I'm afraid for HS^2

[livingNingyo]

What other social media could work for fan interaction?

Since things like tumblr, twitter, and dreamwidth are out of question in terms of sharing and posting certain content.

Curious Cat is just like Formsprings.

[calamityCons]

What makes you say dreamwidth is out of the question? In one Discord server I'm in everyone constantly sings that site's praises and claims it's the best place to go for fandom. I strongly disagree as dreamwidth doesn't appeal to me for personal and taste reasons, but I'm interested in hearing what makes you say that.

[Flame_Warp]

Yeah, Hussie's a recovering edgy fuck for sure. Thus how we got the skaianet archives and their swath of absolute bullshit.

[Darth_Energon]

Yeah, Hussie's a recovering edgy fuck for sure. Thus how we got the skaianet archives and their swath of absolute bullshit.

I personally thought Skaianet was hilarious

[Flame_Warp]

I didn't really mind the joke, but like. You gotta admit it was a little in bad taste. I definitely don't attribute it to malice because it's not like it was trying to paint anybody as right in those situations, but y'know. Bad taste.

[livingNingyo]

What makes you say dreamwidth is out of the question? In one Discord server I'm in everyone constantly sings that site's praises and claims it's the best place to go for fandom. I strongly disagree as dreamwidth doesn't appeal to me for personal and taste reasons, but I'm interested in hearing what makes you say that.

Guess on my mind, it doesn't seem as active or much talked about despite it being similar to Livejournal.

Yeah, Hussie's a recovering edgy fuck for sure. Thus how we got the skaianet archives and their swath of absolute bullshit.

I personally thought Skaianet was hilarious

Same. Though it could be because of being older and having seen stuff like South Park, it doesn't bother me as much as others.

[rookie1978]

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"

Hard Agree

HS^2 Dirk saying Homestuck was 'meant to be something' and straight up criticizing the comic for caring too much about relationships got me really hopeful but I've slowly come to realize the authors are doing exactly as you've described, and are setting Dirk up for failure more than Dirk's setting himself up as a villain.

[rookie1978]

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.

We are entirely in agreement with basically everything. Thank you.

I think the most interesting part of it all is that Caliborn was written as a despicable, misogynist bastard that did nothing but throw tantrums and brute force his way through things, he was one of the ONLY entertaining characters on screen around his time in the comic and I kept looking forward to seeing more and more of this terrible evil little shithead we were supposed to hate.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Caliborn is the best character in Homestuck purely because the comic never had the chance to ruin him.

[Alder]

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

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.

I don't think old humor should be used to support the idea that someone is racist. The most powerful forms of comedy are shocking in nature. Call it tasteless if you will, but edgelords are attracted to shock comedy because it's so socially unacceptable while at the same time being facetious. Also, I don't think him being white or "a product of his time" have anything to do with it. As a latino who went to a >90 minority school, that term was thrown around all the time just 2 years ago when I was in high school even as a senior because it inherently has connotations that make it a disgusting, taboo word and thus, appealing for juvenile jokes. It's not racial or era-based at it all. It's age based.

[ThePungeonMaster]

Daz summed up my feelings pretty well. It doesn't matter what the user personally believes in, as friendsim/pesterquest/HS^2 are all directly 'canon' and recongized by the comic's original creator. It's part of the IP now, and it's happening, and it's all considered official expansions.

That means you can't just put your hands over your eyes and pretend it isn't happening, because any time you want to discuss the comic, people are going to bring up things from these works. Imagine how silly you'd look saying "Well I don't think your right because I refuse to believe it happened and instead choose to subscribe to my imaginary fantasy world where everything worked out the way I wanted.'

Hussie's entire idea about what 'is' and 'isn't' canon is really neat, and well thought out, but in the end there's a VERY CLEAR dividing line. The context of 'narrative canonocity' matters more to Dirk and the actual universe they inhabit than the readers themselves. That was the entire point of the epilogues, in reality- Dirk establishes that without a villain there's no driving force, without a driving force the comic will end, the 'canon' ends, they basically cease to exist and their stories close, etc.

We don't personally decide 'what is canon' or ask what is or isn't. Canon is 100% 'Word of God', or in this case Hussie, who recognizes Homestuck, the two VNs, Homestuck 2, and Hiveswap as canon. Hussie's commentary in the books is canon.

Nicolas Cage playing his own game of Sburb and being classpected as the Nick of Time is canon, alongside Fedorafreak gaining the Gent of Piss title. Vriska having giant titties is canon after Hussie signed off on the picture of giant titty vriska and wrote 'canon' on it. I'm not kidding. That happened.

You could play it off by saying 'clearly they were jokes' or 'they weren't meant to be taken seriously' but the fact of the matter is nothing in Homestuck can really be taken seriously due to the silly nature of the comic, thus blurring the line further of what Hussie means to be canon and what he doesn't mean to be canon. (This also goes in turns with some fan's desperation for Act 6 to stop taking itself so seriously, which i'm pretty sure propped up around the time Dave and his bro's act 1 strifes were turned into an abusive relationship for an easy & lazy tearjerker moment, like John didn't bash his father with a hammer at the same time)

Either everything is canon or nothing is. The reader doesn't get to pick and choose. Headcanons/fanon are fine, but trying to establish your headcanon or fanon as canon is a very common fandom SIN. Which is, again, why having a bunch of random fans getting their hands on official canon writing a bad idea, and honestly, so was the toblerones. Which is, again, why I fear for Homestuck's official continuation (HS^2.)

This kind of gets at the heart of why people don't like the whole cannon classification thing. The idea that cannon is now a concrete label instead of a nebulous idea deprives it of what made it so impactful in the first place. The ideal in my mind is that cannon and non-cannon works can improve each other by both their connections to the story and their differences from the story, like how Theatre of Coolty and Detective Pony are both amazing productions that help to flesh out the character of Dirk in a way that feels non-obtrusive or natural, or how the Paradox Space comics added some interesting and charming character interactions and dynamics. This dude summarizes well how I feel on the matter:

feel like im breaking some kind of law bringing up a teevee trope after only 2 posts in a thread, but the Word of Dante comes to mind.

dante was not involved in writing the bible. he was not really considered an expert on the bible, and he certainly wasnt among the people considered to be bible authorities at the time. but today a lot of people consider his work is to be considered "of the Christian canon", even if it is not "Canon" to "The" "Bible".

id certainly say this applies to a lot of fan analysis in particular. bladekindeyewear is a great example. i basically agree with nothing the guy says, but theres no denying his theory is part of what would be called the "homestuck canon" in literary terms. frequently i'll find myself turning to ideas that originated from bkew when i'm analysing the text for myself. mmmmalo is probably a more contemporary example. again, disagree with a lot of their analysis straight up, but their ideas DO help me to understand some of homestuck and a lot of it bleeds into my own work.

i'm more ehhh about fan FIC, personally, but i think this is where the "canon is what YOU consume for YOUR purposes" thing really comes in. i dont read a lot of homestuck fic. but if someone wanted to engage with me in a conversation about, say, vriska, and they said something like "in this fic where vriska dies at an early age and spends her life in the dream bubbles, x and y elements of her personality come to the forefront, and this has informed my personal understanding of vriska as a character" i would think that's great! i dont have to AGREE with it, but i think that counts as an opinion formed by the canon. so yes! in the broader sense of canon, fic - especially fic that, like Dante's, has a wide appeal and influence - absolutely counts. and all of this is me not even bothering to get into the fact that homestuck is now being written by the same people who wrote homestuck fanfic and more and more ideas that originated in what we might call a "fanon" are finding their ways into licensed homestuck media.

But drawing such an unflinching line in the sand between cannon and non-cannon almost absolves those productions of their weight, which I feel like was the opposite intention of the writers. It's evident the team didn't have such an intent in creating the epilogues. The purpose was likely to say "hey, it's fine if the epilogues aren't to your taste. Cannon really isn't that important to begin with, so just believe what makes you happy ;)."
Now, such a message would have been fine, had Homestuck 2 not come out, and be officiated, and following the sole """cannon""" timeline.
This (and for that matter, the toblerone wishes) are a complete 180 on what the writers have been trying to convince us of. Even if we are to believe that "the fans are creating cannon", which, if we are, we have a long way to go, it goes against the idea that what does and does not cannon is a malleable field, in which anything is fair play. As it stands, it's just kind of a "All timelines are created equal but some are more equal than others." situation. While I do like the idea that fans guide the story, as it is a revolutionary concept, never really before explored in media of any form, it needs to be pulled off with a certain grace not currently seen in the team. You need to incorporate widely held wishes, fannons, fan-theories, and maybe even fan fictions into such a story, in order to lend the idea that all takes, all diverging timelines and different ways situations did or did not pan out, are equally cannon and non-cannon, and not just make a couple of characters trans as an attempt of a display of good faith.

I should add that I know a lot of people don't like HS post act 6, imparticular the retconning, and tend not to treat it with as much weight as anything from Cascade and prior. While I suppose I can understand I don't agree. I think the story got much more engaging after Cascade, and while I would say it got more "serious", it didn't get less funny, and it reflected the raised stakes, character maturation, epic scope, and more existential themes. Granted, such is not for everyone, and I couldn't blame you if you thought that retconning stuff was a bit much, (especially now.)

Also: unrelated, but a LOT of characters really got the shaft in the epilogues moving into HS2. Even though I wasn't the biggest fan of the characters who got the shaft, it's still sad to see. While Dirk and Vriska are my favorite characters (both because of and in spite of how shit they are), it's still sad to see how dirty some dudes got done. I can't even imagine what it's like to be a Jade fan right now.

Addendum: I almost forgot the candy timeline. It's been hinted it may cross over into the main timeline. I think it could be interesting and spell good things for the story if that happens. It could also fail massively. Assaboutet.

[egg]

I don't think old humor should be used to support the idea that someone is racist. The most powerful forms of comedy are shocking in nature. Call it tasteless if you will, but edgelords are attracted to shock comedy because it's so socially unacceptable while at the same time being facetious. Also, I don't think him being white or "a product of his time" have anything to do with it. As a latino who went to a >90 minority school, that term was thrown around all the time just 2 years ago when I was in high school even as a senior because it inherently has connotations that make it a disgusting, taboo word and thus, appealing for juvenile jokes. It's not racial or era-based at it all. It's age based.

He's not necessarily racist. The thing about the Internet back then is that stuff like that was horribly common, mainly as a result of the fact that the early Internet was really only a thing for people of a specific background. The more normalized it became, the less accepted these things became.

[Leddy]

So many people have commented on the Jade thing and I have to agree, being a new fan and a Jade fan it like ripped my heart into shreds and full force crashed me into a brick wall going to the End of Act 6 to Epilouges, seriously. It was crazy. A shitton of characters got it dirty in the epilouges, especially Jane, Jade, and Dirk, and frankly I'm less excited about Homestuck^2 because of this. On some of those things, I actually don't mind Davepetasprite^2 and love their character and Javepeta is even my OTP for Jade, however I do really dislike how Davepeta is used as a tool to just make Jade forget about that whole 3 year expanse, which is reminiscent of her childhood as she didn't have many actual people around, but this time it's even worse and she'd actually be unable to speak to anyone. It just doesn't seem to affect her? It's crazy and I dislike that so much. Than they turned her into a borderline (That's being generous) slutty character in Meat the timeline we're supposed to believe is the 'canon' to some extent which is actually really really upsetting.

I actually do like Act 6, and I think it had some interesting things in it (Like we got really nice insight into Equius and the like) but the retcon was like, absolutely unacceptable for me. To retcon so much of what we just read, with only two characters remembering and being relevant to it, and beyond that not bringing back other trolls or changing other things and basically stopping any retconning from happening with it for.. some reason. It was really odd how they handled it and I disliked it a lot.

Despite all of that though, I'm a super new fan! I've not been here for more than a month and already this has to be one of the most engaging and interesting communities I have ever stepped foot in, even outside of fandoms. I echo whoever said earlier that they're really sad that they missed out when fan interaction and ideas still led the comic, I do too. I really hope that this site, or at least SOMETHING can be become an official place to talk about Homestuck in an attempt to unite the community and let the fans truly interact in a good place about the comic with the writers and all. I'm excited for what's to come in HS^2 and am keeping my head high hoping for something new, especially if they can figure out a situation to unite the fandom. I will say however, the sprites need to change (Obviously we just started but still, please don't recycle sprites), everyone who's a god tier should resemble being 25 at this point (That's the canon point of when they stop aging physically as a God Tier I'm pretty sure) and that's not reflected at all in the current art style which is offputting.

[Alder]

I don't think old humor should be used to support the idea that someone is racist. The most powerful forms of comedy are shocking in nature. Call it tasteless if you will, but edgelords are attracted to shock comedy because it's so socially unacceptable while at the same time being facetious. Also, I don't think him being white or "a product of his time" have anything to do with it. As a latino who went to a >90 minority school, that term was thrown around all the time just 2 years ago when I was in high school even as a senior because it inherently has connotations that make it a disgusting, taboo word and thus, appealing for juvenile jokes. It's not racial or era-based at it all. It's age based.

He's not necessarily racist. The thing about the Internet back then is that stuff like that was horribly common, mainly as a result of the fact that the early Internet was really only a thing for people of a specific background. The more normalized it became, the less accepted these things became.

Uhh, how early are we talking here? Because I've had a computer from the early 2000s, most of my extended family in a village in D.R. did too, and most of the kids in my public/elementary school, along with phones, which was also primarily minority. If you're saying the net was only for white or rich people, that's a little offensive, ngl.

[Mentok Thief of Mind]

IDK. HS^2 can claim whatever it wants, but it will always be canon, and it canon-ized the Epilogues, which to me is a mistake.

[egg]

I don't think old humor should be used to support the idea that someone is racist. The most powerful forms of comedy are shocking in nature. Call it tasteless if you will, but edgelords are attracted to shock comedy because it's so socially unacceptable while at the same time being facetious. Also, I don't think him being white or "a product of his time" have anything to do with it. As a latino who went to a >90 minority school, that term was thrown around all the time just 2 years ago when I was in high school even as a senior because it inherently has connotations that make it a disgusting, taboo word and thus, appealing for juvenile jokes. It's not racial or era-based at it all. It's age based.

He's not necessarily racist. The thing about the Internet back then is that stuff like that was horribly common, mainly as a result of the fact that the early Internet was really only a thing for people of a specific background. The more normalized it became, the less accepted these things became.

Uhh, how early are we talking here? Because I've had a computer from the early 2000s, most of my extended family in a village in D.R. did too, and most of the kids in my public/elementary school, along with phones, which was also primarily minority. If you're saying the net was only for white or rich people, that's a little offensive, ngl.

I'm not saying the net was only for white or rich people. I'm saying the areas of the Internet Hussie operated within were primarily populated by middle-school to college age teenagers/young adults who weren't concerned with being PC or particularly socially adjusted. You can see it in old forums a lot, actually - the banter there wouldn't really fly in modern Twitter. At the same time, there wasn't anyone with very differing opinions to challenge this particular status quo, which is how you end up with the sort of stuff Hussie made, although what I saw the most commonly was very gratuitous usage of the r-word, utilizing mental illnesses to describe people, and other things of the sort. These still exist with some commonality on the Internet, but the more normalized it becomes the more isolated they become to very specific places, instead of being 'Internet culture' in large swathes.

The best example I can think of this 'cultural' difference are old Internet memes. In 2006, Star Wars kid happened, and a whole bunch of people got together to e-bully some teen who acted like a fool online. At the time, it was more acceptable to haze anyone who was far too eager with personal information and looked or acted ridiculous. In fact, this happened on a far more serious level with Christian Weston Chandler, a (at the time) 25 year old who got severely targeted in the late 2000's. In the days of the modern Internet, stuff like this may still happen, especially in forums like Kiwifarms, but once again, they've been isolated and fallen out of general acceptance. When someone's targeted, it's generally due to cancel culture, which, regardless of any opinions you may have on it, is vastly different from what happened to people like CWC and the Star Wars kid.

It's within this environment that Hussie thrived, and it was in this environment that Homestuck started and thus got most of its inspiration from. It's no surprise that comics like Hoops and the other things in TSO were the way they were, and it doesn't necessarily mean by itself that Hussie is a bigot. Could he be? I mean, sure, but if he is, surprisingly little amounts of it actually fell in the comic proper, aside from the whole 'white rapper' and 'caucasian' things, the former of which seems to have been a mistake (the kids and their guardians in Homestuck are LITERALLY white) and the latter of which was poking fun at fandom trends at the time, including the whole white rapper debacle, and not actually racist commentary. The messages in the Skaianet loredump were not intentionally anti-semitic either, and seemed to have been jokes made in extremely poor taste, of such a kind that would not be rare to see at all in the early Internet, where jokes about race and especially Adolf Hitler were very common - indeed, shock humor was a mainstay of the period, not just with bigoted subjects but also things like Lemon Party, Blue Waffle googling, goatse, etc.

Was a larger population of the Internet back then more privileged than the current population? I dunno, possibly. The accessibility of phones has made the Internet more open to people, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the demographics have really changed. Even if they have, certain communities have more of a specific demographic than others (you're unlikely to see trans people on 8ch, for example, but you'll see plenty of them here). I'd say that what's changed is that people are a lot more conscious, and also a lot more sensitive, of what they and others say and do on the Internet. It has nothing to do with your personal background as much as it has to do with your sensibilities, and what you come to the Internet for. Back in the 2000's, the Internet was often a form of entertainment and escapism. It was rarely a platform for political debate or intellectual discussion, and much less one where people would tolerate behavior policing. I'd say that a large population of the people I interacted with were on the Internet primarily for a place where they could be 'themselves' more than they could in real life, but this may not be true of everyone from that era.

In any case, if Andrew Hussie started publishing comics in 2016-onwards, TSO would've been a lot different, as would have been all of his future projects, were they to exist at all given the vastly different atmosphere. And, in reality, Homestuck itself started changing to accomodate the changed atmosphere of the Internet, especially in Act 6, which can be quite jarring if you read the pesterlog in which Karkat makes an incredibly overt reference to a homophobic slur, towards Vriska no less, and pesterlogs even earlier where he repeatedly makes use of the R-word, whereas now Hussie actively and enthusiastically supports a trans headcanon for one of his characters. Whether or not you think those changes are a necessarily good thing is up to you, I personally don't care, but I know many people who care a lot, and it's not within my authority to argue with them. And indeed, their personal feelings on the subject should be respected, as should their ability to personally identify with a character, or feel uncomfortable with the comic.

[Alder]

snip

Kk, misunderstood what you were implying, then.

[thorondraco]

He's not necessarily racist. The thing about the Internet back then is that stuff like that was horribly common, mainly as a result of the fact that the early Internet was really only a thing for people of a specific background. The more normalized it became, the less accepted these things became.

Uhh, how early are we talking here? Because I've had a computer from the early 2000s, most of my extended family in a village in D.R. did too, and most of the kids in my public/elementary school, along with phones, which was also primarily minority. If you're saying the net was only for white or rich people, that's a little offensive, ngl.

I'm not saying the net was only for white or rich people. I'm saying the areas of the Internet Hussie operated within were primarily populated by middle-school to college age teenagers/young adults who weren't concerned with being PC or particularly socially adjusted. You can see it in old forums a lot, actually - the banter there wouldn't really fly in modern Twitter. At the same time, there wasn't anyone with very differing opinions to challenge this particular status quo, which is how you end up with the sort of stuff Hussie made, although what I saw the most commonly was very gratuitous usage of the r-word, utilizing mental illnesses to describe people, and other things of the sort. These still exist with some commonality on the Internet, but the more normalized it becomes the more isolated they become to very specific places, instead of being 'Internet culture' in large swathes.

The best example I can think of this 'cultural' difference are old Internet memes. In 2006, Star Wars kid happened, and a whole bunch of people got together to e-bully some teen who acted like a fool online. At the time, it was more acceptable to haze anyone who was far too eager with personal information and looked or acted ridiculous. In fact, this happened on a far more serious level with Christian Weston Chandler, a (at the time) 25 year old who got severely targeted in the late 2000's. In the days of the modern Internet, stuff like this may still happen, especially in forums like Kiwifarms, but once again, they've been isolated and fallen out of general acceptance. When someone's targeted, it's generally due to cancel culture, which, regardless of any opinions you may have on it, is vastly different from what happened to people like CWC and the Star Wars kid.

It's within this environment that Hussie thrived, and it was in this environment that Homestuck started and thus got most of its inspiration from. It's no surprise that comics like Hoops and the other things in TSO were the way they were, and it doesn't necessarily mean by itself that Hussie is a bigot. Could he be? I mean, sure, but if he is, surprisingly little amounts of it actually fell in the comic proper, aside from the whole 'white rapper' and 'caucasian' things, the former of which seems to have been a mistake (the kids and their guardians in Homestuck are LITERALLY white) and the latter of which was poking fun at fandom trends at the time, including the whole white rapper debacle, and not actually racist commentary. The messages in the Skaianet loredump were not intentionally anti-semitic either, and seemed to have been jokes made in extremely poor taste, of such a kind that would not be rare to see at all in the early Internet, where jokes about race and especially Adolf Hitler were very common - indeed, shock humor was a mainstay of the period, not just with bigoted subjects but also things like Lemon Party, Blue Waffle googling, goatse, etc.

Was a larger population of the Internet back then more privileged than the current population? I dunno, possibly. The accessibility of phones has made the Internet more open to people, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the demographics have really changed. Even if they have, certain communities have more of a specific demographic than others (you're unlikely to see trans people on 8ch, for example, but you'll see plenty of them here). I'd say that what's changed is that people are a lot more conscious, and also a lot more sensitive, of what they and others say and do on the Internet. It has nothing to do with your personal background as much as it has to do with your sensibilities, and what you come to the Internet for. Back in the 2000's, the Internet was often a form of entertainment and escapism. It was rarely a platform for political debate or intellectual discussion, and much less one where people would tolerate behavior policing. I'd say that a large population of the people I interacted with were on the Internet primarily for a place where they could be 'themselves' more than they could in real life, but this may not be true of everyone from that era.

In any case, if Andrew Hussie started publishing comics in 2016-onwards, TSO would've been a lot different, as would have been all of his future projects, were they to exist at all given the vastly different atmosphere. And, in reality, Homestuck itself started changing to accomodate the changed atmosphere of the Internet, especially in Act 6, which can be quite jarring if you read the pesterlog in which Karkat makes an incredibly overt reference to a homophobic slur, towards Vriska no less, and pesterlogs even earlier where he repeatedly makes use of the R-word, whereas now Hussie actively and enthusiastically supports a trans headcanon for one of his characters. Whether or not you think those changes are a necessarily good thing is up to you, I personally don't care, but I know many people who care a lot, and it's not within my authority to argue with them. And indeed, their personal feelings on the subject should be respected, as should their ability to personally identify with a character, or feel uncomfortable with the comic.

If i remember right Hussie does still throws a couple of jabs at the LGBTQ community even now. They are more meant to be friendly jabs though, though he still digs in with his knuckle. At this point he probably has earned the right to parody. The best jokes come from making fun of the things you support and love after all.

Think he probably was a supporter of it even back then, its just that he likes southpark like jokes and wasn't afraid to take a few jabs at the stupid parts of culture. And there is plenty of stupid parts.

[KanayaMaryam]

I have complicated feelings towards HS^2, but I think the easiest way to sum it up is: I honestly couldn’t give a shit.

For the most part, Homestuck canon ended in 2016 for me, and I was (mostly) content with it. Hiveswap was cool, and I didn’t really play Friendsim because I wasn’t that interested in it, but I mostly thought of them as short term projects than were just extra content, like a DLC. I didn’t really join or interact with the fandom until late 2018, which is when the fanprojects and new content really started to pick up, but by then my interest in Homestuck had mostly faded into a fond memory. I still adore it, don’t get me wrong, but all of these added stuff and new things, as cool as they are, just don’t register as ‘real’ or ‘canon’ in my mind.

I hated the Epilogues, though I can appreciate the fascinating writing style and the horror and desperation it was able to portray, but as ‘canon’ content? Nah chief. Maybe it’s because it had been 3 years since I last really read Homestuck, but these characters felt so alien to me. I couldn’t recognise them, and I know it’s supposed to be some bullshit metaphor of how people change and life moves on and happy endings don’t always exist blah blah blah, guess what. We get enough of that in real life. If I wanted to be confronted with tragedy, I would read the news. If I wanted to be blasted with change, I would write a memoir or look at Facebook, or hell, the whole world around me.

I don’t want that.

Many of us use fiction to escape, and by forcing these ‘adult’ themes to show that these characters have ‘grown-up and are realistic people with real problems!!!1!!’, it just depresses me. As a result, I decided to ignore everything that had been declared as ‘canon’ or whatever, because I am so confused as to what that means. It’s become warped and twisted into something trying to be ‘smart’ and ‘intellectual’ when really, does it have to be that? Can canon not simply be canon, and fanwork be just as important, without having to intertwine the two to such an extent? Maybe I’m just an idiot unable to see the bigger picture.

In short, I Do Not Care about HS^2, and honestly, if it bugs people? Ignore it. We don’t have to interact with it if we don’t want to. Make your own works, come up with your own ideas and share them. That’s how things grow. And if people don’t enjoy it, then they can create something different! I’m not trying to say: oh if you don’t like something then ignoring it is the best option!!!! This obviously, has nothing to do with real world issues. I am talking about fiction and things within fiction. We see fans all the time saying ‘hey, I didn’t like how the author did this so I’m going to believe this instead’. (Cough, Mineta BNHA, cough) Why can’t we do the same here?

Anyway this was written on mobile so i apologise for any mistakes, but this is my two cents on the matter.

[ThePungeonMaster]

I have complicated feelings towards HS^2, but I think the easiest way to sum it up is: I honestly couldn’t give a shit.

For the most part, Homestuck canon ended in 2016 for me, and I was (mostly) content with it. Hiveswap was cool, and I didn’t really play Friendsim because I wasn’t that interested in it, but I mostly thought of them as short term projects than were just extra content, like a DLC. I didn’t really join or interact with the fandom until late 2018, which is when the fanprojects and new content really started to pick up, but by then my interest in Homestuck had mostly faded into a fond memory. I still adore it, don’t get me wrong, but all of these added stuff and new things, as cool as they are, just don’t register as ‘real’ or ‘canon’ in my mind.

I hated the Epilogues, though I can appreciate the fascinating writing style and the horror and desperation it was able to portray, but as ‘canon’ content? Nah chief. Maybe it’s because it had been 3 years since I last really read Homestuck, but these characters felt so alien to me. I couldn’t recognise them, and I know it’s supposed to be some bullshit metaphor of how people change and life moves on and happy endings don’t always exist blah blah blah, guess what. We get enough of that in real life. If I wanted to be confronted with tragedy, I would read the news. If I wanted to be blasted with change, I would write a memoir or look at Facebook, or hell, the whole world around me.

I don’t want that.

Many of us use fiction to escape, and by forcing these ‘adult’ themes to show that these characters have ‘grown-up and are realistic people with real problems!!!1!!’, it just depresses me. As a result, I decided to ignore everything that had been declared as ‘canon’ or whatever, because I am so confused as to what that means. It’s become warped and twisted into something trying to be ‘smart’ and ‘intellectual’ when really, does it have to be that? Can canon not simply be canon, and fanwork be just as important, without having to intertwine the two to such an extent? Maybe I’m just an idiot unable to see the bigger picture.

In short, I Do Not Care about HS^2, and honestly, if it bugs people? Ignore it. We don’t have to interact with it if we don’t want to. Make your own works, come up with your own ideas and share them. That’s how things grow. And if people don’t enjoy it, then they can create something different! I’m not trying to say: oh if you don’t like something then ignoring it is the best option!!!! This obviously, has nothing to do with real world issues. I am talking about fiction and things within fiction. We see fans all the time saying ‘hey, I didn’t like how the author did this so I’m going to believe this instead’. (Cough, Mineta BNHA, cough) Why can’t we do the same here?

Anyway this was written on mobile so i apologise for any mistakes, but this is my two cents on the matter.

This.
This is the only objectively correct take in this entire thread, and I dare anyone prove otherwise.
I think all this floundering and bickering back and forth between what constitutes cannon and what doesn't is totally against the spirit of what cannon actually means in the context of Homestuck. Meat and Candy shouldn't be the only timelines considered valid by anyone, least of all the writers. In fact, no timelines should be considered valid post act 7, and by that same logic all should, and we should treat it as such. Instead of using cannon as an excuse to limit current projects in scale and content it should open a door to the craziest shit imaginable, shit that would make every reader cream their jeans in unadulterated glee. Homestuck 2, by being not bound to Homestuck anymore by any discernible metric, has that power, so why waste it by worrying about cannon. If we try to obsess about what continuation of the story is official, we become Dirk, the villain obsessed with maintaining cannon and relevancy to the original tale.

To be frank I enjoy how exhausting Dirk's metanarrative fuckery has been, but that doesn't mean that I can't sympathize with the idea that it's all gotten a bit much. Meat was enjoyable for me, but it would be nice to have the respite that Candy should have been. We should be able to enjoy some comfort in knowing that not all is lost for our heroes. Maybe that one timeline, maybe even the timeline we are reading in Homestuck 2, will provide us with some solace that not all is lost, and by being liberated from the gratuitous confines of what constitutes cannon, we can really start to have some fun.

[nonsenseMnemonic]

I honestly don't think it's fair to ask people to dismiss or ignore new content as it comes out, especially if they've been around for a long time and are emotionally or socially invested in HS. I get that it's frustrating to see so much negativity and anger around, and I get wanting to have positive conversations about the Epilogues without worrying about disagreements. I think we should absolutely make space to have those conversations.
But if you loved engaging with the fandom while it was updating, or if you loved writing fic and making fan art afterwards, if you spent a lot of time talking about and loving the comic, it's absolutely reasonable to be upset with something that turns all that on its head. Unless you want to detach from Homestuck content altogether, you can't ignore the Epilogues. They come up in our conversations. They come up in our fan art. They retroactively change our relationships to Homestuck and its characters.
And it's okay to be upset about that, to address it, to stay in the fandom. While it's natural that new conversations about Homestuck will lean towards those who want it to continue, I don't think anger or complaints about its continuation are out-of-place. Homestuck has been around for a long time, a lot of people are very attached to the version of it that they started with, and I don't want to ask them to give up on the fandom or HS if they still care about it enough to discuss it.