07-2024 Writer Commentary

CHUMI, Peggle Deluxe Enjoyer: Hello my pals! How’d you like this series of updates? It was really exciting putting this mini-visual novel together, and I really hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. I feel like we covered so much ground! Because we’ve had a bit of an unconventional update, so that makes for a bit of an unconventional commentary this time. The Helltier Updates have been split into little chunks, so we want to let everyone who worked on these chunks get their moment to talk about their process. Let’s get crackin’! 

HAVEN, Seasoned and set to 350° for several weeks:  Hey guys, welcome to hell. I mean welcome to  !!!

Will that even look right in the document? I bet it won’t. Anyway we’re finally here! “Hyperbolic Hell Tier Chamber” was one of the first things we plotted out when we began HS:BC , which makes sense since The Point was where HS^2 left off. Many meetings where we would be trying to explain this concept ended with me or james saying “it’s like dragon ball and silent hill” to which everyone would respond "Ohh okay yeah that's sick.”

JAMES, Director and (Dragon) Ball Enthusiast: It is. I remember early on I was like watch Dragon Ball Z and Gurren Lagann. I just searched dragon ball in the work chat and its actually kind of insane how often i mention it??

MILES, hyperbolically aged to geriatric status: This is one of the first things I was greeted with when I hopped on the project, and it was so so so cool to get to work on and even cooler to finally drop!!!  Let’s get into it.

MILES: Starting, of course, with ANOTHER [S] PAGE THAT DROPPED AT THE BEGINNING OF JULY!!!!!!! AHHHHHH!!!!!!!  This was the final third of what, internally, was referred to as Update 10 (which contains everything from John and Vriska arriving at the meteor to Vriska meeting up with Davepeta in her hive).  If we’re being fully honest, we forgot to pop this final third into last month’s Patreon commentary, LOL.  So I’ll cover it here.

It’s been so, so cool to see the multimedia aspect of Homestuck kick way the fuck back into gear.  We get one crazy flash of the OUTSIDE of an esoteric singularity realm, now we get one of the INSIDE?  Are you kidding me?  Never let it be said that we don’t spoil you.

MILES: Here, Vriska finds herself in a locale that is all-too-familiar, yet eerily different.  This bit actually WAS conceived as an [S] page from the getgo, as we really wanted to sell the mysterious, haunting nature of this transition, and James and Kim did a fantastic job with the sight and soundscapes.  I love the wistful, spacious vibe of it all.  I also knew for sure that if we were going to find ourselves in yet another purgatorial, Silent Hill-type situation, those enigmatic Homestuck Horses were going to need to show up again, in all their spectral majesty.  Horses, as you and Vriska well know, are extremely important staples of Homestuckian metaphysics.  Something deep is afoot here.  Or ahoof, I guess.

JAMES: Miles this may please you to know, but everyone was like “wheres equius’s house?

MILES: As I think I mentioned in the last commentary, Al is none-too-pleased by this development, but what’s done is done.  There’s a lot more to say on her perspective, motives, and ultimate aims through this grand, multi-and-meta-narrative tale, but I think it’s better to let her slowly tip her own hand than to say much on it ourselves.  At least she has the decency to let us take a peek inside.

MILES: And now Davepeta is HERE!!!!!!!  We’re so happy to see them back!  Didn’t they die, or something...?  How did they get here?  It’s a mystery.  Although not that much of a mystery, when you consider the fact that they were last seen getting spaghettified into the very black hole we now find ourselves within the singularity of.  What’s vastly more important than how they got here is the fact that they are apparently going to serve as one of a friendly host of spirit guides who are going to help Vriska, and I quote, “save [herself]”.  I don’t know if that was really the most efficient or legible way to quote that at all.  But what’s done is done.

HAVEN: Finally, Homestucks best character is here. I know this is the writer's commentary so you don't usually see these here but they didn’t make it into the previous months artist’s commentary (i forgot) and they wouldn't quite fit in this months either; so here are some (year old wow lol) Dragon ball related Concept sketches I did about Davepeta’s role here and the helltier chamber in general that also feature an incredibly important and amazing character we ultimately decided to cut so we can give them proper spotlight they so deeply deserve later...

MILES: Davepeta, as well as a host of other sprites, have come to welcome us.  To welcome us where?

MILES: To Hell indeed.  Welcome, O sinner, to Helltier.  I feel like we’ve said welcome to hell a billion million squillion times in this document.  Anyway, from here on out we’re getting into the VN section!  HOLY fuck is it cool to see this actually real.

FLORAL, Feelings Haver: So crazy that this thing is out and playable and not just a design document and a bunch of scripts. Seeing it all put together is so amazing, so grateful to the programmers!!

JAMES: Yeah, damn. When We first envisioned this it was sort of just a daring dream. We didn’t even know if it was possible.

JAMES: This stemmed from a somewhat unanimous desire to see talksprites again. I wanted to try something that felt familiar, but was something new. I wanted to try and push it just to see if it would be cool. And, you know what it kind of is!

My section in this, (dubbed internally as part one, but is effectively just the prologue) is pretty brief. Looking back in the work chat, It seems kind of insane to me now that I could advise Floral about anything writing-wise, but early on she asked for my advice about word-count.

JAMES: Bro really said “write less”

FLORAL: This was good advice, it really forced me to focus on the essentials ( I still ended up writing a couple thousand words though TOT)

MILES: I’m actually glad you did, though, because it reminded me NOT to do that for once with my part that’s coming down the line.  For once, TEMPORARILY, Miles was able to remember to shut the fuck up... and also all the words you guys wrote are amazing.  As a chronic over-expositor, I’m always pro-more-words.

JAMES: This has sort of taken off as a whole thing, and part of me knew it might. I made a corny post on tumblr about it (the site where you go to make your corniest posts) and it's actually a little nuts how many people will come and explain Homestuck to me. I’ll admit that at first I didn’t care that much about Vriska, beyond the fact that she was an important character with a lot of nuance and plot relevance. Obviously that has changed. Once you are on the other side of things you can’t help but love these little freaks.

Ok. Here is the most important thing about Vriska. She has made mistakes because she is a teenager and teenagers make mistakes and do things wrong. Yes. I know. She was trapped. She was doing what was required of her by society, by her monstrous mother, by her friends. She was groomed. She was abused. She felt like she didn’t have a choice, and admits later that she even felt bad about some of it in retrospect. She was doing things in-line with a kismet based relationship. She had a hard life, and did what she needed to do to survive. I’ve heard it all, and a lot of it is true.

So. Taking that all into consideration... Did she do wrong things? Yeah man. Sometimes they were a product of her environment and sometimes they were just because she’s a little mean. The actions are still there. We are able to look at it from a third party perspective, but try telling one of the kids she fed to her mom that it wasn’t wrong of her to do that. Sometimes you do shit in order to make it to the next day that you aren’t proud of. It usually isn’t murders, but there you go.

But, you know, look. Hey. Yeah. Me too, bud. That’s so much more relatable than a flat statement admonishing her of any mistakes. I hope this makes sense. If I’m being a little more blunt about it I'd ask “What, you can’t enjoy a character with flaws”? That’s weak as hell to me. I support women's rights and women’s wrongs. (the entire audience is going “oh here they go again”)

Anyway, where you fall in the Vriska binary is up to you, but don’t talk to me about it unless you come at me with something a little stronger than “well, you see alternian society” dogg don’t cite the deep magics to me.

MILES: Not to pop in at the end of all this with some fuck shit but maybe it’s good she did all that wrong.  Maybe it was funny.

JAMES: One of my favorite bits is having someone apologize for things the other person has no clue they did. The more ridiculous the better. I wanted it to seem like Vriska has been sitting there for hours apologizing for ridiculous things you know she isn’t really that sorry for. 

I don’t know if you’ve ever had this happen to you but I had a family member who would do this all the time. “Hey, sorry I told Juan Jr. you smelled like tears. You know. Cause you’re crying all the time. Cause you’re a baby. Cause you cry baby tears all the time. I’m sorry I said that.” bro I wasn’t even there I would have lived my entire life never knowing this and being totally fine now I’m worried I smell like tears? What does that even mean???

I wanted to give Vriska that energy. She is genuinely trying to make amends but at this points it's because she HAS to. She sort of can’t really help getting a few of these in there.

JAMES: I love this bit of Vriska thinking, “Ah, that's the solution. I need to tell him he was right.” Especially because she just did this a few days ago from her perspective and it made Tavros so happy to hear it he did like three to four separate little dances. This breaks her.

JAMES: I like this sequence because it shows a few things. Vriska tells Tavros she’s ignoring what he said to establish a sort of social dominance. She then graciously offers to follow Tavros’s advice, which she just claimed to be ignoring. She then basically just does what she wants anyway, steamrolling Tavros’s ideas  in the process, but still manages to insult him by saying that his idea (which is actually just her idea that she’s framing as his) is actually really simple and stupid. She needs that. She needs it to be Tavros’s idea because there’s no way someone as clever as her would take this long to come up with such a simple idea. She then Immediately takes ownership of the idea back, by stating that it really was just that easy all along. Everything is easy for someone as strong and smart as her. Duh. She spends the next few lines then looking for affirmation from Tavros. It’s just that easy isn’t it? Isn’t it Tavros? It’s easy. Agree with me.

FLORAL: I love the consecutive “oH, oK,” s, Tavros really is just along for the ride.

JAMES: He’s kind of just happy to be included.

FLORAL: I was trying to do a lot with these lines. It’s easy to assign Davepeta the ultimate therapist role and have them say all the right things BUT.

I think one thing I find very funny about Davepeta being in this position is how Dave and Nepeta are both so actively different from Vriska, especially in how they handle other people.

There is a dichotomy to Homestuck characters, are you the guy that will force your will onto the narrative or are you the guy to be acted upon by the narrative. People that externalize and people that internalize. It’s usually the latter that also forces their will onto other characters too. Wonder who that sounds familiar to?

So for me, it was important to bring up this kind of insight which I feel could only be had between Davepeta and Vriska. Talking with someone you literally have no personal baggage with but you can’t relate to either. I’m super nitpicky about things like this because, to me, it makes the difference between two people talking a situation through and a protagonist talking to a “go this way” sign.

FLORAL: AND YET AFTER ALL THAT the irony is that Davepeta does advise Vriska in exactly what she needed to hear! Alternia was a planet steeped in death but one thing Vriska (and Karkat and TEREZI to a degree) internalized that the other trolls may not have is that death is a losing state. Their whole self worth is tied to it. Everyone needs to prove they deserve to live. 

This idea of death existing outside of personal humiliation and failure is so outside of Vriska’s world view, no wonder she didn’t put two and two together.

FLORAL: While writing, this was the version of Tavros I referenced the most, which is kind of hard because we only see him in one flashback but I really wanted to capture this whimsy he had before his life got kind of miserable. I also thought about how he approached his planets quests, dude likes the grind! He’s the type of kid that wants to stick as closely to the rules as possible because the rules are there to make things fun! This isn’t the Tavros that was paralyzed, or traumatized, or became a gollum reference. 

And that’s important, because again none of this is about saying sorry, or making amends, we’re here to deconstruct the root of the issue. 

FLORAL: One detail I haven’t seen anybody comment on but personally tickled me was the implication that not only has Vriska aged a couple years outside the Hell Chamber, but also spent substantial amounts of time inside of it too, just to have it all erased. It’s an Inception situation, which makes the fact she never once asked Tavros what he wanted to do soooooo funny to me.

FLORAL: All Vriska does in Act 5 is try to get boys to win at some game, whether it’s SBURB or against Terezi. I think a lot of people see Vriska as some kind of sadist? But the reality is she cares very deeply for people, it’s not just about HER winning, it’s satisfying to her to see other people become stronger too. She just doesn’t grasp that her “end justifies the means” mentality isn’t universally recognized. There’s also nothing objective about her values either, but because they are based in survival they feel objective.

Don’t you know how the world works Nitram? Don’t you know what’s waiting for you? 

FLORAL: It was fun finding ways to get Aradiabot to piss Vriska off, which we know is usually not caring enough. Vriska really is just so mad nobody gaf. That’s why the original Aradiabot beatdown was such a sense of catharsis for both of them. Vriska was just so happy to see Aradia CARE, that she wasn’t broken and unreachable forever. Facing indifference really makes some people feel truly powerless. 

It’s one thing I really appreciate about Vriska’s writing in the original HS, that she is desperate for connection even if it’s through violence. In a lot of ways, it feels like violence is the thing most comfortable to her. It’s insightful and true to a lot of peoples experiences.

FLORAL: If there is a way for me to tie in aspects…. by god I’ll do it. Especially if it means highlighting my favorite part of the Time aspect, it’s theme’s surrounding death and decay. It’s a perfect contrast to Light, in a lot of ways. Light empowers it’s players, makes them believe they have the tools to control outcomes. But Time… that’s untouchable. It’s a constraint more than anything, an oppressive force, just like irl. The outcome is the same for everyone, and there’s no stopping that. It’s set.

FLORAL: This part to me was one of the most important things to get across in this chapter, to really sell the nuance of this situation. It’s all about acceptance, and that acceptance had to be tested and followed through with. No guilting or being down on herself about being a trash hag, unable to change Aradiabot’s mind. 

I think one of the most important things when growing up is realizing it’s not some unbearable burden to be unliked by some people. It’s not proof you’re undeserving of people in your life or even that singular person hating you, it’s just a boundary. 

Thankfully… the boundary respecter is in the building now.

JAMES: This really is such an important lesson to learn in your own life, you know? There are always gonna be people that don’t hate you but they just aren’t that interested in you in a meaningful way. You just gotta be ok with it.

FLORAL: We got a good bit of catharsis at the end of a lot of hard truths! YAHOO! There is something foreboding too though, because while a lot of people consider getting better for other people, self improvement is pretty isolating. And doing something for yourself, is sometimes the hardest part of journey’s like this. 

JAMES: well thats all folks thanks for comin