I'm afraid for HS^2

[Sahxyel]

My main hope is that Dirk doesn't just end up being a strawman for people who didn't like Homestuck post-Act 6, as it could very well head that way. It would honestly seem pretty crappy if they were just like "hey remember this thing that made all of you upset? well you're not valid for being upset"

Extra this, especially after Kate's comment that the people who disliked Act 6 just wanted to "make Homestuck straight again," rather than disliking it for the myriad of weird writing changes and general plot-directionlessness

That comment sounds like strawmanning the people who fell off the wagon in Act 6. I mean, my main contention was that the Act started with new characters when I had been under the impression that the story was gearing up for the ending with Cascade as the climax. The new characters didn't appeal to me and I just didn't want to put up with new people NOW of all times. That the story surrounding the Alpha Kids was introduced with a plot so similar to a Harem Anime wherein all three of the other kids just wanted to kiss Jake on the mouth when Jake has nothing of interest going on for him whatsoever? I was NOT in the mood for that after the cosmic spectacle and tearful exits of Cascade.

I mean for god's sakes I was trying to process that all the Exiles except PM and WV were dead, and that Spades Slick tragically succumbed to his own flaws and killed the universe, AND trying to process that all the four Kids are God Tier now and JESUS you have no clue how many emotions I was riding. You expect me to give a shit about some newfangled kids whose biggest problem was they all had a crush on the same guy???

That rubbed me the wrong way as a (mostly) archival reader who has a huge chip on the shoulder with A6. On top of starting over fresh the four kids had even less depth to them than the original. I didn't particularly like Calliope, I enjoyed Caliborn as the replacement villain ENTIRELY because he wasn't a void of personality. Conflicts and problems generated but between the trolls and likewise the Harleybert ship and that was i n t e r e s t i n g and dumb Beforus trolls aside the whole dreambubble subplot with Vriska and Aranea was really engaging for me to read too.

It quite literally all falls apart with the Retcon, I hate everything after it. I hate Dave and Karkat's chemistry disappears as they become a couple. I hate Karezi died and because of all the damn setup in the early acts is too solid to deconstruct naturally it's having its grave constantly pissed on. I hate that Davesprite stops being a character. I hate that Vriska's character development stops and gets a hard reset to the point of being a huge god damn bitch again. I hate that Terezi bootlicks Vriska and nobody offers any resistance to her, not even Rose who I'd have thought would have major personality conflicts with her. I hate that everyone is so damn cruel to Jake for being a slow moron who can't read Jane for shit and Jane just gets a pie thrown in her face for being a bad person. I hate that Dave has an honest to god talk about how Bro was abusive when in the early acts this all was played as an actual damn joke and Davesprite never has the same damn hangups of him. AND ESPECIALLY:



I HATE WHAT THEY DID TO JADE.

[egg]

The Vriska bootlicking was honestly the single worst part of the retcons period. I have literally nothing that I dislike harder. Sure, give me all the Davepetas you want. Ruin Karezi for Davekat, I don't care. But please, please stop forgetting that Vriska did a fuckton of things with basically any and all consequence erased permanently and treating her like some sort of hero.

As for Jade, I honestly believe the comic was always perpetually bullying her, what with her sleeping for Acts 1-2 in nearly their entirety, having to deal with troll drama and frogs for Acts 3-5 and having to be stuck in a crummy ship with nothing to do for almost the whole of Act 6 and then immediately getting brainwashed as soon as she got out. And then, and then, came the Epilogues, and I'm pretty sure Jade fans wept at that point.

[Dream Muttman]

To go back to something mentioned earlier in the thread, I really wish the "decanonization" of Homestuck had been achieved through a change in the license. If Hussie had decided he was done monetizing the comic and dumped the whole thing in the public domain (sans whatever rights Viz owns), Homestuck would've made waves again. Maybe we'd get back some of that early chaos and spontaneity that's now pretty much gone.

I'm sad that it ends up reading like an empty promise.

[cookiefonster]

Homestuck^2 so far is just not good. At ALL. It reads like unpolished fanfic by people obsessed with the classpect system, which makes sense because that's basically what it is. I know most of the authors can write better than that, and I think the biggest thing that would benefit the comic so far would be MUCH better proofreading, instead of having Dirk say things like "Alright we get it you are literally a robot" [sic] or other excessively long classpect rants or weird styles of punctuation because god damn is there an overload of those. The epilogues had extreme amounts of proofreading, most from vfromhomestuck and a fair bit from Hussie himself, to assure they will be extra super good, or depending on your view, at least extra super polished. HS^2 isn't even remotely what I'd call "polished"; it's even less polished than the very weakest spots of Homestuck itself. It may be a nitpick, but not getting characters' manners of speech JUST right is a big turnoff. HS^2 suffers a lot from this, with Dirk and Rose's much skimpier than usual use of punctuation.

Also, I'm sick and tired of Homestuck media peppering itself so thick with meta disclaimers or whatever nonsense. I just want to read a STORY for god's sake, not a story about being a story or these extreme promises to throw back to Act 1.

[lynn]

From my point of view, Homestuck^2 and the epilogues is just fanfiction, with its own canon and continuity. It's not like an "extended universe" in other media, it's just fanfiction made by friends of the author of the original.

I liked the Epilogues, right now Homestuck 2 isn't so exciting for me but I still want to see where it goes.

[pfeffer-29]

The Vriska bootlicking was honestly the single worst part of the retcons period. I have literally nothing that I dislike harder. Sure, give me all the Davepetas you want. Ruin Karezi for Davekat, I don't care. But please, please stop forgetting that Vriska did a fuckton of things with basically any and all consequence erased permanently and treating her like some sort of hero.

As for Jade, I honestly believe the comic was always perpetually bullying her, what with her sleeping for Acts 1-2 in nearly their entirety, having to deal with troll drama and frogs for Acts 3-5 and having to be stuck in a crummy ship with nothing to do for almost the whole of Act 6 and then immediately getting brainwashed as soon as she got out. And then, and then, came the Epilogues, and I'm pretty sure Jade fans wept at that point.

I would like to elaborate on Jade's bit that I'm not really a Jade fan, but in my opinion, her treatment in Act 6 was crummy and her portrayal in the Epilogues was, frankly, out of character. Yes, there was a timeskip; yes, she could have became the Jade we see in the Epilogues during said timeskip. But that doesn't change the fact that we never saw her become that person, and nobody provides any explanation why besides dog hormones. This is why people feel uncomfortable when we see an old friend for the first time in five years and their personality is different. We weren't there when they slowly changed, so from our perspective, it's jarring, even though it's not unbelievable. Also, it doesn't help that the story treats this as a natural extension of Jade's character when, in my opinion, it really isn't.
The petty part of me thinks that Jade was written this way in the Epilogues because the authors just wanted to get straight to the Davekat but didn't want to waste precious time writing Jade out of the equation naturally, but I was biased against Davekat even before the Epilogues, so take my words with a mountain of salt (or pepper, heh). I am a Karezi shipper through and through. But anyway, this is about Homestuck^2, not Jade. Maybe there should be a Jadecourse thread?

I'm with you in this one. I think is a shame we aren't getting more regular updates or that we are not going back to that update culture that I heard was so good (this is btw the only thing I truly hate I missed), but I can understand their reasons for doing this the way they're doing it. Not everything can be as we want to, I guess.

Yeah, the lack of regular updates does not bode well for the future of Homestuck^2. Instead of constant discussion of the new stuff that's come out, the fandom will probably have short spikes in activity immediately following the updates and then return to how it is now. Update culture is viewed fondly by people for a reason. It gives the fans something to talk about all the time.

Another problem I have, though not just with Homestuck^2, is that the writers seem to be interacting with the fandom exclusively through Twitter (except for that one page of Homestuck^2 with user input). Reddit and Discord are kinda hoppin', and so, to a degree, are these forums. Reddit and Discord are relatively isolated from Twitter and each other, and have developed unique little echo chambers as a result, though I don't think they're quite as unfriendly to dissenters of their respective norms as Twitter is. If the writers keep listening to one part of their audience, they risk alienating the others.

[thorondraco]

The Vriska bootlicking was honestly the single worst part of the retcons period. I have literally nothing that I dislike harder. Sure, give me all the Davepetas you want. Ruin Karezi for Davekat, I don't care. But please, please stop forgetting that Vriska did a fuckton of things with basically any and all consequence erased permanently and treating her like some sort of hero.

As for Jade, I honestly believe the comic was always perpetually bullying her, what with her sleeping for Acts 1-2 in nearly their entirety, having to deal with troll drama and frogs for Acts 3-5 and having to be stuck in a crummy ship with nothing to do for almost the whole of Act 6 and then immediately getting brainwashed as soon as she got out. And then, and then, came the Epilogues, and I'm pretty sure Jade fans wept at that point.

I would like to elaborate on Jade's bit that I'm not really a Jade fan, but in my opinion, her treatment in Act 6 was crummy and her portrayal in the Epilogues was, frankly, out of character. Yes, there was a timeskip; yes, she could have became the Jade we see in the Epilogues during said timeskip. But that doesn't change the fact that we never saw her become that person, and nobody provides any explanation why besides dog hormones. This is why people feel uncomfortable when we see an old friend for the first time in five years and their personality is different. We weren't there when they slowly changed, so from our perspective, it's jarring, even though it's not unbelievable. Also, it doesn't help that the story treats this as a natural extension of Jade's character when, in my opinion, it really isn't.
The petty part of me thinks that Jade was written this way in the Epilogues because the authors just wanted to get straight to the Davekat but didn't want to waste precious time writing Jade out of the equation naturally, but I was biased against Davekat even before the Epilogues, so take my words with a mountain of salt (or pepper, heh). I am a Karezi shipper through and through. But anyway, this is about Homestuck^2, not Jade. Maybe there should be a Jadecourse thread?

I'm with you in this one. I think is a shame we aren't getting more regular updates or that we are not going back to that update culture that I heard was so good (this is btw the only thing I truly hate I missed), but I can understand their reasons for doing this the way they're doing it. Not everything can be as we want to, I guess.

Yeah, the lack of regular updates does not bode well for the future of Homestuck^2. Instead of constant discussion of the new stuff that's come out, the fandom will probably have short spikes in activity immediately following the updates and then return to how it is now. Update culture is viewed fondly by people for a reason. It gives the fans something to talk about all the time.

Another problem I have, though not just with Homestuck^2, is that the writers seem to be interacting with the fandom exclusively through Twitter (except for that one page of Homestuck^2 with user input). Reddit and Discord are kinda hoppin', and so, to a degree, are these forums. Reddit and Discord are relatively isolated from Twitter and each other, and have developed unique little echo chambers as a result, though I don't think they're quite as unfriendly to dissenters of their respective norms as Twitter is. If the writers keep listening to one part of their audience, they risk alienating the others.

The weirdest thing is that i think we are supposed to actually blame Dirk for the out of character aspects of several of the characters. This guy had likely practiced and experimented with his powers and he obviously experimented on his friends. He wants them all to hate him. He has even set it up potentially that Rose will ultimately turn on him too. So he indulged in his negative impulses for the sake of being the villain.

Part of it is ultimately that the writing was not perfect in any means but it is clear some aspects are meant as parody to fanfic and reference to the fact these beings are unpracticed narrators. The question is which parts of it were the inexperienced writing aspects and which were the intentional parts?

I do think any characters that went through a sudden an extreme change to behavior had Dirk's hands all over it. Jane and Jade in particular. They were changes made before the story began, while Kanaya and Jake were the victims we were shown.

The writing has more flaws than that but it seems to be the deliberate parts at least.... It would kinda explain why Jade was utterly seething at the end. I do think she would be someone at risk of sexual addiction considering how isolated she was. Dirk made sure it happened though.

[ThePungeonMaster]

Hoo boy, this is a thread if ever there was one.
I understand and share a lot of the fears and concerns of other people in this thread, but it generally all stems from one cause: A lack of communication between the author and the fanbase. I should state right off that I am a new fan. Came in over the summer of 2019, post epilogues, and I for one am exited on the route Homestuck 2 and all future projects, with one caveat.
The authors need to legitimately listen to the fans.
And I mean all of them. So many different facets of the community that if they want to make the whole "narrative created by the fans" thing work, they're going to have to embrace a crowd outside of twitter. At any other time I'd tell them to use the reddit, as that's generally the best place for discussion and critique, but now I'd suggest using these forums.
And I don't mean this as an insult of how they've been going about it so far: Rather a challenge. They need to embrace the herculean feat of trying to unite all ideas into one tale in order for this to work. But if they can pull it of, I have faith it could be something never seen before.
However, if we want them to do this, we need to legitimately and thoughtfully criticize some things instead of just being openly hostile towards the authors. They've made some stupid choices but none of them were meant to be bad, and we shouldn't treat them as if they were. I've seen a lot of people say that Andrew Hussie doesn't care about Homestuck anymore. In short: that's bullshit. If he didn't care, he wouldn't even bother to try and assemble a team to continue Homestuck post epilogues, he wouldn't be hiding toblerones all around the world, so it's evident that the people on the team have some serious investment in making Homestcuk good. But sometimes I worry that they don't understand the power they have. They're treating what they are writing like it's fanfiction, hence the lack of professionalism by some parties on their social media, the subtitle of Homestuck 2 being "Beyond Cannon", and the lack of proper proofreading in the comic. And I think this lack of mutual understanding is what's hurting us, the community as a whole, the fans and the writers both, the most.
They seem to understand it as that this is just another fanfiction, as the point of the epilogues is to say that no take is valid and every take is valid after act 7, so Homestuck 2 is just glorified fanfic. While it would be nice for people to think that way, that simply isn't true and ignores the inherent paradoxical of an official source saying all takes are valid so you shouldn't care and then saying that Homestuck 2 is cannon so you should care about it.
This bro said it best.

My two cents on this:
I understand the intention: They want to make Homestuck accessible and give the community some manner of authorial voice. That's noble! Homestuck started as something where the fandom was hands-on, on a forum where people were very hands on! That's good! But the execution... that kills it. It's in a separate site, dedicated solely to host the comic, as opposed to being in, I don't know, MSPFA? They could do that, come in contact with the community of people that actually make comics, get some feedback from the community.
This is what I would say if I were a naive little bitch, which I ain't. It only takes this thread to see that the majority of the fandom is quite hostile to whatever move that the creators make. Hiveswap? Too late! Go faster! Homestuck getting a conclusion? I don't like it! Delete it! Homestuck^2? It sucks! Stop! Make something better!
This is not to say, of course, that there isn't valid and useful criticism about any of the points I used! The Epilogues weren't bad (from what I read of them, and I shan't dare speak of that which I do not fully understand), Hiveswap is in the works, and Homestuck^2 could use some constructive criticism (tweak up the rooms and the sprites, change the art style to fit a different narrative)! However, we, as the community, must, invariably, learn how to portray ourselves in a non-hostile manner, that befits a collection of people who like something and who want a hand on it. Instead of tearing down that which we don't like, we have to build up that which we do like.
So, to conclude: Homestuck^2 definitely needs some polish, but I also believe that it deserves help. Help from us, the community. Help that can only come the moment we decide to not slander and harass the creators and actually try to help and create. Homestuck^2 shows a lot of promise! It has multiple, very good writers, Xamag (an artist whose skill I can't fully describe with my limited vocabulary) doing the art, and Andrew himself, of course, writing the outline. The future is made, not written, so let's make it good.


Post-scriptum: Before I get accused of siding with WP et alii on this, I'd like to state this: If they truly wanted the community to have a hand in creating Homestuck, then they should make Homestuck public domain.
Postquam-post-scriptum: Y'all talk about gender way too much, yo.

I'm probably going to do a longer write up about this later and post it to the reddit, seeing as my propensity for verbosity goes unmatched by any other living soul, and this seems to be more for shorter, more commented discussion. Hopefully all of us, fans and authors alike are able to come to some kind of amendment before everybody gets stuck up the creek of shit we're fording without a paddle.

Addendum: This bro is also totally excellent

Right now I'm hopeful for it. I actually dropped out of reading Homestuck during Act 6 but the Epilogues brought me back in. The way the relationship between an author and their work was explored in Meat really struck a chord with me, so I'm really interested in where HS^2 goes. What I hope is that the authors do try and incorporate fandom in a novel way. There is a lot that can be achieved under a mix of community and author direction. For instance: you can create forums.

On the other hand: if it is just an unofficial story about relationships then I am

[calamityCons]

Another problem I have, though not just with Homestuck^2, is that the writers seem to be interacting with the fandom exclusively through Twitter (except for that one page of Homestuck^2 with user input). Reddit and Discord are kinda hoppin', and so, to a degree, are these forums. Reddit and Discord are relatively isolated from Twitter and each other, and have developed unique little echo chambers as a result, though I don't think they're quite as unfriendly to dissenters of their respective norms as Twitter is. If the writers keep listening to one part of their audience, they risk alienating the others.

I would also like it if the writers would read and interact with the fandom outside of Twitter, because Twitter as a social media platform is probably one of the most volatile and capricious places to get any kind of feedback.

[Wing]

Hoo boy, this is a thread if ever there was one.
I understand and share a lot of the fears and concerns of other people in this thread, but it generally all stems from one cause: A lack of communication between the author and the fanbase. I should state right off that I am a new fan. Came in over the summer of 2019, post epilogues, and I for one am exited on the route Homestuck 2 and all future projects, with one caveat.
The authors need to legitimately listen to the fans.
And I mean all of them. So many different facets of the community that if they want to make the whole "narrative created by the fans" thing work, they're going to have to embrace a crowd outside of twitter. At any other time I'd tell them to use the reddit, as that's generally the best place for discussion and critique, but now I'd suggest using these forums.
And I don't mean this as an insult of how they've been going about it so far: Rather a challenge. They need to embrace the herculean feat of trying to unite all ideas into one tale in order for this to work. But if they can pull it of, I have faith it could be something never seen before.
However, if we want them to do this, we need to legitimately and thoughtfully criticize some things instead of just being openly hostile towards the authors. They've made some stupid choices but none of them were meant to be bad, and we shouldn't treat them as if they were. I've seen a lot of people say that Andrew Hussie doesn't care about Homestuck anymore. In short: that's bullshit. If he didn't care, he wouldn't even bother to try and assemble a team to continue Homestuck post epilogues, he wouldn't be hiding toblerones all around the world, so it's evident that the people on the team have some serious investment in making Homestcuk good. But sometimes I worry that they don't understand the power they have. They're treating what they are writing like it's fanfiction, hence the lack of professionalism by some parties on their social media, the subtitle of Homestuck 2 being "Beyond Cannon", and the lack of proper proofreading in the comic. And I think this lack of mutual understanding is what's hurting us, the community as a whole, the fans and the writers both, the most.
They seem to understand it as that this is just another fanfiction, as the point of the epilogues is to say that no take is valid and every take is valid after act 7, so Homestuck 2 is just glorified fanfic. While it would be nice for people to think that way, that simply isn't true and ignores the inherent paradoxical of an official source saying all takes are valid so you shouldn't care and then saying that Homestuck 2 is cannon so you should care about it.

This is a very good critique and I personally agree with a lot of it. I think the idea of needing more of the entire fandom to come together and have official WP staff also interact with more of the fandom as a whole is a good idea. The lack of communication between certain parts of the fandom and the authors is a lot of what's causing this isolation and worry, as far as I'm aware.

Granted, I get that it's probably difficult because there's a lot of people who are angry at some of the writers and I completely understand not wanting to have to deal with a hostile environment. It's a big commitment, a lot of people shit on you with no regard for you being human beings with feelings, and it's exhausting.

So obviously it goes both ways. The fandom as a whole needs to be better at giving criticism (which I think we are definitely able to do) and the writers need to be willing to deal with the challenge of interacting with more of the fandom.

I don't think all writers of media NEED to interact with fandom. This has been stated time and time again how indie creators tend to get publicly harassed more because they simply can, and they're not major media corporations. However, given that Homestuck^2 and the general vibe of Homestuck content these days is definitely trying to "include the fans", it sorta means that we do need to have more of the fandom come together in one place, even if not all of our opinions will line up.

I dunno, I'm mostly rehashing what everyone else has said but I feel like it can't be said enough.

[aspiringWatcher]

Another problem I have, though not just with Homestuck^2, is that the writers seem to be interacting with the fandom exclusively through Twitter (except for that one page of Homestuck^2 with user input). Reddit and Discord are kinda hoppin', and so, to a degree, are these forums. Reddit and Discord are relatively isolated from Twitter and each other, and have developed unique little echo chambers as a result, though I don't think they're quite as unfriendly to dissenters of their respective norms as Twitter is. If the writers keep listening to one part of their audience, they risk alienating the others.

I would also like it if the writers would read and interact with the fandom outside of Twitter, because Twitter as a social media platform is probably one of the most volatile and capricious places to get any kind of feedback.

Not to mention that even Tumblr thinks it toxic.
WRT Discord: r/hs and HSD are ran by the same party, so they're kinda connected?

[MorganMustDie]

Not to mention that even Tumblr thinks it toxic.

well duh, hussie racist

grrrr

[ThePungeonMaster]

Not to mention that even Tumblr thinks it toxic.

well duh, hussie racist

grrrr

I should ask, does anyone in their right mind actually think that Hussie is racist? With the exception of that one "Caucasian" joke, I can't see how anyone can think that, and even then trying to pin it to a racial motivation will only have tenuous ties.

[Flame_Warp]

I think generally the stuff that sets people off with that are The Condescension (Meenah too but to a lesser extent) and Damara. I can't agree, but I can see it.

[Sokota]

Not to mention that even Tumblr thinks it toxic.

well duh, hussie racist

grrrr

I should ask, does anyone in their right mind actually think that Hussie is racist? With the exception of that one "Caucasian" joke, I can't see how anyone can think that, and even then trying to pin it to a racial motivation will only have tenuous ties.

I've heard some people say on Twitter that they thought Meenah was based on a racial stereotype, but I don't really have any opinions on that.

[nonsenseMnemonic]

I haven't heard anything like that about Meenah, but people have definitely complained about Damara, which I think is more than fair.

But yeah, moving away from Twitter, or at least expanding to other platforms to interact with people, is super important. Some of the creators are on a couple Discord servers, but I think servers tend to bubble into niches of people with similar perspectives. Every HS server I've been on has had a different, distinct consensus about the good/bad parts of Homestuck, so just paying attention to one or two isn't a great way to get an idea of how fans feel. I think this forum has had a decent mix of those perspectives so far but nothing really beats poking in wherever Homestucks congregate.
That's a lot of work, though, so.. just a little more on different platforms would be nice, I guess.

[MorganMustDie]

I should ask, does anyone in their right mind actually think that Hussie is racist? With the exception of that one "Caucasian" joke, I can't see how anyone can think that, and even then trying to pin it to a racial motivation will only have tenuous ties.

Back in the day in an interview that's been long purged from everywhere, I believe Hussie was quoted saying something along the lines of "the kids can be any race really, except for black because, that would just be silly."

It's classic Hussie humour but this, coupled with newer, less-acclimatised fans stumbling upon his edgier TSO stuff for the first time, lead to a short period of time where there was very genuine "hussie is racist grrr" sentiment amongst some people

[Generalrabogolfo]

I should ask, does anyone in their right mind actually think that Hussie is racist? With the exception of that one "Caucasian" joke, I can't see how anyone can think that, and even then trying to pin it to a racial motivation will only have tenuous ties.

Back in the day in an interview that's been long purged from everywhere, I believe Hussie was quoted saying something along the lines of "the kids can be any race really, except for black because, that would just be silly."

It's classic Hussie humour but this, coupled with newer, less-acclimatised fans stumbling upon his edgier TSO stuff for the first time, lead to a short period of time where there was very genuine "hussie is racist grrr" sentiment amongst some people

Andrew? Andrew Hussie? Impossible.

Link Mod Note: Contains N-word. Click at your own risk.

While we do not allow slurs on this board, I also think it's important for people to be able to see the sort of things Hussie used to do, and not whitewash them out, so I replaced the comic with a link to the comic - Mod

[MorganMustDie]

Andrew? Andrew Hussie? Impossible.

Delete this before the lefties see it!!

[egg]

I figure I may as well post this here. Unlike the previous comic it contains no slurs, but is still pretty stereotypically racist.
This, and with more than several characters in Homestuck saying the r-word, I simply choose to believe that Hussie is your average white privileged dude who grew up with the early Internet. He's a product of his time.