I hate the whole "canon discussion" the series has taken

[ArchmageIsACat]

desu the authors picking whichever command they wanted from an abundance of options is nothing new, hussie admits to just picking whichever option came closest to what he wanted to do in the author commentaries in the books, out of anything I'd say the toblerone hunts have been one of the closest things to fan involvement in "official" homestuck in a while, including back when commands were still a thing.

also to suggest they aren't listening to the fans just because they aren't going in a direction that a lot of redditors would like is missing a bit of the larger picture, they're active and receptive to stuff on things like discord, curiouscat, and twitter (for the most part) I'd mention tumblr here but tumblr is a shambling corpse at this point so long as its not stuff complaining about "forced diversity" or "sjws making hussie retcon characters" or people condescending to them about how they need more professionalism because they dont take well to people harrassing them over fictional characters being called misogynists.

idk I just dont necessarily think theyre all that obligated to listen to people who aren't coming to them in good faith
which unfortunately I don't think a lot of redditors are

[thorondraco]

desu the authors picking whichever command they wanted from an abundance of options is nothing new, hussie admits to just picking whichever option came closest to what he wanted to do in the author commentaries in the books, out of anything I'd say the toblerone hunts have been one of the closest things to fan involvement in "official" homestuck in a while, including back when commands were still a thing.

also to suggest they aren't listening to the fans just because they aren't going in a direction that a lot of redditors would like is missing a bit of the larger picture, they're active and receptive to stuff on things like discord, curiouscat, and twitter (for the most part) I'd mention tumblr here but tumblr is a shambling corpse at this point so long as its not stuff complaining about "forced diversity" or "sjws making hussie retcon characters" or people condescending to them about how they need more professionalism because they dont take well to people harrassing them over fictional characters being called misogynists.

idk I just dont necessarily think theyre all that obligated to listen to people who aren't coming to them in good faith
which unfortunately I don't think a lot of redditors are

I think part of it is that a lot of the writers are kinda unproven to the general fanbase. Most of them have done a pesterquest and some awesome friendsims but they are dealing with what is seen as main homestuck. So peeps fret. Some peeps get angry and aggressive. And more so many fear that they can't differentiate good faith criticism and an attack. Albeit that could simply be because of a deluge of negatives.

The forced diversity stuff i don't believe is even going on. Have non of them read act 5? An entire race of bisexual mofos man! But i do understand the fear. The people involved are very opinionated and proud sorts. I believe all of them, even the more vocal ones, are fully capable of not turning Homestuck into a platform for their beliefs and not let the headcanons and opinions override the fact its a team effort, and hussie is the boss. But it is a bit concerning and remains a not impossible thing.

Also I think people take their pretentious attitudes to be literally pretentious when talking about canon and stuff rather than..Pretending to be pretentious like Hussie can be? There is literally a thread here complaining about it when its probably part of the act?

Either way they have yet to be proven to most peeps, even though Hussie is literally still the head of whatpumpkin and the shit it is doing. I personally have a lot of faith.

[PilotBlackSmith]

BIZARRELY this is something that continues to be discontinued despite the claims for more community interaction from the fans.

The "community interaction" they meant was taking input from twitter
honestly I WISH they listened to reddit, even those guys have better opinions
anyways I don't think there's any point in discussing this since the direction the story is going to take has arealdy been decided and there's really nothing we can do

[Dream Muttman]

idk I just dont necessarily think theyre all that obligated to listen to people who aren't coming to them in good faith
which unfortunately I don't think a lot of redditors are

I don't think it makes much sense for them to expect much good faith when the by-pecadillos-transphobic villain of the new act of Homestuck has been set up as an actonetofive-er in the genwunner sense. They fired the first salvo against that part of the fandom, undeniably. What the fans that can write in more than 280 characters want is very different to what the Twitter fans want, and it doesn't come down to reader commands.

I, for one, wish Homestuck^2 was a set of tools for editing and hosting your own version of Homestuck, changed from the original. That would actually put the power in the hands of fans, and would let things like June Egbert into the canon of Homestuck by their hand. Instead, what "canon is up to you" means nowadays is "if your canon is not our canon, you're probably part of a societal problem".

[calamityCons]

I don't think it makes much sense for them to expect much good faith when the by-pecadillos-transphobic villain of the new act of Homestuck has been set up as an actonetofive-er in the genwunner sense.

You know, this is actually a really eye-opening thing for me. Having interacted with Genwunners from both Transformers and Pokémon fandoms, I've found them to be caustic and difficult to get along with, because they often ignored me or would insist I stop "wasting my time" with things like Ruby & Sapphire or Transformers: Animated fanart. In many ways Pokémon and Transformers have tried new things multiple times and can come up with some really interesting and entertaining new ideas that still fit within the franchise. With Homestuck, I find that the current direction just gets so heady and meta and nearly incomprehensible that I just kinda. Wonder what a Homestuck Reboot would be like?

Either way, I'm definitely going to rethink my stance on Homestuck's acts now that I've been alerted to the idea of "oh shit maybe I'm a genwunner in this way, what does this mean?"

[gutza1]

Honestly, I don't think Star Wars or Transformers is a good comparison because the newest and controversial entries in those franchises are still recognizably Star Wars or Transformers, while Homestuck suffered a complete 180 in direction. Like, the Sburb stuff become completely irrelevant and the hole that it used to fill is now filled with meta stuff. It's like if Star Wars stopped being about the Force and started being an edgy military sci-fi shooter setting, or if Transformers stopped being about giant robots and started being about some random human assholes that nobody likes (oh wait, that's basically Bayformers).

[calamityCons]

That's also a good point. I have to like, ruminate on this idea of what is the biggest difference in Homestuck vs Homestuck^2, or even A1-5 vs A6+, that makes it so unpalatable to me while in other franchises (Star Wars, Pokémon, Transformers) this sort of thing is something I can more easily brush off and either accept it and explore Iteration Number Five of a Pokémon game, or ignore it and leave it alone for the people who do care for it to enjoy themselves talking about Star Wars' Expanded Universe.

On another note, I think it's really heartwarming to think of Homestuck as being on the same level as sci-fi and fantasy giants like Transformers, Star Wars, and Pokémon. It's certainly not as big as those franchises are, but to imagine a simple Internet Quest-type adventure evolving into something to that scale of viewership and influence is mind boggling.

[ThePungeonMaster]

I honestly find all this division between fans to be incredibly distressing, especially as the more more displeased of us grow more and more angry about the direction of the story. Really, the main problem is the writers don't seem to be taking the criticism to heart. It seems that they are just using strawman arguments to write off sections of the community that they don't agree with (ie, people who prefer acts 1-5, people who don't like the idea of John/Roxy/Vriska being trans) instead of just taking the time to actually address those fears. At the least I want to see some confirmation that those of us dissatisfied with the story as it stands are being listened to, because it feels like them listening to the fanbase is just them listening to the part of the fanbase that agrees with them. Issue some kind of deceleration on these forums that says "yea, what you guys think is important to us, and we will try to adapt it into the story going forward." Do something at least, before the community becomes irreparably fractured.

[egg]

snip

The worst part is that because Homestuck^2 isn't paid for, you can't do like an EA Star Wars and just not... buy it, which will force them to at least listen a little bit. Sure, you can just not subscribe to the patreon, but the team working on Homestuck^2 was already surviving without it. So, if they choose to not listen, that's... all that's gonna happen. There are no consequences for not listening besides an angry fanbase, and one that can't really do much about it. Being mad at the team is one thing, but being completely powerless about it is another entirely.

[pfeffer-29]

snip

The worst part is that because Homestuck^2 isn't paid for, you can't do like an EA Star Wars and just not... buy it, which will force them to at least listen a little bit. Sure, you can just not subscribe to the patreon, but the team working on Homestuck^2 was already surviving without it. So, if they choose to not listen, that's... all that's gonna happen. There are no consequences for not listening besides an angry fanbase, and one that can't really do much about it. Being mad at the team is one thing, but being completely powerless about it is another entirely.

The consequences if the writers continue to ignore the angrier fans are not nonexistent. The Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/homestuck) doesn't just fund Homestuck^2--it funds What Pumpkin itself and "new projects from What Pumpkin". In other words, the staff is relying on Homestuck^2 for a portion of their income. If the writers do not listen to the angrier side of the fandom, they will alienate potential patrons and lose potential money. If the writers do not listen, Hiveswap will be affected. This sucks for everyone. Sure, the team might survive, but there's a reason Homestuck^2 happened the way it did, and I don't think it was because the writers had a story to tell. At least, not in the project's conception.

I have no way of knowing whether they understand this or not, but I hope desperately that they do. We've become more active, sure, but have our numbers grown significantly since the Epilogues hit? The Homestuck franchise has two entry points: Hiveswap and Homestuck proper. That's it. Homestuck^2 and the Epilogues require one to have read the whole 8000-page webcomic. The fandom is not growing nearly as fast as in the days when Homestuck was running. There's no possible way the Patreon would make even a fraction of the money the original Hiveswap Kickstarter did anyway. People can choose not to support it, sure, but if we don't support HS^2, we don't support Hiveswap.

So a frustrated fan is stuck between a rock and a hard place. One could ignore the Patreon entirely, and not support other Homestuck properties which one might actually like, possibly dooming the franchise to a slow, painful heat death. Or, one could ruefully donate to the Patreon, knowing that it funds HS^2 as well as everything else.

This would not be a problem if such a massive chunk of the fanbase wasn't dissatisfied with most of the content we receive. This would be much less of a problem if the "canon discussion direction the series has taken" was executed in a way that pleased most fans, or simply didn't happen at all. The angry fans are angry at many things, but this is one of the biggest reasons for their ire.

[PilotBlackSmith]

I don't have any money to give to the WP patreon, but if I had and Homestuck was in it's early days, I would absolutely be supporting homestuck
Homestuck in it's first acts are prime "please fund us through patreon" material, but everything after act 6 takes such a nosedive that saying "please pay us for more" sounds less like a humble request and more like a threat

[ThePungeonMaster]

I don't have any money to give to the WP patreon, but if I had and Homestuck was in it's early days, I would absolutely be supporting homestuck
Homestuck in it's first acts are prime "please fund us through patreon" material, but everything after act 6 takes such a nosedive that saying "please pay us for more" sounds less like a humble request and more like a threat

I have to ask: What exactly is the beef that some people have with Homestuck act 6 onwards? The start of act 6 didn't mark much of a major shift in tone for me, (at least not nearly as drastic as the epilogues), and I think that cranking up everything that made Homestuck unique up to 11, stuff like the time shenanigans and ridiculously large cast, was ingenious and likely is what cemented my affection for Homestuck.

[egg]

I don't have any money to give to the WP patreon, but if I had and Homestuck was in it's early days, I would absolutely be supporting homestuck
Homestuck in it's first acts are prime "please fund us through patreon" material, but everything after act 6 takes such a nosedive that saying "please pay us for more" sounds less like a humble request and more like a threat

I have to ask: What exactly is the beef that some people have with Homestuck act 6 onwards? The start of act 6 didn't mark much of a major shift in tone for me, (at least not nearly as drastic as the epilogues), and I think that cranking up everything that made Homestuck unique up to 11, stuff like the time shenanigans and ridiculously large cast, was ingenious and likely is what cemented my affection for Homestuck.

As far as I know Act 6 only started being a problem until later on for archival readers, and for update readers there was a large pause between Cascade and Act 6 that made people pretty agitated. Either way, from all the alpha kid worship on Tumblr (esp. of Dirk and Roxy) way back when there were very few problems with the first initial sub-acts of Act 6.

[PilotBlackSmith]

I have to ask: What exactly is the beef that some people have with Homestuck act 6 onwards? The start of act 6 didn't mark much of a major shift in tone for me, (at least not nearly as drastic as the epilogues), and I think that cranking up everything that made Homestuck unique up to 11, stuff like the time shenanigans and ridiculously large cast, was ingenious and likely is what cemented my affection for Homestuck.

yes, it did mark a major shift in tone
honestly since Mobius double reacharound in act 5, there was arealdy a minor shift in tone with the whole troll romance quadrant thing and the strange focus on their arealdy defined relationships that, at least in my opinion, I didn't give a single shit about, but at the very least it still had some "core homestuck" moments, with Cascade being the apex.
after Act 6, the story completely seemed to ignore time travel and weird puzzle shenanigans except for some very small moments to focus solely on relationships and character dynamics, with things like sburb lore being set to the far side. And then Hussie makes a cascade budget mini game to play as random fucking trolls that I also didn't care about with seemingly years of history that we never saw.
and everything afterwards was bad decision after bad decision, with the retcon shit being the biggest "fuck you I win" button I have ever seen an author pull off(tip: if you make a story where you want your characters to win but you corner yourself into a situation where they can't to a point where you have to give your main character literal god powers to give them a chance, you aren't being clever or subversive, you just didn't plan ahead enough), and then they brought Vriska back ( ) and at that point I was just looking at the trainwreck just so I could see how bad it could get.
where the FUCK were equius, nepeta? what happened to jack noir? what happened to the mayor in the epilogues? What are the other classpects? what do they do? what happened to the other sessions on earth? we barely saw the alpha kids fight their monsters or deal with sburb. this "franchise" has some of the biggest "fuck you"s to some characters I have ever seen(I'm so sorry Jade fans). One of the only things that kept me going in act 6 was fucking caliborn, just so you have an idea how desperate I was for "PLEASE HUSSIE MAKE ME LAUGH AGAIN"
so yeah, act 6 onwards DID have a major tone shift with the ghost writers and made a lot of people turn off homestuck because they HATED the "side" of the fandom that was taking over.

tl;dr: acts 1-5 were (mostly) about video games and stupid/weird puzzle/plot shit
acts 6 onwards were relationships and drama with the funny videogame shit being put to the side
if you want to know what people expected from homestuck, read Problem Sleuth and ask "wow imagine how much epic this could be with thousands of pages and epic flashes and music!"

[Dream Muttman]

Snip

I have to ask: What exactly is the beef that some people have with Homestuck act 6 onwards?

As far as I know Act 6 only started being a problem until later on for archival readers, and for update readers there was a large pause between Cascade and Act 6 that made people pretty agitated. Either way, from all the alpha kid worship on Tumblr (esp. of Dirk and Roxy) way back when there were very few problems with the first initial sub-acts of Act 6.

I have to say this is pretty inaccurate. There was no real pause between Cascade and Act 6, it started 2 weeks after, with Intermission 2 in-between.
Act 6 itself starts with a total amelioration of Act 5's pace. The new kids are introduced without any of the ongoing action of the trolls, then everything pauses for the first intermission of Act 6 in which we find out our cast of characters won't be reunited until 3 years have passed.

It's hard to encapsulate what's wrong with Act 6 in a single post, and people have done so in very verbose, articulate ways before, so I recommend looking for that if you really want to see the perspective of a live reader. Suffice to say I disagree that Act 6 does anything resembling "cranking up everything that made Homestuck unique up to 11". It mostly just gave up on SBURB as a component of the narrative, put character arcs on pause to never revisit them and was riddled with horribly long pauses.

It was a problem from the very start, really, but we were all ready to give it a shot because Cascade had bought Homestuck the world. It wouldn't have managed a kickstarter that big otherwise.

[egg]

I have to ask: What exactly is the beef that some people have with Homestuck act 6 onwards?

As far as I know Act 6 only started being a problem until later on for archival readers, and for update readers there was a large pause between Cascade and Act 6 that made people pretty agitated. Either way, from all the alpha kid worship on Tumblr (esp. of Dirk and Roxy) way back when there were very few problems with the first initial sub-acts of Act 6.

I have to say this is pretty inaccurate. There was no real pause between Cascade and Act 6, it started 2 weeks after, with Intermission 2 in-between.

I was confused, there was a month long pause before Cascade, not after it.

[Cyber-Fan]

so yeah, act 6 onwards DID have a major tone shift with the ghost writers and made a lot of people turn off homestuck because they HATED the "side" of the fandom that was taking over.

There were no ghost writers. I'm not a big fan of act 6, but Hussie has said multiple times that everything in it was written by him, and I believe him.

[Darth_Energon]

I don't have any money to give to the WP patreon, but if I had and Homestuck was in it's early days, I would absolutely be supporting homestuck
Homestuck in it's first acts are prime "please fund us through patreon" material, but everything after act 6 takes such a nosedive that saying "please pay us for more" sounds less like a humble request and more like a threat

I have to ask: What exactly is the beef that some people have with Homestuck act 6 onwards? The start of act 6 didn't mark much of a major shift in tone for me, (at least not nearly as drastic as the epilogues), and I think that cranking up everything that made Homestuck unique up to 11, stuff like the time shenanigans and ridiculously large cast, was ingenious and likely is what cemented my affection for Homestuck.

Well to start off, Act 5 Act 2/Cascade was so fucking nuts that going immediately into "Acts 1-4 again, but worse" killed a lot of my excitement. I just decied to list out all my issues because there's so fucking many.
Too many shit characters (most of the Alpha trolls and kids), ridiculous stretches of agonizing pages (especially the shit right between the Retcon and Collide, Jesus Christ), characters being tossed to the side (Karkat, Jade, the Carapacians), characters starting to suck AND do nothing (Dave, Rose (Rose is especially egregious because she was such an active character before)), decrease of art quality and consistency (fast and loose, a million guest artists doing their own styles), less focus on SBURB and good drama and more focus on shitty teen drama, decrease in walkarounds (Openbound and Myststuck are the only ones), the fact it undermines the entire act structure by having such names like "Act 6 Act 5 Intermission 4", less weird plot shit (such as time travel/time loops), the kickstarter fiasco undoubtedly effecting the comic's production (won't say more because I think speculation is banned or something).
What really kills it for me is the tone shift to shitty teen drama, because Homestuck was never about which character wanted to fuck who, it was about kids coming to grips about playing a weird fatalistic video game where they could potentially become gods.

[calamityCons]

Basically most of my points have already been made by the others above me, but I will just throw my two cents in the hat and agree that Act 6 was NOT cranking Homestuck up to 11. It was cranking HIVEBENT up to eleven, with even worse characters and a barren landscape on Earth that wasn't even explored properly. I mean goddamnit, if Roxy lives next to a hub of Carapaces, and was apparently RAISED by them, WHY DOES SHE KEEP THEM AT SUCH A DISTANCE? Why does she give so much of a shit about a mom she never met who was alive hundreds of years ago? Doesn't she have one or more mother figure CARAPACES who LIVE WITH HER god DAMN IT.

The pace slowed way the fuck down, introduced way too many new things after the huge and climactic and absolutely wonderful Cascade. It was just too fucking LATE for the live readers to get introduced to YET MORE CHARACTERS, with TEEN DRAMA. I was a fucking teenager when I read those and they were just the least interesting thing about Homestuck as a whole for me.

It's just not to my taste. The shift from epic, quick-paced superhero fantasy creaton myths set in the modern day to harem anime with vaguely sci fi backdrops for several years was not something I was enjoying as it was happening, and I still don't appreciate it now. You know that "Came for the X, stayed for the Y" meme? I came for the positive friendly relationships and interesting characters working together to grow into superheroes and survive a terrible game. I left when the superhero angle became a background element and the game literally went fucking nowhere for years, while the characters lost the aspects that made them interesting (Rose Lalonde's character assassination is such a bitter taste in my mouth, why the FUCK did she start drinking. Karkat and Kanaya are the least influential characters in the whole damn story after Act 6 starts. Fucking. Fucking Wayward Vagabond lOSES HIS AGENCY ENTIRELY AND JUST BECOMES THE CUTE PET MAYOR GOD DAMN IT).

I feel like a dick for continuing to harp on about this but it's just how I feel. ugh.

[ThePungeonMaster]

Man, I really poked the monkey here didn't I?
I feel as though I should give some justification as to why exactly I like act 6 where others seem to dislike it, not to make it so you feel less justified in disliking it, but to give some context as to why others might.
Firstly, the choice of word "Cranking everything that made Homestuck unique up to 11" was a bad choice of wording. When I said it, I didn't mean it much as a positive, despite the context. I meant that it seemed to parody self preferentially what stood out about Homestuck, almost flanderizing itself. Characters were added for the sake of characters, just as the 12 trolls were added during a crucial part of the kids story, the alpha characters were added during a crucial part of the beta's story. Time shenanigans aren't increased in number post act 6, their complexity is, to the point where there was a 3 minute flash illustrating why every ounce of those time shenanigans was important.
The first big complaint is that lots of new, less interesting characters were introduced that took time away from the development of all the pre-scratch characters. I agree with this to some degree, but I think that characters like Jake, Jane and the beforan trolls get twice the flak they deserve. I think all of them get markedly more interesting when you compare them to their pre-scratch selves. Looking at the beta counterparts of characters like Arena, Dirk, and even characters like Jake adds a certain dimension to them that we didn't see the first time around.
Another one is the shift less from the game systems and more towards intercharacter drama. I really can't blame anyone for not liking it, but to me Homestuck was always about teen Drama, just act 6 stressed it more than any part before. There was always some kind of relationship dynamic getting pushed to some degree, just act 6 embraced it more than acts 1-5.
But lets talk about the elephant in the room: the retconning. This bit gets way more criticism than any other element of act 6, and I can see why. It effectively removed all consequences from the start of act 6 to game over, and brought back an incredibly controversial character.
And that's part of why I love it.
I don't have much an argument to make here. The fact that this moment completely betrays all conventional wisdom and is a massive "fuck you" to the audiences expectations. But Homestuck has been all about flouncing expectations since day one, for better and especially for worse. Plus John's retcon ability had been established to be able to go back and rewrite parts of the story, so the fact that John could go back and do this didn't come out of thin air. (Well, it did literally, but not metaphorically, if you catch my drift.)
Keep in mind I'm no professional critic: Not even close. I just thought it may be a good idea to shine a light on why I like this part of Homestuck. I'm not going to try to defend most of the authorial choices Hussie made in act 6, as going back over it my defense for most of these points is "it just doesn't bug me that much", and there aren't many arguments I can refute (some arcs and even whole characters getting tossed aside, strange artistic stylings towards the end, etc.). Who knows, maybe I should go back and read Homestuck all the way through and see if my opinion changes.