if you told me a year ago i would be crushing on an autistic pissblooded ghost troll i would not believe you
but, yknow. as of currently, i am.
while i despise openbound for many reasons (mostly because of the way it botched the stories of me and my friends; that is NOT how it happened, hussie), i've always loved the characters in it, even if they weren't utilized as much as they should've been. sure, a majority of them exist as an excuse for hussie to make fun of their fanbase + "weird" people in general, but the potential of them all, while wasted, is hard to ignore. out of all of these characters, though, the one i believe has the most potential is (you guessed it) mituna.
mituna is unimaginably important to me. i've liked him for a while, but it wasn't really until september of this year that everything just kind of...clicked for me. maybe it's because of the fact that i'm latula, or perhaps it's just because he has everything i really like in a character. whatever it is, i'm very deeply in love with him and i don't think i'll fall out of this love anytime soon.
but bec, who IS mituna?
mituna is a character that makes his first formal appearance (as in hes not a barely recognizable silhouette) in openbound, a walkaround game in act 6 of homestuck centering around the dancestors (descendant-ancestors) of the main 12 trolls. this walkaround game, as i stated before, is absolutely awful, but that's something ill elaborate on later. mituna is sollux's dancestor, meaning that he's a goldblood under the sign of true gemini.
mituna was apparently supposed to be a parodical depiction of the average 4chan user at the time. vulgar, abrasive, overly aggressive... his entire reason for acting this way was meant to be the result of brain damage from overexertion of his psionic abilities, however, which made him more of a gross stereotype for people with neurological disabilities. in recent times, autistic fans of homestuck have latched onto him and sort of reclaimed him in a way, which i think is fucking Awesome. and ill admit, this is also how i am with him!
i adore mituna with my entire life. there are a wide variety of reasons why this is the case, actually, so ill try to list out as many as i can think of.
- i am latula pyrope and that is my boyfriend
- HIS HAIR. oh my god his hair the way its so fuckinf messy and covers his eyes and shit ohhh my god
- HE IS SO SILLY. the 4channer ♡
- his theme (gold pilot) is so so so good its in like 85% of all of my personal playlists and it makes me feel a Lot
- HIS HELMET!!!!!!
- whenever he gets really meek and shy like "im sorry :(" its okay mituna youve never done a single thing wrong in your life (or afterlife in this case)
- in contrast to that i love when he gets pissed off at peopke go autism boy go
- he is. So clumsy and so bad at skateboarding and i love it. whenever he trips and falls he makes a squeaky toy noise i think
- that ministrife sprite (pictured above) where he has a striped shirt on with stupid little bee wings ♡ yeah
why openbound sucks and how things actually went
let me make it clear first that openbound is not bad because of the gameplay itself. the gameplay is fine. the gameplay is pretty good, actually. i'm referring to the content within openbound, which is what really pisses me off.
i briefly touched upon this a few times, but most of the dancestors were portrayed specifically in a way so hussie could make fun of not only their fans, but marginalized groups in general. not to toss around -ism words more than a twitter user, but openbound is rife with (ESPECIALLY) ableism, racism, generally uncomfortable moments, ableism...did i mention ableism? because there is a LOT of it.
now, i love the dancestors. i feel as if i've made this very clear by now. i don't hate the characters themselves, and i think that if hussie actually knew how to write without being an offensive piece of shit every two seconds, i would actually really enjoy openbound. but let me tell you, this shit gets bad. REALLY bad.
for example...
- damara megido, aradia's dancestor, is supposed to be "east beforan." she speaks entirely in broken, extremely lewd japanese and is generally a bastardization of japanese culture. if that wasn't already gross as is, she speaks in engrish when talking to human characters. this is also obviously very bad!
- as stated before, mituna is apparently supposed to be a 4channer. really the only thing that makes this apparent is the theming of his text boxes, because other than that he's really just a stereotype of people with brain damage and/or neurological disorders. hussie also likes to use him as an opportunity to make fun of racial slurs!
- kankri vantas, karkat's dancestor, was meant to be a parody of tumblr "sjws" at the time. this ended up being portrayed about as tastefully as you'd think. for the most part, hussie used him to shit all over people's triggers. you know, because people with ptsd are incredibly hilarious. he also used kankri to make fun of racial slurs!
- latula pyrope (aka me), terezi's dancestor, is disabled. this would be okay if her disability wasn't constantly disregarded as not actually being a disability just because it's not a visible one!
- horuss zahhak, equius' dancestor, while not exactly being extremely offensive, is mainly used by hussie to make fun of otherkin. and yeah, being otherkin definitely doesn't make you oppressed, but it's just shitty and i don't like it.
i could seriously go on and on about the offensive shit in openbound and how horribly everyone was bastardized, but i think it's best for the both of us that i stop here for now. this is obviously not fun for either of us to read, and besides, i desperately want to talk about my kin memories.
with that, here are how things actually were.
- first and foremost, mituna was always just Like That. the brain damage itself didn't change much of his personality at all, apart from making him more passive and meek at times, but instead it mostly affected his stamina and sense of balance. he was hardly able to do the things he used to be able to do. sometimes he couldn't even walk. it make him very bitter and angry and depressed, and i always tried to help him through it all. i was one of the only people he let his guard down around. he only liked being touched by me.
- mituna also still had his psionic abilites, he just couldn't use them himself anymore. they would come out at random, usually in tandem with strong emotions, and he had absolutely no control over them. they would often come out in large bursts of energy, destroying nearly everything in their path. he started seeing his abilities as a curse because of this. i would always reassure him that it wasn't his fault that this would happen to him, of course, but i'm not sure if i ever got through to him.
- i lost not only my sense of smell, but my ability to taste a lot of things as well. everything to me tasted like rotting meat and burnt cigarettes, so i usually had to eat very bland things. i also had severe respiratory issues after losing my sense of smell, and would regularly have asthma attacks if i got too active. i obviously Despised this, and would ham up my radical gamer girl persona every time insecurities shone through like that.
- if you weren't rufioh, horuss, or meenah, damara could be SO sweet. like genuinely so fucking sweet and kind and caring and she'd always be looking out for us. she had underlying mental health issues, though, and could be irritable at times. the harassment she faced from the three previously mentioned eventually caused her to have a complete breakdown, where she would insult us and try to sabotage us at every turn, and when it was all over and she became a ghost she spent most of her time trying to make up for the things she did during our session. she just felt really bad for it all! she also used to act out in provactive ways in order to get some sort of positive affection, but she stopped doing this when she started trying to better herself.
- kankri wasnt entirely Like That. sure, he was definitely very self-righteous and could be naive at times, but he was more uptight than anything. he had a particular penchant for cleaning things and valued tidiness greatly. it was very easy to make him anxious if you were to so much as spill something a little bit. like the way he was portrayed in homestuck, he did not like feeling crowded or being touched, and this stuff would cause him to have sensory overload-induced meltdowns. i think he was just autistic, actually. yeah no he was definitely autistic.
- cronus just kinda fucked off after spending a bit of time in the dream bubbles. dont know where he went but i was glad he was gone. that guy sucked!
- i think i remember meulin and porrim being a thing at one point? who knows lol
thats all i can remember right now, but my memories are like 100% more based than anything hussie could come up with lol