Earth C Visual Novel

ohhhhh how i desire more Carapacian Content.....

I think an Earth C entry in the Friendsim series could totally work, though I think a visual novel is exactly the wrong medium through which to explore the establishment of the Four Kingdoms, even in the name of more exile content. Those guys deserve a story of their own!

C-quest (C-change? C-side? WORKSHOP TITLES HERE FOLKS) would work best focusing on a cast of everyday Earth C schmoes the same way Friendsim does, imo, and most of them should be living around the same time in the interests of fully fleshing out a particular slice of the world they live in. A handful of trolls, a handful of humans, some Furthest Ring ghosts (I immediately presumed we were doing the Candy volume as a setting, but I guess that would be a whole other thing that needs discussing), so on for carapacians and consorts... I always forget the consorts can talk. Hell they're probably chattier than most chess folk are. I'm just dying to know what a four foot crocodile has to say about the rise of Neo-American fascism

I actually think Earth C has a lot of potential but the story just doesn't actually focus all that much on what's going on there even though its by far the coolest setting we've gotten for the comic. Like, I want know so much more about how everything works there, I wanna know about the Troll Rebellion and the Human Kingdom and the Carapacians etc but they do move past it all really quickly in favor of just handling the main plot lol.

Also I would adore a Calliope Friendsim route, maybe there could be two for each different Callie too. Since there's Candy!Calliope and Meat!Calliope :3

We haven't even seen the Earth C flag outside of a patreon post from forever ago; ngl wish we got to see more of it or even a map or something of where everything is located. I want more from it ngl.

I'd like to collect all the info we actually have on Earth C, as a starting point for writing stories there. I'm not even sure where the Four Kingdoms are in relation to each other, or how much the geography still resembles our Earth. It's implied that hopping from one capital city to another isn't a big deal, though that could just be down to God-tiers not knowing the struggles of the little consort.

On the other hand, us not knowing means you can make up pretty much anything, and the Well Ackchually-ers won't have any way to well-ackchually it.

Earth C could have been interesting if anyone had bothered to take it seriously as a setting. Unfortunately it seems like the canonical Homestuck 'brand' will always be marked by this sort of Peter Pan-like refusal to engage with the idea that there is a real world anywhere outside of the video game constructs that form a pale backdrop to Character Interactions. You see this not only in Homestuck proper, where it makes sense because those Earths are basically dead on arrival, but in Skaianet Systems, where history itself is relegated to a game of like 'plug character name in' Mad Libs.

Abstraction can be fun! But I also think that being afraid to write anything except pure farce almost feels like playing on easy mode, staying in a comfort zone, refusing to take on a challenging writing concept just because it's challenging and would require thought in order to make interesting stakes and plot threads.

I agree, Earth C isn't much of a setting, and a visual novel in the style of Friendsim/Pesterquest would be a great way to remedy that. Becuz that was already done, with Alternia.

Would I would say Alternia had a lot more exploration than Earth C does, I think we often ignore just how much it helped expand the setting from "cryptic meme joke setting" to "cryptic meme joke setting with a little more depth".

As for the title. C'mon, y'all. Of course it would be called Tales From Earth C.

@margot_kix -

"A Wizard of Earth C" oh dear sweet merciful Cthulhu. A route about a Consort, the heir to Von Salamancer's school of dark wizardry. I really, really want more Consort and Carapacian material for Earth C. Wouldn't mind some leprechauns, either.

(I'm hideously tempted to start writing about some of this stuff, though I'm already bogged down in one outsized HS fic. Basic idea: a timeline where instead of stewing in their own juices or trying to regain Narrative Significance, our heroes explore the planet and its entire frickin' UNIVERSE that they worked so hard to create.)

Hiveswap Friendsim is my favourite depiction of Alternia, hands down. It's an unexpectedly moving sort-of-story, which is quite something given that all these situations spin off from scraps of worldbuilding that were originally played for laughs.