#godfeels 1

[hms-no-fun]

apologies if you’ve written this somewhere before, but in a couple of these #sarahposts you refer to a retcon you made in gf1, what was the change?

oh yeah! i don't think i've really extensively documented this anywhere, so i might as well do so here. let's start with the boring shit and cover the history, then i'll give you the full breakdown of what changed.

so when i wrote gf1, i had no sense that i would ever want to go beyond the realm of this one fic. but i DID have this idea of "the ultimate ultimate self," an entity that contains all selves which is never mentioned in homestuck. funny that THAT’S my first big canon divergence, rooted so deep in the philosophical. obviously the big existential kick of gf1 is this idea that retcon is somehow eroding john's connection to that ultimate ultimate self, or at least to his ultimate self generally. the extent to which this is TRUE remains to be seen, john/june is never an objective arbiter of their own subjective existence, but it is an important idea for the series nevertheless.

the other key ingredient is that for a long time i planned on doing my own audio drama adaptation of godfeels (as i mentioned at the end of this video). obviously i never got around to doing this myself and eventually abdicated responsibility to the far more capable hands of the podfeels team, but i did get as far as adapting godfeels 1 for a podfic (which is what they used for podfeels 1). so i took that opportunity to modify a few things to bring gf1 more in line with how the series’ cosmology had evolved.

RIGHT SO, what are the differences? well, they're almost if not entirely exclusive to the narration. and right from the start, we have a big addition:

[left is my original draft, right is the published version]

when i wrote gf1 i put ZERO thought into how long after homestuck proper it took place. remember that i wrote and released this before the epilogues came out, so it was only later that i adopted the timeline and framework of the epilogues. if anything i wrote gf1 thinking they were closer to *my* age at the time, meaning like 27-28, which might have caused me problems down the line. but this addition is also important because (as i rant about in this recent post) i think it's easier to swallow questionably in-character dialogue when you know that this is six years and change after homestuck. i still don't think the overall timeline gets emphasized enough throughout... honestly ALL of godfeels before chapter 8 lmao. looking back i was shockingly negligent in this respect.

what else?

lol ok sure

this was a pretty substantial addition owing to the fact that back then i really wasn't interested in writing anyone but the betas, and even then i mostly just wanted to write about june and jade. obviously that changed, so i wanted to do a better job of setting up dirk's murky relationship with june. ditto with june and terezi's murky romantic tensions.

this is The Big One. i’m not even sure i could tell you the precise significance of every change here, beyond the obvious one. would you believe that this was before i thought of X as a distinct character? but i still had the sense that the antagonism of the third person narration here was rooted perspectivally, and it’s my opinion that john at the pits of his worst depression is closest to X, the part of himself that judges his every action against the assumed perfection of all his friends. after june comes out and takes charge of her identity and Things Happen, i see X as reflexively turning their judgment outwards (though still with a core of self-resentment), which is how we eventually get the circus egotistica.

big changes here obv

some simplification of text here plus some additions. is the narration here describing jade’s voice breaking through john’s dissociation, or is it something more cosmic? either could be true...

minor alterations here, plus a probably too-cute stinger banging the drum that This Is An Ongoing Series Now Actually

and as far as i can tell, that’s it! very minor changes for the most part, but it’s the little details that get you every time :)

[deathhandsdana]

hold on previous post cancelled. i just realised that i've had this blog for three years, which is less than the amount of time i posted homestuck to what is (now) my main blog. this blog feels so much less substantial than that time. i guess bc i started this blog when i was starting to majorly disconnect with the wider fandom, and i only made this as a sideblog bc i literally could not get rid of homestuck on my dash, and wanted an archive of past/current good art.

[podfeels]

Podfeels Episode 1 Adapt8ion Notes

With Episode 1, we thankfully had our writing work mostly done for us. Sarah had planned to make her own podfic of godfeels, after all, and she had drafted up a script for godfeels 1’s production to that end. As such we just went off her script with minimal changes. You can see her adaptational notes for her writing process on it here!

Her decision to change texts into calls was formative for how we went on to handle things, as well as making changes to tie it into later developments. We had a solid base to work with thanks to her.

That’s not to say we made NO changes to the writing. To emphasize the chaos going on with Rose and co, and to make it feel more like a phone call, we added dialogue in the background of the call to go along with the background sound. Dave and Karkat can be heard bickering with the crowd, and after Rose hands the phone off to Kanaya, we can hear her reciting evil dark magic (read: Karkalicious reversed), as well as accidentally lighting the fire that is mentioned at the end of the episode.

That’s all we had for writing, though. Most of our big choices as a team for Episode 1 was how to handle things in the art and sound departments.

The background was super simple. The entire section took place solely in John’s bedroom. All that took was a simple edit to the Pesterquest background. Some simple photoshop filters and dodging/burning, and I was done there. Easy as pie, not much worth talkin about.

We also had to figure out the sprites for John, Rose, Kanaya, Terezi, and Jade. The first godfeels art had just been released, so we had a good basis to go on. We opted to go for a midway point between Homestuck Classic and girlpillz’s Godfeels art style. From there we had to figure out the designs for these characters.

John was easy. Girlpillz June proportions, classic John design, but looking withered and unkempt. His hair is messier, his eyes are sunken in. This is the John we knew, having spent years rotting away alone in his house.

Rose and Kanaya didn’t require much consideration, either. Rose’s hair had some discussions, but ultimately it’s not hard to predict how the posh goth and the matronly seamstress will dress in their adult years, though that’s not to discredit the designs. The black vest over the purple dress shirt, and the Porrim-inspired dress for Kanaya, both look stellar.

Terezi was just as easy as John, but we did have some discussions about it. Terezi left the end of Homestuck and immediately went flying in space. She’s spent all these years withering but not starving. Did we draw her noticeably skinnier? Damaged? Ultimately, we opted to have her hair grown out and her cheeks gaunt, rather than actually make her break proportions in any way.

Jade, we opted to take in a direction similar to John. On the one hand, our reason for this was based on a mistake on our part. One of us cited a later section where Jade is shown to be falling apart and her house is described as being a huge mess, but that’s after she and June fell out in GF2, and seems to be because of that. So we did pull the trigger on her grossification early. Buuuut also she talks in GF1 about how everyone abandoned her too, so it works well enough. We have her in a basic t-shirt that says “Woof, Bark, Etc”, in the Live Laugh Love font, which I believe was inspired by a piece of fanart I can no longer find. We also gave her the same messy hair treatment we gave John. But she has to keep up appearances, so her eyes aren’t sunken in, but her dog instincts make her a messy eater so that with her depression-laziness, her shirt has some stains.

Sound was also pretty sparse, in terms of adaptational decisions to be made.  First is the creation of John’s ringtone. Its described in the text as “a bad cover of How Do I Live”, so I ran How Do I Live (Bunny in the Box Version) through a high pass filter and called it a day. Making Jade’s teleport was pretty fun, though. Combining the green fiery nature of Jade’s magic, with a bit of radiation crackle for Becquerel and green sun magic, and making it feel Magical Girl-y with the inclusion of the sparkles.

That’s all for the adaptation reports for Episode 1. Episode 2 coming soon, with a lot more to talk about! See you then!

[skunkbert]

getting to the end of legion season 1 and uh. hey isn't this just what happens in godfeels??? these two plotlines are weirdly similar...

[godfeelscritique]

An Introduction:

godfeelscritique is a blog created with the purpose of doing an in-depth critical analysis of the eponymous fanfiction saga godfeels, or: "i dreamt of feeling better". godfeels as a work is a continuation of the internet multimedia webcomic Homestuck.

APPENDIX A: godfeels began as a four-chapter character study of John, later and for most of the work, June Egbert, commonly deliniated from the character's "official" counterpart as June Eg8ert by the fandom. For the purposes of this writing, the character will be referred to as June Egbert for the remainder of this blog.

godfeels, later renamed godfeels 1, was published between March 30, 2019, and completed April 03, 2019, ten days before the prologue of Homestuck's official continuation, The Homestuck Epilogues, was published. godfeels 2, a work spanning three "parts" as deliniated on Archive of Our Own, started on September 03, 2019, and ended on October 12th, 2019. As of writing this introduction, godfeels 3 is still ongoing, starting in November 15, having concluded it's first "part", divergence syndrome on January 03, 2022, currently being in the middle of its run of its second part, double album A: no one does it like us, and double album B: DEATH HANDS. I assume you're familiar with the work to an extent before reading further. If not, in spite of however harsh my writing on it may be, I recommend you check it out. This blog won't make sense otherwise and I'm not here to sway opinions one way or the other.

This recap out of the way, there are a couple of questions I think are worth bringing up. I'll do my best to answer them concretely and succintly.

QUESTION A: WHY GODFEELS?

godfeels is a very fascinating phenomenon to me. By all accounts it's not really the most well-known Homestuck fanfiction, nor is it expansive in its attempt to divorce itself from its context as one, at the time of writing. However, it has a very clear niche it manages to really hit, and that niche is vocal about its love for the work to the point where it is almost defining for its scene. Not really an artistic scene necessarily, but certainly a level of an aesthetic scene. That scene would be the plural transfem with a deep attachment to the original work of Homestuck who links all three traits together into a partially coherent set of signifiers. A scene I happen to belong to.

Thus, I first read godfeels sometime in 2021. And honestly, it didn't do much for me. I've continued keeping up with it, and other works by its multiple creators, out of a sense of respect for its existence and place in the scene. But in truth, I'm fascinated by what exactly makes it not resonate for me in the first place. Therefore, analysis is in order.

APPENDIX B: I'd like to take this question to make a brief disclaimer. Nothing I write here comes from malice. I hold a deep respect for those involved in the project, those who love the project, and even to the project itself, for its cultural significance. This is simply an exercize for myself and anyone who finds what I have to say interesting. I'd ask anyone who reads to refrain from insulting any of the outlined parties.

QUESTION B: WHY NOW?

Truth be told, this is a project over two years in the making. It was sometime around the end of volume 3 part 1 (commonly shortened to 3.1), divergence syndrome. I realized the feelings of the vague curiosity and confusion the work stirred in me on how it managed to evade me completely began to coalesce into thoughts. I realized this would be a good thing to do, for myself mostly.

However, I thought at the time the most sensible way to do it would've been to wait until the work was done. Judge it as a whole, let it coalesce just as I'd let my thoughts. Two years passed, and today I just decided I'd begin straight away. Why exactly, I can't say, but I did come to the realization that these works were all at first written in conversation with other ideas, expecting themselves to be the end of their part in the discussion. I'm a firm believer in judging everything, especially art, on its own merits, and its own framework.

And thus, if any annotations were to be sparked by further updates down the line, I could do just as the work did, and tie back to it when the work called for it. So here I am now, writing this.

QUESTION C: WHO ARE YOU?

You can call me GC. I don't mean to hide my identity particularly, but I do believe in the idea that an author is a paratext to their own work. (You'll be seeing me use that word a lot.) So, I would ask that you do not seek me out, either.

I have made and will make reference to myself again, but this blog will have open communication channels available. If you'd like to talk to me, discuss an idea with me, dispute some aspect of this blog with me, I'd recommend the Inbox, though I'm partial to DMs as well.

APPENDIX C: You're free to make every assumption you want about parts of my identity as you see fit. I will however correct you if I think it's silly. I don't care for identity politics.

QUESTION D: HOW WILL THIS WORK?

I've considered many different ways of tackling this. A single mega-essay, an essay per volume, an essay per part, an essay per chapter. But ultimately, I leaned towards writing an essay per part. That's the process in which the works make the most sense, and the only way I can really conceptualize them being written, given some of the gaps between publishing.

I'll provide screenshot supplements, but I don't really want this to ever devolve into me just restating the plot, peppering it with personal opinions. I'll try to focus formally on both the form and the function of the text.

Again, I believe in judging a text under its own parameters. I don't believe in the characters being "out of character" by the metric of Homestuck, because in that case I would be reading Homestuck. But I do care about its own internal logic as a work, and it's logic beyond as to the intent of how that work was made, and why. Those are the parameters of style and substance, form and function, that I will be falling back on as my ethos.

QUESTION E: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Today, April 10, 2024, I begin with this introduction. Over the next few days, I'll begin working on the first critique, an in-depth look at godfeels 1. Afterwards, I'll continue at whatever pace the process of reading, annotating, and writing follows. I can't promise specific time tables beyond that.

If you've read this far and wish to continue, welcome. This post will be updated with links to read in chronological order.

[godfeels 1]

[homestuck-book-club]

Godfeels Week 1!!

Godfeels is divided into installments which are divided into parts which are divided into chapters so the schedule looks a lil awkward but it makes sense when ur reading i promise 1st November (Friday) - Godfeels 1 2nd November (Saturday) - Godfeels 2: Part 1 Ch 1-3 3rd November (Sunday) - Godfeels 2: Part 1 Ch 4-5 4th November (Monday) - Godfeels 2: Part 2 Ch 1-2 5th November (Tuesday) - Godfeels 2: Part 2 Ch 3 6th November (Wednesday) - Godfeels 2: Part 2 Ch 4 7th November (Thursday) - Godfeels 2: Part 2 Ch 5 If you'd like to read this and other fanworks with us or just hang out with fellow homestucks, join us here!

[assortedtulips]

IF WHATSAPP WAS IN GODFEELS

Dare: hi. Mary: June Darling How Do I Send Emoji (I Need Cock June) Dave: i need cock june also i flushed my damn tail down the toilet again Risk: I neeeeeeeed cock, June. Dirk: ywnbaw Jade: fucking kill yourself!!!!!

fucking kill yourself :)

Terezi: FUCK1NG K1LL YOURS3LF (1 N33D COCK JUN3)

[pochapal]

PICKLE ROUTE

CHAPTER 13: (six)

SECTION (iv.)

Beyond canon and beyond fanon, only ghosts abide.

The quotations in this chapter are lifted from:

Homestuck - pages 5404 and 7022

The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat - page 39

Godfeels 2, part 1 - chapter 4

Through Shadowed Eyes - chapter 30

[homestuck-fanauthor-coalition]

polyfrag

polyfrag (4056 words) by EtchJetty Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Homestuck, godfeels Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: June Egbert/Vriska Serket, Vriska Serket/Dare Egbert, Kanaya Maryam & June Egbert, Dave Strider & June Egbert Characters: June Egbert, Vriska Serket, dare egbert, Dave Strider, Kanaya Maryam, Tavros Nitram (Mentioned), Rufio (Peter Pan) (Mentioned) Additional Tags: Multiplicity/Plurality, Hurt/Comfort, Alternate Universe - Godfeels (Homestuck) Summary: Your name is June Egbert, and you're pretty sure you know how many people you are. (Set after Godfeels 3.1.)

@classpectpokerap brings us a Godfeels inspired work! if you like that story, you should enjoy this one!

[girlbowser]

Thoughts on Neon (Breath+Light)?

Neon (BreathLight)

(icon by victis-stelar)

So! Neon is a fun dual aspect, because it's one of the ones that inspired the entire classpecting system! By that, I mean it has canon representation, in the form of poor, dear, Tavrisprite.

Tavrisprite, according to the ERIJANCENTRAL.COM dual classpect calculator, is a Spy of Neon, or ThiefPage of LightBreath. (Other notable details - Spy is an inverse of itself, and its paired class (active/passive swap within the verb group, so Thief to Rogue and Page to Knight) is Hunter, which is Davepeta's dualized class.)

In a sense, Tavrisprite is the ultimate showcase of what can go wrong with dual classpecting. The two personalities are incompatible as a living being, exploding just seconds after being created. This is obvious in the classpect name itself - Spy of Neon. A spy is thought of as sneaky and subtle -- neon is anything BUT. Their fusion was doomed from moment zero.

On the other hand, Neon itself isn't a fundamentally broken classpect. Obviously, the Tavrisprite fusion had permanent personality-altering effects on both (Vriska) and Ghost!Tavros - Vriska discovering how to cool her fires, and Tavros discovering how to be a leader, even though the fusion was merely seconds long. (For more discussion on that specific note, check out my fanfic, polyfrag.)

Neon also could represent a coming together of John and Rose. A "Herald of Neon" - a herald being a messenger containing news - could fit their relationship, vibeswise. I won't really get into it here, since that'd just end up being a Why I Like Grimdorks apologia, lol. But I do quite like it.

Finally, the popular fan fusion/pairing of John/June and Vriska results in a "Vagabond of Neon." Again, I can't really go into this specific one beyond just, "those vibes feel kinda right for that pairing," but yeah. (Hi godfeels fans lmfao - my new fic about June, featuring her wandering in Alpha Timeline Earth sort of aimlessly yet directedly, does evoke this classpect intentionally.)

I just realized I got to the end of this post without talking about Neon.

@nihilistic-janitor and I named the aspect Neon because it's bright and obvious, yet literally a gas. It's one of the more literal names, since it is just Light But Windy, but I feel like it fits.

Where Light oftentimes blinding and scattershot, and Breath leading in all directions, Neon is a pinpointed alternative. A neon sign tells you where to go and why you need to be there. It combines knowledge and travel in a nicely neat way.

(Special thanks to @victis-stelar for the dual aspect icons!)

---

Please send in more asks! I can do ones about specific Classpects, Classes, Aspects, or meta stuff, like the dual system or how classpecting works with player-fused Sprites.

CLASSPECT POKERAP: 1/5184 COMPLETED /j

[monarchofithaca]

babe are you alright? youre reading godfeels 2 part 1 ch4 again

[hms-no-fun]

GODFEELS RETURNS

on April 3rd 2019, i published the last chapter of godfeels 1.

on April 3rd 2024, godfeels 3.2 will begin weekly updates all the way through May 15th.

see you soon :)

[deathhandsdana]

i think the only thing we (fans of godfeels) are missing is that inexplicably good 45 second long animation of like, the circus egotistica, or saturday 1/2 or even some of the good action scenes off double album. (specifically thinking about the one of jade and terezi bc that one really scratches an itch for reasons i am unable to articulate). oh and ofc the animation is captioned with smth like "this was for my animation final!" or "went crazy for a weekend haha. sorry it's so rough~!"

[podfeels]

Podfeels Season 1 Retrospective

4/13/2024 marked the two year anniversary of Podfeels’ first airing, and in August, we will celebrate the three year anniversary of its inception as a project. It feels so strange, looking back on it all. To me, it feels simultaneously like its always been in my life, and also like it just started yesterday.

I’ve spent nearly three years now spearheading this project, and we’ve expanded from a team of ten to a team of thirty in that time, and have put out roughly four hours of highly produced, full cast, full sound effect audio drama.

That may not sound like much, but for a team composed almost exclusively of first timers at its inception, and with two big hiatuses out of everyone’s control, I’m pretty damn proud.

With Season 1 ending back in January, us currently in the exact two month midpoint between anniversaries, and Season 2 being worked on behind the scenes, I thought now would be a good time to release a bit of a retrospective on our first season. Talk about the process, what went wrong, what went right, and also release our assets for the public.

I’m splitting this into three sections so you can skip around based on what you give a shit about. 

Looking 8ack

Reminiscence about how I got into godfeels through a series of insane coincidences that make my heart feel warm.

2. Adapt8ion

Discussing the process of adapting the work into our medium.

3. Portr8s, 8ackgrounds, and Sound8ites

A release of Season 1’s art and sound assets for your perusal outside of the videos, use as desktop wallpapers, or what have you. 

Looking 8ack

In March 2020, I got covid for the first time. My workplace had no protections for it yet, so I lost my job. And while bedridden with covid, subsisting off a diet of lukewarm broth, saltines, and nyquil, I set my youtube Watch Later (ok, thats a lie, it was my Likes, which i used ((still use)) as a watch later instead of using the actual watch later function, BUT-) playlist to shuffle. And in this fugue state, I stumbled on the video that would completely change the trajectory of my life.

“What I Learned Writing 50,000 Words of Homestuck Fanfiction”, by Sarah Zedig. I vaguely remembered her from some video about the McElroys and from Hbomberguy’s stream, and I had put off watching this because at the time of its release, I hadn’t yet finished Homestuck. So I shuffled it away for later, and it found its way back into my lap at the perfect time. Having now finished the comic, read the Epilogues, actively reading Homestuck ^2: Beyond Canon, and five months in to my first ever real creative outlet in my semi-abandoned video essay channel, I was interested to hear what this goat had to say.

In the video Sarah went into detail about a ton of wider context about the Homestuck Renaissance that I was fully unaware of, and made a very strong case for her own postcanon work, godfeels. Her passion bled through and I figured, sure, why not, I’ve got nothing better going on, I’ll read the story of Spiderjeggings’ No Good Very Bad Transition. Why not!

55,660 words later, crying alone in bed, I was now a girl. Reading the scene of June making her list of wants the morning after Terezi’s return, I said out loud to myself, hoarse as can be, “I can’t put it off any longer.” 

After reading to current I ended up joining the godfeels fanserver, and from getting settled in these circles I’ve met so many people I wouldn’t have otherwise, and come into myself in ways I can’t begin to fully quantify. I went from one relationship to fourteen to now a stable four, the other person in my head shook back loose after a decade of suppression by me (sorry again, Aegis), I’ve become more cultured, I’ve gained more friends, I’ve gained more hobbies, and most relevant of all… I’ve gained Podfeels.

Podfeels proper actually started in a really funny and impromptu way. In Sarah’s video she mentions wanting to start a podfic adaptation of it, but with that being two years past with no more word, a conversation about it cropped up in the server, and it was revealed that it had been canceled for various reasons. Everyone immediately understood why that had to happen. It was an insane amount of work, especially now that Godfeels was entering the territory of a space opera. But the demand was there among all of us, and after almost a dozen loops of us all going “drat, would be cool. I wish someone would take the helm on that!”, I just went ALRIGHT I GET IT and opened up casting. Podfeels was actually originally a joke name made by someone in the server before I even entered the conversation, but we used it for so long during development that by the time we came to release day it just felt wrong to call the project anything else. The name just stuck.

After a few hours of people daydreaming about it happening, and me encouraging other people to take the helm, I finally gave in and opened up casting. Now, it’s important to understand, I had never directed ANYTHING like this before in my life. I made a really terrible sketch in high school theater class and that’s about it. I’ve always been a bit of a natural leader but never anything with the kind of scale this would require, and it showed. I crowdfunded almost all ideas for what to do and how to handle it, and my best idea for how to do auditions was “just send in a few lines of you doing whatever character you want”. And my language was… insufferably fawning. I was hedging my bets at every opportunity. Every development in the project was “tentative”, I was the “director” until someone else took charge, etc. Looking back its actually kind of adorable? 

Look at that sweetheart. She’s so scared. She has no idea the beautiful changes she is in for.

The casting process was an unmitigated DISASTER. Nobody there knew how to audition, and I didn’t know how to wrangle. We were an unstructured gaggle of doofasses stumbling into each other. And due to the limited pool, I was stretched kind of thin on where to put people. Obviously I stand by all our decisions and love our cast, but because I was pulling entirely from the fanserver, options were very limited. I wanted to get everyone who wanted one into a role, but having to do the math of “this person is 40% good at Character A and 60% good at Character B, but this OTHER person is 80% good at Character B and the closest runner up for Character A is only 35% good” was agonizing.

We ended up deciding to make a few demos first, to test our chops as actors and mine as editor. We had four planned. But after we fully produced our first two demos and had recorded the third… I decided we should immediately start chronological production.

Why did I make this decision, you ask? Well. We had a few months until 4/13/2022. If we immediately all went overdrive, me especially, we had the chance to get our first episode out on the 13th 4/13 anniversary of Homestuck, and like HELL was I about to let us pass that up. 

This was the right call, I think, but it did bring us into a BUNCH of complications. First off, it meant we never really tested our violence and drama chops on the houseraid. Second, if I had waited, we would have been able to dodge our first big hiatus, where I put us on pause for a couple months while we waited to see if our Terezi wanted to leave after she floated the idea, which she ended up doing. If we had stayed in prepro, we would have skipped a huge hiatus and not replaced a key character between episode one and two. It also meant that we didn’t fully solidify an editing pipeline, and I was handling practically all editing until around episode 3. Additional prepro time would have helped us iron that out, as well, rather than me breaking myself on the first couple episodes before bringing in help out of desperation. This rush ALSO led to us having to release episode 1’s video around a week after the audio’s release, and with a fucked up background because I was crunching so hard I didn’t notice I’d accidentally completely butchered John’s bedroom somehow! I think I somehow content aware filled the wall? Fucked if I know why!

This is an abridged version because I want to get us to the meat of the matter today and I feel a lot of the longer story is best saved for a video I plan on making down the line, when we’ve reached 50 hours of runtime. For now, let’s move on.

Adapt8ion

A few folks have asked for indepth adaptation notes for what we change in an episode and why. As a general rule, we make changes with three primary motivations. First, adjusting text-based ideas to sound-based. Godfeels plays with its medium in countless compelling ways that, when shifted to a different medium, are either clunky or incomprehensible. So our first job is to translate those into sound. Second, turning narration into sound effects. We don’t need to discuss sounds in the scene, or a character’s tone, when we can just hear it all ourselves now. This then expands into further issues, however, as some things DO need to stay as narration. There’s a lot of pathos in the narration, and often there’s details that can’t be conveyed through audio alone. But by removing just the audio cues, we are left with very clunky phrasing that does our source material no justice. So we have to rephrase entire sections to give them the same resonance, meaning, and clarity while also getting rid of all the things that are now extraneous in our medium. The third main type of edit is bringing it more in line with what comes later. Godfeels has been running a long time and has become a very different beast from where it began. I love this about it, but some ideas have ended up with insufficient preparation, and some thematic resonances are easy to see looking back but may be partially unintentional. We can take advantage of hindsight and bring certain things more in line with the work’s modern philosophies, such as putting an additional focus on the citizens of Earth C, introducing X as its own entity, playing with Dirk more as a villain, and introducing the question of “what happens to the leftover Junes in a retcon?”, all during Episode 6. 

I’ll be releasing a few other posts soon with detailed adaptation notes for every episode in the coming days, but I’ll leave it here for now and bring us to our final section-

Portr8s, 8ackgrounds, and Sound8ites

While the idea for video versions was a relatively late addition to our process, I’m very proud of the work everyone has put into making them what they are. Our art team and video editor do wonders. First up, we’ve got the talkpogs.

The talkpogs were my own invention, but I can hardly claim they’re an original idea. I’m sure something almost identical has been done before. What directly inspired me, though, was the old Polygon podcasts, where they’d have the hosts faces made out of polygons, with one loose and separated, synced to that host’s audio track. It was the first time I’d seen something like that and I knew I wanted something similar to indicate who was talking. From there it all fell into place pretty easily. The outer ring and the waveform is the character’s text color, and the background is their name color. If those two are the same (as they usually are), I apply a slight darkening to the background just for differentiation. The sprites, though, were all the art team. Unfortunately we didn’t have a base early on, so different artists drew to different scales. 

For the art style I told the artists to try to strike a middleground between Homestuck classic and girlpillz’s style which had just been shown in GF3.1.8.E, where godfeels got its first spritework. Otherwise, designs were largely up to the artists but we had conversations about them as a project. Overall I’m very satisfied with the work everyone turned in.

Backgrounds were a more complicated beast, but paradoxically also have less to talk about. We started out with one background per episode, which was pretty doable, but with the season 1 finale, and our expanded art team, we opted to expand out into a background per setting. The first two are just Pesterquest backgrounds I edited by hand, but after that we started having custom art. That was largely due to restraints lifting as the team grew, but it also turned out pretty good thematically, as the first episode with custom art was Episode 3, where June’s egg cracks. We left official art behind as June left the officially plotted course. I think it’s resonant.

Now we come to our latest introduction. KEY ART. We started doing this in Episode 6 and it’s so sick. Don’t expect these inclusions to be TOO common, but… we have some cool things in store here, and I think you’ll all be really excited to see ‘em. For now, here’s our first and so far only public piece of key art, Dirk menacing June against the tree. The final piece of art of Season 1, and the final piece of art of Season 1’s retrospective. It only seems fair.

Which now brings us to my own inclusion: sound assets. I’m very proud of the work I’ve put in to giving each character and concept their own unique aural profile. From the magical girl burning radiation of Jade’s magic, to the shattering static of June’s retcon, to threading the needle of Hammer, Sword, Plastic Toy, Dice, And Doomsday Device in June’s vrillyhoo. 

That’s all for today. In the coming week or so I’ll put together a few more posts, going over each episode in more detail, from point by point script edit notes, to specific art discussions. I also plan to bring in a few people who have been around since day one to talk about our experience setting up the project.

But for now, look forward to seeing more from us soon. Both in the upcoming devposts, and in Season 2. We've been on a hiatus to get our preproduction pipeline settled, and because we wanted to get a few episodes prepped so we can try to maintain a monthly schedule. But we're getting to the end of this phase now, and will be announcing Episode 7's release date very soon.

Until next time! :::;)

[solarpoweredwolf]

oh jeez time to murder my dash with this post unordered even though i'll do the numbers 1. Vriska Serket (Homestuck) 2. June Eg8ert (Godfeels) 3. Oikura Sodachi (Monogatari Series) 4. Kazami Kazuki (Grisaia series) 5. Accelerator (Index series)

honourable mentions: strilondes (homestuck), senjougahara hitachi (monogatari), sakaki yumiko (grisaia), kaede suvorsky (daybreak on hyperion), izekawa hanako (katawa shoujo), verona hayward (pale), viktor (league of legends), felli loss (chrome shelled regios) ... that's enough honourable mentions this is getting out of hand and i forgor tags but i don't think i'll continue this from this post

five comfort characters, five tags

(had to start a new thread, got too long) thanks for tagging me @loulooser ooh i like this okay - nick nelson (osemanverse) - aled last (osemanverse) - peeta mellark (hunger games) - linh song (keeper of the lost cities) - xavier hawthorne (the inheritance games)

tagging @lyssified @mister3127 @raeny-nights-and-faery-lights @weirdo09 @charliethinks

[godfeelscritique]

I'll be reblogging some posts about godfeels by its writers to serve as supplements and references for myself while I work on the godfeels 1 critique.