anti-meowrails anyone?

I agree let's kill that horse freak. again

@jakemorph

LITERALLY you get me. keep his sweaty controlling hands AWAY from nepeta

i don't like equius and i think nepeta deserves a better moirail

You are NOT alone I feel the same way. I really think they're unhealthy for each other as much as I love them. My ideal for them is breaking up in high school and getting back together when they're like, 40-50 years old.

I wish people were more willing to take their early conversations into account as characterization of their relationship as opposed to fully portraying them as "out of character" or "irrelevant". They're still important!

I generally like Equius as a character, but he is definitely bad for Nepeta. By himself I find him fun and compelling, but whenever Nepeta's involved he's way too controlling.

i did not think that this was gonna be a popular opinion this is great

yea their relationship is super woobified 😭😭 equius is such a controlling little freak... funny though. so fuckin funny, i love him. and nepeta too, so sweet. did you guys know homestuck is really well written actually??? and that all the characters are worth caring about despite their flaws????????? WHO WOULD HAVE THUNK.......................................

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(more ellipses so you know im being sarcastic)

GET AWAY FROM HERRRRR GET A JOBBBBBBBBB

No but for real the fandom mischaracterization of Equius and his relationship with Nepeta gets on my nerves. Nepeta wasn't good at pacifying Equius like at all iirc. It led to him trying to "protect" her by just being super controlling and telling her not to hang out with lowbloods and not to cuss and to always stay by him and shit like that.

People want Equius to be less shitty than he really was so bad because he was SLIGHTLY less awful in Alterniabound, I guess? It's so bad I've seen people try and deny that what he did to Aradia when fucking with her robot body's programming wasn't comparable to SA, or that he wasn't being really weird when thinking about how he's changing her blood color. Equius and meowrails is the biggest example of this fandom replacing canon with headcanons the longer they go without reading the comic.

Straight upppp. Equius is a shithead to her every single time they talk, he wants to control everything she does. But for some reason everyone sees that they have a kind of cute conversation in Alterniabound and blind everything else including the same flash where when push comes to shove he does nothing to protect her.

People just go lalala and cover their eyes when it comes to their relationship. And they're the "perfect model" of moiraillegiance too... Hmm...

i agree. equius sucks and nepeta deserves better

what you dont understand could fill a library

my previous comment was mean i apologize

i agree, they should have become matesprits because i think it would have been funny.

I can accept a meowrails goon being mean to me but they gotta provide a stimulating argument to back it up

I have a personal attachment to meowrails as they were one of my first Homestuck OTPs and a huge comfort at one point in time. But despite my biases, I am fully aware their relationship is unhealthy and not an ideal moiraillegiance. Like every relationship, there were a lot of flaws that came from both sides of the party, but that doesn't mean it was all bad. They clearly did their best to understand one another and protect each other the best they could.

Equius' controlling nature absolutely comes from the fact he is constantly riding the caste system rules but also comes from a place of trying to genuinely protect Nepeta. It's nuanced, he saw what was going on in the Flarp sessions and it's understandable he didn't want her to join in on those, but then he would also turn around and tell her not to curse like she was a wiggler or something. I'm not really sure what Nepeta saw in him, but one of the purposes of a moirail is to help a troll be the best version of themself, so perhaps she wanted to help him loosen up and be someone that wasn't so tied to the caste system.

Both characters stay in this relationship as they feel it's some sort of necessity, most likely an idea pushed onto them by Alternian society. They played along with what the other wanted to do even if they didn't want to do it themself, that was more like setting a boundary rather than taking complete control in my opinion, but even with the rules set in stone in this relationship they were still able to be apart from each other and do their own things. I think to say their relationship is all bad and no good because of Equius' toxic traits isn't fair, Equius does a lot of things wrong in the comic but he also grew up in a society where he was taught these behaviors were ok. Does that justify him? Not at all, but he is only a kid during all of this and so is Nepeta.

It's easy to forget the trolls are children for most of the comic, they aren't exactly built like children nor do their behaviors really 100% match up with that of a 13 year old (in my opinion). But this was a relationship between 2 13 year olds who were trying to navigate a world that wasn't built for something they were trying to be, especially when one of them is a stickler for rules and the other is more rebellious. However despite the "it's how they grew up" argument, I do understand that multiple characters in the comic deconstruct this concept even in front of Equius' face (including Nepeta herself), but he is too stubborn and stuck in his ways to listen.

I think the biggest problem of their relationship is probably the fact Nepeta was staying in a relationship that clearly didn't meet her standards or make her happy. While a good portion of Equius commands come from trying to keep her safe and she is aware of it, she is consistently seen being annoyed with him as a result. She is isolated from her other friends and even crush because of Equius' deep desire to keep her safe, he never took any time to really listen to her. Nepeta was the better half of this relationship as she was able to pacify him as a moirail should, but she wasn't good in a sense that she was hurting herself by staying with this troll who frustrated her more than not. A moiraillegiance should benefit both parties, not just one, but this moiraillegiance was more in Equius favor rather than Nepeta's.

Yes, Nepeta was benefitted by the fact she was kept safe but even this shoots the relationship in the head when Equius still failed to keep her safe. I also think it's interesting that, in a way, their classpects could even play a part into the detriment of their relationship.

I think what they needed in order to become the ideal moiraillegiance was more time, but both of their lives were cut short. They didn't have enough time to become better for each other or even see their faults in how they behaved. To say they were completely bad for each other is wrong, but to say they were perfect isn't correct either. But I see most people only blaming Equius for the failure of their relationship when it is both of their faults. For Equius, he ruined it by being selfish, overbearing, and controlling, but for Nepeta, she ruined it by not allowing herself to turn away from the relationship and find something better for herself. One was an act of selfishness and the other was an act of selflessness, too much of both will destroy any relationship.

But this is just my personal interpretation, I haven't reread the comic in awhile. Thanks for reading if you've made it this far. :)

i low key fell for meowrails hype when i was first reading homestuck but in my defence i was like 12. in retrospect they’re like, a deeply heterosexual relationship and i mean that in the sense that like they’re toxic in the way a lot of straight relationships where the man is a misogynist is..

act 5 has a big thing for introducing straight relationships that get radically re-examined in retrospect (terezi and karkat is a BIG one) and meowrails kinda slips by because they don’t really get put into focus after their deaths.. arquius apologizes to fefeta i guess. my point is it’s easy to come out of homestuck without truly examining their relationship unlike for example karezi where you get basically bludgeoned into recognizing the flaws in their dynamic.

ultimately meowrails are built on equius thinking nepeta is embarrassing and telling her to pipe down and nepeta dragging him into a semblance of emotional maturity. she’s not even “fixing him” because the core of their dynamic is that neither of them actually change for each other, nepeta still does all that shit equius thinks is embarrassing and equius literally dies on his racist hill at her expense.

i also can’t help but note that nepeta encourages equius’ pursuit of aradia, even though anyone can see that endeavour is a dead end built entirely on his racism and misogyny. in this way nepeta just kind of condones his misogyny, similar to how in real life straight relationships where the girl knows her boyfriend is a shitty misogynist but never meaningfully calls it out just passively encourages her shitty boyfriend to be terrible to women in general.

so yeah at the end of the day i think meowrails is one of those relationships that we’re meant to deconstruct after it’s introduced, it’s just the message doesn’t fully stick because the criticism is never explicit and the relationship gets referenced in somewhat positive light until the very end.

I love watching my Tumblr followers flourishing on here. so proud 🥲

imo its sort of an issue where equius either makes nepeta buckle under the hemospectrum like what happened to meulin or she dumps his ass for someone better in the long run bc nepetas whole deal of being the most... "radical", i guess you would call it, of the trolls is directly against equius' whole shtick.

say that shit 🎙🎙🎙 break up with him nowwwww