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Homestuck: Alternate Universe PROOFREADING REQUEST

This link is an open invite to view a VERY ROUGH copy of HSAU Act 3: Hivebent. It includes author's notes as well as quirked and quirkless sections. It is incomplete and should be considered unofficial.

WHAT I AM LOOKING FOR:

-Story Feedback

-Character Feedback

-General Critique

-Style Feedback

-Order of Events Feedback

-Sensitivity Reading

WHAT I AM NOT LOOKING FOR:

-Spellchecking

-Syntax Fixes

Please comment on this thread with anything you come away with. This entire document contains spoilers. (Obviously)

RoseMary Sweep and the Staying Power of Homestuck

a patron-only audio with some musings about why homestuck is still popular

"Caliborn as Ubermensch"

A critique of existentialism using Caliborn's exceptional shittiness.

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THE TAVROS RANT

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TAKE A BREATH

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Act 2 Chapter 5 Preview ft. Kanaya Maryam

"The Human Ligma"

lowas theme

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Homestuck: AU Act 2 Chapter 2 PATRON PREVIEW and SCRIPT

[A version without SFX, posted early for patrons!]

SCRIPT:

Your name is Rose Lalonde.

After a fitful night of sleep, you awaken blearily. You say "night," but it appears "night" doesn't exist on whatever planet you've ended up on, light beaming down from the sky into your windows mercilessly.

==

TT: Alright. I'm up. Status?

==

No responses. Just your luck. Appears as though you've woken up first. Terrific.

"Hewwo?" comes a creaky voice from outside your bedroom door.

"Come in, Jaspers," you say patiently. Your sprite, Jaspers, enters.

Back on the dark, rainy roof of your house, before your foolish leap off the building and into the river, you'd haphazardly tossed a doll into your kernel-sprite, making the orb transform into a large-scale living replica of princess Chthulhu. You came to know this act as "prototyping."

Upon entering the game, however, you decided to take a chance. Inspired by John's own grandma-prototyping, you put the remains of your cat Jaspers into yours, and, to your astonishment, you watched as he returned from the dead.

"I don't think I ever thanked you, Jaspers," you say, watching in amusement as his whiskers twitch, ghostly pink body wriggling in excitement.

"Thanked me? For what, Miss Rose?" Jaspers asks earnestly. The kitty appears to have retained Princess Cthulhu's tentacle-arms, which he uses to wrap you in a tight hug.

"For saving my life. Catching me before I fell into that river." you hug Jaspers back, amused. He's just as sweet as he was in life- Though your memories of him are a tad fuzzy. How apt, as he's fuzzy in and of himself.

"Of course! It's my job as a kitty and also your sprite, Miss Rose!" he bonks his forehead into yours before playfully springing away.

You look out the window, drawing your curtains, eyes squinting. No use. The obnoxious light still seeps inside.

"Can you tell me where I am, Jaspers? You mentioned the Land of Light and Rain." Deciding to make use of your wakefulness, you grill Jaspers for game info.

"Of course, Miss Rose!" he says eagerly. "The Land of Light and Rain is your land! It's a wonderful place- Or it WAS, before that mean Cetus moved in!"

"Cetus?" you ask.

"Mhm! He's a nasty brute- Look!" Jaspers points one tendril-hand out your window. Jaspers appears to have retained his shape from joining with your plush Princess Cthulhu, giving him an amusing appearance, two tendril-appendages and a lovely princess's gown wrapped around his catlike body. If Dave saw this, he'd definitely call you a furry or something.

You reluctantly re-open the curtain and look out over the vast, multicolored ocean upon which your house now sits. 

"Those waters used to be just full of fish which the people of this land ate! Mean ol' Cetus ate all of 'em and now she slumbers in the depths," Jaspers chirps.

You blink.

"Hold on. This is a game world, not a real one. It was created when we started our Sburb session. Cetus didn't do that, did she? It's just a story to move the game."

"Well, um!" Jaspers wriggles, unsure of how to respond. "I guess! That's just the info I have..."

"So, what? The point of the game is to beat Cetus?"

"Sort of!" Jaspers looks uncomfortable again. "I mean, Cetus is the end of your quest, not of the whole game."

"What's the point of the whole game?" you ask, straightforwardly.

"Oh! Um- I can't tell you unless you take care of Cetus, and-"

"Why?"

Your questions seem to baffle Jaspers, who flattens his ears to his head. You relent- You don't want to hurt his kitty feelings, after all.

"I don't know Miss Rose! I just know what I know. I'm sorry..."

"Oh, Jaspers, come here," you insist. You have a feeling that he's telling the truth. No- Jaspers isn't being vague, it's the game itself being vague. You scratch behind Jaspers's ears gently.

Still- You really don't want to fuck around with some "quest," if you can help it. It sounds like busywork to you. You look towards where your computer once sat, now crushed by the machine Dave had foolishly placed there.

"Ugh. I said I'd help John with his house, but I don't know if I can even connect. I've only been able to talk to everyone on my phone." You speak aloud mostly for your own sake, but Jaspers responds cheerfully.

"Why, Miss Rose! You can use the Ectobiologizer!" Jaspers hops up and points at the machine Dave so kindly provided.

"I... Can?" you quirk a brow. "How does that work? Can I connect with this?"

"No, silly! You can use it to fix your laptop! Here!" Jaspers taps on a panel, one of the ectobiologizer's screens flickering to life. "All we have to do is go to the past and find your computer BEFORE it was broken and take it!"

"Take it? Like... From time?" you watch him curiously.

Jaspers uses some controls and dials to fast-forward the view on-screen which is a view of your own room, the one you're standing in now. Jaspers rewinds to a few weeks ago.

"Now! We hit the button aaaand-!" Jaspers slams his tentacle onto a button and one of the two tubes of the ectobiologizer fills with a green sludge. It looks to you like your mother's lime jell-o shots.

"Jaspers," you say, amused. "I'm afraid I cannot use... Goo to contact my friends."

"No, dummy!" Jaspers says, giddily grabbing the busted computer from the floor. "You can't steal what's in the past, because it's in the past! Duh. BUT. You can steal its... Sort of instructions! A copy, made of ecto-goo!"

"Is that the official name? Ecto-goo?" You watch amusedly as Jaspers loads the broken computer into the other of the two tubes.

"Using the ecto-goo clone as instructions and the broken computer, we can ectobiologize something new! A working computer!"

Jaspers slams another button located between the ecto-tubes and with a bright flash, the objects vanish.

"Where's your alchemizer, Rose?" Jaspers inquires. You both traipse to the roof, and there, sitting on the alchemizer slab, is your repaired computer, pristine as it was when you first got it!

"Jaspers! You fixed it!" You say breathlessly, petting his head proudly. "Thank you again."

"Hee hee! Do you forgive me for not knowing that other stuff, now, Miss Rose?" Jaspers asks, bonking his forehead into yours.

"Of course," you say, and you mean it. The ability to repair items is one thing, but you can also see the use of combining items to make new ones. Your mind is already racing. "Can this be used to make other things? Could I, say... Make a NEW thing out of ecto-goo?"

"Mhm, mhm! The only rule is one of the two things has to be a real item! Otherwise the result will just be more goo, hehe."

Back in your room, you snag your book, "Grimoire of the Zoologically Dubious" and plonk it into the tube. With the ecto-machine, you zoom back in time and select Princess Cthulhu before she had been tossed into your kernel-sprite. When you and Jaspers return to the roof, there on the Alchemiter, is a miniature-sized real-life Cthulhu, roaring cutely in a little princess crown and tutu. You pick up the little creature, tickling its face, amused.

"This could be very useful, Jaspers. Thank you very much. My friends and I will get a lot of use out of this."

Jaspers purrs loudly, bonking his forehead into your shoulder. You walk back to your room with Mini Princess Cthulhu and place her gently on your bed next to the laptop. She seems content to stomp around your bedsheets for now.

==

TT: I'm up. Anyone else awake?

TG: so it seems

GG: up and at em :)

GG: its really cold in my land D:

TG: lucky you

TG: looks like egbert is still snoozin

TG: can you see him TT

TG: wait shit

TG: is your computer fucked can you even see him any more

TT: Ah, yes. My computer IS "fucked." Now how could such a thing have come about, I wonder?

TT: Lucky for you, Dave, I found an alternative. I'll appraise you all later.

TT: Yes, I see him sleeping. Good lord, he's having some kind of terrible dream.

GG: he is?

TT: He's thrashing in bed.

TT: I can't blame him, we've all had a rough past day.

GG: hmmmmm...

TT: Is that "hm" of meaning, Jade?

GG: i dunno yet! but i feel like thats not just normal bad dreams...

TT: I'll leave that mystery to you, then. Meanwhile.

TT: Like I said. You two work on imps. I'll work on John's house. He can sleep in for now.

TG: already on it

GG: okay!

==

Looks like your teammates are working well. Good. You turn your attention to John's abode, zooming out. A readout says "100m left," and you assume this means the remaining height until John can access the first gate.

Just like the Sims, you are able to not only influence John's environment, but build upon it, too: Walls and staircases and floors all using drag-and-drop capabilities. Through some careful experimentation, it becomes clear that you do not have to regard conventional building practices, as John's house appears to be mostly anchored in place supernaturally.

The end result is a somewhat greebled-looking house that spirals into the sky. Sadly, you run out of grist almost immediately. You check the readout. "88m to go." Lovely. All that you've managed to place is a few plaforms with a staircase. You watch the grist counter.

John obtained grist from imps, but you haven't actually seen any in your time in the Land of Light and Rain. Maybe your friends are having better luck.

==

TT: How goes the grist collection?

GG: um! bad news. i havent seen any yet. :(

GG: in fact i havent seen any, like, at all. i think my land might not have them?

TT: Dave?

TG: its slow going

TG: they mostly try to climb up the side of my building but they fall into the lava before they get up here and my dumbass sprite just knocks them back down so i cant nab the grist

TG: sorry rolal

TT: Perhaps we could make some form of trap for them? This is all rather annoying.

TG: i dont think thats how it goes

GG: yeah! its a game! so we have to grind and stuff for a little while.

TT: But grinding is boring.

TG: well sure but

TG: thats the game

TT: Well, the game sucks.

==

You cross your arms.

"Jaspers?" you call out. "Any imps?"

"Sorry, Miss Rose! None nearby."

You frown, sighing.

"Jaspers? Where does grist come from?" you ask. Another question that makes Jaspers a little nervous. "It's okay if you don't know," you hastily qualify.

"Well... It comes from imps?"

"Do you know how it gets in the imps?"

"No, Miss Rose..."

"Do you know where the imps come from?"

"Sorry, Miss Rose..."

You pat him on the head before he gets insecure again. This makes no sense. This is a game, sure, but every game is built somehow. They're code, rules, data. This is a real-life game, but even real life has rules. Yet no one will tell you how this game ticks.

"Jaspers?" you ask. You decide if he can't answer your esoteric questions, you'll ask him some he CAN answer.

"Y-yeah, Miss Rose?" he says hesitantly.

"What's that?" you point towards the sky, to the single star, still lit and visible even against the bright sky of your land. Jaspers perks up.

"I know that one, Miss Rose! That's Skaia!" he leans on your shoulder, purring.

"What happens there?"

"Oh, Skaia is a magical place! It's where the forces of light battle the forces of darkness. And it's your final goal in the game!"

He looks so eager to talk about something that he knows about, and you make sure to affect attentiveness as you listen.

"High in Skaia, an eternal stalemate wages betweent he Black King of Derse and the White King of Prospit," he begins. You're already lost, but you don't speak up.

"Those imps you're fighting come from Derse, too! They're sent to prevent you from finishing your quest. But! The forces of light and darkness are locked inside a struggle neither can win." Jaspers pats his chest. "That's where I come in."

"You?" you quirk a brow.

"Yep!" he says proudly. "Before you enter the game, you prototype your kernel- That's me! With an object from your old universe. In your case, it was that cute doll! That's why I still have these funny tentacle arms!" Jaspers wiggles them for good measure. "Once you pass through your first gate, the kernel's data gets sent high into the sky and empowers your enemies."

"So... They gain tentacle-powers, too?" you rub your chin. "So after I go through the gate... The imps we're fighting will be stronger?"

"That's right! But the forces of light will be stronger, too! This process and your entrance into the world is what will finally tip the scales!"

"What if we hadn't prototyped anything? And what if we don't enter our first gates?" you ask. "Wouldn't it be better to not empower our enemies?"

"Well..." Jaspers sits back down. "It would be easier to fight, sure. But if you don't prototype anything, the fight can never finish! The game can't be won unless first you make it winnable? Does that make sense, Rose?"

"I supppose," you say. It sounds arbitrary to you, but it's not like you think Jaspers is lying. "Where do the imps come from? And these forces of light you speak of?"

"Oh! They live on Prospit and Derse, Miss Rose! They're the big moons that orbit Skaia. Prospit orbits inside and Derse orbits past your land."

"Prospit..." that name sounds familiar. You think you've heard Jade say it before. Jaspers continues.

"Derse is the really bad place, though," Jaspers shudders. "That's where all the imps and bad guys live... But! But! Once you defeat the mean king and queen of Derse, that's when you get your Ultimate Reward, Miss Rose!"

"So. Power up through the gates. Beat the Black King and Queen. Claim the reward."

"Yep! There are other steps, but them's the basics!" Jaspers purrs louder. "In fact, you don't even have to kill the king, just break his big nasty scepter. That's where his power comes from! But be careful-" Jaspers's voice gets low and mysterious, like a very spirited narrator of a puppet show. "Once the Black King is in danger, he'll start The Reckoning!"

"The reckoning?" you ask. Jaspers is on a roll now. He points up in the sky. Around Skaia there is a thin grey line that slices the horizon in half.

"Yep! See that big line, Rose? That's a ring of meteors called the veil. The Black King can use his scepter to call the meteors down to crash into Skaia! It's a big mess."

You shudder. You've had enough of meteors, lately.

"Well. We probably have time before that," you say.

"Plenty!" Jaspers agrees.

Before, your house sat on top of a river in New England. Now, it sits atop the ocean in the Land of Light and Rain. Outdoors, you notice that the house is situated on a tiny island, near which is a dock. It strikes you that you haven't seen your mother all day, and a pang of guilt makes you realize that it took you all morning to even think of that.

You walk out into the grass that used to be your yard, checking the coast of the new island you live on, now. You think over what Jaspers was able to tell you.

Prospit... The name of the land Jade dreams about. A big golden city floating in the sky. You wonder about Derse, where the forces of evil come from. Derse... Sounds much more fun than goody-two-shoes Prospit. With a smile, you wonder what they're doing around Derse.

You are no longer Rose Lalonde.

Your name is Jonathan Egbert- Senior. Some might call you... Dad.

At present, you're in jail.

You never thought you'd find yourself in the slammer of all places, being a strictly law-abiding fellow, but you're not in America any more. A hot-blooded patriot like yourself could be jailed for all manner of things, such as exercising too much FREEDOM or speaking out in a way THE MAN didn't like.

Frankly, as the years go by, you find it harder and harder to be patriotic, as things like freedom in your country gave way to instead being warmongers and imperialists, but you're no politician.

That and you're fairly sure America doesn't exist any more.

"Hey!" you say, squeezing your face to the bars of your jail. For some reason, everything here is purple. The walls, the floors, the ceilings, a dark handsome shade of the royal hue. You narrow your eyes. Royal Purple... The color of kings... You feel sick. You bet this place doesn't even know what DEMOCRACY is.

"What is it, you?" asks your jailer, patting a baton against his black-shelled hand. All the funny people in this god-forsaken place are weirded carapaced guys. You don't have anything against the carapaced, of course, and in fact you think they look rather dapper, all clad in smart black and reasonable suits.

Out of respect for the foreign national, you take the reasonable hat off your head.

"What's your name?" you demand. Be polite, but stern. That's the Way of the Dad.

"I'm Authority Regulator number Eight-Two-Eight," he says. Your heart sinks. These poor bastards don't even get names?

"That's a mouthful," you say.

"Well you're a handful," he responds bitterly. He's of course, referring to your numerous jailbreaks in your past few days of captivity. Turns out, compared to these carapace guys, you're pretty strong. The bars of your other cages tore clean off! Now, though, you're in high-security lockdown, alone in a cage that could contain an elephant. You're a little proud of this.

"I'll just call you AR, is that alright, son?" you ask. AR shrugs indifferently.

"When's dinner around here?" you ask. AR seems disarmed by your cooperation. No doubt people have told him all kinds of stories about you busting out of jail recently.

"An hour," he says curtly. He's stopped patting the club against his hand and now has his arms sternly crossed. He's a big fellow, you think. Maybe not ALL these carapaces are creampuffs. You doubt you can fight the guy, but he does appear to have a key ring on his person, one that you're ready to steal at a moment's notice.

"How did you become an, er- Authority Regulator?" you ask politely, trying to establish rapport to get him to come closer. AR sheepishly grimaces, taking the hat off, placing it on the guard table nearby.

"Queen's policy," he says, simply. "I got other side gigs, if you're worried about my quality of life."

You can tell that last part is sarcastic, but your suspicions are confirmed. A monarchy. You shake your head in dismay.

"Sorry she's making you do all this, watch some problem case like myself," you say. AR leans on the bars of your cell, sighing loudly.

"You're not half bad, guy," he says gruffly. "Yeah, the queen's a hard-ass about that sorta thing. Though no one's more pissed than her arch-agent, the Sovreign Slayer."

As the guard talks, you crack your knuckles. Your mother, the famous stage magician Jane Egbert, taught you everything you know about sleight-of-hand. You miss your dear mother so much, but something about tactfully lifting the keyring off the guard's belt and knowing just how to hold it so it doesn't make a jingle makes you think she'd be proud.

"-and so the Slayer's on grunt duty until he shapes up. It's a farce if you ask me," he says, letting another sigh. He nudges you with the elbow through the bars. "But hey. They're not payin' me to yak. They're not payin' me at all! Ha!"

Your heart breaks. You hate to have to betray a noble laborer like this AR fellow, but you have no choice. Before he traipses off down the hall again, you call to him.

"You should consider joining a union!" as you shout, the guard turns back.

"What's a union?"

God damn if that isn't the saddest thing you've ever heard.

Once AR is gone, you fiddle with the keys and unlock yourself, shutting the door carefully behind you. Using your fabled DAD VIGOR, you sprint in the opposite direction of the AR and hoof it up a flight of stairs. You're underground, you know that much, so getting higher is job number one.

Hiding out of sight of a few other guards, you make it to the exit of the building, or at least, near it. The only thing standing between you and the streets outside now is a roomful of carapaces. Looks like there's nothing for it. You roll up your sleeves.

"GANGWAY!" you bellow, hand outstretched like a football star, toppling carapaces like bowling pins, slamming the door open as the alarm begins to blare, but by the time they've raised hell, your feet have hit the bricks. You're free!

Free in a hostile foreign city, that is. Catching your breath in a side street, you slow to a jog, patting your head to make sure your hat is still there. Good. A little bent, but still serviceable.

You decide to take a break and regroup, ducking into what appears to be an abandoned bar, the storefront shattered and crumbling, the booths and tables inside long since coated in purple dust.

Your name is now Roxanne Lalonde, or as some call you- Mom.

You've known this day would come for a long time. Eighteen years, to be precise. If you were a better mom, you would have told your daughter, but as it stands, you're not, and so she never knew of her fate.

Presently, you're trying to help your daughter however you can and the best way you can think to do that is to get out of her way, a place you always seem to find yourself being.

A few days ago, once you found yourself and your home in the Land of Light and Rain, you ectobiologized yourself a boat and sped off across the pastel ocean for the nearest port.

The "nearest port" however turned out to be a shitty island in the middle of the ocean, where your gasless boat is now docked. Right now, you're skipping white stones across the pastel waters in your dirty lab coat, trying to solve the puzzle of your continued survival.

There is no day or night on LOLAR, but you are getting sleepy. The island you're stranded on is about the size of a room in your old house, but it does feature a small opening in the ground leading to what appears to be a cave. Maybe down there is some decent place to get out of the glaring light of the planet.

To your surprise, though, the hole features a ladder of iron attached to the wall, a little like the opening to a manhole. You climb down carefully, feet hitting what feels like stone or concrete at the bottom. You can't see a damn thing and you dind't bring a flashlight, so while your eyes adjust, you stumble around, feeling at the walls. The cave below appears to be fairly large, and odder still, your hand finds a lightswitch, clicking on a massive light high above.

Now illuminated, you can see the room is cavernous, like your own lab at home, dotted with what appears to be gargantuan ectobiology tubes, each one filled with the familiar paradox slime you've worked with for years.

You wander forth, looking into the slime, seeing the faint silhouettes of what appear to be humanoid figures. What have you just stumbled upon? Your musings, however, are cut short by a brusque voice.

"Just what are you doing here?" a voice from behind you cries out. It's stern and stentorian, of a familiar accent you haven't heard in decades. To your abject shock, you turn around, recognition dawning on both your face and the face of this mustachioed intruder.

"Mister Harley?" you say, dumbfounded.

Jacob Fitzgerald Harley steps out of the shadows, hands on his hips. He's wearing a pith helmet and leaning on a rifle, his mustache twisting from side to side, eyeing you up and down, one eye closed behind a monacle.

"What in blue blazes are YOU doing here, Roxanne?" he demands.

"Uh," you scoff, crossing your arms. "That's my line, big guy. You're supposed to be dead!"

You remember it distinctly. A sad obituary, "Jacob Harley dead," read online long ago.

"I AM dead," he insists belligerently.

"Oh fuck," you say, bewildered. "A ghost??"

"Not a ghost, you giddy girl," he says. "What I mean is- I WILL be dead, more than likely. Don't tell me how! I don't want some spoiler to ruin my mind for however long I've got left."

"So... A time traveler?" the pieces slot in. You've seen weirder stuff.

"Bingo," he says. "And a space traveller as well, it seems. I'm far afield, this time- And let me tell you, young lady, I've been FAR afield!"

Jacob beckons you closer. "Now, do tell me, Miss Lalonde. What are you doing now? Last I saw of you, you were babysitting my rugrats back home at the Claire house."

You wince. Those aren't the most pleasant memories for you.

"That was thirty years ago for me," you say. "Now I'm working at your company. Skaianet."

"Hot diggety!" he says, raising his eyebrows. "They must've lowered their employment standards! Thirty years ago... And I thought you were getting up in years! I always knew you'd be an old spinster."

He elbows you in the ribs and you squirm, laughing politely. Jacob never was the most self-aware man and had a habit of stating things rather bluntly at best and unintentionally malicious at worst. You... THINK that was a joke? He's sure grinning about it.

"I'm actually the head of regional-"

"Am I living on the island yet, from your perspective, kitten?" he asks, cutting you off rudely, stroking his mustache. You wince again. No one has called you some derisive pet name in years. He has a way of making everyone around him feel small.

"As far as I know," you reply, clipped.

Jacob shoulders his rifle, striding briskly towards a panel at the opposite end of the room. You recognize it as a transportalizer, colored a deep purple.

"Come along, then, dear," he says with characteristic impatience. "No use reminiscing for me, I'm afraid. The game's afoot- Literally!"

You both step on the panel and in a flash, you are somwehere else. The walls around you are a deep, royal purple and the place is layered in dust. It appears to be the back room of some kind of purple-hued store, the shelves stacked with wine, which Jacob catches you ogling.

"There's a time and a place for the sauce, you," he says, pushing open the door. You linger, however, slipping a small bottle into your jacket pocket. From further in, you hear Jacob exclaim, which makes you run to his side.

"Who the devil are you?!" he demands. The front of the store is some kind of bar, unused stools and tables dotting the place. Behind the counter is a dapperly-dressed man in a hat. A quite handsome man, to boot.

"That's my line, bozo," the handsome fellow says. "Put that thing away, you'll shoot your OTHER eye out, grandpa!"

"Well I never-!" Jacob bristles, but you put your hand on the barrel, lowering it. Your eyes meet the stranger and your heart suddenly hammers.

"Put that away," you say to Jacob. "He's probably just the bartender."

"Shows how much you know," Jacob says, shouldering his weapon. "This bar is a front for a local mafia! They use the teleporter in the back for nefarious deeds. I hijacked it in order to sleuth out the secrets of this mysterious land. THIS man," he says, indicating the dapper stranger. "Is new."

"I'm on the lam, thank you very much," says the man. "Just broke from prison- A dangerous criminal. So I suggest you don't mess with me, see?"

"Haw!" Jacob suddenly looks jovial, sitting at the bar. "Well in that case- A foe of the queen is a friend to me!" He sticks out his hand. "The name is Jacob Harley, at your service, sir!" Surprised, the man shakes it.

"Jon Egbert," he says.

"WHAT?!" you suddenly cry, slamming your hands on the table. The surprised-looking man cries out as you smack his face.

"What the- Woman, what are you doing?" Jacob demands, holding your shoulders. You're fuming now, seeing red.

"You- You've been sending my daughter messages for years! John Egbert, her little friend online! You're sick! Posing as a child to talk to my daughter, you-!"

"H-hold on, now, ma'am!" he says, holding a fearful hand up to block any further slaps. "I'm Jon Egbert SENIOR! My son is- Look-"

He takes out his wallet, opening it. Out spills a folio of photos of him and a small son.

"My son's your daughter's friend, so- Just relax, alright?"

"Oh!" you say, immediately cheerful again. "My mistake."

As the two boys chat, you look at the photos of Jon's kid. This child looks normal and does resemble some of the photos Rose keeps. Jon Senior doesn't seem to mind your outburst and you catch him glancing your way a few times.

"Listen up, you two," Jacob says, snapping you from your distraction. You eye the bottles behind Jon on the shelf. They'd make for a terrific aperetif for a date.

"You're probably wondering- Particularly you, Miss Lalonde, why I'm here." Jacob unshoulders a rucksack. "And how to get home."

Now Jacob has your attention. A way... Home? To a non-destroyed Earth, to boot?

"I know a way back to Earth, one of my informants has agreed to help me. But on the condition we complete a little mission for her- An assassination mission, see?" Jacob withdraws a polaroid photo from his pocket, depicting a black-carapaced woman wearing a stern expression and a crown. "This is the black queen."

"She's the one who locked me up," Jon says bitterly, lifting the photo to inspect it.

"And she's terrorizing the people of this land," Jacob continues. "But more importantly than that... She has something I want."

"More importantly than terrorizin' people?" you scoff. Jacob was always something of an egoist.

"That thing-" Jacob ignores you, withdrawing another photo, this time of a ring with four pearls inset on it. "-is this. The ring of orbs fourfold! One of a set. The other is elsewhere, in safe hands, but this one is presently on the finger of the dastardly black queen."

"And you want our help?" Jon asks.

"Sharp man!" Jacob says eagerly. "You help me square away this big shiny bitch and the three of us will coast on back home."

"But home is-" Jon begins his sentence, but Jacob cuts him off.

"For YOU, home is gone, but I'll be taking you back well before all that nonsense. You could live out your lives any time in history you like, see?"

Jon seems to think this over. You do, too, and while thinking, your eyes meet. You both look away hastily. Jacob scowls at this.

"What about my son?" Jon asks. To this, Jacob actually looks somewhat forlorn.

"Listen, Jon," Jacob puts a hand on Jon's shoulder. "Your son and Roxy's kid are part of something else, now. You're going to have to let him go."

Jon doesn't appear happy about this, but you have the strong sense that, like yourself, he hasn't felt like his child needs protecting for years.

"I have to at least see him before we go," Jon relents. Jacob nods curtly.

"And I suppose you want to see your little girl, too, Roxy?" Jacob's question takes you off-balance.

"Huh?"

"Your girl. You just said you had one when you nearly assaulted this gent, here." Jacob looks impatient.

"Oh," you swallow. "I don't think she'd want to see me."

There's a long, dusty silence in the empty bar.

"Well that's a fucking downer!" Jacob announces, clapping his hands together. "We'll rest here for the night and set out to take the ring come tomorrow!"

"I'm happy just to bring democracy to this great nation," says Jon rather patriotically. Something about his conviction just makes your heart swoon in spite of Jacob's buffonery.

"I'm coming, too," you say hastily, stepping close to the strapping fellow in the fedora. "Y'know. For, uh, democracy 'n such." Upon saying that, he smiles warmly and you think you might gasp out loud. You might be in your fifties (forties on your driver's license) but he's making you feel like a schoolgirl.

"Sounds good. Operation Regicide is a go. Before bed, let's talk strat-" Jacob's jovial words are cut off by silence, however, as outside, you all hear voices.

"Shit," Jacob hisses, grabbing you on the shoulder, tugging you towards the back from whence you came. "That must be this place's earnest owners. We have to hide."

The three of you rush into the back room just as the door opens and four figures burst in.

Uncensored "Is Berserk Sexist?" Audio and Script

This audio contains descriptions of sexual abuse.

SCRIPT [Note: Script is not 100% Accurate to Audio]

Is Berserk sexist?

This question, I'll admit is a little disingenuous. For my money, it's very difficult to call any peice of media on its own any one thing, especially a work as expansive and varied as Berserk. A better question might be- "Does Berserk have sexist moments?" or maybe even "Does Berserk attempt to advance sexism as a movement?" Even these questions are a little ridiculous and inherently inflammatory.

The more accurate and less silly question I want to ask today is what does Berserk have to say about gender and sex? I don't really give a shit about how woke it is or how much it adheres to any social movement because such questions are, as we all know: Gay as hell.

Before we start though, this video contains graphic depictions of sex-related violence and as such will be heavily censored for YouTube. Please enjoy the full version on Patreon.

PART 1: Sexism

I want to say to begin with that this discussion won't include whatever nonsense went on with Twitter a few months ago. I only got into Berserk recently and I don't look at anything but fanart, so I'm not going to address any specific critiques here.

The question in specific I'm going to ask in Part 1 is this: Does Berserk depict women negatively in any way?

In the interest of clarity, I'll state up top that the short answer is No, but the long answer is Soooooooorrrrrtttt oooooooof.

Many pieces of media that are of a grim and/or dark persuasion tend to use sexual violence against women as shorthand for evil, Berserk included. Game of Thrones is the example closest to Berserk that I can think of.

Game of Thrones had a lot of critics cite the excessive use of sexual violence as a turnoff for them, which I think is an accusation that is worth examining. What does it say about your female characters that they constantly fear sexual abuse?

And certainly, a theme of sexual violence would certainly make specific people not desire to engage in a work- Especially victims of sexual violence. This of course, is different than critique. "This has something I don't like in it, therefore I won't watch it" is different than "This thing is bad."

Game of Thrones and Berserk are very different, however, in one specific sense. Game of Thrones's sexual violence is uniformly against women, but Berserk actually features men being sexually abused, too. The main character Guts, in particular, was sold by his own adoptive father to another man for sex, an event which led Guts to have intense PTSD.

Griffith, too, the main antagonist, is preyed upon as a young man by a much older man.

In the instances of women's sexual abuse, namely Casca, the subject is not treated as shorthand, either. In Casca's case, surmounting her own sexual abuse at the hand of a nobleman she was given to is the central reason she is such a powerful warrior. Later, when she is raped by Griffith, her trauma is so intense that she regresses into a childlike state. Even when she is cured of this state, she is wracked with unstable flashbacks due to this event.

These are charitable interpretations, ones that inspire a deep degree of hope into people. In fact, the culmination of Guts's own struggle with rape is growing close enough to Casca to have sex with her, even though his PTSD triggers a response such that he strangles Casca, believing himself to be acting in self-defense.

Through Casca's understanding and shared pain, Guts is able to overcome his trauma outright. Though perhaps not realistic, it inspires hope and is a healthy way to portray such things.

Casca, too, who is so often they prey to unwanted advances by enemy fighters and even some allies, hell, even Guts after the Eclipse, is treated as a peer by her male allies. There's only one time where Guts chastises her for her gender, and this is only to try to misguidedly convince her to give up on being a mercenary to be safe.

Casca's incessant, unrelenting victimization reads as exahusting. The reader is put in Casca's shoes, given a glimpse into what it must be like to be a woman in this universe: A piece of prey. Meat. Casca is forced to push down her menstuation cramps to fight in a battle, she has to risk much more than her male peers. It's not played for a laugh and it's not played for misery porn. It's played so that we the audience can empathize.

This is all admirable, but at the same time, Berserk does portray some unsavory moments of sexual abuse. The story regresses somewhat, in fact, in later arcs there are two separate plot points that hinge around women being forcibly impregnated by demons, once with Trolls and once with Emperor Ganishka's Daka soldiers. This falls back into the Game of Thrones issue, but at the same time, these instances are treated as horrific. Need I bring up the infamous rape horse?

What is Berserk trying to SAY about sexual abuse, though? What is the reader's impression of sexual assault that comes through these depictions?

Berserk says, essentially, "sexual abuse is deeply traumatic, but it is surmountable by anyone willing to come to terms with it. Anyone who performs sexual violence is deeply evil."

You'd have to try quite hard to twist Berserk into a story where sexual abuse is somehow glorified and calling it sexist would be in bad faith to say the least.

There is a potential issue with people who enjoy the moments of sexual violence as-depicted in some gratifying way, but the idea of blaming Berserk for this is laughable. You can't blame a piece of media for every uncharitable reading that is made of it.

There is nothing wrong with depicting sexual violence within the pages of a piece of media that everyone is on-board with the contents of. Sure, sexual violence is a barrier of entry for some people, and that's a shame, because Berserk is a beautiful work of fiction, but that is up to their own autonomy. In fact, in some ways, Berserk is laudable for including such a frankly daring depiction of one of the darkest, most disquieting parts of humanity. Berserk has always excelled at pulling comfort out of the most staggering, bleak circumstances, and its depiction of sexual violence is no difference. It takes an author writing with a vast amount of care to thoughtfully pull off depicting these things, especially in such a stark, unfiltered way as Berserk does.

At the end of the day, Berserk is a piece of media that doesn't hide nor discard those people who have been abused, which is so often the case in discussions like this. Miura puts Guts front and center and makes him a survivor. This is more than can be said for any piece of media I've ever personally seen.

Too often, when people shy away from depicting sexual violence, they shy away from its victims, too. By marginalizing the acts, they marginalize those who have been acted upon. It's a shame, and it's heartening to see Berserk quietly fight against this, even if its depictions aren't always spot-on.

So is Berserk sexist? No. It could be better. It could be worse. It was written by a flawed man, about flawed people, for flawed people to read who Miura trusted to understand what he was trying to say.

Part 3: Homosexuality

Unfortunately, Homosexuality is not given as much careful concern as gender in Berserk. Like I said in the first part, there's a specific question at play. In this case the question is "what does Berserk have to say about gay people?"

Most of the discussion of homosexuality in Berserk stems from the earlier portions of the story and around Griffith. Griffith is heavily implied to be bisexual, don't let reddit fans tell you otherwise, and this framing is intentional.

Griffith's main homosexual run-in is with Gennon, who Griffith has sex with to get money to avoid fighting in as many battles when the Hawk was beginning their life as a mercenary band. Other people interpret Griffith's unique affection for Guts as homosexual, which makes sense. Griffith has never connected with anyone else in a way that he did with Guts and it isn't far-fetched to think this might be romantic.

Griffith tends to view most sex as transactional- As with Gennon but also with Charlotte. His seduction and courting of Charlotte begins because he very transparently wants to become king. Even his daydream after his year-long torture when he is married to Casca is startlingly domestic, and when he later rapes Casca in the form of Femto, he is only doing so out of explicit spite for Guts.

The relationship with sexuality here, of course, is monstrously toxic. Even with Guts, who Griffith can be read to be in love with, is treated like an item. Griffith's fall into grief is only because Guts leaves him.

The only other implied gay character, of course, is Guts's rapist. Which... Yeah. Not ideal.

This all leads to that question: "What does Berserk have to say about gay people?" The answer being "homosexuality is the cause of sexual abuse."

The three implied-gay characters in Berserk are, uniformly, rapists, particularly if you remove Griffith from that equation. This notion is pervasive and quite poisonous, and it makes me sad to see it in a piece of media I enjoy quite a bit, but it's worth bringing up.

I could see an argument to this perspective being "well, sure, gay relationships are depicted as abusive, but there's plenty of heterosexual abuse, too." That's true, there are many instances of men preying on women, as discussed, but the critical difference is that there are positive heterosexual relationships, too. There's nuance enough to not color heterosexuality at-large as bad. Guts and Casca's love, in fact is the driving force for arguably all of the comic.

This isn't to say I think Miura is a bad person or that I think we should cancel Berserk, of course. No piece of media is free of critique and I would argue bringing up this point and discussing it shows more love to Berserk as a piece than trying to paint Berserk as a paragon of virtue.

PART 3: Gender

Berserk has basically nothing to say about Gender. Lol. Part 4... Just kidding.

Honestly, I don't have much to say, here. Berserk features, as far as we know, only cisgendered characters. That's fine, actually, given how some Japanese media can be about this topic.

Griffith is often said to have the beauty of a woman, which is kind of cool because it's presented as a positive trait. That's nice I guess.

Let's make one character trans for fun, though. Let's say, uhhhh. Judeau. Judeau can be trans. Good for her.

PART 4: That's It, Actually

So, full disclosure, I have kind of a chip on my shoulder about this stuff. I got into Berserk basically on the recommendation of a trans friend and ANOTHER trans woman's video essay on it, and when I finally finished the manga, I got a really coherent sense of clarity from Berserk about sex shit that I usually never see in Manga. It was great.

Imagine my shock, then, when I discovered that most online Berserk fans are essentially weird reactionaries with loli avatars. Kind of cringe.

This video is just my desire to express nuance with this piece of media, since it really does seem like so many people read these weird totalitarian things into Berserk. I joked in my last video about the "Griffith did nothing wrong" thing, but I found more than a few pieces about how people actually argued this position.

I think there's a massive sect of people who, for lack of a better term, read Berserk wrong. They think it's this grimdark dream and they don't like when the manga develops past that. For those of you who've read the manga I'll put it like this:

If you read Lost Children and thought Guts was cool for taking down all those fairies like a badass- You're reading Berserk wrong.

But anyway, that's me giving away my bias.

Like I said, this video had to be censored for YouTube. I didn't include any graphics for this reason, but I also had to cut sections of the script. If you'd like to hear the FULL version of this essay, it's on my Patreon, link's in the description.

Thanks again.

BYE.

Berserk 1997 Video Script

INTRO:

Picture this.

You're laying in bed, on your side, your computer tilted sideways beside you, lights flickering slowly, lighting your face, illuminating the awe and shock you're feeling. Tiredness seeps into your bones and as the sounds and sights die down on digital screens, you look towards your window only to realize day has broken and you'd forgotten to so much as look up for the last few hours of your life. Your entire night has been spent on finishing a new piece of media.

That's what happened to me this past weekend, watching Berserk 1997.

I'd read Berserk before- It was always a manga I didn't have any taste for, some generic fantasy that I'd seen so many others do better. I'd always loved the art, but I'd never been able to access it. Something that was never made for me. When I was younger, I far preferred Full Metal Alchemist and Ranma 1/2, and even when I was older, the settings in Berserk that I'd seen so many iterations of since didn't appeal to me- and I would say that still holds true for the Berserk Manga writing this today.

A lot of ink has been spilled towards the quality of the manga, and I'll allow the people who love it to talk about it, but even now, after watching Berserk 1997 to the end, it's not my place to discuss the anime.

I only bring up my lukewarm feelings of the source material up because of the sheer joy the 1997 adaptation brought me. For me, someone who respected Berserk at a distance, I never expected to fall in love with its adaptation- Especially an adaptation that is as famously incomplete as it is. Berserk the Manga wasn't my cup of tea, but the 1997 adaptation is.

After watching this masterpiece, I craved media about Berserk, I craved analysis, I craved discussion about it, so I turned to the web to see who else had talked about it, but I found myself a little disappointed. For most videos about Berserk, from the Lady Emily piece on adaptation to the Eyepatch Wolf post-mortem, the 1997 anime was a footnote compared to the titanic legacy of the manga.

I might be alone in my preference for this anime over its source material, but I want to take a look at it as a whole, view it as its own, complete work instead of an anime that is a small part of a greater whole.

After this introduction, I likely won't be discussing the manga at all, treating the Golden Age anime from two and a half decades ago as a unit. Giving it the love that I feel it rightfully deserves.

PART 1: Masterful Story

Narrative, in a broad sense, is all about setup and payoff. Establishment and delivery. Narrative is like a massive joke, it needs to have a punchline, a point at which everything culminates and ties together, something that the viewer can look back on to gain some insight from.

This, of course, is not ALL a story is, but it is a significant part, and one that Berserk pulls off flawlessly.

The first episode begins with a flash-forward of Guts, the Black Swordsman, a broken angry man weilding an oversized blade mercilessly slaughtering a demon plaguing a town. In this episode, we see Guts as a tortured shell of a man, and his triumph over the Snake Baron does not feel triumphant in the least. Gut's fighting style is risky and needlessly reckless, his nights are sleepless affairs, plagued by the literal ghosts of his past, and even though he rids the town of a demon and saves the life of a woman about to be raped, our impression as the viewer of Guts is almost pity.

It's absolutely vital that this is our introduction to Guts, as for the next twenty-two episodes, the Guts we see is a completely different being, planting a question in our minds that is instrumental to the rest of the story: "How did Guts become what he is?"

This central question remains in the viewer's mind as they see Gut's backstory unfurl. In the flashback, we see a younger Guts, still weilding an oversized sword, as a young but accomplished mercenary. After being assaulted by a rival group known as the Band of the Hawk, the leader approaches Guts and challenges him to a duel and an interesting wager- If Guts loses, he must join the Band of the Hawk.

This man, Griffith, fascinates Guts, but he remains undaunted, ultimately fighting with Griffith and losing.

After this, Guts integrates into the Hawk, quickly climbing the ranks and becoming more and more accomplished, making a rival of his fellow commander Casca.

The story of Berserk is the story of three people. Primarily, it is about Guts, but calling him the "main character" is somewhat disingenuous, as that honor goes to Griffith, the man around which the narrative spins. The final person is, of course, Casca, the woman who, more than either of these two men, is the person who is holding up the Band of the Hawk.

Once Guts is assimilated into the band, Griffith shows his closeness to the man, opens up to him, most importantly about his dream, the dream to one day have his own kingdom. Guts also grows closer to Casca, and though they fail to see eye-to-eye, they eventually become close comrades.

Griffith's ambition leads him to new heights, becoming a knight in the kingdom of Midland, assisting the king fight against the Chudor army, ascending the ranks much to the chagrin of the nobles in the Midland court. Griffith also courts princess Charlotte, much to the rage of the Queen herself.

After a decisive battle against the Chudor army, Griffith and his Hawks are held in high regard, but Griffith now has to contend with political plots against him, forcing him to use Guts to assassinate a rival for the throne, Julius as well as the Queen herself, who was part of a plot to kill Griffith with a poisoned arrow.

The story is compelling- A friend of mine referred to this part of the story as "anime Game of Thrones," and the comparison is apt. In-depth battles and political intrigue mix to make something truly wonderful to follow.

But there is a dark underbelly to all of this, something teasing at the edges of the patchwork. Odd happenings and strange, supernatural things among Griffith's meteoric rise, all centered around Griffith's mysterious crimson Behelit stone.

For starters, in one of the earlier Hawk battles, the band has a run-in with a legendary warrior known as Nosferatu Zodd, the Immortal. In the inner sanctum of the fortress, Guts encounters a sea of dead bodies all leading to one solitary figure. Alarmed and enraged, Guts begins the fight, but upon wounding the warrior known as Zod, the terror has just begun. Zod transforms into a demonic, monstrous being, and far from expressing rage over being injured, expresses elation that he has finally found someone who is adept enough to challenge him. When Griffith joins the fight, Zod becomes even more excited- Overpowering both men at once.

Ultimately, the fight ends when Zod sees that Griffith bears the Behelit, flying away, but the incident leaves a scar on the reader's perception of the world, reminding them of the Snake Baron of the earlier flash-forward.

During later scenes, too, we begin to see another side of Griffith. A sadistic, cruel side, one we see when he retaliates against an assassination plot with a plot of his own that results in the death of the assassin's son, perpetrated by Guts.

And when the plot escalates, we see Griffith standing over the burning wreckage of a house he's trapped the queen and her cronies inside, gaining the cooperation of one of the scheming nobles by kidnapping his daughter.

Never in the story do we root against Griffith, but the viewer becomes slowly more and more alarmed by his behavior.

After a decisive win against the Chudor armies, Griffith and his band retire to live near the castle. Things look to be shaping up extremely well- If Griffith succeeds in courting the princess Charlotte, who is already quite sweet on him, he may be able to take the throne in earnest.

But tragedy strikes. Guts, our main character and the only man to ever shake Griffith's resolve, decides to leave the band of the Hawk.

This decision shakes everyone, most prominently Griffith and Casca, both of whom love Guts deeply in different ways. On a snowy field on a road leading out of the castle town, Griffith demands he and Guts duel once more, a shadow of their old battle to decide Guts's fate years ago.

But this battle is different. Not only does Guts win, he does so nearly effortlessly, shattering Griffith's sword in one strike.

In this moment, Guts is calm while Griffith is enraged, shattered by a percieved betrayal- Even though the only Guts struck out on his own was because his love for Griffith and need for his friendship. After all- Griffith said he doesn't regard his band as friends.

After this world-shattering heartbreak, Griffith can think of only one thing to do- Retreat into the arms of his beloved, Charlotte, and take her innocence.

It's unclear how much of Griffith's love for Charlotte is his ambition and how much is in earnest, but it's clear he considers her presence very comforting.

Sadly, that comfort can't last as the King's men discover his treason and imprison Griffith in the legendary Tower of Rebirth.

A year after Griffith's imprisonment and Guts's departure, Guts is in the woods, training with a blacksmith hermit and his daughter, seeming to enjoy his time alone. Even so, he gets word of news that alarms him- The band of the Hawk is now scattered to the wind, being led by Casca.

When Guts reunites with Casca, he finds a broken band, Casca near suicidal, his entire world seeming to have shattered in his absence.

Guts and Casca embark on a mission to save Griffith, but when they retrieve their comrade and leader, the entire band is shocked to find that over the past year, Griffith has been tortured past any recognizable visage. His tongue is cut, leaving him mute, his tendons snapped and muscles atrophied to keep him from so much as holding a sword.

And when Guts reunites with Griffith, Griffith wraps his weakened hands around Guts's neck, trying to strangle him.

After their escape, Griffith begins hallucinating a castle in the distance, representing his dream of becoming king, and in trying to run towards it, he pilots a carriage, careening into a shallow pool. Griffith casts his head into the skies as he laughs one last time, attempting to impale himself on the splinters of the carriage.

It's unclear if he fails because he is too weak or cannot go through with it, but after his feeble suicide attempt, something floats by in the river, something familiar. His Behelit.

As the sun is eclipsed by the moon, the Behelit's mouth unleashes a scream that pierces the heavens.

What happens next is, by now, not just famous, but iconic. The world explodes into hell, engulfing the band of the hawk and unleashing a horde of demonic, horrible entities upon them.

Four Gods appear before them and welcome Griffith as kinsman, offering him power beyond measure if he simply chooses to sacrifice his band.

Needless to say, the broken man accepts.

After the massacre of the sacrificed band, only two living people remain: Guts and Casca, the latter driven to mute madness after what she'd seen, the former driven to uncharacteristic bleak rage. With his hand caught in a demon's mouth, Guts can only watch as Griffith, reincarnated as the demonic god Femto, descends to rape Casca, the love of his life, Femto's eyes full of bitter spite.

Guts cleaves his own arm to get free, but he fails, pinned by innumerable demons as the end credits roll.

The only glimpse we see after this is Guts repairing himself at the blacksmith's house, no doubt to set off to become the Black Swordsman the viewer remembers from the first episode.

A great many people consider this ending to be a "cliffhanger," but I don't agree. I do concede that there is more to the story later, but as a contained unit, the Eclipse as the ending of the story feels complete. It doesn't feel good, it doesn't give the viewer closure, but it is complete- One of the rare stories where the villain well and truly wins, a villain hidden in plain sight all along: Griffith.

Without considering the manga, the 1997 anime is worth analyzing as its own piece of media, as its own story, either taken as separate from the source material or as a companion piece to it.

PART 2: Theme

When analyzing Berserk online, the main buzzword seems to be "causality." Very critically, this is a different word than "Fate," as the causality in Berserk is something different than the western idea of fate entirely. Where fate gives a focus to an end point, causality is more concerned with the blossoming results of people's decisions.

In the 1997 anime, causality is explored in an interesting way that is quite different to the manga as a whole. One of the primary ways Berserk 97 explores this is through the concept of Choice and how free will is executed in humans.

In media, there are essentially two perspectives on cause and effect. In a manga like Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, the power of fate has a strong grip on events, essentially implying that free will is false and that the only winners and losers of fights are decided beforehand. This gives the reader a strong sense that they are upon a roller coaster, simply watching the exploits of a character.

Other media like Fullmetal Alchemist and even Naruto has a different view: That humans exact their free will and nothing is set in stone. This leads to some characters dying seemingly senseless deaths and occasionally viewing glimpses into other lives the protagonists could have lived had they made other different choices.

Berserk, however, has something of a synthesis between these two. Berserk offers free will, as many of its plot points revolve around the choices the characters make, most critically, Griffith's choice to sacrifice the band of the Hawk to the godhand, but critically, those choices that are made are, in many ways, out of their hands.

Imagine being Griffith. Imagine being broken beyond repair, with fresh memories of torture in your mind, obtaining an offer to undo that torment. Even without his Kingly ambition or percieved betrayal by Guts, it would be impossibly difficult for Griffith to do anything else. His choice is indeed a choice, one he has the free will to choose between, but his choice at the same time is inevitable. Griffith has no reason to make any other choice, even if that choice comes with massive consequences.

Choice in Berserk is presented as free will but free will is presented as cheap. People, says Berserk, are not comprised of their choices, far from it, they are a product of their conditions. Griffith made the only choice that was sane to make. His choice wasn't inevitable, but it would have taken him incredible willpower to decline.

Beyond this, too, we see this inevitable choice be exploited by those in power throughout the story. In Griffith's case, the godhand exhaustively convince him to take their offer of sacrificing the Hawk, even though it's implied that they were responsible for many of the grave things Griffith went through.

We also see Griffith exploited sexually by a nobleman who offers funds for sex acts. Griffith makes this inevitable choice too because he is afraid of risking his comrades in battle.

Or Griffith himself forces a choice from Guts, though inadvertently. Guts clearly considers Griffith his truest friend- If naked water fights are to be trusted- and in hearing Griffith proclaim that he doesn't consider anyone in his army a peer, Guts has no choice but to leave and strike out on his own.

Griffith forces another choice over Minister Foss, kidnapping his daughter in exchange for conspiracy.

This idea of forced choice and causality links to the next theme- Idolization and Abuse.

Berserk has three main characters: Casca, Guts, and Griffith, each one with their own past and traumas, each with their own struggles. They're also tied up in a miasma of love- Calling it a "love triangle" isn't quite right, since romance isn't the only type of love here, but their dynamic is deeply interconnected.

Yet at the same time, though this may warm our hearts, the dynamics here are also deeply flawed. Guts loves Griffith, but Griffith refuses to recognize a peer in Guts. Casca loves Griffith, but he can never love her back. Griffith loves Guts, but he seeks only to control him.

Casca and Guts both idolize Griffith deeply due to seeing him as a savior figure after their traumatic pasts, but Griffith, just like anyone else, is a flawed human. More broadly, the entire band of the Hawk trusts Griffith, but he sells them to demons in moments.

Griffith pulls people into his orbit only to be used and abused by him, whether it be as sacrifice or as a casualty in battle. Forced to reconcile this endless death, he makes a choice to steel himself to the suffering of his followers. In becoming more powerful, he becomes less human.

But on the flip side, Casca and Guts coming together to save Griffith shows a different path. In treating one another like equals, Guts and Casca form a strong love and obtain the respect of their troops not as idols but as friends. Griffith's entire approach is flawed: Colored by his own personal ambition.

Essentially, all the evil IN Berserk can be traced back to Griffith's ambition.

In most media, ambition and will to power is presented as a positive trait, from anything as simple as the Lion King to power fantasies like Breaking Bad and House of Cards. Even when we understand the protagonist as "evil," we understand their ambition as at the very least, compelling. Berserk rejects this outright.

Griffith's will to become a king is not only destructive to those around him, but completely arbitrary. During his backstory, we expect to see some deep-seated reason he wants to be king, but all we experience is him running in the streets as a child, deciding to become king on a whim.

Knowing that drive, that arbitrary, senseless ambition is what so many people gave their lives for is intensely jarring. Griffith's weak rationalization, too, the idea that "since his band made a choice to follow him, he is not responsible for their deaths," line, is also astonishingly callous and cruel.

On the other hand, when Guts frees himself from the Hawk, he is found training in a serene vista in the mountains, making friends with a blacksmith and his daughter. Guts, this ambitionless man, feels a growing humility in contentment, busying himself training, seeking challenge only for sport, and bettering himself.

But as we've seen, this idyllic peace is something that Guts refuses to rest on, showing the viewer that it's not necessary to have grand ambitions to become powerful. This juxtaposes Guts's intense learned strength over Griffith's hollow will to power.

And critically, this peace is shattered when Griffith re-emerges into Guts's life.

All in all, the main theme of Berserk 1997 is a critique of power in general. It tells us in no uncertain terms what those who have power over us think of us, how our choices can be forced by their hand, and how we can be made into monsters by a few simple decisions.

Even the king of Midland, who seems affable and kind, uses his power to torture the man who deflowered his daughter mercilessly- Notably Griffith's sex with Charlotte is one of the rare consensual sex acts in the entire show, with Charlotte even aiding the Hawks on their recovery mission.

Berserk warns us not to engage with those who would hold themselves above us, no matter how much legitimacy their reign is offered. No one deserves to be above any other, and anyone who claims to will betray you in the end. It's remniscient of classical Anarchism, the idea that power in and of itself is evil, the ultimate folly of the world being people giving themselves and their will to others.

Griffith does not become a villain during the Eclipse, he is only revealed to have been one all along. 

PART 3: Existentialism

A lot of ink has been spilled about Berserk's link to existential thought, primarily about links to Berserk and Nietzsche. While I agree with this for the most part, the idea that Berserk is existential is somewhat questionable and worth critique.

For starters, there are some direct links to the work of Nietzsche and Berserk's setting, such as the "world of ideas" that Nietzche believed in being a literal part of Berserk's universe, but the differences to existential philosophy are encapsulated in the maxim "God is dead."

In Berserk, particularly 1997, God is very much not dead. God, or in this case, Gods, exist in a literal sense, controlling and manipulating the world. The causality of the universe also contends with the idea of a pointless world, rejecting nihilism that is so often wrapped up in existentialism, in a certain sense.

Existentialism emphasizes at its very core, the idea of free will and free agents. The idea that you have the power over your own development, free from any fate- And while Berserk doesn't aspouse fate in the same sense as other works, causality still exists. I discussed earlier how the choices in Berserk are essentially inevitable, how there was bascially no reality where Griffith could have chosen not to sacrifice his band. This does not absolve him from responsibility, but the choice was inevitable.

Another significant part of Existential thought is the so-called existential angst, or the anguish over the realization that nothing matters. The solution to this, as many Existentialists and even Absurdists like Albert Camus aspouse is to in very simple terms, make your own purpose. One of the most empowering things in existential thought is the idea that you control your fate.

But ambition in Berserk, as I've discussed, is only an avenue for exploitation and horrific death. Griffith himself could be taken as an existential hero, rejecting any power above himself and living his best life, siezing his dreams against all odds.

Yet Griffith ends as a miserable, tortured god, spitefully raping his comrades. The existential man is presented as quite literally a cosmic horror. Griffith is always acting in his authentic self, and yet it leads everyone around him to ruin.

The philosophy of Berserk is tricky to pin down, especially where the manga is concerned, and Existentialism is a good lens with which to view it from, but it's hardly an existentialist work. As I've just described, it completely undermines existentialism entirely.

And yet, it doesn't particularly aspouse any alternative, either. After all, though God is not dead in Berserk, God is presented as five former humans enacting their wills. Perhaps God IS dead. Perhaps to be authentic is vital.

Berserk mostly explores concepts as negatives- it presents horrible, terrifying things, not as reaching for any one philosophical viewpoint but as a cautionary tale of philosophical viewpoints as morality.

Berserk says to us, perhaps existentialism holds something of value, but here is what happens if it is followed without thought. Perhaps there is no God, but perhaps we should not make Gods of ourselves. Perhaps one's own ambition is the only thing that can save him from existential dread, but perhaps that ambition must be tempered.

PART 4: The End

At the same time, these questions make Berserk so compelling to discuss. It is rare among fiction in that it is so dark and horrid and brutal that it is hard, among that darkness, to find any guiding light, but at the same time, intense comfort can be drawn from it.

Because for each Eclipse, for each sordid ending, there is Guts and Casca sharing intimacy after heartbreak. There is Griffith and Guts laughing over a water fight. There is a small, tiny sliver of a smile among the horrible darkness.

I would say if Berserk has any positive philosophy at all, it is that comfort is other people. The only way to live without turning into a twisted demon like Griffith, is to reach out and love others, no matter the horrid, searing, unbearable pain it brings.

If nothing else, this video should tell you one thing by the end. Watch Berserk 1997 and read the manga, and most importantly, rest in peace Kentaro Miura.

I'd like to thank my Patrons for this video. Please consider donating through Patreon for more videos like this.

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you go on a date with rose lalonde

this is incredibly silly

LEMON DEMON DISCOGRAPHY

Script also available.

Lemon Demon Discography Deep-Dive Script

Everyone loves music. It's a uniquely human concept, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who dislikes organized sounds as a concept. In fact, love of music is so normalized that we have a word for people who don't like it: Musical Anhedonia, and while this isn't in so much a disorder, it's understood as not normal.

Even so, so few people seem to understand the mechanics OF music. In fact, music before the modern era was so complex and prohibitavely expensive to produce perform and listen to that it was considered a rare treat. Even after the advent of records and tapes, the creation of music was hoarded by record labels and companies trying to make the most. That is until the internet.

When I was in 8th grade in the ancient days of 2009, I remember we had a class in my middle school simply titled "computers." In this post-millinnial, pre-gen-z age, where people had to wait for an entire YouTube video to load and most parents only had shitty Windows ME machines, the role of the internet was both cemented in the public conscious enough to have a class called "computers" but also tenuous enough that Mrs. Skim didn't know what to teach us outside of learn-to-type software. This was a wild era, a strange era- This was the era of Something Awful, 4chan, and of course, Reddit.

And in that tenuous time, in that class simply called "computers," I saw a video, a video titled "the Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny," a frankly sub par animation accompanied by a chaotic song that was both so crusty and horrid yet so new and astounding that it captured my imagination forevermore.

This was my first exposure to Lemon Demon, and I'm sure it's familiar to you. Maybe you're younger and found Lemon Demon through Spirit Phone, maybe you discovered them through a friend excitedly telling you about them, but Lemon Demon isn't something that's simply been around forever- It's something that's discovered, like a diamond in the midst of the black coal of the internet.

I loved this video and hungry for more, you can imagine my delight when I used my shitty dial-up modem to slowly download "Potter Puppet Pals" on Youtube and show my mom and learning the creators were one in the same. You can also imagine my delight when I found Lemon Demon's web site with free downloads ready to be ingested.

Many memes and phenomena from this time period have faded away into obscurity. Advice Animals, Rage Comics, countless memes like "I heard u liek mudkips" are now laughably passe but Lemon Demon and more broadly, Neil Cicierega have stayed constant, like the fulcrum around which the internet turns.

Like I said before, everyone loves music, and Lemon Demon was one of the first pioneers of music in a digital age, an age where people could make anything and put it out there for no cost, a font of new creativity. Lemon Demon's story is a story of indie creation in the internet age and a story about how far we've come in breaking away from the people who would keep creativity behind walls.

This much you likely already know if you've clicked on this thumbnail, something you fondly regard, but something that a lot of people miss out on is the absolute breadth of work Neil has made. I want to shine a spotlight on all this, because Lemon Demon isn't just Spirit Phone, Lemon Demon isn't just Brodyquest, and Lemon Demon certainly isn't just The Ultimate Showdown.

Let's dive into the discography of Lemon Demon.

Where did Lemon Demon come from? Did it just burst onto the scene one day as some viral sensation? Did Neil Cicierega simply climb out of someone's dial up modem to wreak havoc forevermore?

Like many online musicians, Neil's early work can be traced back to obscure releases that no one clicked on, posted without much thought.

These releases were known as Trapezoid and MEGO vs SPAGO. I'll call this the "instrumental era" because Neil's main focus was on instrumental music during this time with a few exceptions we'll discuss.

I couldn't find information about which came first, but for the sake of a timeline, let's say both of these following releases were "around the year 2000." It's likely only Neil himself knows the answer.

Let's first discuss MEGO vs SPAGO, about which much less is known. Only two tracks from this name are known, a track called "Heh" and a track called the "Chryogenic Freezing Process." (Sic)

According to the Lemon Demon wiki: "The name is a reference to the mego and spago directories found on the Escape from Monkey Island game discs, which contain the game’s audio."

"Heh" is a straightforward rock-influenced song that would sound right at home in a Sonic game or something. "Chryogenic" is more funk-inspired and also sounds to me video-gamey, but more in the Jet Set Radio vibe.

The MEGO releases are both what I would describe as "repetitive but quality." Neil's style is present in both, though, particularly in "Chryogenic" which rather mimics Lemon Demon's title conventions moving forward.

Let's more on now to Neil's first formal release, Trapezoid, now known as Deporitaz, operating from roughly the year 2000 until 2002 with an extra release in 2007, consisting of four full-length album releases: "Outsmart" from June 2000, "Microwave this CD" from June 2001, "Dimes" from November 2002, and "Circa 2000" released November 2007.

The name change from Trapezoid to the anagram Deporitaz was due to another band also called Trapezoid requesting a name change. This request was made after Neil had disbanded Trapezoid, so he agreed, leading to the only release officially bearing the Deporitaz name was Circa 2000.

"Outsmart" was the first release, available for free on Lemon Demon dot com. It contains fifteen tracks.

"Outsmart" as a project is very remniscient of original music of the time, primarily MIDI-flavored tracks with fairly flat mixing. Neil's emphasis seems to be on songwriting, giving each of his compositions different sections and dynamic changes within the constraints of the medium of early music creation.

My favorite track would have to be "COWS" which, according to the wiki, "Probably doesn't stand for anything." It's playing now.

You can also see Neil's signature title style in this with tracks such as "Blips and/or Blips" along with "Sounds like a Jackhammer!" with an exclamation point.

There's really not much to say about "Outsmart." It's pleasant but not noteworthy. The NEXT album, though, is far more interesting.

The 2001 album "Microwave this CD" is semi-lost media. A lot of it, including some tracks as well as the album cover were lost, but enough of it remains to comment on. Unlike "Outsmart" which was all straightforward MIDI-styled tunes, "Microwave" includes tracks that have samples and references to video games of the time.

Track 8, "Sam and Max Disco" contains samples from "Sam and Max hit the road" and the point-and-click references don't end there. Track 5 is a remix from the Monkey Island games that had lyrics written for it that were never released.

Some tracks, such as "Untitled" and "Smosho's Journey" don't have files attached and there are some songs that are thought to be on the album without confirmation but were later disproven, such as "Spiders" and "The Adventures Of."

Neil's skills seem to be expanding on this album, but they remain somewhat limited in scope to MIDIs and samples.

The third album and final original album was released in 2003, known as "Dimes." This, to me, is Neil's first more formal release, as it was given album art and the first to graduate past simple MIDI tracks and into more developed songs. It's also the last album before Neil's evolution into Lemon Demon proper. More on that soon.

The first track on "Dimes" is probably the most significant, titled "I Know Your Name," the first track to feature vocals, but not the first to feature lyrics. Here's some of it.

Again, Neil's songwriting is excellent from day 1, even if the mix and his vocals could use improvement. It's quite listenable for a fledgeling musician, and that isn't faint praise if you've heard other online artists' earliest works.

Beyond this, the rest of the tracks are pretty standard Deporitaz stuff, but more evolved. There's some more sophisticated stuff like panning and better mixing, but altogether, it's the best Deporitaz release in my book.

The final Deporitaz release happened in 2007, so we're jumping ahead a bit here, but we should talk about it because all the tracks were developed in this same early-2000s timeframe in the aptly titled "Circa 2000."

According to Neil, this album was produced as follows:

 “Basically, I scoured my many hundreds of old Cakewalk files, collected some tunes that fell through the cracks, gave them titles, and put them in this collection for you. Enjoy!”

Cakewalk of course refers to an early DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) known as Cakewalk, which Neil likely used for most if not all of these early Deporitaz tracks.

This album I would say is the most hit or miss. Some tracks like "Birth of a Cosmonaut" are fully-realized and would be excellent with added lyrics or as video game BGM, but others like "Squats" were clearly originally unreleased for a reason.

All in all, for Lemon Demon buffs, I think that these four albums are worth a listen, primarily Dimes. I remember having a few Dimes and Circa tracks on my MP3 player and re-listening was a good dose of nostalgia.

It's fascinating to listen to Neil's evolution from this guy who primarily did MIDI work to a more accomplished songwriter, you can really see the increase of his ambition, like with each of these albums he masters something new. You can see his style develop, too, all of his song titles are whimsical and fun to read on their own, my all-time-favorite title being "When Grandma Regains Consciousness She Will Thank Us."

I really appreciate these early works being available. Neil has never been part of a formal record label and unlike many other musicians, seeing his growth is not only easy but free, too. It also heartens me greatly knowing that everyone, even titans like Neil start out as newbies, striking out and trying to make something.

But you're not here to just see some MIDI tracks from a defunct music project from the early 2000s. You're here for the good shit.

In 2003, a Demon was born.

Clown Circus was produced, directed, written, crafted, made, executed, begun, incepted, and performed by Neil Cicierega under his new title: Lemon Demon, a name that would come to shake the foundations of the internet for decades to come, but that for now was a simple project by a 17-year-old and his friends.

The first track of Clown Circus, Error, is an instrumental that seems to bring Neil from his prior project into a new paradigm, evolving and sweeping up the viewer, hypnotizing and priming them for what's to come.

The true beginning of Clown Circus, and by extension, Lemon Demon is the eponymous track, Lemon Demon, featuring, for the second time ever, vocals by Neil and a backup verse from contributor Aaron Ackerson, a musician in his own right.

Now, I'm not going to lie. Lemon Demon kind of sucks. The song, I mean, not the artist. With the paradigm shift comes this sort of step backwards for Neil, where his instrumentals and vocals suffer a little bit due to lack of training. He's this guy coming from a MIDI tradition finally making something more conventionally recorded and on top of this, he's every instrument except for Aaron's singular verse.

That said, this is extremely listenable. When I said "sucks" before, I meant relatively speaking. I said this in the Trapezoid section, but the fact that this guy who as far as we know had no formal training except for three stints in MIDI instrumental albums published independently is astounding. Intuitive might be the word for it.

A better word than "sucks" might be "formative," where Neil is still working out his sound. That's my adjective for this whole album, actually. Formative. It's hit or miss, with the misses being forgettable and the hits being solid. The crunchiness also gives it a unique aesthetic that is quite nostalgic. Still- I think it's a pity Neil never re-released this eponymous track.

Standouts on this album include "Don't be like the Sun" and "Bowling Alley," the latter of which features an almost Tom Waits esque anecdote about a dream Neil had.

It's all very avante garde, and not in the pretentious sense but in the sense of a man genuinely trying to find out what works. This album is throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

I should give special mention to track 13 Hyakugojyuuichi, which is incedentally the best track from a production standpoint, has a story all of its own, it's sort of a tangent, but bear with me.

So. In 2003, Neil wasn't just making albums, he was also doing this thing called Animutation. Basically, Neil invented shitposting. Just... Just watch it.

So this is Neil's second animutation, a massive animation using stock assets set to the song "Hyakugojyuuichi" which translates to "151" and served as the ending to the japanese release of Pokemon's first season.

Hyakugojyuuichi 2003 then, is a 6-minute track featuring Neil, Aaron Ackerson as well as three individuals known as Zander, Toxic, and finally Shmorky, a webcomic artist from the SomethingAwful days (please do not google), advertising a three and a half minute animation, urging the listener to watch and analyze it.

Also it goes hard.

Anyway, that's basically Clown Circus. Notably, this album has a more communal feel, as Neil shied away from lyrical contributors later, but notably, there is a writing credit for Alora Lanzilotta, a contributor who also played bass for Lemon Demon's live shows.

The final Clown Circus track is arguably the most competent track, only few lyrics, called Elsewhere. It's one of Neil's Most underrated compositions and it shows how he's always been an excellent songwriter, even twenty years ago.

2003 was a big year for Neil, though, as in July, Neil would release another album to the now defunct Mp3.com. This one is 17 tracks long and features one of my personal favorite tracks, Dance Like an Idiot, and while the quality is largely similar to Clown Circus, but there are some notable tracks that are worth mention.

Hydroelectric Viking is another instrumental, but it's probably to-date Neil's most Lemon Demon sounding song yet.

The second track, "The Saga of You, Confused Destroyer of Planets" also marks an early-LD schtick of telling an absurd story in song form, featuring Neil's storytelling skills.

The tracks rather run together on this one, Neil seems to have found his stride, but that comes at the expense of variety. Boat and Fiberglass Monkey both sound similar to the earlier tracks, an emphasis on synths and distorted guitars with similar drums and Neil's vocals.

Track 9 is Booja Baooja which sounds like some shit off the Loco Roco soundtrack or from Star Wars just has nonsense lyrics which breaks up the monotony in a delightful way. Neil would have more sophisticated nonsense songs later in his career, so keep an eye on this.

Track 11 is a cover of Chu Chu Rocket, and for people who don't recognize that name, it's a fucking... Game. Look, I can't explain this, just. It's a game, okay? There's mice and cats and- It's fine. Don't worry about it.

Track 15 is just a straight cover of Birdhouse in Your Soul by They Might Be Giants which Neil puts his own spin, playing it mostly in double time. I like it a lot, I wish Neil did more covers, but doing covers reveals a little of Neil's developing voice in this era.

The album ends with Movie Night, a slower song, finally dispensing the variety this album desperately needed.

It only took until March 2004 for Neil to bust out another album, Hip to the Javabean. I like the cover art for this one, a cute little pillow guy drawn by Neil's sister Emmy. Not only does this have 15 tracks, but 8 bonus tracks and a readme file.

I would say that this album is the first full-stop "good" Lemon Demon album.

The first track continues the tradition of an instrumental first track with a twist- Instead of Neil it's a synthesized voice musing on the nature of toast. I find this quite compelling as it's Lemon Demon's first foray into existential mundanity, keep your eye on that.

Track 3 however, is a watershed moment for Lemon Demon. This is the first song on any of the albums, Deporitaz to now, to be, in my opinion, professional-quality. The main element to this distinction is Neil's clearly upgraded microphone that no longer sounds like he's trying to escape from a tin can. The mixing has also clearly improved due to Neil's increased experience.

It's still not perfect, but it's finally "there." The fidelity is still nostalgic.

Another noteworthy track is Telekinesis, which features what I call "Lemon Demon kitsch," a pure distillation of Neil's interests in conspiracies and cryptids in a hodgepodge format.

It depicts a skepticism but deep love for these things and an underlying sense of mysticism that would feature heavily on the later release Spirit Phone, but more about that later.

Another noteworthy track is the re-released I Know Your Name from the Deporitaz era. I still prefer the first one but there's no denying this one is more competently-made.

The other two tracks worth mention are "I've Got some Falling to Do" and "Bad Idea," two more narrative songs, respectively about a man falling to his death which now has a great Aimkid animation and Bad Idea being the first song to feature an Albinoblacksheep animation. Albinoblacksheep will feature later, so keep your eyes peeled.

There's also Run Harry Run which was the genesis of Neil's parodical fixation with Harry Potter.

Clown Circus, Candle Shop, and Javabean all constitute what I call "pre showdown" Lemon Demon, the era which contained Neil's formative works. After this, Neil provides commentary tracks with his albums, seeming to indicate the releases in 2005 and later are the first ones taken seriously, and it's clear to see why.

These albums are adorable in the same way a newborn deer is adorable. It's a bit wobbly and confused, but you know it's going to grow into something truly majestic.

On March 21st, 2005, Lemon Demon released Damn Skippy. It had a whopping 18 tracks and 8 bonus tracks and it represents another paradigm shift in Lemon Demon.

If Javabean was Demon's first "good" album of professional quality, Damn Skippy is Demon's first "great" album. I've made a lot of judgemental little comments about how early Lemon Demon was "comparitively" bad, and Damn Skippy was the comparison point. Damn Skippy is a pace test for Lemon Demon, and I've got great news: It only gets better from here.

I've mentioned this before, but let's make it official. Lemon Demon songs all fall into one of a few categories that I've alluded to in previous segments. Let's ennumerate them.

1. Paranormal Kitsch

This of course is when Neil indulges conspiracy and supernatural elements in a satirical way.

2. Direct Narrative

Usually in first or second person, Neil describes some noteworthy event.

3. Nonsense

Neil makes a song with lyrics that make no sense on purpose.

I've discussed these three, but there are another few.

4. Character Study

Neil describes one or more characters and describes their quirks.

5. Surreal Mundanity

Something average or standard is explained in depth or in absurd terms.

I'm going to be using these from here on to describe some noteworthy tracks, so here we go.

Damn Skippy sheds the tradition of an instrumental first track and hops right in with "Dead Sea Monkeys," a very relatable title track that anyone who's tried to raise Sea Monkeys can relate to. This would be one of Neil's surreal mundanity tracks, continued with "Kitten Is Angry" and "The Ceiling" but the real stars of Damn Skippy are "Subtle Oddities," "Word Disassociation," and of course, "Mr. Porta-Potty Man."

Neil also does some more riffing on his own material here, such as bonus track 6, a rendition of Musical Chairs from Javabean as well as an alternate take of Subtle Oddities as bonus track 8. These new tracks aren't 1:1  upgrades but instead iterations, showing Neil's evolving style.

Comparing Musical Chairs in fact shows Neil's growth over just a few years.

Neil also made a nice music video for Word Disassociation a year later in 2006.

If you'd like more information about each track, I'd highly suggest looking into Neil's own commentary track which is available free on YouTube. There's a lot of interesting trivia.

My favorite story about this is the song "What Will Happen Will Happen" being a song that was intended to cheer up his friends after the Bush election in 2004. Inspiration can come from anywhere.

The biggest improvement on Damn Skippy was of course Neil's vocals. Where before they were a bit spotty, they really came into their own here. Neil has a voice that isn't really conventional as a singer but as it developed it became nearly synonymous with his personal style, iconic almost. There are lots of musicians who have unconventional voices like Tom Waits and Bob Dylan and while Neil doesn't sound quite as gritty as they do, he exudes a clear confidence, like a lanky carnival barker gazing at you with glinting eyes, inviting you into his emporium of sounds.

Neil also shines in song structure. He uses the tried-and-true chorus verse style but these choruses and verses are always distinct from each other yet cohesive. He also often utilizes a third verse that has a different style from the others to keep things interesting. I'd describe his style in the word Novel, something that carries over from his Deporitaz days.

So Damn Skippy is a good album. Great, even. You might think it can't get any better- But for those of you who know what's coming... You know that it does.

Before we talk about Dinosaurchestra, we have to talk about The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny. Up until this point, Neil's fans were mostly niche forum goers in the mid 2000s internet ecosystem, but Ultimate Showdown was the first time Neil broke free of this mold alone and gained viral acclaim.

The song itself was released on December 22, 2005 to Newgrounds animated by Shawn Vulliez AKA AltFFour. The flash animation got 12 million hits on that site and through many incarnations on Youtube and other sites, the total view count easily tops billions.

The song also gained acclaim outside of the internet, being featured on Dr. Demento's compilation album "Basement Tapes Number 15" in 2007, a year after Dinosaurchestra. It was also the top requested song for Dr. Demento in 2006, topping his "Funny 25" list alongside titans like Weird Al, Jonathan Coulton, and Luke Ski.

So, funny aside. To get that recording, I had to buy it from the Dr. Demento website which is hilariously bad. It's crusty as fuck and I kind of love it? I paypaled them 3 dollars and they sent me an email with a password to get into their audio downloads.

Interestingly, on this recording, Neil cites one of his inspirations: Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club. Check them out if you want some more Lemon Demon esque shit. They're kind of like if They Might Be Giants kept doing educational albums but went insane along the way.

Anyway, this is all to say that Ultimate Showdown was one of the first memes on the internet with any staying power- I would say it's transcended meme, nearly everyone has seen it by now. We love it. It's the fucking Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny.

Not only this, but Ultimate Showdown, in all its crusty, flash-animated glory showed the world what a man could do without a record label and no formal training on the internet in a new era. It wasn't just a paradigm shift for Lemon Demon, it was a paradigm shift for like... Earth. The World. Media at large. This was, probably unintentionally, a pioneer of the modern media landscape, one of the trailblazers, and it was all on the power of one demonic lemon.

And was this distinction as Lemon Demon's greatest hit yet deserved? Does the rest of Dinosaurchestra live up to this titanic legacy?

Dinosaurchestra is what I would call Neil's first magnum opus. It's clear that a lot of effort went into this album, since it had the longest track length of any release to date with 19 tracks, 16 bonus tracks, and 1 secret track. It also features a vague framing device, three iterations of the eponymous "Dinosaurchestra," a concept trilogy about jamming with dinosaurs. Very charming. Neil employing more concepts than usual.

The best tracks of this album are Action Movie Hero Boy, Lawnmower, This Hyper World, and of course, as discussed- The Ultimate Showdown. The bonus tracks are no slouch, either- White Bread Boyfriend I remember being shared around forums back in the day. Another classic is Bill Watterson, the tale of the stalker of the author of Calvin and Hobbes. For a long time I thought this was based on a true story- But it's not. There are also some excellent Ultimate Showdown remixes, my favorite being the Aaron Ackerson mix, featuring Neil's vocals and a new instrumental.

A few of the bonus tracks including Bill Watterson got re-released on Neil's NEXT album in 2008, View-Monster, which we'll talk about in a second, but as its own standalone, I really enjoy Dino.

At this point in time, Neil has gone from MIDI guy to competent songwriter to genuinely great artist and he's remained in the milieu of indie internet creator. He carved out a niche and was happy for it.

One of my favorite things about Lemon Demon is its transience. This was just one of many of Neil's projects, something he gave himself to, but was never intended to go big- When it did, it was nice, but in the end, it was all for the fans. Neil's lack of ambition is one of his biggest credits. He seems satisfied with where he is and I really like that. There's no need to explore his personal life, no need to exhaustively promote his work, no need to do anything but share some fun little tunes this guy made.

Too many artists these days who we'd call "Indie" stray so far from that distinction it's somewhat heinous. We all remember the fall from grace of the band Fun as well as the meteoric rise of Billie Eilish, marketed as independent but far from it.

It's nice to have bands like Lemon Demon, scrappy little artists for a niche of people, made with limited appeal on purpose for no critical acclaim. The world is too full of people with too much ambition, too much drive, and not enough creativity. Fuck "making it big," I find something very aspirational about what Lemon Demon became: Loved.

If you look in the comments for any Lemon Demon album you'll find a great number of people just appreciating a work for the sake of it. People who know it's not perfect, that Neil's vocals could use work or that it could be mixed better, but that doesn't matter. Critique falls away because it's unneeded. Who cares how good or bad it is? It meets the criteria of "good" and for Lemon Demon that's all that matters. Even if you don't like one of the songs, that's why they invented the skip button.

Essentially, Lemon Demon in my eyes disproves the notion of objective critique. The thinking goes that no matter what, people should be allowed to level any critique on any project, that is the only means by which people can improve their craft. It's a very negative approach, and one that I'm sure many musicians have either fallen into or been subjected by.

Music online isn't easy. It's actually incredibly discouraging. Generally speaking, no one wants to listen to anything you make, not because it's bad, but because there's already a deluge of works being put out and enjoyed that yours are just another drop in a vast sea of that sweet sweet content. And when you are noticed, more often than not, it's in the form of someone decrying your work, sneering at you, looking down their nose, usually by someone who makes music, too.

Lemon Demon is proof that you don't need some gauntlet of remorseless naysayers to get good and you don't even really have to be good in the first place. People just have to like it. The hope that someone will love your work should motivate you to be better, not some bitter, decrepit worship of quality and critique at the altar of your peers.

Anyway, let's talk about View-Monster.

View-Monster is a return to Neil's roots. First of all, Kaleidoskull is an instrumental track to open things off, like in the previous Neil-Era. There are also numerous transitions in between tracks. This one features 16 tracks and 16 bonus tracks. When Neil later signed on with NeedleJuice Records (more on that later) there were also some DIFFERENT bonus tracks, including some of Neil's albumless releases such as 123456 Pokemon.

Another return to Neil's roots is a collaboration track, Knife Fight which features Marty from Uncle Monsterface. Neil's early work had more collabs, but this seems to be the last one of Lemon Demon's discography.

I would say this album is a peer to Dinosaurchestra, but they are very different. The standouts on this album are Amnesia Was Her Name, Marketland, and the bonus track Ben Bernanke. I think the best way to compare Dino to Monster is Dino is a magnum opus and Monster is a tour-de-force. In a less pretentious way- Dino was Neil's first truly great album and Monster was an iteration on that with fewer limits.

Another bonus track of note is Super Hey Ya, a straight remix of the Outkast hit Hey Ya. Hm. I wonder if Neil will ever do any more straight remixes... hm! Hmmmmm. Hm.

Another bonus track was Toy Food, which got a cool music video from 2009. Same with 123456 Pokemon.

Also, the video on YouTube for Amnesia Was Her Name's comment section is just 41 people who also said "Oh Cool." Idk why but it's funny.

https://youtu.be/0Vaf99waLgc

These three albums round out what I call the "Showdown Era," which is essentially a high point for Lemon Demon's popularity- All centered around Ultimate Showdown. This era also featured a great deal more music videos and YouTube comment, as the platform had taken off at this point. This also, sadly, marks the end of Lemon Demon's consistent releases.

Each album from Clown Circus onward released within about a year of each other, with Deporitaz Circa 2000 filling the 2007 gap between Dino and Monster, and View-Monster would be the last annual track with new material Lemon Demon would make. That doesn't mean the story is over, however, far from it.

The last thing I'd like to touch before we enter the 2010s is the album Almanac 2009, released in 2009 at Youmacon. This was a best-of album featuring 14 tracks: three re-recorded tracks, ten legacy tracks, and one original song, "This is Youmacon," a rendition of "This is Halloween" from Nightmare before Christmas, retooled to be about the Detroit culture convention.

This might seem like a small release, but this album was the first piece of media I actually owned of Lemon Demon. I was at Youmacon THAT YEAR. I'm pissing myself with anger that I never kept any photos, but that was one of my favorite events I'd ever been to.

Sadly, 2010 was the first Lemon Demonless year since 2003. To make up for this, in 2011, another re-release album was created, the first album to feature an actual band and not simply Neil recording everything. This is the first time Lemon Demon could be called a "band."

The name, Live only Not refers to the live recording, even though it was not a live SHOW. Personel for the show, listed on Bandcamp are:

Neil Cicierega - Vocals, piano, songwriting 

Greg Lanzillotta - Drums, recording and mixing 

Alora Lanzillotta - Bass 

Charles "Chooch" Sergio - Guitar 

Dave Kitsberg - Also guitar

This is probably my single most favorite Lemon Demon release. Something about hearing an actual band play these songs for the first time is magical, it's like a puppet coming to life. There are only 9 tracks, none original, and they don't even hit any of the classics, spare for Ultimate Showdown, but this album might very well be Neil's best job singing. I love it. It's the most slept-on piece in Lemon Demon's library and if you look up one single thing because of this video, look up Live Only Not. Great entry point into Lemon Demon's body of work.

Sadly, the scattershot nature of these releases would become a trend in the coming years. The next two releases were original, but they were similarly short, two EPs, I Am Become Christmas in 2012 and Nature Tapes in 2014. A far cry from the yearly albums, but these two were still amazing.

In reality, the EPs were compilations of various singles released over 2011-2013, but we'll talk about them as EPs instead of singles, becuase the latter would take too fucking long.

I Am Become Christmas is a concept EP about, what else? Christmas. Lemon Demon's spin on Christmas of course is in a characteristic dark optimism, like the Christmas season was wrapped up in a dark black bow. The best track in this 5-track treat is "Aurora Borealis," an instant Christmas Staple in the holidays or out.

Christmas has another intstrumental intro, called Prelude to Presents and ends with SAD and CryptoSanta, both jarringly earnest and jarringly surreal takes on the holidays. It's like seeing the world's most celebrated holiday from a different angle. I like it. It's mired in the sort of malaise that winter comes with, a very down to earth thing.

This is honestly kind of a black sheep among Lemon Demon's releases. It's short, sweet and unique, even when compared to other Lemon Demon stuff. I'm glad it was made.

The other EP, Nature Tapes from 2014 had 7 tracks- 9 after it was re-released on Needlejuice. This EP was made up of the homeless singles I discussed earlier.

The most iconic track from this release has to be Two Trucks, which details the sexual exploits of two all-american vehicles. I don't have any actual numbers, but Two Trucks is probably the second most known Lemon Demon track outside of Ultimate Showdown.

This era of Lemon Demon is punctuated by a sort of... Unhinging. I don't know Neil Cicierega, but if I were to guess, I would say in a general sense this was the time when Neil began to retire the label. It was time to wind Lemon Demon down, to put it on the back burner to work on things like New Kids on the Rock and YouTube, perhaps, or just because of general diminishing returns. Given this, I think it's wonderful we got so many releases like this at all. I think it's wonderful we got the next album.

The final Lemon Demon album of all was not until 2016, two years later, with the critical bombshell. After View-Monster, Neil began work on Spirit Phone, an album which took eight years to produce and release, the first single of which was "Eighth Wonder," released way back in 2009. Between 2009 and 2016, singles would be released that would eventually appear on Spirit Phone, but unlike Nature Tapes, which was just a conglomeration of homeless singles, Spirit Phone was a new, bold Lemon Demon vision.

Spirit Phone had 14 tracks and several bonuses, some of which were demos. This album is similar to I Am Become Christmas in that it is a vaguely conceptual album surrounding what I can only describe as paranorm-core, the kind of shit you'd see on 4chan's /x/ board in like 2012. The hits include Cabinet Man, Eighth Wonder, and the bonus track Redesign Your Logo.

All of the tracks here are a little darker than Neil's previous work, but in a fun way. Like a haunted house, but with a clown. My favorite is Eighth Wonder which features a song from the perspective of an actual cryptid named Gef which a British family made up in the 1930s that was allegedly a ghost in the form of a mongoose. Read up on it on Wikipedia, it's really interesting.

The album is much more focused which I really enjoy, Neil offering some more meaty critiques and commentary on society in this one, especially the likes of Redesign Your Logo which is a stark depiction of how intensely advertising dehumanizes us as people. On top of this, though, they're fucking bangers.

Spirit Phone is probably the single most acclaimed album project of Lemon Demon. Until Phone, Lemon Demon mainly existed as disjointed singles on youtube and mp3.com, but Spirit Phone was the first one people seemed to listen to in earnest.

In response to this, in 2018, Lemon Demon signed to Needlejuice records, publishing Spirit Phone and some of Neil's back catalog, as far back as Javabean. Needlejuice re-released the albums with new bonus tracks, as well, but nothing original was made for them. If you're looking for a place to support Lemon Demon, they're a great place to start. Needlejuice also publishes for indie darlings like Tally Hall and the aforementioned Logan Whitehurst and the Junior Science Club.

Needlejuice also remastered Spirit Phone in 2022, but nothing new has been released by Lemon Demon since then.

There are also two tracks that Neil made for Gravity Falls that were cut from production, both a theme song mockup and a Bill Cipher song that recieved an animatic from the YouTuber Psychic. I'm sad these were never included in the show, Neil's work fits Gravity Falls to a T, especially Spirit Phone's era.

Other than this, there have been no Lemon Demon releases. Spirit Phone is the last Lemon Demon Album and it's been six years since then in 2022. It's unlikely that there will be more, as Neil seems to have moved on, but... I can't bring myself to be sad about that. There are quite literally hundreds of tracks of Lemon Demon, giving them an impressive run of over a decade, from 2003 to 2016, with plenty more artists related to check out on Needlejuice.

I'm of the belief that time does not constrain great music. I might be wrong and Lemon Demon might have an album in the future, but if this is all there is, to me, that makes me happy. Lemon Demon represents one man's skills developing over a decade and along the way shaping the internet culture as we know it. The world would be a sadder place without the whimsical mind of Neil C, and I appreciate the work he's done.

At the end of the day, Lemon Demon is a testament to the growth of an artist. It makes me happy to think that right now, some kid is releasing his bandcamp singles that will, in ten years, be the next big viral sensation. There are probably hundreds of people out there making music just like Neil did, and maybe you're one of them. It's proof that anyone can make it, that anyone can get better, that anyone can become great. That there is room on this Earth for everyone to carve a niche out for themselves.

Lemon Demon isn't a household name, but it is well-loved. Lemon Demon has never won a grammy, but people still make playlists and listen to them. Lemon Demon isn't famous, prestigious, or even the best of the best, but they are there and our lives wouldn't be as full of whimsy without them. I love Lemon Demon, and I hope you do too.

But that's not the end of the story, is it? Neil Cicierega didn't just stop making music, did he? We all know that's not true. We all know that's not true in the least.

Before Spirit Phone, in 2014, Neil Cicierega, outside of the Lemon Demon name, released an hour-long track to Bandcamp called, simply... Mouth Sounds.

This, much like some of Neil's earlier viral hits needs no introduction in the least. It's a mashup album entierly made up of surreal remixes of Smash Mouth's All Star mashed up with other 2000s americana such as Modest Mouth and- Shit. Haha, I said "Modest Mouth" didn't I? Fuck- Such as MODEST MOUSE and Daft Punk.

This mashup album is a joke, but it's far beyond JUST a joke, it has some genuinely good remixes, including Daft Mouth, a compilation of Harder Better Faster Stronger and Walkin' on the Sun which goes hard. There's also Tears in the Chocolate Rain which makes Chocolate Rain into a haunting commentary, like it recontextualizes the meme into a song about racial injustice like it was always meant to be.

I would play some of these tracks, but- I can't. YouTube copyright prevents me from doing so.

Later in 2014, Neil followed up Mouth Sounds with Mouth Silence, something dubbed a... Prequel? To the original album, featuring more mashups without Smash Mouth. This album, unconstrained by one single sample, is even better than the original, featuring the now-famous Crocodile Chop (Elton John vs System of a Down) and my personal favorite, Born to Cat, (Bent Fabric vs Bruce Springsteen.) This isn't even touching the various esoteric references to Smash Mouth hidden in the data of the album.

This album also inspired other works, most notably the work of Triple-Q in their Birthday Girl series. Look up Crimes Against the Internet on YouTube if you want more unhinged mashups, featuring more anime inspiration.

The Mouth Train slowed down for a little while, until in 2017 after the release of Spirit Phone, when Neil released Mouth Moods, another more free-styled mashup album, including a healthy sprinkling of Mouth. The hits of this album are Bustin, a straight-up remix of the Ghostbusters theme with YTP-ified lyrics, and Wow Wow, a remix of Wild Wild West that in my mind, has outright replaced the original song.

Finally, three years later in 2020, Neil released the final in the Mouth quadrilogy, Mouth Dreams, a tour de force, combining all of Neil's exhaustive knowledge of Smash Mouth and mashups, featuring such hits as Just a Baby, featuring Justin Beiber and Johnny Cash, Ribs, and Fredhammer.

All of the Mouth albums are quite unique in that they aren't so much singular tracks and mashups, but they all have links interspersed. Neil has taken great pains to make sure all four albums have a throughline, making them all a genuine experience to listen through.

My personal favorite is Silence, but they're all good. It's uncanny how good they are, actually, like I said some of them replace the originals in my mind. It's like the meme has transcended.

As a YouTube commenter on one of the albums said- "Neil is the king of, 'all jokes aside, this is actually pretty good.'"

The final Neil Cicierega release worth mentioning is, of course Not For Resale's OST, which is an instrumental album that's evocative of the 80s that Neil made for the documentary "Not For Resale," which, full disclosure, I haven't seen. I have heard the OST, though, and it rules.

There was so much I didn't even talk about here. So much. There's Guaranteed Video, Potter Puppet Pals, the fandom videos, so much shit that I just didn't have time for, because in the end, this was about Lemon Demon the band and the projects that surrounded it, not Neil Cicierega.

This video was originally MUCH longer, with a breakdown of every single Lemon Demon song ever, but that video would have been way too much and not fun for me to make, so I made THIS video instead, which is quite frankly, still way too fucking long. This speaks to Neil's body of work.

If you want more information about him, the guy, though, there is a great video on YouTube called Neil Cicierega, internet person from the XOXO festival (whatever that is) where he goes more in-depth about his history and the internet.

Like I said, if you're looking to support Lemon Demon, you can do so through bandcamp or Needlejuice records.

At the end of the day, Lemon Demon means a lot to me. There's a lot to be said about what constitutes skill and what makes up a viral hit, but I've already said all that stuff in previous sections, so I want to wrap up by saying two things.

One, Lemon demon is good. Seriously, check them out. It's literally free. Fuck.

Two, if you're an aspiring musician of any stripe, just... Keep going. Critics and foes will try to tear you down and you might become discouraged enough to quit, but you should keep making stuff. I won't lie and say you'll get famous or rich or make your dad finally love you or something, but you will make some music that you like, you will make friends, and you will enjoy your life.

Rarely do groups like Lemon Demon appear. In an era of Spotify and homogenized music, there are so few bands like them, bands who don't compromise in quality or niche appeal, bands who are still making songs about shit they like, saying what they want to, untainted by this hellscape of capital that we now reside. These are the bands that will never appear on a "for you" page, bands you'll never hear at High School dances, bands that, when you recommend them, you'll get blank looks and confusion. We live in an age where record labels and companies like Viacom and Warner Music control their artists with fists of steel and scrub away any uniqueness like the rough side of a sponge, and the internet was supposed to fight against that, put power in the hands of the listener.

Lemon Demon is that power personified. A simple, humble man, just banging out the fucking tunes.

I've been Funk McLovin. Like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, tickle my balls. This video is FUCKING OVER.

Please take a moment to read.

Hello, all. Please take a moment to read.  As you know, for the last several months I've been hard at work on HS:AU and I'm proud to announce the HS:AU soundtrack on Bandcamp. 

Right now, I am having some medical troubles due to my long struggle with hearing loss. My hearing aid broke and I need a new one, and the price is steep as my insurance doesn't cover them. If you would like to help, there's never been a better time than now through Bandcamp. HS: AU and HS: AU's OST is free but anyone who can donate through the pay more option has my heartfelt gratitude. 

BANDCAMP: https://funkmclovin.bandcamp.com 

PAYPAL: https://paypal.me/FunkMcLovin 

I'd also like to thank you, my Patrons. Your contributions have quite literally kept the lights on in my home and put food in my mouth over these last few months. Thank you kindly from me, Funk McLovin, to you, the listener.

Homestuck AU Act 1 OST

Available Saturday 11th at 11AM EST!

HOMESTUCK AU ACT 1 WATCH PARTY

Come out to YT and see it!! It's about 3 hours long and I'll be there.

CAN TOWN

INTERMISSION

Early Access :3

Homestuck AU Episode 9 EARLY ACCESS

here it's!

STRIFE! (Homestuck AU OST)

CHAD BUSKIN REAL?!

Homestuck AU Chapter 6 In-Progress

Kind of fun mostly-complete recording. For the fans :3

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here u go :) it's rose

Homestuck AU Episode 4 Early

fuck it! have it early

Status update for HS:AU.

GOOD NEWS: The original release date of Jan 10th has (as you've guessed) gone out the window entirely. We've begun releasing episodes weekly, and barring any conflict, this will continue until Act 1 is done.

Act 1 contains 10 episodes about 20-30 mins in length and will release weekly on Sundays at 5PM EST.

The actual story has been written up to approximately the end of Act 5 from the original comic, IE the Scratch. 90% of voice lines and illustrations have been completed until the end of HS:AU's act 1.

Act 2's release date is TBD, but we're shooting for 4/13/22.