#basically just rehashing a bunch of points i've made before

[tyrannuspitch]

Odinson twin manifesto

Part one: EVIDENCE

Look at Thor and Loki as children, imagine you don't know anything about them, and tell me who's older. Can you tell? I'm willing to bet you can't.

No-one in the films ever actually says that there's an age difference. There's no "little brother", no "elder son", no "when I was your age" or "just because you're older". They only ever say "brother", and, once, "firstborn". But of course one of them had to be born first. All siblings have a birth order. That's not the same thing as an age gap.

We do, however, get one (1) implication of an age gap. Infinity War has Thor say that he is 1500, while Thor 1 established (pretty tangentially, through an on-screen time and date for the Jotun war) that Loki is around 1000.

...But Ragnarok explicitly says that there is NOT an age gap. Thor says that the snake anecdote happened "when we were eight". Since Ragnarok comes directly before IW, it seems unlikely that IW is deliberately retconning Ragnarok here, and more likely that the subtle age implications of Thor 1 were just forgotten about. So if IW calls Thor 1500, we're meant to assume that Loki is also roughly 1500.

Proof by contradiction, for the unconvinced: If Loki is 1000 and Thor is 1500, forget being twins - how can they have grown up together? This means that Loki is currently roughly two thirds of Thor's age; what age gap does that translate to?

You could say that Loki is roughly 20 and Thor is roughly 30 - but those kids definitely don't look like, say, a 5-year-old and a 15-year-old. You can play with the numbers as much as you like, but there's just no way to make the ratio work.

You could also say that Jotuns and Asgardians mature at different rates, so the brothers are very different chronological ages but similar relative ages - but wouldn't Loki being so different have been a major giveaway of his heritage? And if they already looked the same age as children, why hasn't Loki overtaken Thor yet?

And you could say that Jotuns and Asgardians mature non-linearly, so they grow rapidly to adulthood and then slow down for a near-eternal youth - but then you have to retcon every single piece of evidence relating to the brothers specifically being children together.

Essentially: These two canon ages are very, very difficult to reconcile. You can take either of them as canon individually, but together, they cause major problems which are much more easily explained by... "someone forgot".

Finally: Why is the succession even in question to begin with? Yes, you can argue that only Loki believes it is, while Thor sees it as fixed - but even then, why does Loki always make it about who Odin favours and who Odin thinks deserves the throne? If the official line were really that Thor was chosen for his age, don't you think Loki would comment on what a terrible qualification that is, and how he would be the obvious choice otherwise?

So. Now that we know twinhood is a distinct possibility, what can we do with it? Stay tuned for part two.

[anxresi]

So, it turns out Chloe IS going to return for S6... this hot off the press from her voice actor... (actually from back in Jan, but who's counting?)

...So why, my dears, couldn't I give a damn?

Probably because, as arguably the writers had no idea what to do with her in S4 and S5 other than strip her of all personality, agency & likability, what's the point in her still remaining?

*She's not going to be a hero again, Manbaby Astruc has made this PERFECTLY clear thankyouverymuch. IMHO, she's far more useful as a tool for him to take out his warped misogynist humiliations on, apparently. Why he doesn't just buy himself a blonde mannequin, call it 'Chloe' then beat it with a wooden stick whilst shouting various profanities within the privacy of his own bedroom, IDK. Maybe it's good therapy for him to expose his weird hang-ups in front of a mass audience? Hey, if it works for him... good for you, buddy! I just wish the rest of us didn't have to suffer to aid his treatment.

*As a villain, Chloe's threat level is arguably less than 0%. She is now written to be dumb as a post, no-one trusts or likes her and everything she says and does seems more cartoonishly infantile with every tortuous appearance since S3. The ONLY time she posed any vague threat is during her massively overhyped team-up with Lila where basically she was little more than a pawn to the Mary Sue Of All Lying B*tches... and those two episodes where she took over Paris as Mayor with a bunch of robots were undebately the most stupid ones of S5. Which if you've seen the competition, you KNOW that's some achievement.

*My prediction is: They're gonna rehash the same tiresome schik we saw before she got on that plane at the end of S5... perhaps they'll give us a one episode Hope Spot upon her unexpected arrival back where it looks like she's changed after attending a 'tough school' in New York/London but OH MY WORD WHAT A SURPRISE it turns out to all have been a ruse to become Queen Bee again. YAWN. She'll move straight back into her old room... Andre and Audrey will reconnect... and it'll be like nothing ever happened. In case you hadn't noticed, this show handles plot continuity or character development about as well as Marinette keeps her distance from her crushes.

*'But where does that leave Zoe?' You might ask, to which I can only respond with a succinct 'If you had the Hubble Space Telescope on full power, you still wouldn't be able to locate how little I care about that particular subject.' Maybe she'll carry on as Vesperia. Maybe she'll get a girlfriend. Maybe she'll do something halfway interesting, and give the viewership a heart attack out of sheer shock value alone. It doesn't matter to me one jot... less because I curse the ground this insipid plot device masquerading as a serious character walks on, but simply because I have no faith in the utterly abysmal writing this show has displayed for years and years now. Chloe could take over the lead role in a SHOCKING twist, they could change the name to Miraculous Queen and I STlLL wouldn't give it a second glance. The fish rots from the head-up, guys.

(Okay, so that's a bit of a lie. I would probably sneak a peek at ONE episode out of sheer curiosity, but you and I both know with HIM in charge the standard won't improve one iota. Plus, it isn't gonna happen anyway... so why am I tying myself in knots speculating about an impossible scenario?)

Anyway, I've nattered on for too long. I'll just leave you by answering Selah's somewhat disingenuous last question there about 'your favorite Chloe line of season 5'.

This implies we were watching 'Chloe'. As far as I was concerned, we weren't. Not the Chloe I fangirled for in the very beginning and got me involved in the show in the first place because I could relate so much. Not the Chloe who got so many other fans emotionally invested in her personal and familial struggles, before her character was comprehensively trashed by a ruinous creator with a grudge.

So in answer to your question Ms Victor, none. Because it simply wasn't Chloe.

[golbrocklovely]

I'm confused, what exactly did Stas do?

i made a whole post about this a while ago, but i'll rehash it as quickly as i can here lol

some of this is hearsay and some of this is actual stuff that happened, just fyi.

stas, at one point or another between 2021-22, had been in gcs with fans talking about colby. i had an anon on here years ago claim that she admitted to a group of fans that she was in love with colby. idk how true that was, so i deleted that asks. but that was at the very beginning of her coming around in the fandom. i've also had ppl claim that she was talking about snc/colby way back in 2019, which was the first time she came around but only briefly.

so you have the gcs, liking ship edits, posting content of her and colby behind a paywall (bc she knew ppl would sign up for it if there was extra content of him and her), answering questions about colby when fans would asks questions about him, ect. that was some of the initial stuff she did.

what became a problem was, especially in 2022 when the core four was a thing, she actively made it more and more apparent that she and colby were "a thing". problem is, he wasn't dating her. he was literally hooking up and hanging out with someone else for the past year and half, someone i've dubbed on here six flags girl. hell, there was even another girl in the mix, pumpkin girl. but she was only here for like a week or so.

he had been on and off with six flags girl throughout 21-22. he literally took SFG on a date WITH sam, kat, abbey, and stas. but stas was doing her damnest to make it seem as if her and him were having something going on. when they all went to europe, she posted a vid from his room, essentially making it seem like him and her were sharing a room (when they weren't bc her shit wasn't even in the room). and also, and this is something alleged that idk if it actually happened but it seems possible, that she was sharing where they were all going to fans on her subscription service which is why certain fans were able to find them easily while in europe. on top of that, her mom was also sharing stuff to fans on facebook (and insta i think) so fans were also able to use the pics she was posting to find them. and all of this is a huge safety risk, which is why i hold it as a main issue i had with her at one point.

the catalyst to what i think caused a rift between stas and colby to occur was malishkagate lol

during tomorrowland, a festival they were all at, colby posted a video of stas dancing and at the bottom it said "malishka" which means baby or babygirl in russian. thing to note about stas is she speaks russian. however, colby doesn't. so it's very obvious that she wrote out malishka on his snap and posted it. and when that got posted (on top of a pic that was on his insta story of her face zoomed in which clearly was taken by her) all of sudden a bunch of fans believed that they were now dating. mind you, they all have terrible cell service at tomorrowland, so most likely colby didn't even see how fans were reacting to anything until basically the next day.

and fans were LOSING IT on twitter. i'm talking ppl were congratulating them on "finally" admitting to dating. stas even liked tweets talking about the malishka thing. some fans were claiming that they "knew all along that they were dating and it was nice to finally see them admit it". and a good chunk of these fans were fans OF stas/were close to her.

mind you… none of that happened. colby never came out and said they were dating, but stas made it seem like that's what was happening, just in her own vague way. and also none of the fans that congratulated them ever took back what they said when it became extremely apparent that they weren't dating.

the almost last time colby and stas hung out was right before snc and kat moved to vegas and had just gotten back from europe. stas posted on her subscription service that she was getting ready for a date, and then later that night posted something with colby, or he posted something with her. however, they didn't go on a date. there was a whole big group of them that hung out (without kat and sam) so clearly… she lied, again, trying to make it seem like her and colby had something going on.

after that, it seemed like everyone kept their distance from stas. kat ignored questions about her, colby started removing comments about her (and shea) from his tiktoks, and stas started tweeting out vague things and saying she felt abandoned and also started up her poetry insta where she wrote about (most likely) colby. she hung out with colby and all of his friends on new years of 2022, and then a couple days later when it was their bday, since her and colby have the same bday, he went and hung out with shea while everyone else celebrated with stas. so….. clearly things were still muddy even then.

things seem fine now. they all seemed to be on good terms with one another. but yeah… she pushed too hard to make it seem like her and colby were dating or had something going on. my thing is, is it possible that something happened between them? sure. but it was also very obvious that whatever it was never got off the ground like she made it seem like it was. so it annoys me to this day how many of her fans and just fans in general take her side just bc she's the one that had feelings for him. he would have been an asshole to reciprocate feelings he didn't have. idk why ppl can't understand that lol

[fadebolt]

Well, this is a pretty tricky one. Neither of these rooms are particularly conventional. And they're somewhat similar to Saint's COMMS, in the sense that it's everything around them that makes them work so well, and not really the design decisions that the devs made when creating them. But with that being said, the design decisions in these two were pretty damn good.

Let's start with L01, a room that's relatively simple, while also being chaos incarnate.

Of course, the sounds and visuals of this place go hard. And it hits so well specifically because of how well the game builds up to it.

Yet despite that… nobody is really expecting the sheer intensity of this place, on their very first visit.

I'm pointing that out partially because it's a bit of a curious case how LttM's "Random Gods Area", didn't quite earn the same level of adoration, many people even complaining that the Reflections of the Moon was playing too loudly… even though it was literally just as loud as in Five Pebbles.

And I think that really goes to show just how much the novelty, and the build-up factors mattered in this instance, and how great it is that Downpour actually aimed to do a ton of new things, rather just being being 'Rain World, but… again'. (Which is actually way more important than anyone would think at first. After all, when all the audience sees is a rehash of something they've seen before, it suddenly becomes really difficult to get them to care about your art. Mainstream media in the last couple years has proven this wonderfully)

As for the actual design of this place - it's large, strangely beautiful, and thankfully, has more than enough poles and red cable-thingies to ensure that you won't be floating around aimlessly for an infinity.

Though the top half is sort of lacking, when it comes to having things you can grab onto. And the place can be a lil annoying if you show up here just to collect some Neurons (especially if you're Hunter or Artificer, and you need to fill up 6 pips… I hope you'll have fun collecting 24 of those things!).

But for the most part, it does get its job done, and it a huge blessing that both room connection pipes have a pole that leads directly to them.

As for its competitor, we have SPIRE, a room with a type of design I've never seen before, even though it fits perfectly into many different areas. (Particularly Sky Islands. Like, if you removed my memories about DP rooms, and just showed me the layout, but without any colors or objects or lanterns, I would straight up assume that this would be an addition to SI)

However, it does work well enough for upper Sunken Pier, an area with a whole bunch of botomless pits.

And there absolutely is a lot to like about this place. For one, you have the uniqueness of the layout, and the idea of a shelter within a small cube high up in the sky (good luck sleeping here if you have acrophobia xd). But there's also the nice ambiance, and background visuals, and the Gooieducks that will ensure you'll have enough pips to sleep (and if you do, then you won't have to worry about food in the next cycle).

My issue with this one is that it's a little too basic for its own good. I think that one pipe was a bad addition, that made the room feel a lot less interesting and memorable. It would have been a lot more effective if it was actually required to utilize those poles on the side, but as it stands, it's really not the craziest room out there.

So I think the choice here is obvious. While L01 isn't a particularly complex or interesting or even well designed room in theory, there are many things about it that make it stick with you incredibly well - way better than SPIRE could ever hope to. It is not my personal favorite room, but I still adore it quite a lot, for its stunning and really well detailed visuals, and for what it managed to accomplish as a whole.

Pick Your Favorite Rain World Room, Day 296 R5

There is a hidden slugcat in one of the rooms (they can be in any color). If u can see it comment or reblog with where they are and if u are first, u get a cookie!

Credit for game screenshots goes to: Rain World Interactive Map, Rain World Wiki and me

Congratulations for day 295 winners!

[jonayariley]

Okay, I've got some additional thoughts on this -

Boring intro part you can skip if you don't care about who I am or whatever

I wanna preface this by saying that I'm currently co-directing Stuck at Home Con (which draws in over a thousand Homestuck fans every year, and has involved some level of conversation with folks working on official content) and directing Friendsim 2 (which is a fan project, but also has over a hundred people having worked on it at various points, which includes several folks who're currently working on HS:BC as well as other folks who've worked on HS content in an official capacity), so some of these thoughts are gonna be tempered by my own experiences as a project runner.

Also, wanna make it clear that I think Sarah's points here are good ones, and I don't wanna just rehash what she's been saying.

But also, I want to offer another POV on this - as someone who came into the fandom in 2019 and became rapidly entrenched in it in 2020. I've put a huge amount of time and effort into the HS stuff I've made (like, over 1.5 million words written and thousands of hours of time spent on projects).

Also, like, the Homestuck fandom is where I met the woman I've been dating for the last two years. It's the reason I helped start Studio June Games. I've met a bunch of my current friends through the fandom in one way or another. It's the reason I got back into both writing and game dev after a bit of a hiatus to do other stuff.

All of which to say - I've never worked on official content, but I'm not some kind of neutral observer here.

Now, on to the actual point of this

IMHO, there were two intersecting issues that hit HS2 (and really all post-canon content) and I think threading the needle between them was always going to be an issue.

On one hand, a certain sub-group of the fandom could be virulently against post-canon content and the team that was making it in a way that was both awful, and often fueled by what felt like naked bigotry. Like, I'm not talking criticism or "I don't like this" but folks talking about how they're gonna "fix" Roxy's Pesterquest sprite by changing the hair to make her look whiter. People being bigoted towards the official writers. That kind of shit.

The approach that was taken to the fandom as a whole - and I feel like the hostility of some of the fans played into this - felt very distant and disconnected. There wasn't much in the way of communication as far as what was going on with post-canon content, period, and that made the whole thing feel inapproachable and, at times, kinda hostile.

I've said for a while now that Homestuck as an official entity in the post-canon era (and I get that it's, like, one or two people at any given time in actuality) should engage more with its fanbase. Not with the kind of bad faith assholes who want to argue about whether a character is trans or not, but the people who are making fandom content and creating stuff and all that.

There is a tremendous amount of creative energy in this fandom, and I think that should be celebrated and explored.

So I think what James is doing now feels like the right call. It's a willingness to engage with the fandom while still staying true to what they want to do with the comic. Basically - listening, but not just randomly following whatever direction the wind is blowing. Similarly, transparency about stuff like how things are organized is really nice, especially given the absolute lack of any insight into things before. This is especially true since money was flowing in from the fandom, and it's nice to know kind of generally where that's going.

I agree that it's not the job of the current team to, as Sarah aptly put it, re-litigate what happened with the previous team and everyone involved. I think that would be putting an unreasonable expectation onto people who are trying to tell a story, not answer for every single issue anyone ever had with how things used to be run.

But also I do not, personally, think that the situation was well-managed before - and that's going to be an obstacle in terms of how the fanbase interacts with your current work.

It is also worth noting that the fanbase as a whole has changed since 2019. Like, fans who might've been kids at the time are now whole-ass adults. People's perspectives and views on things may have shifted or mellowed out over the years. The fact that some of the fandom bullshit/drama has had time to heal probably helps too.

Also, new people have come into the fandom and become more prominent, at the same time that other people have moved on to other things. The landscape has shifted - it's been three years even since HS2 last updated. I think the absolute worst thing that anyone could've done would be to try to jump back into the shit like no time at all has passed and nothing has changed.

Idk - my own feelings about some things have rounded out over time. At the end of the day - I'm 40 years old and I just wanna make interesting stuff for people to enjoy. I want the same for the people working on the official content. I sincerely hope that the people who were being bigoted assholes previously have fixed their hearts… and if not, then I wish them a very stay the fuck away from this fandom, please.

By the same token, it always weirded me out to see takes along the lines of "all Homestuck fans need to answer for their bigotry crimes" when it's, like, a bunch of marginalized creators trying to make stuff in the Homestuck/Hiveswap fandom space. So I'm glad to see that James and co are willing to put themselves out there - I think that'll ultimately engender a lot of good will and tbh most of the people I've seen interacting with the official content now are cool and chill, so if there are still bigots out there, they can fuck off because their energy is very much not wanted here.

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.