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The official line was the comic would just be uploaded as a completed work when finished, but considered the writers all left that seems unlikely. I mean, the Patreon shutting down at the same time was a bit hint Hussie just said that to save face.
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Sep 2, 2023 19:58
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Pants Donkey posted:The official line was the comic would just be uploaded as a completed work when finished, but considered the writers all left that seems unlikely. I mean, the Patreon shutting down at the same time was a bit hint Hussie just said that to save face.
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Sep 2, 2023 20:17
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Arsenic Lupin posted:they (right pronoun nowadays, right?) According to the credits of Psycholonials, they’re “clowngender” and use “any/all” pronouns, so it’s entirely uncertain both as to what to actually use and also whether or not this is a real thing or if it’s just another sick troll.
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Sep 2, 2023 20:23
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it would be extremely funny if in like 4 years they just dropped 5000 pages of homestuck 2
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Sep 2, 2023 20:26
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Farg posted:it would be extremely funny if in like 4 years they just dropped 5000 pages of homestuck 2 It was pretty funny when they dropped the Epilogues.
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Sep 2, 2023 20:29
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it was extremely funny. I read those suckers straight through. I felt insane
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Sep 2, 2023 21:27
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Hussie had an interview a year or so ago that used he/him pronouns so either it was a bit for the game or he’s not terribly concerned about pronouns. Or the interviewer is an rear end in a top hat, I guess.
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Sep 3, 2023 06:11
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One of the former writers whom I follow on tumblr uses he, she, and they interchangeably when referring to Hussie, so I'm guessing it's at least sincere enough that they don't mind whatever people want or choose to use
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Sep 3, 2023 22:26
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Psycholonials spends a healthy chunk of time doing gender jokes that vibe with Hussie’s presentation, including a chart: To me, it seemed kind of obvious that Homestuck read like something written while the author was doing a Personal Identity Journey of some fashion, though it feels wrapped up in how that was happening to lots of people in the 2009-2016 window. Certainly, I feel like Davepeta’s exuberance read to present-day me the same way some people talk about gender/identity euphoria, and a bunch of people forget that Davepeta’s speech about all that is nearly the last substantial pesterlog. The epilogues go way further, of course—a line that sticks with me is Dirk shittily narrating that Jade probably wishes “they/them” pronouns existed when she was a teenager, and then there’s all the complexity of Roxy’s identity, etc. It’s a testament to Hussie’s commitment to the bit that anybody would think their genderfuckery is all irony.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:28
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I'm coming to this conclusion and I have nowhere else to drop it, so, here: Fionna and Cake is just the HS^2 of Adventure Time, isn't it?
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Sep 29, 2023 01:43
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Given it ended and had a clear point, I’m gonna say no. Although drat if they aren’t milking that franchise.
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Sep 29, 2023 02:19
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Absolutely not.
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Sep 29, 2023 05:03
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Probably a more apt comparison is the Epilogues, especially since it features heavily on seeing the after-effects of the original finale's events on certain main characters - and how some aren't able to cope with the new status quo. Also there's probably a good joke to be made about fan fiction somewhere too.
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Sep 29, 2023 19:28
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There is definitely similarity in the idea of what is canon/not canon in particular, since I think a lot of media has done alternative universe selves and such. A lot of people saw parallels with the latest Spider-Man movie as well: The main character not being 'canon', traveling to different parallel universes and meeting alternative versions of themselves, and the Powers That Be telling them they're Not Allowed. Fionna and Cake was literally spawned from in-universe fan fiction, and Adventure Time itself wrestled with the idea of a character being real or not real: Fern wanted to be the real Finn but could never really do it. So while F&C does seem like a sequel series that continues the main story, I don't think it does. It feels like a real epilogue. The issue with the Epilogues and HS^2 in general is the lack of closure. The Epilogues had a chance for answers but instead it threw out more questions. Does the story feel complete for any of the characters in Homestuck at this point? Not in my opinion. It didn't feel complete after the original ending, after the epilogues, and after what I've seen of HS^2 so far. dipwood fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 21:36
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Homestuck’s epilogue was also way more about fan expectations and meta reflections on pop culture consumption in the internet age. Especially in the wake of the underwhelmed reaction to Homestuck’s end.
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Sep 29, 2023 22:31
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the epilogues also pay off certain narrative or character threads that don't entirely land in homestuck proper, like dirk and dave having an appropriately stunted and weird relationship instead of sort of memeily sweeping their issues under the rug to close things out. after the retcon homestuck sorta concluded that ultimately the world is a thorny and complex place, people don't have arcs, it is not really for anyone to judge another because even if you could such judgment can do nothing for no one, not all personal change is progress, and someone's personal growth towards a fuller self might make no sense to you or even feel actively bad. john is thrust into a strange new world where all his friends are recognizably his friends and yet unaccountably different, and all he can do is make peace with it as best he can and continue to lead the life he would like to live, and really isn't that everyone's situation as time passes and we grow up, and isn't that the best anyone can do. the epilogues explore that conclusion further and conclude, mostly via dirk and calliope but also through the meta "meat vs. candy" framing*, that the desire to build neat narratives out of life is a disfiguring urge that falsely promises self-knowledge while in reality preventing one's self-actualization and hindering the ability to truly appreciate the quiet pleasures of growth and reflection. it's a continuation and culmination of homestuck proper's interest in stories and narrative as received paradigms for growth and maturation, and its uncertain ending is precisely the point. (*meat vs. candy initially purports to be a choice about what kind of narrative we're going to get. But the truth is that either path leads to tragedy because to see your personal growth as akin to a fictional narrative means believing that you will grow whole by conflict, whether that conflict feels rich and meaningful or sweet and light. they aren't real food and cannot sustain you because the cherubs are as wrong as this as they are about everything else, with their insane zero sum existence) homestuck 2 on the other hand is, as it says on the tin, not homestuck but its sequel, and accordingly it is a separate work with different concerns and, most importantly, a drastically different creative team, even if hussie remained involved. Valentin fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Sep 29, 2023 |
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Sep 29, 2023 23:25
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It's an old discussion, but I personally feel like the Meat/Candy dichotomy in the Epilogues falls apart because the Candy timeline really isn't sweet and light in practise. It feels like the separation is meant to be between people who want impactful plot and drama, and people who want to see their favourite characters mixing it up and kissing one another, but the Candy timeline is a dystopian nightmare full of angst and drama, it's just sillier and less grounded in character than Meat. Which I don't think is what the presumed "Candy" reader actually wants: if they're meant to be the fanfic reader who wants to see their faves kissing, they maybe don't care much about plot, but they do care a lot about characterisation. So the Candy timeline ends up just being...I guess for people who want silly stuff to happen and the self-seriousness of the narrative to be punctured? Which feels in honesty like an audience largely composed of Hussie themself, another part of their self-aware retreat from telling stories with Themes and Character Arcs that parts of the end of Homestuck are coloured by.
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Oct 3, 2023 16:18
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I think you missed the point of the false choice
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Oct 3, 2023 20:21
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M_Gargantua posted:I think you missed the point of the false choice I don't think I did! But like, it would be cool if you said something on that subject so I could hear your perspective.
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Oct 3, 2023 20:52
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Neither path gives the reader what was promised. Candy is not sweet fluff, its brutal character drama in a dystopian nightmare. Meat is not plotty plot plot, its a critique of meta narrative as Dirk continually messes with progression. Both are canon, so you don't actually get a choice.
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Oct 3, 2023 21:07
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Android Blues posted:I don't think I did! But like, it would be cool if you said something on that subject so I could hear your perspective. Valentin posted:(*meat vs. candy initially purports to be a choice about what kind of narrative we're going to get. But the truth is that either path leads to tragedy because to see your personal growth as akin to a fictional narrative means believing that you will grow whole by conflict, whether that conflict feels rich and meaningful or sweet and light. they aren't real food and cannot sustain you because the cherubs are as wrong as this as they are about everything else, with their insane zero sum existence) neither candy nor meat are "for" anyone, and they are explicitly in-fiction controlled by narrators whose interests and goals crucially don't really include "satisfying the audience" in meaningful ways, but who do themselves want very specific things out of the narrative (calliope-jade basically walks into a random chapter at the end of candy to say HELLO, I GAVE THESE EVENTS ARTIFICIAL MEANING AND NARRATED THEM IN NARRATOR VOICE). the choice was always the author's, and never the reader's. Valentin fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Oct 3, 2023 |
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Oct 3, 2023 21:09
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The Alt Calliope scenes at the end of Candy are more about how the Candy timeline intrinsically doesn't make sense - the contained critique is that a story focused on structureless fluff also can't make sense. Calliope and Dirk are narrating to serve their own purposes on a plot level, but on a thematic level, Dirk has always been an emotionally detached schemer focused on executing sequences of events that drive the story, i.e. plot, and Calliope has always been a fanfic writer who cares far more about character interactions and setting minutiae than plot or structure. They're picked as the narrators of the two timelines because they represent those themes. Their agendas represent the presumed interests of two different types of fan, which yeah, contains a critique of bringing those rigid expectations ("lots of plot and drama" or "lots of character and setting work") to a narrative that is no longer interested in meeting them. Like, Meat is a plot-heavy self-serious dramatic narrative. The fact that Dirk talks about how he's making it into one doesn't reduce that - if anything, it makes him a grandiose villain appropriate to that kind of narrative. But I don't think the critique presented by Candy is very good, because the Candy narrative isn't very good at representing what Just Fluff entails. It doesn't fall apart because it has no plot, but because its characters fall apart. It has a plot, but the plot is very silly and weirdly vindictive, like the reader is constantly being told, hey, look what you did by wanting this. Meat feels like homage to something the writers like, but Candy feels like a parody of something they have a reluctant love-hate relationship with. There are critiques you can take from it ("character without plot isn't actually anything"), but because Candy winds up densely plotted anyway, I think those critiques are muddled too. I think it's also worth interrogating the fact that Homestuck is no longer interested in meeting those expectations as of the Epilogues. Hussie has always had a visible desire to puncture the stakes of their own narrative, and you see them negotiating that throughout Homestuck. Walking the line between ironic meta-commentary and sincerity defines the comic, kinda. A lot of Homestuck's strongest, funniest, and most moving moments come from mining the tension there. In both the Epilogues and HS2, it sometimes feels like sincerity's on the back foot and struggling to stay in the ring. Is that good or bad? I dunno, but for me it's part of why HS2 felt fairly empty.
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Oct 3, 2023 22:18
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I get where you're coming from with that and agree that Candy isn't a very good or on-point critique of fluffy fan works, but I guess part of my feeling that the meat/candy choice is a false dichotomy is ultimately that Candy isn't ABOUT fanworks in that way. That's what makes calliope's intervention near the end interesting; she concedes that she bound events in candy with an artificial gravity as part of the metaplot fight with dirk, and that she's actually here as part of an ip-extending multiverse exercise with existential stakes. I don't think Candy cares very much about fanworks, a thing which I think hussie generally supports, though it definitely feints at the idea and quite possibly way too hard. I think ultimately both routes are critical takes on genre and modern tropes about the primacy and holiness of storytelling
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Oct 3, 2023 23:01
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From a Doylist point of view, the epilogue authors have said of Candy, "your twenties are just like that.'
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Oct 4, 2023 04:36
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I might've been thinking about it in simplistic terms, but I always read it as the meat route giving you the candy of all the deep character interactions and candy wound up having more and more plot coming at you fast at the expense of characters. Having the last chapter of each summed up with a prominent character eating the opposite choice (Rose eating candy in the meat timeline for example) sealed that interpretation for me.
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Oct 4, 2023 13:15
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Valentin posted:I get where you're coming from with that and agree that Candy isn't a very good or on-point critique of fluffy fan works, but I guess part of my feeling that the meat/candy choice is a false dichotomy is ultimately that Candy isn't ABOUT fanworks in that way. That's what makes calliope's intervention near the end interesting; she concedes that she bound events in candy with an artificial gravity as part of the metaplot fight with dirk, and that she's actually here as part of an ip-extending multiverse exercise with existential stakes. I get that, too. Rereading a bit of Candy to make sure my memory is clear, there's definitely stuff I like there, and yeah, it does wind up essentially taking the stance that people aren't stories and don't benefit from being treated as if they are. But I think it does get there on a tour through fanfiction, among other things - Gamzee saying he can't sleep "without holding onto a motherfucker" is a reference to an infamous fancomic from like 2011, and the whole Redemption Arc gag is based on a million Good Eridan/Good Gamzee fics. The love triangles, the fankids, Eyepatch Karkat, it's both a celebration of fan stories and a joke at their expense. I think maybe the disconnect is that Candy engages extensively with fanworks, and says some stuff about them - Roxy's last conversations with John about how her life is good even if it isn't canon, how she can grow and change in ways she couldn't if she was Canonical, are part of that - but there's a vacillation there between acceptance and contempt. It moves from that springboard into talking about stories generally, and still seems a bit unsure, to me. Calliope considers stories corrosive and the bounds of canon and plot structure degrading, but Candy still tells a story, and often one that does degrade the characters as a gag. This quote from the end stuck out, on that, because it's so self-aware about that ambiguity: quote:ARADIA: you werent even sympathetic to the very story it seemed you were trying to get me invested in from the beginning It's interesting in that it comes off like the authors, themselves, are in conflict on their feelings on the value of stories and fanwork. Which isn't surprising, I guess, given it was a multi-handed project written by people who'd had very different experiences of creating things before they wrote it! It's at the very least a dense and rewarding work, because we can have this conversation about it. I appreciate that this thread is still hosting that kind of stuff years later!
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Oct 4, 2023 15:22
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here we go again I'm not sure if I actually want to read a new update but I don't think the website wants me to either so whatever Tenebrais fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Oct 8, 2023 |
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Oct 8, 2023 18:15
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Despite everything, I'm still excited like a little baby for this. Trying to read right now amidst the site collapsing unto itself from the overload is a classic experience News on the situation - James Roach and a new team of people will work on this, and the team will be reportedly independent of Hussie, Viz etc
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Oct 8, 2023 18:23
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Aw, I’m finally getting to enjoy the classic experience of not being able to read an update because of the site crashing. Neat.
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Oct 8, 2023 18:25
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rko posted:Aw, I’m finally getting to enjoy the classic experience of not being able to read an update because of the site crashing. Neat. It's a pre-Halloween miracle!
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Oct 8, 2023 18:31
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And of course it crashes the website.
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Oct 8, 2023 19:03
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Android Blues posted:It's interesting in that it comes off like the authors, themselves, are in conflict on their feelings on the value of stories and fanwork. Which isn't surprising, I guess, given it was a multi-handed project written by people who'd had very different experiences of creating things before they wrote it! That's a great point re the project being multihanded, and I appreciate the points re fanwork references. It's certainly very different to write about fanworks as a creator, as a creator who's handing the work off to other people, and as a fan who has become a creator, and I think you're right that the conflicted nature of the epilogues is partly due to that. this has always been a strangely good thread for media analysis, given both how media threads tend to go and how homestuck discussions tend to go. not bad for a dead thread... is what I was gonna say. wonder if they're building to something on 10/25, then.
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Oct 8, 2023 19:27
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So just like the last time we were told that "the whole rest of the story will be posted all at once only after it's finished" we are instead looking at piecemeal updates Whenever. Ah well. Such is life. James posted:I want to be more transparent and engage with the community more. I don’t know if I always agree that “No News is Good News” so I want to try a more open policy, even if the news is kind of mundane. Sometimes the people just want to know that we are still doing anything. Fair enough. Edit: Ooh, floralmarsupial is on the writing team. I really like some of her comics, so that's a reason to be optimistic Plom Bar fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Oct 8, 2023 |
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Oct 8, 2023 19:33
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It doesn't seem like the issue with the writing/art team getting threatened will have gotten any better since then, though, even if it's a new team. Won't that just continue like before? I guess a lot of those people might have lost interest by now.
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Oct 8, 2023 19:43
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It's fun to see the differences caused by the sudden swap in writing teams, such as Terezi rebooting and immediately realizing that she's damned herself to eternity with two insufferable people.
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Oct 8, 2023 19:58
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She's got That Wallet! So far I love the art.
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Oct 8, 2023 21:06
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They’ve got a really difficult job here, which is winning back all the people who dismissed or never really engaged with the epilogue/sequel content, so it’s surprising that it’s being presented as just starting back up, though with a definite shift in tone. They could’ve rebooted back to the beginning of the epilogues, for example, so even if the new panels seem snarky, I’m charmed by the commitment to the existing post-canon content. There were a lot of cool ideas there, and all the flaws are easy to fix, really. The Terezi panels were all quite good. Sollux was fine, I’m used to More Advanced Solluxes in fandom, but it’s notable that they’re following up the John Is An Egg vibes from the previous update, even if Sollux is being a gamer about it. June Is Real 2024, folks. I think it’s cool they’re going for it. Good luck!
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Oct 8, 2023 21:15
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Sailor Dave posted:It doesn't seem like the issue with the writing/art team getting threatened will have gotten any better since then, though, even if it's a new team. Won't that just continue like before? I guess a lot of those people might have lost interest by now. What’s more interesting is this is entirely divorced from Homestuck’s whole business apparatus. No WP, Hussie, or even Viz (who I assume just threw in the towel on the whole deal given there hasn’t been a book in three years and they got all of Act 6 left to publish). Besides Hussie’s blessing and legal cover, this is basically fanfic. I guess the whole “what is canon” question is one that has so far been more interesting to discuss philosophically than anything explored in HS2 this far. But I’ve also been one who finds Homestuck at its weakest when it tries hard to eschew a coming of age story with meta trappings to go all-in on the latter.
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Oct 8, 2023 21:22
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Pants Donkey posted:The original writer team were smaller and also queer, a common target for assholes, whereas James Roach may have a bigger team (so harder to concentrate bile at) and has been involved with Homestuck long enough that he probably knows what he’s wading into. The current team is still pretty queer, and also a fair number of names I know to be nonwhite, including James himself on both counts. Plus, he wrote Aradia's PQ chapter and did heaps of music for the game, so it's not like he is completely divorced from the previous creative team, just unbound to their whims.
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Oct 8, 2023 21:35
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at the edge of dreamless sleep that word echoes through my soul for eternity: update
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Oct 8, 2023 21:42
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