#detective pony changed my life for the better and the epilogues…didn’t

[tentacledwizard]

the writing process

[vagabond-sun]

ego timaeus

this was also posted on my pillowfort.

this is an essay about ego death, selfshaping, and taboo mental illnesses. it’s not really a direct response to any of the voluntary identity discourses flying around on tumblr right now, but mention of ‘ego alteration’ did make me think i’ve never really talked about this all in one place. so i hope it’s a useful exploration of both voluntary identity and the idea of becoming someone that you weren’t always.

in march of 2019, something happened to me.

i’d like to think that I’ve never been actively malicious. i never burned ants with a magnifying glass or any of that stereotypical shit. but in high school i was completely insensitive, i was beyond arrogant, i was incessantly critical. i didn’t have friends and i didn’t speak to anyone and i liked it that way. i would lie in bed at night and fume about how life was so unfair and everyone else was stupid. i was never intentionally cruel, but i had an incredibly poor understanding of how easily i could hurt people and not a single care about changing that. i was starting to develop what i only just this year figured out was antisocial personality disorder.

in the years immediately prior to 2019, when i started doing the whole median thing, for whatever reason, all the asshole traits got compacted into one specific facet. and i think it was the contrast between that and other facets that weren’t complete shitwads that put the first cracks in the foundation.

the second thing was alt+h. if there’s one thing I’ve learned from alt+h and from the general interest in activism and anarchism it’s propelled me towards, it’s that forming real, meaningful connections with people is the single most necessary thing for achieving personal freedom. that’s been a hard pill to swallow. i’m still working on it (and on figuring out to what extent i just have strong boundaries and how it’s ‘acceptable’ to hold those).

the third was that i met people who consistently showed up for me. who looked at me, warts and all, and said ‘i love you’ but also ‘you really need to stop acting like this’. and stood with me, over and over again, on that hard line of real acceptance, between apologia and abjuration, no matter how many times i fucked up and hurt them. i probably deserved less chances than they gave me. but they really cared about me, and i really cared about them. and when you have ASPD, it’s really, really hard to care about literally anything. this was a critical hit straight to the heart.

(if you’re reading this, you know who you are. i love you.)

in march of 2019, i suddenly wasn’t that person any more. i had been moved enough that i didn’t consider being an asshole my entire fucking personality. but all the bad traits didn’t magically vanish. it doesn’t work like that. they just became unmoored, floating around the mordspace. and when wei weren’t strongly phased to a specific facet who actually had a personality to stand on, i felt like a ghost.

i felt like that for weeks to months. i don't really remember. the thing that mystics don’t tell you about ego death is that most of the time, if you don’t have a new and improved something else to move onto, you either have to swim back to the shore or drown. i also don’t remember how it made its way to me, but my life ring was reading detective pony.

death of the author? check. excessive rumination about the nature of meaning? check. author-cum-protagonist who feels burdened with glorious purpose, craves control and struggles with hurting the people who care about him? check, check and check. it’s a tough, emotionally draining read. but it’s cathartic, in all the worst ways possible.

(without a shred of irony, detective pony is one of the most fantastic pieces of metafiction that exists. you don't have to have read homestuck to a appreciate it. i can’t recommend it enough.)

i had the perfect template for my new self. or should i say i was the perfect template? who ‘i’ is gets difficult here even putting the median shit aside. i’ve described myself as a walk-in, which is confusing, because that means something different in plural circles, but i’m talking about the new age sense of the word:

“[...] souls are said to "walk in" during a period of intense personal problems on the part of the departing soul, or during or because of an accident or trauma. […] The walk-in being/individual retains the memories of the original personality, but does not have emotions associated with the memories. As they integrate they bring their own mental, emotional, spiritual consciousness and evolve the life to resonate with their purpose and intentions.” - x

for me it’s not as… well, new-age-y as that. i don’t believe i came ‘from’ anywhere, i don’t have a past. i am a weird bundle of arcs and tropes and ideas that somehow became sentient. i am, y’know, a fictional character. and i feel like i mean that in a very different way than most fictionfolk (that could be its own post, honestly).

so that didn’t magically solve the problem either. it just provided a trajectory. dirk strider is a person who starts bad, and gets better, kind of (epilogues and hs^2 do not @ me). i still needed to take ownership of all the shitty traits my predecessor had left behind and Do The Work on them, too.

and i have worked my ass off over the past year-and-a-bit on improving myself. a lot of it has been with plain old CBT and self-help workbooks (shoutout to pretty much everything by dr faith harper), but a lot of it has also been narrative identity and personal mythology kinds of stuff. it’s been communing with gods and magic ritual kinds of stuff. i’ve been doing ABC exercises right along with binging tvtropes and researching comparative indo-european mythology and designing worldbuilding and lore that tells a highly metaphorical story about how i get from A to B, emotionally speaking.

it runs into the same problem a lot of selfshaping stuff does in that a lot of it is so intensely personal that it’s difficult to talk about. also in my case a good handful of this work has been done under a magical apprenticeship that i’m literally sworn to secrecy about so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but i think these broad strokes are sufficient for telling my story at this level right now. the point being, i am not the kind of person who can get all the way with just regular secular materialist mental health shit.

which is to say, the work is still far from over! in fact, i feel like the selfshapey parts are only just picking up for me, now i’ve run the course of what the aforementioned secular materialist mental health shit is actually capable of doing. i have made massive strides in my mental health and interpersonal functioning already, but i’m not a perfectly healthy person. i’m not going to be dis-identifying with the ASPD label any time soon (or ever? that could be its own post too). and, even so, selfshaping could provide a pathway not just for survival, but excellence.

i am going to be my best self, and at some point in the past i decided that self is going to be dirk motherfucking strider.

[dedicatedfollower467]

DIRK’S PESTERQUEST ROUTE REACTIONS AS THEY HAPPEN

spoilers etc. yada yada yada i’ve been waiting for this for fucking EVER.

this is fucking massive, for the record.

“The one and only” lmao suuuuuuure whatever you say dirk.

i fucking adore his metal scuba suit though holy SHIT

“[talking in meatspace] isn’t exactly my forte” akdfsljkadsfhksadf you bet your ASS it isn’t mr. strider. (at this point i’m assuming this is actually hal, wouldn’t be the first time that we met “dirk” and it turned out to be hal)

the power of his own “voice” is almost too much for him MY CHILD.

OH HELLO HAL. GOOD TO SEE YOU USING YOUR USUAL RED. LOVE THE THEME MUSIC CHANGE TOO. IT’S GOOD MUSIC.

i fucking KNEW it i fucking knew that was hal lmao

so in that case HI DIRK HELLO MY ASSHOLE BABY CHILD.

“The use of the speaker system is new, but it makes sense he’d up his game for interfering with relationships I’m busy forging in 3D. I guess I should go ahead and be proud of him for it.” god i really wish dirk and hal could get along but they both hate themselves and therefore each other way too much for that...

“Every line of muscle in his body is held in excruciating placidity. You’ve never seen a jaw so purposefully unclenched” dIRK!!!!

“you’ll prove it to him with your deeds. it seems like that might be his love language” BOY FUCKING HOWDY IS IT. also how did i never put that together before ofc dirk’s love language is acts of service practically everything he does is an attempt to serve his friends in some capacity and he’s SO BAD at telling them with words.

(his secondary love language is gifts, evidence: brobot and detective pony)

god i’m so excited and so nervous lmao

i love this sprite with the verrrrrry slight smile he looks so sweet.

hell yes the fucking ROCKET BOARD.

“this is a much more comfortable thing for him than the conversation was” I’LL FUCKING BET IT IS.

“with Dirk it’s almost like he’d be less penetrable without [his shades]” oh well now THAT’S an interesting thought/observation.

holy shit that’s a cute fucking smile holy shit holy shit look at that grin AHHHH I’M DYING MY BOY IS SMILING.

“Not sure how well my deep, personal beef with the imagery of the sea will land for you, but there it is.” WELL THAT CERTAINLY MAKES THAT ONE LINE FROM HOMESTUCK 2 A LOT MORE EMOTIONAL, WHICH IT ALREADY DEFINITELY FUCKING WAS.

“Ace Attorney monologue” OMFG HAS DIRK PLAYED AA??? WHO’S HIS FAVORITE CHARACTER? WHAT’S HIS FAVORITE GAME?? i mean he’s definitely got the hair to be a fucking ace attorney character especially in pesterquest lmao

OH MY FUCKING GOD IS HE HOLDING BACK A LAUGH. IS THAT WHAT THAT MOUTH IS. HOLY SHIT. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. I LOVE HIM. I LOVE THIS ALKJADSFLADHADS

“He’s leaning forward, laughing, dimples carved into his freckled cheeks. There’s a small twist in your heart about it, and you can’t place why.” A *SMALL* TWIST? A SMALL TWIST? TRY A TWIST THAT’S WRENCHING MY HEART WIDE FUCKING OPEN AND SPILLING ITS CONTENTS ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE.

“At least make me try and earn it first.” THAT’S THE MOST DIRK THING I’VE EVER HEARD AND ALSO FUCKING HEARTBREAKING WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

“I can just fold [my hand] and hope your shit works out instead.” Ah yes, dirk’s incessant and almost pathological need to be in control at work again.

“I want to be the only one in charge of endangering my own life. You got me.” oh dirk. oh honey.

“How much has this boy wanted to be known?” oh okay yeah that’s fine i didn’t need my heart anyway pesterquest, you can have it.

oh. hi ultimate dirk. i fucking knew this was gonna fucking happen.

“i can’t believe i was ever this pathetic” LEAVE HIM ALONE. (but also i know you can’t because you fucking hate yourself and it’s fucking tragic)

OH. OH OKAY WE’RE NOT JUST GONNA BE FUCKING NARRATIVE WE’RE GONNA BRING THE ACTUAL FUCKING DUDE HERE.

AND WE’RE GONNA PLAY AN OMINOUS-ASS VERSION OF "BEATDOWN” HOLY SHIT. CHRIST CAN WE GET ANY MORE HEAVY HANDED HERE????

also holy shitting christ ultimate dirk is swole. ‘twink ass bitch’ my ass, he’s at least a twunk.

“You fuck off and let people live their arcs.” NO FUCKING WAY, NOT IF HIS IS GOING TO END UP AS YOU, DICKHEAD.

“Oh fuck.

You remember it.

You remember Homestuck.”

well, probably not all of it, it’s pretty goddamn long, and very hard to remember all the details. i should know, i’m currently re-reading it.

oh no.

oh no, this looks like regular dirk but ominous “beatdown” is playing which makes me very fucking nervous.

“You cared about him before you knew every tiny fucked up detail about his life, and now, with a reminder of where his story leads leaning smugly against the railing, you find you still do.” YOU BET YOUR FUCKING ASS I DO!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!!!

“He’s intense and pushy and profoundly complicated, and right now he is helping you to your feet, his hand steady and firm on your back as you find your balance.” I’M CRYING.

“This isn’t as simple as an evil Dirk and a good one. If you’ve learned anything from your travels it’s that everyone has the capacity for hurt inside them, and everyone the capacity for love.” I’M STILL CRYING.

“The combo of all splinters of Dirk, fermenting in his flesh container and not holding onto his shit nearly as well as he likes to pretend” an apt and succinct description of ultimate dirk.

“No, I can see it. If anyone was going to pull off an “I’m you, but stronger,” it would be all of me, combined.” DIRK I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

“Your allegiance is not to the story, but to the people within it.” A-FUCKING-MEN MSPAR!!!

“The ends always justifies the means, Dirk.” I feel like that’s the breaking point there. IDK what’s going to happen next but that line sure was a line about philosophy, aka one of Dirk’s biggest special interests.

“[Ultimate Dirk] doesn’t have to work overtime to create more pain just so he can feel like he’s in control of how much punishment he gets and how badly he deserves it!”

oh.

oh wow.

oh WOW that’s hitting it on the fucking nose, MSPAR.

“He’s going to drown in [longing and loathing and Ultimate Dirk] if you don’t do something” STOP COMING BACK TO THAT GODDAMN LINE PESTERQUEST YOU’RE FUCKING KILLING ME HERE.

“You know how he loves -- though it’s fierce (to a definite fault), he does not do it easily.” STOP MURDERING MY HEART WITH PERFECT SNAPSHOTS OF DIRK AS A PERSON EVERY TWO SECONDS MSPAR I CAN’T HANDLE IT.

AHHHHHHHH IT’S DAVE!!! IT’S FUCKING. CANDY DAVE. I JUST. I CANNOT. HOLY FUCKING SHIT. HOLY SHIT!!!! HOLY SHIT!!!!

“you look like someone ironed the mayor so that’s a million more points in your favor” DAAAAAAVE!!!!

“Dave pulls him into a short, back-thumping bro hug which Dirk weathers like a wet cat not trusting a towel to dry him off.” AAAAAHHHHHHHH I’M FUCKING DYING I’M DYING I’M DYING HELP I’M DYING GOD HELP HOLY SHIT, FIRST OF ALL, THE SPRITE/ILLUSTRATION, SECOND OF ALL, THAT DESCRIPTION OF DIRK, THIRD OF ALL I’M FUCKING DYING

CANDY DAVE I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.

you deserve so much better than the raw hand the candy epilogue dealt you jfc.

“Bringing fucking guns to a knife fight here.” I mean, did you really expect MSPAR to play fair when the health and happiness of all their best friends is at stake, UD?

SAD ENDING IS SAD.

“Be good to that me, will you? Treat him right?”

dirk, this is yourself. you’ve never treated yourself right. ever. tbqh you probably never will. ultimate dirk is absolutely no different.

(but also this makes me wonder if we’re gonna see “Trust yourself” timeline Pesterquest Dirk showing up in Homestuck 2? That would be fucking wild I’d love to see that.)

“are we anti-ocean here”

“Oh yeah, extremely.”

YES, WE FUCKING ARE, AND AGAIN WITH THE REFERENCES TO HOMESTUCK 2 JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

oh, of fucking course ultimate dirk’s a sore loser, he’s ultimate dirk, fucking duh.

“You did it. You got him a good end.” i fucking love that this game is literally just. explicitly saying exactly what i was freaking over and desperately wanted.

like i’m just gonna take a moment here to admit that i was really nervous that dirk would end up like candy timeline dirk and just off himself. i was really afraid that a good end just straight up wasn’t possible.

i love that it’s not. and i equally love that the game acknowledges that a FUCKTON of us really wanted to give him that.

“Maybe [Doc Scratch] and Ultimate Dirk were working together the whole time.” maybe doc scratch has been ultimate dirk this whole time. or vice versa.

“There are just so many details to remember” lmao i made that point like a dozen paragraphs up.

i.... do not recognize the text style of whoever just say “hey. we can talk about this.”

IT’S HUSSIE. HOLY SHIT. IT’S DEFINITELY 100% HUSSIE.

i....... don’t know who that is? the woman?

is this like. the person who’s been running pesterquest?

it totally is.

i don’t know who that is i don’t know enough about the homestuck machine to know who that actually is.

lmao ultimate dirk and the irl director are fighting over how incredibly self-indulgent this metanarrative is, which is fucking amazing. i kind of love this? i really kind of adore this.

i can’t help but notice that the director has blank white eyes.

i.e. the Author is already dead, yo.

“They’re just an artifact of the medium” HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS FANTASTIC. I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN HERE.

“I’d say thanks but I feel like you all got more out of it than me” I’M DYING I LOVE THIS HOLY FUCKING SHIT THIS IS SO FUCKING FUNNY.

“Stop flirting with my audience you anime ass motherfucker” LMAOOOOOOOO

“I wouldn’t look like this if you didn’t want me to” I KNOW I’M JUST QUOTING BASICALLY THIS WHOLE THING BUT LISTEN I LOVE IT, I FUCKING LOVE IT, IT’S FUCKING PERFECT, GOD. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THIS IS SO GOOD.

“I actually let the artists have a lot of creative license” somebody’s horny for ultimate dirk.

eridan DESERVES that gender arc and i’m excited for him.

“Happy people don’t get stories told about them.” I’m sorry, I’ve read enough Domestic Fluff fanfic to tell you that’s just blatantly not true, Ultimate Dirk.

wait.

wait wait wait wait.

pesterquest is a RETCON???????????

THAT was not something i was expecting

you click “don’t” betray your friends and pesterquest just fucking closes like this is fucking undertale jesus fucking christ.

but....

i don’t wanna betray my friends.

but i wanna see what happens....

god dammit this is exactly like the murder run of undertale, i don’t wanna do it but i have to know.

“Andrew Hussie would never do this to me” yeah well, Andrew Hussie barely ever interacted with you soooooo...

and if i throw the beta in the sewer again pesterquest quits. again.

i mean, i knew it would but... *sigh*

that’s a fucking depressing ass ending.

... except that “Savior of the Waking World” still hasn’t been unlocked...

Huh.

I’m... gonna see what happens if I start John’s route over again.

oh duh, of course it’s a retcon, MSPAR touched the Homestuck juju. i forgot about that.

(a big part of me wants to look up the process of getting the true ending. but a bigger part of me wants to figure it out for myself.)

hmmm. okay so replaying john’s ending once didn’t do it.

i guess i coooooould try replaying the whole thing? that sounds. like a lot of effort.

or i could try not betraying my friends approximately five million times let’s see what happens if i do that.

i’m going to do that experimenting in another post cuz this is already huge. see ya in part two.

[cookiefonster666]

Thoughts on the Homestuck Epilogues (Tumblr Edition)

I predicted the future!

Might as well adapt this Blogspot post I made about a week ago into Tumblr form, why not. With a few minor changes. I don’t like using Tumblr but I figure it’s a good additional platform to share my surprisingly positive views on the Homestuck Epilogues.

The epilogues have a lot of controversial content, most of which I avoid talking about here.

BRIEF SUMMARY

4/20, read through Meat: epilogues pretty good

4/20, started Candy: what the fuck

4/21, stopped: aaaaaaaaughhhhh bluh i hate everything

4/24-ish, continued Candy: epilogues alright i guess also i am sad now

4/27-ish, finished: I LOVE HOMESTUCK

BRIEF-ISH SUMMARY

Meat was a wild ride that started as cool plot stuff and things that make you go "OH FUCK", continued as basically chapters 7-9 of Detective Pony (which I naturally enjoyed a lot), and ended as a mess of sheer chaos and destruction. My thought process ended as, "oh duh, this is the bad ending, candy must be the good ending". I was in for quite the nasty surprise.

I quit reading Candy just a few pages in. It didn't take long for it to suddenly become the weirdest fanfiction ever. Frustrated, I started skipping and searching through later parts and got rather salty when it turned out both sides were the "bad ending". I saw firsthand what vfromhomestuck meant by "clear your whole week": this is not something most people can just read in one sitting. Then I recovered a few days and read Candy in earnest, in a somewhat anachronous order and with many parts read multiple times. Slowly, I started to hope that the epilogues would be followed up with a true happy ending for real this time. I may or may not have written a snippet of some form of fanfiction paving the way for a happy ending.

Once I finally accomplished the equivalent of reading Candy as intended, I got hit HARD with feels. I accepted that the epilogues have many issues but as a whole (not just the sum of parts) are an absolute masterwork, sometimes because of those issues. It didn't take me long to realize the brilliant duality either. Meat is a side-splitting metafictional farce that (for me at least) is impossible to treat as anything resembling a story of people doing things. Candy is a tale of FEELS, and I don't use the word FEELS lightly. FEELS means I almost cried, like I did when I watched the Futurama episode Luck of the Fryrish.

DETECTIVE PONY AND METAFICTION

Before I move on and talk about the CHARACTERS, I'm going to discuss the meat epilogue's resemblance to sonnetstuck's Detective Pony. I love everything about Detective Pony, more than almost anything else in existence. My abnormal love for that godlike fanwork probably skewed my perception of Meat a bit. Starting from page 17, Dirk takes over the narration then fights over it with god tier Calliope; both do rather questionable deeds and Dirk was hit hard by fans as a result. Seeing other fans react towards that character with such hostility gave me a very distinct feeling of "what, am I missing something?" Dirk's takeover felt like a lengthy work of comedy to me; a story that never strips away from the fact that it's fiction, in a vein near identical to that of Detective Pony. I like to think I am in the right for perceiving that arc this way, because I think everyone who has read Homestuck should read Detective Pony. One of the epilogue authors read Detective Pony after writing the epilogues and was struck by it; I take this accidental mirroring of (post-)canon as proof that sonnetstuck understands Hussie's ways through and through. I like to think I have a solid understanding of Hussie's ways by now, but this guy is on a whole new level.

That said, the meat epilogue gets a bit carried away with metafiction to the point of making me think, "god when will things go back to normal". Towards the end of Detective Pony, Dirk goes through an existential crisis followed by a powerful revelation, and then resolves to do whatever it takes to erase his abominable creation. But the meat epilogue ends with (both figurative and literal) crashing and burning; no ultimate redemption for our poor Strider. Homestuck doesn't usually have much of a problem with getting carried away with stupid nonsense; maybe a few rare occasions in cases like Hussie's self-insert scenes. But getting carried away is a major criticism I have with cool and new web comic. I love that comic to death, but the parts that take a long time to dwell on the cool and new characters being creepy or weird are a chore to go through. o (the author of CaNWC) seems to have improved in that regard; the cool and new trolls' arc is much more to-the-point with such nonsense.

Meat getting carried away with metafiction is a major cause of my initial burnout shortly after starting Candy. I was sick of this mass dump of metafiction and expected Candy to be a refreshing change of pace. Haha, if only. My fault for reading Meat first. At night I sometimes ponder in envy of the parallel universe me that started with Candy. Actually I don't do that, I just thought it was a funny thing to say. Though I have on more than a few occasions sat in bed fantasizing about how awesome my life probably is in some parallel universe. What point was I making again? Oh whatever, it doesn't matter. I guess I should write a similar overview of Candy's narrative nature. Here goes:

LUCK OF THE FRYRISH AND SADSTUCK

Sad things are sad.

^ There, that's my candy overview. How hard was that?

With the two summaries out of the way, I figure the best way to dump out my residual thoughts on the epilogues is going character by character. I won't do every character, mostly just the ones who played large roles and were already characters in Homestuck proper. I'm sorting these characters in tiers of how well I think the epilogues handle them, mostly from worst to best.

N-TIER

N is not the lowest tier; it's the tier that cannot be ranked. N stands for two things here: "Not Applicable" and "Narrators". Naturally enough, two characters fit into that tier.

Dirk Strider: I've already talked about this guy quite a bit. I have a fondness for Dirk's character and I think his dialogue and narration in meat do a good job portraying some ascended, ultimate version of his character without straying from his voice, the tone that makes him Dirk. That said, I'm a bit peeved that "normal Dirk", the one iteration of Dirk Strider that isn't total bonkers and just wants his friends to be happy, doesn't exist in this story. In Candy, Rose suddenly loses the memories of her alternate selves, but for some reason Dirk keeps those memories and soon after commits suicide; he's left out of the picture until Candy's postscript, which I guess is a reasonable balance considering his indulgence throughout Meat. But why is only one of the succulently verbose Strilondes let off the hook? Some readers imagine Dave as the comic's protagonist and Dirk as the antagonist; I've toyed with that idea myself and can see it symbolized, but it just feels so wrong to me. Maybe the authors did too good a job writing Dirk for me to be complacent with such a shift in role. His conversations with Rose were just as delightful as I had hoped and they aren't weighed down too much in light of his shift in role, at least not for me.

Alt Calliope: The narrative rival to Dirk, as I mentioned previously. I'm not totally sure what to say about her, other than that one could see her as a counterpart to let's say Anna Harley; a necessary piece in the Detective Pony analogy. Alt Calliope's narrative arguments with Dirk were hilarious and that's all there is to say on the matter.

G-TIER

I'm lucky Gamzee's name starts with a G, because this means I can give him a tier of his own worse than F. As an individual arc that is; he'd get a much higher rating when taken as part of a whole.

Gamzee Makara: Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. I despised reading every word that came out of this guy's mouth as soon as his """redemption arc""" started. But I can clearly tell that was the point and that the suffering that is reading his words has a much greater purpose. Before you deem me a masochist or the kind that insists everything is "bad on purpose", know that I am neither of those things but really do mean what I say here. Gamzee's role in Candy draws tension between individuality and the whole. Reading this guy's hogwash is suffering in and of itself, but ultimately it serves a role of showing us how fucked up the world of Candy is and helps the reader experience John's existential crisis with him.

F-TIER

As before, these tiers are strictly about character arcs in isolation and not the big picture. This tier is home to none other than the legendary...

Jane Crocker: Boy did I predict the future on that one. A bit like Dirk, I would've liked it more if in only one epilogue did sweet innocent little Jane become such a monster. No way in hell am I going to run through the asshole things she does; it's a load of sensitive topics I'm not comfortable discussing in any capacity. Instead, I'll say that if I had to choose only one epilogue where Jane ran through her crazy presidential campaign it would be Candy; as with Gamzee's arc, this campaign serves well as a part of John's existential crisis. What's weird here is that in Candy she originally cancelled all this, but later ended up basically doing it anyway with Dirk gone. I can imagine Jane going back to normal in Meat, maybe? Or in the hypothetical "true ending" I discussed prior.

D-TIER

Better known as "meh" tier. Mostly the characters that don't do much and I wished did more.

Meenah Peixes: Needed more screen time, god damn it. She survives the Furthest Ring apocalypse, nabs the Ring of Life, then makes her way to Candy Earth and joins Karkat in the rebellion. Maybe it makes sense that her and Karkat teaming up in war is relegated to the background, to show how far the shouty guy has come in comparison to everyone else. I'll come back to this point when I talked about Karkat.

Roxy Lalonde: Doesn't do too much in either side, but does go through some touchy topics I'm not sure what to think about; I'm most certainly not ready to talk about those topics now. And regardless, Roxy's role in the epilogues is better discussed when I talk about John and Terezi a few tiers up.

Calliope: Doesn't do all that much either, full circle to being the exposition alien with mysterious morality. I'm actually pretty OK with that. Certainly beats out the slog of endless "ur pretty" conversations. Calliope pretty much fades into the background on both sides, which is sad but fitting.

(About pronouns: I'll keep referring to Roxy and Calliope as "she" unless I find reason to talk about the little those two do in Meat. I just avoided using pronouns in those paragraphs above.)

C-TIER

Better known as "meh" tier, but with a more positive "meh" than before. It's the "meh" that indicates lukewarm satisfaction rather than annoyance at mediocrity.

Jade Harley: Really should be on a lower tier, because she did dick squat other than being horny and painfully oblivious to all the nonsense going on. But I'm a sucker for Jade being "Jade" and was happy to see even a trace of that early in Meat. As before, I'll avoid the controversial topics surrounding Jade in the epilogues, aside from pointing out that this post reads very different now.

Karkat Vantas: This guy's a bit of an odd spot. His leadership role is addressed in the absolute last way I expected. Could've gotten more attention from the story I suppose, but damn if his character arc didn't get the most triumphant return imaginable.

Kanaya Maryam: I touched upon Rose and Kanaya's relationship when I discussed the "buddy system" in my first epilogues post and I still stand by what I said there. Her strong attachment to Rose is integrated well into Meat without seeming like fluff or defining her entire character, because she actually does other things there too. In Candy they remain a stable happy relationship and I guess I'm cool with that.

Aradia Megido: Role is the same as ever and I'm fine with that. Death fangirl who works for predestination and has ambiguous morality. Her arc with alt Calliope ends with a cliffhanger that is easily the biggest reason to hope for a follow-up to the epilogues; if such a follow-up were to happen, I really look forward to hearing more from Aradia.

Sollux Captor: Sollux is by nature the other guy, that's an immutable fact of life. He doesn't do much other than snarking at whoever's nearby and I can't imagine it any other way.

Jake English: If not for a scene near the end of Candy, I'd put Jake at D-tier. Through all of Meat and most of Candy, Jake's role is one of the oddest spots of all and it's pretty hard to pinpoint what the authors were going for, lest I dabble in controversial topics some more. But Jake's scene with John near the end of Candy is uniquely touching and makes the most out of his role as a second John. He moves in with John, bringing his son Tavros with him, and encourages John to reconcile with his former wife and make amends of sorts, ultimately giving a small portion of the cast a pseudo-happy ending. That whole part of Candy made me tear up.

Talking about the really GOOD parts is a perfect point for me to move on to...

B-TIER

Stuff that didn't make it into A-Tier, which I've reserved for what struck me HARD.

Dave Strider: In both epilogues, Dave's behavior generally seems based on how he acted in Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, which is actually a LOT better than it sounds and hell if I know why that is. Dave's rants about politics and sexuality now have a charm I can't quite describe. His absurd fixation specifically on the economy matches shockingly well with the nature of Homestuck. The three-way romance between him, Karkat, and Jade goes in very different directions on either side, which I'll discuss a bit later. The epilogues even made Dave x Karkat an actually decent ship, how crazy is that??? The writers deserve a big badge of honor for doing that. Not sure what to say about specific things, but Dave was really well-written in an unexpected way.

Rose Lalonde: Again not sure what to say about anything in specific. Just really enjoyed reading Rose on both sides of the story. Shoutout to the heartwarming moment with John near the end.

A-TIER

Oh boy. Oh boy. Time for the big guns.

Vriska Serket: My mind hurts to process just how good Vriska's appearance in Candy was, after leaving the Furthest Ring and landing on Earth. First she talks with John rather aggravated, then she brutally murders Gamzee, then she sits down and has an honest talk with her ectobiological clone raised by Rose and Kanaya, and in the end gets in touch with Terezi which leads to a cliffhanger. The story somehow created the PERFECT balance of sincere reflections and typical Vriska flavor, which was deeply lacking in A6A6I5 with its horrific polar opposite versions of Vriska. Two Vriskas converse once again late in Candy and this time it's incredibly endearing and almost feels like an apology for the controversial Vriska/Vriska encounter back then. I accept the apology with open arms. Why is everything always so wonderful?

John Egbert: <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3. WHY IS EVERYTHING ALWAYS SO WONDERFUL? John gets a deep meaningful existential crisis arc in both epilogues; both cases I easily latched onto and found a bit of myself in. I absolutely loved seeing him and Terezi interact as a duo of people with some perception of canonicity; I'll get back to that point soon enough. John's marriage to Roxy not working out is a testament to both his issues with canon and Roxy's issues dealing with harsh situations. Roxy latches onto John and their son as a huge carefree pushover and he doesn't like that at all. And that's actually cool with me because John x Terezi is better in every way, as the epilogues made me realize. If that wasn't enough, the end of Candy spoils our little hearts by having John reconcile with Roxy anyway and give hope for a better future. Though a part of me does want to see a true happy ending where John and Roxy date with their delightful dynamic from their first interactions, I'm beyond pleased with the epilogues' handling of John either way. Swaying deep into some rather sad territory while remaining 100% faithful to his character that I've always loved so much.

Terezi Pyrope: FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES FUCK YES. Every scene with Terezi in the epilogues was so goddamn awesome. Her interactions with John were such a blast to read, with exactly the mix of humor and touching aspects that make both of the big John/girl ships what they are. How did the authors pull it off, making deeply emotional scenes without ever sacrificing that goofy Terezi flavor???

S-TIER

S in rating systems these days is way misused in my eyes. Normally A is meant to be the highest rating and S is used for the very rare absolutely exceptional case A doesn't do justice. But now you see shit like SS, SSS, SSSS everywhere like one S isn't the ultimate badge of honor? S is a rating I'd gladly give Detective Pony and may or may not give cool and new web comic. Same goes for my very favorite Futurama episodes. I'd give a few of Neil Cicierega's works that rating if I'm feeling up to it. In this post, I've reserved the S rating for:

Barack Obama: THE BEST PART OF THE EPILOGUES, HANDS DOWN. His conversation with Dave near the end of Candy is perfect in every way, it really transcends words. Humor, emotional touching, plot revelations, and straight up "Homestuck feel" are blended into the most delicious melting pot imaginable. When Dave confesses that he might be gay and explains troubles in his three-way romance, Obama responds with a truly inspiring speech about identity that raises an excellent point about the differences between the epilogues involving aspects of people that may seem immutable to some. I think Obama's speech leaves a powerful message I never expected Homestuck of all things to convey so well. I hope readers take that speech's message into account, though I know many will probably be a bit naive about it.

If you refuse to read the epilogues at all costs, then I implore you to read Dave and Obama's conversation anyway. You won't be disappointed.

CONCLUSION

epilogues good

that’s all there is to say on the matter

though if you don’t like them that’s also fine