Post
by ThePungeonMaster » Tue Mar 17, 2020 12:42 am
I think the real turning point came around the time of the "I feel so caucasian" gag. I'm not going to try do defend it, it was in poor taste, and Hussie realized that quickly. But what I think makes this point significant is that before this much of his humor was racial, if not racist, so such poignant backlash to his more edgy humor is likely what motivated him to phase it out. But it does mark the turning point to what we have now, where there are literal trigger warnings at the top of every chapter. I'm not going to go on some kind of rant against "SJWs" because that would be reductive and wouldn't get us anywhere. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, Homestuck's sense of humor has changed drastically over its run. And it wouldn't surprise me if this change has been forced due to Homestuck's general change in tone. Tracing the sense of humor Hussie had way back to Jailbreak, it's no secret that the humor was more gross, more offensive, and much more tongue-in-cheek and devil-may-care. Now, it's much more serious. Topics like suicide and child abuse are brought up frequently, where it wouldn't surprise me if 2008 era Hussie actively joked about such topics. Homestuck has changed, and certain aspects of the story have been altered after the fact to accommodate said changes. Hussie didn't create Homestuck to be some kind of long, winding, creation epic for the ages, but that's what it became, and so the tone had to accomodate for that. It was no longer one man's goofy passion-project, it was a megamyth, that hundreds of people cared deeply about. Hussie had to care at this point because stakes held a new importance in the story, arcs now became greatly favored in this kind of story over the more static characters seen in works like Problem Sleuth, who changed little if at all over the course of the story. The trolls, first created by Hussie to be gag characters have since had the minutiae of their entire society dissected. What I'm saying is, offensive humor wouldn't fly nowadays because the culture around Homestuck has grown too serious. I mean, imagine the whole debacle about the "Vriska did nothing wrong line." in Pesterquest. In Homestuck, it would be obvious that such was a joke, but in that case, first people couldn't decide if it was a joke, and if it wasn't, they couldn't decide just how pissed to be. Even excluding the complication that Kate wrote that route, it made it clear how divided the Homestuck community has become, split between old fans and new, those who like the direction the authors are taking and those who detest it, and those who prefer the melodramatic to the facetious and vice versa. Really, I don't think it's right to say that one kind of storytelling, one kind of tone is better than the other, and all the same I don't think it's justifiable for both groups to be at each others throats so much. After all, Homestuck wouldn't be Homestuck without the both of them.
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
June X Vriska is the best ship.
