>Start thread for MS Paint Adventures

Still quite unsatisfying, on both timelines.

I disagree. It was all quite fascinating. Gutwrenching in places, but a worthwhile read in my opinion.

On the battle: Its important to remember that all of the kids minus John (who was no longer a kid) were from doomed timelines. They were destined to die no matter what. What happens to John is so much worse, but was such good character work. All of it was necessary to get LE into the black hole, where Alt!Calliope was confined. Alt!Calliope also needed a host to manifest in, which she found in the Jade from this battle.

It's hard to describe succinctly in short form, but it works. It also makes sense.

It all comes down to taste really. I liked it, some here liked it, others didn’t, and the internet is divided. It’s The Last Jedi all over again.

At the end of the day, the entirety of the furthest ring is inside the black hole so the battle to get LE in there feels kind of pointless. And while Dave and Davepeta going down fighting is alright, Rose and Jade instantly dying is just so god damn lame, especially since their other selves get shafted for so much of Meat (with Jade being possessed and Rose undergoing Galaxy-Brain Sickness)

That’s such a good term for it

Here’s a family tree.◊

Question about crosswicking the epilogues: when adding entries to trope pages, should I put them in the Literature folder (where the namespace is), or together with other Homestuck entries in the Webcomics folder? The latter feels more natural to me, but also seems like it will lead to poor indentation.

New tweet...what could it mean?

Oh god it's the Epilogue Epilogue!

Okay so I read Meat and really liked it, and then I read Candy and absolutely loved it. Seriously, though. While Meat was fun, it takes place over one or two years at most, doesn't introduce any new characters, and doesn't show the characters develop over time the way they do in Candy. All it really has going for it is the narrator stuff, the election campaign and the aftermath of the Lord English battle (the battle itself and its leadup felt more like something they had to get out of the way because of the way Homestuck ended). And that just doesn't compare to all the developments in Candy. The ending itself might be kinda cliffhangery but I feel like the build up to the emotional payoffs were handled much better than the ending of Homestuck proper. Overall it feels like a weight has lifted from my chest that's been around since Homestuck ended. A couple of notes:

It seems clear to me that Hussie was planning this since long before Homestuck ended. At least as far back as when Dirk and Caliborn where shown to have the same Denizen, and it was explained that Yaldabaoth was only assigned to the strongest of all players. Before the Epilogues it never really made sense to single out Dirk of all the players and put him on equal standing with Lord English like that. It also makes his conversation with Dave near the end (or what I remember from it) make more sense. And then there's the fact that his title basically translates to "Destroyer of Soul/Self"

I'm not sure to what extent Rose was brainwashed by Dirk's narrator powers. As a Seer of Light and especially after awakening to her Ultimate Self I feel that she should be one of the characters most resistant to that kind of thing. I think a lot of it was her vulnerable state from her migraine and how Dirk was the only one who offered her a cure for it.

The only part of the writing that felt off to me was the stuff with (Vriska) and Gamzee, where she just started to make out with him and then killed him.

My biggest question with regards to the timeline of all of this is how John plucking out Dave, Rose and Jade with his retcon powers didn't cause the Rose, Jade and Dave in the Meat timeline to disappear (if the events leasing to the new universe could even happen at all with them gone). My hand wave for it is that the existence of Candy John who didn't go back and get them allowed for the Earth C timeline to still function, but it stands out in my mind as a break from the established rules of the story.

So what happened with the sprites? Did all of them disappear when the game was completed (except for Davepeta who wasn't in the Medium at the time)? Does anyone remember if they showed up in the credits?

So what was up with Rosebot claiming that the eventual Sburb game on the planet they arrived to would be the most important game of Sburb ever? Did they ever allude to that in Meat and I just missed it?

EDIT: Is it just me or is Rose/Kanaya the only ship that's lasted relatively intact all the way from when it was first seeded in Act 3 to the end of the Epilogues with no breakups or complications except for when the main villain was messing with their heads? With the way so many ships got derailed both in Homestuck proper and the Epilogues they really stand out to me.

EDIT^2: The Obama sequence is the most bizarre and out of place scene I have ever seen. Coupled with the way it seems to fulfill all of Dave's hopes and personal wishes, I would have assumed it was all in his head if not for Davebot's appearance in Meat's Postscript.

Edited by Druplesnubb on May 6th 2019 at 11:47:23 AM

The Dave and Jade that helped John weren't from the same timeline as Meat; they were from the GAME OVER timeline. So there's no way anything that happens to them would affect how things turn out on Earth C. The Rose he recruited was presumably also from some offshoot or other. And, again presumably, the same goes for the Alpha kids.

So I guess we can conclude the timelines negated by the retcon powers do continue to exist in some form? Which we kind of already knew because the ghosts from GAME OVER kept existing, but the point is that they're apparently still reachable to John's powers.

I don't believe there's any sign that any of the sprites made it to Universe C. But in addition to Davepeta, some version of Arquis was around to become part of LE, so I don't think they de-spawn when the game is completed or anything like that. Possibly they just can't directly enter universes and had to stay in the medium, or something like that?

One of the things in Meat is also that Dirks apparently been playing safe in his handling of he Narrative. He keeps the still racist Jane from becoming as xenophobic as we've seen in Candy, even him saying she needs to be "Woke" about her xenophobic attitude towards Trolls. He even avoids her becoming a rapist who sexual and emotional abuses Jake While still fucking people including Jake over.

Of course he does these things by making himself the scumbag everyone wants to punch.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on May 5th 2019 at 6:20:02 AM

I mean, the main thing about Meat!Dirk that makes me want to punch him is how little respect he has for just about everyone who isn't named Dave or Jane. Jake is the most obvious victim of this, but those rants about John, and those dismissive comments about Karkat... jeepers he needs a facepunch.

On the topic of relationship struggles and such; Rose and Kanaya's relationship had a major complication in the comic. They just managed to work past it? Or, they sorta did. It looked like they were about to finally meaningfully address and work on it, and then everybody died, and then Vriska, and then this time the problem wasn't so bad and basically got resolved offscreen. (Yes, I am still less than fond of how that played out.)

I like how Rosemary, while objectively the best ship, still isn't perfect. It could have been handled better, I would have liked it to have those issues come up more in the post-retcon Alpha timeline, or to actually see the Rose from [S] GAME OVER. make some character progress instead of just being turned into the Cheshire Cat, but still.

Meanwhile I've been reading the books and in the third one (Act 4), Hussie made a comment about the "True Quests" that Players are sent on, and how they differ in motivation from the gamey presented Quests, and I don't know if reading that and I don't know if the implication he maybe didn't just brush them aside in the lategame as unimportant but construed them as hugely departed from the game constructs to be meaningless makes me feel better or worse about that whole thing, or just exactly as bothered but in a slightly different flavor?

Also, in the Intermission there was a really confusing comment about Snowman stabbing Slick in the eye maybe being because of "cosmic coincidence", or maybe to "make him look more like her former employee/blackrom lover". Which is really confusing, since, he uh, he is that exact guy already, and looks exactly like him by virtue of being literally that instance of that guy, but in a suit. The Jack who was missing the eye and the arm via prototyping was completely unrelated to Snowman, and for that matter not a look the other BQ ever saw him with either? Since he killed her to get the Ring? So it wouldn't really make sense to construe as just mixing up which Jack Slick is, or which BQ Snowman is, but some kind of bizarre advanced level of confusion?

Edited by RaichuKFM on May 5th 2019 at 10:29:39 AM

rosemary got the best end in candy and even though dirk broke them up in meat kanaya is going after him to chainsaw him and get her wife back. they did have some trouble in the game over timeline, but kanaya refused to break up with her and they made some efforts to fixing things before it all went to shit. then in the retcon timeline they are happy and in love even if rose couldnt be happy till she lost her knowledge. so yeah they got the best ends more or less evened out.

Seriously though, Meat Dirk is the most hateable Homestuck villain since early Vriska.

I remember him calling Kanaya "hysterical" stuck out for me, because boy I don't think picking such a loaded word was an accident.

Finally finished Candy. I've read almost all of it in two days, but around (Vriska)'s return and the whole Gamzee thing it became unbearable; I kept opening the page, reading a couple of sentenses, and closing it, until I finally powered through. Overall, I liked Meat better. I was uninvested in relationships drama (though I liked the hypocrisy of Jane having quadrant based love life), so I was always waiting for Terezi's and Calliope's chapters. Although, my favourite part was probably Rose's final speech about how she may not be destinied for canon greatness, however this life has meaning for her specifically.

Oh, that sounds like genuinely nice Character Development for Rose. Compare: Her freakout about how Rosesprite was "pointless". Granted, Rosesprite herself took that "pointlessness" in stride, but I think that was more the clusterfuck she'd just died through than a General Rose Trait of being able to take being "pointless" in stride.

it was honestly my favorite moment of the epilogues. it probably hit harder after reading what happened in meat first, but seeing rose sincerely thank john for staying and letting her be happy with her life and wife and kid for once because she no longer has to matter or be important or canon anymore was so satisfying

ROSE: I don’t care if it’s not true. I care even less if it’s not canon. I have a beautiful wife who I love more than I thought possible, and a daughter who I am immeasurably proud of. It can all be senseless, ephemeral noise that dissolves in the void. A whisper swept up by the wind before it’s uttered. I’m still grateful to have felt this way.

Yeah, fantastic moment.

Development hiatus for Hiveswap Act 2 is over. Programming is underway.

The announcement is for backers only, so here it is on the subreddit (first comment)

Edited by SatoshiBakura on May 10th 2019 at 10:48:36 AM

I'm on page 35 of Candy. It's... not good.

The prose is great. I am very into this prose. It is funny and biting when it needs to be. But the story... Jesus, I know I'm stepping right on the classic South Park "Ha ha, the creators already anticipated and mocked your complaints in the story itself!" rake, but it feels like a fanfic. Especially the part about how Jane Crocker is now, out of goddamned nowhere, a Donald Trump analogue, presumably because some teenagers made capitalism jokes about her on Twitter.

May report back later.

Edited by ThriceCharming on May 10th 2019 at 10:10:53 AM

James and Toby are back on Hiveswap.

Condensce has been brainwashing and plotting to groom her instory long before we met her via using Cockercorp tech. It's why she makes, very, very, clear, as a brainwashed evil minion that she only wanted Jake for his body and that wasn't due to brainwashing.

Just that no one expected her to continue idolizing the toxic parts of capatilism that Condensce used to rule humanity as Crockercorp on her own, or failing to realize she's just as Tyrannical as the alien she's being racist towards Trolls about. Like Great Grandmother like great grandaughter