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spider-gets-artsy · 2 months

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I Can't Call You Home Again

A Herack & Anenja story

You can also find me here

It was stuffy inside the van. The air conditioner was running at full blast, but it couldn't quite disperse the heat that had the leather seat sticking to her thighs.

The holoscreen in front of Anenja flickered with static, the loading symbol unmoving. She sighed, wishing for better reception. The desert was barren of many crucial things; shade, water, grubburgers, and good wifi.

If it was anyone's fault, it was her own, she thought bitterly. She had somehow surrounded herself with tech wizards throughout her childhood and left every single one of them behind to travel with Sadane. She didn't regret it, she didn't have it in her to feel homesick over a cage. But still. Maybe it'd be worth it to take the trip back to Elysian, get an Eos worker to… do whatever needed to be done to the van in order to get a clearer signal. Stars, she grew up in a tech manufacturing company, she should know the basics of wifi.

The holoscreen blipped, and suddenly he was face to face with her.

"Hey, kiddo."

"Hello, Herack."

She carefully took him in, noted his normally coiffed hair hanging limp, and wondered how dark his eye bags would be if he took off his mask. She'd only been gone a few weeks, was that all it took to make such a powerful man fall into despair?

Tactfully, she asked, "Are you well?"

He snorted. "Just peachy."

An awkward silence stretched between them, until Herack's eyes began to dart to the side, looking off screen. Probably at Rhoren. Disappointed, Aneja said dejectedly, "If you want to stay in my life, Herack, you have to act like it. We both know we don't do these calls for my benefit."

His features pinched, scowl starting to form, until a bright green sock with purple stars nailed him in the face. Anenja had to hold back a giggle, mentally thanking Rhoren for having her back when it came to her temperamental dancestor. Herack swiped it away, flipping the bird in what she assumed was Rhoren's direction.

Returning his gaze to the camera, Herack ran both hands through his hair, leaning down to hide his face momentarily. After a beat he straightened, his lips quirked in a half smile.

"I'm not used to you being away. To you being able to", he gestured vaguely at her. "You know. Act like an adult."

"You only ever treated me as a child," Anenja replied coolly, her ears pinned back in anger. "But I never truly was. Even if you hadn't shoved me into a meat suit, if I'd been hatched properly, I would have been raised in a war. I wouldn't have had a chance to be a child."

His expression turned solemn, watching her as he might a stranger. Warily.

And maybe she was a stranger to him now. She was growing, she could feel it in her bones, becoming someone she never got to be in the depths of Eos. Someone free, someone with loved ones and friends. Stars, she never loved being alive more than these past few weeks on the road.

Herack quickly changed the subject. Typical.

"You still have money? I can wire more to you, anytime. And what about food? Have you been eating crap? If you need a chef I can spare one from the kitchens, send him out to-"

"Are these calls just another way for you to try to control my life?!" Anenja cried out in exasperation. "All you want to do is find ways to insert yourself back into my life. I left you! I had to get away, do you understand that? You suffocate me, I couldn't breathe in Eos, Herack. I need space."

Herack opened his mouth to say something, then shut it promptly, looking strained.

"Actually… I just miss you."

It wasn't an apology. But she knew it was as close as it got for him. Herack couldn't talk about his feelings for shit, so it was actually a pretty impressive statement, coming from him.

"Part of me misses you too. But I can't come back, not yet."

He nodded, sinking into his chair in defeat.

On the other side of the van, Sadane poked her head through the door, a stick of jerky poking out of the corner of her mouth. She tapped her wrist with a meaningful look and disappeared again.

"We're headed out soon. Is Rhoren there?"

The gold blood ducked into frame, grinning. "Hi An, having fun out there?"

"Oodles of it," she said with a teasing smile. "I found a patch of lumenrose out near the canyon. I pressed one for you."

"I can't wait to see it," he said warmly.

Herack was staring daggers at his matesprit for hogging her attention, so she asked, gently, "You'll take care of Herack, won't you Rhoren? Make sure he's eating well, you know how he is."

For all his talk over her eating habits, he was by far, worse. He thought a can of beans for dinner was an appropriate meal.

Herack's scowl softened as Rhoren gave her a jaunty little salute. The gold blood then dove out of screen, with a panicked, "My pasta-"

She laughed as Herack rolled his eyes, calling out goodbye to him. And then it was just the two of them again.

"Take care, kiddo. I'll see you next week."

"Bye Herack, I-"

She couldn't bring herself to say I love you. She probably wouldn't be able to for a long time. But she did, stars help her she did. Even if he was a shit guardian. Even if it was hard to look him in the face still sometimes.

"I'll see you next week," she parroted with a wry smile.

And she would. Family was important.

#homestuck #fantrolls #fantroll #spider writes #herack #anenja

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ihavedoorinsurance · 1 year

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big long post abt bokutachi-kun bc i have worms

so. a little over a week ago, SoapOpera46 (or Yoli-chan) blessed us with this video and i would like to talk abt it at length. piece by piece. this is the true definition of sadan. so much so that it's going under a readmore (if those even matter anymore. i hear fumblr truncates posts automatically?) anyway

full disclosure: i didn't plan any of this. what's to come is basically word puke, off the top of my head, with no organisation or structure to it.

you won't be interested in this unless you're clinically insane. if you're looking for worthwhile opinions on the video, i recommend browsing the comments section. they're short, sweet, and easy to read. nnnnow, without further ado.....

I KU ZO

i'll start off saying i don't know shit about Dream (YUME-SAN as he is so graciously credited in the vid description)! not a damn thing! all i know is he's a Minecraft YouTuber, and up to just yesterday i didn't even know he made music! what seems to be very emo music if this song is anything to go by.

i looked up the lyrics seperately bc tbh i couldnt extrapolate anything from that singing. bokutachi-kun's a star talent and all bless his heart but i needed expert assistance. also according to the blurb at the bottom of the page i referenced, this song references the struggles of depression and ADHD! and myopia, most tragically of all.

here's a student copy.

what to note before we forge onwards: this is contextualised to us by Yoli-chan as a look into Bokutachi's history, saying she: "feeling it fit bokutachi-kun no past very much!!!"

i'm not sure how far in the past this is, but i have some vague ideas pinned on the information that, expressed by Episode 10, Raku and Koneko have already graduated (or dropped out of i'm not discounting that) college by the time the mainline story is in effect.

you also see these silhouettes

of what i assume to be the girls? at around 1:22, so i'm giving it anywhere from 6 to 14 years ago.

and if that seems like a wide ratio that's because it is!! i have no way of knowing what year of high school he's in, when exactly he graduated, how long it's been since then, or anything. i mean he's a fairly young man so i'll take that into account but that hardly helps

(also grant that none of the story takes off until after Raku and Koneko have left college long enough for Raku to call her fellow alumni "old" friends....also wtf what did they major in i've been asking this for years..you don't see them with jobs ever I MEAN PERHAPS KONEKO MAJORED IN NURSING THE COVID PSA DOES INDICATE SHE IS A PROFESSIONAL SO IDK)

but damn if any of that actually matters. you can't even peg the year by identifying hiis fatback monitor and Windows 98 ass OS

he is using some..EQUIVALENT of early msn messenger, maybe that puts this in the ballpark of 2000-2003

ik the Covid PSA isn't like properly canon or anything but i'll bet Raku is still using Win98 well after the OS's discontinuation anyway (it went out of service in 2006 if that helps.)

so if Bokutachi's old enough to be in any year of high school in 1998-2000 (assuming this computer is any indication. it might not be!), i'd wager a guess he's anywhere between 24-30 years old by the time NNSG properly starts (again assuming, that 2010 is the actual year the show takes place. once again, it might not be! it's at least post-Hatsune Miku, judging by the Christmas episode). this leaves room for college, but i doubt he went.

kind of what i already assumed, but it's fun trying to put these pieces together.

also can i just say i'm intrigued by the "nya, rawr" adlib in the beginning? that is Hitoshi's Thing, as we well know, but additionally, in the very beginning of the video, there is a box of pocky on the floor of the hallway.

pocky would happen to be one half of Hitoshi's favourite breakfast (plus ramune. this fuck drinks soda and eats cookies for breakfast what is wrong with him.), so i wonder if he had some knowledge of Hitoshi already this early on. we're operating on the premise that this is Bokutachi's younger self singing, right? did Hitoshi go to his school? we don't see him anywhere unlike Raku and Koneko, so idk. maybe "nya, rawr" is just a popular, cool phrase to say in Amerijapan.

potential cool thing: the one pocky stick upside down and sitting outside the box but near it might allude to Bokutachi himself. you do get the feeling he's lonely throughout the song, he's not got one close relationship with a real live person. not in school, not at home...

let's start talking about these lyrics.

I wear a mask with a smile for hours at a time Stare at the ceiling while I hold back what's on my mind And when they ask me how I'm doing I say, "I'm just fine" And when they ask me how I'm doing I say, "I'm just fine"

so i like this set of frames

you see him happily chatting away, but abrubtly he gets tense and stops himself. only after his mood swing is acknowledged does he try to perk back up and affirm to whoever's asking that he's "just fine". clearly he feels some kind of pressure to bottle up his emotions.

the facade begins to wane slightly here: despite the open ears he remains reticent. another thing: he seems to just be very guarded when he's around people. like physically!

you see him holding himself in the midst of confrontation here, earlier he'd balled up his fist because he got upset thinking about something too long... his stance in general is very tight in public, from what i can tell.

here, he's got his arms firmly placed at his sides as he turns away from whoever it was that confronted him earlier. shortly afterwards when he's sure he's not being looked at, he drops his little half smile.

in the first image of this post, again at around 1:22-1:25 you see him holding his bookbag straps and powering through the hallways the longer he continues to walk, like there's a sense of urgency there.

and here, he's around people that are likely just minding their own business but he's just. not comfortable in any way. the song mentions at this point:

"Always bein' judged by a bunch of strange faces Scared to go outside, haven't seen the light in ages"

even though it seems he's being ignored for the most part. everyone who's addressed him thus far in the song has only ever asked him if he was okay. i have to wonder if he's being gossipped about behind his back for being an outcast and is well aware of it.

"haven't seen the light in ages" strikes me as metaphorical. light as in hope. light as in a reason to keep going.

ALSO I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE MOMENT TO HIGHLIGHT THESE LYRICS

But the fact is I can never get off of my mattress And all that they can ask is "Why are you so sad, kid?" (Why are you so sad, kid?)

my guy has been in bed all day long, just awake and in bed dawn to dusk, tossing and turning unable to get to sleep. or even will himself to get up. he hasn't eaten, drank, brushed his teeth, showered, just. bed. and the first thing his (probably) legal guardian thinks to ask him when he FINALLY manages to find some strength is why he's so sad.

it'd be nice to interpret that in a compassionate way. i think best case scenario, his guardian(s) don't know how to help him and want to talk with him. approaching the subject of utter disengagement from the world is difficult when you haven't lived it, and i can't imagine mental health resources are plentiful in early 2000s Amerijapan.

but also he doesn't seem to trust his legal guardian(s)?? he's just as guarded with them as he is with strangers, look at this at around 0:56

he looks anxious trying to address either of them. the way he's looking back and forth between them it's like he's trying to get a word in edgewise but can't.

they're not particularly given identifiable features. they look fairly similar to the "strange faces" he sees judging him, except they're bigger. they cast a longer shadow and they're no comfort to him at all. helps that the lyrics accompanied are:

"And it just keeps on pilin' It's so terrifying"

which implies to me he's constantly in the habit of racking up shames in his legal guardian's eyes. like they pick at him frequently and find reasons upon reasons to scold him, and remind him of everything that's going wrong. maybe the pressure he feels to perform normalcy is derived from them, because if someone finds something "wrong" with him, they're going to pick and pick and demean him and lose faith in him. and that hits too close to home for him.

(i'm willing to bet he is/was physically punished too. like, shot in the dark, but that makes sense to me with how stiffly he walks and how clammed up you see him around ppl. i might be projecting though but hey. never said i was sure.)

I'D LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY GUY IS JUST CHRONICALLY ONLINE TOO

morning to night, he finds himself whiling away HOURS on the computer. time spent online (on messaging clients and what have you) outweighs time spent on homework, and studying, possibly eating. anything else that might beg his attention is forgotten.

anything else that might stress him out is forgotten when he turns on the computer. he can mask (OHOHOHOHO) his struggles online because there's no burden of expectation or obligation.

there's a freedom in his anonymity, in how he can choose his company, and lie about being happy, and they'd believe him. no-one asks questions. there's no pressure. and that makes him "happy" so to speak.

i say that because only when he's messing around online do we finally see him peaceful enough to go to sleep. the fog on his brain is lifted when he turns himself into this person that's full of confidence and takes life easy. and even though he might be faking it...

Been wearin' a smile for so long, it's real So long, it's real, so long, it's real

that'll happen to you when you use another skin to cope with your own shortcomings. i'm acutely aware of this in particular. this might be what some people refer to as irony poisoning? when you do something enough times, even if it's only for show, it becomes habit, and your habits aren't you as a person, but they can certainly shape you.

i wonder if he joked about dark sshit like kidnapping people and committing felonies, etc. to try and make himself let go of the fear of being judged by others. make himself stop feeling empathy so he'd stop acting so careful, thus unchaining himself from his own thought paralysis. plenty of people do that (and some become criminals later on, go figure)

anyhow later on we have a mental breakdown from about 1:31 to 1:39 with:

But I've been places So I'm okay-ish, so I'm okay-ish Yeah, I'm okay, bitch"

coupled with what seems to be a violent start from a dream of some kind?

not sure if this dream IS or is connected to the following scenes of walking through the school hallways + out in the grass, but that would actually make a lot of sense considering "haven't seen the light in ages" compared against his internet addiction. like he found a distraction and thus has little incentive to leave. i imagine he's skipping school and holing up in his room or something.

the effects of what he's doing seem to be catching up with him. you can see him high strung when he gets out of bed, and when he answers to what's likely his guardian(s), it snaps him.

i get the impression he either woke up with all this tension, then realised he slept through the morning and made it worse, OR. the dream sharply reminded him of his current circumstances and THAT made it worse.

maybe he's spiralling because he feels powerless. to stop himself from making bad decisions, from disappointing people, from pushing people away, from underachieving, from misusing his time, from taking his life for granted, from being alone...challenging these doubts about your own agency over your life is tough when you don't know where to start and also you're a teenager.

he's clearly wracked with despair over this but can't act in his own best interest due to closing off all avenues to recovery thanks to never opening up to anyone. god the more i think about it, the more i consider "why are you so sad, kid?" to be accusatory. if you feel singled out in being honest, of course you'll try to avoid that.

also note:

But the fact is I need help, I'm failin' all my classes

damn straight.

jesus that report card. look at that thing, that is straight Fs all the way down. i mean we know he hasn't been doing his homework but god ALL F'S??? IN EVERY SUBJECT????? you'd think he wasn't going to school at all, which kind of lends itself to my idea that he's just altogether not going. or when he is there, doing literally anything else but the work. god damn. relatable

that combined with his outburst, that epic door slam?? that might be what pulls him into the doctor's office later on. like his legal guardian(s) are just sick of his shit and so they get him psychoanalysed.

A FINE ANALYSIS FROM DR. ^w^ PHD, FUCKING "NORMAL JA NAI", WHAT A GENIUS ASSESSMENT. I'M SO GLAD THEY COULD TAP INTO THE HEART OF THE ISSUE AND ADDRESS THE ROOT CAUSE OF HIS SUFFERING IN A THOROUGH AND SPECIALISED MANNER. BASED

no seriously even though that shit kills me every time i see it, i like the implication that they only vaguely diagnose symptoms, write a prescription, and send him on his way. like what's really wrong with him is being overlooked by professionals because the mental health awareness just isn't there. as exemplified by:

"They think that I need glasses"

which is a lyric i laughed at but also...that's kinda true to life. you'll say to your school's counsellor, everything that sings to the tune of someone with executive dysfunction. a spectrum disorder even. and they'll be like

"hm. move em up. they cant see the board that's why they're not taking notes right. have you talked to an ophthalmologist". offering bandaid solutions for bigger issues. and speaking of bandaid solutions, DRUGS

"I just really wish that I could pass this (Wish that I could pass this)"

That's what the mask is That's what the point of the mask is"

SDGLKMFKFKLDHNFGJKNGVF I RAN OUT OF IMAGE SPACE LMAOOOO

okay so basically from 1:49-1:59 Bokutachi goes through a moment of crisis where he laments his fate of being labelled as "NORMAL JA NAI". either he doesn't like the things the medication is doing to him or he's skeptical of taking them at all. regardless those shits are going inthe TRASH. my guy is like "fuck big pharma" out here

he is not in a stable frame of mind at all throughout this video. who knows if those pills would have helped. we'll never know because he doesn't trust them. he doesn't want to think of himself as someone who needs that kind of thing.

as far as he's concerned he doesn't! he has his chat group, he has FUCKING MINESWEEPER; if he were to try and "fix" himself now, what would happen to those spaces? would he still be able to navigate them? find the same joy in them as he once did? they're all that matters to him! he's become accustomed to the isolation and this is his only reprieve (read as: escape) from a hostile environment.

(how hostile it really is, that's sort of up in the air. i'm thinking he's got the makings of a dude with some kinda cluster A disorder. ADD and autism are also on my mind, depression because of the song's origins itself, but eh. i digress.)

you can see him calm himself down once it's time to boot up the computer again at 2:00.

so it would seem, he's already given up on trying to be more than what he is right now. change is scary though, i don't blame him. especially when you feel like it's being forced on you when you didn't ask.

maybe this is him trying to regain some kind of control, but...in a decidedly unhealthy way. by sticking his head in the sand and acting like nothing's wrong. burying the idea that he needs help makes him feel less like a problem that needs to be solved and more like a well adjusted person that's just misunderstood.

at 2:09 he pulls out his planner (i refuse to believe that's a smartphone LIKE COME ON THE TIMELINE. PLEASE) and you can kind of watch his stomach churn knowing there's shit to do but his alter ego doesn't care.

his alter ego isn't concerned with that bullshit. "nah i'll have time. i'll do it later. and if i don't get it done tonight, who cares? nothing's gonna happen to me and i don't gotta answer to anybody. i'm not scared." he's developing an apathy to responsibility b/c it frustrates him he can't manage it.

i have to ask if this is where his rebuke of social acceptability took root.

you even see him at around 2:21-2:26 pull out his medical records and write "daijoubu" next to the diagnosis. which also slays me but next to "NORMAL ja nai" it kind of reads like "not being normal is okay".

that's a perfectly fine stance to have when you're just a little kooky! just a tad silly! eccentric even! i don't know if that's something you should be saying to wave away EVERYTHING that could be affecting you (and potentially others if it goes unchecked), just because it makes you uncomfortable to stare it down! that's dangerous!! particularly when you don't know your limits

i'm also kind of loving 2:28-2:32??? where he raises his head to his legal guardians and he's smiling for the first time in front of them.

but now we're well aware all his smiles are performative. he's wearing the mask for them now too.

the fake it 'til you make it policy seems to be his safety net. in order to avoid being treated and seen like a walking blemish, something to be fixed, he's slowly grown to be more comfortable acting well to do, or at least unaffected. then people leave him alone. when he's loose and devil-may-care, he's allowed to be himself. which would be fine if that were honest.

in truth, he's extremely emotional. he's sensitive. he's scared and wound up. he's angry and he's self conscious. he cannot function in the way the world wants him to, and he can't stand his own inaction in the face of his self-inflicted demise. but when that's too shameful to bear, you don't seek anyone out. imagine how much more painful it would be to have someone see you flounder. they'll poke fun. they'll judge.

it's like he sees the world telling him to be better, and his response is to create what he thinks is an objectively better person. even though at the end of the day he is still who he is.

i wonder if he starts wearing that mask permanently because at one point he'd become aware there was no running from himself. with this being his only way to reconcile his failures, it was inevitable.

we end the animation with him going to sleep and his maegami "masked" self looming over the end credits. smiling is equated with wearing a mask consistently throughout the song, so i find the image of him going to sleep with a smile on his face pretty solidly telling me that he's starting the transition into becoming the Projected Bokutachi as opposed to Plain Bokutachi.

this is the beginning of his descent into a more dangerous, yet exciting and outgoing person. he is mentally unwell and owning it. i don't know what happened between high school and the NNSG plotline (or god forbid, what happened between childhood and adolescence), but here we definitely introduce some catalysts for his face-heel turn.

and now i have even more reasons to reconsider this little rat man's true motivations and character depth.

arigatou gozaimasu Yoli-chan (੭*ˊᵕˋ)੭* ੈ♡‧₊˚

#nnsg #nyan neko sugar girls #nnsgposting #bokutachi-san #no one is going to read this!! and what's more i actually highly encourage that you don't!!!!#look at this shit is longer than the Half Blood Prince #im really just rambling but like god damn you dont understand #how good it is to be validated with this #after eight years my curiosity has been rewarded #and now to go even further beyond and make even MORE fanfic #god i should show off my theory if were going this far with it right #yeah ill do that. at some point though not tonight #i need fresh brain

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