Regaining my love for Homestuck (Help Please?)

See I don't even think it's a matter of happiness vs. sadness. The Epilogues do have a lot of fucked up shit happening in them, that's undeniable, but they also both end in very very sappy sanctimonious ways- one with all the characters making their badass stand to hunt down Dirk and the other with the wounded but still stable characters either coming to terms with themselves/leaving to find out who they really wanna be. They do aim for very big FUCK YEAH moments and to some extent succeed?

I think there's a deeper issue here, one I am more inclined than not to link to many of Homestuck's other late game changes even though they impact different groups to different extents.

Homestuck is, uh, kinda small! It's small and kinda insular and the grandness and majesty it pushes out never really reach that epic amazing conclusion they seem primed to, because every time you get close to it the story pulls out the curtains to wind back that grandness back into the dumb incestuous samey tapestry that everything else is part of. I think even the basic fact that people wanted an Epilogues emerges from that kinda dissatisfaction with how small and brief Act 7's "happy ending" is from the amount of lollygagging and weird bullshit it takes to get there.

For "candy" minded folks that looks more like an Undertale True Pacifist type "you personally walk through and see how every person you helped along the way is better off for you having been in their lives", for "meat" minded folks that looks way more like Problem Sleuth's high octane "literally every single loaded chekhov's gun fires simultaneously and the ordinarily smarmy dweebish tone shifts as the anime music kicks in and PS punches the antispiral into another reality", most people are in the middle

but no side really likes the thought of the "endless weightless CW space serial meets Real Housewives Of Earth C" vibe the Epilogues end off on because that's not a climax it's not a resolution it's an endless anticlimax, no sweetness no umami just a bitter coffee you sip at a private taste testing in the world's most gentrified studio loft apartment. And to those ends I think it's just what climax is enough to get people off of homestuck.

endless weightless CW space serial meets Real Housewives Of Earth C is an accurate description, but I disagree with you that no one wants that. i honestly wish it had been wackier. go full riverdale. "i am sollux, queen of the bees" core.

i didn't read candy initially (i did read it eventually, lol), but i had it comprehensively spoiled to me by a friend while doing tequila shots and it was one of the funniest conversations i've ever had. i mean that 100% seriously. gamzee drinking jane's breast milk was so transcendently awful that i nearly had an out-of-body experience outside my college dining hall.

you have to give credit where credit is due.

I suddenly feel oddly validated for not finishing a single page of the epilogues. What I had understood of them via osmosis from others who had... suffice to say they so soured me on Homestuck content I began reading alternate continuation fanventures (something I had previously refused to do on principle of “the original comic is better”) out of spite. I did not even give HS^2 / HS:BC a fair shake until some time later, and even then I tried my best not to get invested (failed, I am now unfortunately very much invested in seeing what they do with both Jakes).

If the Epilogues pissed you off that you started engaging seriously with fan work rather than prioritizing the Source over everything else... I hate to say it but this is kind of the Epilogues working as intended. fucked

I am a hardcore Epilogues defender - if nothing else they are the bridge from what Homestuck used to be to what Homestuck is right now. It's an off ramp, and it's fine if you don't like it, but it is capital H Homestuck. So much of what I hear about it is, to quote you "I suddenly feel oddly validated for not finishing a single page of the epilogues. What I had understood of them via osmosis from others who had... suffice to say they so soured me on Homestuck content" and like, you didn't finish a single page and already have an opinion! That isn't how you judge media! I read it straight off of Homestuck and loved it, it was a mature response to the frustrations I had with Homestuck itself. But so much of the way people approach it is so poisoned.

I will say if you wanna get into Homestuck - and Beyond Canon is Homestuck right now - you need to read the Epilogues. They aren't written to be liked, so not liking them is fine. And then 2/BC is a reaction to the necessary mess the Epilogues made - not fixing the mess but engaging with it.

@bluebooty i gotta be honest i disagree with most of what you're saying here.

"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."

It is a satire of "happy ending" epilogues but it's also a satire of "nuclear family" as happiness or a symbol of resolution in epilogues. The nuclear family is gonna have you wishing to go back to the torture chamber, as we see with John! The Epilogues are also not the actual ending! They're a transition to HS2/Beyond Canon, so of course it's not going to be a real resolution. It's not resolved! We are practically at the beginning of a new story, and the Epilogues were to make you want it to "not end like that!" 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. Of course it's going to completely break from the tone of Homestuck! (also you haven't read Jade Route yet.... I mean this genuinely with all the love in my heart but you have to read Jade Route.)

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." But people can still write their fics however they want and there will always be an audience for them. Homestuck is about some kids fucking it all up over and over and over and over again. Like it is an absurdist tragedy, arguably. They were killing each other bloodily throughout the entire comic. I kinda agree with 0dderty's points too.

I've been feeling the meme "[Homestuck] is only toxic to miserable people! I be having a ball on this bitch!" SO MUCH lately. People have been having fun with Homestuck. Look at the fanworks that are members of FRAF, they've been having fun with it! They've been making cool exciting things because they are actually engaging with what the comic is doing and saying. People ARE still in conversation with the epilogues, beyond canon, and fan works. Most people just aren't having that conversation because they only really care about some aspect that's not relevant anymore. Which is valid! But then you have to know you're setting yourself up to be unhappy. I was about to say because Homestuck's never going to go back to what it used to be, but we've already begun some really fun Act 1/early Hivebent-esque moments with the HSBC Act 2. But it's with new characters. It's new!!! You gotta stop thinking of the Epilogues as the end and see HS:BC as a real continuation.

**Adding the addendum: You gotta stop thinking of the Epilogues as the end and see HS:BC as a real continuation OR you have to decide you don't care about what is "canon" and commit to your personal fanon and fanworks. That's what I mean as a major meta part of the Epilogues as function. And many others have done so (and notably, many "fix-its" have already started to implement more and more Epilogues/Post-Canon concepts becaaauuuuuse: they're good. They're Homestuck.).

Also: people saying that things they've heard about the Epilogues make them happy to not have read it make me laugh, because that's what most people say about Homestuck proper.

I feel doing more Epilogues discourse isn’t particularly helpful. I like some of what the Epilogues had going on, but HS^2 felt it spent most of its run trying to apologize for them and Beyond Canon spent its first year trying to speedrun out of that era as quickly as possible. Like they’re an important part of Postcanon as an identity but like any part of Homestuck they are just kinda a piece of the show and yeah the story is moving on from it too.

Idk I kinda despise the way people talk about the Epilogues (or Homestuck itself) as some sort of great morality/taste/intellect filter, like to Get the Epilogues is some key task that must be reached in order to reach true Homestuck fandom.

It's not a requirement, but it's what it is. It's like people who only like up to Act 4 and want to ignore the rest of it. There are people who do that and make their own fanworks about it/groups for it and have a wonderful time talking about it. But you're going to have a bad time if you don't want to follow it but still try to force yourself to 'like' it. That's just the truth of it as the story progresses.

HS2 was fumbling around a bit, but combined with HSBC they've been really making use of what's been set up in the Epilogues. The HSBC team had to work with the choices the HS2 team made and adjusted them slightly (like Jane/Jake being on the ship now), but they're clearly on board with the Epilogues as a whole. It is a direct continuation. It's only "moving on" from the Epilogues in that the format has changed back to the usual style and is keeping the story actually moving.

It's like skipping the Intermission (im mostly referring to @noble here). Like yeah, sure, whatever, but you're going to be Very confused later on, and it'll be hard to have actual conversations about the story at certain points. There are parts of the Epilogues even I didn't enjoy reading (just like there are parts in mainline Homestuck I dislike) but you just gotta focus on what you do enjoy out of Homestuck and what you want out of it, or decide to move on if its just torturing yourself.

I hear what yall are saying about the Epilogues being required reading to be able to engage with HSquared or Beyond Canon. As I understand it though, there was a recap on the HS:BC site itself (presently taken down with a “returning soon” notice in its place). I have also osmosed much from others in my circles who have read the Epilogues in full, enough to have something of a gist of how things went down, including certain details that still make me irrationally ticked off to remember.

I suppose I am sort of double dipping, with one foot wading in the fandom mainstream (postcanon and the discussion surrounding it) and the other planted well outside it (other spaces for Epi-divergent / Epi-averse fanwork).

@nobleRadi8ion

The issue is that the epilogues are very much the sort of book that is focussed more on the experience of reading it and all the details put into its prose as oppossed to one focussed on plot beats, so just hearing the plot beats and making a judgement based on the removes all of the nuance. The epilogues plot points are genuinely not much worse then beyond canon in terms of its content, just a little more graphic/explicit (but still well in the "ma-15+ range" imo.)

Beyond canon has been so intertwined with the messages already present in the epilogues and building upon them, you cannot engage with them as text properly without having read the epilogues. IMO I cannot understand liking the new teams stuff but still refusing to read the epilogues.

the epilogues aren’t “required reading” in the sense that yes, you literally do not have to actually read the epilogues and instead read a summary, the wiki etc, but that doesn’t mean it’s not “required reading” as in the comic literally picks up mid-story??

i think making the argument that the intended way to consume HSBC is literally to take the summary to replace actually reading the text the story is continuing is pretty insane. like, if a sequel to a movie starts with a summary of the previous film, does that mean it’s not a sequel anymore and you can just watch it standalone, letting the summary basically just replace the whole first part in your mind? for example, across the spiderverse, the sequel to into the spiderverse, starts with a summary of the first movie, all the info you need to know to understand the events of the actual film is presented in the film itself, but not a single sensible person would argue that watching the sequel without seeing the previous film is a “normal” or “appropriate” viewing experience. like, you could do it, but you’re still getting an incomplete experience.

i feel like its entirely disingenuous to imply that a recap‘s purpose is to replace the original text. it’s just not. thats why it’s called a recap, it’s recapping events that already happened and that you already *know* about, just didn’t quite remember. that’s why stories insert a recap of events within themselves - why sequels sometimes start with summaries, why “on the previous episode” sequences exist, not to actually replace the experience of viewing the original, but to make sure the audience remembers the relevant information. the recap doesn’t exist for you, someone who wants to start the story from the middle for arbitrary reasons, it’s for a person who read the epilogues when they dropped and are hazy on the details and need a reminder. you *can* read it as a replacement, but that is on your soul.

not reading the epilogues before HSBC is just the modern “i started reading at act 5”. like, sure, you can scour the wiki and have your friend fill you in on the details, but you don’t then get to go on the internet and say “the first four acts are not required reading for hivebent”.

Epilogues fans have been forever fighting really bad faith poisoning of the well. Read the epilogues. Develop your own opinion. You literally should not have an opinion without reading them. They are essential to HSBC.

My refusal to read the Epilogues is not the subject of this topic. I have my reasons for abstaining, reasons that are not rational in the slightest, and I would like to leave it at that.

I am not saying that other people should just read the recap of the Epilogues (they can, if they’d prefer). I am especially not saying that the original poster of this topic should do that (it would appear they have already read the epilogues anyway). It is just the way I have been able to make peace with the state of postcanon content without having to read something that has already stirred up some highly antagonistic feelings from me even just from secondhand hearing.

I did actually intend to delete my response there cos it came off far meaner than I meant, alas apparently I lack permissions, so do please imagine I tried to reword my previous statement and failed. But I absolutely stand by the reality that The Epilogues is the bridge between Homestuck's 6 acts and it's subsequent stuff. It's absolutely fine not to like the epilogues! But it does limit your ability to engage with HSBC, which is what homestuck is now.

All is not to despair though! Hiveswap is out there. Friendsim is brilliant, requiring no Epilogues engagement at all! Highly recommended by me.

7 acts even... edit pls

I feel I just have to add: The reason that HS's continuation also seems to be a huge difficulty for me (and the content coming thereafter) is because none of the characters feel like logical throughlines to their previous selves. I don't feel like I can take a stab at Dirk in Act 6 and Dirk in Meat and say "yes, this is the same character." in any capacity.

Same for Jane. Same for Jade. Same for Rose. Same for Roxy.

And it kind of kills my ability to be invested. I feel like in 2 years time, the characterization for all of them could be swapped around again, so what's the use? :(

well, personally i think that the continuation for these characters does make sense, and a lot of people agree, but i think making a case for that doesn’t address the issue you’ve been having in this entire thread.

the truth is, someone can come here and make a fool-proof case that the epilogues are the greatest piece of fiction and are a perfect continuation for these characters, and you may even agree and change your mind as to the quality of the writing and the logic in character progression. that will not, however, make you actually like the epilogues. it will not flip a magic switch in your brain and erase all the read throughs you did where you didn’t like them, it may change your logical approach to the work, but it will not change your emotional response, because there’s a big difference between thinking something is good and liking something.

the reason you have this emotional response is not even entirely because the character progression is necessarily illogical, it’s because you have preconceived notions of what these characters are and what directions they are headed in at the end of homestuck proper. these notions may not even be inaccurate, they’re definitely not unsubstantiated, but they differ with what post-canon does with these characters, and that’s not the fault of post canon, and not your fault either. your preferences for how these characters should’ve progressed are just different.

and, at the end of the day, if that’s the case, there‘s pretty much two options:

1. try to engage with post-canon on its own terms, try to see the logic in it and try to appreciate it. there are plenty of people talking about why they think the epilogues are good, and your approach to this (if you want to pursue this option) should be trying to see those perspectives and *consciously* and *deliberately* trying to appreciate them. it must be emphasized that this approach is not simply just engaging with defence of the epilogues, but going in with the mindset “okay, yes, i will try my best to perceive this as interesting and take it in and try to come up with reasons for me to find this interesting too”. taking these concepts as they are, and engaging with them not to disprove them or argue that they’re bad, but deliberately coming up with why these, too, are valuable.

2. accept the fact that you dislike the epilogues and post canon and just go from there. accept that this is media you consider bad, and don’t want to try and find enjoyment in it at all. move on, onto whatever greener pastures: be it imagining your own ending, finding value in fan endings, continuing to analyze and engage with the original text, criticising post canon if you find joy in that.

i guess my larger question is: why do you want to like the epilogues? you come at every point in favor of post canon with the preconception that it’s bad, not a good representation of the characters, and actively try to argue against any other notion. why not accept that you just don’t like it? why do this song and dance of saying you want to see other people’s reasons for liking post canon, and yet reject every single answer anybody actually presents to that question? why not accept that you don’t have to like every single piece of homestuck media and move on?

i think you talked about wanting to engage with fandom but being unable to do so without seeing all these versions of characters you don’t accept, but “fandom” is such a huge and nebulous community, you like, totally don’t have to engage with fans who like the epilogues. fandom culture is built on alternate universes, mischaracterisation, basically oc-ifing their favorite characters, shitposting and drawing characters who exchanged two words with each other kissing. i really, really do not understand what exactly you’re talking about when you talk about fandom as this collective that all largely accept the epilogues and dedicate significant amounts of content to them.

like, most of my current engagements with the homestuck fandom as someone who doesn’t even mind the epilogues and post canon are, in no particular order: watching a bunch of deltarune fans live read homestuck on twitter; shitposters; analysis blogs that regularly get into age old character discourse; a bunch of artists who dedicate their entire presence to drawing their favorite characters in any and all contexts, most of them entirely made up.

i think fundamentally what’s happening is you’re wallowing in a negative mindset and are unable to move on and curate your engagement with homestuck to your liking. the fact that you are very set on disliking post canon and yet reread it multiple times is kind of indicative of this mindset to me. speaking from personal experience, there are two types of people who consistently and continuously engage with something they dislike: 1. people who are dedicated to being haters and find genuine enjoyment in critiquing said thing 2. people who are unhealthily obsessed with the misery and negativity the thing brings to them. and these aren’t totally distinct types either, type 1 often if left unchecked just turns into type 2.

so, the question you should be asking yourself is: do you enjoy critiquing post canon? if so, make an analysis blog, make a thread, a video essay, a few bitter tweets - whatever it is, go and express those opinions and make sure you still get a healthy dose of engaging with things you still actually like, be it homestuck or not.

if not: stop doing this to yourself. stop trying to shovel food into your mouth despite it hurting your throat.

I don't want this to be a combative post; I'll just reply to each part in it's own section, but it's the last time I'm going to get dragged into discussing the Epilogues.

I don't find this to be constructive; I feel I've been fairly charitable with a lot of people's suggestions and even done a lot of good introspection and taken some ideas on board.

I do not believe they are logical conclusions of the character arcs, in part due to the fact that to reach them, many retcons had to occur to even get to a position where the Epilogues were possible. And I'm not talking about a retcon like John editing the story; I'm talking an actual one. I'll list them all as I remember:

- Nannasprite (x2) offered to be Jane's guide in the new world, something which Jane seemed elated to have. This story thread is completely ignored and the lack of all the living sprites in the Epilogue world goes wholy unexplained.

(The Sprites get returned in Vriska's rehash character arc, with none of their previous desires at all.)

- Jasprosesprite^2, despite being an Ultimate Self, is somehow unable to get involved or warn people of Dirk's plan. Or simply doesn't want to? But that kind of behavior doesn't seem as coherent to her prior characterization where she cared about Rose Prime's happiness. She's also conveniently absent from the Epilogues.

(This doesn't even get explained in HSBC, Jasprose is just back with 0 explanation.)

- Jane goes down the route of a dictator, with horrid xenophobia towards aliens, despite the fact she was previously friends with an alien and didn't harbor any xenophobic views in the story. Her dictator route is given as a reflection of Trump's presidency and growing fascism in the world but isn't done in service of who she is. Her original idea is that human's will be outpopulated by trolls due to birth rates, ignoring the fact Ectobiology machines exist on the meteor and everyone has access to them. Nobody even brings this plot hole up. It's ignored in favor of Jane being pigeonholed into that role.

- Vriska sleeps with Gamzee?? Really?

- Dirk does what he does to himself in Candy, and all of his friends just ignore the fact they have the ability to go back in time. You can argue this is a moot point because they're dejected or just don't want to, but in previous canon, Dave wasn't willing to let Rose sacrifice herself with the Tumor. The guy has time travel and even shows regret for the fact Dirk is gone, but the best we get is that we should respect Dirk's desire? What kind of story beat is that? Why the hell is John the only person suggesting they time travel to fix it? Roxy didn't mind time travelling to save a whole swathe of her friends during Game Over, but she's just chill with her childhood best friend being gone like that.

- Dave and Karkat's relationship is reset from Act 6 so that we can have a grand exploration of heteronormativity. Whilst the end of the comic very heavily suggested they were an official item, with Terezi and Vriska commenting on how happy they are for them, with Jasprose telling Nepeta that Karkat is taken, with Roxy asking Dave about his romantic interests and John realizing that something is going on between Karkat and Dave. The Epilogues roll all that back and tell us that at best all they did was hold hands; pushing Jade as an "invader" to their romantic arc because of an at the time, pervasive heteronormative fandom concept of DaveJade having to be endgame. Jade's arc here isn't designed to explore her character; She becomes a set piece to further explore Dave and Karkat's discomfort.

- Jane sleeping with Gamzee?

- The climactic fight against Caliborn was actually a whole different group of alpha and beta kids that John gathered up, Caliborn just neglected to mention that the John present was significantly older than the other people present when he wrote his story.

Not to mention that John's retcon powers previously made any changed timeline they invented become "Prime". John didn't have the caveat of a doomed timeline, so somewhere out there there's just 4 Alpha Kids who should be "Prime" given what John did, yet they're never brought up again. In fact, when John retconned before, Davesprite and John from the previous timeline had to be erased to make space for John Prime and Davesprite Prime hopping through; so how come these Prime Alpha kids don't have that same caveat? It's just wholy ignored by the story's own logic.

- Dirk's heel turn into a villain. The whole discussion at the end with Dave seemed to be indicative of the fact Dave recognized inherent good within Dirk and that the idea of his villainy was something he used to flagelate himself with. The Epilogues throw all that to the wind and just go "Nah, he's exactly like Bro."

What's the point of an arc where the character is supposed to be reflective of how antithetical he is to his worst self, only to end if with "no, he is his worse self." That entire rooftop conversation was so poignant, and the retcons directly make it the most pointless build up ever.

These are just a few of my main sticking points; I'm sure if I re-read the Epilogues again I'd find more, but some of these "actions" in the story can only occur by convenience of ignoring previously established rules/arcs/story with 0 given explanation. That's what prevents me from engaging with them as a cohesive work and that's part of how I do not understand people glazing over and ignoring it all. How do these things not bother people with regards to the story itself? There's no internal integrity because at the drop of a hat, any previous established content could be thrown to the wind in favor of whatever the current story wants to be.

I don't think anybody has refuted these points, people just either do not care or ignore them for their own sake, which is fine, but I *cannot* ignore them.

How can I maintain my interest and love for a story that doesn't seem to maintain an interest or love for its own narrative? And how can I continue to engage in a fan space that pushes this into my face? You discuss the idea that you can curate your own "space" within fandom, but I do not find that to be true. Most of the people I spent time with during Homestuck abandoned ship around the Epilogues, the few that have stuck around don't find discussing the story fun anymore, and the ones I do not know are all constantly discussing the post Homestuck content. We can talk all day about fan endings, but they're not being given fandom attention to the degree post Homestuck canon is; the fact of the matter will always be that the fandom will prioritize whatever Hussie gave her official endorsement to, or penned. And seeing as Hussie penned part of post Epilogue content, and the post Epilogue content and the Epilogues themselves were promoted by the official Homestuck account, they are the "canon" story. They are what people will be discussing until the end of time.

No amount of DOTA will change that, because these stories have and had an author.

There are aspects of post Homestuck that I enjoy. I think June is a gorgeous character arc and I'm interested to see how they handle it. I like Calliope getting to have more of a presence in the story and come out of her shell. I love Terezi's resilient existence, and how she toes the line to fight to overcome her grief; she misses Vriska and that reunion is going to be so cathartic to see.

But that's where it ends, everything else just feels slapstick or forced. I cannot in good conscience ever accept the idea Jade *and* Rose would name a child Yiffany, the idea of them picking a sexually charged name for a literal baby like that is INSANE.

Back during Homestuck, I didn't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater to discuss the story. I didn't have to ignore gaping plot holes or arc twists or contrivances just to discuss the story.

I like seeing the art that's just agnostic of content, sure, but most of the time art drops are fueled by recent updates.

And it frustrates me most that any time a critique of the story comes up, it feels quashed by a need for relentless positivity about the work. I don't feel I can discuss the Epilogues or post canon in good faith, because even the slightest resentment or criticism is lumped in with some of the worst faith actors from the likes of Reddit or the Discord. It's exhausting.

So I'm stuck here, wanting to fit in and wanting to be able to find community again, but unable to understand where I fit and how I can fit.

If you have rebutals about my Epilogue points, feel free, I may not respond, even if I read them. I find the whole topic sour.

That last comment comes off harsher than intended. I mean to say that you can respond to anything you wish, I just don't know if I have the energy to engage with it anymore. I'll try to take what you say on board, though.