#the epilogues make us feel what weve done

[kozzax]

I've been thinking about postcanon a lot today. I think... the thing is I know a lot of people won't enjoy it. It very much isn't for everyone. The epilogues in particular are intended to be hostile towards readers and are very much uncomfortable to get through.

That being said, I think the way that the epilogues and Beyond Canon work as a unit is really compelling.

Homestuck is a story about telling stories-- this is common knowledge. Also common knowledge is that the ending of Homestuck is the kids getting to leave the narrative. Their happy ending exists only when they exit the spotlight, only when their story is concluded and our paths diverge from theirs.

The epilogues function as almost a punishment for the reader, because we forced that spotlight back on them. We as readers are meant to really truly feel and understand the consequences our yearning for more have on these characters. You want them to be back in the narrative? Alright. Now you have to truly reckon with what you've done.

That's why they're so hostile and unkind. You're not supposed to enjoy them. They're uncomfortable and distressing and rough to get through because you as a reader have hurt these characters by continuing the narrative.

What Beyond Canon does, then, is recognize that we as readers have gone through the epilogues. We understand the horrors we have brought onto these characters. We know what we've done.

Beyond Canon takes this and says alright. Now it's our turn to fix it. Now it's time to guide them back out of the horrors and, hopefully, to end their narratives once and for all. It's the uncurling of the monkey's paw.

We see this so clearly in a lot of the recent upd8s. The heroes are getting their chances to speak out against what happened in the epilogues, getting their chances to truly process their emotions. We still have a long way to go to undo the damage our narrative spotlight did, but we're working on it.

And the Omega kids-- well. They've only just entered the narrative, haven't they! Their happy ending isn't necessarily defined by leaving it, and even if it was it would be leaving the narrative after they've grown. Beyond Canon takes them from being the props that they were in the epilogues and gives them a chance to flourish.

I like postcanon a lot. This is... only part of how I think about it-- the other part is less meta and more about how actually it's all very in character when you look at it through the right lens, but that's a post for another day. I just. I think it's so interesting and compelling ok.

[calhaspam]

Thinking about Stanley and the narrator and... yeah. It's so hard to explain their relationship but I love it. I keep thinking about the skip ending and the narrator being so scared of being on his own, and then Stanley ends up on his own and then he's free but there's NOTHING out there. And then he's back again in his office, and the narrator's back too, and everything's normal. Do you think Stanley remembers every loop? It's hard to say if the narrator does, but Stanley can't even say anything about it.

since stanley is a representation of the player (but is also his own person with how narrator differentiates the player "you" and stanley), i have a firm belief that he's really the only one who remembers all the loops.

there are times when narrator references certain runs and even affects them if youve already done it (broom closet, bucket (1000 bumpscosity), memoryzone), but of all the things he cant remember its when hes the victim of the run (story or ending but i like calling it run). i dont think ive heard him reference the adventure line, real person, and the zending in the 2013 tsp, and weve seen that he doesnt make any reference to the skip button in ultra deluxe either. of course hes not going to reference every other run and i may be assuming here buuuuut...

there is one bit of actual evidence for narrator forgetting runs. if you watch the epilogue of ultra deluxe and once stanley repeats the game, narrator has no clue whats going on and almost panics over it. so yeah its absolutely possible he doesnt remember other runs, though which ones is hard to tell. if you check the figley ending, it shows that he DOES remember past runs of where the figleys were. except for the pink room, which is another piece of evidence he forgets.

it gets really confusing when you think about how he remembers you the player. hes aware of the player but only in certain runs (whenever he says "you", hes talking to you). if this can be considered evidence of him forgetting and remembering, its debatable. but its interesting he only mentions the player when something stanley cant normally do happens. hes also actively hostile to the player. if he cant blame it on stanley, hell blame it on the player. he never holds himself accountable. if you check the skip button dialogue, he ALWAYS blames another party.

and the biggest evidence (arguably evidence cause its based on my interpretation but if my interpretation IS true then WOW) i found is somewhere in the skip button dialogue, narrator implies that he remembers his past stressful ends from 2013 tsp and starts refering the player to dump his angry spiel.

as for evidence that stanley the character remembers. theres the epilogue! it doesnt say if he remembers everything, but it does imply it. theres also the whole process of collecting figleys, which the character will need to remember in order to get them all. (very watsonian interpretation)

oh i actually have a theory that the reason we see stanley in the desert in the epilogue is because he used the skip button ending to leave the office. we know that the narrator is very much dead when you see that desert, so seeing stanley there makes you think.

i actually found this explanation somewhere that the way the world evovles in the skip buttom ending is figurative for the narrators imagination or head, the desert signifying as his absolute death cause its empty and devoid of life.

you can also consider their roles (or your role) in traditonal storytelling! narrator is the narrator, and hes an unreliable one. stanley is the protagonist, therefore the readers way of interpeting the world. the protagonist may not know everything, but the reader does. and since tsp's medium is not actually a traditionally written story and is instead a game, being a player helps stanley (this feels lile a watsonian interpretation too with a dash of fourth wall break lol)

[thewebcomicsreview]

Homestuck 2 has updated! Christmas is ruined!

Previously, on Homestuck 2: Literally nothing happened, and a non-trivial portion of the patreon supporters gave up and quit. Can this update pull a Christmas miracle and right the sinking ship of Homestuck 2? Probably not, but let’s find out! 

We’re back in Candyland, having completely skipped over Karkat and John talking about Dave’s apparent death, because this comic is only interested in long conversations when they’re boring and not about anything at all. That’s alright, I got the gist of it.

When Karkat is finally gone, John still doesn’t move. It isn’t as though he has nowhere else to go, since there are quite a few places he might attempt to make himself useful, for better or for worse.

So, it appears to be morning now, meaning that John’s son has been missing in a war zone for almost 24 hours and I guess John literally forgot Harry existed?

Prediction: This conversation is going to end in some variant of “Where is our son?” “Oh shit!”

ROXY: hey john can u do me a quick solid

ROXY: actly idk how quick itll be but its definitely solid

ROXY: harry anderson says i just missed u being here but could u skip back on over?

What.

So, I went back and checked, and apparently nowhere is it explicitly said that Harry Anderson was also looking for the Vriskas, so I guess he....stayed home? Which makes sense, I suppose, but maybe a “Stay here I’ll go look for them” would’ve helped. I wasn’t the only one who thought Harry was out looking for Vriska too. 

ROXY: sup

ROXY: follow me

ROXY: well were just going to my room so i guess technically u know the way

JOHN: haha ok.

John follows, trying to shake the ominous feeling he got from what she’d just said. He’d been in and out of this house a lot in the past few days. Why should this be any different?

Is Roxy....horny? Is the solid she’s looking for John’s dick? I mean, that’d make her saying Harry wasn’t available kind of weird, but I think this framing is a fake-out.

...

What the fuck is that lamp, Jesus Christ it’s awful. Just a cat’s asshole, facing the door.

ROXY: r u kiddin me rn egbert

JOHN: i’m not? unless you were, in which case yeah lets say i was also kidding.

JOHN: oh my god, i’m sorry, i don’t know why this making me freak out.

ROXY: i remember our past boot knockin with fondness but that is a situation im not interested in revisiting

Oh hey, it was a fakeout. Good job, Homestuck 2. You successfully implied something just through the art. Art which, by the way, looks a lot better than the last chapter. There are backgrounds and everything. I wonder if Chapter 15 was rushed out due to Hiveswap and that’s why it was so weak?

He’s almost embarrassed by how relieved he feels. So what if his ex wife wanted to hook up? Shouldn’t that be a situation he could navigate? Don’t people like to find solace in human physical connection during dire times? Why did the idea of it make his mind white out in panic more than, say, any number of the traumas he just experienced?

I’m not the biggest fan of the way the narration is going JOHN IS AFRAID OF SEX WITH ROXY LIKE HE’S A TEENAGE VIRGIN AGAIN (LIKE IN HS1!) AND IT DOESN’T REALLY MAKE SENSE PLEASE REMEMBER THIS IT’LL BE IMPORTANT LATER, but okay, noted.

ROXY: u said ur house is gone??

JOHN: yep.

JOHN: completely.

ROXY: jeez

Heh. I like Roxy, still. 

JOHN: so i just sat there, watching, trying to figure out why watching my house burn down felt like i was being released from prison.

If this comic actually uses the phrase “home” and “stuck” in the same sentence I’m turning this blog around and we’ll go right back to Winnipeg.

ROXY: aight then no wind bending just use your mangrit

Roxy flexes, the corner of her mouth pulled up into a familiar grin. John feels his guts, so recently calmed, twist up into knots again. Her eyebrows shoot up and the smile loosens. He must have shown something on his face.

ROXY: ok or just like push when i push

ROXY: we both got sick muscles

ROXY: no other adjectives necessary

I feel unqualified to talk about how hard Roxy is pushing the June Egbert thing.

....Is that the fucking portal from Hiveswap under a tarp? Also hi Candy Callie, appearing in HS2 for the first time. One of the Calliope’s is nonbinary, I think, but I honestly can’t remember and I think it’s Meat Calliope? 

JOHN: do i get to know what that big thing under the sheet is?

ROXY: hmmmmmm no

JOHN: oh ok.

JOHN: are you sure? i mean, it seems like a pretty prominent feature of the room.

JOHN: space.

JOHN: wherever we are.

ROXY: and a totally mysterious n COMPLETELY inconspicuous feature it will have to remain for now

ROXY: we r kinda in a hurry here fyi

ROXY: and by that i mean

ROXY: we are in precisely the amount of hurry that means im excused from having to a that specific q rn

JOHN: right, sorry.

JOHN: i will pay no attention to the object behind the curtain.

ROXY: u catch on fast egbert

Oh thing HS2 has not been great at is that it has a lot of plot mysteries that are supposed to keep us enticed but they don’t really get implanted into the audience’s head (Remember Vrissy mysteriously collapsing that one time? Probably not, she did it off screen and the boys kind of laughed it off). This one’s hard to miss.

JOHN: so... this is all downstairs?

JOHN: it seems like you had a lot of work done.

ROXY: well no not x actly

ROXY: were in the old meteor

It’s kind of weird how this meteor keeps popping up like this. 

CALLIOPE: besides, hUman divorces are even more fascinating than i had ever imagined, and being able to witness yoUrs in motion was an honoUr.

This is an unexpected but not unwelcome direction for Callie to have gone.

CALLIOPE: ah right, right. yoU're probably a little cUrioUs as to where the dickens we are.

CALLIOPE: how much do yoU know aboUt black holes?

Oh, wow, we’re going right there, then. This does seem like a bit of a reaction to complaints HS2 wasn’t shmoovin’ enough, but maybe I’m reading too much into it.

CALLIOPE: no, i mean, what if oUr whole WORLD was inside a black hole.

JOHN: ok.

A’ight, that got a laugh out of me

JOHN: ugh, i fucking KNEW it!

JOHN: i'm so sorry.

JOHN: i'm so sorry that i put the earth inside a black hole everyone. ):

I like this conversation a lot. 

ROXY: iirc at least part of y u got so weepy was the fact that u couldnt believe a version of earth existed where ppl got 2 watch more mcconaughey films than you

JOHN: listen.

JOHN: i simply don't think you all appreciated the gift you were given.

Quite a bit, in fact.

ROXY: ur not gonna enter a weird time vortex and change the trajectory of a little girls life with the power of love

JOHN: aw.

Roxy and John have a good dynamic. 

CALLIOPE: bUt Upon her departUre, the rift closed for good. as far as i can see, there's simply no way for Us to commUnicate with the world oUtside the black hole.

CALLIOPE: i woUld certainly be very sUrprised to find oUt that anyone had managed sUch a thing!

JOHN: ...right.

John’s phone has very good coverage, since he was able to talk to Terezi in the epilogues, as we’re being subtly reminded of here with that ... before the “right”. I wonder if it still works after alt-Calliope left.

CALLIOPE: oUr exclUsion from the overarching coUrse of events which governs all reality means that oUr existence here is liable to dramatic and violent Upheaval.

CALLIOPE: to pUt it another way, becaUse nothing in here "matters", we are likely to be sUbjected to things which are a bit bats in the belfry, for no reason other than it's totally insignificant to the wider canon of reality.

CALLIOPE: and mUch thoUgh i am personally titillated by some of the conseqUences of this predicament, it is a degrading way for Us to live. u_u

Okay, so we are now being explicitly told that living in the black hole is fucking with the characters and is part of the reason they make such baffling decisions, like Rose not telling Kanaya about Yiffy, or naming her daughter “Yiffy” in the first place.

CALLIOPE: we need yoU to free vriska from the clUtches of oUr misgUided friend jane, and bring her here, to the singUlarity.

ROXY: weve been calling it the plot point

CALLIOPE: yes, the plot point is a key part of oUr plan

CALLIOPE: as far as we have been able to sUrmise, the only remaining method for escaping oUr grim confinement depends on leveraging the UniqUe properties of this location to create an event of sUch catalcysmic proportions that it simply cannot be contained within the black hole any more.

CALLIOPE: something SO dramatic, so hyper-relevant, that it becomes ontologically impossible for anyone to ignore it.

CALLIOPE: for that, we need an individUal of sUfficient narrative cloUt, so to speak.

CALLIOPE: and to liberate her, who better than the embodiment of the aspect of freedom itself?

So, the plan is literally for Vriska to be such a Huge 8itch that the black hole itself gets sick of her and yeets Earth C out of its own event horizon to freedom.

This is actually a great plan. 

And that’s Hamsteak. This definitely feels like a bit of a reaction to complaints about HS2, but hey, I dig it, I guess? Definite improvement over the last chapter.

[ardenttheories]

i feel the worst part of these latest upd8s is.... 2? 3? things? firstly, it's implied dave and karkat wanted kids too - jade could've ectobiologically had a kid w dave. dave was willing and proposed to her, he did love her. rose lied to kanaya and broke her trust but she also broke her brother's trust.... and dave n kanaya will probably never get to discuss that, nor will kanaya likely be allowed to be upset bc the narrative won't let her :)

Honestly? Something I hate most about the Yiffany situation is that Jade actively acknowledges Ectobiology. Like, she outright states in the Epilogues that she and Dave can’t have biological children because of Bec fusion shit (which implies she was a cis woman beforehand, since she says it’s explicitly because of the fusion that she can’t have children anymore), and then she admits that Ectobiology is an option.

What’s her reasoning for not using Ectobiology, though? 

JADE: but i dont think any of us are really interested in having a kid with ectobiology

JADE: it just feels…

JADE: well

JADE: i think weve had enough of ectobiology for one lifetime!

So... if Dave and Jade want children... but the only way for them to have a child - which, by the way, would still very much be biological since Ectobiology takes your fucking DNA - is through Ectobiology... we’re just meant to believe that they looked at each other and went “actually, on second thought, not having a child is the better option :)”

Firstly, that’s pretty shitty. The concept that a child isn’t worth the effort to have and raise if they’re not biological is outdated at best, and incredibly harmful to be read in something as popular as Homestuck, considering how young people were when they got into it, the wide range of ages it caters to, and the fact that a fair amount of people who are currently into Homestuck are LGBTQIA+ (aka, people who might not be able to have biological children). 

It’s even worse when you consider that through Ectobiology, the way they’ll have that child will just mean that all they’re skipping is the pregnancy part of it. That child will still genetically be part Dave and part Jade. It just means that Dave didn’t impregnate her. 

Yes, I understand that Jade might miss that - miss being able to bond with a child over 9 months while they’re growing in her womb, miss the actual act of childbirth, miss the moments she and Dave could have shared together waiting for her due date - but at the same time? If you are that desperate to have a child... that is biologically yours... with your partner... why would you not go for it?

It does bring up the question if Jade thinks her womanhood has been taken from her with her sudden lack of working womb, which feels slightly transphobic/misogynistic to write into a character who is already being badly coded as a trans woman (implying that trans women aren’t “real women” without the ability to bare children), but then. Why would her literal next option be to have sex with her best friend. 

That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me. If this isn’t Jade having a gender crisis (”my body has been physically altered against my will and now I cannot have biological children, which is affecting me psychologically”), then why does she sleep with Rose? She’s not even the one carrying the child. Hosting that baby inside her body clearly does not mean that much to her if she impregnates Rose. 

So, she doesn’t care if the biological child is made with her actual partner’s DNA. This isn’t Jade finding a way around not being able to bare her own baby. This is Jade deciding that she can’t have an actual biological child without the act of sex.

Jade would rather fuck her own best friend behind both their partners’ backs, quite literally encouraging said friend to cheat on her wife, than have a perfectly legitimate, biological baby with her partner through Ectobiology. In what universe did the writers think this made any form of sense. 

In what universe did the writers think that a woman who is desperate for a child with her partner would overlook something as wondrous as Ectobiology - something that would let her have a baby with her and her partner’s DNA, a baby that would be biologically theirs. 

In what universe did they think Jade would view sexual intimacy as an important part of having a child, an important part of making that child biological and legitimate. When she herself wasn’t born from sexual intimacy. When sexual intimacy would require cheating on her partner. 

Even if we ignore that fucking mess, you’re completely right - we’re never going to see how Kanaya reacts to this. She’s been shafted to begin with, anyway; all we hear from her about the situation is that she and Rose have talked about it. That’s it. She and Rose have talked about the situation off-screen, and suddenly she’s perfectly okay with the concept that her loving wife of several decades has cheated on her and kept a child secret for fifteen years. 

It would have been cathartic to see the conversation. It would’ve been important to see how Kanaya copes with the logic, how it affects their relationship - to see Kanaya be angry, be upset, to show any form of emotion towards her wife’s long-kept secret. To see Kanaya tell Rose she loves her, and that they’ll work through it. To see Kanaya ask Rose why she didn’t just tell her, that she would’ve been supportive, that she would’ve helped, and Rose’s guilt about not telling her. To see Kanaya say she would love to meet her some day, her wife’s other child, and Rose happily telling Kanaya all about her. 

As a writer, you need to add in this sort of catharsis for your readers. You need to help your readers work through their emotions at the same time as the characters do, especially if they’re as loved as the Homestuck characters are. You need to let them slowly come down from the outrage alongside the characters who are feeling the emotions, to see the logic, to see the aftermath, so they can feel legitimised and find it easier to accept what’s happened.

Instead, it’s just... sorted. It’s already done. Kanaya’s okay with it, supposedly, but we are not. We are outraged on her behalf because she has been written to not care. Because we never got our catharsis, so we can never accept hers. 

That’s not even taking into account Dave. I know, in some ways, it might not matter as much to him; Dave didn’t fully love Jade, and their relationship was built on shambles. He’s also Davebot, now - and we have no idea what he does or doesn’t know, what he’s come to terms with on his own off-screen. But even that comes with its own flurry of questions. 

Will he be mad at Rose and Jade? Will he be glad for them? Will he even care? What does he feel towards this child, considering it’s his wife’s child? Will he feel anything? Will he see her as partly his own? 

How amazing would it have been - or be - to see Dave and Kanaya have another conversation? We’ve already seen them talk in Meat, we know their conversations can be cathartic and good for each other. Seeing a Candy conversation between them, Dave opening up about how he feels while Kanaya admits her own frustrations and feelings... it would have been a wonderful. 

It would’ve been something we could compare against the two timelines, something to analyise, something theorise with, something to judge development between in a starker manner - but instead, Dave’s gone, and Kanaya is just okay with it. 

It is endlessly fucking frustrating. Everything about how they wrote this reveal is just awful. It’s such horrific writing practice I genuinely don’t understand how they thought a single part of this was anything close to okay.

[ardenttheories]

oh wait wtf, jade having a dog dick wasn't a joke??? lmao i thought that was a fucking joke this whole ass time because i thought it was straight up weird and, in a way, beastiality. i get it, people have weird fetishes-- but Jade's, what?? 20 or smth??? she should be worrying about college, man, not dog dick. ((I have not read the epilogues or hs^2 and i refuse to lol))

Yup. It’s very heavily implied in the Epilogues:

The thing about Jade Harley is that she’s not as good at personal things as she is at other things. Like science, or mastering fraymotifs, or kissing, the last of which she has definitely put a lot of levels into over the past few years because, well, what else are you supposed to do with immortal godhood once you hit the age where the dog hormones start kicking into overdrive?

And then...

JOHN: and that’s why it was so messed up that jade caught the bouquet!

JOHN: now i have to pretend to laugh and think it’s funny when she makes jokes about being the next to “tie the knot.”

And then this fucking ironic conversation, too:

JADE: id love to have a baby like everybody else

JADE: i mean everybodys been having them. i wont pretend im not a little jealous

JADE: but... i dont think its gonna happen with me and dave

JAKE: What? Why not?

JAKE: If you want i could give that whippersnapper a talking to.

JAKE: Get him to really man up and accept responsibility.

JADE: no! its nothing dave is doing! its me

JAKE: Huh?

JADE: theres no way me and dave could have a regular baby together because im...

JAKE: Whats wrong?

JADE: well lets just say that after all the sburb stuff its done some things to my body

JADE: like merging with bec mostly

JAKE: Have you been trying?

JADE: er... we cant really...

JAKE: What do you think your dog genes or whatever are keeping you from getting pregnant?

JADE: um

JADE: not my....... GENES exactly :\

JADE: i dont really want to get into the specifics

JAKE: Would that rule out a union of an ectobiological sort?

JADE: i guess not

JADE: but i dont think any of us are really interested in having a kid with ectobiology

JADE: it just feels...

JADE: well

JADE: i think weve had enough of ectobiology for one lifetime!

JAKE: Heh heh fair enough.

JADE: ive thought about asking rose to help us but thats so much to ask...

That last part, for sure, hints to it; Bec’s biology didn’t affect her genetics in regard to pregnancy, but if we assume Dave is a cis male and Jade now has a penis as a result of fusing with Bec... you can see why she wouldn’t be able to have a biological child with him.

Also, how wonderful that Jade says she thought of asking Rose to be her surrogate but didn’t because that would be “so much to ask”, yet apparently did it anyway.

Speaking of - that’s how Yiffany, in Homestuck^2, comes to be. Rose and Jade are very heavily implied to have had sex, since Rose mentions her gestation period (the length of time she was carrying the baby) to have been shortened to two months due to Jade’s dog genetics. Jade having a dog cock is literally the only reason that whole “Rose cheats on Kanaya” thing happens. 

Plus this weird concept of “nobody wants ectobiological kids”, as if... ectobiology doesn’t do the same exact thing, just without the actual sex. As if Yiffany would have been literally any different. As if it would have been as invasive, too, as fucking your married best friend - just donating your DNA rather than your entire body and your monogamous relationship. 

So, yeah. Jade’s got a dog cock. We’re... kind of just meant to accept this knowledge, I think, and roll with it. Except that the entire thing - and Jade as a whole - is being treated extemely poorly by the writers, so it’s just something that exists without our consent.