okay so i’ve seen a lot of post about What If Humans Were Weird and stuff about humans and aliens interacting but………….give me some human/alien relationships? where are my complicated courting rituals???? where are my human alien marriages??? Give Me That Shit!
what if aliens consider humans the Epitome of Beauty and grace? like yknow how some ostriches prefer presenting to humans instead of other ostriches? and anyone who is lucky enough to be mated to a human is thought of to be like a tier above.
but like the flip side where any human who marries an alien is immediately known as a Kinkster. “i fucking knew david was into weird shit!!! no wonder he got married to an alien from sector 764b4 HE LIKES TENTACLES!!”
or maybe?? aliens who like humans are weird to other aliens? “omg ru’garr stop fetishizing an entire species, u creep.” and ru’garr is trying to hide his weird human porn like “ITS NOT THAT WEIRD GUYS THE GENITALS ARE COMPATIBLE!!!” “fuck off ru’garr”
the best thing in all of homestuck is when we saw what the kids would be like if they didn’t play sburb and grew up, jade, rose, and dave all became dedicated anti fascists who literally rebelled against a dictatorship and murdered important members of the regime, while john literally was just A Stand Up Comedian
alpha john was probably a saboteur, because that is the sweetest prank of all. he was just good enough never to get caught, in part because he doesn’t have the strilonde urge to stab one’s enemies in the eyes and ride their corpses down a waterfall
Honestly my favorite part of Homestuck is that for a solid chunk of the story amongst all of the then-disguised characters harassing the then-main characters one in specifically deals with the main-est character backwards, so he starts out knowing everything about him and hating and insulting him and as we follow the main character his harasser gets less and less mad until it turns out that during their first conversation from the harasser’s side the main character is so used to him he acts friendly and the harasser asks him out, finds out he’s straight, and promptly starts talking to him backwards in time for the sole purpose of being too embarrassed to talk to him with that knowledgeable and honestly same
Hello. I’ve never really done a proper theory post before, but I really hope I can manage to make my points clear? Because this is something I feel strongly about.
First of all, today is October 28th 2016, Homestuck had its Credits three days ago, and Hussie has been hinting at an Epilogue to come. Many people really want the Epilogue, because they feel Homestuck’s ending was unsatisfying. The reasons for this, and whether I agree with them or not, are up for debate and are more complex than they seem. But one reason people have proposed is that Hussie grew tired of writing Homestuck and just whipped up an ending. That is the viewpoint I absolutely disagree with, and I believe I can (if not prove) make a convincing case against. Which means I believe I can make a convincing case for the suggestion that Hussie had this entire ending planned, including people’s dissatisfaction with the ending and the reasons why they found it unsatisfying.
So then. What was the ending, again? Let’s describe it from the perspective of one who didn’t like the ending.
John finds his way into a rewritten world where his friends are not really the friends he knows. Roxy is dead here, indirectly killed by John’s own choice (but it’s okay because we know the real Roxy is still alive). The protagonists fight the Big Bad witch and inexplicably kill her with one lucky blow off-screen. A wolf thing, presented as a dire threat, has nothing to do with the actual fight and is neutralized and appeased naturally. A robotic killer is threatening but ultimately blows itself up. The audience is rewarded with, essentially, fanart of Homestuck characters being affectionate with each other. The audience is pissed off by this turn of events; after all that was built up, suddenly our favourite characters are being drawn by other people, suddenly all plot seems to have been forgotten and just strung together with contrivances. It feels like an insult to everything we’ve come to admire. The next Act, instead of providing more answers, we just get anime, and still not drawn by Hussie. A little while later, we hear again from the story, and we see our focal point character is despondent and mournful, deciding ultimately to take action and leaving us on a cliffhanger.
(I gave this description on Reddit, though I added the last sentence specifically for this post)
That is the ending, right? Let’s go over it again.
John finds his way into a retconned timeline, where the art is predominantly a different style than Hussie’s conventional (and when it is Hussie’s, it is “fast and loose”).
His friends are there, but John is consciously aware that they’re not literally the same people he has known all his life.
John’s very act of arriving in this retconned timeline (his Choice with Typheus in A6A6I4) necessitated that the new Roxy would have to die (which is okay because there is still the old Roxy).
The new John died before we came to this timeline.
The protagonists fight the witch (Batterwitch), the wolf (Jack), and the robot (different Jack).
The witch is inexplicably killed with one lucky blow. (The audience is rewarded with “fanart” of Homestuck characters being affectionate with each other, including a wedding.)
A wolf thing, presented as a dire threat, has nothing to do with the actual fight and is neutralized and appeased naturally, non-lethally.
A robotic killer is threatening but ultimately blows itself up.
The audience is pissed off by this turn of events; after all that was built up, suddenly our favourite characters are being drawn by other people, suddenly all plot seems to have been forgotten and just strung together with contrivances.
The next Act, instead of providing more answers, we just get anime, and still not drawn by Hussie.
A little while later, we hear again from the story (Credits), and we see our focal point character (John) is despondent and mournful…
…deciding ultimately to take action (fight Caliborn) and leaving us on a cliffhanger leading presumably up to the Masterpiece.
Does this… make sense? Do you see why I personally believe this whole “ending” is just another ruse, another instance of Homestuck being shaped like itself?
i’m entirely prepared to believe that this is all we get of homestuck and caliborn managed to ruin shit for both the characters AND readers. but it sure would be cool if the last couple years were a fake-out on hussie’s part for him to get his shit back together and write some actually good stuff, instead of just him quietly trying to dig himself out of a hole he’s not having any more fun in.
Game Over dropped on my 19th birthday wherein one of my (both since disowned) patron trolls murdered my favorite kid. Then I spent the next few days an anxious wreck glued to MSPARP to cope.
So there’s that.
Thematically, I think Game Over fits snugly into Homestuck’s overall narrative. Destiny says “you’re done here”, the kids say “fuck you” and figure out a way around it. That’s what they’ve always done, except now they’re going to an even greater extreme and breaking the concept of narrative itself in order to do so. I have only ever seen the flash itself once (and would only watch again under duress and with protest) but I think it’s one of the last times Hussie used animation and the layout of MSPA to push the boundaries of what could be done to tell the story. Here’s reality falling apart, reflected by the characters shifting out of the frame and parts of the flash itself shoving other parts out of the way. In theory, this is a good “all is lost” moment, an end of the second act in a three-act structure where the heroes seem utterly defeated, only to rally and pull out a victory. In theory, this is a good extreme for John’s powers to go to. In theory, it plays out like a video game: the kids fuck up, die, and John starts them over from a save point with an extra life. Everyone learns from their mistakes and goes on to complete the game.
In practice, I think it became Hussie’s way of writing himself out of a corner. Except he was never in a corner. He was actually in a perfectly straight hallway the entire time. But this is the point where I break off and start rambling about post-retcon, so skedaddle here if you don’t want to hear me bitching about that.
tl;dr: I find the flash itself horrifically upsetting, but I’ve made my peace with its purpose in the narrative and can admire its construction. Bitching about the fallout of the flash starts… now:
just moving along like everyone else 