Regaining my love for Homestuck (Help Please?)

I have just had an epiphany because of this thread (so thank you to everyone who has contributed thus far). I think another major reason I struggle to enjoy the story right now is because for the last few years of content (and the droughts in between), all of the characters who used to be friends have been at each others throats or hating each other for such a long time in real life.

Back when the alpha kids had their fall out, the resolution didn't take nearly as long (they god tiered and reconciled to some extent). I think the resentment characters feel towards one another has been lingering so long IRL that I must have just been passively depressed about that aspect too.

I know it's not realistic to expect people to be friends forever, but Homestuck isn't exactly sticking to realistic parameters of interpersonal issues when it comes to why some characters resent one another now. The comic has felt like it's been on a negativity arc for a very long time; there's not really been a moment of catharsis that I can pinpoint WRT to any of the negativity that was brought on by the epilogues, and that was almost 10 years ago now.

Terezi is sad. Rose is sad and hiding it bad. Kanaya is sad. Dave is sad. Dirk is definitely sad. C!John is depressed. Everyone in Candy is depressed actually. I don't think we've ever spent this much time with characters stuck in such a low emotional state.

Thank you all for helping me realize this.

I have just had an epiphany because of this thread (so thank you to everyone who has contributed thus far). I think another major reason I struggle to enjoy the story right now is because for the last few years of content (and the droughts in between), all of the characters who used to be friends have been at each others throats or hating each other for such a long time in real life.

Back when the alpha kids had their fall out, the resolution didn't take nearly as long (they god tiered and reconciled to some extent). I think the resentment characters feel towards one another has been lingering so long IRL that I must have just been passively depressed about that aspect too.

I know it's not realistic to expect people to be friends forever, but Homestuck isn't exactly sticking to realistic parameters of interpersonal issues when it comes to why some characters resent one another now. The comic has felt like it's been on a negativity arc for a very long time; there's not really been a moment of catharsis that I can pinpoint WRT to any of the negativity that was brought on by the epilogues, and that was almost 10 years ago now.

Terezi is sad. Rose is sad and hiding it bad. Kanaya is sad. Dave is sad. Dirk is definitely sad. C!John is depressed. Everyone in Candy is depressed actually. I don't think we've ever spent this much time with characters stuck in such a low emotional state.

Thank you all for helping me realize this.

As much as I enjoy fanworks and would love to have the time to create my own, something in my brain never quite lets me get beyond the idea that they aren't "canon". In the grand scheme of things, fans are going to gravitate to the "Canon" and that will be the most popular depiction going forward, it's what people will use to inform their perspective on a character and their arc.

I know it seems a bit pathetic, but that's what my brain clings to. There's a chain of hierarchy there, fanon cannot exist without a canon to build itself off of, thus canon will always be the centre. I could write endless tales about a better Jane ending, but it's never going to be true to the actual story. I wish I could think another way.

@kevin

Well, you're totally right, that's a huge problem I have with the epilogues and postcanon in general. It seems like. Very artificially constructed for creating shocking character dramas and controversial emotional moments. I have actually done a considerable amount of suffering here on this mortal coil, but even still, I find misery porn to be completely unrealistic. Every time I have been at a nadir in my life, I have been able to keep moving forward. Even though I have been through so much, there are friends I have lost and friends I found and friends that I have kept for decades.

So if you think that it's unrealistic, unenjoyable storytelling, and that it doesn't have much to teach you, and it doesn't have much entertainment value, and you don't really benefit in any way from grappling with its pointless ordeals... Why not just dig your heels in and ignore it? Act 7 is a pretty neat cutoff point from Homestuck, and it becomes surprisingly easy to write off the rest when you realize that it's even less planned out and meaningful than the most rush-job improvised parts of the preceding narrative.

For what it's worth, I think Beyond Canon's recent update is addressing the very complaints you have, which is the idea that Canon is something that will always override any popular fanon depiction of a character's story. I know a lot of people hate the Epilogues for pretty valid reasons, but I enjoyed Calliope's depiction because she's the only character who pushes back and agrees with the "Fans" (the nebulous conglomerate of Readers who read Homestuck and stuff lol AKA Us.) She agrees that just because something is "fanon" and doesn't "matter" because it doesn't fit into Canon's strict framework, that doesn't make it any less impactful, because it still affects people anyways.

And the recent update, which idk if you've read but which was really good IMO, sort of introduces this new idea that fanon is equal to canon when it comes to Homestuck, and that the story can be molded by average people who just enjoy the story.

There are other things I have always speculated about the Epilogues as well, like how Dirk has some sort of soft disdain for John simply because John is the main character and thus has all of this narrative importance that Dirk will never actually get. In Meat, when John dies, he speaks very coldly about John and even makes it seem like John was always insignificant and like he can't understand why someone like us (the readers) would even be worried or sad about John dying off lol. But the truth is that John is a character who's relatable and important to a lot of readers because he's a character people have grown attached to. Without John there really IS no Homestuck, and Dirk doesn't really "get" that. He doesn't get how someone like John could be given such power just due to fans who like him in a story.

In a sense, "fanon" is the reason John is still around not "Canon". It is because of fans that he's the main character 15 years later, basically. And that is important, it's like that whole death of the author shit.

yeah, i get what you mean vis a vis canon. i think homestuck has a lot... looser(?) relationship with canon than most works (as evidenced by the fact that "canon" is an in-universe concept, i guess!), but i've always felt something similar in the back of my head whenever i write homestuck stuff. so i usually end up slipping into the ol habits of writing things that are "canon compliant," but just aren't seen in homestuck proper (stuff like the guardians' childhoods, the ancestors, the dancestors, etc. fall under this). which makes it a little hard when you're trying to do something like, y'know, rewriting a character arc.

my honest recommendation? if your feeling is "this is a 'lesser story' that still needs to be based in canon," just make that the actual feeling in-universe! one of the more interesting things homestuck has always done is that characters take actions based on things that the fans feel, y'know? the epilogues is entirely about having two characters fight over "the type of story" they want to see, so writing a story about jane (or someone else) trying to stop her from becoming 0.05% More Fascist Hillary Clinton could work pretty well. whether it's time travel bullshit, psychic bullshit, or just throwing her ass in The Point, i think there's a lot of options!

and for what it's worth, we have an un-evil jane back in hsbc at least. so maybe things will be okay. maybe we'll all be fine...

Come to think of it, the closest I've come to regaining that "reading Homestuck for the first time" feeling was when I discovered "Vast Error."

I don't think I'm really looking to capture a feeling of "first time read" again; generally speaking, in the time span between Act 7 and the Snapchats, I re-read the comic multiple times and found a large sense of enjoyment in plundering it's depths for additional meaning and drawing my own conclusions and headcanons around certain situations. The end felt so open that all joyful things were possible.

I wish I could just scrub the Epilogues from my mind because I genuinely do not derive any meaning for them or any pleasure. I understand the meta concept, I get what Hussie was going for, I just don't think it was valuable. I didn't leave them feeling satisfied or hungering for more of the characters, at the time I remember I left them rather sad and forlorn, with no hope of a better ending. To think that was almost 10 years ago is haunting me.

this is gonna sound lowkey crazy for me to say, but i do think that's just like... the way it fucks with your brain when you read it the one time when it came out. most of my friends that felt similarly were pretty fine after a reread, but i also get that it's a pretty big ask.

the bright side is that there's a lot of people that did end up writing alt endings where things are relatively peachy and/or keen, but i also get that isn't like. "canon," so it gets harder to soothe the woes. that said, i always did personally take the epilogues less as "a happy ending is impossible" thing, and more of "a happy ending will take more work than this" thing.

not to rant about themes or ideas or whatever, but i guess i've always taken homestuck as a deconstruction-reconstruction (not related) of the young adult escapism genre (ie. harry potter, which andrew hussie clearly hates more than anything), where the main thesis of the epilogues is "suffering as a child doesn't inherently make you a well-adjusted adult, and saving the world as a kid is probably a very easy way to make you kinda miserable in the specific way where you refuse to unpack it." hilariously i was talking to some friends last night about steven universe and realized that su: future was the same exact thing, just less. well. y'know. anyway, all of that to say, i don't think it necessarily needs to be a "and then everything sucked for everyone forever and you were wrong for caring about these people" ending. especially since the message becomes "and then everyone needed to put in more work to become good people" by the end of the epilogues/beginning of hs2.

I've had the unfortunate pleasure of reading them 3 times (that's about as much as I could stomach a full go around) in the last 8 years. It's not that I don't understand the themes or what they're trying to say; I even understand Hussie's interview and how the epilogues are meant to be a double edged sword where wanting more story inevitably means desiring more conflict for these heroes.

But to that end, my eternal answer is: People were asking for a conclusion by Act 7. They wanted the answers to some of the comic's big mysteries, like who provided Jade her last frog and how Caliborn wound up getting the Ring of Void. I don't think there was a big outcry for a sequel or an open ending for "potentially more story".

The epilogues function with the idea of a strawman fan IMO.

Additionally, as I realized above, a reason they've been so heart-aching to consume is because since their release, there hasn't really been a moment of joy or relief for these characters, who even at their worst in Homestuck still had glimmers of joy and hope or the resolution to the pain came quicker than 9+ years of real world time.

I cannot imagine being satisfied if the Alpha Kid trickster fall out, or Terezi's Gamzee based depression or Game Over or Dave and Dirk's confrontation was dragged out for this long IRL, and I know it's not the fault of the writers because there's been several real world reasons why the story has been so delayed.

We finally got to the end of Act 1 in Beyond Canon, but it doesn't really feel like catharsis or a resolution, it feels like the first step to setting it all up for a conflict which began 9 years ago from our POV. And they've since only continued to ADD to that conflict.

As an aside, just to muse, (pun not intended given her class) but Calliope now being posited as the author of Candy leaves me very unsure with how to feel about her character in Meat. The implication of her responsibility for the real consequences a character like Jake experienced at the hands of the story she penned has monstrous implications that I don't know if the story will ever address. How do you even begin to extrapolate on that in any kind of satisfying way? Especially with Tavvy becoming real.

to me the epilogues are my second* favorite continuations of homestuck on a thematic and character level. it feels like a perfect encapsulation of homestucks characters as they transition to adulthood, and struggle with the fact that all of them are kind of fucked up and traumatized on many levels that they have all refused to properly acknowledge in any way. i think if we were to get the type of epilogues fans initially wanted, that's lighter and fluffier and answered every single fan question they have, i think it wouldn't really feel like homestuck, and it would kind of ring hollow.

re: "Additionally, as I realized above, a reason they've been so heart-aching to consume is because since their release, there hasn't really been a moment of joy or relief for these characters, who even at their worst in Homestuck still had glimmers of joy and hope or the resolution to the pain came quicker than 9+ years of real world time."

i think part of the issue here is the fact that homestuck released at a breakneck pace that is extremely unhealthy to expect anyone to follow up on. they've been doing a slower paced release schedule, which i think is healthier, but I think that gives the impression that not as much has been happening, which I think on a narrative level is just not the case. there was also a 2 year hiatus in which the comic had to entirely switch teams because the original team was more or less bullied off the internet. i think had the harassment campaign not happened, a lot of these issues would have been

the other part here is that these are follow ups to the epilogues, which are an intentionally very challenging and upsetting piece of media, and a lot of what hs2/bc have been trying to do has sort of been put on hold for a while as they have to juggle all the plates that the epilogues left for them before they can get to the stuff they really want to make. and i think suddenly making it shift in tone to something much happier would ring kind of hollow to me personally. I feel like the vibe the hs2/bc writers are going for is a kind of "things will get worse before they get better" sort of situation. things will eventually reach a happier conclusion, but it will take a while to get there, and it will take struggle to get there. and i think that's kind of beautiful

re: "People were asking for a conclusion by Act 7. They wanted the answers to some of the comic's big mysteries, like who provided Jade her last frog and how caliborn wound up getting the Ring of Void. I don't think there was a big outcry for a sequel or an open ending for "potentially more story"."

i think those sorts of questions don't really matter? they don't feel like questions that serve to fit into a story with themes and ideas its trying to convey, they feel like questions to answer to fill out bullet points on a wiki page, or tying up loose ends that don't actually meaningfully effect much. it just doesn't really feel that meaningful. maybe its a bit callous to say i don't care? but those questions really never mattered to me.

and re: "Calliope now being posited as the author of Candy leaves me very unsure with how to feel about her character in Meat. The implication of her responsibility for the real consequences a character like Jake experienced at the hands of the story she penned has monstrous implications that I don't know if the story will ever address."

i think its sort of ambiguous whether or not callie actually created or manipulated the world of candy or if shes just sort of independently transcribing what happened without knowledge of that's what shes doing. if its the former, I think they probably will tackle that, because that's the kind of interesting question the epilogues and HSBC excel at imo. if its the latter, i think that also has interesting implications as to what the difference between those actually are.

I think the epilogues are a story that the more you look at them, the more you get out of them, and I think focusing on what they Could Have Been is sort of a recipe for disappointment, because I think its better to focus on what they are, because what they are are incredible. they're phenomenal works of media that I honestly think I might enjoy more than the original comic, as blasphemous as that feels to say.

I wont say I don't understand where you're coming from, I used to be a big epilogues hater when they first came out, but the more I engaged with them the more I fell in love with them, and i think its doing yourself a disservice to write them off as bad so thoroughly.

i will also say that I think it sounds like the kind of continuation you're looking for is closer to Burning Down The House, which I personally fell off of a bit due to it feeling too slice of life-y for my tastes. though for the record I don't necessarily have anything against it other than it being not for me. I've heard good things about it from friends though!

* (for the record, my #1 favorite is the ao3 fanfiction godfeels by sarah zedig (terezis pesterquest route writer and former cohost of the perfectly generic podcast, not to be confused with the other sarah z), which is a story that wouldn't exist without the epilogues and exists explicitly in conversation with the epilogues and hs2/bc. its really good and you should go read it, though fair warning that it is just as emotionally intense as the epilogues if not more so.)

I think the type of Epilogues I'm describing aren't necessarily just slice of life and hollow but a natural tapering of a story. Every good story needs an ending, you can't keep going forever and doing so just cheapens everything that came before.

For example: I don't feel satisfied by Vriska anymore, I though she had such a beautiful opportunity to introspect as (Vriska) and then all that growth got reset again, then we even got her Pesterquest route which did a great dive into her childhood trauma and then we redid her whole growth arc again in the Epilogues. I don't feel like I can be invested in the story of a character whose progress keeps being reset in different ways and different mediums. (I'll grant that Pesterquest isn't part of the comic proper but it happened in between these arcs and just felt like another re-tread of what was already being blazed by (Vriska)).

I don't think it's a pacing issue for why the comic has felt so low for a while, so much so that the IRL issues have made it drag out for so long and of course, the authors are still trying to untangle certain things from the epilogues, which were a body of work that set up so much it's hard to just barrel through.

--

I suppose I should rephrase what I meant when it comes to Calliope. Whilst I'm sure an attempt could be made to explain what it all means if they are culpable for the hell they put people through with their narrative control (IF that is what happened), I'm not sure I'd be interested or happy to see the conclusion of how Callie and Jake shake out.

I can't picture anything in my mind that would comfort me about that narrative, especially given the consequences of it having happened.

It felt rather callous and insulting for Karkat to brush off the whole prose; especially just glossing over how Callie seemed to have written a fanfic about their current in universe partner de-transitioning.

I think the decision to tie the character to some degree of culpability for Candy might have been a mistake because there's no way that the fallout can preserve aspects of the character I originally enjoyed, and it goes the same for Karkat. I know he was fast and loose with shipping charts but his abstract concepts were a teenager being stupid.

If Callie winds up being somehow responsible for what Jane has done to Jake, it calls into question the friendship they previously had in so many ways.

--

I've tried multiple times to engage with them and see the good in them, but I really can't get over the fact that for me, Homestuck seemed to hold a decent balance between meta themes and respect of character's journey, whereas the Epilogues seem frontloaded on meta themes about stories and very little concern for character's journeys. I don't think that just because something bad or difficult happened to a character that it makes it "good storytelling".

Like, Rose cheating on Kanaya to me doesn't really offer anything to the story other than conflict for the sake of conflict. Yiffy existing in the capacity she exists in is only beneficial to Jade's character arc, but Rose didn't need to be involved in it. She just is so that Kanaya can be betrayed.

there's probably a lot more in this thread I could read back and respond to, but I want to focus on a particular point here: Calliope being "somehow responsible" for the events of the Candy Epilogue.

I think the story is asking you to apply a little more critical thinking than you're willing to exercise, here? Like, do you think the point of this plotline is that a writer should be held personally responsible if the things they write turn out to be true in another dimension? Should we just avoid writing about tough topics forever, out of anxiety that we might actually be hurting our fictional characters? Isn't that more than a little bit silly? Doesn't that tell you there's probably more going on here than your gut emotional reaction tells you?

I mean, even if Calliope WERE somehow aware beforehand that everything they wrote down were going to somehow come true, it seems like it's largely being ignored that these stories came to them in the form of visions, which they surely CAN'T be held culpable for...

re: vriska, i think all of these quote unquote "retreads" all sort of give a very complex and layered look at vriska as a character. and i don't think (vriska) ever really felt like she was acknowledging her problems, it felt like she was more ignoring it. it doesn't feel like retreading ground to me, it feels like acknowledging the past in a way thats very poignant and compelling.

re: "I can't picture anything in my mind that would comfort me about that narrative", i think the discomfort is kind of part of the point. not all stories are meant to be comforting, and to say they are feels limiting on what art you're allowed to make. sometimes art thay exists that's upsetting and unpleasant to read, and you just have to live with it.

re: yiffy, i think rose being involved with yiffanys existence is EXTREMELY relevant. in recent hsbc updates we see that rose seemingly still has access to her future sight despite her claims to the contrary, and while this is just speculation, i believe its extremely likely that rose was aware of what dirk was doing and that the existence of yiffy was a deliberate move by rose to act as a sort of weapon against everything dirk stands for and believes in. and i think it makes sense that rose, who believes she is going to die, would make a harmful and self destructive choice that she "knows kanaya will forgive her" for (unclear what she meant by that, but we will see), for the purpose of furthering a grander agenda.

also her name is just funny. like its a funny thing to name a fictional character, and i think the common insistence i see where people to try and compare naming a fictional character a silly thing to real world abuse is troubling to say the least.

and like, i get not liking the epilogues, but saying the epilogues prioritized meta themes over character development feels like a complete misrepresentation of the story as a whole. sure the meta themes are there and they're important, but the epilogues and hsbc are SO character focused, and everything i see about them makes me feel that it will continue down that track, especially considering homestuck is a completed narrative whereas hsbc is ongoing.

re: yiffy's name and child abuse

homestuck proper also has this weird relationship with child abuse as a theme in the sense that it is both used for comedy and at the same time treats it seriously. like, the whole thing with dave's childhood is that it's both presented as a joke and genuinely fucked up. i think the thing about yiffy's name is that yes, it is a joke, but it's also a genuine commentary about how yiffy's existence is selfish on jade's part: not just towards rose and kanaya, but also towards yiffy herself! like, part of the point is that everyone is having all this drama about yiffy and her existence and yiffy just fucking hates all these people. it's a throughline of candy that all the adults have their own bullshit that ultimately hurts their children - who none of them really treat as like, people. that's why vriska is like "wow ok fuck these guys" and just takes the kids. the theme of like, child rights and the treatment of children has always been an undercurrent theme in homestuck, considering it is a story about children and growing up and has a cast of largely unsupervised thirteen year olds, so it makes sense that in the world where everyone gets together and has children because That's What You're Meant to do none of them take their children seriously as like, people. roxy has a kid just because that's been her childhood dream resulting from her last woman on earth complex, john is a deadbeat who's at his most excited about his son when he learns that he, too, can play the Death Game, tavvy's situation is, well, tavvy's situation, rosemary is literally just raising Vriska 2 for shits and giggles, and yiffy was named yiffy. and, yes, in part this is a commentary on the concept of "fankids", how often people who make said fan kids only make them as an accessory to whatever ship they like instead of treating them as real characters, but it's also a continuation on the themes of the original homestuck - children's relationships with their parents and how children fail to see their parents as people, parents also fail to see their kids as people.

i fully believe yiffy will turn a new leaf of child liberation in homestuck considering her thing so far seems to be really pissed about everything and also the person who so far treated her with the most kindness and talked to her like another person instead of a point to bring up to a divorce lawyer or a conciliation prize for a failed marriage is another child also victimized by being a child of a bunch of gods who rose to godhood as teenagers.

Big agree with Luna, Danya, and Jake here, and I'm gonna start by hyping up the Epilogues and ending with how I rekindled my love for Homestuck, and how you can too even if you don't want to like the Epilogues.

I think what I understand as a bit of a throughline on your issues with it is that you're kind of wanting... a more traditional story from Homestuck/post-canon? Especially where you said you thought the Epilogues should be a tapering off of the story, wrapping things up and making us feel good about knowing all the mysteries and feeling like the characters are Done. We can nod to ourselves and think about how every main character has now become their Final Self, where they're happy and healthy. But not only is that not the kind of story Homestuck is, that's not what the Epilogues were for.

IMO you can read the Epilogues in two different ways depending on how interesting you find them (though of course both work together). 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?

The second reading of the Epilogues is how you can read it now in combination with HS2 and HS:BC, as something that's supposed to act as a bridge to a different kind of Homestuck. Read if you want to, ignore if you want to finish off Homestuck as a YA instead of an Adult story. Fanfics are going to be labelling themselves as "Epilogues compliant" or not so you'll be able to filter them out. But the story is still going. Why would the Epilogues wrap things up when their purpose is to get us ready for a continuation? HS:BC has already made a bunch of shit from the Epilogues pay off IMO, and is doing really interesting things with these characters. When it first got started it took me a bit to realize that I read so much fanon and so much meta, even, that was acting as if Homestuck was going to finish with a clean victory and happy ending. We were wrong though, c'est la vie.

I've been able to really rekindle my love for Homestuck (that started waning after the HS2 team got harassed out of the project) by seeing the work that people have kept doing, and especially the ones that really use the Epilogues as a building block. Obviously I love SpicyYeti's work as a whole but I think Jade Route REALLY sold it all to me. It filled in a lot of the gaps that reading the Epilogues as prose versus the usual webcomic picture format left, and bridged the distance of how I remembered these crazy kids to their crazy adult selves. They're the same character, but we have to remember that things that are quirky and cute as kids... can really stop being such when they're adults that now have authority and power. It can sour quickly without them even realizing. Like even for Jane, you have to remember that Jane thinks she's doing the right thing!

If you want to make peace with the Eps being "canon," I think reading some Epilogues fanfic might help you see how other people are interpreting the "character" side of things, especially if a lot of your fandom recently was reading mainline HS fic. I also think that it would help to relax a little bit about what I call "fandom stocks." When something becomes canon, the fandom will surge toward it and start making work about it more than noncanon things. And it can be annoying if it's something you don't like, but there are still die hard ANYTHING fans these days even still in the fandom. There are absolutely plenty of fans that are going to just not read the Epilogues.

If you've ever been into Marvel/DC Comics, if you really just can't rock with the new stuff, you can see HS similarly as a whole through the lens of canon being whatever the current run is (regardless of how contradictory it feels to previous runs), but there being so much previous work that most fans pick and choose what they actually care about. Yeah popularity is gonna change but that's just new fanwork. You can still enjoy your old fanwork. And if you really support the fans making stuff the way you enjoy it, they'll continue to make it!

TLDR: Read Jade Route and engage with other fans that have similar interests as you. Create your golden land.

> Create your golden land.

omg umineko reference?!

but yeag i more or less agree with all this.

and i think if we're talking about a reflection on the epilogues or epilogues fanfic, i want to personally recommend paravellex's story Through Shadowed Eyes (https://archiveofourown.org/works/19972756). it's a retelling and alternative ending of the candy epilogues (it was originally outlined before homestuck 2 was announced so its ending is different than how homestuck 2 continued things), but written (almost) entirely from the perspective of roxy lalonde. it's really good, and it gave me a new appreciation for the candy epilogues that i didn't have before.

(paravellex also happens to be involved in two projects im also involved in so i am a little biased but he's very cool and a great writer)

there's no edit button so i have to add this in another reply, but i do think tse works as a counterpart to jaderoute as reflections on the events of each epilogues through the focus on one specific character. im not just dropping it here because i like it (although i do) but because i do think its relevant and you should read both.

I find that the obsessive focus on depicting lurid sexual abuse for laughs dampens my enthusiasm for the Epilogues. Sorry if that makes me sound like a stuffy prude.

i mean i think its fair to not like that, and they're by far my least favorite parts of the epilogues, and im sort of of two minds about it, where like on one hand yes its the point that its uncomfortable and i think it adds to the story in a thematic context, but it's also still unpleasant to read and i do not enjoy reading those parts. but again, i think that art doesn't always need to be comfortable and pleasant, and there needs to be room for uncomfortable and disquieting stories like the epilogues. so like i wouldn't say the epilogues are Bad because they have these unpleasant aspects, and i would would ultimately say that i think the epilogues have more good in them then they do bad, and i think they're very worthwhile stories, and it makes sense that they would partially shape the broader fandom understanding of the characters and world.