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(NOTE: this is a really old article from 2019 and i should probably write a follow-up to this at some point. also this was written on 4/20/19 but wasn't published until 2019-05-04. just letting you know. -sprite)
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hi. welcome back to... this thing. that i'm doing on a protocol nobody uses.
...
let's talk about homestuck for a hot second, shall we?
for those of you who don't know, homestuck[1] is a webcomic first published in 2009, by andrew hussie, who is notorious for creating problem sleuth a year before. the story of homestuck is long, complicated, and it contains lots of twists, turns, and regrets, but the gist of it is that a boy and his friends have to save the universe from being torn up by this video game that thrashed the earth with meteors in the first place. also, there are like sixteen main characters. i know, i know, that isn't a very good description, but i really don't want to get into summarizing a webcomic that has taken up almost ten years of my life right now.
(and yes, i have been a fan of this webcomic since late 2009, when i first saw it linked on a digg clone that no longer exists. i had no idea where the comic was going, but i was enthralled for the first four acts or so. i kept reading only because i really wanted to know where it would go from there, and i've been more or less a fan ever since. the comic isn't perfect by most accounts, but nothing really turned me off of it other than the insane page count that it has.)
what i want to focus on is its beginnings and endings. okay, well, it only has one beginning on april 13, 2009, and it ended seven years later, on april 13, 2016. there was a brief 'credits' update on october 25th of the same year, and that was that.*
somewhat recently, in late 2018, james roach, the man who composed music for hiveswap**, recently confirmed that there was an epilogue happening. we didn't know exactly when, but most of us guessed that it would be on the 10th anniversary of the comic starting.
boy, were /we/ right.
on the morning of april 13, 2019, the new homestuck.com updated with a giant banner on top that said 'THE HOMESTUCK EPILOGUES.' of course, looking at this, my immediate first thought was... "epi... logue/s/???" and sure enough, we eventually found out what that meant. but before... that happened, what was released on 4/13 were three chapters of a text-only epilogue.
that's right, text-only. (i forgot to mention: homestuck was more like a traditional webcomic except it had one or more pictures near the top, and all the narration and dialogue was below it in either a long string of words or hidden behind a 'read pesterlog' button. there would occasionally be a flash animation or game or two, but that's mostly what the comic was like up until this point.) this was... not what i was expecting, to say the very least. i would have expected hussie to go completely off the rails, completely fake us out with a picture update that slowly goes into a flash animation and start using 3D panels that used WebGL, but no. it's just... prose. and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing (for example, another former webcomic i follow, NEOKOSMOS,[2] announced that it was rebooting itself into a partially-illustrated trilogy of novels, which looks great so far, but that's beside the point), i was... slightly disappointed at first, to be completely honest. but the writing was pretty good fro
m the start, so i was a bit optimistic in this regard. and who knows, maybe it'll eventually go back to the old form as the story progresses?
the epilogue started off with rose (another main character) telling john (the original main character) that he needs to go back and finish some business that didn't properly happen before the comic ended, or else their world will become 'non-canon'.*** as you can tell, this is a lot to take in if you're a 23-year-old dork who also happens to have god powers. however she implies that this isn't required, but more... essential. in other words, john had to decide whether to do this or not.
right after this, john decides to have a picnic with two other characters, and at the end of it, he has to decide between choosing whether to eat meat or candy, as well as deciding whether to swallow the metaphorical meat of doing what rose wanted him to do, or just take the candy and forget about all that 'canon' stuff and just... enjoy life with their friends. and maybe solve the little stuff along the way.
that was all we got on 4/13's update. i honestly thought what would happen after this is that john either ends up picking neither or both at once, and we get a linear story that ends with a bang.
...of course, if you know hussie, you know how unpredictable he can get at times.
on 4/20, 2019, hussie updated the site with the rest of the epilogue. s. he made it so that if you click on either 'meat' or 'candy,' you would get a COMPLETELY different story (with about 40 chapters each, mind.) on the outside.
that's right, there are not one, but *TWO* different canons!! while for a good chunk of people this feels like a good thing, a 'have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too' moment you could say, i feel it... de-legitimizes how canon the epilogues are.
okay, okay, to be fair, i haven't read through them all yet. i've only gotten about six chapters in each canon thus far. but... i feel having two canons... makes the story feel less concrete. it shows that anything can happen, and for some reason that just... turns me off from it. i may be asking for much, but what i really wanted from an epilogue was: a definite beginning, and a definite ending. not some wishy-washy 'Oh Look There Are Two Epilogues Now' bullshit. i wanted something to tie up the loose ends, not to have me decide whether those loose ends were actually tied up or not because Oops It Didn't Happen In This Timeline!!!!
i know, i shouldn't be judging the story especially when i'm this far from reading it all, but, like. if this is the last set of updates for homestuck, then i'm just going to come out and say it: i expected a lot more. like a lot more flashy stuff. and a lot more straightforward-ness too. and to be fair (again), homestuck was never straightforward. for the longest time we had no clue how it was going to end, and there were SO MANY filler moments. but when i think about homestuck, i don't think about a novel series that takes place in two different universes. i think about an off-the-cuff adventure with ectobiology, a kick-ass soundtrack, 24 aliens from two different planets, multiverses, frog galaxies, and more. and i know i am being hypocritcal when homestuck alluded to different timelines and i enjoy games and other comics that are non-linear as well, but... i really feel that having two canons feels like cheating.
'but what about the canons themselves,' you may ask? well, without getting two much into spoiler territory, dave strider (another main character) said that jane crocker (another another main character) was straight-up xenophobic, and that's when my brain started raising up yellow and red-colored flags like there was no tomorrow. i just felt a sour, rotten meaty taste in my mouth after that and i eventually stopped reading.
i know for a fact i'm /eventually/ going to read the epilogues, and when i do, i will post another phlog post with my thoughts on them. but in the meantime... it's... weird to think about a thing you've been with for ten years ending like... this. like... this is it. this is what ten years of me being in the homestuck fandom adds up to. jake english fighting mechas and rubbing his butt on national television, karkat vantas running for president, and the very end having no visual imagery in the slightest so far. i. is this what i've liked all these years? this is canon, but it doesn't feel like it. or maybe it isn't supposed to be canon. is that the point? was this all made up to begin with?? GAH.
i'm gonna stop talking about it until i read these fully. i hope that they're better than the first eighth of each section makes them out to be.
happy 4/20.
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