@pearls, what fandom spaces are you in? I'm genuinely curious because I am really not getting this sense. We might just be in different places. However @stagelights, I don't think your comment is fair. This is fiction, and people are entitled to their opinions. There are reasonable criticisms of the Epilogues, even James Roach said that he disagreed with some of the decisions made. There is a major difference between criticizing something and spewing vitriol. A lot of spaces spew vitriol, but I actually think well-thought-out criticisms of the epilogues are rare in comparison. Pretty much everything I see is people taking hussie and co's fix it satire as if it's some sort of deep personal attack. People who don't want to seem like assholes who hate the authors, including myself, feel a lot of pressure not to be associated with bad actors. However, I don't think Dandy is a bad actor, and I don't think they're saying anything unreasonable. They've read the epilogues. They just don't like them. It's fair, The epilogues are pretty upsetting.

Reading back through this thread, I feel like we are not making a great case for how Dandy is supposed to regain their love of homestuck. Sword's comment especially rings out to me "You can read them as something that Hussie did to shake fans out of a stupor of being addicted to Canon and reading Hussie's writing as the only thing that matters (which ties into a lot of wanting to know the minutiae of how X or Y thing happened). Basically if they were expecting a Happy Ending from Homestuck of all things it would wake fans up and destabilize the "happily ever after" vibes the fandom and fanon was basking in. Because let's be real, we're seeing a lot of compelling reasons why that was never going to happen either way. Homestuck is a meta story about stories, but also video games. What happens when you win the game, but it doesn't feel like winning? What happens when you die as a child, and don't know how to live normally after your world ended then?" But is it really so wrong to want a happy ending?

I think there's something to this, but it's missing a lot, and if what sword said was the goal of the epilogues, I think it's far too cynical of a motivation for me to be compelling at all. Lots of people continue to survive and be happy after unspeakable tragedies.

The most compelling read of the homestuck epilogues is of a satire of fix it AUs and post sburb AUs. The idea that fans wanted either a "meat" (fix it retcon) or a "candy" (post sburb happiness) is a really good observation. People either wanted to see the characters move on from the game and live idyllic lives, or they wanted to fix every problem and correct every tragety. Now, the idea that hussie was mocking this is a little bit short-sighted. It's not mocking. I think the point they were trying to communicate was that those two options are not really consistent with the tone of homestuck. What the team was trying to do was explore the question "what if trying to make everything perfect in a universe that functions on tragedy actually made things worse"?

The homestuck epilogues are really depressing but they are also sort of "the only valid" ending to homestuck. They are the worst case scenario for a story that remains more true to canon than anything trying to replace it.

Does that mean there's no way for homestuck charcters to be happy? No. But I think it explains why most fix it fics don't really fill the void people have when they are searching for emotional relief from the epilogues. Every fix it fanfics are only able to achieve a happy ending because they break with the tone of homestuck. While there are tons of compelling alternate version of the "Candy" route, that explore the earth-c versions of the character, I was very much unable to find a good "meat-alternative". Not that I've read everything (i haven't read Jade Route yet, for example). It's just.... I want my pre-retcon babies back, and I wrote John load previous save because I was deeply unhappy with the alternatives I have been presented so far. I still think the epilogues are too dour, but I also find most fix it fics to be overly saccharine to the point of being even less true to life and even more out of character. I do not think it is realistic that every character would somehow escape paradox space unschathed. I think that it's even less realistic that every conflict is chalked up to a misunderstanding, good intentions gone wrong, or outside forces beyond anyone's control. Some things can't be solved with an apology. Sometimes people are just fucking awful.

Ideally, the epilogues, the surrounding fan works, and beyond canon, would all be in conversation with one another. I think hussie was trying to start a diologue and spur people's creativity, hence the archive format, I just think that the relationship between the fans and hussie spiraled really quickly and it never ended up going how they wanted it to. I think that's really tragic, and a missed oppourtunity. Especially because we lost the ability to have fun with homestuck. Homestuck is tragic, yes, but what made it work as a story was that it was also genuinely enjoyable. I've read all the classic trageties; sometimes I need a little light in my life. Damn.