@sword my comment was poorly phrased. obviously people still have fun with homestuck! i mean, i am. what i was trying to say was that a section of the fandom took what hussie and co wrote very personally and adopted a mindset that isn't conducive to actual discussion. "hussie hates me" is not engaging with media. there were years where the vast majority of what was happening in hs fan communities was vitriol towards hussie. it was genuinely exhausting. this isn't the fault of hussie. it was just a thing that sucked. it's much better now.

"Even the idea of a "fix-it" fic for the Epilogues doesn't make sense because if it gets "fixed" then it's a completely different story that ends instead of starting something else." i don't think we disagree here.

i know i already said this was a "fix it parody" but thinking about it, that's not totally true. i think you're right when you say it's a "happy ending" parody, but i think that it's a little more specific. when i saw the epilgogues, my first instinct was that it was a dig at the hp epilogues and the cursed child. i think this was very clever. that being said, i think part of what was worth satirzing about the cursed child is that it was ooc (if you could call the hp characters consistent), poorly structured, and all and all straight up bad.

hussie and company did a really good job deconstructing it and other epilogues, but by doing that, they had to derail the paths these characters were on to tell that story. dandy is right. they were deliberately changing these characters. jane being a fascist doesn't make sense, but neither did cedric lmfao. Its awkward tone is a result of it being a parody.

the critique that it's ooc is straight up true; they're being ooc intentionally. that's not bad writing, it's good satire. what HSBC did was try and move forward with those characterizations and see what could be made out of the ashes. not everyone wants that, though, and that's reasonable.

that's where the "dubiously canon" thing comes from. there's a reason it's separated from homestuck proper. there is a noticable difference from hs and dub canon works. in tone, in characterization. it is seperated, to some degree, from og homestuck.

"There are so many people that just wanted their favorite fanfics to get some Hussie Sauce added as the finale and to be able to have canon wrapped up so they can play dolls with the way they solidified their characterizations of the kids in their heads pre-2018 and still feel like they're "canon-compliant.""

This feels unnecessarily harsh. I strongly believe that "dub-canon" left the option to engage with the characters only as they exist in canon open on purpose. I agree that more people are taking inspiration from dub canon, and I agree that dub canon is homestuck, and is good.

I disagree that there is a "right way" to do that and that that "right way" means taking the events and character changes of HSE and HS2/BC as gospel. People who decide not to do that and that prefer canon aren't failing to engage with the text.

As someone who aspires to add her work to FARF (barring any complications like the work currently being on AO3 and having to make my own site for it, as well as some of the site needing to have verification so that minors can't read any graphic nsfw scenes) I can tell you that even some of the FARF writers were critical of the HSE. Part of the conversation is criticism. The point was that it was constructive criticism. Where the conversation broke down was, again, people in fan spaces taking it personally.

@dandy if it would make you feel better, feel free to DM me on discord (same username) i was pretty upset when the homestuck epilogues came out too and if you want to vent to me i'm open to it.