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not that but inserting herself into davekat and trying to push them to be with each other and her is kinda not great

I mean, I'm of the general opinion that the epilogues are something we need some time to sit on before making judgements like that, but. Like. I'm definitely uncomfortable with the way the page presents 'becomes a fascist dictator' and 'discovers that she enjoys sex' as comparable in magnitude levels of derailment? At the very least, it could stand to be re-written in a the way that makes it clear one of those things is a much more significant change than the other.

The entry never even mentions her uncomfortable Entitled to Have You attitude towards Dave. It just mentions that she has poor respect for boundaries, and then spends the rest of the entry complaining about her high libido and genitalia.

I don't know.

Character Derailment is defined as "dramatic change in character without justification or development". And I personally feel there is at least some level of justification behind even Jane's shift, even if you disagree with it.

Honestly I think the main issue is the Time Skip. Logically speaking, it isn't impossible for somebody to change that much over the course of however many years its been since Homestuck proper ended. The problem is that we saw little to nothing of it, so suddenly jumping to the point where they act so differently comes across as a really big shock, especially when it involves characters who were previously pretty good becoming pretty overtly villainous.

The configuration of her genitals categorically isn't derailment, at the very least. It's not really a change in character at all? A change in a character, maybe, but not her character. Also, I wouldn't have seen that fan idea being correct in the Epilogues coming, but it's neat I guess. That last line should be nixed, and the rest of it kind of just says she's one thing in Homestuck, and then in the Epilogues, she's another thing which... is compatible with the first part? I can't say if there was derailment or not, but as written, the entry doesn't work. Jane feels like derailment but I didn't read it so I wouldn't know.

On a personal note, if the point of Candy is, as posited, that they're not like the characters in the comic, on purpose to make some metaphysical point, then I can mourn yet another of Homestuck's thematics that I liked as being discarded. I mean, not really, it's still there fine and dandy in the comic itself, though this does kind of make me leery about potential motivations behind some of the mildly OOC-feeling-ness of very late game Homestuck proper? But I like how people have strong cores to themselves that are, not really constant, but conserved. The idea that there is no nature at all is, while not stupid, not accurate to reality and not something I particularly value as an idea; whereas, the stuff about how nature works in Homestuck, I found pretty cool and genuinely pleasant? The time travel and coexistence of predetermined results and genuine free will was also quite up my hardcore compatibilist philosophical alley, which is sorta rare, as far as media goes.

I mean, really, if you go back and look at Jane's introduction, the seeds of the stuff she did the epilogues are pretty clearly present. It's just that we all assumed that she'd grown past that stuff, but in retrospect, it just got shoved under the carpet because Romantic Plot Tumor followed by irrelevance.

Exactly! It was always there, and the HIC controlling her showed her more nasty side to Jake.

Honestly, it's not even the most drastically different that two alternate characters have been. Just look at Meenah vs. Condesce, Kankri vs. Sufferer, and Dirk vs. Bro. Well, original Dirk vs. Bro...

I mean, the real point of jarring contrast isn't Homestuck Jane vs. Epilogue Jane, it's Epilogue Jane vs. Nanna. The latter two would be near impossible to see as the same person if the former wasn't linking them.

Which would've been an interesting comparison to make if every single sprite aside from Davepeta hadn't fucked off into the nether regions of complete irrelevance.

i haven't read the epilogue at all because i really don't have the time to given my finals are coming up in the next couple weeks and i have a fuck ton of work right now

but i have been skimming through your guys' reactions and... what the fuck is going on??

It feels like Character Derailment because when mind-controlled to be evil and showing her worst side, she does things that are like the things you're mentioning, but not even as bad. That is her worst self on display, and even then also under corrupting influence. So, yes, she could get worse as a person, but she just gets— as her normal self— worse than her worst self used to be? Sure, the seeds were there, but that's not sufficient for it to be organic growth. I'm pretty sure nobody bothered by it forgot those elements were there. I just don't think they think the progression into so fully embodying those bad elements is believable.

Also to be honest other than the abusing Jake thing I really don't see the seeds for the other stuff. Gung ho capitalism derailing her from moral good, I could buy. Dictatorship? No. Yes, she idolized Betty Crocker and CrockerCorp, but not the dictatorship part, she didn't even know about that? Condy's attempts to groom her into wanting that didn't really work, that's why she had a technomagic mind control tiara slapped on. And, I've heard things about xenophobia which I don't even know what that would be seeded by? Again, grain of salt that maybe the actual prose did it better than I'm imagining, but unlike with Roxy I really have absolutely no confidence in that here. I have, like, negative confidence, in fact.

With Meenah and Condy, they're different largely in that Meenah didn't really get an opportunity to abuse her power and then slowly (or quickly) get worse and worse and worse. Depending on the rulership system in place prior, Condy probably had more incentive to do just that. Meenah, eventually, gets some growth knocked into her but outright idolizes and wishes to emulate her other self. Bro had less of a support system than Dirk and, presumably, didn't learn lessons that Dirk got forced to, and just kinda leaned into his worst parts further. The Sufferer grew up and had more pressing injustice to be upset by Literally Everywhere; Kankri got coddled and stagnated and misdirected his anger at naive conceptions of less obvious issues, and never grew up enough to adjust those to fit reality. At least to me, these all make sense, and are less stark. My issue with Jane is why did her environment worsen her, and so severely, when if anything it should have bettered her? And it does not help that the answer that supplies itself as most plausible is that they had to make their political commentary somehow.

It also ties into my dissatisfaction with how after the ending everybody, or at least a chunk of the cast, isolated themselves off in little groups with relatively minimal interaction, but that's less "That is a dumb plot development that I think makes no sense" and more "That is a writing choice I don't like and which feels off, relative the characters, to me", so.

Let's just say that the general reaction is that the epilogue is great and people hate it anyway despite directly acknowledging it's great.

I have now come to the realization that it's not just that I haven't made up my mind on whether I liked it or not, but rather that I actually can't say whether I liked it or not. Like, how it's executed is amazing, but like I am unable to like or dislike it, or even be neutral. I have never felt this way about anything before ever. That's fucking amazing.

Luckily, it was directly so that audiences could invoke Fanon Discontinuity if they wished.

Edited by SatoshiBakura on Apr 22nd 2019 at 12:05:31 PM

I should note that in Candy path Jane's development takes place slowly, over literal decades. She starts out worrying that trolls would become a privileged class if Kanaya got free reign over reproduction, then she realized that her wealth means that she's easily able to influence stuff behind the scenes, then she spends way too much time listening to Gamzee, and finally after twenty years of this snowballing and her father being killed by a troll she declares open war on them.

Edited by IniuriaTalis on Apr 22nd 2019 at 12:08:25 PM

Janes been unsubtly influenced by Crockercorp brainwashing tech since she was a kid, we have no idea how that could influence down the line, especially compared to HIC direct brainwashing into a loyal henchman shown later.

The epilogues do have some character interactions we didn't get previously due to the cast clumping.

We don't have no idea; we can look at how it affected her in the comic. Sure, that might not be the end all be all of it, but it's a basis.

I mean, it's not my mission to convince anybody this is necessarily implausible; the thing (watch this, too, get ninja'd) helps with explaining it, and sure, the brainwashing could have more long-term effects than it seemed.

I just want to point out that thinking it is out of character isn't simply ignoring or forgetting parts of the text.

As for the 'why did the environment worsen her' question: This is something that's discussed more in Meat than Candy; but the bottom line is that giving an emotionally insecure teenager the power and status of a god doesn't always work out. Jane kept being told by everyone around her that she had some crazy business acumen and was a super genius and Exactly What the World Needed and all that jazz, because obviously none of the Earth C inhabitants are going to contradict one of the gods who created their universe. And then we combine that with the way all of the people in the main cast who'd be inclined to counterbalance all that stuff isolating themselves; Dirk and Gamzee actively supported her worst instincts, Roxy and Jake willfully ignored the warning signs, and none of the other had any regular contact with Jane.

So all that's a lethal cocktail that put her down a dangerous path.

Edited by Gilphon on Apr 22nd 2019 at 12:31:06 PM

I forget, what exactly did Gamzee do that negatively influenced her?

fucking her mostly. also remember who debrainwashed jane in the first place. a dirk splinter so her being messed with all that time isnt out of the question.

I mean, in addition to the general case of Gamzee not being a good influence on anyone ever, he kept disingenuously bringing up arguments against what she was doing, so she would feel that much more justified that what she was doing was right, and when everyone who disagrees with her says the same kinds of things that Gamzee's saying, it makes it easier for her to dismiss them, because obviously Gamzee can't be right.

And, of course, he also did his weird "priestly" "redemption" cult thing, which gained him (and Jane, by proxy) a bunch of fanatical followers, which also helps to grease the slippery slope.

what im taking from all this is gamzee is still the biggest shit in the universe

Gamzee is absolutely the worst. Full stop. Dirk is the second worst.

I think it's pretty obvious that the narrator of Candy was Obama. Dude knows way too much, and already talks in black text, even.