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bladekindeyewear · 4 years

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Bloggin’ thru new Homestuck^2 bonus, The Influencers part 2. Kinda got my gears ground during part 1, but that largely wasn’t this sideplot’s fault, so I should still be able to enjoy it.

Reminder, bonus update blogging is always light on detail because I don’t wanna spoil all the paid content, but I’ll give the gist of my reactions and go into anything plot or character related that helps understand the main story, as well as giving you a real top-down view of “what happens” so you know what it’s about and whether or not to invest in looking yourself. (And I don’t necessarily have to give you anything that isn’t main-plot-relevant.)

So where are they going to follow the main party? They shouldn’t need to record the funeral I’d assume, because that already would have been televised (and awful for Jane’s PR)... *click*

9/28/2020 - The Influencers, Part 2

TEACHER: Time’s a-ticking. TEACHER: The next plot point is yours to change, if you want it. Don’t you feel it calling to you?

Yeah, just hanging a lampshade on this whole parallel sideplot I guess.

> (==>)

Whatever it is, Imode feels it. A tiny string of relevance spooling out from their belly. They want to follow it.

That’s pretty Lighty and/or Seery. I’ve used that terminology to describe the pull of Light and its “relevance” connotations even since the only fanfic I’ve ever written, back in 2011 during Homestuck’s run, and it’s obvious enough terminology that I think Rose later mentioned it somewhere like in the Epilogues. Are these three kids perhaps going to get a fourth, and become their own session by the end of this like Harry, Vrissy, Tavros and Yiffy might?

They can’t stop picturing their friend, Harry Anderson, arrested or tortured or worse. They’re not sure what there is to be done to stop this chain of events, but they’re sure as shit gonna find out.

(”They” is almost certainly referring to Imode here, not all three, since Imode uses they/them.)

Alright, self-aggrandizing used for good. Show off the sort of thing that Vriska could have accomplished if she actually used her talents for her team for once. (Besides, like, the similar thing she did just recently by making a scene.)

> (==>)

Imode is the first to choose pursuing this path over bootlicking, and the others are sure to follow.

> (==>)

Yup, Avril and Silas follow. (Had to be reminded of ALL of their names, it’s been months since their single named appearance.)

> (==>)

Crockercopters overhead but none taking note yet, just ominous setdressing

> (==>)

IMODE: lemme take a ⏱️ to 😮‍💨 before we figure out where to go next. AVRIL: wait don't you know? IMODE: Huh? AVRIL: we were following YOU this whole time.

Oh, that answers the first question I asked. They have NO clue where they’re going. Let’s see if they luck out and find the clock tower.

IMODE: You 👂 what he said about the next step 📞 to us, same as i did. Don't you feel it pulling at you?

Literal pull? Powers? Future player? --All baseless speculation of course.

SILAS: Woah are you seein’ this.

Vriska’s probably putting on her very public display now. (This is a bonus so I’m skipping lots of banter and arguing.)

> (==>)

Oh, they just saw John flying up to the clock tower in his outfit. And catching sight of him fly is rare celebrity gossip stuff so of course it’d stand out to them, apparently. (Only one of them is athletic apparently, the other two are groaning at the prospect of more running.)

> (==>)

Avril always enjoys running, but there’s something else thumping along to the rhythm of the thuds of his feet and beat of his heart. He’d thought Imode was nuts for feeling it just a minute prior, but now he’s realized he isn’t deadweight, that he hasn’t fucked up someone’s life irrevocably, and it pushes him faster and faster as he tears ass toward the belltower.

(Did we know Avril was he/him before this? Probably but if so I forgot.)

Okay, since we’re getting glimpses into each of their headspaces narratively that BOTH have had some oblique aspect references, I have to at least OPERATE on a guessy assumption that there’s a sort of classpect-for-each-of-them thing going here.

I’ve quoted both those whole paragraphs here... so what do I see? This is going to be a bit tougher because I don’t care as much to remember these characters...

Imode had some Lighty-or-Seery language, and then could not stop picturing bad things happening to Harry, wanting to avert that chain of events. So something of a Seer or Mage would make sense. But given how easily Lighty stuff and the Understanding classes (or at least what we think those are) can be conflated, Mage of Light seems a bit of a premature jump. Heck, I’m only saying Mage because a Seer of Light already occupies a starring role, and because her first act on that feeling was to jump after it herself and tell the others:

IMODE: Stay here and 👢👅 your way into fame if that's what you really want. IMODE: I’m ✈️. Follow me if you’re not 🐔💩.

--leading by example rather than directing the others into battle. Only half-caring if they followed, willing to pursue it herself if necessary. So, potentially more “Active”.

As for Avril... the word “heart” is mentioned there, sure, but the full context is “there’s something else thumping along to the rhythm of the thuds of his feet and beat of his heart”. I’m inclined to think that the rhythm/beat references, especially the even footsteps and heartbeats hitting like a metronome, might be more tied to Time? But if so, I don’t see anything class-related. (Could also be Blood, and him thinking of what he owes in the last sentences could be reinforcing that? Big question marks for now.)

> (==>)

Door to the belltower’s locked. The kids figure John’s forgotten that his son can’t fly.

AVRIL: this is it, this is the thing we can help with! #feelinit #vibes IMODE: OK I'm excited that you believe me now, but what are you gonna even do? IMODE: use your big all-star 💪 to break down the 🚪?

--so they think they can “resolve a missing plot point” by getting the way into the clock tower open? Is this going to be a theme or running joke of the Influencers sideplot, showing plotholes resolved in bonus content like how we finally saw how Gamzee’s body was relocated last time? When I was explicitly mad about that? (This seems like a much smaller one though.)

Apparently in HS^2 proper they remarked that the door SHOULD be locked, but Vriska just opened it anyway and wasn’t surprised it was unlocked, which she would’ve ascribed to her luck -- how the universe just makes way for her. (And we’re literally seeing HOW the “universe” “made way” for her this way, through these Influencer kids. Even though Vriska could have broken down the door in a second and it’s practically meaningless.)

> (==>)

Avril just has the key!

AVRIL: so like my photoshoots are like, #modernfashion #myworkout #urbexp IMODE: Yea, your 📸 are why we’re all in this mess. We know. Get to it. AVRIL: fair. ok well this is the urban exploration part. AVRIL: a lot of the public infrastructure buildings in the kingdom have the same weird, shitty deadbolts on them. AVRIL: its like they were mass-produced for ease of access or something. AVRIL: none of the deep crockergov stuff, but a lot of the kingdom maintenance buildings. AVRIL: so once you swipe one key, you got access to it all. AVRIL: that’s how i get a lot of my hard-to-get shots #tradesecrets #tellnoone

Hhhmmmmm. So what does this tell us about his potential role? Getting places you’re not supposed to is associated with the Thief, Rogue, Bard, and sometimes Knight classes... as well as the Time/Space aspects, or the Void and Breath aspects. A Thief or Rogue of Time could do the trick, and fit with the rhythm paragraph earlier... whereas Space doesn’t have the same rhythm associations even if it is “places” he’s getting into for these shots. And photography, snapshots still in time, is something Dave was also explicitly into. Plus, this exploit he’s showcasing is specifically for older buildings, playing into history/archaeology from an urban perspective.

So, Time is looking like a safer and safer bet for him.

> (==>)

lock click

> (==>)

long-hair swoop, cheer

SILAS: Yeah, I’m tickled a near-disproportionate amount by the unlockin’ of a door, so I’m inclined to believe you were onto somethin’.

Still no real hints about Silas, yet.

AVRIL: ok so. we did it, right? #missioncomplete AVRIL: feels a little anticlimactic #tbh IMODE: idk, I think so? whatever I was feeling doesn't seem so immediate anymore. IMODE: I wonder if-

Okay, that’s some near-confirmation that Imode was LITERALLY FEELING the plot or some such. We’ll probably end the Influencers sidestory eventually with at least solid GUESSES blatantly obvious for their potential Hero Roles or the like.

> (==>)

Ah, Vriska and the kids are coming-- and we get the Silas paragraph(s)! Silas is green-themed with green text, and a session with a Time player has a good chance of having a Space player too, so let’s see if...

Silas doesn’t know what being spotted by the other kids might mean, metaphysically or logistically or legally. She’s not particularly pressed by that sort of thing. But this is a day that’s come with more introspecting than she’s used to having to endure in a year, so she's ready to get moving before it becomes an issue.

As Harry Anderson, Vrissy, Vriska, and Tavros proceed to have this conversation, Silas pushes to catch up with Avril’s pace. She’s not sure where they’re headed, and has no clue what all this means for her. She knows the step she’s taken isn’t one she’ll be able to backtrack from, but she’ll figure that out tomorrow. For now, one foot in front of the other.

That...

I mean there’s a lot of talk of time-FRAMES, from a lazy perspective, but just-pushing-forward-in-the-here-and-now is reasonably Spacey? ...hm. I was excited for the Silas paragraph(s) but I don’t see any immediately-apparent pattern meant for us to discern classpect info here. Maybe a female Page example (since we could use one), propelled along by events without knowing what’s going on at first, too early in her journey to have taken more than her first step up the gradual incline of her long-term potential?

I really don’t know I guess.

Anyway, that’s the end of the bonus upd8! See ya in a while.

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #Homestuck^2 #Avril Thorpe #Imode Kurita #silas p beauregard iii #spoiler #spoilers

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bluetinge · 7 years

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It’s been a year... more thoughts on the ending of Homestuck

Okay, so, I just rewatched Act 7 for the first time in forever, had a couple revelations, and I felt the need to post my thoughts.

The last time I did this, I feel like I didn’t fully articulate myself? Like, I have had a whooole bunch more thoughts since then and they need to be free... most importantly, I spent most of this year getting down every time I thought of Homestuck because I immediately thought of the ending... I was kidding myself when I said it wasn’t disappointing. It was! Homestuck has been at a consistently sky-high level of quality since its inception (Imo, might be a side affect of reading 3/4 of the thing through archives) and the ending was just... good. not great. not what I expected. And I mean, I can understand that! Hussie obviously didn’t intend to sink this much of his life into this comic (remember it was originally planned for one year, somehow) and not to mention he has obviously had some serious crazy stuff happening with hiveswap... I should be able to forgive him for maybe not sticking the landing.

And yet, I feel like there’s a little more to this whole thing than that. Out of every webcomic and piece of media I’ve ever consumed, Homestuck is still the most unique, and the void it left behind in my left /still/ hasn’t been filled. I mean, Paranatural is funny, Erfworld has intricate plots, Dumbing of Age has high-quality updates every day- these and more are all outSTANDING webcomics! But you /really/ can’t beat Homestuck. Nothing I have ever seen can replicate Hussie’s cutting humor, nothing has pages upon pages of zany characters trading intensely well-crafted dialogue, and absolutely nothing has that same level of RESPECT for the reader that Homestuck has. Hussie just throws you into the comic headfirst- it starts off with a kid screwing around in his room with a data-structure-based inventory system of all things (did I mention homestuck is also ridiculously creative and so wonderful in the best ways) and then dives head-first into the increasingly convoluted plot, complete with a time-traveling narration and children who don’t waste time being surprised at things like, “Oh, this game can MODIFY the world around us? This is totally crazy and I need to have several pages worth of incredulity and explanation!” Homestuck provides you with enough to understand it- although I admit I somewhat relied on my brother’s explanations for the first few acts- and if you can’t keep up then Hussie will not slow down for you! (”You can talk to the hand!”)

I’m sure not explaining things isn’t exactly a novel technique- and many people would consider it a flaw- but its so refreshing to read something where the author allows the plot to get this complicated and different and doesn’t try to bog it down with explanations! It almost feels like stretching out your mind, allowing yourself to seriously use your brain for once, and god it feels /so good/. And for the parts where you don’t understand- yes, there were plenty of these for me at least- the humor is unique and crazy enough to keep you going!

Okay, I’m actually digressing horribly here. What I’m building up to is that I was expecting, as Caliborn would say, my “shitty twist.” I wanted it, and I /needed/ it. That revelation in Cascade that [spoilers] the Tumor was creating the Green Sun all along? Astounding. The end of act five (a1) when it was revealed S***b was creating a new universe all along? Blew my mind (although maybe it was obvious to non-archival readers).

Anyways, that was my major disappointment. I had been following BKEW for about two years now, and while I didn’t buy into the plausibility of many or most of his theories (c’mon, all that “evidence” for classpects was pretty arbitrary) I did learn to appreciate the vastness and interconnectedness of Homestuck, and Andrew Hussie’s genius. Most importantly of all, I caught his excitement for the update- I was really looking forward to whatever mind-blowing revelation Hussie cooked up for us.

Of course, as we came closer and closer to the end of the comic, more and more doubts filled my mind. Vriska described (dictated?) the battle plan and... in collide, everything went according exactly according to that plan. I was afforded a brief respite of hope with that creepy static-y ending, but as soon as the interlude panels went up I knew something was fishy. I dreader it in the back of my mind- I even joked about it (what if the twist is that there is no twist)- but, well, I had faith in Hussie. And then when Act 7 came out- I knew there was a pretty goood chance it would only be a few pages. Act 7 actually was pretty confusing, in a way, and at the very least it provided more to think about than Collide- I had to re-watch it a few times, before I finally formed an opinion on what was going on- but I was left closing out of that video with an uncomfortable feeling.

So the shitty twist, well, it didn’t really exist as such. There were a couple important plot revelations- LE was immortal and infused with rainbow-majjyks because he cheated, stopping and breaking his own god-tier resurrection clock so he couldn't be killed, inhaling the rainbow-dust to get that colorful, epileptic aesthetic- and it also explained why the cue balls were his weakness- since the all-knowing cue balls act as the judgment pendulums, attacking him with a cue ball weapon that kills him could conceivably stop the resurrections as well. So, I felt, well, partially satisfied- more weird plot shit had been explained, and the house bits were hella ambiguous but still more mysteries to crown over. Still, I was left feeling a little shaken up, but I was able to convince myself I liked the ending.

That... didn’t last. There were just too many problems I had. I went online, searching for people with the same deep-seated dissatisfaction as me, and I found plenty of upd8 h8. Some of it- a lot of it- I agreed with, some of it I did not, but it helped me understand. When Hussie announced the epilogue, this was a turning point for a lot of people, giving them hope- but for me it just made me mad... like, I wanted an ENDING, yo! I had been riding the homestuck train for over four years, and I was actually looking forward to an exciting conclusion! I mean, this might sound strange to some, but for me an epilogue just confirmed for me that homestuck was ending in a very mundane way, and maybe it would tie up lose ends but I think it more likely it might just tie up one major end (cough cough masterpiece) and leave the rest out...

Okay good godde a lot of those words were unnecessary... let me just sum up my findings from the past year or so of exploration: I didn’t like the ending because it was missing what made Homestuck great. From the very beginning and almost to the very end, Homestuck has had three major things going for it:

- The humor. Again, Hussie’s humor is just incredible. Collide had plenty of it, but the ending as a whole, including all the panels before and after collide? Not much narration, quite a bit of dialogue that didn’t really have too much of a place for it (more on that in a sec), and lots of serious, single-image and guest art panels. In other words, there simply wasn’t very much room for it! That wry, poking-fun-at-the-reader tone of Hussie’s was gone, and the comic didn’t quite feel like Homestuck because of it.

- The plot. I’ve already said a bunch about this above so I will try to keep this to a minimum, but I feel like the story just, well, stopped expecting very much of us. It told us what would happen... and then it happened. A reset and developed-offscreen version of Vriska fixed everything (as did an alternate timeline Calliope with no clear origin.) And that’s not even mentioning the myriad of other plot holes that Hussie left open! (Where did the special frog of Jade’s come from? Why did the Condesce have a second Gl’bgolybs? Did Dave ever drink his own piss in a bottle of apple juice?) Many of these aren’t particularly important questions, and can be excused on their own- and there are of course plenty of foreshadowed events that never come to fruition- but it would be nice for there to be some resolution on some of these!

- And lastly, the characterization. There, was, like, none of this in the “Ending” as we think of it, which I think is fair... or would be if it wasn't for what I consider the most physically painful part of Homestuck: the Game Over timeline reset. It... oh my god, the pain I feel thinking back on it. I respect that Hussie tries to break story traditions, but oh god why! These characters, that we’ve been following for years- that we’ve watched grow- that we LOVED- all suddenly had their backstories reset, and replaced with new ones we barely saw. I just... I have physical trouble thinking about it. John may be the same John, but to be frank he’s always been (to me) one of the less interesting characters in Homestuck. Roxy, Jasprose, and the Davesprite half of Davepeta all came from the “original” timeline, and probably Aradia remained unchanged. Everyone else? All got reset and had their own character development, the most we saw of was a slideshow! There’s so much we don’t know about what remained the same and what was different... so much of it happened offscreen. Even minor things, like Karkat and Meenah’s friendship, got retconned out of existence- and it extended into the alpha kids as well with their sprites. We spent so much time reading this material, enjoying it, theorizing about what would happen next, and that was apparently all for naught. Maybe the ending would have been more palatable had we actually, you know, known the kids who got the happy endings frolicking on the revived Earth! Had they solved their problems, had they earned it! Maybe if we had more time to really get to know them... but we didn’t, at least not for me. Parts of them seemed familiar, but parts of them were not, and the kids who won the game didn’t feel like the same ones that started it- because they weren’t.

And through this all, what I ask is: why??? and how??? Collide and Act 7 were dissapointing, sure, but it wasn’t a fundamental problem with them- they simply came too soon. The story wasn’t finished- in fact, it had recently gone backwards and gutted itself. Hussie HAD to have known this. Right? He’s an extremely smart man, and I can’t possibly see him not foreseeing this issues or at least noticing them. Maybe these really WEREN’T issues to him- after all, the characters are his own. He knows exactly what he wants to know about the new characters and, except for a few Striders, couldn’t share it with the rest of us. Either that, or the errors were too late to fix.

And THAT’S why the ending feels hollow to me. That’s why I can’t sleep some nights, staying up reading Homestuck and Homestuck-ending-hate, trying to reclaim some of what I lost. The ending we got was hollow because everything post- Vriska return was empty, and even though I had faith at the time that this magic man would work it all out somehow, he didn’t.

Actually, it’s occurring to me now that this “Ultimate Self” business may have been an attempt to cover for it. Of course, it doesn’t fix it- you can tell me that it’s okay because Terezi can remember her past selves, or that pre-GO Jade and post-GO Jade are the same Jade all you want, and I won’t believe it- I CAN’T believe it, because they aren’t. The Jade I knew is dead in the ground.

Anyways, I had been unable to watch the Act 7 flash for some time now. Collide I can actually enjoy, but for some reason Act 7 was untouchable- until, well, I listened to some of the music and got the urge to watch it again for the first time in so many months. Like, just a few hours ago.

And here’s the thing: I thought it was amazing. I forgot how good it was. And I think the last piece of the puzzle has fallen into place, at least for me and for now.

Hussie isn’t clueless- he wanted this flash for a reason. And as much as the fans might complain, he chose to focus on that flashing tadpole for a good third of the video (not as long as people have been claiming!). And I realized something:

Homestuck really deserved this ending. This was, maybe, the best ending I could ever hope for.

Homestuck has been gradually building in art quality and scale, and as much as people (like myself) might complain that the anime-ish finale was totally unnecessary, upon reexamination a year later I think Homestuck nailed it. It couldn’t end in any way less than this.

Okay, I admit the music might be so good I got a little emotional and very persuaded. But really- it was so majestic. Seeing that frog? We knew it was coming- we have known since year two. But in order to truly go out with a bang, Homestuck needed this- it needed to reach up and touch the very highest potential it could reach.

And ultimately? It was an amazing and incredibly fulfilling ending to Homestuck. Besides the frog (my only complaint is the lack of an audible vast croak!) we got to see lord english approach a mystery demise- yes, frustrating for some that we don’t even see what happens to him, but I think Hussie is telling us something by not being explicit, and by focusing more on Caliborn than Caliborn’s adult (sort of) self.

Hussie is trying to tell us about the power of people.

Passionate people, he shows us, can cause huge events, be at the crux of huge turns of events, and they don’t even have to be particularly nice. Vriska apparently redeemed herself some off-screen- maybe she just naturally got more mature- and was able to single-handedly ensure the heroes’ success in Collide and her own fate as the one to put a stop to LE. John, a more passive person, went from the self-hating narrator’s punching bag in Act One to a leader of heroes- granted, with plenty of help along the way, but he was passionate about making friends all the same. And Caliborn- he may be a terrible person, but he worked through his tedious punishments and learned the rules of the world and got what he wanted- ultimate power, even if he was ensured an ultimate fate in the same moment.

Compare, then, to Griska, who became so passive and vulnerable she was completely unrecognizable to her younger self, or Tavros, whose one self was carried through to the new world on the achievements of others, a sleeping instrument of Vriska’s, versus his other self that saw his dream of being a badass hero with self-confidence come true.

Okay, I’m not really sure if this was Hussie’s intended meaning or not- the last three paragraphs of mine reek of speculation. The point I’m apparently writing a fricking essay trying to make, though, is this- when taken as a whole, I think there were some serious problems with the ending. But, if you just look at the achievements of the final two flashes? If you zoom out a bit, and see that maybe the “Masterpiece” was the shitty twist all along, and will seem just as much a part of the ending as Collide? That, yes, characters were changed, HUGELY- after all, Hussie always likes to change things up, never get too predictable- but maybe it was for a real reason, and people were so deliberately changed on purpose? I still think it was a mistake to go as far as he did, but I see another side now- I see how the Vriskas and the Tavroses and the Terezis and the Roses and the Daves are changed, on each side of the line, some for worse but some for better. And maybe three and a half minutes of frog animation really was necessary for completing Hussie’s vision? For completing his Homestuck?

I may still have problems with the ending, but I think I learned today I need to take it all in perspective. I actually, think, somehow, I’m at peace with Homestuck now, and that I think I might be able to see Act 7 not as a random disappointment but as a greater part to a whole.

#more homestuck #yes #i know #its been a while #but I got really into it again recently (4/13 hype anyone???) and I feel the need to say more #homestuck #me #thanks for reading friend!#(ugh this is way too many words lol)

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