In Remem8er, Terezi — normally not a very emotional heart-on-sleeve character — opens up about feeling conflicted and upset because she felt like she could not live up to the example of her alternate self in a doomed timeline, whose last action before death involved making a list of points in history where she could have made a different decision and directing another character, John, to go back in time and prompt her past self to change those decisions using his retconning powers. She felt that this alternate self, while dead and doomed, managed to make much more of an impact on their game’s success than her current self did. She wished she could remember what her other self did, not just through John’s testimony but viscerally, just so she could really know that there is at least one version of her that was bad-ass.

I wouldn’t say that Remem8er triggered me, at least not directly. But Terezi’s ruminations about how she would never be able to compare to her alternate self tugged at my feelings of failure, of feeling like nothing I did ever mattered.

I was frustrated at a job history mostly filled with amazing opportunities, well-known personal projects, short part-time jobs, and plenty of volunteering — but none of it seemed to matter when it came to looking for steady work. I was still healing from an abusive relationship and was regretting leaving my first relationship (which was awesome) mostly because I came out to myself as a lesbian; I felt like following my sexuality only led to doom. I felt like, almost at 30, I still had none of my shit together. My biggest wish since I was 4 was to be personally independent and free from obligation, and yet I still needed to be supported by my parents because getting a regular income seemed impossible. I was pathetic, useless, nothing to show for.

Was there another version of me in another timeline that was more successful? Someone who took on the opportunities I missed and dropped the ones that weren’t good? Someone who was more stable with interpersonal relationships and didn’t get caught up in drama (self-inflicted or otherwise)? Someone who was thriving on their own because they knew how to support themselves and have been for a while?

If so, how did they do it, and why can’t I remember?

Was it even in me to be the sort of person I wish I was?

by andrew hussie

In the update, Terezi eventually gets to “remem8er” what her alternate self did, and her alternate self found resolution and happiness. I, however, am not a character in a sprawling epic, much less one where alternate selves were an option, so asides from a ton of conjecture I would never know whether I had the capacity to be a self-sufficient successful self-assured soul. Instead, what I have is a decision that threatened to undo nearly 10 years of self-work, throwing me back into a prison of isolation and agony: a decision I felt was forced only because I’d painted myself into a corner. (Incidentally, this feeling of choicelessness was one of the factors that doomed Alternate Terezi’s timeline, and led to her attempts to “F1X TH1S”.)

I watched the update at Bittersweet Cafe in Oakland, where I regularly ask for a salted caramel hot chocolate with a shot of espresso. I thought I’d get some work done with my laptop, but instead I was a bawling mess. Homestuck had its tearjerker moments, but all the events in my life leading up to that point in time messed me up more than before. Terezi’s internal crisis cut close…maybe a little too close.

On the way home, I was already posting on social media about how despondent and suicidal I was feeling, how I felt like I was reaching a dead end and I could see no way out. When I got home — a studio apartment in a bigger house that I got for a steal after taking over a friend’s lease when I needed to get away from my abusive ex — I started scouting around for something to hang myself with. Suicidality is no stranger to me, not at all, but this was the worst it had been in a long time.

Somehow I had enough presence of mind to call for help, and a friend got an Uber to bring me to their house. I spent the next few nights at a different friend’s house, one of my best friends — well, two of my best friends; they’re dating and living together. It was when I was there that I told them, quite honestly, that the only thing I had to live for was the end of Homestuck, because I had to know how it all resolves.

As far as reasons to live goes, wanting to know the end of a story isn’t necessarily the strongest choice. It’s just a piece of fiction, what does it matter to you when you’re dead?

But when your life seems like a pile of dead ends and you have no idea if or how anything will move forward, you hang on to the rare certainties that you have. And right now, the only thing I knew I could look forward to was the resolution of a 7-year project that captured my heart in its final 2 years.

It’s better than nothing, I think my friend said.