#when I say ''the audience / fandom at large'' I'm also talking places like Reddit & Twitter

[hms-no-fun]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[sage-nebula]

I saw a few people in the tags mention that the fandom at large seems to have latched onto Rindo (and Rinshoka) far more than Neku (and Neshiki), and seeing those people wonder at the potential reasons for that and why it is made me think about it, too. To be honest, I was also surprised at how many people seem to like Rinshoka (albeit pleasantly surprised, because I like it too), but I also found myself surprised at how many people seem attached to Rindo as a character when it’s a bit of the opposite for me. I don’t dislike Rindo, but I’m also kind of neutral on him as well, and found myself far, far more attached to Neku (as he was in the first game, at least; he’s OoC and has the personality of bleached cardboard in Neo). In thinking about it, I’ve come up with a working theory, so here are my thoughts. (Note: This is going to focus on the characters of Neku and Rindo, and not so much their respective ships. Any reference to the ships will only be made in passing.)

Essentially, I think it all comes down to character relatability.

In The World Ends With You, Neku starts off as a character who, by and large, is unlikable. That isn’t to say that no players liked him, or that it’s impossible to like him, but rather that he’s meant to be seen at the beginning as someone who, to be honest, is not a great person, at least when it comes to how it treats others. Neku doesn’t just shut people out, he does so aggressively; he tells them to shut up, to screw off, he refuses to listen to anything others have to say and will flat out leave in the middle of someone talking to him. Although he’s not happy with the idea of murdering someone, he’s willing to do so if it means protecting his own life. And if Neku only behaved this way toward characters that the player also didn’t like or trust, that would be one thing, but he doesn’t. Neku treats Shiki, Beat, and (to a lesser extent) Rhyme like garbage at the beginning of Week 1. He expresses disdain and dislike of NPCs that the player probably likes and finds cool, like 777. He’s written in such a way that the player is meant to look at him and say, “God, this guy needs an attitude adjustment and I hope he gets one soon.”

What I mean to say is: To the vast majority of the audience, Neku is not relatable, and therefore he is not an audience surrogate.

Yes, we learn about the Game at the same time that Neku does, because he has Game-induced amnesia and doesn’t remember anything beside his own name. But although his amnesia is a convenient device to teach the player about the Game, Neku has such a strong personality and such strong characterization that the average player cannot self-insert into him to any degree. The Prince calls Neku a “spicy tuna roll” because of the way he dresses, but in truth that descriptor does fit Neku in the sense that his personality straight up kicks you in the teeth because of how strong it is. Even as he develops and becomes less of a jerkass to everyone he meets over the course of the game (to the point where no, he’s no longer willing to murder to protect his own life at the end), it’s still impossible to implant yourself or random characteristics onto him because his characterization still comes through so strong. He’s more patient with Beat, but he still doesn’t hesitate to say that Beat sneezes like an elephant to the point of blocking out Uzuki’s instructions, or to scream “WHAT THE HELL” when he wakes up in the Scramble Crossing yet again at the end of the game. He is still undeniably, unashamedly Neku. And while that is fantastic from a writing standpoint, it can be hard for the average player to relate to, and certainly impossible to self-insert into.

But with Rindo, it’s a different story. Don’t misunderstand, Rindo does have a personality of his own. But while he has his own moments of sarcasm, his personality is, on the whole, much milder than Neku’s. Rindo, for instance, never acts aggressively toward characters that the average player wouldn’t want him to. The closest he gets to doing so is when he acts aggressively toward Shoka in Week 2, but even then, she’s a Reaper and there’s a good chance the average player would be on his side even if they like her as an antagonist. He also mistrusts Kanon, but he does so at a stage in the Game where the other team leaders have betrayed the Wicked Twisters, and he doesn’t act overtly hostile toward her either, unlike how Neku acted toward Shiki and Beat in Week 1. Rindo’s display of mistrust toward Kanon and Shoka is something the average player might relate to, versus be put-off by.

Whereas the Neku that players first meet in The World Ends With You is someone that they would hope gets an attitude adjustment posthaste, Rindo doesn’t incite that reaction. Rindo’s biggest issue is the indecision caused by his anxiety disorder, and not only is that a relatable problem for far more people than trauma-induced hostility is, but the biggest impact that it has on the game is inducing the Replay function when something has inevitably gone wrong. Rindo is nice enough to most people upon meeting them, even though he keeps his distance (while still staying close enough to remain in the conversation). He’s quiet. He’s indecisive, but very amenable to other people’s suggestions. He’s nerdy, in that he likes mobile games, and his best friend is someone he knows wholly through online interactions (Swallow). If Neku is a spicy tuna roll, then Rindo is a California roll: still tasty, but far more mild, and a little sweet. Goes down far more easily and is far more tasty to a wider range of people. Rindo’s characterization is there, but mild and relatable enough so that he can function as an audience surrogate, and does so.

What all of this means is that while Neku is a character that might put-off a good chunk of the audience before his development due to how strong of a personality he is, Rindo is a character that would instead draw those audience members in because they can relate to him, and thus feel his struggles as their own. The surge of popularity that Rinshoka has experienced could potentially also be a result of this: people love Shoka, and they relate to Rindo, and so they want Rindo to date Shoka because they want to date Shoka. (In a non-creepy way for older fans, I would hope.) Whereas with Neshiki, people are far less likely to relate to Neku to the same extent, and so who he ends up with is of less of a consequence to them because they don’t have that same attachment. Even if they like Shiki, they’re just as likely to ship ShikiEri or some other Shiki ship, because Neku isn’t necessarily the common denominator here.

Of course, all of this is speaking generally and doesn’t apply to everyone who likes Rindo and/or Rinshoka. I mean, I like Rinshoka, and I don’t have any bias toward Rindo at all. If anything, I like Rinshoka because it would make Shoka happy, and I feel she deserves all the happiness, haha. But I do think that Rindo’s comparative mildness and easy of audience surrogacy in comparison to Neku’s absolutely plays a factor in the wider audience latching onto him so quickly. He’s meant to be latched onto. He’s not meant to make the player go “what is this guy’s problem” like Neku is meant to in the beginning of The World Ends With You. And this makes sense, because Neo doesn’t actually hinge on Rindo’s ability to get his shit together. Although his final decision to go back and attempt to save his friends along with Shibuya is what wins the day, it is far and away not the only thing that wins the day, versus Neku’s growth being what makes Joshua decide not to erase Shibuya after all. Neo was far less character-driven than the original game was, and as a result, the central character didn’t need to be as dynamic as he was the first time around, and audience reactions have adjusted accordingly. Or at the very least, that’s my take on it.