#also no i have not read hs2

[cobwebears]

homestuck^2 panel edit with my trollsona

[gelarshiesprofruitboarder]

random doodles,, my brain is full of pretty much only them right now. ough

[borkb11]

Guys i just finished reading where hs2 has left off

[demonicimagery]

homestuck reread: i actually like dirk a lot more this time

[freunwol]

i need a dirkjake fic where the author actually remembers that theyre best friends

[strider-odyssey]

Ult!Dirk is the funniest fucking character ever…

He got the chronically online behavior and yet so damn serious like fr mean business? For what? Shut the hell up b4 I downvote you.

[relaxxattack]

Piggybacking off the last anon, what is it you like about Jane so much? I find my feelings on her kind of mixed but I lean towards positive.

okay i haven’t read act six in probably like 5 years so bear with me here. *cracks knuckles*

jane is sooo so interesting and it’s really a shame people miss like everything fun about her.

pre-scratch she used her detective work to literally succeed at tearing down the crocker cooperation, to the point that HIC has to fucking abandon ship and head into another universe to have another shot at her evil empire. pre-scratch jane is also fucking hilarious! if you didnt enjoy her antics with john as nannasprite you must just have no heart

meanwhile HIC breaches a new universe, and her FIRST fucking order of business is to NEUTRALIZE JANE CROCKER because of how goddamn detrimental she was to HIC’s plans the first time around.

not ONLY does HIC pump subliminal messaging and brainwashing into nearly every aspect of jane’s life, she also tries to straight up mind control her basically whenever possible! she ALSO sends assassination attempts after jane 24/7! (people will seriously try to say that jane lived a safe normal life… as if she wasn’t almost killed by walking into her backyard.) this is because HIC is fucking scared of jane, as she very well should be!

jane is also NOT a boring weepy annoying crybaby like everyone and their mother complains about. jane is literally the most fucking supportive friend and emotion-repressing dumbass you could ever hope to meet. jane combines john’s emotional repression and jade’s intentional cheerfulness together into one of the most fucked up cases of emotional repression in the whole comic

act 6 suffers from a LOT of shitty writing choices, but it’s not jane’s fault the whole act turns into a soap opera— and she’s ALSO not the only one who acts all soap-opera-y either! literally all of the alpha kids suffer from this, people just like jane the least so they project it all onto her. despite the fact that she did her very fucking best to NEVER talk about her feelings, to the point where she ONLY started telling people about shit when she was mind-controlled or took mind altering substances to make her do so! and you can say “ohhh that’s stupid she shouldn’t repress things in the first place how dumb” but, one she’s sixteen, and two, everyone eats that shit up when it comes from like. literally any other character.

people (cough hs2 writers) act like she would actually be “pushy” with a relationship on jake— as if she wasn’t literally the one who helped him make the decision to explore dating dirk?? because she thought it was the right thing to do???

jane is incredibly thoughtful and mature and people really throw all of those traits out of the window with preference for a version of the story where she Comes Inbetween Their Fave Gay Pairing as if she wasn’t, again, the one who got them together. jane is also extremely interesting in terms of queerness; she’s got the makings of a really interesting arc, not to mention she’s the only human girl that dresses mainly masc! there’s a lot there that people just don’t care to explore.

people just have less patience for the prospit kids in general. not to mention homestuck fans love to be misogynistic and berate jane for stuff they love the men doing, or claim she’s coming between them when she’s not, etc etc. and then because no one was writing fun meta posts about her, nobody ever rereads the comic to grab little scenes or lines to expand the online discussion about her! and then because there’s no discussion about her, people assume she’s boring and don’t go looking for bits to start discussing, which cycles on and on forever until we have the ripple effects we see of that misogyny today. which mostly consists of, “oh i hate jane because she was a villain is hs2”, or, “i know hs2 isn’t canon but i still don’t care for jane because she doesn’t do anything that interests me.” (and she’s only not interesting because of the cycle i mentioned before causing NO ONE to have meta discussion about her).

idk, it’s been a while since ive read so i could be talking out my ass but that’s what i’ve got.

TL;DR: jane is fucking COOL, she just suffers from intentional fandom ignorance. and she’s also a canonically hot, fat, masc woman, so i don’t know what else you could possibly want.

[professor-pucefoot]

So the upd8 said some FASCINATING things about Jake, but I want to talk about Jane for a sec. There are plenty of things in HS2 that I don't love but think they're interesting to explore, but their take on Jane is still one that I struggle with, even if it's part of a larger narrative plan we haven't seen yet. So reading this line alone was... so validating. Such a relief.

We're also given some good fodder for analysis. When Jake suggested to Jane that she was a bad mother, she took that in basically right away instead of fighting back. She's not beyond hope (or Hope?). What I also find interesting is her conversation about her relationship with Jake, where she essentially says she loves him exactly as he is whereas Dirk always wanted him to change and improve. Clearly, never expecting your partner to grow has its problems and shows some of Jane's dependency on having Jake around - but at the same time, I thought it was a compelling statement on her love for Jake. Entering a relationship with someone who always wants you to be changing, and more importantly, tries to force that growth upon you, is a frustrating place to be where you will never feel good enough. This would especially be a wedge for someone like Jake, who has stated numerous times in this update alone that he does not want to change. Jane is offering him the chance to come as he is and to be loved for all of the flaws he sees in himself. It's overwhelmingly obvious that this does not automatically make for a healthy relationship, but it does demonstrate the difference between Jake's relationships with Jane and Dirk. It's like Jane never stopped having her teenage love for her crush where what is most important is simply that they are together.

This section was more affirmations that this simply is not Jane's natural character! Which is such a relief to have the narrative acknowledge. I think this discussion is also building to something that is to come.

Earlier in this conversation, we see that Jake is the one who cured Tavvy of his peanut allergy - which he doesn't realize! Directly after we see Jake using his Hope powers to change a person's reality, we lead into a discussion on how Jake wants to believe in a better Jane. Maybe she'll never decide to change, but Jake still sees better realities for Jane and believes in those.

So, when Jake goes to kill Jane... Do you think he'll Hope that better Jane into existence instead?

[hms-no-fun]

I know you said you're cautiously optimistic about HS2, but the newest blog post has me kinda worried. The talk of "fixing the fans broken trust" and how even the new writers don't like a lot of story decisions that were made by the old team seem really off to me, like it's throwing the old team under the bus. I want to expect good things from HS2 but when the people working on it don't seem to like the story as it stands right now it really just seems like they might bend over backwards to appease the shitty side of the fandom. What do you think about this whole thing?

this is in reference to the october 30th 2023 news update on the hs:bc website. i give the date because the news posts don't seem to have individual links atm, so if you're reading this in the future you might have to scroll back.

to your worry that the new team might bend over backwards to appease the shitty side of the fandom, i wrote at length in my prior hs:bc post about why i don't think that's gonna be a problem. i'd also caution against reading too much into what james says about the attitude of the hs:bc team at large, for reasons that should be apparent by the end of this post.

i think it's perfectly reasonable to take a diplomatic position towards a fandom that is historically very hostile to this continuation. a lot of people haven't read the epilogues/hs2 and hate on them anyway because of what they've been told they contain, and refuse to question those received opinions on principle. many who did read them seem to have been inattentive or otherwise needlessly aggressive, sometimes owing to a baffling refusal to accept the premise of postcanon. plenty of others maybe just need a reason to think that homestuck is for them again. for this project to succeed, the fandom at large needs to be given a reason to revisit the epilogues/hs2 from a position of safety and critical distance. i have my own barbed opinions about this state of affairs, but it is what it is.

i understand and to an extent share your misgivings over that Q&A post, but it simply is not james roach's job to relitigate the conduct of the hs2 team. to even broach the subject in more than a general sense would constitute the opening of a massive can of worms, because the truth is muddy. mistakes were made on all sides, some worse than others, and to really contextualize where the hs2 team were coming from you'd need to explain the history of the hs fandom, the leadership of the reddit/discord, the overall tenor of twitter post-2016 and especially leading into/during 2020, the history of pgen and the homestuck renaissance, the lack of PR training or oversight or guidance from anyone at WP, the history of audience hostility in homestuck, and on, and on. for what it's worth, i think that context is essential-- but i don't know that anyone working on this project ought to be the ones to tell it (nor do i think they want that responsibility), and a brief casual Q&A post as a halloween treat is certainly not the place to publish it.

and ultimately, none of that has much at all to do with hs:bc. they are not beholden to or responsible for the choices made by the hs2 team. they have been entrusted with the reins of this story, and with that trust comes their own admitted desire to take it in different directions than what was initially planned. the hs2 team did this to the outline andrew hussie gave them; it's only fair that the hs:bc team has the same leeway over the outline they inherited. acknowledging fault in prior leadership, admitting disagreement over past creative decisions, is an olive branch to a largely skeptical fandom. i bristle at some of this because the hs2 team were my friends and i'm very protective of their work and that moment in history, but that isn't james roach's (nor the hs:bc team's) cross to bear. his choice, as the new public face of homestuck, is to move forward rather than linger on the past. it's good that he's burying the hatchet, frankly. i'm sick of that fucking thing.

love it or hate it, agree or disagree, the hs:bc crew has to exercise diplomacy right now. they've reopened the patreon and want to sustain this project for the foreseeable future, ideally without subjecting the workers to intensely traumatic levels of scrutiny and harassment. this involves clearing up miscommunications, admitting fault, gesturing at shared disagreements over story direction, and otherwise putting on a friendly face for strangers. and let's be clear, i know for a fact that plenty on the original hs2 team had a panoply of disagreements with the choices made in the epilogues! the operative condition here is not unquestioning devotion to / hatred of prior material, but a willingness to build upon that prior material constructively regardless. that's what matters most to me, and i have every reason to believe they're taking the constructive route.

i'll end this saying what i've been saying from the start. the measure of this project's success or failure should be taken in the work itself. if james roach blanket dismissed the prior team, but hs:bc constructively evolved in a way that didn't invalidate or undercut prior material, i'd still consider us oldschool hs2 fans the winners. i wouldn't be HAPPY about it, but the art is what we're all here for, and it's the art that people will remember. i think often about how the showrunners of the tv series LOST insisted from day one until the very end that everything in the show had a scientific explanation, despite the fact that they *always knew* this was a bald-faced lie. they told this lie because ABC did not want to fund a fantasy show and would've canceled it otherwise. some fans to this day decry the lack of scientific explanations in the text of the show, even when you point out that the promise of such explanations was false from the start.

point is, there are material realities to leading a creative enterprise. james roach has put himself in a genuinely dangerous and scary position, a fact that's easy to forget with how casual and welcoming his posts have been thus far. but this is perhaps the single most mismanaged property of the internet age, and there's no walking that back without stepping on some toes. over-correction is expected and probably necessary. if it ruffles your feathers, that's fine-- but let the work speak for itself, and judge it on its own merits. all this other stuff is ancillary and will inevitably fade into the distant fog of time.

[salisburyliam]

My WORST to BEST ranking for Heaven's Secret 2 LIs

Oh boy I finally did it!!!! never want to read this book ever again, lmao

NOTE 1: We all know that HS2 has its flaws —S1 feels like a fever dream— but personally one that really irks me is not being able to choose whether or NOT you want to marry your LI. I mention this because many LIs routes are (negatively) affected by this sudden marriage imo

NOTE 2: Winchesto you deserve so much better than Rebecca.

7. Dino - He's never been a character I've been particularly fond of, but at least in HS1 he had some narrative importance (the dynamic with Lucifer was a lot of fun too). His relevance in HS2 is, well, zero & I personally don't feel the chemistry between Vicky and him at all. That being said. Of all the LIs, the only one with whom the wedding makes absolute sense is with Dino - he's 100% husband material.

Being good should not be equivalent to being boring… but in Dino's case, it is. 4/10

6. War - His dynamic with Vicky is… okay-ish? I guess??? They are a hot couple (I personally love his design & his laugh is sexy af) but the connection is lacking & there is no emotional intimacy whatsoever. They keep saying they're in love but are theeey? You don't know each other. Also, if you decide not to k*ll him and don't romance him later in s2 he's literally just a background character. 

I don't think this man is ready to be a husband - he should get therapy first. 5/10

5. Hunger - If it were a matter of rating characters, Hunger would be in the top three. His first appearance is one of my favorite scenes in the book along with the board game moment, lmao. But if it comes to rating him as a LI… The relationship feels rushed, to say the least. Marrying a character who appears halfway through the second season makes no sense at all - their wedding scene is just weird.

You guys met like five episodes ago. How about we start by dating first? 6/10

his smile is unsettling lol 4. Malbonte - Replaying this book so many times has made me really appreciate Malbonte. A soldier who will do whatever it takes to win. I love how everyone assumes that he always, always, has a plan (he usually does). But as a LI? His main emotion is rage and pure indifference. As a husband for life, I don't understand how that could work: I can imagine Vicky asking him how his day was and Malbonte's only response being '….' 😐🙄 Go boy give us nothing!

Seriously though. I really love him as a character, but he needs to join War in that therapy thing. 7/10

3. Astaroth - The first interactions are awful & personally his sprite doesn't help either (he's literally a male M*ley Cyrus) but he has so much chemistry with Vicky, it surprised me. Their relationship feels organic as you progress, but just like the rest of the characters that appear in the second book, it all feels rushed. The wedding option should ONLY have been available for characters that appeared in the previous book - with new ones it just feels unearned.

Still, it had potential. 8/10

2. Mimi - The only female LI (how's that legal) and one of my favorites. tbh I think she's TOO good for Vicky??? lmao. A character who is impossible not to adore (even judgy Rebecca gives her approval), in-laws anyone would love to have, and a route that is equal parts endearing and passionate. I confess I kinda miss her sprite from the first book tho

The only reason she's not at the top of the list is the motherf*cker below. 9/10 

1. Lucifer - Simply put, they feel like soulmates (he was my LI in the first book so that also plays into it). I haate his behavior in S1, but even with that rocky start the dynamic between Vicky and Lucifer is, and will always be, one of my favorites. They have everything: chemistry, banter, passion, vulnerability moments... I love the contrast of the Lucifer from HS1 with the Lucifer in the final episode. That's growth.

I sincerely hope the third book focuses on their married life and, hopefully, Lucifer being a girl dad 😍😍 10/10

CREDIT

[ender--slime]

long post about the 10/8 update incoming!!!!!!!

ok i dont usually post my thoughts on updates bwcause im the number one adhd rambler of all time but here we go.. you get to read them today!!!!!!! SO. one of my big HSBC theories is that Ult Rose is actually the mastermind of sorts behind the whole story. not in an evil way, because dirk isnt even evil, just in the way that she knows a lot more than shes letting on!!! and that dirk and al might not be the only ones with real influence here. this theory was first thought up by my friend @classpectpokerap and its called the "Gloves are Canon" theory and you can read about it more in-depth here and here! as a fun challenge go back and read the epilogues and early hs2 (and also new updates) with the idea that rose knows more than we think. youll get some really fun stuff out of it and hopefully youll be convinced :p

SO ANYWAYS. how does this concern the 10/8 anniversary update?

HOO BOY

first of all, lets get a few content warnings and things outta the way. this lil analysis is gonna talk about some suicidal characters and suicidal ideation so plz !! be warned!!

first off, we know that Ult Dirk is really just afraid. hes not scary or intimidating at all, to the reader, because he killed himself in one timeline and hes really just trying to do it again. he even says this in the epilogues- that he hopes his death is Just when it comes, and he hopes its dave that does it. dirk feels as though he doesnt belong- hes always felt this way. he thinks the world and his friends would be better off without him, and his last gift to them is to create a new universe where they can start fresh outside of lord english's influence for good. he might be the most obnoxious narrator on earth c, claiming that he knows whats best and that hes doing right by everyone and by you, as the reader. but the TAGLINE of the epilogues are "tales of dubious authenticity". it tells you from the start that youre dealing with the worlds most unreliable narrator here. a guy who says one thing, says hes fine, puts on a mask to make himself seem stronger, but is always harboring the most pain. who also thinks this way?

rose fuckin lalonde!!!!! this isnt just beyond canon either. try and count how many times she did some suicide mission shit in og homestuck. and how non chalant she was about every single one. this character trait stuck around, and its especially clear in the 10/8 update.

and who does she reference, saying that he made the right choice to kill himself?

bam. this miserable motherfucker wants Out.

notice how she doesnt say "kill himself". she says LEAVE. as if she knows ult dirk is in the other timeline, alive and well. as if she knows that she could have done that too. made the right choice. the canon choice.

but what does that mean, in terms of Gloves are Canon? well, if you read the gloves are canon theory part 2, it states how at the beginning of candy, rose's ult self visions completely went away supposedly, but by the time HSBC picked up last year, theyre back...and worse?

how? its only been a few days, in universe.

was she lying about them being gone? is it the influence of having the Light, the Narrative, the Eyes of the Reader back on her now that the comic is going again? was she ulted the whole time just like dirk and we dont know it?

to the reader, the rosemary breakup in both timelines was a destruction of rose's character. but to rose.....its what she thinks kanaya deserves. rose thinks kanaya deserves a life without her. rose thinks shes BETTER OFF without her. and maybe deep down she thinks the whole timeline, and the whole universe, is better off without her too.

just like ult dirk.

i have a lot of thoughts on the other two parts of the update, but i wanted to focus on the concept of ult rose with this post because. god. idk her whole section was so potent and not only confirmed my theory, but just made me feel sick!! /pos

[latinfeline]

ok... rc seemingly dropped on facebook a week after the update that heaven's secret and astrea's broken heart are part of the same universe, and also spoiled the species of the lis, sorry to those who didn't read yet.

not to be a party pooper but this killed what interest i had in the plot of abh. what i found most interesting was theorizing about the nature of the identities of the lis and heirarchy of whatever was going on behind astrea. as well as the mechanics of how demons and angels work, i was personally really interested in possesion after this update.

having it as an au for hs basically kills any potential for mystery the series had, as most rc readers are familiar with the world and workings of the hs universe. it also retroactively spoils the ending, because no matter how abh ends, if it takes place in hs before hs2, the apocalypse awaits our cast.

i also think it undermines hsr as the cooler, darker, better written hs.

i have more thoughts but no energy to write them down. feel free to discuss or debate me on this, i actually find the decision interesting despite being against it.

[terraco-07]

HSBC direction and character writing

So the team has released the writer's commentary early to the public most likely because they know how inflammatory the last update is/has been and wanted to get the reasoning behind it out there. Going to be going through it piece by piece here. Disclaimer: None of my opinions and thoughts are directed at the people as individuals and any criticism is directed at the writing itself. With that said, lets start off. Haven saying “this is the update where we’re gonna see if people are really rockin’ with us or not.” Lmao yep and I can assure you that I'm not one of them. I think we're seeing the end results though of a years bleeding fandom here though. Most people who enjoyed Homestuck either didn't read the epilogues or HS2 because they knew it was something they wouldn't like and didn't care for the direction of taking away the kids victory and giving them some new battle to fight while hurting each character. Those remaining are primarily people who are curious, neutral, or liked the official releases after Homestuck ended. Among them I'm sure a fair amount have liked this because this is already a work catered to them and what they want for better or worse. Anyways, moving on. So the next part just goes over everyone liking Yiffy and her getting a voice and all that, not much to comment on here. Which is a non issue except still making Rose and Jade call their kid a type of porn and keeping that was such a choice, but hey silly candy timeline right? Okay moving on to the conversation that matters. Okay starting with Floral: "Kanaya has long earned this confrontation and she’s not going to accept anything less than the truth." JAMES: This is the funniest line in Homestuck. This is so fucking funny because she gets cut off half way through and then the you fucked my wife being memed to hell in back both took any bite out of it and visibly made me cringe to read. Kanaya is mad here but there are other ways to write it. Would have loved to see a rant about "If you loved me so much Jade why would you betray my trust? Why would you not speak to me. Now you choose to spit in my face like this?" Etc etc. I may genuinely re-write every Kanaya part in this log at some point. I did do an alt version already but that's neither here nor there. Compliments for the art which deserve it! BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP GOING "Pretty art" AND EXCUSE BAD WRITING. I've had to read "I'm just using it as a picture book" and "I skipped through the logs" way too fucking much. JAMES: This one was for the sapphics. The most important demographic that exists. ... saying this while obliterating the biggest endgame sapphic romance? But hey guys!! Kanaya's hot right? This makes it all better :) Especially considering compared to Homestuck proper the epilogues and HS2 have just felt actively hostile towards sapphics FLORAL: This scene is also only one small part of the larger puzzle, bridging between what already existed in HS2 to what we want to do deeper into HS:BC. A puzzle that most of us aren't going to want to figure out. The question of if something is bad for the first 500-1000 pages is it worth consuming will always be no. Also points of expanding the border of Homestuck 1 BUT WE NEVER GET TO SEE THIS. I'm going to hit more on this later but Rose specifically there's so little or no direct foundational build up to her current character choices.

MILES: Yeah, seriously.  I felt viscerally going in that it was really important that Kanaya get some time to just be a stone cold bitch, both in the context of this particular marital fuck-up and in general.  She deserves it. So I'm on my hands and knees begging you guys to learn how to write badass powerful women that doesn't involve them just getting angry because their wife cheated. Hands and fucking knees. This goes for any writing in general but if you have to develop a character through purely negative experiences I'm not sure you should be writing. This whole entire scenario with Rosemary is such a cheap drama soap opera point to begin with (like a lot of HS2). Why can't we let Kanaya be her own fucking person and have shit going on, do something in the war, get to have moments like this in relation to Jane.

FLORAL:  Was so excited for this panel when we were first outlining the update. I had a lot of feelings about how we should move forward from the initial Yiffy reveal, but justification for these narrative choices only matter inside of the text itself, and this is only a tip of a much larger iceberg.

That said, what has always appealed to me the most about Candy in Beyond Canon is that it’s an opportunity to explore alt. selves to the max and start finding the missing “Meat” to Candy’s unbalanced and unsatisfying narrative. The irony for me on this is it was written about the fucking Jojo ass posing Rose which is in my opinion the worst panel in the update. Rose being turned into a comical villain for the sole reason of shaking things up in Candy. Justifications in the text is a great way of putting it and before this we had very very little. The idea of telling us afterwards well it was all apart of the grand plan when barely any time ago we have Rose thanking John for how happy she was to have her life the way it is here. Rose suddenly going ahh apathy my true love and going from a loveable and complex character to this flat cardboard cut out is the biggest crime of this update. The I knew you would forgive me part too. Just. GIRL HOW?? Rose Lalonde who first lost her seer powers in Candy, second the same girl who couldn't even see her friends all dying and her failing in game over. This girl? She saw 15 YEARS INTO THE FUTURE and knew Kanaya would just get it. Roll over like a good wife and be okay. I didn't know she was a seer of time now? This is the worst line in the entire update simply because it implies that Rose has gone off the deep end in the least interesting way and is now an unreliable narrator or that Kanaya is actually going to forgive her and holy fuck that would be the actual worst way to take this. Not beating the NTR kink allegations HS2 writers. Also spoiler alert it's unsatisfying because everyone in it gets fucked over by writing choices as baseless and useless as these. You're perpetuating the problem.

HAVEN: The world hasn't felt real to Rose since she was 16, this life is like a game to her. For her, a war is just “something to do.” Also man while this was a route that I didn't like for the epilogues either there are so many other ways to handle this than the one chosen. But that would require a rewrite from the start of HS2 which already put on this shit show. I still wholeheartedly believe that none of the things listed here justify Rose's behavior to Kanaya. As the one anchor point she's had her entire adult life. FLORAL: It’s a little sad that even during a Rosemary moment, it's never really about Rosemary, huh? Then later- "There really needed to be a joke here, too, to sell the emotional drop the next page brings" Kettle, meet pot. Whatever could be the cause for nothing ever being about them and the pair being relegated to background bullshit? Who's to say indeed. But hey! They're at the forefront now, and only for the most basic and cheap drama ways. Also I loathe this mentality about there needing to be a joke. You're clearly writing this for adults at this point a joke isn't required a real look at the situation is. The gag at the end where the convo gets ended is enough to break the tension for the reader.

FLORAL: There’s catalyst events, sure, but ask a few questions and it becomes apparent everything rides on the history of smaller fights, disappointment, sweeped away passive aggressions, miscommunication and unsaid hurt feelings.

This is why writing characters in their 40’s is great and why there is so much to do in Candy. Behind all the patented Homestuck misdirection and narrative unreliability, you’re left with an offshoot full of alternate selves at their lowest, layered in apathy and evidently not saying what they think Once again we aren't shown this. We just get told about it later and that's incredibly unsatisfying as a reader. Explaining it further down the line and doing more justification later does not help this either. I think also the idea that everyone in their middle aged years is jaded and apathetic is such a lame ass direction to go in. The idea that no one is allowed to be happy after everything they went through in the game is still one of the most frustrating things. I'm asking anyone why would someone want to read that? Why do you think the fandom imploded after this and that the people left mostly enjoy either soap opera trauma or torture porn (which HS2 is both)

like sitting down with a highschool friend you lost touch with 20 years ago and have only known about through concerning Facebook posts. So we're fully aware of the problem and just going this is a feature. Got it. So the commentary ends there and I'm just kind of left feeling as hollow and empty as before. I have zero faith that we can dig into any of these characters in a meaningful way but especially the more complicated women. This reads as coming back to them 20 years later so we can write them how we want or how we envisioned them without having to come up with in text validation. Reminds me of late season Game of Thrones writing. Guys how we got here is important. Anyways in summary HS2 remains a dour, unfun read of characters going through a perpetual state of torture and emotional suffering while we forever get told "Wait but there's more!" But hey. Happy Rosemary, glad they won that poll. Maybe the little thing James is going to do for the fandom is just kill them off to save them from this torment. As a writer myself it's just painful to read and I want to re-write it all times

[dingodad]

i've said on here before i actually find the yiffy birth controversy plotline very fun (when divorced from the deeply misogynist baggage jade is still carrying from the epilogues, which is also the main thing weighing down jane's arc lol) in the sense that "the joke" is that it's a "cheating plotline" where it's not necessarily taken as read that any sexual or romantic cheating actually took place. (and even if the epilogues and hs2 have made some pretty clumsy decisions in the name of "being mature" i do think the fact that we react so strongly and instinctually to "cheating" in the first place is a cultural issue that maybe some readers are not mature enough to come to grips with? idk.)

and i think that's even more interesting with the context that kanaya is from a culture that has a very loose concept of "monogamy" but DOES have strictly defined rules for what kind of relationship is supposed to lead to breeding, and obv kanaya in particular comes from a caste whose gendered role was to act as the species' mothers. so the transgression isn't just "cheating" in a human cultural sense but in a very alternian cultural sense too. and like yes kanaya does say "you fucked my wife" LOL but maybe it's important that within the text we have no idea what it really means for trolls to "fuck". like what kanaya sees as "fucking my wife" is not necessarily the same as what a human would consider "fucking my wife" and the way the story is framed works because of that ambiguity. and yes terezi and john do fuck in the epilogues but maybe it's different when it happens in text because troll sex is something that can be vaguely described but not really depicted

[h-ypno]

SO WE DID SEE DOC SCRATCH

I totally forgot how creepy he was, but it's interesting to see that the last line from him was fairly neutral. "Good luck". Not for or against his own control over her

Also interesting to see who Doc considers a pawn or not. Its been a while since I read Homestuck but. Karkat??? I think that red blood may have been one of the humans. "Pawn", not "knight".

My guess would have to be Rose.

Also! Vriska didn't age this time! Interesting! Although we got to see baby Vriska!!! :D

I wonder who the feather will be.... Or heck, even the magic 8 ball... Maybe Vriska encounters her younger self? Maybe the feather is Dirk, since, ink and quill, writing the story, so on

Also this update answers my question of

"if Vriskas good now, she won't be be steroids for the plot anymore will she???"

The HS2 team blew this update out of the fucking water, GENUINELY

[disguisedcheezed]

39, 66, 82 for the hs question thing

39. NOTP?

The other ships with Dirk and John in them(that isn't dirkjohn). And to clarify, I don't actually *dislike* a ship, I just don't want to draw them. And it's too tiring to think about.

66. Have you read HS2? Do you like it?

Kind of and also no. I read the Candy John parts, so I could make comics and put the "real and accurate John Egbert" in that situation, which I did with HS2 and HS:BC. They did him dirty by taking away his entire personality of being a bitch, his repressive habits, and being devoid of emotion in the most fucked up of situations.

I thought John the only "real" person left in that timeline, as a foil to Ult Dirk letting Meat!John into going to a suicide mission so that he could dispose of him, and also because Ult Dirk is afraid of him. Candy!Dirk took the easy way out and John DESERVED be mad about that. Not even the HS:BC could fix that. The art is cool but with the price of my blorbo being reduced into some bland fuck who I don't fucking know.

ALSO, JOHN DOES NEVER DID THE ":B" THAT'S A FANDOM THING YOU FUCKS

It sucks, I don't like it and I am "fixing" that.

82. Favorite Homestuck moment?

(Aside from page 6952.)

It's this one.