:33< Do you ever plan on reviewing the new HS:BC updates or analyzing them from a classpect perspective? I love to read your musings on the stuff!

I’ve been really looking forward to catching up on HS^2 and all the bonus material and sharing my thoughts (I missed HS^2 and was happy to see it back!), but I’m juggling (non-dangerous) medical issues and a job search and still don’t have the energy to make fresh posts about Homestuck yet.

What spare energy I have has been spent on self-care, ie goofing off— Dragon’s Dogma 2 has been great, the first big game I’ve had the energy to actually pour myself into in quite a long time (with the extra free time / reduced stress between jobs and my limited spoons), and when done with that soon I’ll probably find some other game to spend my free time on after that instead of the slightly more emotionally laborious act that would be keeping up with regular Homestuck updates and getting really invested in new speculation again. We’ll see in another month or three.

Just so you know optimisticduelist was not involved in the project for very long, having left due to a mental health breakdown after the backlash from haters. As far as I know, none of their theories are actually canon to homestuck squared, nor does it look like they’ve returned for the continuation of the story. I think there would’ve been more chatter from OD himself if his theories ascended. 



Ah that's definitely understandable, hope he's feeling better... though I still would expect whichever team was / is now involved had/has a flavor of classpect understanding that they might prefer, atop the base that Andrew left them with. I'd also expect that if optimisticDuelist's theories WERE canonized then OD would actually play it close to the chest? That's what I'd do, in that position I'd be a party to the answer to the puzzle so I wouldn't feel I had the right to spoil it for people by explaining it.

Just so you know optimisticduelist was not involved in the project for very long, having left due to a mental health breakdown after the backlash from haters. As far as I know, none of their theories are actually canon to homestuck squared, nor does it look like they’ve returned for the continuation of the story. I think there would’ve been more chatter from OD himself if his theories ascended. 



Ah that's definitely understandable, hope he's feeling better... though I still would expect whichever team was / is now involved had/has a flavor of classpect understanding that they might prefer, atop the base that Andrew left them with. I'd also expect that if optimisticDuelist's theories WERE canonized then OD would actually play it close to the chest? That's what I'd do, in that position I'd be a party to the answer to the puzzle so I wouldn't feel I had the right to spoil it for people by explaining it.

Hello, what do you think of optimisticDuelist's Role-playing theory? Basically, he suggested that instead of inverting, Rose was role-playing a misinterpretation of her mother's classpect. He also suggests Terezi was role-playing Redglare's Knight class while investigating Murderstuck, and that Vriska and Aranea were role-playing each other's classes. I recommend watching "HSE: Guardians and Ancestors" for more about his theory. :D

Since I'm trying to get back in the swing of things (might still take me a few weeks), I might as well remind y'all of my earlier position:

I haven't read or watched optimisticDuelist's theories yet, and I probably ought to before I make any serious judgments on the matter. Plus, I'm not caught up with HS^2's recent new updates, and I was under the impression that oD had some input into HS^2 as a whole-- I'm not sure if Andrew gave the writers and collaborators on that project the latitude to make some changes from the system that was intended by Andrew in the original comic's run, but I wouldn't be surprised if he had, so for all we know some of those theories may retroactively fit the original comic even if they weren't initially intended! Or introduced as just a NEW thing that can happen! That's one sort of thing that I was originally so devoted to the comic's "original intent" that I wouldn't have accepted easily, but I'm coming to accept as a possibility a bit easier now, with how much Andrew has pushed Death of the Author and how much the ending of the comic showed that many of the things I judged were "important" in-comic weren't important to him at all.

However, if we're looking as far back as Act 5 Act 2, I believe there's a serious fundamental difference in scope and scale between trolls like Vriska and Terezi poorly cosplaying the trappings and aesthetics of ancestors whose classpects we didn't know at the time -- ancestors who were in fact constantly teased with words like Thief (Mindfang), Seer (Redglare), and Witch (Condesce) to match their younger descendants' classes even though Andrew likely intended for them to have had different classes all along -- and the severe, extreme, and powerful event that seems to be full-on hero role inversion.

Reading some Homestuck liveblogs lately, I was reminded of the strong and intentional connections that all of Homestuck has with Carl Jung's psychological theories and the concept of the "Shadow" self. And I'm not just talking about a superficial resemblance between the Shadow and role inversion, or the "assimilation of the shadow" and the uniting of one's Real Self and Dream Self to ascend to God Tier. No-- I mean that Jung's theories, even if somewhat discredited, are referenced by the complex stew of mythologies that make up Sburb and define how the game is played, just like all the pop and serious references to works like Lord Of The Rings that made it into the game's objectives. If you skim that wikipedia page you'll very quickly see what I mean:

Nevertheless, Jung remained of the opinion that while "no one should deny the danger of the descent [...] every descent is followed by an ascent",[54] and assimilation of—rather than possession by—the shadow becomes a possibility.

"We begin to travel [up] through the healing spirals...straight up."[53]: 160–1

There's a good reason that Rose was given an interest in psychotherapy leading into the comic. It's tightly tied to the whole story's themes! Trying to show players the potential they have as individuals, the power inherent in their very personalities, and setting them a stage to confront themselves and grow into someone who would shape the future and accept their own self-worth, is the entire point of the game and the answer to the Ultimate Riddle. Every major character had to go through the arduous process of confronting their flaws and talents and trying to accept who they were. The game IS the psychotheraputic journey from start to finish, complete with the same monumental challenges, pitfalls, rejection and acceptance (of help and of oneself!) that all sorts of different people must confront in order to simultaneously fully appreciate and become themselves, and also become the people they truly want to be. Because despite what self-loathing and toxic gender norms and all sorts of naysayers would have us believe, those two things are closer to the same thing than most can easily imagine. The journey to discover, accept, unite with and leverage the power of being you.

And when you tie Jungian Psychology to MBTI personality types, you can practically flip the letters into an opposed Shadow too, in a less literal but startlingly similar way to the class-and-aspect-flip Inversion Theory that we proposed. (DAMMIT i still need to rewrite the Aradia post to be less pretentious, that's been on my to-do list for years but I've never been up to it...)

Again, I still need to read/watch optimisticDuelist's theories (I've had a hard time emotionally looking deep into anything Homestuck for a good while now, and even though you're referencing some pretty old theories i was NEVER very good at keeping up with others' theories besides what was specifically brought to my attention, it was a serious problem), but from what I recall in-comic every time I saw someone mimic or cosplay an ancestor they were mostly... just cosplaying! Nothing is stopping a Seer from picking up a sword and trying to do some knight stuff. TRYING. The only issue is that they won't be very good at it, because they're not actually learning about themselves and leveraging the strengths of their own personality and power set. I have no idea how to use a gun or weapons; if I were to pick one up and try to suddenly join a battle, I would have no idea what I'm doing and would be more likely to get myself or others hurt rather than do anyone any actual good. And even when someone like Terezi picked up a (cane-)sword in the comic, she still mostly used it as a Seer would, as the threat to punctuate or act on explicitly foreseen possibilities. When she ran Vriska through, she was acting on a VISION borne of the realities that hinged on others' decisions and fronts, that revealed themselves through her understanding the Mind aspect. It was no martial superpower, no mental trick-- all Terezi had was the superpower of understanding how badly Vriska's move to fight Jack would play out, with the necessary certainty she needed in order to confidently stab Vriska.

(Brief edit: as an aside, many classes of Heart player might be more positioned to take on and leverage the skills and uniqueness of others. Roleplaying others was one of NEPETA'S strengths.)

Rose's inversion was very, very, VERY different.

The word "witch" was EVERYWHERE around Rose, almost moreso than the Void symbolism. "Witch" was plastered all over Act 5 Act 2 in both the text and visual representations. Other players like Eridan CALLED her a witch REPEATEDLY. We saw a Witch of Time using dual needles and magic. Andrew couldn't have shouted the word any louder. It came with IMMENSE power, the sort of power level we've deduced (and Doc and Rose hinted) comes from someone's Hero Title because it's more powerful than any other mundane, magical, or psychic power source, fitting to the Ultimate Riddle-- when someone pulls out their Hero Powers against any non-hero power source besides sometimes the Green Sun, the one using Hero Powers always wins. It isn't even a contest.

When Rose went grimdark, she looked like a Witch. She didn't look like her mother. And she didn't act like her mother either! Especially when we got Roxy Lalonde in Act 6, it was clear that Rose's Grimdark actions and modus-operandi were absolutely nothing like those of her ecto-sister, even with all the commonalities they shared as people. Whatever inspiration Rose received from her mother's behavior and aesthetics, all it seems she took from it in her Grimdark descent was the Void, and little else.

If you were to try and convince me that what Rose did in Act 5 Act 2 was meant by the author to convey to us the actions of someone behaving as a Rogue of Void and not a Witch of Void, you wouldn't just need to show me evidence of Roguish activity. You'd need to show me ENOUGH evidence that Andrew meant to hide Rogue behavior beneath an intentional Witch whitewash (like that prior tease with the Troll Ancestors being coyly made to sound like they matched their descendants that I described earlier), and that all the Witch symbology and actions were actually a bullshit red herring!!! Few readers thought there was any serious impact of her Grimdark phase to her Class until we stumbled upon Inversion Theory as an extension of Aspect Duality, and a red herring is pretty pointless if it doesn't convince anyone.

Saying that NONE of those witch hints mattered? THAT'S A REALLY TALL ORDER. "Witch of Void" is just way, way too strongly evidenced in my eyes, and almost half of our derivative understanding of classes and aspects is based on Seer <--> Witch duality! It'll be weeks before I have my mental health together enough to watch optimisticDuelist's theories, but like, Seer <--> Witch is the most confident I still am in any theory besides the Ultimate Riddle and Aspect Duality. It'd take quite a lot to make me believe otherwise, so expecting optimisticDuelist's videos to change my mind on this matter would be... er. A little optimistic.

And because of how dependent so many of my theories were on what we learned about aspect duality FROM role inversion, if Seer <--> Witch didn't happen, then you might as well throw out almost everything I've ever said on classpects with the bathwater and start over. Rightly call me biased, but I do really hope I don't have to do that!

(edit 1pm cdt: added a bit more to the second-to-last paragraph before the cut to hammer home that "Shadow (Psychology)" wikipedia article, seriously so many of the characters' journeys in the comic follow it like a playbook. edit 1:15pm cdt: fixed wandering read-more)

I've really missed HS^2! A little under the weather this weekend, but if I feel better during the week I'll try to resume liveblogging it. I believe there may be a bonus/side update or two I never bothered catching up on either, will be revisiting those if I skipped any.

I still haven't played chapter 2 of Hiveswap after all this time (much less Psycholonials), but I'm going to have to get into the swing of things more before I'll stomach something that big, and probably have to just do some out-of-context posts on it while I play it instead of recording my entire playthrough. Just depression and some temporary chronic illness stuff getting in the way, and I've been trying to be more realistic about what I can accomplish and keep my workload low lately, which has been working well for me.

Homestuck^2 is back as "Beyond Canon", comes with news update, new pages and a new team.

It's go time.

My fiancee, aka, my queer anarchist wife with whom I do not have legal unity yet, is currently living in an abusive situation that I haven't been able to extricate her from for internet lesbian reasons.

Please reblog this, and if you can spare even a few dollars every little bit will help us to get her away from that, into some newer, safer accomodations, where we can stay together until everyone in our little queer caravan is all ready to pack up our things and move north together.

Hi~~~ it's been a year, how are you doing?

I'm doing pretty well! Still procrastinating on Hiveswap because I don't want to switch my mind out of HS^2 mode where I left it, or-- well it's complicated. But life's good! I have a girlfriend I'm living with and am actually making life plans instead of goofing off on the computer 99% of the time. I'm only goofing off 98% of the time now!

After pondering Orb Memes for days and seeing my SBaHJ shirt in the mirror, I was inspired to open up GIMP and take the above phat dump on our collective mindspace.

oh god i just learned the skaianet archives are a thing

im not reading it all right now but i cant stop myself from reading them

A Homestuck Podcast, in an episode reading through pages 6587 to 6714, brought my attention to how they referenced my Ozstuck post above, so I went through the trouble of fixing the broken Dropbox images there so it reads right.  I haven’t listened to it yet, but hopefully it was an interesting listen and/or had some sick dunks on half-wrong theories and Oz-based referance-getting!  :D

Thoughts on Roxy (Candy) in HS^2

Some thoughts from Discord I had on how well I was warming up to HS^2 lately, specifically how it was handling Roxy.  Spoilers under the cut, concerning HS^2 all the way to the current pause point:

BlastYoBoots — Today at 2:46 PM I realized just in the back of my mind, a handful of days ago, how before HS^2 paused it had been coming around strong on one of the biggest things that'd annoyed me about it

in the Candy side, Roxy seemed to have resigned herself to housewife-- and raising a child is noble and all, but she was a GOD and a capable scientist-minded person all wrapped into one and the world was falling into chaos, with her barely even taking a side compared to everyone around her she looked weak, ineffectual-- I was delighted to hear that she at least TRIED to introduce flight to the world, to make some change to make the world better with her power and talents (the status of godhood conferred in part because they prove WILLING to go that far for it), and dismayed that it failed, though at least I had a mental picture of someone who had tried to leverage her power and mind and found that the world didn't want her to :( that depressed me throughout HS^2 until the very last update I was blogging when that request from Roxy for John to help her move some heavy furniture was given, and I was like, COMPLETELY outraged for a moment at the idea that they maybe, possibly, had forgotten that Roxy was powerful enough to at least lift a bed with her top-of-the-echeladder god strength but it all eventually played out, in those last update or two and it turned out that Roxy and Callie were working happily together, without anyone knowing about it, looking as meek as possible -- truly Voidy -- on what is probably the most important move in the entire plot, to save their world and possibly the other.  with a sick-ass underground science cave at the heart of the universe.  just like, yeah.  chill.  on the down low.  just lettin' John know about it maybe a little. and all that just fills my heart with joy. so yeah, just had to get that off my chest

omg you're still here. hello! its been years. it brings me joy that your blog still looks the same. like walking into a memory

I do wish I had more free time to keep working on some loose ends here, but work has me tied up and exhausted more than I expected with what low energy reserves I have; and that PS5 beckons in the downtime, even if I’m mostly just playing Warframe on it.  :o

I really need to take a weekend and revise the hell out of the Aradia inversion post to be LESS FUCKING SMUG, for example.

Mom's officially fully vaccinated, and I just got scheduled for my first shot! :o

Holy SHIT i got one

Hey, how many of y’all are caught up with Girl Genius?  Because now having seen him, I think X is just Y having been exposed to extradimensional energy and spent years in another dimension only to atemporally arrive here recently, but I don’t have anyone to share the theory with.  (X and Y under cut for spoils, + images for further explanation)

X = Kjarl Thotep, Y = Dimitri Vapnoople

I mean, it feels almost too obvious so I’m not sure.  Their builds are even extremely similar, Kjarl’s is just an inflated version.

(And I think he IS legitimately good now, not pretending for subversion purposes, but I’d understand if not.  Him having been the one to heal his own mind after not recognizing himself, so he’d hop in the portal and become himself, is just delicious Homestucky time shenanigans.)

I don’t expect to keep having Girl Genius theories or start classpecting it so don’t bug me to make more Xo

EDIT: Added a Kjarl Thotep/Mad page to the wiki for this I guess. I can't believe he didn't have one before.

Andrew Hussie posted to Patreon that they’re going to take a slow Gigapause-seeming approach to releasing a finished HS^2 much later down the road.  I still have some bonuses, commentary, and Hiveswap Act 2 to blog through, and I’ll try to get around to some of that in a couple months if I’m less IRL busy.

Selected quotes, though not the complete post:

Homestuck^2 is going to be completed, but the Patreon will not be charging patrons anymore. The account will be frozen and no additional patrons will be accepted, but the ones currently registered are welcome to stay and receive notifications about the future of this project if the team is inclined to post any.

The plan now is to have HS^2 finished, but without a regular update schedule. Previously saved Patreon funds will be used to privately commission the team to finish the story. It will all be posted at once when it is finished, and there will be no updates until this happens. I expect that it will take a long time to finish the story. This is because I am specifically instructing the team to work slowly.

I originally agreed to let this project move forward entirely based on the presumption that it would be an enjoyable experience for the team involved. It's not like I had a burning need to release a continuation of the narrative, or a formal "sequel", which is never how I viewed this arc. The project mostly came about because I picked up on the enthusiasm the original creative group had for the idea, and I also sensed that energy was being reciprocated by the particular state of the fandom at the time. But since then I've observed it's been pretty far from an enjoyable experience for the team[...]

My only criteria for the completion of HS^2 is that whoever is involved the rest of the way just has a good time with it, and ends up feeling like they have made a good story. If the team is happy with it, then so am I, and nothing else about it matters to me. Especially not sticking to a schedule or satisfying fandom demands, whatever those even are at this point.

[...] I'll consider ways to thank the patrons for hanging in there all this time and supporting the team. [...] We all appreciate your support.

—Andrew

I expect they’ll post another version of this announcement somewhere other than Patreon, because communication can’t stay spotty about something like this -- this is why you have official accounts and such.  But I don’t know who owns the logins to those, and over long distances this can be something of a juggling act I understand.

I am enjoying HS^2 though and am quite dismayed that it’s going to be quite a while before we see the end (OR ANY CLASSPECT CONFIRMATIONS/ DECONFIRMATIONS AAAGH), and furthermore understand from personal experience that people’s emotional states are fuel reservoirs that are easy to burn and exhaust, especially based on team dynamics, subject matter and the state of the world.  So I hope those who continue working on Homestuck^2 over the next while can deliver it to us for the least emotional cost.  I think most of us don’t believe most works of fiction are worth wringing significant pain out of the creators.

aaand Homestuck^2 missed the January update, without any notice or explanation.

They didn’t charge anyone on Patreon; December and January have been fucking hell, I don’t blame them much.  Notice will probably come soon.