#← the name of this mspfa (which I actually really want to try and make properly)

[wyfy-meltdown]

Hi meet my kids I cannot stop myself

I am working on toyhouse pages for both of them and the other ten ocs I have made with this set because I have no self control

Top: Mitrix Elauva

Bottom: Avinas Barana

(for bonus points guess their classpects)

I cannot stop making Homestuck OCs and it is genuinely a severe and unusual problem

[sundslime]

Another Object Comic Blog 2

Back at it again with another name change! This one’s probably the last one for a bit though.

A good amount of progress has been made on the idea of the comic since my last post in March. That is, I hunkered down with some buds and actually made a kind of rigid outline of how I want the plot to be structured. A good amount of ideas were leftovers from Exclusion Delusion but more fleshed out with a cleaner idea for a possible ending in mind, which makes me happy! Every time I’ve taken a stab at a comic like this I usually drop the idea because I don’t know how I’d end it, so having that in mind has been reassuring.

Here’s a mostly redacted look at the outline of the story, mostly for the sake of keeping things a surprise! Who doesn’t like a good surprise? I will leave a synopsis of the beginning of the story though, so here! Objects of many different locations live on a planet with only them and are all aware of/ friends with each other. Ornament is the main character of the story, who on their (TBD)th birthday travel around the world in search of artifacts warning of an impending doom. After a year, the end of the world takes the form of a competition in which each challenge takes place on a different planet.

Unlike the plot, the biggest point of contention has been the actual characters to appear in the comic! Truth is, there’s been dozens of characters that have had the possibility of appearing in the comic. Some as main characters, and others as more comic relief side characters. Sizing down the original fifty plus characters has been no easy task, and I’ve joined a bunch of calls with some buds trying to decide which characters should stay or go has been a struggle. I’ll probably come to this decision on my own since these are my characters and only my most cherished of children will make it in..

The spreadsheet above was originally where I listed out all of my ocs and we went through them all and talked about how which characters could act and little quirks they could have. I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t help give me an idea on the characters I FOR SURE wanted in.

Ornament’s a character I’ve wanted in the comic since day one, they’re GUARUNTEED to be a main character. I used them in this enviornment as a test of how I’d draw backgrounds in the comic.

As another small experiment, I tried to go back to my last comic Sunburn and redraw it with the skills I have now in a style I might’ve liked back then, I’m pretty happy with how it came out!

Below is another character with a similar style. She’s also guaranteed for the comic, her name’s Inkwell!

More onto the look of the comic...

I’ve also been messing around with a potential style for the comic. It’s another one of those things that I’ve been putting a lot of thought into, but at the end of the day I think I have a good idea for what I want to do.

My biggest inspirations for this comic have always been my favorite object shows (ONE, Battle for Dream Island Again) and their saturated colors and simple designs, and Homestuck and the many many MSPFAS out there (Vast Error, A Guy Gets Revenge). Drawing objects in this style consistently has been a bit of a struggle, but I’ve found myself gravitating towards big and round hands, and tiny lil’ feet.

I don’t know if I’ll lean as heavy with the gradients and blurs though, since they’ve given me mixed results. I think I like the look of them when minimally used so I’ll probably stick to that.

Another art related thing I heavily debated on using was sprites. At first, I wanted to completely opt out of using any sprites for the sake of simplicity, but with the help of some really nice people I not only re-sprited old characters, but decided that I might go with this sprite style for the new characters. They’re so silly that it’s been hard for me to say no!

Another thing I want to note before ending this post is that just like all of my other comics, I do not mean for this to be the job of a crew where I’m only a writer.

This is my comic, and something I’ve wanted to make. Chances are that just like Sunburn, I’ll be writing a large part of the comic and drawing a large chunk of the panels. I wanna carry the weight of this because its my story!!! With that being said, anyone’s welcome to help! If you’re interested, feel free to DM me on Discord @sundSlime#2003.

TLDR?

Progress on the comic has been underway, but there’s a lot of stuff left to iron out. Hope you guys like what I have so far! Have a good day :)

[dash-n-step]

You could argue the rpgs are kinda cheating cause you know, rpgmaker games are as prevalent as VNs, especially back in the day, but neither here nor there. Speaking of back in the day, there was also stuff like Hammerkind, and that Jane cooking game. Also would like to hear some of your fanventure reccomendations, besides VE or Kittyquest. Nothing towards Kittyquest, thats more me already guessing it from the blog banner and description.

heheheheh yeah it's no surprise that I'd recommend Kittyquest, I've had half a mind to blaze a post I made about it, that's how much I think people should read it, like even taking away my davepeta bias (they don't even show up at that often lmao) it's just a much more fun look into a post canon homestuck, with the world its built.

and while it's neither here nor there, I think it's a matter of the era/fandom. Like homestuck fans aren't going towards visual novels because they're any "easier" (the accessibility of tools especially for people who just want to write and draw does help of course), it's because it directly melds well with the format of comics/flashes/adventure games that the series itself runs on, and pesterquest/friendsims normalized it. It's like how if you go back you'll find a whole bunch of [x]stuck AUs and concepts and whatever, because back then people literally just did whatever because it was an active and chaotic fandom, for better and for worse.

For MSPFAs, again I don't spend as much as I'd like to in reading them and haven't really caught up and I already have a huge backlog when it comes to other stuff, but some that I've kept tabs on are, some of these aren't that active though:

(you've opened the floodgates anon, I didn't expect this post to get this long)

Martyrdom (last update: May 30th, 2022) , which is about the midnight crew finding some weird dudes stepping on their turf and trying to deal with them.

Homestuck (last update: April 21st, 2022), an mspfa that starts off where somehow Jade is teleported to the start of the comic, and there's something about OCs and there's a lot of earthbound music and I thought it was neat with how it changes things up

OH FUCK I forgot, Oasisquest (last update: September 16, 2021), it hasn't updated in a while but it's an mspfa that I think is based off the creators' roleplaying, so there's a new planet, mostly fantrolls and the designs are good

Oh and of course Act 8 (Last Update: April 16, 2021), because everybody has to have at least one "the ending of homestuck underwhelmed me, we can totally fix it" mspfa comic to follow. I don't remember too much but it does some neat stuff with Gamzee, Aradia and Tavros get a neat meat up, and Davepeta does some cool stuff here and there, so you know I'm down, even if it hasn't updated in like a year

OH FUCK also Deltastuck (last update: April 13, 2022), it's almost exactly what you'd expect form the name, but it's UNDERTALE characters trying to use sburb to get out of the underground, I haven't checked it out in a while since it had to stop to make a big flash update, but that's actually done now so it's somewhat still going

and uh, I think I'll end this off with a really old one, Nightfall (discontinued), which I haven't even finished but it interests me in that it's so clearly written before certain things in the comic that it almost feels like a time capsule.

It's basically centered around vrisjohn and it's post canon but in the way that I guess people just assumed that when the kids were done with the game and made a new universe they'd do normal kids stuff again and be in a normal americana setting while the trolls fuck off to their own planet, except suddenly Vriska shows up and has to hide out at John's place because humans don't know about aliens.

And of course the stakes get randomly high with some kind of magic alien ninja or something, I never got that far to understand but it was interesting to find, and while the creator doesn't plan on finishing it, they've basically adapted it into an original work, Xenologia (last update: June 25th, 2022) that apparently is still hosted on MSPFA and has multiple chapters out

we don't talk 'bout alt mewniverse no no no, we dont' talk 'bout alt mewniverse~

Also while we're down here, I've never actually read Vast Error. A part of me thinks it's funnier not to read it, so I can look at it in the same confusion as people who've never read homestuck probably looks at posts about it.

[clonerightsagenda]

TLC DVD commentary: Vriska’s arc, pt 2

I'm back at it responding to a request to discuss Vriska's arc in TLC. Since this is commentary on her story overall I won't dive too deep into any single scene, although I'll skim through them. Part of the reason we tag updates is for people to see them, but mostly I use the character indexing so I can reference specific scenes as needed. It has saved so much time.

As some general notes, as I said before, I'm skeptical of "redemptions" where someone says "yeah I regret what I did". Post-retcon Vriska pays lip service to that, but she doubles down on her abusive behavior, so I'm not convinced. I wanted to make sure TLC Vriska actually demonstrated growth and change. However, she has a tendency to take over the story. Luckily, the dreambubbles are a pretty good quarantine. You'll notice that although she gets the most updates out of Team Dreaming Dead, she doesn't really impact the story in any direct way. Sure, she delays/distracts Lord English, but we could've left that out and just had him show up as needed, and people would've accepted that as part of the narrative. So Vriska doesn't get to be the super relevant hero of the story the way she wants to be, but what she does get to do is grow up a little, even if she physically can't.

After Meenah and Aranea die, Vriska ends up enlisting with the ghost 'army', for lack of a better word. While before she was in charge of a bunch of dreamers that she used as 88, now *she* is 88 protecting them. Her situation has flipped upside down, including in that while at one point she was bossing Tavros around, he is now in a position of command. I had been planning for Tavros to show up leading the ghosts, and when it happened in canon, I was like oh hey, look at that. Then, after showing up the person who's treated him so horribly, Tavros is promptly subordinated by her again. I was rather miffed by this. In TLC, Tavros is calling the shots. That makes sense to me. The dream bubbles sap people's wills, and Breath players seem to be the best antidote. Vriska livens up after being merged with Tavros, and the treasure hunt loses steam after John bails. Tavros is the perfect person to keep the ghosts energized and focused. As I've acknowledged before, part of Vriska's abusive behavior comes from her conditioning by Alternia and her situation with her lusus, although that is not an excuse. Tavros was abused by her in turn... and when he is in a position of power, he doesn't misuse it. The cycle of passing pain along ends here.

Ok, looking at some scenes in depth... When Vriska is upset, she uses 8s for way more vowels, and right after Meenah and Aranea's death, they're all over the place. Meanwhile, Aradia is making heavy use of the Socratic method here, not passing judgment but asking leading questions to try to get Vriska to realize some things about herself. Aradia has been doing this for a while. She’s gotten good at gently guiding spirits in the right direction. 

VRISKA: They were 8mp8rt8nt t8 VRISKA: T8 the missi8n.

I've posted about this before, but a tricky thing w/ writing Homestuck is that the characters' voices are established through online communication, and we talk very differently in person than online. Online, we have a lot more opportunities to choose our words and convey an artificial persona. However, especially if you're doing a fic w/ someone else's characters, you don't want to deviate too much, because then it sounds wrong. It's a tough balance to strike. One addition I made to spoken word logs was people cutting themselves off, talking over themselves, or leaving sentences dangling. You can add some extra meanings there, or just indicate distress and uncertainty.

VRISKA: Anything is better than n8thing. VRISKA: That's why I had t8 d8 something. VRISKA: It's this pl8ce. VRISKA: If you st8nd still for too long, you get stuck in the s8me stupid cycles of v8pid teen 8ullshit forever. VRISKA: T8lking and t8lking 8b8ut n8thing while the w8rld 8r8und y8u 8r8ks 8p8rt. VRISKA: I had to 8r8k out of that! VRISKA: I had to keep g8ing 8r VRISKA: Or I'd 8e really dead.

It's easy to forget with the existence of an afterlife and a life/death revolving door, but Vriska is a kid who died at thirteen, and recent events have driven that home for her. It's hard to think that your story is over, and life goes on without you, especially when you're young and tend to be more solipsistic. That's one of the drivers of her behavior. If she lets go and stops struggling, she has to admit she's dead, which is hard to bear.

Gill calls page 519 the 'put me in coach, I'm ready!' panel.

Anyway, Vriska joins up, primarily for vengeance. Most of that is offscreen, although we've got a bit in the Vriskagram flash. That flash exists entirely because we wanted at least some practice on getting something audiovisual up on mspfa, youtube, and tumblr before we did an actually important flash. It's near the top of my list for the Director's Cut to add in a lot more character dev for Team Dreaming Dead members (plus Sollux and Aradia who are team liminal or something.) Perhaps Gill will even put fewer OCs in the remake. (This shows me it's rather silly to act like her drawing everyone in Metal Gear outfits is some huge burden. She has always pulled this shit.) However, there is indication that Vriska has started taking her job a little more personally and is becoming invested in the safety of the dreamers. Progress.

Of course, Vriska is all about appearances and bravado, so she's not going to admit it. In her conversation with Eridan she claims to be one of the good guys but is rather dismissive about their ideals, and it's intentionally ambiguous how much she's sincere about. (As a writing sidenote, Vriska often refers to her fellow trolls by their last name, probably as a gesture of ironic distance. Later, I no longer have her do that. That could indicate character dev but is also a matter of practicality. If you're dealing with thousands of versions of one person, it's hard enough knowing who you mean when you use their first name, let alone their surname.)

We get more sincerity from her when she talks to John. That's usually who she's most likely to open up to, because John tends to be less judgmental, and Vriska gets defensive very quickly. With John, who sort of served as a morality guide earlier, she seeks absolution, eagerly saying she's changed her ways and it should all be fine now. Unfortunately, Vriska's attempts to push bad stuff under the rug crashes directly into John's attempts to push bad stuff under the rug and he has a mental breakdown. Afterward, although Vriska is taking some steps to improve herself, he suggests she clear the air with her former victims. Although she's reluctant, John has suggestion powers, probably linked to his aspect. Often, when he tells someone to do something, they end up doing it, especially if it's in line with their own inclinations or suppressed urges. (I think puppets aren't that cool. Why don't you fly away and never come back? Why can't space and time work the way I want it to?) At least he Breath-hexes Vriska in a constructive way.

VRISKA: I guess there's ONE person I'd like to clear the air with. VRISKA: I'll skip the 8r8kdown part though.

Me, lurking overhead with my .txt files open. No, Vriska, you are both going to scream and cry about it.

You'll notice that Vriska frequently adjusts her outfit and/or hairstyle. Again, this is part of her whole appearances routine. She's not quite sure what her new facade is going to be, so she keeps trying various ones out.

Sidenote for the bonus panel log

TAVROS: aND ARADIA SAID SOMEONE WAS ARRIVING SOON, wHO SHE WANTED TO TALK TO TAVROS: sO SHE’S WAITING FOR THEM VRISKA: Wonder who 8it the dust. VRISKA: Do you think it was someone we knew? TAVROS: iT COULD BE ANYONE,, fROM ANY TIME TAVROS: ,,yOU KNOW THERE’S A LAG, sOMETIMES

Aradia's lurking around to give Dave his peptalk. Gotta roll the carpet out for your fellow Time hero.

And we're up to the last Vriska, Terezi, and Kanaya conversation and her exit. I feel like that deserves its own separate post, which I will work on later.

[gummysnom]

Woah, Check it Out! A Fanventure Guide

Hey, you. Yes, you! Are you a dirty Homestucker that didn’t fly the coop like all the over disappointed fans after that flop of an ending? A younger fan trying to find their place in the dwindling fandom? Just someone who wants to screw around in photoshop or MS Paint with a simplistic style?

Cool, you’re all losers. 

ANYWAY, after reading the gargantuan webcomic Homestuck, you might’ve thought to yourself “Woah, I think I can put a cool spin on this!”, and chances are, you can. That is, if you put some DAMN WORK INTO IT.

Yeah, that’s right, Webcomics take work, and some other things, like, you know, CREATIVITY. 

As you know, most fanventures are on mspfa, or http://mspfanventures.com . So, go have a look on there, and check out the average fanventure. The ones with 8-50 or so pages, with three favorites at most, sadly abandoned. Yeah, those. Sadly, there are a couple hundred of those, and a few actual diamonds in the rough. But, what makes these on-going fanventures keep going, and how did the others fail? 

That’s what we’re here to look at.

THE CHARACTERS:

So, you wanna make a fanventure now, right? Cool. The first thing you need is: A Character. Or two. Or three. Or maybe four. Sburb adventures need at least two main characters, and a few others that usually come with a main character.

The biggest thing is, your character needs to be developed, and have an interesting personality. Why do I say this? Because that’s gonna influence how you write this story. The biggest mistake any creator makes is making unenjoyable/unrelatable characters that nobody, not even the creator, cares about. What most fanventures do nowadays is try to rush all the character intros to get to the “good part”. 

The problem with this is, well, your entire comic is supposed to be the good part. Your readers are supposed to enjoy your comic all the way through, or they will drop it like a rock (Like a really hot, lava rock. They will probably throw it at someone they hate too). If you don’t enjoy your characters, your readers won’t either, and they won’t want to go on a journey with your characters and get to the “good part” with them.

Sub-Point: The Amount of Characters:

If you have too many characters, and you try to introduce them all, you’re gonna have even more pacing problems. For a fanventure, of course most people have 4, or due to the popularity of Hexane, 6. 

This is fine and all, and you can have as many characters you want, but you don’t need a million characters if you can’t dedicate enough development or characterization to them.

 People try to copy Homestuck by having Fankids AND Fantrolls. You don’t need both just because Homestuck had them. You can just have trolls, or just kids. Hell, you don’t need kids OR trolls. Make your own species, make whatever you want! Make hybrids, have fun with it! Just don’t make a bunch of characters you don’t care about!

THE STORY:

So, you’ve got like, ten characters, and you think you’re hot shit now. You’re WRONG. What are these characters even doing now? Sitting around sucking on pixie sticks and browsing Ebay like a bunch of LOSERS.

“Vicky!! How can I fix this?” Well, don’t even worry about pal, because I have the solution. It’s called a, well, err

Uh, //looks left and right

Now listen, you can’t go around telling people this but it’s a

A PLOT!

Yes, your characters need a story, something to do, and they need it now. “Well, that’s easy!” You say as you pull open note pad and...sit there for an hour.

“Damnit!” You say in frustration, because you forgot you don’t know how to write a plot outline. (Second Grade plot outlines be damned, T-Charts are for babies!)

So, this is easy. Your fanventure needs three things: A beginning, middle, and end. More importantly, a beginning and end. You need to know where you started, and you need to know where you’re trying to go. The middle is the big gooey middle that’s how you get there.

For a fanventure, your beginning will usually be a couple of acts where you enter your main characters (NOT ALL AT ONCE, but we’ll get to that later.) and introduce THE GAME. Your end will be...well, that’s up to you! Make it cool, original, something you wouldn’t expect.

Sub-Point: Pacing:

Remember how I said you should introduce all your characters at once? Yeah, that’s a big deal, and it will overwhelm your reader, and make them not care about the individual characters. We all enjoyed John as the main character because he had an entire act dedicated to him, and we spent all that time learning what he was all about, what he enjoyed, what he liked. We need that time with your characters too.

Remember that while you need good pacing in the beginning, since it will determine whether your readers will stick with you or not, you also need a good middle. We aren’t trying to go rushing to the end. Make it an enjoyable trip, and have some fun with it. Keep the pacing at a medium pace, not too slow (Boring) or too fast (Even more boring).

THE ART:

Cool, you’ve got a story outline planned out, some cool characters ready to go on a piping hot adventure, and now there’s one one thing left to do: Get to work on those panels! (Err, unless it’s a written story, to which I say, more power to you! Like, damn, you  have a lot of dedication because it is ROUGH in the fanfiction world. We don’t get enough reads and views anyway, but OCs are treated like trash. Just keep your head up, and hell, I will support what you do!)

The big thing here is: How do you want to draw your comic? Do you wanna make it a panelled comic like how comic books do it? Do you wanna go for the iconic Homestuck Style? A mix of the two? Cool! Go for it! But be consistent with your style, and make sure it isn’t just “boring” and really blank like a lot of adventures are. 

Most people like it when you use your own art and parts, but there’s nothing wrong with using some of Hussie’s parts too if you want. But you should use oiginal parts too, and don’t use people’s work who haven’t consented to it, cause that’s theft.

Sub-Point Suggestions:

Homestuck was, at one point, completely based on suggestions. Now, you don’t have to, but it can really help you when you’re in a rut with your story. You don’t have to take every suggestion, but engaging with your fanbase can be incredibly helpful! (Making a discord or a blog for your comic can be helpful!)

POSTING YOUR COMIC:

Cool, cool, you’re straight up ready. You have a few good pages ready with some commands, a rockin’ story, and some characters. What’s left? Posting, of course!

Now, this isn’t about “how” to work the MSPFA website because there are some better guides for it, but! This is about how to real your readers in.

So, firstly, you need a catchy name.

“How about, Cool-Stu-” NO, DO NOT EVEN. Every person and they mother, grandmother, and disowned uncle have named their story something like “Cool-Stuck” or “IDK-Stuck” but that’s not how the name works guys. Let’s try  to get better.

“Hexane” had six characters main characters at first, Hackbent was a hacked Sburb Session, so think about a title that fits your story.

Now, like any good creator knows, and any english teacher that wants to ruin your life will remind you, you need a good hook. Something that will pull your reader in. That’s why you shouldn’t advertise “This is probably shit” or “IDK what I’m doing” because you won’t get any readers. Make your blurb interesting. Write what would interest you!.

ORIGINALITY:

This is the final point, because I feel like it is the most important. (You know, save the best for last and all.) This mostly comes from the fact that I’ve had a few bad experiences with doing fanventure collabs. (Especially with a certain person. if you want the deets I live to over share)

So, uh, here we go:

You aren’t gonna make the next Homestuck. You aren’t. It isn’t going to happen. No, no matter how original, cool, and unique it is, it isn’t the next Homestuck. So, DON’T TAKE ALL YOUR CARDS FROM HOMESTUCK. If you take every cue from Homestuck, with nothing new or original, or something YOU made, you will be another chump with a failing fanventure.

I have dealt with a person who told me that all of my ideas were “bad” and “trash” and couldn’t happen because they weren’t exactly like Homestuck. She critiqued my characters not by their own merit, but because I didn’t use the right pants for a teal blood and that my spriting style was too unique and too colorful.

Listen, this is YOUR story, this is YOUR adventure. Be creative, create new worlds, species, new versions of your game. Homestuck was popular because of the pure creativity in it. By copying it exactly, you’re doing both Homestuck AND your readers a disservice. 

So, that’s about that. Now you have the basics about a fanventure, and you should be able to succeed. Now, of course, I’ll always be here, ready and willing to talk and explain and post more guides if you need it. And if you disagree with anything, I will be willing to debate on it.

Hell, just send me your fanventures and we can talk about it for a while! (And if you’d uh, like to collaborate on a fanventure *wink wink* I’d be down with that)

Bye for now, and if I see a fanventure called Cool-Stuck, I am suing all of you!

[isaacathom]

time to think about various story ideas ive had, yeehaw

ACitDS - Thomas trying to find their parents amidst the angel/demon war. pretty neat. I wanted to make a game out of it so the player could decide which way Thomas swung in terms of angel/demon, giving leeway for players who made mechanical choices against the ‘moral’ choice (cause like, split progression, man. it was gonna be pretty flexible and based mostly on choices within the world, though one route was locked behind a specific skill progression).

ACB - ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. war story about a commander trying to protect their homeland, except they arent even a commander in that homeland, and also its just really complicated. I like the individual characters i guess, even if im pretty sure Black themself was... not... my best character. I’ve made more ableist ones (hhhhhh) but that wasn’t my finest, so acb would need a total rehaul to fix that sorta thing. characters neat though.

SFY/414 - the whole gang of criminals help a guard catch other criminals story. or gay suicide squad, as you wish. i like my characters, and i like a whole lot of it, and i like the world. the core premise is a lil shaky but if you get past it, fun times, i think. i love tamjol especially.

SFY/425 - i dont know shit about the civil war plot except that tamjol is there and gets accused of being a traitor after his group finds out he’s a Shonyul, thats a fun one. thats basically the only thing i know for certain about it, that those scenes happen, and maybe one where he confronts his “father” directly, idk, weird stuff all around.

SFY/BTH/386 - sailing time. theres a storm, a mutiny, a second bloodier mutiny, and then a whole ass dragon eats like 2 whole boats without warning, god damn.

CCC - we have established i think that idea slapped i just never wrote shit. i dont remember any of their names. i just know some fuckers got lazered in the chest. tight.

Codename Seren - oh no

Codename Sworl - uhhh bunch of aliens get sent to earth disguised as teen girls to track down a different group of aliens. i remember nothing except that the sworl Charlotte ended up falling in love with a girl called Aaliyah (??????) who was actually one of the enemy aliens, and also that the sworl overlords were trash. everything else, big ol’ no clue.

EC - former MC fanfic, crystal’s sister and BIL get kidnapped by the goddess of fire in order to get the city (of which the BIL is like, the prince?) to do a bunch of specific things so that the fire goddess can release the imprisoned goddess of darkness. also one of the members of the motley gang crystal acquires is actually the fire goddesses missing daughter, and another is the descendant of some of the dark gods closest attendants who bailed and were hunted down. and the other dude is like. the son of a ghost? like? a ghost? like his human ass father found a portal to an afterlife realm and fucked one of the librarians and now their kid is half fucking ghost, I dont get it, also the man had a wife so uh W. Skye’s dad was messed.

GGS - hell yea. gods forming pacts with a bunch of youngsters who die in tragic circumstances (one was a car accident, another got crushed by a tree, and a pair got caught in a burning house). fun times. the car one had the war goddess as her partner and was able to summon a magic gun, the tree one had the god of time and fought with a magic sword while his COMPLETELY HUMAN sister kept tagging along on his missions and using a dustbin lid as a shield to help him out. nice. i love them all.

KoA - i dont remember whats happening there except that one of the kids was like, iron resistant? so she could use magic even when in iron? and fter they got captured by the govt or whatever they found out about her power and things escalated and im like 90% sure they fucking. hit her on the head with a shovel and killed her? i. i dont know why that was what i decided should happen in my novel but there you go, huh. her sister was very upset and i think ended up finding out she was iron resistant too? i dont remember the plot of this.

Kingdom Keys  - crocodile minigame and a littol skeleton man. basically if you found three keys you could access this area and get a wish granted by the goddess, and the skeleton dude had tried this previously and sort of failed? its kind of unclear but i think it was that he’d adventured with the main girls mother for the keys and i think she died? so then he used his wish to save her life? or the other way around? i think he died trying to get either the 1st or 2nd key and at the end the mother made it to the goddess and used her wish to bring him back, except he was a skeleton for Uh Reasons (how fucking long did it take???) and then i think the mother died after, i DONT know. i just remember littol skeleton boy man dude. he was like, 16 but also like 40, i think, i AM Unclear

Mermaid Cafe - there is no plot to mermaid cafe except that a mermaid like, comes on land and hides her identity, goes to a cafe by the sea one day to be a little closer to home, and then gets trapped along with a bunch of other people when the sea goes Very Bad. it was a very weird dream.

Minds Eye - ? gods claim your kids when theyre born and raise them? there was no further plot. i dont remember shit.

Mistakenbound - the last gasp of my hs phase, may it rest in peace. some heart player got murdered for revolution b4 the game starts but persisted as a ghost and pretended to be a blue blood, which while it was based more off the story of Rhia from COdename Seren, is a fuck of an aradia ripoff, whoopsie fucking Daisies

LOTMV - light demigod gets “kidnapped” by a dark demigod, sparks a war, very complicated, i mostly like it. one draft had the light demigod killing her shitty soldier ex-boyfriend at the end of the story after he almost murders the dark demigod, who has all but become her gf in the time since she left home. fun stuff.

Puppeteers Rebellion - buncha voodoo shit, smth about voodoo being outlawed and a countess using her powers in it to try and overthrow the kingdom, being foiled by the princess who she had (inadvertently?) been training at a sewing circle thing. i think?

Re:Memory - rebirth where your actions in your previous two lives determine your class, protag is class 1 (worst) because her last lives where a fucking infant and a murderer. befriends the princess (class 7) and idk what the hell were they planning to do but it was gonna be smth.

RiH - story about a thief with a metal arm trying to save the metal forest from an unnatural rust, aided by a knight who is one of the few people who actually notices their presence. was actually an MSPFA, ripperino, i still have like, 4 panels total and nothing else.

Royalty Story - uhhh country being run by Queen Adelaide acting as regent for her like, 21 year old son, but then she gets taken captive by this woman named Hazel who starts running the kingdom, forcing Adelaides three kids to flee the castle and try and find a solution. idk what was going on. the kids were Jackson, Morgan, Lillian, in order, iirc? cause the naming scheme was -an (sound). i thought it was neat. Lillian was the only one who shortened her name, to i like just Lilli, but Jackson was never Jack. they were neat.

SoaCS - pirate sets off a curse that means they are followed by a terrible icy storm, ends up being cast overboard by their (new) crew and saved by a woman on an island, who then also helps them escape when the storm ravages her home. then they go on a whole thing try to fix the mistake that HE made, resulting in them going back to where he had abandoned his crew in search of treasure. lotta fun. he even directly saves her life at a point where he had failed/refused to save one of his old partners last time, which was neat, but overall she was saving his ass. fun times. never wrote much for that.

Shadow Huntress- idk theres a girl called Blake and shes aways running because she thinks if she stops people will notice the scars of battle with like, The Darkness. physical battle, but also the emotional toll. ends up mentoring a few of her classmates who became hunters sort of incidentally. idk.

TDoC - so theres a demon king in the center of the lake, and around this lake are a bunch of cities with demon lords. and you have to kill the demon lords in order in order to be able to access the demon king and kill him. and there was a mechanic in place where you could only kill one demon lord/king. so the new party who is trying to free themselves from demon rule is accompanied by a group who tried many years prior, and in the first battle one of them fucking dies while trying to kill the lord because it turns out! that in the last attempt! he had succeeded in laying the final blow, and his soul was forever weakened and could not withstand the demonic energy this time, so from the outside he basically stabbed down at this demon lords week spot and then the second his blade made contact there was a burst of energy and he collapses like a sag of bricks who barely lives to the end of the battle to explain what happened. that was neat. i like the idea of the party by the time they get to the demon king being people who had all killed a demon lord, meaning they shouldnt be able to kill the king, but then they all manage to deal the final blow together, with their combined souls withstanding the initial burst of energy and killing him. whether they all die afterwards or just kinda pass the fuck out to be found by their allies outside who react to the demonic death wail, idk. i think its neat. that end sounds kinda cliche but presumably they had their best soldiers (demon killers) and then a handful of people with them who HADNT killed a demon who should have been able to, except the king could fucking smell em and wiped the floor with them early, knocking them out or killing them to focus on toying with the ones he wanted revenge on. I’m down for that. cause then its slightly less of a like, “twist”, since in the planning to kill the king SOMEONE would have noticed that they had to send some non-heroes :P So make sure you do, I guess.

TFOS - princess vs dragon, she has a gun and she wants revenge for her older sister and aso to save her kingdom. aided by a mage a knight and a rogue, bunch of lesbian mfers fighting dragons, Nice.

TFT - proto GGS, main difference was that becoming a demigod was essentially randomised and that there was like. a god of computers. who i think i reworked as a god of technology? or something? tech generally, not computer tech. idk. cherry was cute.

WTDD - the worlds surface is a series of spinning gears with cities and towns on them, and the gears all powered a music box below the earth which kept this colossal dragon asleep. and then one day the gears stop and the dragon wakes up. something like that. the initial thing was world is gears, but id probably shift it to a city or an area? cause the idea of a city constantly rotating sucks ass. admittedly that was straight up the reason the gears stopped in the initial writing, because the villain (??) was sick of the rotation ad fucking. blew a gear up. nice.

YD3N - uhh bunch of robots? one for eac letter of the alphabet (so there was Aden, Byden, Cyden, Dyden, Eden, etc) and Yd3n was the source of all of them. and then a robot called syd3n manages to escape and finds the aid of a local engineer called Ignis Lex, and they try to free their siblings and especially Yd3n, and find out the purpose for the alphabet crew. fun fact, this entire story came about because on the way home from uni I saw a dude in front of me with a jumper that said ‘Sydney’, except the last y was covered and my brain misread what was left as Syden, which is why theyre the protag. Neat.

thats the only ones listed. its missing a few, but i dont remember them much or have names for them :P

[clonerightsagenda]

TLC DVD Commentary: Jade’s arc (final)

Page 715, where Jade floats in front of the green sun, is as big as we could make it, but Gill really wanted to make it as big as your computer screen. Perhaps one day we’ll break the site to our will. The cracks are intended to be more or less the color of MSPFA's background, to give the sense that the comic itself is breaking down.

Her taking one moment to touch Bec's ears is perhaps laying the pathos on a bit much. But that is the last trace of her best friend that she has. She sacrificed him too in the name of getting a more "useful" tool for herself in Jadesprite, even if that backfired. Mostly, the Green Sun subplot deals with the way Jade has built her identity around her powerset, and now she has to give it up. But she is giving up that connection to Bec too.

I still really like the effect of the Green Sun falling away and the First Guardian energy coming out "toward" the reader. It keeps everything just a little weirdly meta. Meanwhile Jade's getting a chunk of her soul ripped out which is probably not rad. You'll notice Terezi and Davesprite floating in front of the lava lake on LOHAC directly after this update. That juxtaposition is intentional, mostly because there was this weird symbolic association between Davesprite and the Red Sun and self-destruction that I didn't know what to do with, so I just kinda... picked it up and moved it over to the lava lake and then wrote in a few art parallels to try to spackle over the change. Close enough.

Jade gets a Meaningful Haircut partly because I wanted to fuck up a character's Brand for once. Also, her super long hair is used to visually compare her to the Empress. I'm not saying long hair is bad, and I'm sure she'll grow it out again, but it's a dramatic visual shift. Similarly, in her next major conversation with Rose, she switches outfits, and she's frequently seen out of God Tier costume for the rest of the comic. She's no longer defining herself solely by her powers, which that outfit represents. She can just be herself.

Speaking of the conversation with Rose, we had a wild time decorating Jade's battleship room. If you look carefully at her bedspread, you will notice an abomination against god. AKA, a really bad jpeg'd version of Three Wolf Moon with space textures and Harley glasses over the wolves. Gill laughed so hard she had to lie down after making it. I have a link to the saga here.

The conversation is more relevant to Rose's arc, but I really wanted to make sure she and Jade got to chat because they don't in canon, and they have one of the better dynamics of the Beta kids. Rose is more open with Jade and in turn is more perceptive about her issues. I even lampshade that maybe they weren't allowed to talk because they would have sorted too much shit out.

On to the Dave conversation. Gill decided she was going to draw him flat on the ground for no reason, which means I had to overhaul the entire beginning of the log because I figured Jade would at least comment on it. If you look at his position, it's exactly how his body drops when he dies in Beatdown. Plus, he's covered by his swarm animal, which happens when you die and God Tier. Foreshadowing. Jade's issues with trust and truth come up again, but she's done this dance enough times that she's got it down pretty well and can stay calm. She also pushes Dave to use the sword, which brings up an issue that first gets highlighted back when she's Grimbark. Jade and Dave don't communicate great. Space players tend to be straightforward; Time players can be more abstract. So when Dave was trying to express why he objected to wielding Caledfwlch, Jade dismissed it as overdramatic whining without really grasping why he was upset. She starts the comic out with knowledge no one else has, which can make you pretty stubborn about he right way to do things. At times, especially while grimbark, that shades over to arrogance, like when she refuses to back down from Jake, boasts about how much smarter she is, and then gets curbstomped. Now, she pushes Dave to take the sword anyway. She'll regret it.

As a sidenote, canonically Jade never touches a gun after shooting Dave. Perhaps that's because she got God Tier powers, but considering she also learned she indirectly shot her grandfather, I figured she'd have a hangup. Who wouldn't?

Jumping to where she regrets it. Way back when Hussie talks about the fourth wall, he tells us that "if you knew Lord English's true name you'd know horror like no human ever has". In this situation, the you of the scene has referred to Jade. Why would it horrify Jade in particular? I don't know, and I don't know how to achieve horror like no human ever has, especially since that slot may well be filled by walking into a classroom thinking there was no homework and seeing everyone else with a paper on their desk, but thinking you fucked up an important mission and may have gotten two people killed ain't great.

Jade freaks out and Rose shows up with a juicebox. See, when I plan logs it helps me to imagine the characters doing something with their hands, for whatever reason. Usually I edit that out, but for a while I kept the characters with juice boxes because it seemed like a fun juxtaposition to the carnage being dished out in the main storylines. However, I told Gill to put the characters wherever, and they ended up on Prospit... which meant they were in the thick of said carnage. That led to some later revisions where Rose talks about something bad headed their way and in the end the log got a bit more serious, so the juice boxes felt a bit too lighthearted to put in the actual text. Still, Gill drew them in.

Dave and John get back, Jade Learns An Important Lesson about communication, and we finally get to put the Betas all in one place. It's about fucking time.

We're about caught up now, my guys. Jade's last big scene that we've had so far is coming back from Echidna with Karkat. She mentions that she's feeling a lot better about giving up her powers, because she's learned she can be helpful without them and it's a relief not to have to hold herself to such high standards. She's also learning to balance honesty with a genuine desire to be encouraging. Finally, looking back at how she was sort of primed by the game to "do her part" and then prototyped to be a tool, she's deciding to determine her own story instead. Overall, she's doing pretty good. As she should be, since we're close to the end! Most of her final walkaround logs will merely be emphasizing her new, more honest and open relationships with her friends and looking to the future. :)

[clonerightsagenda]

The arc review continues.

Someone had to do the Chris Pratt velociraptor meme. We were willing to take on that burden if no one else was.

Deciding to be honest and doing it are two different things. You’ll notice Jade mostly avoids her biggest victims during the Derse plaza sequence and first talks to her partner in crime.

Fun fact: Although I handled Roxy when she talks to betas, other logs between an alpha and a beta were drafted via msparp between me and Gill. This led to those logs being, on average, longer and more tangent-riddled. The worst offender is the Dave and Dirk convo. Often I sliced a lot out for the final version. We also often went off script on weird tangents (including me once threatening Gill while she was in the bathroom when she kept sending me metal gear memes). This log’s text file is referred to as jajane charades.txt because of one said tangent, which I will repost for your entertainment. This is the dvd commentary after all.

JANE: YOU SEE ]] JANE: WHEN A YOUNG LASS HITS YOUR AGE SHE STARTS GETTING... URGES ]] JANE: MY DAD TAUGHT ME THESE URGES MUST BE SUPPRESSED UNTIL MARRIAGE. ]] JADE: i have a cloning machine i am unstoppable ]] JADE: also jane sweetie we are going to have to talk about other orientations someday ]] JANE: I like men!! ]] JADE: yes but you see there is a whole broad world of orientations out there ]]] JADE: it is very simple ]] JADE: for example i am JADE: flails arms randomly ]] JADE: and john is JADE: crosses arms firmly over chest ]] JANE: Ohhhh. JADE: it is the all or nothing option] JADE: and the salad bar is calling your name ] JANE: And jake is... ]] JANE: Stares blankly into space. ]] JANE: Emits confused noises. ]] JADE: i dunno he had fake dates with dolls ] JADE: i have no word for that one] JADE: or gesture ] JANE: He did what? ]] JADE: lmao ] JADE: i suppose he had urges ] JANE: Well. ]] JANE: He is a strange, silly boy. ]] JADE: and a strange silly old man ] JANE: And the more things change the more they stay the same!! ]] JANE: Hoo hoo, and Dirk is quietly staring at Jake's rear end from the corner, while Roxy is rolling around on the floor laughing at everything, I guess. ]] JADE: dave: slightly different flailing motion ]] JADE: rose: waggles eyebrows at all women in the vicinity ]] JADE: ok i think this log is officially dead ] JANE: This is all bonus content ]] JANE: It must be seen I demand it ]] JADE: ok]

Ok now let’s get back on track

JADE: i dont know what it was like for anyone else JADE: but i guess for us that meant JADE: it was just?

Jane and Jade have no way of knowing that Aranea rigged the clock, poor things.

JANE: Of course, my death wasn't permanent after I died this time under similar circumstances. JANE: So perhaps we were victims of a Skaian clearance sale? JANE: Doomed timeline, everyone must go!

Tbh I feel like this would help explain some of the honestly sorta sketchy clock rulings. They’re already doomed, might as well keep ‘em down. That’s our justification about why Jane didn’t die in a similar situation in TLC. 

JADE: do you ever worry you dont feel the right way about your friends?

The core difference between John and Jade, at least in my interpretation, is that John represses a lot of things unconsciously, and Jade is doing it intentionally. Jade is fully aware of all her bitter, angry, or jealous impulses. She considers them all personal failings, and she tries to squash them. Unfortunately that just made them more nasty when they came out. I think if Jade hadn’t demonized every ‘bad’ aspect of herself so much, grimbark Jade wouldn’t have been so aggressive... she would have been more resigned and ‘guys if we just cooperate maybe fewer people will get hurt’ rather than ‘i’m gonna kick my brother in the gut’.

Speaking of kicking her brother in the gut, let's get to the first of those uncomfy conversations.

From Karkat's perspective, he got angry, sent some nasty messages to the humans for a few hours, and then cooled off. No real harm done. But from Jade's perspective, he bullied her for years of an already crummy childhood. Considering her typical attitude versus how hostile she is when he contacts her, he must've really gotten on her nerves. She had no real reason to kill him for a "demonstration". She did that out of vengeance, and now she has to admit it.

JOHN: i know you grew up alone for a while, and you let us see your house, but whenever we tried to ask questions you changed the subject. JOHN: what were we supposed to do? JOHN: i didn't want to pry! if you said it was fine, i thought it was. JOHN: and now you're mad because i didn't assume my sister was lying to me? JOHN: i guess i won't make that mistake again!!

The other kids on the ship must have learned at least some details of Jade's childhood. Again, it seems kinda unrealistic that they didn't ask *any* questions, but that's what I have to work with. John feels betrayed and frustrated that Jade is now punishing him for not magically knowing the things she tried to hide from him, which is an entirely fair reaction. Maybe he didn't pay as much attention as he could have, but she deliberately made it harder for him to notice, so they both have been contributing to damaging this relationship. Jade eventually admits that she fucked up. She felt they would like her more as the peppy, supportive friend, and maybe that’s true, but that has only made this revelation harder to swallow.

Karkat is bewildered in the background, because since Jade was pissed at him, she didn't care enough about his opinion to hide herself. Ironically, it's the people she doesn't respect who know her best.

KARKAT: SHE LITERALLY TOLD ME TO TELL HER WHEN I WENT TO HELL SO SHE COULD SET UP A REMINDER TO THROW A PARTY. KARKAT: THAT IS AN ACTUAL THING THAT HAPPENED.

That log is a riot.

There's an emphasis on everyone admitting that this happened and dealing with it rather than sweeping it under the rug. In canon, the implications of grimbark and crockertier kinda get glossed over, partly because it's unclear how much of their actions got retconned away. That suggests all that stuff is still festering. We wanted to make sure it gets talked about so it’s less likely Jade and Jane snap on their own later because they simply can’t take holding it in anymore.  

Jade and Jake! Another combo log that had to get sliced down quite a bit. This conversation is a lot more heavily tied to Jake's arc than Jade's so I won't spend a bunch of time on it.

JADE: i deserve some sort of update

I made some joke about this being @Andrew Hussie but considering the kinds of updates he finally gave the poor girl (get sexually harassed and stabbed! every girl’s dream) I take it back.

JADE: is the xenon inert?

If the girl's supposed to be a science genius I'm gonna bring chemistry into the story, ok? I HL’d in chem. I miss it a little. Plus, chemistry is directly relevant to the Alpha session. Noble gasses are inert and have trouble forming bonds without outside influence. It takes the addition of the Beta planets to create an octet of eight electrons around the Skaian nucleus, making a stable atom. Everyone hanging out on Jane’s planet probably got a chipmunk voice. The possibilities are endless. 

JADE: i think you have taken quite enough punches for the day JAKE: That one to the solar plexus really did smart... JADE: how about the villains take a turn for a change? JADE: that arrangement sounds good to me

In the future, Jake will get to punch himself as a villain. So best of both worlds, I guess.

Moving on to Davesprite... Jesus christ, this conversation. The one good thing I can say about it is it did generate this gem.

I used to test the text color code before we put it up on mspfa (these days I just say fuck it and we fix the errors when we see them). This effect doesn't happen on the mspfa page with the smaller text box, but I think it's a pretty good summary of the log as a whole. In fact I opened this log to look at it again, saw the wall of orange, and felt my heart quail within me. But this is an arc commentary which means I don't have to read it line by line if I don't want to. 

Anyway, this was a pain in the ass because Homestuck does not like to let people who are dating talk to each other, a phenomenon I tongue-in-cheek call the Homestuck relationship curse. Current couples almost never speak, unless it's part of a group conversation or they're breaking up. Go back and check if you don’t believe me. These two are even worse, because although Dave pre-split talks to Jade and Davesprite talks to Jadesprite, Davesprite-as-Davesprite never talks to Jade-as-Jade ever. Which makes it really fucking hard to write a whole thing about how stuff broke bad, let me tell you. I had about three sentences to go off of and so mostly relied on piecing best guesses together from general character analysis, which I won't go into in depth because no one asked for a DVD commentary for this scene in particular. This is another conversation that got overhauled once or twice - in earlier drafts Davesprite was a lot more passive, but I figured he's had a long day and is ready to snap back, and I needed him to because I was, after all, trying to call Jade on some of her shit too. This conversation essentially serves the same purpose as the one with John for Jade - she lets people know what's going on with her but is also faced with the fact that it's partly on her that she kept her mouth shut for so long.

The fact that he's lurking in the background of a bunch of panels is because I should never make idle comments around the artist. I made some joke about being afraid that your recently evil ex will just fuckin shoot you for talking shit and Gill took it upon herself to make that a reality. Same with John hiding behind a rock, or the entire existence of Janerezi in this household. I've learned to stop making jokes.

Then John fucks up with his power of mental association powers and teleports Jack Noir along with Jade to the green sun. Good job, John.

Jade's closure with her traveling companions mostly caps off the messiest part of her 'be honest with your friends' journey, although she still has Dave and Rose to talk to. The next bit is more focused on her working through the way she finds self-worth through being powerful rather than simply being, represented in her Green Sun quest. And that seems like a good place to break for a new post to ME.