04-13-2024 Update Writer's Commentary

JAMES, Director: Welcome to the writer’s commentary for April that comes out in May. I was excited for this update to come out for a lot of reasons.

HAVEN, Ready To Rock And Roll: Let’s go.

MILES, locked in: Let’s fucking go.

MILES: I had so, so much fun writing this update.  I need to open with that because I’ve spent the last MANY months nervous about this one dropping, on 4/13 no less, but now that it’s out I’m feeling myself.  Writing Dirk is challenging; he’s a wordy prick but he’s got a very fun voice that sort of seamlessly fluctuates between jocular aggro machismo and snobby yet self-aware intellectualism.  I wanted the first return of the dreaded orange prose to really, really punch, and I’m proud of how this little passage came out.  He’s just such a smug asshole, but he’s glad you’re back!  And, of course, he’s glad to be back.  Let’s get into it.

Also massive shoutout to Haven on the art for this one... everything just looks spectacular.

JAMES: Yeah, just visually stunning. I don’t love saying that about Dirk, but there you have it.

MILES: Dirk, like many of us, is really eager to get the fucking show on the road.  He’s excited for what’s to come, as are we!  Of course, as Terezi so aptly points out a few lengthy paragraphs later, he also can’t help but grandstand, but who could blame him?  He misses us.  But first, a little tweak...

MILES: This was just something all of us, Dirk included, felt was necessary for a while now.  You can get more on this in the artist’s commentary, so I won’t touch too much on it here, but it’s just so awesome to see the adults rendered in a more guardian-esque style.  Our babies are growing up...

JAMES: Making the adults look more like adults was something that we knew we had wanted to do for a while, but it was functionally sort of difficult to pull off. We discussed gradually transitioning to this,or any other number of options but Dirk sort of forcing it on everyone through the narrative was a stroke of genius. And I think it comes naturally to so many characters because they already perceive themselves as adults. But, what about those that are.. Still working on that? What will it be like for them the first time they are in sprite mode, I wonder?

MILES: I loved writing this conversation.  I mean I loved writing all of this, but getting to tear into Dirk as everyone’s favorite legislacerator was a treat, especially because she’s totally right.  Being the only one who can hear this dude spouting off into the metanarrative has got to be kind of a hassle.

MILES: This conversation was also fun because we got to address a little of the tension that’s been building between these two power players.  Terezi sort of got dragged along here on a whim, and as Dirk has so tauntingly pointed out, she’s kind of overwhelmed, caught between two much more active and assertive forces in Dirk and Rose.  It’s been pretty clear since the Epilogues that Terezi feels lost and directionless in a lot of ways, so even though it grates it’s easy to see how despite all her misgivings, there is at least some purpose to going along with Dirk and Rose’s designs... but that doesn’t mean she has to like it.  Still, she made her recupercoon, and now she has to nestle down into the slop.  Or something.  Dirk knows it, and it’s part of what makes his taunts/threats/legitimate points here so cutting.  She can try to sit out and keep her hands as clean as possible, but this IS happening.  No ifs, ands, or buts.

MILES: I LOVE WRITING DIRK AND ROSE TOGETHER!!!  Man, oh MAN.  These two were MADE to shoot the shit, I swear to god.  I’m going to get into this more later, but I really wanted to get across the fact that I think they really must have just fantastic repartee.  They’re so alike in a lot of ways that it feels almost a shame that it took Homestuck this long to get them chatting, but that’s fine because it means we get to do it.  Haven put it best; Rose is a daring and irreverent nutcase, and Dirk is the improvisational master of yes, and.  

MILES: That said, even Rose is getting sick of this Spore Build-A-Bear Bullshit.  I touch on it later, but I think that the idea of “motherhood” is super, super loaded for her; having to become the mother to an entire species is a big responsibility and it might kind of wig her out!

MILES: I wanted to really quickly touch on this capital B Bullshit Dirk mentions a couple times.  As we all know, he’s got special story powers now.  Especially in the absence of other interfering forces such as Al and the presence of many other characters, he’s able to bend reality (or rather, the story, which to these characters is the same thing) with incredible ease... but Dirk IS a details guy.  The whole little rant he gets up to here is his way of reminding us all of that.  His Bullshit powers are, in a way, his ability to assuage the reader that the nitty gritty isn’t worth our time, just his.  He’s self-aware, he knows that getting into every tiny granular detail of everything doesn’t necessarily make the best story, even if he thinks it’s important, and what is he doing all of this for if not to provide us with a good story?  This little rant, and his Bullshit indulgences, are his way of compromising between his obsession with detail and the knowledge that the show needs to go on in an exciting way.

MILES: This hurts the Dirk.

MILES: I might have been a bit heavyhanded with it, here, but I wanted to make it clear that Dirk really gives a fuck about how Rose feels, and values her collaboration; the fact that she seems not to want to play with him anymore is not only disappointing to him from a logistical point of view, but from a deeply emotional one.  This could have been a home, and what’s more, a home for a guy who is famously guarded and uncomfortable.  But without her participation, that prospect loses a lot of its meaning.  The seagulls of his childhood, who would have served as some of his only in-person companions back in his first home, out on the sea, no longer have a place here.  He plays it sort of cool, here, but you can tell it’s a blow.  Also it’s an Umineko reference.  He should read Umineko.  Maybe he already has?

MILES: This last section of the update really, really matters to me.  It’s one of the most touching things I’ve had the opportunity to write, actually, and this starting bit is critical.  I feel like I’ve seen a lot of confusion about what exactly is happening here, so I think to be safe I’ll spell some of it out in this commentary, because it’s integral to understanding what might be the single most important point we were trying to make during this update.

Dirk, fearing that Rose is slipping away from him, prepares to pull her forcibly back into the headspace.  The keyword here is PREPARE.  As in, he hasn’t been actively doing it for some time.  His orange text charges up, though, a signal to us that he’s getting ready for a big narrative flex, but right before he bites the bullet and violates Rose’s autonomy, ROSE reaches out.  Not ROSEBOT, but ROSE.  The orange fades away from his ellipses; he powers down.

MILES: Rose, fundamentally, is a woman of action.  She is a breaker, a mover and shaker, a fucking badass concerned first and foremost with getting shit done.  She’s many other things as well, but Homestuck pretty strongly implies that she’s most comfortable in the flowstate of doing what’s essential to make sure things turn out alright, even when that gets messy and alienating and brutal.  Less room for emotions to muddle up your head and make things uncomfortable if you know there’s a utilitarian purpose to getting something done.

She is so, so much like Dirk in this way.  Why do you think he brought her with him?  He could have taken anyone, really, and if his goal was just to kidnap someone for villain points there are plenty of other folks he could have kidnapped.  Hell, he could have just killed a bunch of people!  That’d be fantastic motivation to chase him down, and it’d still give the narrative that kickstarted burst of excitement necessary to get things “back on track” (or at least, back on track according to what it is HE thinks makes a worthy story).

Instead, he brought Rose.  The reason, I think, is because she GETS IT.  Lest we forget, she’s also the only other person who was fundamentally aware of the fact that there was a metaphysical problem in Homestuck’s universe, a person who knew that if something wasn’t done, if their story wasn’t continued, their entire multiverse risked degradation and annihilation.  Dirk absolutely manipulated Rose into coming along, but what’s critical is the only place I think he had to do any really severe over-writing of Rose’s actual beliefs was by manipulating her into thinking Kanaya was okay with her departure.  Other than that, the two might as well have already been on the same page.  He even says as much in the Epilogues, and why would a guy so fond of telling the gnarly truth to the audience lie?

What I’m getting at here, in a very long-winded way, is that Rose is here largely of her own accord, if not entirely before then certainly now.  She’s in this shit to win this shit.

Her affirmation of that in this last bit means the world to Dirk, and recenters him in his purpose.

MILES: After all, it’s critical to remember... 

MILES: This panel made me cry, btw.