#NOT TO TALK ABOUT FFXV FIC BUT DIRK REALLY DOES KIN VRISKA!IGNIS

[synodicatalyst]

epilogue thoughts part 3

a big part i didn’t like and about which i’ve seen similar complaints is the aspect of taking the “absurd gritty edgy realist” fanfic trope WAY FAR and the more i think about it, the more i agree

because the fact of the matter is that i DIDN’T enjoy reading the epilogue. there were lots of parts i liked and found funny, but it was arduous and horrible in the way that you don’t feel hope, at any time, for any chance of happiness. you feel like youre reading through 180k words of genuine depression, even including the softer moments, the happier ones, the ones that offer development

i say this as someone who has read my fair share of gritty what-if bad-end longfic. an example i’ve been thinking about is the FFXV fic tu fui, ego eris. while it doesn’t share the same meta elements as homestuck’s epilogue, it strikes me as broadly similar, for a few reasons: one, it’s like, MEGA long. and two, we get to see a beloved character (my favourite character, ignis) spiral on his journey to becoming a villain.

here’s the thing about tu fui: i enjoyed every step of the way.

and that’s the thing, really - you CAN write horrible, tragic stories where the gay dude becomes a villain not out of inherent evil but because of Necessity. both tu fui and homestuck did it. but the difference is that i fucking loved tu fui, ego eris because not only was it written spectacularly, but there was an underlying sense of hope.

Throughout the fic, the author states many times that there’s “no going back”, that if you’re expecting a Good End then you’re in the wrong place. (I read it in its entirety, in one sitting, before she started writing a Good End by popular demand.) And i persisted -i still held out hope - not only because i had already read like 100k of it, nor just because i’m stupid and believed in the good of ignis scientia, but because it was ENJOYABLE. i loved being witness to the descent of ignis scientia. i was deeply invested in the outcome of this horrible, hopeless universe - will ignis find a way to accomplish his original goal? will he succumb to the scourge? will noctis still die, despite the horrible sacrifices made? i knew ignis would die. i knew it would be ugly, that he’d have to be stopped. but i didn’t care. even though this was a character i poured my soul into, i needed to see this til its end, villainy or no.

I got to see hardened, sharper versions of characters i loved (much like the epilogue) and even though the end was tragic and made me actually cry, and the whole thing was SUPER LONG with a lot of Plot Bullshit that probably went over my head, i didn’t regret it, i enjoyed every step of the way.

so i’ve been wondering where homestuck left me. and why homestuck left me here. and why i was slogging through thousands of words of jane suddenly being outright xenophobic and dirk Doing Some Bullshit. and why i didn’t fully enjoy reading it even though i am just as invested in these characters as like, ignis from ffxv (btw i know i have bad taste and ffxv is a shame fandom full of pretty videogame boys but that’s not the point DONT @ ME OK)

and i think it mostly boils down to the fact that 1, it felt hopeless the whole way through? like that was the POINT but it was hammered in again and again. tu fui did similarly - there was no Happy Reprieve, no funny jokes except for ardyn being a fucking weirdo - but it did it less absurdly. which i think leads to number 2, that homestuck just...started off 7 years after the end of the game. we didn’t get to witness the characters change into what we saw. we were plunged straight into “jane is spouting actual fascist ideologies now i guess” and “dirk is really purposefully manipulative to the extreme and kidnaps rose and fucks with people’s heads a lot”. we didn’t get to witness the spiral, the descent into feral horror. we just witnessed the outcome

this doesn’t mean it’s BAD to do so, but it is jarring, and i don’t think it was a good choice, character-wise. like this is the precise reason many people said the epilogue reads as OOC - yeah, cuz no-one is the same at 23 as they were at 16 - but like can you BLAME people for thinking as such when going from 16 year old “i want to be the best version of me because i know i can fuck up or slip up really easily” dirk to 23 year old dirk requires a WHOLE LOT OF INTERPOLATION

anyways what i’m saying is it is indeed possible to write dark nihilistic Everything Sucks fic and still have it be enjoyable and i’m sort of at a loss because while i liked a good chunk of the epilogue, i cannot in good conscience say that i Enjoyed it, and i think that’s a shame