With the announcement of the animated series by Spindleroo, i've been think about how the more experimental and meta elements of Homestuck will appear in it.
An example i've been thinking about is Caliborn smashing the whole website with the crowbar, i could see it appearing as Caliborn smashing the app of whatever streaming server Homestuck is greenlit on.
WE <3 HOMESTUCK
It's been kind of funny seeing people worrying about trimming it down - it BETTER! IIRC the first episode is going to cover Act 1, and with relatively short episodes they will have to do a Lot of hustling to get to somewhere interesting by the end. I do wonder though if they plan on making a lot of changes between the pilot and if it gets greenlit (which..... I have to imagine they're already planning for it to with a strong built in fandom and it being an almost Tumblr household name).
I agree wholeheartedly with Jake that I think there is an opportunity for Hussie to really ADAPT and see what new opportunities there are with the new medium. They could do some really cool things with transferring a lot of the web/coding jokes to animation jokes, and even while officially on music/VA I think Toby (idk anyone else on the project) would also have to have some sick ideas/jokes. I know a lot of people groaned (I personally was in hysterics with everything going on) when they saw it was Vivziepop, but I actually kind of think that they're one of the better 'indie'(?) studios to take it on, since Helluva Boss and Vivzie herself had a similar rise from web project to Oh Shit Actual IP, but for animation.
There are a lot of funny pesterlogs but they will not be needed nearly as much when we can actually WATCH characters do things, instead of them having to talk to each other to fill out whats happening in the 2 frame gif. They can focus on snappier back-and-forths and cutting down to important information. I really am excited to see what they choose to keep, cut, and what new parts/interpretations are put in. I'm also genuinely kind of hyped to see new fans that liked the cartoons then getting a TOME of more of the characters they liked :)
true but if they cut the apple juice shit im going insane
vriska is awesome
i'm really interested to see how they adapt how various characters are reading/writing homestuck. the "watching characters on screens" aspect is pretty easy to translate, but then i imagine exiles would fill more of a "director" or a "writer" role, shouting into quasi-director megaphone rather than typing them like reader commands.
its exciting to know that AH is still a character, i could see a lot of directions for him to go in whether its "animator" or just like a general "showrunner". i feel like it's pretty likely that he points out that he's adapting the comic. and then caliborn's role in the production of homosuck will reflect whatever role AH plays (the felt can be his studio of animators...)
i have zero clue how the retcon will play out. will the stuff always be there...? that sort of defeats the purpose of the retcon!
Obviously they WILL trim the dialogue, but it's not the length of the dialogue that makes Homestuck, it's the quality, and animated mediums have the benefit of being able to develop their characters and worlds through means other than dialogue - primarily their visuals, but also for instance other elements of sound that we don't experience through written dialogue alone, like tone. This is always how adapting the written word to the screen has worked, since the screen was invented, and Homestuck is not in a position to uniquely break these long held conventions. I mean, presumably it WILL break a lot of the conventions of the medium, that's what this thread is about - but it'll do that on purpose, because breaking conventions is much of what Homestuck is about.
Spending some large number of seasons adapting Act 6 is inevitable in any case. You need to remember that Act 6 is the vast majority of the comic, and it's where everything happens! Compared to Act 6, the first five are basically all setup, and imo if Hussie knows what he's doing (which they almost certainly do) then they'll try to get through that setup in as few episodes as possible to get to the real meat of the story.
>eats somewhere other than olive garden once
>fucking dies
On re-reads, it always surprises me just how long it takes to get all four Beta Kids into the game. OK, the in-game situation has already developed quite a bit by Jade's entry in Act 5 Act 2 (!), but there's plenty of room to tighten things up. Especially if the trolls are introduced earlier, as seems likely.
The middle of Act 6 has a ton of deliberately frustrating Caliborn material in the "main" acts while the action happens in the intermissions. Can't imagine this being a palatable way of watching the story, so that element will be handled very differently.
Then there are things that happen in other spaces and times entirely to the main narrative. The Exiles, the Midnight Crew, the trolls session, the other trolls' session... I wonder how much of that will survive, and whether it'll get its own episodes or be mixed in with the "present day" action.
"This is StuckUnderHell, nor am I out of it." - Mephistopheles
the year is 2028. the homestuck animated show is entering an eagerly awaited arc, which old fans of the work have dubbed "murderstuck". gamzee has gone insane, vriska killed tavros, eridan murdered three people and a fetus, the tensions have never been higher! the episode opens on terezi making an upsetting discovery of the lifeless body surrounded by bronze blood. she gasps in utter dismay!
after a short close up of her saddened face, the camera suddenly snaps into an unnaturally theatrical shot of the room.
"OH NO! POOR TAVROS! WHATEVER SHALL I DO?" she seemingly speaks directly to the audience, accentuating her words with an exaggerated hand gesture, which is unfortunately lost due to the fact that we can only see her back. she is not facing the camera, on the account of the fact that she is blind. she does not know where the camera is.
there is an uncomfortable, completely silent pause.
"WHAT DO YOU THINK I SHOULD DO?" terezi asks again, again followed by another pregnant pause.
"WHAT? SPEAK UP, I CANNOT HEAR YOU!" she speaks in a very stilted manner, as if screaming directly at you.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY? YOU THINK I SHOULD INVESTIGATE THE BODY?" she pauses again.
"THAT IS A GREAT IDEA! THANK YOU!" she finally snaps out of her unnatural pose, and squats to look closer at dead tavros. after voicing a few discoveries in a delivery that is infinitely more natural than whatever she's been saying for the past two minutes, she stands back up and turns away from you again.
"OKAY! WHAT DO YOU THINK I SHOULD DO NOW?"
anyway i joke but i do think the idea of adapting the concept of "the audience is inputting commands for these characters to do" in the style of dora the explorer has enough potential to earn at LEAST a single joke in the show
