homestuck

Bonus Update - The Influencers, pt 2

Right Here 

Sketches + Commentary: The Funeral

Okay so...The Funeral. Initially this chapter was called “A Funeral for a Universally Beloved Figure” but since that’s kind of the Joke aspect of Jane’s whole speech, we pared it down to be more simple. 

The last two updates were a little lighter, a little less ‘evil dictator brutally disciplines local teenager in front of a room full of spectators’, so welcome back. It’s Homestuck. 

PANEL 303 

Kim’s art! As usual. What a lovely looking church. I would definitely want to go to church there, if I went to church, which I haven’t since I was maybe 15. 

The fact that there even ARE churches on Earth C is, on the face of it, pretty strange. But taking into the fact that so much of it is just aping modern American culture, which is where ⅔ of the kids come from, it makes sense. And not even REAL American culture, just the impression of it that you get when you turn on the tv. They made churches for the same reason that they adopted capitalism and liberal democracy.

That said, you’ll notice the color scheme of the stained glass. Derse and Prospit are still heavy in the minds of the Earth C inhabitants. 

PANEL 304

Ladies, gentlemen, and news outlets. The three genders. 

PANEL 305 

Jake is here on Yiffy-sitting duty, and Jane has maneuvered that to be in the most degrading way possible, for both of them. Imagine having to keep your granddaughter on a leash because your crazy dictator wife doesn’t want her to yeet out of there. Brain Ghost Dirk is probably really beginning to regret his decision to come on this wild ride. 

PANEL 306

The three of them are really suffering here. This speech is pretty unbearable. Have any of you guys ever seen a Politics done? It’s pretty bad. People say all sorts of obviously untrue bullshit, and everyone just stands around nodding like it’s the deepest shit that ever got uttered. What you say often doesn’t matter, it’s how you say it, and how many incomprehensible buzzwords you use while you’re doing it. 

Jane really is a born politician. It’s a pity about, you know. Everything. 

PANEL 307 

We get a little bit of Jake’s feelings toward the proceedings and, as usual, they’re fairly blasé. Jake has reached a point with Jane that even the worst shit she does in front of him results in a sort of meh. Which, to be fair, is necessary, since he’s undercover and all of that. But on another level, it’s a defense mechanism. If you don’t change your situation and you don’t escape, then the only other choice you have is to become numbed, and in a way, complicit. 

Jake is doing this for the greater good, of course, but at the end of the day, isn’t he still holding a  girl on a leash? 

PANEL 308 

Gaaah this panel is so fucking good. I love everything about it. The composition is so dynamic, there’s so many things going on. Yiffy’s cleats look amazing. She’s so cool. 

Most of what Jane is saying in this speech is nonsense garbage, which it’s meant to be, but it just strikes me as particularly funny that she brings up her upbringing as lacking privilege. That she’s using a eulogy as a chance to build herself up and call the deceased a dumb asshole. 

Did Jane actually care about Gamzee? I think it’s possible that she did. Or I guess, “hated” Gamzee, since he was her Kismesis. But according to quadrant theory, you can be in hate with someone and still value them. That’s the whole point of blackrom, at least in theory. So did Jane value Gamzee? Maybe. Is that going to stop her from milking his death to the nth degree that it can be? Absolutely not. 

PANELS 309-312

In Andrew’s original outline, this series of panels here were Yiffy dancing wildly on top of Gamzee’s coffin until it breaks. I think it might have even been tap-dancing at some point? Yiffy started out with way more of an elegant aesthetic, but it really wasn’t working, and besides, Joey Claire has that market cornered. So when we went with jock instead, the dancing didn’t really fit anymore, so Kim decided to have her just stomping like crazy, while Jane gets angrier and angrier and continues to try to give her speech while this nasty teen is making a mockery of her important press event. 

PANELS 313-315 

Such a pain, when the electroshock color you’re using on a troublesome teenager doesn’t make her listen to you. 

PANEL 316 

Look at BGD there, just chilling. Man, nothing ever phases this guy. 

Jake arguing with Brain Ghost Dirk (i.e. himself) while a bunch of important bullshit that could use an adult goes down is, admittedly, very on brand. 

I initially put “cuntwaffle” in as a placeholder and then decided that I liked it. 

PANELS 317-319 

Finally, Jane is forced to give up on her speech. It was a valiant effort, Jane. You did your best. 

More physical comedy with Gamzee’s corpse. Seriously though, guys, there was so much more of it in Andrew’s original outline. He just really loves tossing this motherfucker around. Yiffy is being very disrespectful of the dead here, but really no more disrespectful than Jane is being, at the end of the day. Using his death as political farce. 

PANELS 320-321 

Jane’s behavior in the Epilogues and beyond veers into the cartoonish at times, which I think is the nature of the story (homestuck) but also the nature of Jane Crocker. She’s always had a dramatic streak; consider her love of cosplay and gumshoes, her affected 1930’s accent, and her deep, laborious, half made-up love affair with Jake back during the game. That isn’t to say there’s anything inherently wrong with those things--that’s how many teenagers are, especially isolated ones. But then you take that and add layers of PTSD, godhood, the intense pressure of being a mythical figure and you get...Madam Crocker. The Jeff Bezos of Earth C, with added racial cleansing. 

The shit she’s saying to Yiffy here makes it pretty clear that the problem she has with Yiffy is not with her, but with her parents. And with her refusal to be grateful for what she’s been offered, when she’s a nuisance whose only real purpose here is to create chaos. 

IDK if that’s gonna fly for Yiffy, though. 

PANEL 322

Even Jake and Dirk are like, damn. 

PANEL 323 

Yiffy’s had it with this shit. When I was writing this I was thinking a lot about the last person we saw stand up to Jane, i.e. Karkat, years ago back when he told her to go fuck herself and then ran off to start an insurgency. Yiffy’s style is a little less wordy and a little more growly. 

And here we get Gamzee punted out into the crowd, for the last time, if I have anything to say about it. 

I know the treatment of Gamzee has been a sore subject for some people. It’s true, Gamzee’s redemption arc was a “joke” in that same way that all of Candy was a “joke”. That is to say, it was a deconstruction and caricature of what happens after the story is over. The falling action, the Harry Potter epilogue where everyone shows up in perfect heterosexual marriages with their kids, and Harry is a cop. It plucks at the absurdity of happily ever after in the first place. 

PANEL 324

Jake is extremely admiring of the fact that Yiffy has had it with this shit. Have you ever been in a position like Jake’s? Not his exact position, i.e. the trophy husband of a maniacal capitalist intent on knocking boots with the worst person in the world. But in a bad situation where escape seems impossible, and then someone else strides in and does the exact same thing you were terrified of like it’s no problem? It can be really disheartening and alarming, but also inspiring, at times. Because it doesn’t make the fear go away, but it does remind you that fear is something you can take control of. 

PANEL 325

Jane has also had it with this shit. She’s tired of people not listening to her; people have been not listening to her all day. 

PANEL 326 

Oh no. I wonder who that could be...

See you next time! 

Commentary + Sketches: Diamonds, Dames, and Dads Pt. 2

Here we go again at Midnight City. My darkhorse favorite setting in all of the MSPAdventures canon. In fact, as much as I love everything that’s going on in HS^2 (a very uncontroversial comic) this is probably my favorite storyline we’ve got going. For obvious reasons, probably. I’m not sure if I honestly have anything too new or groundbreaking to report. I love cheesy bullshit noir, and one day I will write an entire game completely filled with cringey pastiche of men in crumpled suits smoking and making eyes at each other. 

PANELS 1-2

Jumping right in. Diamonds Droog is back and he’s sobered up. He’s intensely unamused by this fact; we’re led to believe that sober is not a state he finds himself in very often. He’s just trying to enjoy a relaxing smoke here, but Dad is not the sort to ignore posted signs and placards. It’s ungentlemanly to ignore the rules. DD is surprised by this, suggesting that you can still smoke in most bars and restaurants in Midnight City. In Magical Noir Land you can typically smoke wherever you want. Either that or it’s the nineties. 

On second thought, Dad might not actually care that much about the sign. He just likes fucking with DD. 

PANEL 3 

Problem Sleuth, the Midnight Crew, and other such works all have a formula of very intricate wordplay, meta-levels, and mindfuckery. But you don’t often get the characters introspecting much. In a way, it’s Homestuck without the personalities to distract from the metaphysics. Both style AND substance, but without much time for heavy self-owns. 

DD is experiencing what us in the business call a “depressive episode”. And sometimes to get out of one of those you just need a snappily-dressed dad to come and light your cigarette. Or something. 

PANEL 4 

This might be my favorite panel in all of HS^2. Or possibly all of homestuck? Haven’s art is just so dynamic. He took my extremely boring panel description “they get into the elevator” and made it awesome. 

PANELS 5-7

Just look at these toughs. No sense of decorum. Don’t they know a gentleman of breeding doesn’t just start fights in the middle of the hotel corridor? 

I actually can’t remember why I decided to have this scene take place at a hotel. I guess it could have really been anywhere. I think I’d just watched John Wick, or something, and had hotels on the brain. 

PANEL 8

God. This panel. The blocking. The rain! Everything about it rules. As usual, you get my extremely informed and interesting takes on art. Which consist of me going “golly”. 

Here we get a little indication that Dad doesn’t really know what to make of Diamonds Droog. He has a leg up on him in that he’s known a different version of Droog, while Droog doesn’t know him at all. But I’m not exactly sure how well this knowledge is going to serve him. This guy is a completely different sort of guy. He’s been done dirty by someone he trusted, which is always a hard thing to recover from. 

PANEL 9 

And here he is, the man himself. The guy Diamonds Droog is getting systematically drunk over. What exactly was the nature of their relationship? That’s complicated, my guy, you got two hours and a fifth of gin? For our current purposes, all we need to know is that Diamonds Droog feels really badly done by the guy. And sometimes that’s all you need. A good chunk of the ways we felt like we’ve been done wrong exists in our heads. That doesn’t mean it’s any less impactful, but nevertheless. Not to say Slick DIDN’T do something fucked up. Just...Diamonds Droog has taken it and turned pining into an art form. 

PANEL 10

Another great panel. I love the white gun. The monochrome of all of this is really incredible. 

Yeah, says another voice. A cool, smoky voice that lights a greasefire of dread in your guts.

I was pretty proud of this line. Anybody who knows my writing can probably tell who I am from this line alone. Repetition, weird metaphor, descriptions of burning physicality. Oh, it’s that bitch. 

PANEL 11

Always Has Been 

Chapter 13: The Funeral

Chapter 13 

Commentary + Sketches: Chapter 12

Here we are with these guys. You like these guys, yeah? Well, if you don't, too bad. They're in love so fucking deal with it.

Just kidding, who doesn't love them? Some people, I guess, because we are all humans with our own interiorities and preferences and shit.

Ok enough hitting every possible opinion about Davekat. Time to get INTO it.

PANEL 1

Dave's been internalizing a really complicated situation in his head, as they say.

There's a troll roomba on the floor there. We talked a decent amount about what the differences between troll roombas and human roombas were, but some things are secrets so deep there isn't a patreon tier expensive enough to accommodate them.

Artist note: I took time to really design the laundry room since the entire chapter takes place here. It’s a small, dark, intimate (hehe… hoo hoo…) space, but appropriately mundane yet familiar. I wanted it to quietly surround the conversation that takes place, visually mirroring the closeness of the exchange’s emotion. I hope it feels like a place you may recognize in one way or another. Much of the layout is actually taken from the laundry room of the house I grew up in. The best inspiration for me is lived experience!

And back to writer commentary: I DID have a startlingly visceral emotion of being back in my childhood laundry room when I saw it, even though the layout was different. And also the alien technology, and the green. It’s just that the vibes are There.

PANEL 2

For those of you who don't memorize everything in the comic either for fun or to call us out when we have fallible human memory, this is Dave referencing the story Kanaya told him in a previous chapter. I didn't write that part, but I like the idea of knowingly fucking up the point of a story in order to apply it to yourself, so I wanted to keep that going.

I mean, we all do that shit to some degree, right? Cram ourselves into the cracks in a story, or stretch it to fit a feeling we've had? It's fucking GREAT when it hits just right without having to do any kneading, but that is a feeling that is hard to come by. So Kanaya and Dave both desperately trying to make meaning in the pointlessness of what they're doing, etc etc. It’s good.

I also thought a lot about how the way people talk adapts after a long time hanging out with each other. I didn't want to change the way they talked too much because I did not want to be executed for homestuck quirk crimes, but I wanted to give a bit of the feeling that they speak in the sort of synchronous cadence achieved by spending untold hours stewing in each other's speech patterns, though possibly neither of them think about this enough to notice they've done it.

I also wanted it to feel a bit different than the dave chapter right before this, since it is a different Dave.

PANELS 3-5

Anyway also there is a lot of talk about candy characters and meat characters and I like how the Meat characters, though they are on the way to Plot, are sort of held in suspension until they get there. I wanted to set this scene in something very "domestic," or perhaps even "boring" and after some conversation, we landed on laundry day. Even if you are plot guys, you have to wash stuff (once you get tired of pajamas that smell like someone took a dump on a butt).

Anyway, Dave has a lot of feelings about Dirk and you can just read and think about that on your god damn own, you don't need me to tell you about it.

Also is it quarantine talking or does casual physical intimacy just knock anybody else onto their ass. Just curious.

Artist note: I really like the little rumbling animation of the washing machine in these first few panels… also Karkat’s faces and little circle blob-hands… just putting it out there. Those are good.

PANELS 6-8

God. Intimacy. Ya'll ever consider that shit?

Sometimes heavy conversations happen while you are doing chores. It happens.

PANELS 9-10

For a long time i didnt notice the typo where it said "fraggle mortal meatsack" so that's pretty good. We could have had that in there.

Karkat finding his feet steady on a soapbox, just about how much he likes Dave, this time. Ahh.

PANEL 11

Here it is, folks.

Also, I wanted some sort of visual way to show the impact of Karkat's response to Dave's fear ramble, and after a bunch of my own rambling, the artist came up with the bare laundry room lightbulb, which i fucking love. It influences each panel, but none more than this one.

Artist note: During the sketch phase, I was trying to figure out how I wanted to frame this last panel. I wanted it to hit and have its moment, but quietly so. I looked back at some of the kiss panels of the past: Rosemary, Dirkjake… they all were these long, scrolling panels with the reveal at the bottom, but they were moments that came with a lot of buildup. This wasn’t an exploding volcano kind of moment, but still one that I think deserved a little something. The single bulb seemed like a fitting answer to the problem, and so I then worked the lighting into the previous panels.

Chapter 11 Sketches + Commentary

From the get go, we have this ship. A lot of hs^2 is like… very serious. I think thats cool because I don’t know how to do that. I am pretty good at writing goofy things though so my original goal for this chapter was to make it a little less serious. My favorite parts of homestuck were always when it made me laugh, or when it was just extremely silly. Where are the JOKES? I drew the original draft of the ship in paint and made it a twitchy gif. The artist thought this was so funny that they insisted we keep it in. So he cleaned it up and we kept it.

I storyboarded this scene out for the artist but I don’t really know how to draw. 

I wanted to establish an existing relationship between Aradia and Dave who only kind of knew each other in the comic. Dave is training to fight Dirk. Aradia isn’t as interested in that, but as Ghost Calliope’s acolyte is along for the ride. She passes time by having fun hanging out and developing this new friendship. I tried to make it so it felt like Dave and Aradia had been rubbing off on each other personality-wise. They tell the same kind of jokes and have a similar sense of humor. You know how when you spend a lot of time in a group chat and you all sort of gel together? I wanted it to feel like that. Just some friends talking about nonsense and being goblins to each other. Dave is talking about Tony Hawk, who was popular when Dave was young. He is still popular now but if you follow skateboarding, as I know you do, there are definitely more relevant skaters to today’s scene. Dave doesn’t know this because none of these skaters exist. Skateboarding is a crime on earth C. I made that up. I don’t know. They let me write whatever I want.

I know Dave isn’t short for David. I just think its funny. It is like calling your friend Jim “Jimothy.” A completely victimless crime. Throughout this scene possessed Jade/Ghost Callie is just off screen narrating. That is their version of training to fight Dirk. As you know from the comic Calliope is kind of an unreliable narrator. I wanted to develop the character a little bit, or at least set up more interesting and capable writers with an opportunity to do so. This is the same Callie we see possessing the OTHER Jade. Why is she so different then? I think sometimes when you hang out with people who are more on your level you tend to open up. I wanted the idea to be that Aradia and Dave are just SO annoying that Jade-Callie can’t help but get swept up into their energy.

There is an interesting point of Lore here where I talk about Aradia having tried this TIME joke in multiple timelines on different versions of Dave, but since Davebot has ascended to his ULTIMATE SELF he has the culminated experiences of all these timelines already. The “passive” line is sort of a red herring that a lot of people fell for and I think that is very funny. 

We get into them talking about their feelings. Aradia has been through a lot and very few people really ask her about it. She is doing that thing that people who have dealt with traumatic experiences often do where they very openly and sort of macabrely joke about them to test the waters a little. If you know, you know.

“Times fun when you’re having Flies” is an old person joke that my Dad used to say. “Son you know what Kermit the Frog says? Times Fun When You’re Having Flies.” The phrase is “Time flies when you’re having Fun.” in case you were born after 2005. After this Dave raps and it gradually devolves into his feelings of guilt, in a way that is immediately transparent to anybody that isn’t Dave Strider. I wanted both of them to show that they are good enough friends to be vulnerable around each other, but maybe they still don’t want to talk about their problems in depth. It is a precarious balance.

We get into Aradia and Sollux here. In the epilogues Aradia says that she is cutting Sollux loose so he can do his own thing, since he seems tired of all of this narrative tomfoolery. Sollux isn’t especially perturbed by Aradia going off and doing her own thing. She has always kind of been this way. Aradia says a swear because she got so caught up in the portal and Jade-Calliope vore that she forgot Sollux was up on the roof. How will he get down? What zany family friendly adventures will he get into? Only time will tell. He is making a very sad face but I assure you it is because he is on a roof in the timeline that sucks.

I’m not the best writer when it comes to meta stuff or prose or sentences with words in them because I genuinely just don’t know how to do that and it actually doesn’t interest me that much. However I really like the joke that when Calliope narrates through Jade, it sometimes is just her mumbling off in the corner.

The rocket spinning like that was a last minute edition because without it the time skip seemed a little too sudden. Here is the example gif I made. 

Again Ghost Calliope Jade is practicing their ability to narrate by just saying really basic things, a sort of word training montage that nobody asked for. At one point Aradia interrupts her and Callie begins using the narration to be petty, which is growth in its own way. She is convinced she knows better. She is using the narrative voice in a somewhat childish and irresponsible way, to prove her own point. “Well ACTUALLY I do care. And I am using my god powers to tell you that you are wrong.” Hm! Where have we seen that before? I will let you come to your own conclusions there as the story continues. A lot of this chapter was to set up people who are better at writing. We finish off with some jokes. We get to see Ghost Calliope start to let her guard down at the exact moment she is distracted elsewhere by things going on in a different body. 

Ok I love you Bye Bye

Diamonds, Dames, and Dads pt 2

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Chapter 12 - Really Convoluted Metaphorical Horseshit

homestuck2.com 

Commentary + Sketches: 1 WOND3R WH4T TH3Y T4ST3 L1K3

H3R3 YOU GO 

A science fiction writer I really respect once told me that “the purpose of prose is to take an hour to examine a moment” and I think about that a lot. I think that at its most basic level, the beauty of prose is to let yourself linger on shit you really couldn’t in any other medium. In reality, someone drops an egg, and it takes maybe half a second to hit the ground and crack. But with prose you can freeze that egg on its way down. You could really dig into what’s so very messed up about this egg getting smashed. Maybe it was the final egg. Maybe it was a lucky egg. Maybe you’re known as the motherfucker in the family who drops all the damn eggs all the time. 

Whatever the case, prose allows us to really linger here with all this egg shit. We can find out what you were wearing while you dropped the egg, whether or not the light on the kitchen was on, etc, etc. Prose is for going inside situations, instead of looking at them head on. 

Which is why I decided to do this in prose instead of visuals. I don’t think I need to describe “Terezi gets grabbed by a monster tree” but I really wanted you to know what she was feeling while it happened to her. It’s really what makes the Epilogues so visceral and uncomfortable, I think. Not only are we watching people make bad choices, we’re seeing the unkind thoughts they have when they make them. 

Writing characters after time skips is always a challenge, even with characters I know incredibly well. Terezi has spent years onboard a space ship with Dirk and Rose, so writing the three of them interacting has been incredibly interesting, trying to get the balance between how I know they talk and how they might have changed or grown (or I guess…ingrown? Ungrown?) in that time. I think they’ve probably developed an interesting rapport. That’s why I made Terezi a little more direct with Dirk, less teasing and circular than she is with most of her conversations—at least the ones with boys. 

We also figure out that Terezi more or less knows what’s going on, except she doesn’t exactly get how Dirk is doing it. To her it seems like mind control. Dirk says it’s not. But does the difference actually matter? 

See you next time! 

Commentary + Sketches: "How Goes the Eulogizing, Dear?"

P: For this commentary, I thought we'd try something a little different again, and so I'm really happy to welcome a member of our art team to give us some of his thoughts on the update!

K: Hi everyone! I’m Kim Quach, the artist for chapter 9 of Homestuck^2 and also the character designer for Yiffany. I gotta say, Andrew was right when he said we were all going to love Yiffany. As soon as I designed her, she instantly became my favorite character in HS2 (but that might just be my bias, hehe). I had no idea what kind of character Yiffany was going to be before I was assigned to design her, but once I was given a groundwork of her character I already had a clear vision in my mind of how I wanted her to look. Before I started drafting my own design sketches for Yiffany, I was given some key elements for her character and an ancient design draft made by Andrew Hussie. I’ll just tell you, Yiffany looks completely different from Andrew’s initial concept, hahaha. 

P: You might already be aware of this from his Instagram account, but Andrew Hussie is a grown man who does not know how to dress himself. So, in all honesty, the less said about the original Andrew concept for Yiffany the better. Since we were inviting Kim to contribute specifically because we all love his character designs so much, we wanted him to have as much freedom as possible to make something that he would enjoy drawing. I think this was a pretty good call. Kim's outfits are to die for.

K: For her design, I had a solid idea of what kind of outfit I wanted her to wear. I was given a few key points for her design: she’s in a boarding school uniform, she decidedly wears shorts instead of a skirt, a messy tie, and that she wears her uniform badly. My particularly favorite detail is the too-big untucked shirt, haha.

P: Something that might be surprising to the readers is that, prior to the month of May, Yiffy didn't have a final design. So there was this period of about a week or so where people were drawing fanart of a character that not only had nobody seen, but of whom no canonical representation had even been decided upon. In a limited sense, the fan discussion around Yiffy formed part of the design process, but I really do mean a limited sense. A lot of the designs that we saw were quite lovely—a majority of them fell into a category I sort of loosely identified as "sad girl". I think a lot of people already identified from her background that Yiffy would have a lot of angst potential, which is very true. But Homestuck has a habit of taking what the reader thinks they want and saying, um, well, have you considered that maybe what you want is this instead? And in guiding Kim's design process, we very consciously decided to go this route: Yiffy the sad doggy girl in a sundress gave way to Yiffy the angry doggy jock in soccer shorts. Not to toot our own horn, but judging by the reaction I think it's fair to say that this turned out pretty well.

K: I thought it was really cool to see the fan speculations! I honestly hadn’t seen any before I designed her at all, so I came into the drafting process with a completely blank slate. I don’t think we had a text color picked out for Yiffany just yet either as I was laying down the colors. Though, I liked the idea of her being on the warmer side since a lot of the HS2 kids were already on the blue-adjacent end (hence the salmon accents on the first few iterations). I really love the bold red we ended up with a lot though, it really shows the character’s strong personality and energy. She was also initially going to be wearing chucks, but in the design room Pip suggested she be wearing cleats to complete the jock look. Honestly, it’s one of my other favorite parts of the design—it brings a lot of character to it!

P: All of you people out there who just wanna get fucking stomped on by a girl... I got you covered, I guess.

K: If I had to say what was the hardest part of designing Yiffany, it was actually her hairstyle. (Does her ears and tail count as part of her hair too?) I think how a character styles their hair really defines their personality, so I wanted something that would reflect that. My idea was that her hair was short, wild, and loosely styled. It’s out of her face, but not something she would care to maintain. I think the most interesting part about her hair was translating it into the trademark Homestuck style. While I did have my own idea for her hair, abstracting it and seeing how fans would interpret it was the fun part I was looking forward to! I couldn’t decide if I wanted to keep Yiffany’s ears white or black. White seemed like the obvious choice, but the black balanced out the design more. Everyone agreed the black complimented her a lot more, and so it was! Plus, hey, she looks sick as hell, hahaha.

P: Right, hahaha. I think my favorite part of her design is the piercing on her (dog) ears—the red accent up there is just so fun. Oh, and plus, she has a tail, so there's going to be a lot of expressive potential there that we haven't seen in a human character before. We all really did fall in love with Yiffy the moment Kim started working on her. There's something about seeing a character "in the flesh", as opposed to just a list of plot points and traits, that really helps you begin to treat them as a living breathing creation.

236

K: Working on the panels themselves was a really interesting creative experience! I was given an outline of what the writers wanted to be key for every panel, and I boarded and revised the sequence accordingly. Funny enough, the hardest part about boarding this was actually the first panel. Though, I think that’s a given with any kind of storyboard sequence. The first panel of a storyboard is what leads into how the rest of the boards would look like, and you have to plan the rest of your boards accordingly for a visually smooth experience.

237

P: So in this scene, Jane is working on her eulogy for Gamzee's funeral. She doesn't have very much luck in this endeavor because I frankly could not think of anything reasonable for her to say in contemplation of the life of That Guy. She starts off trying to riff on some poem from Lord of the Rings (I think?), but she stops at the precise moment that I realized that there isn't a rhyme for "honking". I didn't say fiddlesticks when this happened though.

238

K: After the boards, the next step is laying down the color script. The use of color throughout this chapter is especially vital as the blue and red signify each of the core characters featured in this chapter. I wanted to use color as a way to convey the control and emotional intensity of each respective character.

P: Right, we established early on that the main idea of this update would be the conflict between Yiffy and Jane, and so the colors were deliberately chosen to reflect this. Pay attention to how the blues and reds interact throughout the scene, and you get a pretty good picture of the dynamic at play.

239

K: Oh man, this panel. HAHA. My given notes for this shot were that it had to be below the waist and for what Jake was carrying to be obscured. I didn’t intend for this panel to be as fanservice-y as it was, but here we are.

P: A lot of people gave us "grief" for this one, saying like, oh I can't believe how in-your-face the fanservice is in this comic now, and to those people I have to say that it was a genuine accident. A happy accident, maybe... Look. Have you considered it's appropriate that Jake's ass is just SO jutting out and impudent that it somehow muscles its way into the shot even without any of us intending for it to? This is how Art works, okay? Okay.

240

P: I think one of the most insidious things about Jane is that she very often says things that could appear, from a certain angle, to be entirely reasonable. I mean, what she says here about Troll society does reflect some of the beliefs about their culture that even Troll members of the cast expressed in Homestuck proper. That's the difficult thing with people like Jane. You have to pay very close attention to where the logic is taking you, because in their hands logic becomes a very dangerous tool indeed. It's deductive reasoning with an agenda. Hannah Arendt pointed out in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" that it was this inhumane aspect of logic which characterized a lot of the totalitarian developments in Europe in the 20th century. I think it's important for people to understand the fact that logic is not like, say, an encyclopedia; it's not a repository of knowledge that you can access and consult, it's not a collection of facts. Logic in fact has very little to say about the Truth of Reality—logic simply is a tool by which one deduces information from information that already exists. It's a process, a machine. And, depending on the raw material that is fed to it, logic can potentially pump out a load of hot garbage. The danger is that it's internally consistent hot garbage, and that's the thing that gets you. 

Fascism is a weed which has to be ripped out by the very root, because it festers and perpetuates itself by way of this logic. At its core are some cancerous "truths" (the truth of which have no actual importance—they are often deeply untrue) from which everything else proceeds matter-of-factly. And you can't debate the subsequent "truths" which get deduced from the preceding ones because, to the fascist, they are as self-evident and consistent with reality as saying that 1+1 must necessarily be 2. Once the baseline "facts" are established, that's already too late. The entire sorry process, that ends up with people getting killed and stuff, is already a given by the time the initial """""facts""""" are established, because this process consists entirely of items further down the dark path of syllogism from where it started. This is what Jane is doing. 

And so you have to get at the core, then. You have to dismantle the axiomatic foundation. You gotta dismantle the concept of like, the number 1. Because they've encoded hatred into these axioms, upon which they're trying to build the entire mathematics of a way of looking at the world. 

Um, anyway, let's talk about Yiffy some more. I miss her already and she hasn't even shown up yet.

241

K: This panel has me shaking in my boots in excitement. It’s probably one of my top favorites of this update. THERE SHE IS!!!!! AND HER SICK KICKS!!! A small detail that I particularly like is Yiffany’s body language here because it’s very telling of her character. Meanwhile it conveys a sense of defeat, her posture here is still very dominant.

P: *turns to the camera* Hello lesbians. Glad you could join us.

242

P: Jake has been married to a multiuniversally acknowledged cook for like, [NUMBER] years (I'm not looking it up), and yet the best he has to offer is fucking. Microwave mac and cheese or something. You KNOW that stuff came out of a can. It's just unfathomable that this man can be endured by anyone. 

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we dedicate our time and affection to people like Jake English? Well, it's a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of whatever must in want of a romantic partner to utterly disappoint. Jake is like, the embodiment of the entire history of male anticlimax. He contains multitudes and they all STINK. And yet we cannot look away. He is a vacuum, empty space, devoid of anything, and so we cannot help but be pulled in. He's a black hole of human sentiment that yawns ever wider and gorges itself on its own vacuousness. We pour our attention, our care, our three lovingly prepared square meals a day, our everything, into this gaping maw just hoping that something will come out of it.

Or maybe... maybe it's that there's just so MUCH going on in there, the complexity is so great, that it collapses under its own density to form that selfsame singularity. What appears to be emptiness is more like an all-encompassing acceptance, a space into which all can be welcomed because all has already been welcomed. There is no external reaction because the internal world is already complete, a universe of significance beyond an event horizon from which there can be no egress, and relative to which there is only one direction: inward. 

Anyway, none of this fucking matters because the garbage mac and cheese is gonna get yeeted out of there in like three pages, I BET you.

243

K: At least give her a utensil, Jake!!! Isn’t Jane the queen of spoons and forks?!

244

K: This panel is particularly amusing to me because I love the idea of Jane woefully mourning while looking at THIS picture of Gamzee, lmao.

245

P: Another wonderful Homestuck onomatopoeia. There's something objectively funny about objects entering the shot onomatopoeiaically. Bonus points if it's a sound that doesn't make the slightest bit of sense: the more outrageously onomatopoeiaicized the better, IMO.

247

K: Okay, now THIS is another one of my favorites for this update. The big money shot! There’s lots of things that I love about this panel. One, there’s Yiffany in it and she's cool as hell. Two, I’m a big fan of drawing angry expressions. I actually had to tone down my initial drawing for this because I had to figure out a way to keep it within the Homestuck style, haha. And three, I’m also a sucker for extremely bright colors. As the overall hues shift into red and the searing light from the doorway encapsulates the panel, I wanted the colors to reflect Yiffany’s emotional intensity and dominance over the scene.

249

K: NOOO!!! JANE HOW COULD YOU!!! Meanwhile this panel makes me so upset for Yiffany, I like the colors used in this shot a lot. This is when the two colors start clashing against each other here, fighting for control. The warm hues are violently responding with Yiffany’s emotional state as the cooler hues start closing in on her.

252

K: As Yiffany falls unconscious, blue becomes the dominant color of the scene. Jane is back in control.

254

K: I swear these ass shots are not intentional.

P: First Jake had one, and now Jane gets one. Its_equality.gif.

255

K: The scene becomes darker and the blue encapsulates around Yiffany as any hint of warm colors dies out in this panel… This panel also makes me really sad because I feel for Yiffany’s rightful anger and frustration... I really hope to see more of her in the comic soon, and see what antics she gets up to!

P: Me too.

Chapter 11: History's Most Notorious Haters

homestuck2.com 

Chapter 10: 1 WOND3R WH4T TH3Y T4ST3 L1K3

Commentary and Sketches: "The Influencers"

Oh it’s these guys again. You thought they were throwaway characters?!?? HA! 

Actually, so did I. If I’d thought I’d have used them again, I probably would have given them less obnoxious quirks. But hey, what’s the act of creation but accidentally getting attached to bullshit and running with it?

Anyway, these guys all have lore hints in their names, and I could tell you what all of it is, or you could probably just do some research, look at them in a mirror, whatever. Except for Silas--you can’t google that one, so I’ll just tell you. She’s named after a burner pokego account. Sometimes it’s just like that. 

These guys all have pieces of backstory and hobbies and some have friendship and romantic inclinations, but we may see more of them in the future, so I am not gonna unload this all too early. Also that could totally change between now and the next time they show up. Enjoy your morsels as you get them.

Some more behind the scenes shit is that originally there was going to be no adult figure, just the three of them working shit out. Then it was just gonna be the principal being a plant, but (though I know there are some good-aligned principals out there), I couldn’t bring myself to write one, so that character split into two. 

Another thing about this trio is their relative unimportance. They are not gods or the children of gods. They are just 3 assholes going to school and accidentally getting wrapped up in revolutionary activity. This sometimes happens when a revolution is occurring around you. 

Clout is the mind killer.

Bonus: The Influencers

(See you for Chapter 10 tomorrow!)

June Break!

The HS2 team going to be taking a short summer break in June. Worry not, existing supporters, you won’t be charged for the month of June on Patreon! 

Those who aren’t already supporters will still be able to join and pay to experience all our bonus updates. 

We’ve still got another main and bonus update for you here in May, and we’ll be 8ack in the saddle starting in July. Thank you for all your support! 

— The Homestuck^2: Beyond Canon Team

Chapter 9. "How Goes The Eulogizing, Dear?"

Politically charged funereal planning.

COMMENTARY: A Threat, Sensed

Hello, everybody. Writing in from my ivory tower high on the hill, offering you my sincerest wishes for your good health and continued toil toward building a better future. I know shit is rough, and it’s only going to get rougher. Am I talking about real life or am I talking about homestuck? At the end of the day, does it even matter anymore? 

Let’s talk about Dirk. 

PAGE 1 

Here we see Dirk engaging in a mode of behavior well-known to modern-day humanity: lying on the floor and just resting. Just doing some good self-care in the detritus of the former world. He looks like he might have tried to get underneath his kotatsu and given up halfway. I feel you, Strider, I really do. 

PAGE 2-3

And here we see Rose practicing social distancing. And by ‘social distancing’ I mean distancing herself from the potentially awkward social situation of your ecto-father throwing a huge tantrum in his philosophy cave. So good on her. 

PAGE 4-5  

Another relatable “mood” here. Dirk picking himself up from the floor and immediately logging on to speak to the manager. 

PAGE 6-7 

When I was doing the panel descriptions for this chapter I think I said something like “one of those old-timey green lamps you see on desks in movies that you pull a cord on” and the artist knew exactly what I meant. I don’t know if I’ve ever actually seen one of these lamps in real life. Or maybe my parents had one when I was a kid. Memory sucks and doesn’t work. 

PAGE 8 

We’ve had quite a bit of speculation on whether this is “really” Andrew. To that, I think we’d say that it doesn’t “really” matter. If you’re asking are those Andrew’s actual hands, then no, of course not. Because those hands are fake hands that are on the computer screen.

Here we discover that Dirk has not, as some people have speculated, been directly intervening into the Candy timeline, or influencing it in any way. In fact, he has a very hard time seeing anything going on there at all. A couple of years ago I might have agreed with the take that everything happening in Candy is simply too outlandish to ever happen naturally, without direct, villainous interference, but that was before literally every fucking batshit insane thing that has happened on Real Life Earth started going down, and now I will believe literally anything. 

PAGE 9 

From this discussion, it’s clear that Dirk and Hussie have at least a passing acquaintance with each other. Like the Director from Pesterqyest, Dirk is aware of him and the influence that he has on the story. He’s aware of there being a greater voice of authority above himself, although he doesn’t really seem to acknowledge it. He might even think that he has more direct power over the narrative than Hussie does himself. Surprise, motherfucker, you are a fictional character. 

PAGE 10 

There’s been talk of whether or not this bonus was written in the two days between its release and the Yiffy reveal chapter. The answer is--no. It was written over a month ago. But I think the things it addresses were not difficult to suss out. Obviously, Dirk is highlighting the issues that the readership are having with Yiffy, in his typical Dirk fashion. If it seems a little defensive, well...I suppose it is. Yiffy is one of the two hard lines drawn in the sand, and all of us love her, and we’re hoping that everyone else will love her too. But more than that, it focuses on the fact that update culture has a rhythm to it--shock, revulsion, acceptance (or not), and then excitement (or not). Will it follow that pattern this time? Who knows. I guess we’ll find out. 

Also this section is obviously an allusion to the conversation between the author insert character and Caliborn, when Caliborn asks for help and is thoroughly owned. There’s something both incredibly “cringe” and self-indulgent, as well as philosophically intriguing, about the author arguing with his villain, especially since he’s writing both halves of the conversation himself. You are, for all intents and purposes, trying to solve a problem that you have created for yourself. You are looking an aspect of your personality in the eye and asking, hey, what the fuck, man? 

But in the end, isn’t that what every story is? Trying to untie knots that you put in the rope yourself? 

PAGE 11 

Dirk has a certain idea of how stories are supposed to go. That’s pretty much what the Epilogues is about. The audience also has a certain expectation of how a story is supposed to go. In a way, the Epilogues were also about that. They were taking a story that had reached the traditionally “acceptable” happily ever after, and saying, wait, no. What happens next? Thinking past happily ever after in any story is a terrifying prospect. Once Cinderella marries the prince, what then? Sure, she got what she wanted, but who knows that it will be everything she dreamt it would? What if she changes her mind, if not today, what about ten years from now? What if the prince dies of malaria? 

Is Rose and Jade having a secret child they hid from the rest of the friends for 15 years wild bullshit? Yes. Does that mean it would never happen? Probably not. 

PAGE 12-13

My favorite panel in the update--Dirk’s hand shaking above his gamer keyboard. Chin up, king, your headset is slipping. 

See you guys next month! 

Sketches and Commentary: A Daughter Astray

So here we are. Another month of Homestuck draws to a close. But of course this wasn't just any old month of Homestuck, Oh Goodness No. April is the month where all the little children around the world feel a strange sensation on the breeze, and find themselves googling pictures of horses long into the night for a reason they cannot explain. While to T.S. Eliot it may be cruel, to a Homestuck April is the weirdest month. How was yours? Mine was fucking busy.

Anyway, we've got quite a bit to get through, so let's get on with it.

192-193

Jane is being evil again, while Jake sort of simpers (no, that's not what that word means) pathetically over her shoulder. No idea what BGD is up to. He's just chillen'.

If you're reading this then you already know that the daughter Jane is referring to is Yiffy, rather than Vrissy. But for the first-time reader the implication is obviously the other way around. Pretty standard misdirection.

What else to say here. The chyron (the little scrolling text thing on the bottom of news channels) is an IT joke. You know IT? The Steven King novel. I hear it got a movie adaptation recently. I know jack dick about IT other than that a lot of people are drawing fanart of boys kissing. This describes almost every fandom on the internet though so I might as well know nothing at all.

194

This kind of page layout will be familiar to you if you've been following Catnapped, or if you remember the 2xPanel combos sometime in Act 6. (I'm not gonna look up where because do you think I have all day?). I think this is a fun way to present two conversations happening concurrently, and having a connected panel rather than two distinct ones is also pretty Neat if you ask me. Comics are fun to play about with. The two halves of this page are almost exactly the same length, and you may even spot that Vrissy and Tavros stop talking at the precise moment Harry's phone starts ringing on the other side of the room (provided you're reading with the page at its full width). I'm sure you'll want to know how I managed this, since it seems like it might be a bit tricky to plan and it's a pretty staggering coincidence otherwise. But, dear reader, you will have to be content with being staggered, because sheer fucking coincidence is what it was. I'm still happy to take the credit for it though.

Oh, also the dialogue on this page is pretty funny.

195

Harry is worried about his dad being mad. If only he had read Homestuck, he would know that this basically never happens.

196

I like writing John and Harry talking. I think it's cute.

Quite a lot of people were very sad about the Dirk Strider memorial effigy. Me too. I was crying when I wrote that. It could, however, have been significantly worse: originally it was going to be the Dirk Strider memorial pinata. I changed it because contrary to what the internet will tell you, I am not a fucking monster.

197

THERE THEY ARE... THE WIFE'S.....

198

We considered giving Kanaya a full-blown vampire style cape but we toned it back because that would have been silly. Rose's new haircut was OK'd by a hand-selected panel of lesbians and is therefore beyond criticism.

199

Oh right, here's a random NPC for you all to hyper-fixate over I guess. I got an awful lot of questions about Alfonz after the update, most of them extremely tedious. I'm here to tell you that whatever you want to be true about this person we'll likely never see again, that thing is potentially true. Do whatever you like. Please stop DM'ing me about Alfonz's pronouns—they're about to get ejected out of the comic...

200

Right about...

201

Now.

Holy shit Jade just shoved Alfonz out of the way like it was nothing. This is terrible! I expect everyone to add this to the list of reasons why Jade Harley is verifiably evil, just under "is a woman" and "who has sex".

Oh my god look at her beans though.

202

Rorb 2.0.

203-204

Aaaaand boom, there it is. Yiffy has been teased at last. Reading this after the fact, I'm sure you have Opinions about this development. Let me assure you that whatever emotion you're feeling right now, we all felt in spades back when we first heard that we had to include this in the story. Yiffy was a non-negotiable plot point, a solid nugget of patented Hussnasty bullshit integral to the HS^2 experience.

I don't want to start this discussion prematurely though, so more about it later probably.

This was where the first update of April finished, leaving us with what can only be described as a Yiffhanger. But it's ok, look. The next page is clearly going to explain everything.

205

I hate this fucking comic. 

That's almost certainly what Vriska is thinking here, in fact.

206

Arguments are fun to write, fun to read, but not generally fun to participate in unless you are a man on the internet. I am not a man, though I am, unfortunately, on the internet. I hate arguments.

207

Earlier on we had the sequel to Rorb; here Harry Anderson has become Rorb 3.0, the next generation of Rorb. Ballry Anderson. Harry Andersphere.

Oh, one thing to mention about Vriska's dialogue here. A lot of people seem to take her statement that Harry should be grateful to receive parental affection as indicative of her feelings towards John. That may well be true, but the other implication here is that Vriska is bitter about her relationship with her own parental figure. Remember Vriska's lusus? It's been approximately nine years since she was last relevant. How time flies huh.

208

Ooooooh new chumhandles. I bet people were wondering if we were ever going to see these. I know I was! It was a spur of the moment decision, in all honesty. It's very easy to think that all of the old Homestuck staples, like strife specibi and chumhandles and so on, are just things that you HAVE to include in order for it to even be Homestuck. But we don't wanna apply that kind of thinking uncritically. I mean, WHY is it strictly necessary to have chumhandles? By the end of Homestuck, everyone was just talking aloud, with their lines designated by name. Deciding to walk that back for nostalgia points alone isn't going to be worth it, frankly.

So then, why DID we return to chumhandles here? Well... it just ended up being the most convenient thing to do. Harry has left the room, but needs to continue having a conversation with Vrissy. There is a preestablished medium through which distant (or not-so-distant) communication takes place in Homestuck, i.e a chat client such as Pesterchum. So I used it. But the important thing is that it actually served a purpose here, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Oh and yes "glamor" is a valid spelling of the word.

209

There's something interesting about this panel which I have not seen anyone point out. 

210

I'm sure all of you have something anime related to say about this.

211-212

Oh right, these pages. I was responsible for writing Chapter 8, as well as producing all of the old Homestuck-style panels. For these two, we could have just used the original ones from the sequence where John chooses HAMMERKIND as his abstratus, since SCISSORKIND was also included on that old list. But that would have been boring, so instead I remade them with a bunch of new abstrata. 

Making these panels was a bit more of a pain than I anticipated. The original font used was a variety of Lucida Console called "Semi-Condensed", which was bundled with Windows XP. As far as I can tell, it literally does not exist any more. So what I had to do was use Photoshop's text settings to modify the regular Lucida Console font to match the one that appears in Homestuck. If anyone wants those settings, I have saved them and can include a screenshot in a concept art bundle. I'm sure literally thousands of people will be interested to see this. But seriously, it was an important detail to get right, because otherwise thousands of people would have GENUINELY gotten extremely mad at me. Homestuck is just like that.

Some people were curious about the kind abstratus that's partially hidden by the cursor. To you, beloved Patrons, I can exclusively reveal that it was "CRLNGIRNKIND".

213

Vriska heard that some boys were going to have character development, and rightfully concluded that this was a dumb idea.

214

There she goes.

215

Vriska is a common dispensary of these kinds of bombastic speeches, which makes it easy to compare and contrast her motivations and intentions at various points in the story. In this sense, Vriska is as close to pure theatre as Homestuck gets. How do you see her position as a character now, compared with, say, the "8y 8eing me" moment back in Act 6?

216-218

There were several people who got their hopes up here. Monsters.

219

Sorry to disappoint. You think she's going down that easily?

220-221

Think again.

222

Ok, this page. Upon reading it, a lot of people were of the opinion that this page "should" have been a flash. Why is that? I think we can assume it's because the moment it represents is of sufficiently high tension, and the events that are described of a sufficient level of badassery, that it would in Homestuck proper have warranted a flash page.

But here, we have prose. To the Homestuck reader this feels like being cheated out of something which they were led to believe would happen. It's important to realize that at no point in Homestuck^2 has such an expectation ever been established. Remember what I said about following conventions just for the sake of it? Here, of course, it's a little more complicated. Flash pages were a beloved part of the original comic and added significantly to its overall appeal.

I'm not interested in entering into yet another discussion of the reasons why we are not making Flash animations for Homestuck^2. The important point for our purposes is that, in this situation, prose was a means of communicating the action in a way that was a) time-, energy- and cost-effective; b) unexpected; and hence c) more interesting and exciting (this last point is where most of the disagreement lies, I feel). To put this as politely as I can: if this direction of the comic is something that you personally don't find engaging, that's fine. But quite literally the first update of Homestuck^2 was dedicated to elaborating on the new format the comic would take. Nobody can say there wasn't any warning. Anyway, to conclude, this page is funny and I like it.

223-225

This is adorable! Nuff said.

226

Longjohn. More parent/child cuteness. John rambles about Linsday Lohan to a group of people to whom she has never existed. Doesn't get much more Homestuck than that, if you ask me.

227-228

Kanaya is being let down, gently. She has, on previous occasions, been let down less gently than this. We're about to hear about one such occasion!

229

It makes my heart happy to see these colors on the same page. Forget what was said about the combination in Homestuck proper—having Jade's green and Rose's purple next to each other is enough to brighten any day.

230

Kanaya is taking her job as a revolutionary very seriously.

232-5

Alright, the final Yiffy sequence. Here's where we hear the bulk of her background, in all its wonderment and stupidity. I actually have remarkably little to say about this, other than the fact that I feel pretty good about the whole thing. There's a particular kind of euphoria that comes from having made something that severely pisses thousands of people off, and dear reader, I've been clinging to that euphoria in these dark days.

If you're reading this later on, you'll already be confused at this, because you will have fallen in love with Yiffy so completely and utterly that the idea of anyone saying a bad word against her will seem totally infeasible. This is my prophetic vision. And with that, thanks for reading! See you next time.

Bonus Update: A Threat, Sensed

Dirk has some concerns.

CHAPTER 8. A Daughter Astray, Part 2.

Rose and Jade: Explain everything.

CHAPTER 8. A Daughter Astray

Welcome to the resistance.

Sketches & Commentary: Chapter 7, Distress Call From the Closet

Panel -1 

a2: we’re establishing with an establishment shot because it’s been like 84 years since we’ve seen these motherfuckers. 

Panels 1-4 

A1 So much has happened since then. For us, I mean. For them, not so much. A perpetual closet panic for the last 3 months. 

a2: yeah, we’ve had a whole ass pandemic since any of this shit has happened. really makes you think. 

A1 Damn it really does. I understand the pathos of this now. 

A1 Anyway Harry Anderson is delightfully unaware and i love him for it

a2 a lot of this chapter has involved developing harry anderson, and he continues to be the only boy in the world for me. i love him dearly. what a little shit. 

A1 I think it’s really important to discuss what a good water fountain entails. There’s always one in every school that’s better than the other ones and this is absolutely vital knowledge that Harry Anderson should be texting about with his girlfriend who goes to another school.

A2 when i was in high school we texted some, but it was still mostly phone conversations? i guess i am very old. nowadays i can’t imagine ever wanting to talk to someone on the phone. 

A1 Rich coming from someone who is currently voice chatting with me right now.

a2 listen you are like my best friend, you don’t count as someone. 

A1 You love to hear it.

a2 --who is difficult to talk to. 

A1 [Gay emoji]

a2 anyway, i think the whole premise of this particular scene is extremely funny and also extremely scooby doo. like, whenever in actual life has anyone hid in a janitor’s closet? i doubt i could even have found the janitor’s closet in my high school. we just went into the band room to smoke weed. 

A1 Ah, the classic high school experiences that happen only in fiction.

A1 I think people smoked weed on the tennis courts at my high school but I was a massive fucking uptight nerd, so.

a2 i got into fights in high school and also stole shit. i was actually probably a pretty shitty kid, but i got straight A’s so nobody noticed. i was also deeply fucking depressed. when you have good grades nobody cares if you’re troubled. just a little bit of my trauma here for the audience. 

A1 Just like Tavros Crocker.

a2 i can’t believe you just made me tavros. well, actually, this tavros rules and i love him.  

A1 lmao. Harry Anderson is a solid C+ student and no one cares because of his other charms, which are plentiful.

a2 you wrote this part, do they really just leave gamzee’s body there? fucking power move. have this clown corpse, public school system. 

A1 I know they’re going against the cardinal rule of gamzee corpse management, turning their backs on it. But they’ve weighed their options and this is the only thing they can really do. Plus he is like actually dead this time so it’s fine. Vriska knows this. 

a2 yeah, drastic times etc. vriska really is on the next level here. she just made out with this guy and then choked him to death. and nobody here knows about that, as far as i can tell? like, they know she killed him. but the continuing theme is here that vriska is on like….a different playing field than the rest of them. like, they’re doing shenanigans and she is an actual warrior.  

A1 It’s not her first rodeo. Vrissy has a feeling about this later we will see.

Panels 5-8

a2 so i did the meenah and karkat parts, and i completely beefed it in the first draft by doing it in second person. which is SO much easier to write homestuck voice in, btw. i always feel like i’m doing a crime when i write in third person for these people. 

A1 It was so fucking funny when i started reading it and was like “wait...are we allowed to do this now? Are we just saying fuck it, 2nd person??” and then i told you what you’d done. Who knows. 5000 patrons and we’ll switch to 2nd person* (*not binding).

a2 yeah you always assume that i know what i’m doing, which is really amazing of you as a friend. but i usually don’t. 

A1 I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Also I really wanted it to be true.

a2 anyway, enough bullshit. let’s talk about what really matters. candy karkat. or, as he’s been named in the fandom, big boss karkat. 

A1 I have limited metal gear knowledge but I do know a babe when I see one, and Candy Karkat is that.

a2 of course, you guys haven’t seen him yet. 

A1 All in good time. It’ll be worth it. Enjoy your crumbs for now. Let your thirst grow.

a2 it is actually deeply fucked up how metal gear the epilogue is in general, which is absolutely on purpose. because the authors are big metal gears. the eyepatch, for instance. although i guess more characters than big boss have an eye patch. eye patches are just sexy. 

A1 Yeah Vriska’s is pirate flavored. 

a2 yeah instead of deranged libertarian cult leader flavored. anyway karkat is not a libertarian. also he was a little tricky to write here, because i wanted him to still be karkat, i.e. grumpy and done with all of this shit, but also he’s middle-aged and a revolutionary leader. so he’s doubtless learned a little patience. 

A1 Yeah, he’s become the thing he always wanted to be as a kid, but like. Not at all the way he’d imagined. Basic ass commentary i know, i just like to think about it.

a2: yeah. when he was a kid on alternia he had this overwhelming need for companionship and intimacy that he could only really fathom as a need for power, because of the place he grew up. he abandoned that pretty quickly once they were on the meteor and he had that gaping hole in him filled. i mean. you know what i mean. metaphorical hole. the only good leader is the person who doesn’t want to be a leader, etc. etc. 

A1 Also I very much enjoyed meenah talking about karkat outlawing fish puns and then using one like half a page down. Karkat’s authority can only go so far.

a2: meenah is hard when you can’t do fish puns because you end up just veering into dave and roxy. 

A1 Karkat checking twitter: A March 2020 mood.

Panels 9-19

A1 This part of the outline was written before final edits and additions (including the Candy chapter where John talks to Roxy and then goes on a drive with Harry Anderson) to the Epilogues were made, so in order to make the timeline work, I had to get Harry Anderson home from school, continue to go on the drive with his dad like he does in Candy, and get him back to meet up with the kids, while also getting Roxy out of the way. It was kind of a pain in the ass, but also I think it ends up a little funnier because this fuckin guy cannot stop making things harder for Vriska/Vrissy/Tavros. 

a2 harry anderson is the friend who shows up two and a half hours late with starbucks, and he also got everybody’s orders wrong. 

A1 And then makes sure everyone cashapps him for it anyway.

A1 I hope everyone has a great time picking apart Harry Anderson’s room and interests. He’s got exquisite taste. Pokemon: the first movie would make an excellent live action musical, and Alien vs. Predator is simply one of the finest films ever made.

a2 i like that they have time to engage in love triangle nonsense. because of course they do. also “i know john is depressed and long-winded now” made me laugh out loud. that’s part of Being An Adult, vriska. 

A1 There’s always gotta be time for love triangle nonsense!! And lmao yeah, sorry Vriska. It comes with the territory (though to be fair, John has a pretty bad case at this point). 

A1 Also i think Vriska is just sort of having fun poking at the dynamics between the other three, not really placing herself on a level with them? 

a2 oh yeah, for sure. vriska is miles above these babies. also, she’s still half-convinced that this world isn’t real. 

A1 Yeah, and Vrissy is like. Not totally sure where Vriska is coming from, but she can tell she has a lot going on, which she’s both jealous and afraid of. Homestuck is extremely good for giving us multiple versions of characters, but they don’t often end up interacting with one another directly. So this dynamic is maybe my favorite to write and think about right now.

a2 another reason i think you would like metal gear, there is a whole lot of clone interaction. 

A1 Compelling. Noted. 

A3: WOAH HEY THERE FOLKS IT'S AUTHOR THREE HERE. SORRY FOR SHOUTING, IT'S JUST THE MOST DISTINGUISHABLE QUIRK LEFT UNUSED IN THIS CONVERSATION. JUST WANTED TO POP IN HERE TO SAY A FEW THINGS ABOUT HARRY ANDERSON'S ROOM. 

A3: SO HERE WE HAVE ANOTHER RETURN TO MSPA TRADITION WITH THE CLASSIC 'EXAMINE ROOM' PAGE, BUT RATHER UNIQUELY THERE IS NOBODY HERE. THERE'S SOMETHING PRETTY FUNNY ABOUT ONE OF THESE COMIC STAPLES JUST CHUGGING ON REGARDLESS, WITH OR WITHOUT ITS PARTICIPANTS. THIS ROOM *WILL* BE EXAMINED, WHETHER HARRY ANDERSON LIKES IT OR NOT.

A3: IF YOU HAVE ACCESS TO THE CONCEPT ART FOR THIS CHAPTER, YOU GET TO SEE WHAT ONE OF THESE ROOMS LOOKS LIKE WITHOUT ANY STUFF IN IT. IF YOU DON'T HAVE ACCESS TO THE CONCEPT ART FOR THIS CHAPTER, YOU CAN JUST IMAGINE A COMPLETELY BLANK, FEATURELESS WHITE CANVAS WITH LIKE, JUST SOME LINES I GUESS. ALSO VRISKA IS THERE BUT WE WON'T TALK ABOUT THAT.

A3: FILLING UP A CHARACTER'S ROOM WITH RANDOM SHIT LIKE THIS IS A GREAT WAY TO GET A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF THEM AS A PERSON. IF YOU'RE STRUGGLING TO FIGURE OUT SOME MINOR DETAILS OR INTERESTS OF A CHARACTER YOU YOURSELF ARE WORKING ON, I THINK IT'S A FANTASTIC EXERCISE TO TRY EVEN IF YOU'VE NEVER DONE ANY ART BEFORE. SERIOUSLY, JUST GET A BUNCH OF SWEET JPEGS OFF GOOGLE IMAGES AND DUMP THEM IN A PHOTOSHOP DOCUMENT LIKE IT'S YOUR HOUSE IN ANIMAL CROSSING AND GO FUCKING HAM. IF YOU DO THIS I PROMISE YOU THAT YOU UNDERSTAND ABOUT NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF THE MSPAINTADVENTURES SIGNATURE STYLE.

A1 I did look at this room and say “oh, Harry Anderson has a large sloppy rug like the one i bought from Saharah.” so i think this tracks.

A3: I WAS TALKING TO ONE OF THE OTHER ARTISTS ABOUT THIS WHILE WE WERE MAKING IT ACTUALLY. THEY WERE LIKE 'UGH, SET DRESSING IS SUCH A CHORE', AND I WAS LIKE 'I'M JUST PRETENDING THAT I'M ON MY ISLAND, ARRANGING FURNITURE I JUST BOUGHT AT NOOK'S CRANNY. I'VE... BEEN PLAYING TOO MUCH ANIMAL CROSSING. IT'S PRETTY POPULAR AT THE MOMENT. ONE COULD SAY THAT INTEREST IN THE GAME IS A BIT OF A PANDEMIC.

A1 I can sure tell you that when we are done with this upd8 i will be logging the fuck on to animal crossing, myself.

A3: THAT STUPID FUCKING BUNNY WILL BE WAITING FOR ME, I JUST KNOW IT. PLEASE GOD... NO MORE EGGS.

A1 Fanmade AC homestuck kid room stylings welcome. @ me with your AVP posters please

A3: YEAH BE SURE TO HIT A1, A2 AND MYSELF UP ON TWITTER WITH THOSE SWEET SCREENSHOTS.

A1 Good luck guessing who is who...maybe best to just @ every creator you can think of, just to be safe.

[panel 20-22]

a2 i like that even after all this distance and years, john and karkat have basically retained the same dynamic in their relationship. john being baffling and karkat just barely able to contain his rage. remember johnkat? johnkat was pretty good. 

A1 I had actually forgotten it, but I do love this well worn comfortable bickering. 

A1 Anyway, tune in next time to see how John Egbert can still win. (unless we go see what some other characters are doing instead, you never know).

CHAPTER 7. Distress Call From the Closet

This update was shy. But now it's here. We have drawn it out from isolation with a secret pattern of clicks and whistles.

Homestuck^2's Second March Update Delayed to April 2

Homestuck fans,

We're sorry to have to send this message. Like many of you, we've been impacted by the worldwide crisis caused both by the pandemic and the associated economic effects. Our team remains hard at work, but these past few weeks have been difficult. Unfortunately, we are unable to ensure that the March 31st update of Homestuck^2: Beyond Canon can release on time without jeopardizing artist welfare or other in-progress projects.

Chapter 7 (and its associated commentary) will release on April 2nd. There will still be two additional updates and a bonus update in April! We apologize for the inconvenience, and appreciate your understanding and support now more than ever in this difficult time.

- The Homestuck^2: Beyond Canon Team

Sketches and Commentary: Diamonds, Dames, and Dads, Part 1

Page 1-2 

You guys ready for some noir shit? Some real greyscale nonsense with just a tinge of purple to give it some ambience? This is Midnight City, which means that it’s dark. And every other midnight pun that I came up with for the chapter and am not going to rehash here. 

It also always appears to be raining in Midnight City, but I don’t think that has to do anything with it being midnight. 

Page 3

Real talk, I have been looking forward to writing this story the most out of any other part of HS^2. Finally I get to combine my passions. Cheesy noir bullshit and old men making eyes at each other. Not that these guys are old. They’re in the prime of their life, really. Just ask Droog. Well, I guess Droog probably wouldn’t agree with that since he’s kind of going through a rough patch, currently. Seems he’s out of work, and spending time in an old-timey bar, because that’s what you do when you’re a depressed gangster in an anachronistic sci-fi noir setting. 

I really was drinking whisky while I wrote this scene. For the ambience, mostly, because I don’t actually like whisky that much. Droog might not either, actually, but a man does what he has to in order to feel those vibes, you know what I’m saying. 

Page 4

There he is. A silhouette that can’t be mistaken. I’d know that jaunty hat and aristocratic nose anywhere. Even old Ivory Joe on the piano couldn't keep it together when Dad Crocker rolled into the spot. 

Haven’s art is always good, but this is just him in his element. His character designs are so stylized but everyone is still immediately recognizable. Both Dad and Droog look pretty much exactly the way they do in homestuck proper, but...more somehow. It’s like he distills them. 

Page 5

Have you ever been just sitting there getting your drink on, when some wise guy plops down right next to you when there’s a bunch of other seats around? Droog doesn’t have time for this sort of nosey bullshit. He’s got no patience for out-of-towners, no matter how dapper their hats might be or how shiny their shirt buttons are. 

When I knew we were going to be taking the side stories to Midnight City, I knew I wanted to do a Dad and Droog story. Not only did they get on pretty well back in Act 6--or as well as you can get on when one of you is the prisoner of the other--they encapsulate this idealized old-world masculinity that has always really fascinated me. Dad is the platonic ideal of a suburban American dad. An impression. A cardboard cutout of an archetype. Droog has been multiple people in multiple stories, but all through them he’s retained the same basic bearing and class. So they inhabit a similar thematic space for me. Does that make sense? 

They’re both sexy, that’s what I’m trying to say. 

Page 6 

And speaking of sexy, is there really anything more erotic than lighting someone’s cigarette for them? I’m not really sure why smoking is considered so sensual--okay, well, I do know. It’s because big tobacco had a really good advertising campaign. But put that aside for a moment. It’s probably got something to do with the tactile nature of the act. The steady journey of the cigarette from the fingers to the mouth. How watching someone’s cigarette means you’re also watching their lips. Because manipulating a cigarette involves a level of dexterity, a finesse. Smoking carries a sense of authority, because you are performing an action that you are completely in control of. 

Or something. I don’t even smoke, I just like watching people smoke in movies. 

Page 7 

Writing banter between characters who never actually speak in dialogue is actually easier than it sounds. The Midnight Crew/Problem Sleuth cadence is pretty distinct and easy to slip into. Centering yourself completely in the point of view of a single character and looking at the world through their eyes, letting them tell you what they think about the person they’re dealing with, purely through a stream of consciousness. It’s got a rhythm to it. 

Page 8 

I’m trying to hit all of the classics here. Cigarette lighting, standing silhouetted against a moonwashed street, staring morosely into a glass of whisky. Here we have the collar-grab. The “how dare you talk about my daughter that way” snarl. Okay, I’m not actually sure if these are the “classics”. They’re just amalgamation of shit that I like that I thought you’d all like too. 

Page 9 

I figure that living in Midnight City, a place with various imaginary worlds and alternate selves just swarming around, Droog probably wouldn’t have too much trouble buying that Dad met a different version of him somewhere along the line. What is slightly more troubling is his acceptance that the Draconian Dignitary was keeping Dad locked in a room. Droog, do you have people locked in rooms? Is this a pastime? 

Page 10 

Agghh the contrast here. I suppose in a way the Dersite and Prospitian divide has cleaved fairly consistently to the traditional white and black binary of “good” and “evil”, although that of course breaks down pretty quickly. The Mayor, for instance, is a Dersite, and he has never done anything wrong in his life. It’s more like the Dersites and Prospitians have the “aesthetics” of bad and good. The Dersites are gangsters and bureaucrats, the Prospitians devoted civil servants who love justice. But then I guess the Felt are leprechauns, and also green...I actually don’t know where I was going with this. Forget about it. I just like how this looks. 

Page 11 

This poor simple bartender. He doesn’t know how to handle whatever homoerotic bullshit has cropped up here. Although he does work in an old-timey bar full of gangsters, so he’s probably used to homoerotic bullshit. 

Kids these days. They just don’t know anything about vibes! You know. Vibes. I think vibes are basically what I’ve been trying to convey in this commentary, but Droog does it all here for me, so honestly, I didn’t really have to say anything and waste everybody’s time. But I’m going to keep doing it so whatever. 

There’s another element of “old-world masculinity” and that is definitely that it is pretty gay. I know Dad goes on a date with Mom, putting him firmly into the bisexual category, but...idk guys. That “Serious Business” app just reads like old-school grindr to me. And Droog, well...he’s an alien NPC construction from a universe-creating video game so what the fuck do we know about his sexuality at all. 

Page 12

Anyway, there’s problems. 

Page 13 

Sitting here and trying to wrap my head around the narrative implications of the idea that Problem Sleuth has in fact never been stuck inside his office at all, and has instead been erecting complicated structures to reinforce his worldview in a last desperate grasp for the status quo. It’s almost like every single cage we live inside is just a construction. Like….gender, or capitalism. What if all we had to do was just climb out of our fort and open our office door? 

Either that or I was running out of word count and just really needed to move the plot forward. You pick. 

Page 14 

The dream team is assembled. Nothing can possibly go wrong. 

BONUS. Diamonds, Dames, and Dads, Part 1

Appreciators of dapper menswear, come get your food.

Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 6, "A Conversation Regarding Relevance"

Page 145-146 

Space, have you heard it’s vast? 

Here we are, back at it again. I’m typing this to you from pandemic quarantine, which really isn’t any different than the usual quarantine being a writer puts you under. Just, now my toilet paper is worth a lot more money. 

One could almost say that I’m stuck. At homea adfhkasd dadfdf

That was a visual representation of me slowly disappearing up my own ass. Where were we? 

Oh, right. Space. It’s vast. I wanted to impress on everyone just how vast it is, and also to remind the audience that alt!callie has them at the same mercy that Dirk does. She can force us to listen to her pontificate endlessly if she so chooses. She’s slightly less insufferable than Dirk, if only perhaps because her text isn’t orange. 

147 

This is what us in the business call a “PSYCHE”. You think the possessed floating girl is looking out into the void, but she is actually looking into a fridge. Don’t you feel enriched by this bait-and-switch? You’re really getting your money’s worth. 

So here she is. Jade. We find out that not only is she conscious inside her own head, she is also incredibly chatty. And not too thrilled with her current situation. I know most of the audience isn’t either, considering the fact that Jade having no agency has basically become a meme at this point. 

148 

That’s a pretty well-stocked fridge, considering they are on a spaceship and alchemizing all of their food. This is honestly doing better than my fridge is most of the time. 

The basic structure of this section is mostly Callie narrating and Jade commenting on her narration, but every so often Callie will slip up and talk to Jade directly. As Callie told us in the beginning of the chapter, it isn’t natural for people to behave like narrative devices. Even within her own thematic framework, Callie has a habit of defaulting to behaving like a person after all. 

149 

Oh there it is, the void. 

150 

Have you ever gotten into this sort of argument? I don’t mean trapped in the void inside your own body and held there against your will by an alien skullgirl--although I’m sure you could find a support group for that online. I mean, have you done the ‘who has suffered more’ back and forth. I find myself doing it without even meaning to. I think that’s what happens when you come up under capitalism. You are convinced that suffering is noble, and that somehow enduring the most pain will enable you to become better and purer and more worthy of...what? I don’t exactly know. 

Callie gets in a little jab here about Dave and Karkat. Davejadekat. Man. Jade really could have had it all. And by ‘it all’ I mean two emotionally constipated early-twenties Bernie Bros who probably don’t know how to vacuum. 

Jade calls Callie out on her narrative embellishments here. I know it can be easy to think of the Dave/Karkat/Jade situation as inherently tragic. These people all have history with each other, which makes the scope of the story seem narrow. Dave and Karkat were two of Jade’s “love interests” so if she doesn’t end up with them, that’s a check in the narrative loss category for her. And it is, in a way. She definitely does love them, and she wanted to be with them, but also...Jade has a lot of other prospects. She’s actually the one character who seems to be enjoying her time on Earth c. Hitting up interspecies raves and getting around. We just haven’t seen any of that because none of those other people she boned are main characters. 

151-152

Anyway Jade’s consciousness is huge. 

153

Jade goes so far as to call Callie “evil Callie” here, which Callie doesn’t dispute. Probably because Jade is just a silly girl saying silly things. Also, she should probably just be quiet and let Callie use her body, since she’s very used to it and therefore couldn’t possibly have any arguments against that, right? Right. 

It’s been a while since we’ve had any sort of serious meta talk about classpects. Mostly because there’s really no use for classpects outside of the game, unless, for instance, you go around referring to everyone as the Prince or the Witch because you are a dramatic alien in a hood. It does make sense that a Witch’s powers would be more useful than a Sylph’s to a Muse. 

154 

Callie would like to remind you that this is a story, and in a story you can’t always get what you want. There’s not enough time to chase down every thread, or have every single possibility come to pass. Jade, however, is a character in this story, and she would like to suggest that she doesn’t actually give a shit about that. 

Honestly, the Jade Situation is a tough one. To be sure, she has been sacrificed to the plot again and again, something that probably began as a coincidence and then later grew into a theme. Space players are destined to be huge, cosmic forces in the universe. Big movers. Kanaya was the midwife of her entire species, transplanting it from one reality to another. Jade literally scooped up all her friends and moved them from the Pre-Scratch universe to the alpha timeline. Callie literally controls the narrative. But usually when we hear the story of big, god-like beings, we don’t think about the personalities behind them. What was it like for god to create the universe? Was he lonely? Did he regret it? Did he wish he could live in it instead? 

155

I actually think Jade could have been okay with this. With being A Force For The Narrative. She’s already had it explained to her by davepeta, and like Callie says, she’s used to the loneliness. But then Callie makes it personal. I don’t think Jade likes the idea of being consigned to the footnotes of the story because she is a “silly little slut.” That doesn’t sit very well. 

156

So far I have managed to avoid just saying “oh my god, look at the art” because that’s all I ever end up doing, but my god, look at the art. I love Jade’s face here. She’s just. So done. 

157 

Admittedly these last few chapters have definitely been “girls beating the crap out of each other” heavy, and I hope that’s okay. I mean, even if it isn’t okay, it’s happening, because girls beating the crap out of each other rules.

I think it’s easy to forget that Jade is “quite a formidable physical force.” She grew up scrapping on a desert island, hunted frogs through the game, and now is half a dog. What I’m saying, she could kick your ass. She could definitely kick Callie’s ass, unless Callie went Full Snake, and as Callie tells us, there’s nothing amorous going on here. At all. Really. Why would you ever think that. 

158 

God, I love this. Look at her go. 

I’m not really sure if Jade is thrashing around here because she and Callie are fighting for control over her body, or if there’s just a very energetic fistfight going on in her brain. I think either one could make you flail around the kitchen. 

159 

Okay this is definitely a possession flicker. 

160 

Ah, yes. The bowl full of red things that was foretold in the prophecy. There was so much speculation as to what that bowl could have been full of that I knew I wanted to have it come back. Initially, Jade picked up a knife and held it to her throat, which I think was a little more dramatic than what I ended up going for, but also way less homestuck. Homestuck has to treat serious shit with very stupid gloves. 

I gave serious thought to what sort of things were red and had peanuts in them, and eventually I just decided that it would make the most sense to have it be some mess up alchemized thing. I remember exactly when I had this train of thought--I was driving to a friend’s house and thinking about peanuts the whole fucking time. 

161 

I’m not sure if we’ve seen the SUICIDE THREAT anywhere else except Rose’s very first strife with Mom back at the beginning. That’s been put into interesting perspective, considering what we learned about Rose and her relationship to self-harm in her past. Several characters have a history of suicidal tendencies. Dirk has a habit of solving problems through cutting his fucking head off. I don’t know if Roxy or Dave have ever flirted with the idea, but knowing their childhoods I imagine there was a pretty good chance. 

Like everything in this comic, it’s easy to forget how absolutely bleak shit is while it’s happening, because it’s just presented in such a ridiculous way. I think that can sometimes soften the blow, but also that can make it even more affecting. A threat coming at you from a direction you weren’t expecting. 

And Callie, by the way, definitely isn’t expecting this threat. 

162 

Here we see Callie desperately trying to claw back some narrative control, seeing as how this silly, dramatic girl has yanked the reins away from her. 

163 

My panel description for this one was something like “Jade looking divine and terrifying” and oh man did Xam deliver. This is not the sort of girl you fuck with. Physically or narratively, unless you want to get your throat ripped out with teeth. Or like, your narrative throat. 

Callie and Jade aren’t really sure who makes a decision on what is considered “just” or “heroic”. Plot twist, it’s us. We do. But also the alpha timeline does. We learned in Candy that if someone hates themselves enough, any act of suicide can be just. But that’s another bit of lore that we can’t be quite sure about, considering we’re not actually 100% certain who was narrating the Candy epilogue. Almost everything we know about SBURB is blatant speculation. It’s best to be on the safe side and assume that these things are almost entirely arbitrary. 

164

And here we have our first [S] page. Very bespoke. Good ticks and tocks. 

165 

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a good old god tier clock. Those things really do show up at the wackiest times. 

166

So now we really get to the crux of the “Callie possesses Jade” situation. Jade tells her that these actually aren’t Callie’s friends, Callie just stole them from Jade. She’s not doing this out of some benevolent preserver of the story, but out of loneliness. Like Jade, she grew up alone, only talking to her friends through a screen. This version of Callie was never able to meet her friends. And she probably thinks she’s accepted that. 

But that’s the real issue here. Dirk and Calliope are all-powerful narrative figures, but when it comes down to it, they’re characters, too. They are entrenched in the story as much as anyone else is. 

167

I think of this scene as the spiritual successor to Dave refusing to kill an alternate version of himself on his quest bed. Sure, he knew that a Dave would ascend to god tier, but it wouldn’t be him. It would be a different him. To the story, and even to us, the readers, which Dave we get isn’t honestly that large of a concern. Do you care about the marios who died? No, you care about beating the game. 

But Dave cares, because Dave is that Dave. And Jade is this Jade. She isn’t happy with some other, greater sense of “Jadeness” being out there in the universe. She has decided that she wants her own story. Her own destiny. And I think that’s pretty woke of her. 

168

More gorgeous Xam art. Initially we were going to make it more ambiguous whether or not she actually ate the peanut butter, but we decided to have it be a decisive moment of triumph. I don’t think Jade has had one of those since Cascade. 

169 

And here we see Calliope practicing social distancing. Good work, Callie. Flatten the curve. 

Commentary on the Commentary

This commentary uses "she/her" to talk about the alternate Calliope possessing Jade, while the "other" Callie (remember them?) uses they/them. This other Calliope, presumably, has a much different relationship with her gender – and her brother – than the Callie we saw discussing the subject with Roxy and John. One of my favorite things about this update (I can say that, because I'm a second person who didn't write it) was that subtle hint about how different her Caliborn must have been to allow her to predominate in the first place. I'd be really interested in fan works exploring more about her (and his) past.

CHAPTER 6. A Conversation Regarding Relevance

space is vast.

Sketches and Commentary: Catnapped, Part Three

Alright, motherfuckers, strap in. Time for more of this ABSOLUTE NONSENSE.

Catnapped is some of the most fun I’ve had while writing, because Jasprose is just so goddamn fun. Cats don’t plan, they live in the moment. She’s always existing in that moment of pushing a glass off the table.

After expanding the canvas vertically in the main update this month, I wanted to go wide with this one. Just like Homestuck started very conventionally and slowly began to shift the boundaries of its medium, I think we’re all settling in to more comfort and confidence on this project and starting to loosen the format.

Plus, I knew Haven would absolutely kill it with the art. This speakeasy is HOPPING, and there's so many great details in the background. Every time I see this guy, I lose my shit laughing:

 BONK!

Let's go left to right and talk about each of Jasprose's conversations.

1. First, I actually really appreciate getting a lot at Jane's genuine sympathy for Dirk here. There was quite a bit of mutual fondness and care between the two of them – but, at the same time, they enabled each others' worst tendencies. Jasprose displays her most tact yet here. Well, as much tact as you can display while complimenting someone's "ample bosom."
2. I really could go into a long talk about Hysterical Dame, Nervous Broad, and the deep current of gender that suffuses the entire story of Problem Sleuth, which you really should read if you haven't yet. I'll keep it to this, though: The two of them had stories that revolved around each other and became more powerful together. Despite their disparaging names casting a lamplight on the sexism that usually pervades a detective noir setting, these two girls got some of the coolest moments, the best gear, and were really the first of the MSPAverse's now storied lineage of badass women. I'm glad they're married.
3. Oh, Jake. I wonder how long he's been awake at this point. Again, despite her role as a chaos agent, Jasprose seems to find herself being...sweet? Her disastrous idea of an English presidential run is shot down and she backs off immediately. The little moment of friendship over Jake's respect for Jasprose's unique identity – probably easier for him, since he never really knew Rose – does warm the heart. Really glad he's not running, though. That leaves room for...
4. Swifer! Swifer remains the closest thing to a "straight man" this story has. (Not in the sexuality way. In the comedy way.) She's something like a Kermit figure, the average person unconnected to the pantheon, trying her best to make this show run. She's in over her head, which is a pretty common emotion for women thrust into positions of power. Cliper really is her rock, and he picks up what Jasprose's intent is right away: Electoralism. If she wants to do it, Swifer could be a formidable candidate in a way that none of the gods really could. Hatched and raised on Earth C, she presents a friendly face that makes Jane's stoking of fear about the Mother Grub look ridiculous. Jasprose is definitely fibbing a bit, here, about Jane already agreeing...but she's fairly confident she'll get what she wants. >;3c. Also Swifer has no idea what to do when being flirted with. It's very cute.
5. There was no universe where we left this story without Jasprose saying "owo what's this". You know it, I know it.

Now what the fresh fuck has Dad Crocker gotten himself into??? Already imprisoned by DD once in his life, he now finds himself handcuffed to the most dapper Midnight Crew members. Maybe we'll get to see a little more about how this came about?

If you've watched Parasite (you should, we've almost all seen it and loved it), you'll recognize Kim Ki-taek's wisdom about plans in Jasprose's hectic improvisation: The best plan is no plan at all. Where are we off to next? You'll just have to wait find out.

God, Problem Sleuth just has the worst commuting luck. He should put some of his rug money into a permanent locksmith. Checking back in with these scenes is always a delight. It probably took PS like two hundred off-screen panels to get to this point. Miserable.

That's another month of commentary! Thanks again for being the most devoted supporters of our little project here. It means a lot to get to wax poetic to you, and I hope you enjoy the additional glimpse into our weird heads.

Enjoy these delightful bonus sketches from Haven:

BONUS UPDATE. Catnapped, Part 3

The latest chapter of content for speakeasy enthusiasts is now available by logging in on homestuck2.com/bonus.