to us at first to be cautiously optimistic. is a bit of a suicide mission itself. She does not intend to come back if she can’t complete the mission, even to pick up new supplies. Terezi is starving to death but she refused to return because she sees Earth C as a false paradise, a fake recreation of Alterna where everything is a bit too perfect and the people are too happy and she feels lost when she left the only route to happiness she can see behind in Sburb. Turns out Remem8er didn’t so much give her a new perspective as it doubled the dependency she had on Vriska.

John and Terezi connect with each other because of how they both see themselves as empty, and Earth C as empty, and John tries to appeal to Terezi’s need for friendship. He tries to get her to see the light side of living. But because he has hard time seeing it, he can’t express it. He tries to help her get over vriska, by saying she deserves better companionship. This DOES plant a seed in Terezi’s mind, the idea that she’s wasted her life looking for someone who has been a shitlord to her.

To an extent, they have been enabling each other’s depression. Seeing each other as the only “real” characters and discussing that idea, John going into how he thinks “everybody is already dead”, Terezi confirming other characters are acting strange and expressing how she hates the new world so much she’d rather die than return empty-handed, they’re lighting the fire to their own negativity. John’s in panic mode about losing the one outlet he has. And if anything’s made Terezi feel alienated from Earth it’s seeing how it is turning out.... But there’s not a lot John can do about this, because yknow, she feels the same way in Meat.

This interaction between two suicidal characters has a positive and negative representation of dealing with those thoughts. John’s begging Terezi to come back and forget about Vriska, which is a good thing, but Terezi’s too stubborn. She won’t budge. John has to traumatically read what may as well be her suicide message to him, further cementing his own issues. Bear in mind - because of her predicament, he has has been sidetracked from talking to her about his argument, and probably thinks he’s been a moron for venting to her about all of this while she’s been slowly dying in space. Altogether I’d say this conversation veers towards absolute hopelessness, at least for those who have read Candy first and haven’t been spoiled on what happens to Terezi next.

The next scene’s also retroactively hilarious, but that doesn’t stop it from being powerfully depressive. John find the car with her “”””””blood”””””” and freaks out.

In losing Terezi, who he saw as his one outlet to canon, John loses all of his composure. He is completely incapable of holding himself together any more.

Remember that DBZ fic I mentioned earlier where Gohan runs off and blows himself up with a suicidal tantrum? Yeah. It was a lot like this, but with rocks flying everywhere.

John at this stage is at rock fucking bottom. He’s completely hopeless.

Then 10 years pass. He’s been so depressed his wife and kid have left him. But... he’s still around. Dave at one point thinks John’s going to kill himself, directly addressing this subtext, but John was actually talking to Karkat. Karkat’s position as a revolutionary leader, Dave’s caring for him, and John’s presence at Jade’s wedding to Dave despite having thrown a mega-tantrum that made him think they’d hate him forever, all of these things are........ starting to contradict John’s idea that the world is full of empty heartless people who don’t feel things. John has not been rejected by everybody.

He accepts Terezi’s gone, and rips her picture into tiny pieces, letting them drift in the wind. This is the start of John’s progress away from his suicidal depression.

He bumps into Vriska, has a go at her about Terezi, then Vriska does.. THAT with Gamzee. Gamzee’s death does restore some peace in the hearts of the viewers, at least. Not entirely relevant but I felt it was positive. John’s been calling Vriska Jr shitty for all this time too, but she and Harry are alright characters who feel real enough to us as the reader. It’s now that we may be starting to question whether he was correct in writing off the world as his own bad fanfic. We’re questioning whether John is justified in hating Candyland as much as he does. If people care for him, if Karkat’s going to become Jesus, and if it birthed these two losers, then... is it so terrible? Maybe there’s hope?

He bumps into Rose who thanks him for everything he’s done. Rose is SO IMPORTANT here because she was the one who planted the idea he was in a fake world to begin with, and now she’s telling him even though it’s not canon, she feels happier than ever COULD in the canon world. John’s wishy washy on this. When he talks to Rose he feels optimistic, but when he gets back to his house, he’s thinking about how she just confirmed nothing matters at all.

At his house, he has a couple of surprise intruders. Turns out Jake discovered free will. John has some real talk with him. And while he’s at first negative, Jake’s infectious mood and the opportunity to give Tavros the life he deserves gives John that little push of motivation he needs to go speak to Roxy.

His chat with Roxy is the climax of Candy!John’s arc. She gives us, for the first time, a third-person perspective of depressed John. We see him how she sees him, a sad little man who appears to be blaming outside forces for problems that he isn’t willing to confront himself.

She TEARS DOWN his perception that the world is fake. She explains why she may have seemed fake and why he was a fucking fool for thinking so. She says she doesn’t CARE whether it’s canon or not, because she knows a bit of how it would’ve gone down, and it would not have been good for John or Rose. Roxy throws a great big surprise on us as the reader - she’s been dealing with gender dysphoria the whole time and overcompensating for it! Holy fuck!!! Our minds have just been blown!!!!

So the audience, and John, who have for this whole time been feeding into this depressing idea that the world is fake and it’s probably better for John to be dead than in this fake life, that everything is terrible.... Roxy’s rant makes us do one of the most amazing double-takes I’ve seen a story throw.

John..... sees light for the first time in years. He decides to take the step to work on his relationship with his family.

And then it ends.

All of this - Rose, the wedding, the kids, Jake and Tavros, Roxy - The way these make us revise our perspective on John’s depression is one of the most hopeful representations I have ever seen in media. An AMAZING turnaround for a suicidal character. They made us hyper-invested in all the bad things John’s feeling, taking advantage of our awareness he’s correct in thinking it’s fake. Taking advantage of all the nasty thought that may have crossed in our minds about the world not being real, about people acting not real, the little cells we build ourselves into...... and opening the door to a wide world with people who have had a lot going on that we’ve been blinding ourselves to.

Roxy going into how we have our whole lives ahead of us and countless years to fuck up, to discover new things, breaking down how John and Terezi think that because they hadn’t figured things out as young people they were never going to be happy....

Candy!John is an overwhelming success. Fucking KUDOS to the writers for this representation. But to get there, you have to slog through the entire thing. And there is a risk that maybe you relate to his depression, but not to how he saw through his depression. That would be for yourself to confront. For me personally, I honestly feel that this has given me a refreshing outlook. It makes me so happy to be writing about John’s turnaround after all of this analysis of his depression.

...Okay, fun’s over. Now to the depressing ending. The point where the epilogue kind of fucked up.

MEAT:

It’d be unfair for me to make you read through this with the bias that Meat is an entirely depressing resolution for two characters struggling with suicidal depression. There’s much that Meat gets right with John and Terezi. I think, however, it trips at the finish line. But how badly it tripped depends on whether you think the comic falls into the trap of suicidal depression, or just about subverts it

Let’s get into it!

John for the start of Meat is contemplating how he’s just launched himself into a bit of a suicide mission. Roxy and Calliope walk away without giving him a hug, which is... upsetting. Not sure why, if they knew he was going to die??? Legitimately makes me angry that this happened. But going back to the point - John is isolated in his fate. He does not have any friends he knows to back him up. He’s leaving the fake fake Earth C for good. John leaves notes behind for his friends. These will never be read.

Ouch. Off to a rough start already. This has the makings of an angst fic by itself.

When he’s fighting Lord English with all these other versions of his friends, he’s actually having a bit of fun. But all his friends die and you get the impression he’s very very doomed. And he gets bitten by the tooth, etc. Oh and Davepeta performs a suicide attack! Holy fuck, forgot about that! But there’s no suicidal subtext, Davepeta’s just being a martyr, so nothing interesting to dissect here.

AFTER the fight with Lord English: John just floats in space. He’s seemingly hopeless. He does not take any action to help himself, having sensed he’s got nothing to back to. But PART of this is the influence of Dirk Strider, planting thoughts in his head. Dirk wants John to stay there, until he finds Terezi. But John does challenge the depressing thoughts Dirk’s putting into his head:

Dirk’s relationship with John and Terezi’s depression has increased importance in the end chapters, but for now, it looks like he’s trying to get them to reunite. Is Dirk actually feeding their emotional dependence on each other? Even though we know they still have that dependence isolated from his influence, I get the impression he’s trying to make things unhealthy.

Either way, John has no willpower to go ANYWHERE until he finds her. John for these two chapters is drifting aimlessly, hopelessly. He’s signing himself off for martyr death.

Terezi finding John has equal meaning - she was willing to die until she bumped into him.

A mixed interpretation so far of the suicidal depression. They were both waiting to die, but the way John was going to die was so abstract that it doesn’t feel as impactful as when he was depressed in Candyland. I think this would’ve had a weaker impact on the viewership. But the moment he finds Terezi, it becomes a hopeful interpretation, and remains that way for the next few chapters.

On Meat 28 and Meat 31, they spend these chapters dealing with their suicidal depression, in particularly Terezi’s. She’s directly confronting all of those emotions, with a person she cares about that she thought she’d never see again. Terezi is still incapable of letting go. She’s still starving to death out here and refuses to return, but... she doesn’t want John to leave either. She wants him to stay. Terezi is being very foolish here, and it’s unknown how much the decision to stay escalated John’s death. It’s notable that John would rather stay here with her than go back to Earth for backup or healing, or drag her back kicking and screaming.

They’re still on the edge. They’re at what we assume to be their low point and don’t think anything matters, and they have little self preservation... but because they care about each other, John gets motivation to go back to Earth with Terezi, and she becomes concerned about his failing health.

John continues trying to get through to Terezi and convince her to go back. The below conversations takes place:

John sees hope in Terezi, because she gave him hope when he thought nothing could get worse. He values the hardass attitude she brings to the table, kicking everybody else back into gear. John thinks several times through the epilogue that if Terezi was on Earth, she would’ve stopped everyone from falling apart.

I think this is relevant because the scene in GAME OVER itself is an example of the characters finding shining hope and determination even when the narrative forces have taken a hard dump on them. It’s an important reminder here when John and Terezi are deciding whether they want to live or not.

And here’s my favourite part of the entire conversation:

John has now given TWO examples of Terezi fighting on when she just wanted to give up. And the relationship this has with the reader is Terezi’s acts of self preservation are indicators that maybe she does want to live? If she wanted to die, why would she eat fucking shaving cream--- okay maybe yes most people who want to die would try that, but in this situation she’s crazy and thinks it tastes like cream.

Because John’s giving Terezi reasons to live, she gives him an opportunity to live by performing some haphazard surgery and removing the tooth embedded in his body.

Following this, they realise their connection to each other, and consummate their relationship... in the back of his dads car.

Hooray, you cry! Terezi and John have found reasons to live - they care about each other, and as each wants the other to live, they want to survive so as not to disappoint. They’re able to connect with each other in ways they can’t connect with other characters.

AT THIS STAGE, this has an... optimistic outlook. Terezi letting go of Vriska is very very important. But you might be noticing she’s latching onto John. If it was left like this, and they went back to earth and fell in love or whatever, it might have been a happy enough resolution for two depressed characters. Not as RAW as Candy!John, but Terezi’s been through enough already that it might have been as impactful. And John’s finally getting what he wanted all throughout Candy. Cliche... but happy days. If they could’ve overcome their depression it, would’ve been fine.

.....

And then Meat 35 happens.

Soon as Dirk takes the narrative back he decides to start killing John with LE poison inside his body. John fucking dies in the middle of a love confession.

Oof!!! Well there goes any hope for John’s depression arc. But at least he was happy and canon when he died. It wasn’t as deep as Candy’s anyway, and we were expecting it. John’s death does NOT feel like a suicide, because he wants to live. So Meat!John is a mixed result for a suicidally depressed character; someone who was suicidal, but then found the will to live, and then had his life tragically taken from him.

Terezi though, Terezi who I wrote a 500 word paragraph INTRODUCING the context of her suicidal depression story, is now left with absolutely nothing. Because she had done a rebound away from dependency on Vriska, and now latched onto John, Terezi doesn’t know what she’s doing on earth. Her perspective hasn’t changed and she still thinks it’s very fake. She feels like all of her friends are embroiled in social dynamics and petty fights that exclude her. She feels like she can’t confide in anyone about the traumatic shit that she’s been through, including John’s death.

At least, that is how Dirk wants her to feel.

Terezi has a history of challenging the narrative. She rewrote the timeline with the retcons, but before then, Terezi’s spoken to people who have tried to write narrative prompts in her head. In this act of defiance, Terezi calls out Dirk for being full of shit when he tries to go into how depressed she’s feeling.

This challenge, though weak because we know Dirk’s right on the money, ends up turning this confrontation from a fully depressing one into dark comedy, not ENTIRELY unlike the scene in Candy where John’s crying over her... stains. Because Homestuck is dealing with a hopeless case, it can’t just END it like that. Terezi, despite feeling that way, refuses to allow herself to be seen as completely hopeless and gets mad at the author for reading into her like that. This is getting metatextual but the self-awareness in this conversation is an important reminder to the reader that this ultimately a story, and maybe Terezi isn’t as hopeless as Dirk’s making her out to be.

Of course, Dirk tells her that she can put an act on her whole life, and never be happy. Terezi... agrees with him, insofar as we know. Despite her challenge, she gives up on living with the Earth kids, joining the villain to create a new sburb session.

Terezi’s conversation with Roxy was dysmally depressing. However, Roxy was thinking about her and trying to get through to her. Roxy seeing through Terezi’s feelings makes me think if she’d stayed on Earth, they would’ve become friends of some kind? That would’ve been a light at the end of the tunnel. If Terezi had showed Roxy that John had died, that’d have been a massive step. But Terezi chooses isolation, leaving the planet for a new, more canonically relevant adventure.

This scene does make it seem utterly hopeless for Terezi, especially when Callie says later that while John may theoretically be revived, he will never be relevant again. So while Terezi continues to be relevant, she’ll be isolated from the TWO people she cares about most.

...There’s a flicker of hope there though. If you read Candy, there’s a scene where Vriska tries to send Terezi a sort of apology love confession. And we see Terezi recieving the messages for this!!!! But, she doesn’t read them onscreen. We don’t SEE her become aware that Vriska’s alive. And “seeing” is important. Terezi in the Epilogue is also doing some goofy shit. While life on the Dirkship is probably depressing as fuck, she’s trying to eat Metal Candy for shits and giggle despite Rose challenging her. Terezi’s personality defiantly shines through, when John dies, when Dirk wants to make her grovel, and when she’s on a ship with Robot Rose. The comic can take everything from her, but it can’t take away her goofiness. Terezi continues to live in defiance of the comic.

BACK TO HOW THIS RELATES TO DEPRESSIVE SUICIDE, How do I rate Terezi’s arc? Both in the epilogue, and across homestuck?

I get the impression the reason other characters have been able to move on from this stuff while Terezi gets dragged back into hopelessness is because of meta reasons. She’s the dark comedy, and one of the most continuously relevant characters. If things calmed down for her maybe she would be a less interesting or funny character. She’s cursed by her own relevance. Like Vriska, and John! Except instead of dying or being sucked into a new world she just continues being a bitter protagonist. But.... what Terezi’s story brings to the discussion on suicidal depression is hopelessness. The sparks of hope and self awareness presented at the end are good to remind the reader this is just a silly story, but there’s not too much light for her at any stage. Getting continuously trodden down, throwing away her own chances of happiness. Not being able to get over anything. Therefore, Homestuck fails to bring a light at the end of the tunnel for Terezi Pyrope, even after all of these years of going into this theme. Even if she has hope from Vriska, there’s the issue that she’s chasing after John like she was chasing after Vriska. Terezi’s fallen into the trap of being a character who goes around in circles with her depression arc. If you were personally invested in her getting better, you might be hurt by her presentation. The story tries to mitigate this by giving Terezi enough self awareness to poke fun at her own situation, and stop it from feeling too much like a melodramatic dragonball z angstfic like John’s. After all, Terezi would rather be tragicomic than plain tragic.

Holy fuck, this is long!!!!!! Thanks Terezi!

DAVE:

To cap off this post I wanted to do a character that did not have a direct depiction of depressive suicide, but still related back to suicidal themes and did, ultimately, kind of kill himself. Dave in the Candy timeline.

Dave goes through a lot of shit in his timeline. He’s in a terribad relationship with Jade at the start, and all of his attempts to seek advice on his own sexuality are met with opposition by... fate itself. John’s not very useful. Dirk KILLS himself.

Things go from bad to worse for Dave. He loses Karkat for good, when Karkat gets outraged at everyone for letting Jane’s bullshit slide.

Dave... does not appear suicidally depressed following this. But he is a very repressed man. And years in the future when Obama comes to offer him the choice of accepting his ultimate self form, leaving EVERYTHING behind? He takes it without a second thought. Dave is so miserable that he doesn’t give a fuck if he does, because he gets to become an awesome robot with awesome powers and memories. In the Meat! postscript, he abandons the Candy!planet to go fight the relevant fight in the new session Dirks’ overtaking.

Because of how detached this suicide is from the suicidal depictions of Dirk, John, and Terezi, it’s not easy to analyse. But I think that this would count as a mixed representation. JUST like Terezi, Dave has given up on his new world and decided to go run away for adventures elsewhere. JUST like Dirk, Dave’s let go of his individuality. UNLIKE both of them, he’s with the good guys, he has enough individuality to still be himself, he has ALLLLLLLL of the self confidence... for now, and he is already making new friends.

Unfortunately because most people IRL can’t merge their minds with epic robots, things for regular ol Candy Dave appear to have been so awful he gave it all up just like that for Obama. If it wasn’t so absurd, it would probably be depressing, and I think a lot of Dave fans who read a more depressed interpretation of his character might see this as a failure on the part of Hussie to depict light at the end of the tunnel.

Now we’re at the end of this stupidly long essay, let’s do a TL;DR:

DIRK: Hopeless depiction of character dealing with suicidal depression, when their depiction was previously more hopeful

CANDY!JOHN: Excellent representation of character overcoming suicidal depression, best in the comic by far

MEAT!JOHNL: Weak representation of character dealing with suicidal depression

TEREZI: Semi hopeless representation of character dealing with suicidal depression

CANDY!DAVE: WH4T

TAVROS: Not depressed, but symbolic of Candy’s hopeful outlook

EPILOGUE

Oh, sorry, I mean “Conclusion”. Except we can’t really call it that either. Oh you meant the ESSAY? Okay!!! Right.

The epilogue’s depiction of sucidial depression is mostly upsetting. It’s negative, with a not very hopeful outlook.

But what bits of there ARE end up being very powerful, in particular Candy!John who is the focus of this theme.

However, Terezi - the COMIC’s focus character for sucidal depression - does not get a good enough deal at the end to be seen as having much hope. The story tries to mitigate this with self awareness that it is, in fact, a story.

It does this MORE with Dirk, and Dave too. Dirk is hyper aware of his status as a fictional character. Although he kills himself, it’s not much of a suicide when he’s doing it to consolidate his influence elsewhere.

But Dirk’s depiction as a supervillain shits on a previous arc he had, where he thought he’d be better off dead than alive because he might become bad one day. Dirk was getting over this. Then the epilogue makes it look like Dirk would’ve been better off dead!!! He lost all of his individuality.

So, Dirk is the most critical failure of this theme. Terezi is a big failure but as always she’d be salvagable if there was more content. Candy!John is an overwhelming success. Tavros is a part of John’s success. Dave is in a weird place. I’d call him a failure though.

The lesson to be learnt here is that.... even though the end did some GREAT things, like Candy!John, it’s advisable to distance yourself from relating too hard to characters going through suicidal depression. If they are like Dirk or Terezi you might be feeling depressed yourself at the end.

It’s not up to the author to live up to the reader’s vision of how something should end. In this case Hussie gave hopeless endings to characters. But if you’re consuming media responsibly, you make sure you are not too sensitive to negative depictions like this, which while relatable are still the fictional musings of some dude.

It’s not fair to ask Hussie to give everyone a happy ending, if that’s not his artistic vision. We can criticise it artistically all we want, but we can’t call it unethical, not unless he’s deliberately aiming to hurt people. And despite everything, I don’t think he ever has been.

What do you think? Do you believe the epilogue team wrote a good representation of characters coming to terms with depressive suicide, or suicidal tendencies?

#homestuck #dirk strider #dave strider #terezi pyrope #john egbert #johnrezi #suicide cw

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