I think they're neat. Second channel where I respond to comments: / @ca2eyjarme2 Other Homestuck Essays: • Homestuck Video Essays Fanfiction: archiveofourow...
Thank you so much for watching! Second channel where I respond to comments: www.youtube.com/@Ca2eyJarme2 Other Homestuck Essays: ua-cam.com/play/PLn1jnk7OVJsuhVCd5mN6j2DG1E16k_WEA.html Fanfiction: archiveofourown.org/users/EugeneConard/pseuds/CaseyJarmes
I absolutely agree that Jane's transition from "a bit bossy, sometimes" to "Her Imperious Condescension the II" is VERY rough - something that the Epilogues themselves point out in a clumsy attempt to lampshade it - but, if I'm willing to make a LOOOOT of stretches, I can see some hints that this could happen to her. First of all, the fact that the first thing Jane did when she woke up on Earth C was to create a new Crocker Corp is a pretty big red flag in retrospect. Feels like something she should have been talked out of. This was emphasized in the Snapchat storyline, which I suspect was Hussie workshopping this twist. Second, even before it completely took over her mind, Jane's tiara was steadily brainwashing her as part of HIC's efforts to mold her into a perfect heiress. For the most part, this undercurrent to her personality was communicated poorly in the comic, but it does seem notable that, for all her stated altruism, Jane's only firm, stated goal for when she inherited the company was for it to take over the postal system - one of the few institutions that had managed to resist the company's control on Earth Alpha. That didn't bode well. Third, Jane's closest advisors in the Epilogues were Ultimate Dirk - who, as a shadow of Lord English, had reason to effectively resurrect one of LE's favorite and most effective puppets, HIC - and Gamzee - who also contained part of LE, and wanted to further Dirk's last wish to give the Candy timeline some consequences and conflicts. Considering how much those two managed to twist people around, it does make some sense that Jane's old corruption could resurface. Finally, and this is flimsy even for this list, but the fact that both Meenah and Feferi became planet-uniting overlords when allowed to grow up - albeit very different overlords - does suggest a inherently tyrannical streak lurks within the Life aspect, which I find interesting to consider, if nothing else. That said, Jane's antipathy towards trolls in particular feels forced to me. It might have been interesting to explore that - maybe learning about what HIC did to Earth Alpha in the future scared her - but I doubt that'll happen. Although, I am toying with writing a fanfic in which Karkat becomes president of Earth C instead of Jane, and that could be a good topic for it to touch on...
In Homestuck proper, Jane's only interactions with the trolls, pre-retcon, was Gamzee stealing her sprite prototyping away from her, Tavrisprite who hated itself and detonated itself, and HIC who brainwashed her. Post-retcon, she had Vriska who didn't learn anything, Tavrosprite who seems as ineffectual as he used to be, HIC who mind controlled her, Arquisprite for 1 panel, Terezi only on the periphery of conversations she's in, and... I think that's it. So her only good influences she hardly interacts with, while the bad ones are much more impactful. She's not friends with trolls, and the only ones who made an imprint on her were negative.
@@liamwhite3522 You're forgetting Fefetasprite, who was Jane's close ally and confidant, but that interaction was erased by the retcon. My nitpick aside, that's a good argument! I just wish that it had been explored in the epilogues and their sequel, rather than requiring assembly and inference.
@@liamwhite3522 Huh. I reread a bit of the relevant part, and I don't think retcon Jane ever interacted with, or even met, retcon Vriska. For once, we may not be able to directly blame Vriska for something.
Homestuck has this huge issue of just expecting the audience to just find these stray plot threads. I had some of these plot threads that made the idea of her pulling this shit somewhat plausible, but you collected even more together quite succinctly But there's literally no story*telling* going on if we're just filling in the blanks ourselves.
I generally don't vibe with 'It's bad on purpose' being a defense of something's quality, and I stand by that here. I fully agree Hussie wanted this story to be making fun of fandom, I just don't appreciate the author of a story coming back three years after the ending with an 'epilogue' that has the explicit aim of making fun of all the people who appreciated their work enough to make things for it, especially when the way that mocking is done is honestly mediocre and full of things that it's own defenders agree were honestly terrible choices, even if a lot of those choices were bad on purpose. On top of that, the epilogues weren't just a bad epilogue, they were also bait for a sequel, where Hussie continued to make insane nonsense to stir up drama in the audience, got people to pay to speed up its production, and let the harassment fall onto the staff that from what little I've heard weren't ready for the role of working on something as divisive as the Yiffany reveal
Man, good thing i didnt read ^2 (Dirk section at the begining was just super boring and i coudnt read anymore) Funny enough, even if i read it the Yiffany part wont affect me as i concider ^2 canon. For what i knew at the time, the epilogues where to give the fandom something to make their own stories on, so anything BASE on the epilogue (something of dobious canonicity) is in itself a fanfiction, thus need to be concider for its own value, just a narrative aprove/recomended by the original author. Yet, later i learn they activly tried to use the "sequel" label, to which i expect the effect that later happenex. Try to claim oneself as "the sequel" then retracting to "its just a fanfiction" when people dont like it is the most "have the cake and eat it too" moment Another example is pesterquest, which tried to even self proclaim itself the "new canon", bs, uou are fanfiction, just be good fanfiction and you can gain your own respect. A clear example is fallout equestria, a fallout/mlp fanfiction that is so good people recomend it for its own value, not the IP tied to it.
I liked it when SBURB was presented as letting people excape control and influence to become the best version of themself represented by children leaving the influence and control of their society, guardians, command module becoming gods and gaining their own place. Character arcs and science fiction was much more satisfying than hammering the concept of Death of the author in HS and Beyond HS and meta of denying the audience of the characters. I liked it when the characters cared about each other and did anything to save each other and succeed in insane feats. I get that Caliborn shows us his interests of events like how princess bride is edited by its in story author and Caliope with her beautiful fan art and self insert when LE is deafeated and she wins. While I dislike the Epilogues and Beyond HS it does have its moments a scene of good art here or there and I started reading JohnDirk fics where i would have never if i wasn't exposed to Depressed John. I wish HS made better choices as a franchise instead of ruining characters by turning them vague and unlikable.I have liitle faith that I will be understood as we are individuals whoms thoughts, feelings, and experiences are our own and words fail to convey leaving often reductive word choices and misunderstandings from one person to another. I have seen people deny the experiences of others because they stated there is only one way to see things(their own). I hope value is gained in my attempt.
@@Habbitual i find them a fun pairing in a way where like... dirk is off the deep end, Jake feels isolated from his friends by now. Dave strikes me as the type who kinda peaked at 16 and post sburb he'd kinda drift away from his friends too. they remind each other enough of the people they loved or liked (dirk, john), and they're isolated enough from the other session's friend group to where they don't have to worry about making it weird with them. I don't think it would have much passion or feeling, it's just kind of a sad way to stave off loneliness while refusing to talk about that, smth they're both aware of. obviously just my interpretation though
@toads13 I would read that fic. Recently JadeRoxy was suggested and it would be funny for Dave's reaction that his parents are with his friends😂. Many characters didn't interact and it would be interesting if more did. My interpretation of HS ending was the death of ghosts were just another form of transmigration that they are reborn into the fanfiction we write therefore all stories are cannon and we are their authors except for the mains whom escaped through the door. Out of character actions justified by being a previous sprite changed their personality murged their souls. My original read of HS ending was that ghost game over + doomed johnroxy were the ones to face Caliborn while the winning ones handle a enternet troll the best way by not engaging, and touching grass. The ending is without dialoge and explanation, i thought not seeing the kids fight LE was part of this stylistic choice as you could make any interpretation such as the beta kids merged to become Hussie who then narrated the kids.
i literally got suckered into homestuck specifically bc i read one john/dirk fanfic that very cleverly set them up as equal and opposing narrative foils (which again only feels sensible IF john is the post ending mess that he becomes) and ive.... been six feet under ever since!! this essay just made me like it more honestly (also no offense to roxy, the sweetheart, but john's gamut of previous love interests were rose, vriska, and terezi... the guy has a Type and its apparently manipulative, sneaky, cunning characters)
You're right, what makes or breaks the epilogues is its meta-commentary. This is why I was sure, and am now 100% certain, that I would absolutely loathe the epilogues if I read them I never liked the meta narrator stuff in HS, and was only able to tolerate it because it was funny. Even the Calliope and Calliborn stuff being an allegory for types of HS fans already started to seem a bit too egotistical and masturbatory, but it wasn't enough for me to stop reading the comic You said that people criticize the epilogues by saying they're bad fanfiction, and defend them by saying that they're written like bad fanfiction on purpose. But only because a story is written badly on purpose... doesn't suddenly make it a good story. This is more of a criticism of meta stories in general because this is an excuse that they often try to pull. The out of context bad scenes from the epilogues people mention like rape, fascism and infidelity done by the HS characters we all know and love matter very fucking much, it's not enough to say "But see, they were written OOC ~on purpose~ Therefore, none of this is a slog to get through!" I appreciate your opinion, I will just never understand how people can enjoy and want to read these types of meta written-badly-on-purpose-to-punish-the-reader-and-expecting-them-to-still-enjoy-the-story-somehow stories. Is wasting your time on 200,000 words of straightforwardly horrible shit of 20+ silly characters from your childhood who liked to pull pranks on their friends and listen to bad rap music suddenly becoming fascists and absent fathers and raping people really worth whatever existential message it has to say?
This is a real "what is art" conversation, and part of why I personally hold Meat and Candy close to my heart. Homestuck was always at its best to me when it was using its own tools to examine and deconstruct itself, and the Epilogues serve to examine Homestuck in a way that wouldn't usually be allowed outside of fandom itself.
>Is wasting your time on 200,000 words of straightforwardly horrible shit of 20+ silly characters from your childhood who liked to pull pranks on their friends and listen to bad rap music suddenly becoming fascists and absent fathers and raping people really worth whatever existential message it has to say? Maybe when I was a teen and had the time to burn on the Epilogues the same way I did on the main HS story But time and energy are more precious resources for me to allocate in my life right now, and trying to chew and digest these Epilogue stories feels very unworthy of my attention with its myriad of negative qualities that are often done on purpose
honestly? yes. yes it is worth what existential message it has to say, because thats what stories are. they are statements, thematic caves to be mined for meaning. whether or not you find meaning in the epilogues is your own thing. but answering for myself, absolutely it is worth it.
Your seemingly underlying want to not experience works that challenge you, and instead consume stuff that's pleasing to you, is actually one of the main points of the epilogues. Hussie knew a large part of the fanbase never picked up on the more serious aspects of Homestuck, and those people can choose to see act 7 as the ending, even though it has a few loose ends. but it still constitutes sticking your head in the sand lmao. also there's a big difference between being "bad on purpose" and being written poorly. the epilogues are in fact very well-written, it's simply that the subject matter is considered "bad" by some. is any story containing these "bad" things in itself bad? answering that with a yes is valid I guess, but again it's contingent on simply not being able to process whatever lies underneath the ugliness
@@sofielundsskolan I never said I disliked dark stories, only pretentious meta stories. I've even read a lot of dark HS fanfiction. My problem is that so much of it in the epilogues happens out of nowhere (which I'm sure many would argue "is the point") and is a huge tonal whiplash from the original HS. It's one thing when it's fanfiction, it's another when it's official HS content (which it is, no matter how "dubiously cannon" it claims to be. It has the Homestuck tradmark, there is no doubt about that and the way the characters act is going to affect the way we see them in the original HS)
1:50:03 the main problem with the epilogues is the timing. Because it had been THREE FUCKING YEARS since three last up8. Three years filled with only vague notions that hivebent might be coming out maybe. So when a thing called "The Epilogues" dropped we were fully prepared to believe that this was the "conclusion" that this would finally be the end. We would wrap up all those last loose plot threads and create that satisfying conclusion. Instead, it was a double layered fanfic written in part *by* the original author. We simply took it at face value of "this is what happens next" If it had dropped even like six months or something after the credits? It would have gone a lot better. But again, three years with the disappointment that hivebent was bringing
I also felt this way about the epilogues and was so frustrated that people just weren't engaging with it in a way that actually took into account what the story was. They were painful to read, like Dirk is my favorite character, It physically hurt to read meat, but I understood what the story was trying to do and say and it said it really well. Also something I noticed that I think is very often missed is that dirk isn't just dirk, he's all the dirks, including the dirk that is in AR the same AR that is part of ARquius, Arquius who is part of lord English. Meat dirk uses terms and language we've only ever seen Caliborn use, such as referring to karkat as a boy wife. I think Dirk was able to ascend the way he did and have such immense control of the narrative is a direct result of the fact that part of him is also a Lord of Time and his more toxic elements are exacerbated by his connection to Caliborn and Bro. As well as being severed from his connection to brain ghost dirk who is a version of dirk who is now distinctly separated from Ascended Dirk. A dirk who we've seen to be a supremely important to dirk being kinder and less caustic.
I suspect Dirk might be Lord English's way to survive his fated demise. After all, the trick Caliborn used to defeat Calliope was making her think that his Queen was his King, and using that deception to outmaneuver her. Kind of how everyone thought that defeating Lord English would solve their problems. I also think it's very important to note that the only person ever addressed as "you" in Candy is Dirk, and that his chapters' narration is the most Dirk-like. I think Ultimate Dirk uses his selves as pawns, and forces them to... "merge with the whole" whenever there's a chance they might drift out of his control. That would also explain why, in Meat, narration Dirk sometimes seems confused by character Dirk's actions, and constantly affirms his actions; Meat Dirk is another of Ultimate Dirk's puppets, but has been tricked into thinking he's the mastermind.
@@caseyjarmesthis is honestly what turned me around on hs2, its hammered home in the newest update but it feels like we're rly going to touch on Bro in a way that we didnt fully get with Dirk. It feels like h2 and hsbc are gonna explore a lot of things that felt unaddressed both for good and bad
I think the problem with the epilogues is the people the most interest in more Homestuck are the fans who enjoyed Homestuck IN SPITE of deconstruction of fiction angle instead of because of it. I would know how they feel given I am that for a few pieces of media, the one that will work best as comparison here is Undertale and Deltarune. I always find all this direction of "what it mean to be fiction" persoanlly exhausting and pointless. But I still love Undertale and Deltarune cause the characters are interesting and fun, the music is great and it's really funny in its comedic moments. I assume Homestuck had countless fans like that, and they would be the ones most interested in more of cause they are also the ones most interested in the aspects that aren't the deconstruction. It's the same reason a lot of people write those slice of life fanfics. They like the characters and want to see more of their goofy antics, so when you give them a deconstruction of that stuff of course they won't like it, they're being mocked. Also I know logically it's not dunking on amateur or self indulgent writers for existing but it feels like it. Idk maybe I'm just so tired of this pessimism around fanfic to the point even the strawman version of it feels insulting. Plus it feeling so much like the strawman version of fanfic to the point I just called that without blinking until after I typed it doesn't help either.
I think that's the reason because I like the epilogues and homestuck so much I LOVE DECONSTRUCTION OF CANON, and god is so creative the way everything is tell so messy yet so interesting, is like a hellhole of imagination, I don't change it for anything
i only care about the weird deconstruction metanarrative shit when it serves creating an interesting and fun story. IN THE EPILOGUES IT DOES NOT SERVE CREATING AN INTERESTING AND FUN STORY
it's funny how Problem Sleuth took itself far less seriously, every character was portrayed comedically, yet it feels like, Problem Sleuth (the character), his friends Ace Dick and Pickle Inspector, his enemies like Mobster Kingpin, and even one-note characters like Bat-Hearst, were treated more respectfully than whatever the epilogues were supposed to be.
I read Candy first when it came out and I don't regret it. The way it builds the mystery, the descent into an insane world that doesnt make sense while you are completely in the dark was a really interesting experience and made Meat more satisfying to me.
same😂broooo im glad im not the only one ive been feeling bad about reading them out of order despite enjoying how surreal candy is without the context of meat
@@honey3762 Hey, don't be mean. All the Epilogues show is that Calliope has knowledge of Candy, not specifically that they are writing it. I'm not even sure how they could be the narrator, as that normally required vast reality warping power they do not possess. I think it's likely they just have visions of what their Candy incarnation sees
@@honey3762 In my defense I have not read the Epilogues since they were first released, and Meat!Calliope was a fairly minor character. Even in HS^2 the majority of their time has been spent hiding in the vents. It will likely take months if not years IRL until whatever it is that they've been doing is revealed and becomes plot relevant.
The video brings some good points but, personally, I can’t bring myself to enjoy the epilogues in any way after its portrayal of the characters got people within the fandom harassed and sent gore for “liking the wrong character” (yes that still happens to this day) It’s not the story’s fault but it’s one of those situations in which the fans taint the original project, at least for me, and considering some people who encouraged/turned a blind eye to this behavior were involved with close projects related to the epilogues at the time (such as pesterquest and friendsim), it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
The reason I dislike the epilogues is simple and straightforward. When you make an epilogue to a visual media such as a webcomic, having it entirely text based is a dealbreaker. I'm also among those who liked HS in spite of all the meta narrative which I found extremely annoying, so having the whole focus of the epilogues be that is why I did not bother
@@daiyahigashikata It's like putting the epilogue of a series into a video game, or the epilogue of a comic book into an opera, not everyone in the fanbase will be fine with the sudden jump of presentation. And Homestuck was a webCOMIC with animations with good music sprinkled throughout, so having the epilogue be exclusively on text form is akin to the examples I gave
Seriously though, it’s so funny going from the ending of this video, straight to the new update where Dirk is straight up like “What’s up fuckers, this shit’s boring, fuck that lets a go”
For the first hour or so I was thinking “this guy is just restating plot point” but I’m glad you bring that up later on. Besides it was still a pretty good recap
I am *begging* you to balance your audio levels better. You love raising your voice to emphasize points, which is fine, but at a volume where the rest of the video is audible, these moments of emphasis are absolutely ear splitting. It sucks having to vigilantly ride the volume knob for three hours, and you could fix it by adjusting the volume of your shouting moments down after the fact. Please!
@@gayjay246 yeah that was way too loud too, only the lesser offense for me personally because I like Sburban jungle a lot better than Casey's Karkat impression.
I am very happy I have already read the epilogues I am not very good on picking up on subtext of things so vid1eo essays like these make these kinds of stories into something I can actually understand an now I will get more out of my next reread, seriously thank you for making these kinds of videos
you explained ultimate self in a way that really made it click for me. I thought i understood it, and i already liked the epilogues and hs^2, but wow that really made it make sense why that was a plot they chose to run with.
The twist at 2:14:54 completely blind sighted me. I guess mostly because my memory of the prologue was so foggy. Beyond feeling disgusted by the character shifts, I mostly was confused what the story was trying to say. Especially the john arc in candy, which if you were kind to me was to say that I didn't agree with him but in reality was just because I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I thought your description made sense, until it suddenly didn't :P The only specific scene i can remember reading is the one where Things Happen In The Car and I can only remember thinking it came totally out of left field. It's nice to think that it was at least (temporarily) cathartic for Terezi, and in that sense even if John was being crazy I like that the terezi-john relationship from the original comic seemed to basically stay the same in the prologues. Maybe that's why John felt like terezi was the only one who was real - She never changed because she never gave up looking for vriska. She was the only one who didn't grow up into a different person because she lived in denial for so long, and in that sense she was the only one john could still recognize. It adds to what i said before - the terrifying reality of the plot line of a piece of media that continues even when the reader stops reading. In the limbo state the characters found themselves in when you leave the plotline you end up with characters either like john and terezi, experiencing total stagnation and being completely flawed while losing all of their friends who have moved on; or like every other character, who grew up into being someone else you can no longer recognize. Neither outcome seems enjoyable to me in the same way that I liked the original run of homestuck. It's certainly interesting, but forcing characters to either stagnate forever or grow up to be uncorecognizable leaves me feeling extremely unpleasant. This story isn't homestuck, it's like a spinoff about what happens when you take the homestuck characters and put them into a world with totally new rules and challenges to face, which can be a hard sell for people like me who just like the character arcs as they completed originally. But if you like metatextual stuff (which I do), I can imagine how enjoyable it could be. I only wish it could have been done with totally new, non-homestuck characters, but obviously that would be totally impossible to accomplish. I think I probably have to give the prologues another chance. It has been 5 god damn years after all, I was 16 when i first read them... By the way, if you haven't played The Beginner's Guide, please please please play it! it's very similar to this concept and I thought about it a lot while writing these two comments
You could say that John's argument that everyone is fake is a way of looking at the prologues from the perspective of someone who only enjoyed the original. It recontextualizes all of his problems as a sort of continuation from the past with terezi as a connection to it, as an existential, abstract challenge to be overcome, rather than the first world problems he's really been avoiding. Only that john resorts to apathy rather than solving the problem, which is I guess the way most of us prologue haters have addressed it
As soon as you started describing the Cursed Child I saw exactly where you were going. It's basically the same, but done with intentionality and baby I am here for it.
Just found your channel yesterday and watched all the homestuck videos you’ve made. I really liked what you had to say about them. I never read the epilogues and I never really had any desire to. After this 3 hour video though? I’m still of the same opinion. I was very content with the ending homestuck had, I never even thought about the themes concerning them running away from the final battle but that actually made me love it even more. Plus I’m not really on the fandom anymore, I just pop back into it every 413 for the good old fashioned nostalgia. The summary you’ve provided me today has satiated any curiosity I had with the epilogues. So thank you. I’m very interested to see what content you produce next and I’ll go watch some of your non homestuck videos. Also time to farm views on that Dave video, I need your trerezi video. Once again, thank you for the wonderful video, and happy 15 years of homestuck
One minor note I really gotta hand to Epilogues, the structure of the print version really got me to reconsider just how big of a cipher Ende's The Neverending Story is for many parts of Homestuck's structure and reader relationship beyond just little references during recaps. Actually structuring a physical book with a duality gimmick was what had it click into place in my mind.
Additionally, Ultimate Dirk lends surprising gravitas to Dirk as the "philosophy guy" (as superficial as that sounds, and is considering the wikipedia philosophy bit in Meat). A lot of Ultimate Dirk's mindset hearkens to Nietzsche's description of Socrates in Birth of a Tragedy, as a man who despises emotional storytelling that affirms and celebrates life for its own sake, considering the only narrative art worth it to be one that serves a mechanistic utility (like Aesop's fables, a clear unit that delivers a payload of utilitarian narrative intent), and that has a clear and defined point pre-dictated by an engineerlike author. It makes Dirk the perfect demiurge to continue Homestuck primary thesis of the gnostic prison existence being the narrative. Free will and uncontrolled desire are the worst thing Dirk can imagine.
46:26 I like to headcanon that a lot of weird plot inconsistencies in Candy are caused by the irrelevant rift. Like, the farther away they get from canon the more that the details of the comic itself start to be a little fuzzy at the edges. (Excemplified pretty well when Rose relays that Vriska killed Lord English, which is so untrue that John calls her out on it and the universe kind of almost stops for a moment before distracting John from it)
"They are bad on purpose" Is not an excuse when they are literally called "the Epilogues". its a very intentional middle finger to the fans who wanted questions answered or a continuation. Its like, people wanted a story. Not a deconstruction / mockery of one, and thats all these politic and fetish filled epilogs are.
A thought I just had. Black holes, miscommunication, secrets, isolation, things that are irrelevant until they aren't, finding meaning in meaninglessness: these are all totally Void's domain. *Roxy* might be narrating Candy. (Now to start actually reading it for myself.)
I can't even begin to explain how good this video was. I've had a rough relationship with the Epilogues, but they still stuck with me even after the rough bits. Yes, it's true that some characters change drastically from their Homestuck counterparts, which I think is one of the main things that threw people off, but the main cast finally being able to grow up and have families SHOULD be messy. They're adults who grew up without being able to be proper teenagers, who were chosen to play this reality altering game and lose everything AGAINST THEIR WILL, of course they wouldn't know shit about parenting and forming families. And I feel that's what made it so appealing to me. The Epilogues dropped when I was months away from turning into an adult and I think they meant a lot to me because it made me realize that adulthood can be messy and rough and fucked up and still be meaningful. That people CHANGE and they should be ALLOWED to change without constant policing of their choices and identities. And I think that's beautiful. Watching the characters that accompanied you through your chilhood and teenage years be fucked up adults is comforting in some way. And also, Roxy and Calliope's whole thing about gender might have changed my own perspective and life forever
46:20 I think that is deliberate. It's not the "first batch", much like Gamzee's fridge not being on the rooftop when Dave and Dirk had their talk (The fridge is punched there by Cans during Collide), it's probably meant to be a subtle sign of things being "forgotten" in the Candy timeline and canon events of Homestuck aren't being accurately followed anymore.
As someone who has read Homestuck yet was warded off from reading the Epilogues when I learned of them, I have to thank you for making this video. It helps me appreciate what Homestuck was all over again. Maybe I should make some time to read the Epilogues myself at some point.
I do, and likely always will hate the epilolouges, not because i dont like the fanfiction deconstruction, not because anything disturbing, not even really because of its changes in charachter, i think its a perfectly fine story, but it took away homestucks ending, and that to me just isnt forgiveable.
i think her existence is a perfect metaphor for my cautious optimism for the continuation of post canon. Yes she was born of a horrible idea, but that doesn't mean that she can't be made into something wonderful
I'm glad that somebody finally made this video. I've always been an Epilogue defender; it actually might be my favorite part of Homestuck, if we're counting it as part of Homestuck. I agree with almost everything in the video, but I have a couple comments. I slightly disagree with reading of Homestuck's ending. I think the original ending was always meant to be ambiguous on whether or not they actually escaped the story/timeloop. I think John hitting his phone in the credits is supposed to mean both that he rejects the fight, and that he chooses to fight, depending on the reader's choice. The more Candy readers would want John to refuse, while the Meat readers would want John to fight. I think the route choice in the Epilogues is basically just a more direct portrayal of this idea. Also, I actually don't think all the suffering in Candy is necessarily inconsistent with its portrayal as a fanfiction parody. I interpreted Candy as not only representing fun, cute character development, but also a kind of sadism. It is true that readers gain a kind of meaningless joy out of seeing their favorite characters happy, but I think we also get a similar kind of joy from watching them suffer. Like how we feel compelled to watch car accidents. Candy isn't a cozy slice-of-life fanfic that got corrupted, its a melodramatic darkfic. I see the "Candy" concept as more representing hedonistic pleasure without structure and meaning, which can come from both empathy and sadism. One more thing. This might sound a bit weird, but I think it's also worth mentioning how the Epilogues are kind of a response to the 2016 election. I think the themes of people becoming something else, or people being impossible to truly know, is possibly somewhat of a response to that election. A lot of left-leaning people, especially in the younger generation who grew up in Obama's presidency, saw it as this massive shocking event that revealed a hidden evil in many of the people they thought they knew. Considering how Homestuck's original run lines up almosy perfectly with Obama's presidency, and how Homestuck was especially popular with a young left-leaning community that grew up under Obama, I wouldn't be suprised if the Jane storyline especially is a response to it.
My heart stopped when I saw the act 6 title card and realized we were halfway through, nice touch I haven’t finished the video yet but I’ve been an epilogue truther since the day they were released and thank you for putting all of your thoughts together like this, it’s really great to see people still genuinely analyzing Homestuck all these years later
Writing this before watching the entire video and not having read the epilogues, just a bit of them and Homestuck^2 I always felt like John got completely sidelined by everyone. Maybe it's the comic trying to be Meta and purposefully ignoring the character that was once the protagonist, but it always felt so weird to me how, judging by the parts I've read, he seems to be an after thought to all the people he loves I'll never forget Rose telling John he's the Leader and he countering that he's their friend. They took my favorite character and made him somewhat of a lonely loser that's barely remembered. My boy doubts himself so much and most of his friends simply don't care at all. Idk, I miss the better parts of Homestuck
@@pedrocavalcante4939 I disagree with this. The original does do a good job of having John be the protagonist. He saves everyone after the epilogues. As for the epilogues, bad things happen to John, but he is still indisputably the main character of candy. He becomes depressed and lonely, not because no one cares about him, but because his depression and existential dread cause him to push his loved ones away. Beyond canon is stuck spinning its wheels, but in the little we’ve seen John he’s self assured and ready to step back into the role of a hero. Time will tell how well they stick the landing
@@caseyjarmes Yeah you're probably right, like I said I haven't actually read all of it, I just want to see my little guy happy and loved by his friends
Ive been slogging and slogging through candy while having a general idea of what happens later and reading hsbc as it comes out Knowing meat is better is fine I think it being badly written on purpose doesnt entirely excuse the fact it's badly written if candy had a set narrator it could be better But i want good things for the future not like candy bs i want a good story and i can see a good potential in hsbcs story maybe they can do it maybe they can earn the title homestuck 2 and if they do itll be the best thing that happened in the history of metafiction Oh wait no that was hussie riding falcor and killing some bullies damnit
THIS, THIS IS THE VIDEO ABOUT THE EPILOGUES THAT I WANTED TO SEE! (I saved your video to see it later when I finished the epilogues haha) I love your video, dude. Really, there are so many things that I just wanted to discuss with someone when I finished the epilogues, and you just talk about all of them in this video. Really, thanks for making this video! I would love to see the video about Terezi that you mentioned you could do, seriously! and also I love your video about Dave too!
@@caseyjarmes it's just all too perfict; all too absurd. and removed from its speaker, the dialogue is REALLY dirky. eerily similar even to what happened with rose.
Totally. Come on, Obama commented that he learned everything he knew from Dirk and convinced Dave to ascend to his ultimate self through...the same way Dirk made Rose ascend to her ultimate self? With a robot? Yep, a plan of Dirk.
I do think that Al is the narrator of Candy, but she doesn't want us to know that. The moments where we see her writing in red, she very clearly is letting us know that she is the narrator, but for Candy i think she wants us the reader to think that is just what totally would have happened, the narration isn't funky! This is normal! But no, it isn't. Meat or Candy was an absurd choice, and I think the ending of Homestuck 2 is going to be a denial of both. Dirk is not the only villian, The Muse is just hiding it better (not that she has to work hard with Dirk as a comparison point).
How can something that isn't "canon" influence canon? Oh buddy, as a Star Trek fan, I tell you that "non-canon" influences cannon all the time. Non-canon supplemental materials feed into cannon in bits and pieces all the time. Supposedly the new Star Trek shows are a new different timeline to Star Trek Online that do very much contradict each other, but ship-designs unique to Star Trek Online show up in Picard. Before that, details about the Andorians were ported over Enterprise form an RPG book who's whole line was rendered non-canonical years ago and which Enterprise directly contradicts in other places. Heck, sometimes things that were just popular"fanon" and never specifically referenced before randomly made in into scripts. Or Thrawn in the new Star Wars stuff. The novels that introduced him have been completely decanonized, but yet he and other elements were ported over. So the candy timeline could be non canonical in that way. It's supplementary, it's fanon, it's something adjacent to canon, that can sometimes bleed over into it, but it will never "be" canon. Homestuck exist at a sort of metatextual level, so maybe it's possible to move up and down or communicate between different "levels" of canonisity in a more direct way. Also it's interesting that it doesn't give a rebuke of the "non-canon" stuff, it's says it's just as valuable, just as important. Someone in the "canon" timeline fell in love with the "non-canon" version of a character, and for those of us who interact with fan-fiction, isn't that sometimes a little true. We fall in love not with the official version of the character, but with what other people create and write about them, and that's still valid, it might not be canon, but that is a version of that character, which actually exists and it's fine to appreciate that version. It makes me think of DC Comics recently recanonizing all versions and alternate realities that have ever existed and been shown, and even hiring a fan-creator to write the Batfam series which focuses on all the small little meaningful relationship moments of the characters. Is canon important? Should canon matter? Maybe not. But when it doesn't then you don't get that nice juicy "this was a big deal" or "this is the one single official truth" that an official canon can give you. But maybe that's okay.
I really didn't expect to watch this entire thing in one sitting, but that was a damned fast three hours. I did read the epilogues when they came out and remember walking away with a bad taste in my mouth. Thank you for this analysis. I've been re-reading Homestuck and am about 6.5k pages in, and I feel like I'm appreciating it even more than I did the first time around. I was never into the fandom- it was just myself and two friends yelling about it occasionally, but now I'm also in fanfic mode myself. Anyway, I feel like this video will help me appreciate the epilogues, versus my first read where it all felt like a nightmare horrorshow (which is honestly not a bad thing entirely)
I want you to know that at least one guy, that guy being me, watched this entire video without ever having read neither the Epilogues nor Homestuck proper.
Having read the epilogues without the fandom opinions was probably the best thing that could of happened to me(I read homestuck in 2020 and never interacted with the fandom prior) When it gets bad it gets REALLY BAD and some parts i did find boring, but, some of this ideas are the coolest thing ever, my favorite characters are Jhon (the two of them) and Dirk, duh. So cool in general
I don't like dirk's characterization tbh, him mirroring Dave's arc fits perfect for homestuck. Dave, being destined to be a hero and rejecting it, and dirk who is destined to be a villain and rejecting it. Making dirk a villain is the antithesis of his character
Pretty good overview Thing i most go against the fandom is that i concider dirk more of anti-hero than a direct vilan. Yes, he is a manipulative ashole. Thing is he fight someone even MORE so And that is something EVERYONE Knowledge but dont realize: The WHOLE of homestuck is Calliope (the muse) Fanfiction with Caliborn trying to make it a REALITY to then SHIT on it. And concidering Dirk has a part of Caliborn he just become an pseudo reencarnation And that is the thing people miss, Calliope is doing the SAME, That Dirk does. The manipulation of character and event, after she is the TRUE author/writter. Heck, Calliope as roxy's girlfriend is a self insert. And this self insert is an extension of "the muse's power", pasivly influence other To which i am still doubtfull if roxy non-gender is natural or her suporting her partner, as roxy does. Be ause we know dirk cant really incluence her, he admit as much, but you dont need mind cotrol to manipulate osmeone, so the self insert of the muse could have done it? Now, what is candy? Candy is the spinn off all happy ending. Basicly, my idea is this, the muse cause homestuck, then after literaly killing her brother on it, decidego have 2 endings. Using a self insert create both ending, Candy is her personal Good ending, will meat is the one needed for the narrative. And more than anything, Dirk is STILL a character, the muse isnt, she shows to be stronger than him, the original writter, so is dirk megalomaniacal god rampage basicly a scape goat villan, who is basicly taking calliborn's place. And yes, hussie is a dumbass who dont really underestand social group like fandoms or economical/social theory. Like how he newezt novel is an aleghory of him turning down the lider position of a cult. Which has mever been a reality. Abd even more so, he dosnt underestand why social movement emerge adn become violent, like how the french revolution wasnt a sole event or leader but the concecuences of decades of social circunstances.
I used to reflexively love the Epilogues, because other people hated them, but I've since mellowed a bit. I also prefer Candy to Meat; tragedies don't do as much for me as comedic anti-nihilist redemption arcs. That said, I can understand people who don't like the Epilogues because they thought they'd be more like the Problem Sleuth epilogue; something to wrap up the story, not the prologue to a new tale. Plus, if you were highly emotionally invested in things like Rosemary, Dirk's redemption ark, and Roxy already being trans... yeah, I can see why this would be rough read. And, unlike the Caliborn chapters in Homestuck, there's no true "canon" Homestuck alternative on the horizon. I'm curious if Casey James has any thoughts on Friendsim and Pesterquest. Back when Friendsim's chapters were first being released, I saw how many people hated my beloved V-written chapters, and, in retrospect, that warned me in advance how much a lot of people were going to be really upset by the Epilogues' sense of humor.
@@caseyjarmes Fair warning: Pesterquest mostly assumes you've played Friendsim. It's basically a direct sequel. I think you'd like Friendsim, though. Several of its writers are the same ones who wrote the Epilogues, and some of its chapters also go pretty ham on the meta-narrative angle. It's less meaty than, well, Meat, but it does go to some neat places, particularly in regards to Bad Ends in video games. It also introduced the infinite hate sink that is Zebruh Codakk, and I have to admire a work that can introduce a character so thoroughly loathable. Although, of course, plenty of people dislike Friendsim for that very reason.
i actually quite like the epilogues as well, far more than i like homestuck 2, to be certain. while i dont think its a very good continuation of homestucks story, the events in it are so outlandish and the characterization is exaggerated enough to make it feel like a fever dream version of homestuck that didnt truly take place.
if i may make a comparison between what works about the epilogues and what doesnt with homestuck 2 is that while homestuck 2 just outright doesnt seem to understand what makes homestuck work, the epilogues do and intentionally subverts it
great video thank you. brb gonna log into my Seventy Alternative Accounts to farm views onto your dave essay to watch you ramble about terezi for half an hour or so
obligatory also "one of the artists making hussie's narrative shitpost comics' music was mfing TOBY FOX UNDERTALE", but if you're in this comment section you probably knew that already. it still gives me whiplash to this day when i remember the baby is you exists.
@@caseyjarmes i'd personally say they're both metatextual deconstructions of fiction as a concept, but I think they go in very different directions with that deconstruction in ways that play off of their respective mediums. to claim they're so similar that it can't be jarring or make someone smile a little is to dismiss both of their merits and what they've done for those mediums that the other hasn't. /shrug that said, homestuck is also actively hostile to it's reader while undertale by virtue of being a game reacts to your choices. and their senses of humor while similarly bizarre at times.. a lot of hussie's humor can rely on some level of meanness, which isn't bad, i just find that it's different and has different stuff to say about the topic. like, the dna is there, right, but a lot of things that are distinctly 'hussian' in nature have been toned down in favor of a different approach. i love both approaches. EDIT: on second thought, the meanness or not of the comedy might have more to do with where the internet was when each one was made, but i still contend that toby's humor stands out seperately from hussie, who at times carries the energy of a chaos deity that toby simply does not. but none of that was the point of the comment. the point was that it's objectively funny that award winning game dev toby fox who is now business buddies with nintendo is someone i grew up knowing as being the homestuck mpreg song guy. and then he put it in pokemon. sorry that doesn't even make you giggle even a little bit tho. :P
@@jeshirekitenkatt1212 the fact that there is an mpreg meme reference in Pokemon is hilarious Also, I would argue that Undertale has the same hostility towards the player as Homestuck. The Genocide route is designed to be unfun. You miss out on NPC dialogue, all of the puzzles are solved for you, nearly every fight is ended in a single button press, the two exceptions are designed to be frustratingly difficult. Metatextually, the Genocide route is designed to punish the player for playing it Toby's humor is nicer but there is still a meanness in his design philosophy at times, something that I enjoy
@@caseyjarmesi think that's what i mean - undertale thoroughly lets you *earn* that hostility and gives you many chances to back out, which homestuck by it's nature can't do. homestuck doesn't care what your opinions are, it will hurt you anyways as well as the characters you love and you're going to have to live with that. which i think also just really matches the overall tones of those two -games- stories (hiveswap my beloved when shall you return from the war)! it's very neat how the fact homestuck being a comic and undertale being a game use that lack of or freedom of choice to their advantage. i do think too that it's cool that while probably unintentional, in the epilogs and (so far as we can tell) deltarune, they have now swapped those perspectives on freedom of choice & power of perspective and how they leverage their strengths in *that* direction to completely disarm the audience is wild. toby and hussie are mad geniuses or something haha
anyways, now that i've watched the whole thing: in hindsight, it kind of bugs me that it's played like john is being played as just an asshole here? john has also gone through an insane amount of trauma and there is a very real condition that can easily convince you that everyone you know and love is not real and has been replaced with a fake, one that often limits the extent of one's empathy and ability to connect with others (leaving them often seem oblivious or dense on an emotional front from the perspective of others) that often shows up and progresses as one gets older & which can be triggered by stress & trauma and often leads one to severely isolate themself and have (rarely, but sometimes) violent outbursts. what i'm saying is that i take issue with it for the same reason gamzee is an ablist trope - john hasn't just convinced himself of this, he actually believes it and is experiencing what can only be called a delusion. source: i have schizo-spec disorder & i know what being delusional looks like from having experienced it. and in john's situation i can see how one could easily be driven to being delusional, because it's made worse by the fact paranormal and messed up multiverse crap actually does happen around him all the time. ffs john is literally detached from reality at one point. many people who experience psychosis are able to seem 'normal' 99% of the time, too. i haven't read homestuck 2 but i'd be curious to know if symptoms of disassociation and delusion are something that recur later for john.
Finally got around to watching this. I enjoyed the video, and I especially appreciate that it doesn't just ignore that The Epilogues are styled after fanfiction, or just pick at various plot points divorced of that context. I don't think that means you have to like it - even if it's a musical on purpose, everyone's still singing - but I wish that aspect of it wasn't ignored as often as it is, or to have it be reduced to a collection of plot points. I recall you making a reply to a comment under your defense of the Homestuck ending video where you said you hate to give the Epilogues credit, but that they're about what the user was talking about. I found that a strange thing to say - even if you didn't like the epilogues - and I'm glad you seem more willing to give credit where you think it's due in this video (and criticisms where you think those are due). I'm hopeful for Beyond Canon. I think I'm enjoying it more than you from the brief bit you said about it, but I do hope things start to move in it. It can't have been easy to pick up the pieces from the old team and to transition it into the story that they want to tell, but the updates so far do still feel like they're moving pieces around and catching the audience up to where everyone is. It's necessary, but at one update a month, I hope it's not too many updates before this transitional period is over.
Just started this, I've been curious about the epilogues for YEARS but have avoided them because people flamed them so hard when they dropped. Super excited to see where this goes! edit: i cant believe I never connected cursed child as getting the same crit of "bad fanfiction" with homestuck before i literally gasped. I kinda love cursed child though because its camp to me and it makes people who like HP mad.
I really enjoyed this video and I feel like I've actually found someone who also enjoyed the epilogues. Actually watched all 3 hours lol. Also I very much agree on your sentiment on homestuck^2 and homestuck beyond canon. I very much hope they succeed in making the comic do something interesting now.
I was postponing watching this video for so long bc i was genuinely scared that you would change my opinion on Homestuck Epilogue. And then I watched all 3h. And you did change my mind. Again. Wow. I feel like I was just to lazy to go any deeper with interpreting it and I'm glad I forced myself to watch your video, no regrets
I'm actually re going through homestuck and I think what I enjoy the most is it's in my opinion a take on online friendships and as someone who married the person they met online homestuck serves as the feel good material that the connection I make can last a long time while still being me but maybe just a little different.
58:06 You need to imbrase the two Sollux theory like me! Also technically two Aradia's( and double nepetas and fefs) Well it has to be since (Vriska) and (Terezi) still exist despite them being from a re-conned timeline. So of course the sollux that was fully blind and fully alive (thanks to the eridian and sollux fusion sprite) is still our there. Along with the one who is only half dead (and had to be because that sprite became davepetasprite) Oh right! And the two Tavros's which one got turned onto Jake's sprite and one was helping fight English. 1:00:52 I chalk that one up to "alive characters have far more effect on the plot then dead ones". There are a lot of ghosts that fall but none of them change anything in the plot overall. True, it's mostly true with the ghosts in hs proper too! With a few exceptions but those were either Vriska, Meenah, or Not Vriska. I guess Kurloz too but it was more part of LE rising to power deal. 1:04:40 that is technically a retcon as homestuck pages were originally numbered by total number of pages of everything on mspa but it is a fun new page nonetheless 1:26:00 my take was that Dirk is not missgendering Roxy because of Transphobia but more part of his own self hatred mythos coming into question. Because for years Roxy was hitting on him because they were the last surviving people and it wouldn't work because Dirk is gay. But now that Roxy might not consider herself a women anymore, it brings Dirk into questioning how the hell he see's them. And ultimately pulls the Egbert move and pretend it didn't happen and not to think about it. Still transpobic as hell but in a more character driven way.
Personally, I couldn't finish reading the epilogues (Despite desperately trying) was because I simply never vibed with the aspects of homestuck they try to deconstruct nor the 'humor' of mocking one's own fanbase. Those aspects were always my least favorite part of homestuck, though i still enjoy them and think they were executed well, and seeing the epilogues throw away the characters I care about in favor of fucking with the audience was something I could never enjoy. Yet, I'm really glad that people CAN enjoy it and take meaning from things I can't even stand!
Whether or not it's being done for the purpose of "deconstruction" or some kind of irony, an officially sanctioned piece of media being fetish material is weird and bad.
John could be the narrator of candy, narrator as the one describing the world not the controller, stating all the madness caused by the fan fiction nonsense
15:41 Funny you bring this up, waaaaaay back when the pesterchum chat client was good. I found a trickster cult. That they were acting weird, at first i thought they were just rping super hard. ( I was sorely mistaken). Anyway they made a skype group that i joined just to see what this was even about. They were going to "make a real homestuck session", but i didnt make the cut. i had made files about all that happened with me, but they're lost on one of my high school flash drives. 😅
I’m not done with this delicacy of a video quite yet but I just want to say something. I am reallllllly afraid of the Epilogues. Like, rereading homestuck before I let myself even consider reading it scared. I really get attached to certain characters and they mean a lot to me. From what I have heard, Epilogues literally tear all of my favorite ships and characters to shreds. So I’m a bit…. Nervous. Lol. I just really really want to believe the story is all fan fiction written by the characters, if that makes sense. Like, Dirk is actually very healthy and relatively normal and with Jake and they’re good and everything’s FUCKING fine….
that's why it's specifically stated to be non canon. you can decide if you believe in it or not, like the santa claus of dubious literature. it can be a dirkjake detective pony masterpiece if that's what your heart is telling you
I'm sorry, but while I enjoyed the video up to 1:38:44, and tried to see your perspective of things, I couldn't with the whole Gamzee thing. Both you, the writers, and Hussie somehow, through a miraculous means of sheer ignorance that I'm both befuddled and saddened by, misunderstand him. So many clear lines drawn with his character that are entirely missed, only to be intersected at random intervals in the story. I just couldn't. I was gonna hear you out, but I couldn't sum up the will to do that while still trying to understand the fuckery that is the Epilogues. I refuse. I wanted to, but I couldn't.
@@caseyjarmes Sorry, my thoughts were very much conglomerated when writing that comment. I truly did appreciate your commentary on the Epilogues, but your unnecessary comments on Gamzee as a character when he truly served no relevance to the actual plot of the continuations besides to be a shock factor turned me off completely to continuing the video. Also, for some reason, you said he had no relevance to the actual structure of the original plot of Homestuck, which is entirely untrue. I was genuinely confused when you said that, since he obviously and very much does contribute to the plot significantly - if not even more than nearly any other main character.
@@user-vf3pz4br1g I don't believe that Gamzee is irrelevant. When I say that, I am quoting Dirk, and showing on screen the line of narration where Dirk insults Gamzee and says he shouldn't be allowed to be relevant again. Gamzee is is a very plot relevant character. And I do think that calling Gamzee the worst is relevant, when he is acting like the worst, and John is saying that he is the worst. Gamzee's shock value is a messy and I think it's the worst written part of the Epilogues, but it does serve a narrative purpose: to make John realize that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world, triggering his dsescent into nihilism. I'm also very confused by the statement that Andrew Hussie misunderstands Gamzee. Gamzee isn't real. He's a fictional character created by Hussie who, through most of the comic, acts like a violent chaotic asshole and makes everything worse. The Epilogues have him at his most vile, but I do think that is in line with how he was characterized for most of the comic
@user-vf3pz4br1g Imo it’s less that Hussie misunderstands Gamzee but more that they alter the character because they stopped liking him at some point and didn’t like that people liked him, basically pulling a Thomas Astruc (creator of MLB) The writing for Gamzee in the epilogues is consistent with canon because Hussie rewrote Gamzee in canon to become a caricature of himself and unrecognizable (and also with racist and ableist traits that say more about Hussie, who was in their thirties(iirc) at the time, than the character itself) There’s a great video about it, made with contributions from people of color, called “How to find a Gamzee”, that explores more about these subjects if you’re ever interested!
At some points, this unironically kinda feels like one of those anti-sex fanfictions where the writer is making a bad faith argument about how the cast aging up and fucking ruins everything. x.x
Watching you break down meat and dirk's descent into evil was really cool and makes me want to re-read it fully. But it also made me realize why I don't like gamzee's character arc in the main story. His descent into villainy felt very undercut when he was turned into a character that got beat up for jokes interspliced between being a genuinely intimidating monster towards many other characters. He got neither the satisfaction of being a well built, intimidating villain like jack or LE nor just as a loser we could just make fun of like the dancestors.
I'm 55 minutes into the video and I have to go and watch a movie, so i'll recap my thoughts now cause I have a lot to say. I read the epilogues when they first came out and never since, so my memory is very fuzzy. I have always said that I hated the epilogues (and I never even read ^2 because of it, but this is not relevant.) Though, if I recall correcty, there were small parts I liked too. I think, now, I would say I liked and hated it at the same time. The ending of homestuck was amazing in my opinion even though I had never really put together the symbolic rejection John made in choosing not to fight. Even though I never realized it, I actually internalized it anyway just out of my desire to ignore the caliborn claymation scene as a doomed timeline of some description. I liked the happy ending. I feel similarly about all media. The characters in any game or movie or tv show are being observed by the viewer, but you do not see their entire lives when a scene cuts or time skips an hour or years. With this in mind, The prospect of what happens to a character when the cameras arent watching can be terrifying, principally the idea that they stop acting, they stop living, they stop thinking. Much like when john is trapped for a quadrillion years. Even in a happy scenario, when you work so hard in a game to, say, have a relationship, the game ends right after. but I want them to live on and enjoy it. After enjoying these characters, I want them to live on without my view, I want that happy ending (or a sad ending, just so long as it ends.) The epilogues are the same. there's a deep gut feeling that you aren't supposed to be here watching this. It is fanfiction in the sense that it's a single interpretation of what happens after the ending, and not canon because of it, that lets me ignore it. The undertale genocide route is the same. The story can be engaging at times, but it treats you like a villain for experiencing it. You should not be there. Undertale punishes your bad decision by killing loved characters - Homestuck punishes your bad decision by fucking with their personalities due to the curse that rose was dealing with (and killing dirk, my favorite character.) That's why i hate the epilogues. they're a venture into a land that shouldnt exist, shouldnt be percieved. the original ending of homestuck will always be the real ending for me. And yet, that doesnt mean the epilogues dont have good literary moments. i found myself pausing the video and reading screenshots ots several times even if i felt bad doing it. I still dont like the epilogues and dont plan on reading them again, but i can admit they can be enjoyable, just not by me, lmao. Also, in case you were agreeing with me too much, I always liked vriska and I always will :^)
these are mostly my thoughts too. i really enjoyed the epilogues while i was reading them! but only as a like... well written angsty fanfiction that i can pick bits and pieces from to go into my own headcanons of characters and ignore the rest. i feel the same about homestuck^2/beyond canon - i view it as a fanventure. it's fun, but only if i see it as that. if i were to consider it canon it would piss me off pretty bad with how it basically just disregards so many of the character arcs of homestuck proper. i get the deconstruction of narrative thing, but... idk. even post- [s] game over stuff was sloppy in how ooc the characters felt. but we at least got two awesome animations to finish it off with collide and act 7. i would have greatly preferred if the epilogues and hs2 didn't exist in favor of focusing on hiveswap. with smaller games like friendsim to hold over until each hiveswap act is released... i like the hiveswap and friendsim stuff because it's just supplementary material, with its own characters and a new adventure. it's not trying to drag out a story that should have just ended in 2016, even if that ending wasn't perfect.
I wish I joined your community earlier so I could participate in that poll. When epilogues first came out, I read them before hearing anyone else's opinion about them, and then was surprised at the amount of hate they got. Sure, they weren't great, but the idea of characters in a story taking control of the narrative in order to keep themselves alive and relevant sounded really fresh and novel to me. I also thought that the Candy route was purposefully made bland and boring in order to pass it off Meat as the stronger, more "canon" narrative. Anyway I disliked what they did to certain characters and the tone shift was a bit sudden too, but that canon vs dubious canon premise sounded interesting. Looking forward to where James's team takes it!
I am going to try really hard to format this comment in a way that is coherent and legible, and translate my long long history and thoughts about homestuck into a meaningful read, which is the least I can do for an amazing video essay. I read the epilogues when they came out, and they hit me hard. Johns death in meat was heart wrenching because dirks narration made the moment heart wrenching and cemented my anger towards dirk, because Dirks belittlement of John really highlighted how much he mattered. And Candy John believing Terezi is dead reopened those wounds when i got around to Candy. I viewed both as two halves of the story, and the ways the two foiled and mirrored one another made me enjoy them when I reread them after completing both. Even now, I would defend them not as perfect stories but as stories with merit that should be engaged with intent and analysis rather than gut reactions and a broad brush. I say all this as a preamble to really take the fine tooth comb to some things that I like, that I know from talking to people at the time, received a lot of push back. I really think the epilogues are meant to be read twice (or four times? Since there are two? Idk). Like, once I had read the twist/reveal/revelation of the John/Roxy conversation in Candy, I went back and read both stories over again, and really interrogated my perceptions of the characters, trying my best to divorce the narrator in the case of meat. And the thing is, aside from Jane, I don't actually think any of the characters trajectories/outcomes in either timeline don't follow from the characters they were in the main story. Im going to home in on Jade, since aside from Jane and Dirk, she was the other big character that I remember people having a great number of issues with the way she was written, and for what its worth, I did not see you talk about her that much. Setting Aside Yiffany for now (we will be back to her), the fact that shes out of the story for the lions share of meat, combined with her... less than ideal relationship with Dave in candy, made a lot of people dissatisfied with the way she was treated. The thing is: Jade Harley has spent most of her life isolated. Whether it be growing up on an island or spending years trapped on a ship traveling between the 4th wall, the universe has conspired to keep Jade Harley lonely. Even once she was able to be around her friends physically, she still felt isolated from them, and If i remember correctly, it is speculated in Homestuck this is due to her Classpect by.. I want to say Muse Calliope? Al? It may have been normal Calliope but I want to say it was Al. Regardless, this is an inescapable fact of her character, so when I read through Candy the second time, alot of her behavior that people took issue with was re contextualized, now that I could ignore John's unreliable narration. Like, her whole conversation which makes Dave and Karkat uncomfortable, is still kinda messed up, but from Jade's perspective, shes desperate for scraps, to feel like she belongs, like she is connected to someone, and is willing to beg for crumbs from Dave and Karkat. Its uncomfortable to read, to see a character that I really like act this way, but my thoughts on it is that this is kinda.. this is something that might have happened to jade anyways after the curtains closed. Interpersonal conflict and a characters problems wouldn't vanish once the story is over if it was real, we as audience just wouldn't see it, we just wouldn't be privy to their problems anymore. Which brings us back to Yiffany. I.. actually like this twist? Not everything about it. I think Kanaya up until recently is really robbed of her role as Rose's wife, but as a big Jade fan, I really really get why it happened the way it did. The reasons Jade was never going to be okay with adoption or ectobabies is really the same thing I was talking about earlier. The universe and fate conspires to keep Jade Harley isolated, so Is it no wonder she wants kids, kids of her own. Is it any wonder why she need it to be hers biologically, for there to be unbreakable bond of mother and daughter? There is a gulf between Jade and the rest of the cast, one that Jade is in some part responsible for keeping as Kanya rightly calls out in her anger, but like: can you even blame her? She's been isolated for so long emotionally, im not surprised distancing herself and hiding her affairs (literally) has become a defense mechanism. Kanya has every right to angry. Every right to be hurt. But so does jade. She wanted to be close to someone for so long, so badly she ruined Karkat and Dave's relationship, so bad that Dave dipped out on them. So badly she spent years trying to date anyone and only getting burned and burned again and again, and all her friends would do is lecture her on boundaries, when she just needed to be close to someone. Yiffany to her is that person and the irony of it all is that her doting is possibly going to end up with her suffering the same fate she keeps suffering over and over again. I also really hate the toxic minefield that is jades... parts? It feels simultaneously bigoted and like there is potential to do compelling thigs with it, but Hussie is the last person I would want tackling this topic but we are here, and like, god can we just put it to bed? I think you could talk about say, Dysphoria Jade might have and there are some cool stuff you can do, but Hussie does not have the track record for me to trust him with it, but also I dont want to hear people discuss it because I think alot of it is knee-jerk reactions and not coming from an honest place. There is so much more I could talk about but Im gonna wrap it up here. Thank you for the video essay. If people wanna hear more about my thoughts or need me to explain something lemme know in the comments and ill try and respond.
I don’t know how i feel about beyond canon but a good note is jane was literally groomed as an heir to the condesce in homestuck so that’s not a lot but a good deal of why she’s probably evil
if you're looking for a homestuck fanwork sequel that isn't afraid to touch on the meta stuff in the original comic, then i'd recommed "Mr tambourine man" it's one of the most beautiful, faithfull, and best written fan work's i've ever seen.
Oh dang, this is taking me back to when I actually read most of the epilogues, in spite of what everyone said. I honestly wish I could look back and say I have strong thoughts and feelings about them and what happened there. I came into homestuck at the end of some hiatus and got greeted by another one by the time I had caught up. I don't think I was able to appreciate its meta narrative very well at the time, and I honestly started to lose touch with it post-cascade. I just didn't find the relationship drama afterwards terribly interesting at all compared to the stuff before. After years to get that ending, I was mostly feeling apathetic. They got their happy ending, lord english was presumably defeated by the magic box or whatever, the end. I was honestly happy to have it considering all the drama behind the scenes that was slowly souring my enjoyment of the withering franchise. In spite of my lack of strong feelings, i do think my thoughts at the time I read the epilogues pretty closely resemble Casey's. Seeing all the characters change as they grew up in candy and dealt with all that trauma in what felt like a more grounded, if purposefully bad fan-fictiony, narrative... It was sad and tragic, but it felt more real than if they had just stayed the way they were. Though this isn't the only controversial character development opinion i hold... *cough cough* Luke Sywalker in The Last Jedi made perfect sense to me narratively *cough cough*... It was still a weird slog, but it kept my interest, because I was apparently at least a bit interested in a deconstruction of fanfiction. I think the fact that I had not read much homestuck fanfiction was both a blessing and a curse here. On the one hand it was all new to me, but on the other I didn't have any context for the deconstruction. So I lost interest and moved on with my life part way into meat. Also weird side theory. What if homestuck is a cursed creature that lives by making fun of its audience until it alienates them, and then only continues because it immediately picks up a new one that isn't the target of the jokes? I just, feel like there is a strange pattern there. Anywho, thanks for this journey into my past. Also I'm hoping writing this will put some very old thoughts of mine to rest at last.
I now realize that the solution to people constantly misinterpreting the epilogues is simply put calliope and Dirk in the author section. Ao3 allows for collective authors so simply add them, it would be like the time loop nonsense that homestuck is built on
@@skittlegore 2026 maybe? I did consider making a video on Hiveswap, Pesterchum, or that clown game Hussie made for my 2025 essay, but I decided on a different topic. Although, maybe I’ll wait til Hiveswap is done in 2050 before making an essay on it
Thank you so much for watching!
Second channel where I respond to comments: www.youtube.com/@Ca2eyJarme2
Other Homestuck Essays: ua-cam.com/play/PLn1jnk7OVJsuhVCd5mN6j2DG1E16k_WEA.html
Fanfiction: archiveofourown.org/users/EugeneConard/pseuds/CaseyJarmes
I absolutely agree that Jane's transition from "a bit bossy, sometimes" to "Her Imperious Condescension the II" is VERY rough - something that the Epilogues themselves point out in a clumsy attempt to lampshade it - but, if I'm willing to make a LOOOOT of stretches, I can see some hints that this could happen to her.
First of all, the fact that the first thing Jane did when she woke up on Earth C was to create a new Crocker Corp is a pretty big red flag in retrospect. Feels like something she should have been talked out of. This was emphasized in the Snapchat storyline, which I suspect was Hussie workshopping this twist.
Second, even before it completely took over her mind, Jane's tiara was steadily brainwashing her as part of HIC's efforts to mold her into a perfect heiress. For the most part, this undercurrent to her personality was communicated poorly in the comic, but it does seem notable that, for all her stated altruism, Jane's only firm, stated goal for when she inherited the company was for it to take over the postal system - one of the few institutions that had managed to resist the company's control on Earth Alpha. That didn't bode well.
Third, Jane's closest advisors in the Epilogues were Ultimate Dirk - who, as a shadow of Lord English, had reason to effectively resurrect one of LE's favorite and most effective puppets, HIC - and Gamzee - who also contained part of LE, and wanted to further Dirk's last wish to give the Candy timeline some consequences and conflicts. Considering how much those two managed to twist people around, it does make some sense that Jane's old corruption could resurface.
Finally, and this is flimsy even for this list, but the fact that both Meenah and Feferi became planet-uniting overlords when allowed to grow up - albeit very different overlords - does suggest a inherently tyrannical streak lurks within the Life aspect, which I find interesting to consider, if nothing else.
That said, Jane's antipathy towards trolls in particular feels forced to me. It might have been interesting to explore that - maybe learning about what HIC did to Earth Alpha in the future scared her - but I doubt that'll happen. Although, I am toying with writing a fanfic in which Karkat becomes president of Earth C instead of Jane, and that could be a good topic for it to touch on...
In Homestuck proper, Jane's only interactions with the trolls, pre-retcon, was Gamzee stealing her sprite prototyping away from her, Tavrisprite who hated itself and detonated itself, and HIC who brainwashed her. Post-retcon, she had Vriska who didn't learn anything, Tavrosprite who seems as ineffectual as he used to be, HIC who mind controlled her, Arquisprite for 1 panel, Terezi only on the periphery of conversations she's in, and... I think that's it. So her only good influences she hardly interacts with, while the bad ones are much more impactful. She's not friends with trolls, and the only ones who made an imprint on her were negative.
@@liamwhite3522 You're forgetting Fefetasprite, who was Jane's close ally and confidant, but that interaction was erased by the retcon.
My nitpick aside, that's a good argument! I just wish that it had been explored in the epilogues and their sequel, rather than requiring assembly and inference.
@@liamwhite3522 Huh. I reread a bit of the relevant part, and I don't think retcon Jane ever interacted with, or even met, retcon Vriska. For once, we may not be able to directly blame Vriska for something.
Homestuck has this huge issue of just expecting the audience to just find these stray plot threads.
I had some of these plot threads that made the idea of her pulling this shit somewhat plausible, but you collected even more together quite succinctly
But there's literally no story*telling* going on if we're just filling in the blanks ourselves.
I read it like she was fucking abused by HIC which probably spurred some nasty inclinations towards trolls.
I generally don't vibe with 'It's bad on purpose' being a defense of something's quality, and I stand by that here. I fully agree Hussie wanted this story to be making fun of fandom, I just don't appreciate the author of a story coming back three years after the ending with an 'epilogue' that has the explicit aim of making fun of all the people who appreciated their work enough to make things for it, especially when the way that mocking is done is honestly mediocre and full of things that it's own defenders agree were honestly terrible choices, even if a lot of those choices were bad on purpose.
On top of that, the epilogues weren't just a bad epilogue, they were also bait for a sequel, where Hussie continued to make insane nonsense to stir up drama in the audience, got people to pay to speed up its production, and let the harassment fall onto the staff that from what little I've heard weren't ready for the role of working on something as divisive as the Yiffany reveal
Man, good thing i didnt read ^2
(Dirk section at the begining was just super boring and i coudnt read anymore)
Funny enough, even if i read it the Yiffany part wont affect me as i concider ^2 canon.
For what i knew at the time, the epilogues where to give the fandom something to make their own stories on, so anything BASE on the epilogue (something of dobious canonicity) is in itself a fanfiction, thus need to be concider for its own value, just a narrative aprove/recomended by the original author.
Yet, later i learn they activly tried to use the "sequel" label, to which i expect the effect that later happenex.
Try to claim oneself as "the sequel" then retracting to "its just a fanfiction" when people dont like it is the most "have the cake and eat it too" moment
Another example is pesterquest, which tried to even self proclaim itself the "new canon", bs, uou are fanfiction, just be good fanfiction and you can gain your own respect.
A clear example is fallout equestria, a fallout/mlp fanfiction that is so good people recomend it for its own value, not the IP tied to it.
I liked it when SBURB was presented as letting people excape control and influence to become the best version of themself represented by children leaving the influence and control of their society, guardians, command module becoming gods and gaining their own place. Character arcs and science fiction was much more satisfying than hammering the concept of Death of the author in HS and Beyond HS and meta of denying the audience of the characters. I liked it when the characters cared about each other and did anything to save each other and succeed in insane feats. I get that Caliborn shows us his interests of events like how princess bride is edited by its in story author and Caliope with her beautiful fan art and self insert when LE is deafeated and she wins. While I dislike the Epilogues and Beyond HS it does have its moments a scene of good art here or there and I started reading JohnDirk fics where i would have never if i wasn't exposed to Depressed John. I wish HS made better choices as a franchise instead of ruining characters by turning them vague and unlikable.I have liitle faith that I will be understood as we are individuals whoms thoughts, feelings, and experiences are our own and words fail to convey leaving often reductive word choices and misunderstandings from one person to another. I have seen people deny the experiences of others because they stated there is only one way to see things(their own). I hope value is gained in my attempt.
JohnDirk and DaveJake are so peek!
@@honey3762I have never even once concieved of DaveJake. Now I have to search for this. I need to know what that could possibly look like...
@@Habbitual i find them a fun pairing in a way where like... dirk is off the deep end, Jake feels isolated from his friends by now. Dave strikes me as the type who kinda peaked at 16 and post sburb he'd kinda drift away from his friends too. they remind each other enough of the people they loved or liked (dirk, john), and they're isolated enough from the other session's friend group to where they don't have to worry about making it weird with them. I don't think it would have much passion or feeling, it's just kind of a sad way to stave off loneliness while refusing to talk about that, smth they're both aware of. obviously just my interpretation though
@toads13 I would read that fic. Recently JadeRoxy was suggested and it would be funny for Dave's reaction that his parents are with his friends😂. Many characters didn't interact and it would be interesting if more did. My interpretation of HS ending was the death of ghosts were just another form of transmigration that they are reborn into the fanfiction we write therefore all stories are cannon and we are their authors except for the mains whom escaped through the door. Out of character actions justified by being a previous sprite changed their personality murged their souls. My original read of HS ending was that ghost game over + doomed johnroxy were the ones to face Caliborn while the winning ones handle a enternet troll the best way by not engaging, and touching grass. The ending is without dialoge and explanation, i thought not seeing the kids fight LE was part of this stylistic choice as you could make any interpretation such as the beta kids merged to become Hussie who then narrated the kids.
i literally got suckered into homestuck specifically bc i read one john/dirk fanfic that very cleverly set them up as equal and opposing narrative foils (which again only feels sensible IF john is the post ending mess that he becomes) and ive.... been six feet under ever since!! this essay just made me like it more honestly
(also no offense to roxy, the sweetheart, but john's gamut of previous love interests were rose, vriska, and terezi... the guy has a Type and its apparently manipulative, sneaky, cunning characters)
You're right, what makes or breaks the epilogues is its meta-commentary. This is why I was sure, and am now 100% certain, that I would absolutely loathe the epilogues if I read them
I never liked the meta narrator stuff in HS, and was only able to tolerate it because it was funny. Even the Calliope and Calliborn stuff being an allegory for types of HS fans already started to seem a bit too egotistical and masturbatory, but it wasn't enough for me to stop reading the comic
You said that people criticize the epilogues by saying they're bad fanfiction, and defend them by saying that they're written like bad fanfiction on purpose. But only because a story is written badly on purpose... doesn't suddenly make it a good story. This is more of a criticism of meta stories in general because this is an excuse that they often try to pull. The out of context bad scenes from the epilogues people mention like rape, fascism and infidelity done by the HS characters we all know and love matter very fucking much, it's not enough to say "But see, they were written OOC ~on purpose~ Therefore, none of this is a slog to get through!"
I appreciate your opinion, I will just never understand how people can enjoy and want to read these types of meta written-badly-on-purpose-to-punish-the-reader-and-expecting-them-to-still-enjoy-the-story-somehow stories. Is wasting your time on 200,000 words of straightforwardly horrible shit of 20+ silly characters from your childhood who liked to pull pranks on their friends and listen to bad rap music suddenly becoming fascists and absent fathers and raping people really worth whatever existential message it has to say?
This is a real "what is art" conversation, and part of why I personally hold Meat and Candy close to my heart.
Homestuck was always at its best to me when it was using its own tools to examine and deconstruct itself, and the Epilogues serve to examine Homestuck in a way that wouldn't usually be allowed outside of fandom itself.
>Is wasting your time on 200,000 words of straightforwardly horrible shit of 20+ silly characters from your childhood who liked to pull pranks on their friends and listen to bad rap music suddenly becoming fascists and absent fathers and raping people really worth whatever existential message it has to say?
Maybe when I was a teen and had the time to burn on the Epilogues the same way I did on the main HS story
But time and energy are more precious resources for me to allocate in my life right now, and trying to chew and digest these Epilogue stories feels very unworthy of my attention with its myriad of negative qualities that are often done on purpose
honestly? yes. yes it is worth what existential message it has to say, because thats what stories are. they are statements, thematic caves to be mined for meaning. whether or not you find meaning in the epilogues is your own thing. but answering for myself, absolutely it is worth it.
Your seemingly underlying want to not experience works that challenge you, and instead consume stuff that's pleasing to you, is actually one of the main points of the epilogues. Hussie knew a large part of the fanbase never picked up on the more serious aspects of Homestuck, and those people can choose to see act 7 as the ending, even though it has a few loose ends. but it still constitutes sticking your head in the sand lmao.
also there's a big difference between being "bad on purpose" and being written poorly. the epilogues are in fact very well-written, it's simply that the subject matter is considered "bad" by some. is any story containing these "bad" things in itself bad? answering that with a yes is valid I guess, but again it's contingent on simply not being able to process whatever lies underneath the ugliness
@@sofielundsskolan I never said I disliked dark stories, only pretentious meta stories. I've even read a lot of dark HS fanfiction. My problem is that so much of it in the epilogues happens out of nowhere (which I'm sure many would argue "is the point") and is a huge tonal whiplash from the original HS. It's one thing when it's fanfiction, it's another when it's official HS content (which it is, no matter how "dubiously cannon" it claims to be. It has the Homestuck tradmark, there is no doubt about that and the way the characters act is going to affect the way we see them in the original HS)
bold of you to assume i have read homestuck. however, i will remain sat for the entire video
I didn't read homestuck, I watch people on youtube read it. Lol
1:50:03 the main problem with the epilogues is the timing. Because it had been THREE FUCKING YEARS since three last up8. Three years filled with only vague notions that hivebent might be coming out maybe. So when a thing called "The Epilogues" dropped we were fully prepared to believe that this was the "conclusion" that this would finally be the end. We would wrap up all those last loose plot threads and create that satisfying conclusion.
Instead, it was a double layered fanfic written in part *by* the original author. We simply took it at face value of "this is what happens next"
If it had dropped even like six months or something after the credits? It would have gone a lot better. But again, three years with the disappointment that hivebent was bringing
HS lost me during the Paradox Space comics, so I didn't even read the epilogs. I just saw ppl talking about meat and candy and was like eh, whatever
I also felt this way about the epilogues and was so frustrated that people just weren't engaging with it in a way that actually took into account what the story was. They were painful to read, like Dirk is my favorite character, It physically hurt to read meat, but I understood what the story was trying to do and say and it said it really well.
Also something I noticed that I think is very often missed is that dirk isn't just dirk, he's all the dirks, including the dirk that is in AR the same AR that is part of ARquius, Arquius who is part of lord English.
Meat dirk uses terms and language we've only ever seen Caliborn use, such as referring to karkat as a boy wife.
I think Dirk was able to ascend the way he did and have such immense control of the narrative is a direct result of the fact that part of him is also a Lord of Time and his more toxic elements are exacerbated by his connection to Caliborn and Bro.
As well as being severed from his connection to brain ghost dirk who is a version of dirk who is now distinctly separated from Ascended Dirk.
A dirk who we've seen to be a supremely important to dirk being kinder and less caustic.
Not to mention that part of him is the beta timeline child abuser version
To add on to this, Dirk is also Doc Scratch, which makes his relationship with Rose a lot more interesting.
I suspect Dirk might be Lord English's way to survive his fated demise. After all, the trick Caliborn used to defeat Calliope was making her think that his Queen was his King, and using that deception to outmaneuver her. Kind of how everyone thought that defeating Lord English would solve their problems.
I also think it's very important to note that the only person ever addressed as "you" in Candy is Dirk, and that his chapters' narration is the most Dirk-like. I think Ultimate Dirk uses his selves as pawns, and forces them to... "merge with the whole" whenever there's a chance they might drift out of his control. That would also explain why, in Meat, narration Dirk sometimes seems confused by character Dirk's actions, and constantly affirms his actions; Meat Dirk is another of Ultimate Dirk's puppets, but has been tricked into thinking he's the mastermind.
@@caseyjarmesthis is honestly what turned me around on hs2, its hammered home in the newest update but it feels like we're rly going to touch on Bro in a way that we didnt fully get with Dirk. It feels like h2 and hsbc are gonna explore a lot of things that felt unaddressed both for good and bad
Oh my god.
@@ericemigh3869
I think the problem with the epilogues is the people the most interest in more Homestuck are the fans who enjoyed Homestuck IN SPITE of deconstruction of fiction angle instead of because of it. I would know how they feel given I am that for a few pieces of media, the one that will work best as comparison here is Undertale and Deltarune. I always find all this direction of "what it mean to be fiction" persoanlly exhausting and pointless. But I still love Undertale and Deltarune cause the characters are interesting and fun, the music is great and it's really funny in its comedic moments. I assume Homestuck had countless fans like that, and they would be the ones most interested in more of cause they are also the ones most interested in the aspects that aren't the deconstruction. It's the same reason a lot of people write those slice of life fanfics. They like the characters and want to see more of their goofy antics, so when you give them a deconstruction of that stuff of course they won't like it, they're being mocked. Also I know logically it's not dunking on amateur or self indulgent writers for existing but it feels like it. Idk maybe I'm just so tired of this pessimism around fanfic to the point even the strawman version of it feels insulting. Plus it feeling so much like the strawman version of fanfic to the point I just called that without blinking until after I typed it doesn't help either.
I think that's the reason because I like the epilogues and homestuck so much I LOVE DECONSTRUCTION OF CANON, and god is so creative the way everything is tell so messy yet so interesting, is like a hellhole of imagination, I don't change it for anything
i only care about the weird deconstruction metanarrative shit when it serves creating an interesting and fun story. IN THE EPILOGUES IT DOES NOT SERVE CREATING AN INTERESTING AND FUN STORY
it's funny how Problem Sleuth took itself far less seriously, every character was portrayed comedically, yet it feels like, Problem Sleuth (the character), his friends Ace Dick and Pickle Inspector, his enemies like Mobster Kingpin, and even one-note characters like Bat-Hearst, were treated more respectfully than whatever the epilogues were supposed to be.
I read Candy first when it came out and I don't regret it. The way it builds the mystery, the descent into an insane world that doesnt make sense while you are completely in the dark was a really interesting experience and made Meat more satisfying to me.
same😂broooo im glad im not the only one ive been feeling bad about reading them out of order despite enjoying how surreal candy is without the context of meat
Wow. Never occurred to me that Meat!Calliope could be the narrator of Candy.
It’s a fringe theory but I figured I’d mention it. I don’t believe it. I’ve also heard Obama suggested as the narrator
You… you didn’t…
I don’t know how you got through Homestuck without being able to read
@@honey3762 Hey, don't be mean. All the Epilogues show is that Calliope has knowledge of Candy, not specifically that they are writing it. I'm not even sure how they could be the narrator, as that normally required vast reality warping power they do not possess. I think it's likely they just have visions of what their Candy incarnation sees
@@honey3762 In my defense I have not read the Epilogues since they were first released, and Meat!Calliope was a fairly minor character. Even in HS^2 the majority of their time has been spent hiding in the vents. It will likely take months if not years IRL until whatever it is that they've been doing is revealed and becomes plot relevant.
The video brings some good points but, personally, I can’t bring myself to enjoy the epilogues in any way after its portrayal of the characters got people within the fandom harassed and sent gore for “liking the wrong character” (yes that still happens to this day)
It’s not the story’s fault but it’s one of those situations in which the fans taint the original project, at least for me, and considering some people who encouraged/turned a blind eye to this behavior were involved with close projects related to the epilogues at the time (such as pesterquest and friendsim), it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
The reason I dislike the epilogues is simple and straightforward. When you make an epilogue to a visual media such as a webcomic, having it entirely text based is a dealbreaker.
I'm also among those who liked HS in spite of all the meta narrative which I found extremely annoying, so having the whole focus of the epilogues be that is why I did not bother
aww, too many words for you?
@@daiyahigashikata
It's like putting the epilogue of a series into a video game, or the epilogue of a comic book into an opera, not everyone in the fanbase will be fine with the sudden jump of presentation. And Homestuck was a webCOMIC with animations with good music sprinkled throughout, so having the epilogue be exclusively on text form is akin to the examples I gave
im an hour in and ive never screamed "THERES MORE??" or "STOP..." this much in a video before its painful
“I feel like so far Homestuck:Beyond Canon has too much candy, and not enough meat”
Ultimate Dirk:Too much candy huh? We’ll see about that…
Seriously though, it’s so funny going from the ending of this video, straight to the new update where Dirk is straight up like “What’s up fuckers, this shit’s boring, fuck that lets a go”
@@jureigeeksoutoccasionally I know right
And then he continues to serve candy
@@caseyjarmes right now I’m hoping that the new team “gets it”™ but I am a little skeptical…
Only time will tell though
For the first hour or so I was thinking “this guy is just restating plot point” but I’m glad you bring that up later on. Besides it was still a pretty good recap
I am *begging* you to balance your audio levels better. You love raising your voice to emphasize points, which is fine, but at a volume where the rest of the video is audible, these moments of emphasis are absolutely ear splitting. It sucks having to vigilantly ride the volume knob for three hours, and you could fix it by adjusting the volume of your shouting moments down after the fact. Please!
for me, the shouting moments were just barely manageable but the music in the part title pages made my ears bleed D:
@@gayjay246 yeah that was way too loud too, only the lesser offense for me personally because I like Sburban jungle a lot better than Casey's Karkat impression.
I am very happy I have already read the epilogues I am not very good on picking up on subtext of things so vid1eo essays like these make these kinds of stories into something I can actually understand an now I will get more out of my next reread, seriously thank you for making these kinds of videos
Glad you liked it!
you explained ultimate self in a way that really made it click for me. I thought i understood it, and i already liked the epilogues and hs^2, but wow that really made it make sense why that was a plot they chose to run with.
i very much agree with your points about hs^2, but i have a lot of hope for the story developing
The twist at 2:14:54 completely blind sighted me. I guess mostly because my memory of the prologue was so foggy. Beyond feeling disgusted by the character shifts, I mostly was confused what the story was trying to say. Especially the john arc in candy, which if you were kind to me was to say that I didn't agree with him but in reality was just because I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I thought your description made sense, until it suddenly didn't :P The only specific scene i can remember reading is the one where Things Happen In The Car and I can only remember thinking it came totally out of left field. It's nice to think that it was at least (temporarily) cathartic for Terezi, and in that sense even if John was being crazy I like that the terezi-john relationship from the original comic seemed to basically stay the same in the prologues. Maybe that's why John felt like terezi was the only one who was real - She never changed because she never gave up looking for vriska. She was the only one who didn't grow up into a different person because she lived in denial for so long, and in that sense she was the only one john could still recognize. It adds to what i said before - the terrifying reality of the plot line of a piece of media that continues even when the reader stops reading. In the limbo state the characters found themselves in when you leave the plotline you end up with characters either like john and terezi, experiencing total stagnation and being completely flawed while losing all of their friends who have moved on; or like every other character, who grew up into being someone else you can no longer recognize. Neither outcome seems enjoyable to me in the same way that I liked the original run of homestuck. It's certainly interesting, but forcing characters to either stagnate forever or grow up to be uncorecognizable leaves me feeling extremely unpleasant. This story isn't homestuck, it's like a spinoff about what happens when you take the homestuck characters and put them into a world with totally new rules and challenges to face, which can be a hard sell for people like me who just like the character arcs as they completed originally. But if you like metatextual stuff (which I do), I can imagine how enjoyable it could be. I only wish it could have been done with totally new, non-homestuck characters, but obviously that would be totally impossible to accomplish. I think I probably have to give the prologues another chance. It has been 5 god damn years after all, I was 16 when i first read them...
By the way, if you haven't played The Beginner's Guide, please please please play it! it's very similar to this concept and I thought about it a lot while writing these two comments
You could say that John's argument that everyone is fake is a way of looking at the prologues from the perspective of someone who only enjoyed the original. It recontextualizes all of his problems as a sort of continuation from the past with terezi as a connection to it, as an existential, abstract challenge to be overcome, rather than the first world problems he's really been avoiding. Only that john resorts to apathy rather than solving the problem, which is I guess the way most of us prologue haters have addressed it
As soon as you started describing the Cursed Child I saw exactly where you were going. It's basically the same, but done with intentionality and baby I am here for it.
Just found your channel yesterday and watched all the homestuck videos you’ve made. I really liked what you had to say about them.
I never read the epilogues and I never really had any desire to. After this 3 hour video though? I’m still of the same opinion.
I was very content with the ending homestuck had, I never even thought about the themes concerning them running away from the final battle but that actually made me love it even more. Plus I’m not really on the fandom anymore, I just pop back into it every 413 for the good old fashioned nostalgia. The summary you’ve provided me today has satiated any curiosity I had with the epilogues. So thank you.
I’m very interested to see what content you produce next and I’ll go watch some of your non homestuck videos. Also time to farm views on that Dave video, I need your trerezi video.
Once again, thank you for the wonderful video, and happy 15 years of homestuck
One minor note I really gotta hand to Epilogues, the structure of the print version really got me to reconsider just how big of a cipher Ende's The Neverending Story is for many parts of Homestuck's structure and reader relationship beyond just little references during recaps. Actually structuring a physical book with a duality gimmick was what had it click into place in my mind.
Additionally, Ultimate Dirk lends surprising gravitas to Dirk as the "philosophy guy" (as superficial as that sounds, and is considering the wikipedia philosophy bit in Meat). A lot of Ultimate Dirk's mindset hearkens to Nietzsche's description of Socrates in Birth of a Tragedy, as a man who despises emotional storytelling that affirms and celebrates life for its own sake, considering the only narrative art worth it to be one that serves a mechanistic utility (like Aesop's fables, a clear unit that delivers a payload of utilitarian narrative intent), and that has a clear and defined point pre-dictated by an engineerlike author. It makes Dirk the perfect demiurge to continue Homestuck primary thesis of the gnostic prison existence being the narrative. Free will and uncontrolled desire are the worst thing Dirk can imagine.
46:26 I like to headcanon that a lot of weird plot inconsistencies in Candy are caused by the irrelevant rift. Like, the farther away they get from canon the more that the details of the comic itself start to be a little fuzzy at the edges. (Excemplified pretty well when Rose relays that Vriska killed Lord English, which is so untrue that John calls her out on it and the universe kind of almost stops for a moment before distracting John from it)
Genuinely you create the best Homestuck video essays out there. Keep up the good work!
"They are bad on purpose" Is not an excuse when they are literally called "the Epilogues". its a very intentional middle finger to the fans who wanted questions answered or a continuation.
Its like, people wanted a story. Not a deconstruction / mockery of one, and thats all these politic and fetish filled epilogs are.
A thought I just had.
Black holes, miscommunication, secrets, isolation, things that are irrelevant until they aren't, finding meaning in meaninglessness: these are all totally Void's domain. *Roxy* might be narrating Candy.
(Now to start actually reading it for myself.)
I can't believe Roxy is so mean to Roxy
I can't even begin to explain how good this video was.
I've had a rough relationship with the Epilogues, but they still stuck with me even after the rough bits. Yes, it's true that some characters change drastically from their Homestuck counterparts, which I think is one of the main things that threw people off, but the main cast finally being able to grow up and have families SHOULD be messy. They're adults who grew up without being able to be proper teenagers, who were chosen to play this reality altering game and lose everything AGAINST THEIR WILL, of course they wouldn't know shit about parenting and forming families.
And I feel that's what made it so appealing to me. The Epilogues dropped when I was months away from turning into an adult and I think they meant a lot to me because it made me realize that adulthood can be messy and rough and fucked up and still be meaningful. That people CHANGE and they should be ALLOWED to change without constant policing of their choices and identities. And I think that's beautiful. Watching the characters that accompanied you through your chilhood and teenage years be fucked up adults is comforting in some way. And also, Roxy and Calliope's whole thing about gender might have changed my own perspective and life forever
Glad you liked it
46:20 I think that is deliberate. It's not the "first batch", much like Gamzee's fridge not being on the rooftop when Dave and Dirk had their talk (The fridge is punched there by Cans during Collide), it's probably meant to be a subtle sign of things being "forgotten" in the Candy timeline and canon events of Homestuck aren't being accurately followed anymore.
As someone who has read Homestuck yet was warded off from reading the Epilogues when I learned of them, I have to thank you for making this video. It helps me appreciate what Homestuck was all over again. Maybe I should make some time to read the Epilogues myself at some point.
Wow, 13 times. That's impressive that you managed to not talk about the character we aren't gonna talk about
Yeah Yiffy is my least favorite Omega kid
@@Antiling_the_Squidkid wrong opinion
I do, and likely always will hate the epilolouges, not because i dont like the fanfiction deconstruction, not because anything disturbing, not even really because of its changes in charachter, i think its a perfectly fine story, but it took away homestucks ending, and that to me just isnt forgiveable.
honestly yiffy is the only part of the epilogues/beyond canon that I actually care about and she might be enough to make me read beyond canon
Whenever Yiffy's not on screen, all the other characters should be asking, "where's Yiffy?"
And yes she is the best part of Beyond Canon
i think her existence is a perfect metaphor for my cautious optimism for the continuation of post canon. Yes she was born of a horrible idea, but that doesn't mean that she can't be made into something wonderful
@@caseyjarmes genuine question: should i read beyond canon just for yiffy
@@literallyglados if she is the only thing that interests you then no. If they are other things about them that you’ll enjoy them yes
I'm glad that somebody finally made this video. I've always been an Epilogue defender; it actually might be my favorite part of Homestuck, if we're counting it as part of Homestuck.
I agree with almost everything in the video, but I have a couple comments.
I slightly disagree with reading of Homestuck's ending. I think the original ending was always meant to be ambiguous on whether or not they actually escaped the story/timeloop. I think John hitting his phone in the credits is supposed to mean both that he rejects the fight, and that he chooses to fight, depending on the reader's choice. The more Candy readers would want John to refuse, while the Meat readers would want John to fight. I think the route choice in the Epilogues is basically just a more direct portrayal of this idea.
Also, I actually don't think all the suffering in Candy is necessarily inconsistent with its portrayal as a fanfiction parody. I interpreted Candy as not only representing fun, cute character development, but also a kind of sadism. It is true that readers gain a kind of meaningless joy out of seeing their favorite characters happy, but I think we also get a similar kind of joy from watching them suffer. Like how we feel compelled to watch car accidents. Candy isn't a cozy slice-of-life fanfic that got corrupted, its a melodramatic darkfic. I see the "Candy" concept as more representing hedonistic pleasure without structure and meaning, which can come from both empathy and sadism.
One more thing. This might sound a bit weird, but I think it's also worth mentioning how the Epilogues are kind of a response to the 2016 election. I think the themes of people becoming something else, or people being impossible to truly know, is possibly somewhat of a response to that election. A lot of left-leaning people, especially in the younger generation who grew up in Obama's presidency, saw it as this massive shocking event that revealed a hidden evil in many of the people they thought they knew. Considering how Homestuck's original run lines up almosy perfectly with Obama's presidency, and how Homestuck was especially popular with a young left-leaning community that grew up under Obama, I wouldn't be suprised if the Jane storyline especially is a response to it.
W Take. I like this analysis a lot
spent 3 hours watching this video and still have never read homestuck and have no idea what its about
I want to look at your brain under a microscope
@@caseyjarmesironically enough, they probably watched because they found your brain fascinating
My heart stopped when I saw the act 6 title card and realized we were halfway through, nice touch
I haven’t finished the video yet but I’ve been an epilogue truther since the day they were released and thank you for putting all of your thoughts together like this, it’s really great to see people still genuinely analyzing Homestuck all these years later
I didn't even plan this, but Act 6/7 being half of the run time is certainly fitting
The medicine ad voice over after saying “side effects may include”: 28:24
Writing this before watching the entire video and not having read the epilogues, just a bit of them and Homestuck^2
I always felt like John got completely sidelined by everyone. Maybe it's the comic trying to be Meta and purposefully ignoring the character that was once the protagonist, but it always felt so weird to me how, judging by the parts I've read, he seems to be an after thought to all the people he loves
I'll never forget Rose telling John he's the Leader and he countering that he's their friend.
They took my favorite character and made him somewhat of a lonely loser that's barely remembered. My boy doubts himself so much and most of his friends simply don't care at all.
Idk, I miss the better parts of Homestuck
@@pedrocavalcante4939 I disagree with this. The original does do a good job of having John be the protagonist. He saves everyone after the epilogues. As for the epilogues, bad things happen to John, but he is still indisputably the main character of candy. He becomes depressed and lonely, not because no one cares about him, but because his depression and existential dread cause him to push his loved ones away. Beyond canon is stuck spinning its wheels, but in the little we’ve seen John he’s self assured and ready to step back into the role of a hero. Time will tell how well they stick the landing
@@caseyjarmes Yeah you're probably right, like I said I haven't actually read all of it, I just want to see my little guy happy and loved by his friends
alright, you've convinced me to give the epilogues a chance. great commentary on all the meta-ness of HS
Ive been slogging and slogging through candy while having a general idea of what happens later and reading hsbc as it comes out
Knowing meat is better is fine
I think it being badly written on purpose doesnt entirely excuse the fact it's badly written if candy had a set narrator it could be better
But i want good things for the future not like candy bs i want a good story and i can see a good potential in hsbcs story maybe they can do it maybe they can earn the title homestuck 2 and if they do itll be the best thing that happened in the history of metafiction
Oh wait no that was hussie riding falcor and killing some bullies damnit
THIS, THIS IS THE VIDEO ABOUT THE EPILOGUES THAT I WANTED TO SEE! (I saved your video to see it later when I finished the epilogues haha) I love your video, dude. Really, there are so many things that I just wanted to discuss with someone when I finished the epilogues, and you just talk about all of them in this video. Really, thanks for making this video!
I would love to see the video about Terezi that you mentioned you could do, seriously!
and also I love your video about Dave too!
also, am i the only person that thinks that obama introducing dave to his ultimate self is just one of dirk's machinations?
It’s possible
well, yeah, and it might even make all the weird stuff about "why obama" make more sense
@@caseyjarmes it's just all too perfict; all too absurd. and removed from its speaker, the dialogue is REALLY dirky. eerily similar even to what happened with rose.
i mean, a convenient robot body was just hanging around.
Totally. Come on, Obama commented that he learned everything he knew from Dirk and convinced Dave to ascend to his ultimate self through...the same way Dirk made Rose ascend to her ultimate self? With a robot? Yep, a plan of Dirk.
It’s very fitting we switch from visual to text based
I do think that Al is the narrator of Candy, but she doesn't want us to know that. The moments where we see her writing in red, she very clearly is letting us know that she is the narrator, but for Candy i think she wants us the reader to think that is just what totally would have happened, the narration isn't funky! This is normal! But no, it isn't. Meat or Candy was an absurd choice, and I think the ending of Homestuck 2 is going to be a denial of both. Dirk is not the only villian, The Muse is just hiding it better (not that she has to work hard with Dirk as a comparison point).
How can something that isn't "canon" influence canon? Oh buddy, as a Star Trek fan, I tell you that "non-canon" influences cannon all the time. Non-canon supplemental materials feed into cannon in bits and pieces all the time. Supposedly the new Star Trek shows are a new different timeline to Star Trek Online that do very much contradict each other, but ship-designs unique to Star Trek Online show up in Picard. Before that, details about the Andorians were ported over Enterprise form an RPG book who's whole line was rendered non-canonical years ago and which Enterprise directly contradicts in other places. Heck, sometimes things that were just popular"fanon" and never specifically referenced before randomly made in into scripts. Or Thrawn in the new Star Wars stuff. The novels that introduced him have been completely decanonized, but yet he and other elements were ported over. So the candy timeline could be non canonical in that way. It's supplementary, it's fanon, it's something adjacent to canon, that can sometimes bleed over into it, but it will never "be" canon. Homestuck exist at a sort of metatextual level, so maybe it's possible to move up and down or communicate between different "levels" of canonisity in a more direct way. Also it's interesting that it doesn't give a rebuke of the "non-canon" stuff, it's says it's just as valuable, just as important. Someone in the "canon" timeline fell in love with the "non-canon" version of a character, and for those of us who interact with fan-fiction, isn't that sometimes a little true. We fall in love not with the official version of the character, but with what other people create and write about them, and that's still valid, it might not be canon, but that is a version of that character, which actually exists and it's fine to appreciate that version. It makes me think of DC Comics recently recanonizing all versions and alternate realities that have ever existed and been shown, and even hiring a fan-creator to write the Batfam series which focuses on all the small little meaningful relationship moments of the characters. Is canon important? Should canon matter? Maybe not. But when it doesn't then you don't get that nice juicy "this was a big deal" or "this is the one single official truth" that an official canon can give you. But maybe that's okay.
Happy 4/13!! Super excited to watch this behemoth of a video
I really didn't expect to watch this entire thing in one sitting, but that was a damned fast three hours. I did read the epilogues when they came out and remember walking away with a bad taste in my mouth. Thank you for this analysis. I've been re-reading Homestuck and am about 6.5k pages in, and I feel like I'm appreciating it even more than I did the first time around. I was never into the fandom- it was just myself and two friends yelling about it occasionally, but now I'm also in fanfic mode myself. Anyway, I feel like this video will help me appreciate the epilogues, versus my first read where it all felt like a nightmare horrorshow (which is honestly not a bad thing entirely)
I want you to know that at least one guy, that guy being me, watched this entire video without ever having read neither the Epilogues nor Homestuck proper.
Having read the epilogues without the fandom opinions was probably the best thing that could of happened to me(I read homestuck in 2020 and never interacted with the fandom prior)
When it gets bad it gets REALLY BAD and some parts i did find boring, but, some of this ideas are the coolest thing ever, my favorite characters are Jhon (the two of them) and Dirk, duh. So cool in general
I don't like dirk's characterization tbh, him mirroring Dave's arc fits perfect for homestuck. Dave, being destined to be a hero and rejecting it, and dirk who is destined to be a villain and rejecting it. Making dirk a villain is the antithesis of his character
Pretty good overview
Thing i most go against the fandom is that i concider dirk more of anti-hero than a direct vilan.
Yes, he is a manipulative ashole.
Thing is he fight someone even MORE so
And that is something EVERYONE Knowledge but dont realize:
The WHOLE of homestuck is Calliope (the muse) Fanfiction with Caliborn trying to make it a REALITY to then SHIT on it.
And concidering Dirk has a part of Caliborn he just become an pseudo reencarnation
And that is the thing people miss, Calliope is doing the SAME, That Dirk does.
The manipulation of character and event, after she is the TRUE author/writter.
Heck, Calliope as roxy's girlfriend is a self insert.
And this self insert is an extension of "the muse's power", pasivly influence other
To which i am still doubtfull if roxy non-gender is natural or her suporting her partner, as roxy does.
Be ause we know dirk cant really incluence her, he admit as much, but you dont need mind cotrol to manipulate osmeone, so the self insert of the muse could have done it?
Now, what is candy?
Candy is the spinn off all happy ending.
Basicly, my idea is this, the muse cause homestuck, then after literaly killing her brother on it, decidego have 2 endings.
Using a self insert create both ending, Candy is her personal Good ending, will meat is the one needed for the narrative.
And more than anything, Dirk is STILL a character, the muse isnt, she shows to be stronger than him, the original writter, so is dirk megalomaniacal god rampage basicly a scape goat villan, who is basicly taking calliborn's place.
And yes, hussie is a dumbass who dont really underestand social group like fandoms or economical/social theory.
Like how he newezt novel is an aleghory of him turning down the lider position of a cult.
Which has mever been a reality.
Abd even more so, he dosnt underestand why social movement emerge adn become violent, like how the french revolution wasnt a sole event or leader but the concecuences of decades of social circunstances.
I used to reflexively love the Epilogues, because other people hated them, but I've since mellowed a bit. I also prefer Candy to Meat; tragedies don't do as much for me as comedic anti-nihilist redemption arcs.
That said, I can understand people who don't like the Epilogues because they thought they'd be more like the Problem Sleuth epilogue; something to wrap up the story, not the prologue to a new tale. Plus, if you were highly emotionally invested in things like Rosemary, Dirk's redemption ark, and Roxy already being trans... yeah, I can see why this would be rough read. And, unlike the Caliborn chapters in Homestuck, there's no true "canon" Homestuck alternative on the horizon.
I'm curious if Casey James has any thoughts on Friendsim and Pesterquest. Back when Friendsim's chapters were first being released, I saw how many people hated my beloved V-written chapters, and, in retrospect, that warned me in advance how much a lot of people were going to be really upset by the Epilogues' sense of humor.
Have not played the dating sims. Plan to play Pesterquest eventually
@@caseyjarmes Fair warning: Pesterquest mostly assumes you've played Friendsim. It's basically a direct sequel.
I think you'd like Friendsim, though. Several of its writers are the same ones who wrote the Epilogues, and some of its chapters also go pretty ham on the meta-narrative angle. It's less meaty than, well, Meat, but it does go to some neat places, particularly in regards to Bad Ends in video games.
It also introduced the infinite hate sink that is Zebruh Codakk, and I have to admire a work that can introduce a character so thoroughly loathable. Although, of course, plenty of people dislike Friendsim for that very reason.
i actually quite like the epilogues as well, far more than i like homestuck 2, to be certain. while i dont think its a very good continuation of homestucks story, the events in it are so outlandish and the characterization is exaggerated enough to make it feel like a fever dream version of homestuck that didnt truly take place.
if i may make a comparison between what works about the epilogues and what doesnt with homestuck 2 is that while homestuck 2 just outright doesnt seem to understand what makes homestuck work, the epilogues do and intentionally subverts it
great video thank you. brb gonna log into my Seventy Alternative Accounts to farm views onto your dave essay to watch you ramble about terezi for half an hour or so
I genuinely think both Meat and Candy are simultaneously canon AND not-canon. Definitely feels like it.
I mean they are tales of dubious continuity
obligatory also "one of the artists making hussie's narrative shitpost comics' music was mfing TOBY FOX UNDERTALE", but if you're in this comment section you probably knew that already. it still gives me whiplash to this day when i remember the baby is you exists.
@@jeshirekitenkatt1212 honestly it’s not shocking that the maker of Undertale was involved with Homestuck. Undertale is very similar to Homestuck
@@caseyjarmes i'd personally say they're both metatextual deconstructions of fiction as a concept, but I think they go in very different directions with that deconstruction in ways that play off of their respective mediums. to claim they're so similar that it can't be jarring or make someone smile a little is to dismiss both of their merits and what they've done for those mediums that the other hasn't. /shrug
that said, homestuck is also actively hostile to it's reader while undertale by virtue of being a game reacts to your choices. and their senses of humor while similarly bizarre at times.. a lot of hussie's humor can rely on some level of meanness, which isn't bad, i just find that it's different and has different stuff to say about the topic. like, the dna is there, right, but a lot of things that are distinctly 'hussian' in nature have been toned down in favor of a different approach. i love both approaches.
EDIT: on second thought, the meanness or not of the comedy might have more to do with where the internet was when each one was made, but i still contend that toby's humor stands out seperately from hussie, who at times carries the energy of a chaos deity that toby simply does not.
but none of that was the point of the comment. the point was that it's objectively funny that award winning game dev toby fox who is now business buddies with nintendo is someone i grew up knowing as being the homestuck mpreg song guy. and then he put it in pokemon. sorry that doesn't even make you giggle even a little bit tho. :P
@@jeshirekitenkatt1212 the fact that there is an mpreg meme reference in Pokemon is hilarious
Also, I would argue that Undertale has the same hostility towards the player as Homestuck. The Genocide route is designed to be unfun. You miss out on NPC dialogue, all of the puzzles are solved for you, nearly every fight is ended in a single button press, the two exceptions are designed to be frustratingly difficult. Metatextually, the Genocide route is designed to punish the player for playing it Toby's humor is nicer but there is still a meanness in his design philosophy at times, something that I enjoy
@@caseyjarmesi think that's what i mean - undertale thoroughly lets you *earn* that hostility and gives you many chances to back out, which homestuck by it's nature can't do. homestuck doesn't care what your opinions are, it will hurt you anyways as well as the characters you love and you're going to have to live with that. which i think also just really matches the overall tones of those two -games- stories (hiveswap my beloved when shall you return from the war)! it's very neat how the fact homestuck being a comic and undertale being a game use that lack of or freedom of choice to their advantage.
i do think too that it's cool that while probably unintentional, in the epilogs and (so far as we can tell) deltarune, they have now swapped those perspectives on freedom of choice & power of perspective and how they leverage their strengths in *that* direction to completely disarm the audience is wild. toby and hussie are mad geniuses or something haha
You sir have reawakened a passion for meta narratives I haven’t thought about since Homestuck was updating and I thank you for reminding me of it
anyways, now that i've watched the whole thing: in hindsight, it kind of bugs me that it's played like john is being played as just an asshole here? john has also gone through an insane amount of trauma and there is a very real condition that can easily convince you that everyone you know and love is not real and has been replaced with a fake, one that often limits the extent of one's empathy and ability to connect with others (leaving them often seem oblivious or dense on an emotional front from the perspective of others) that often shows up and progresses as one gets older & which can be triggered by stress & trauma and often leads one to severely isolate themself and have (rarely, but sometimes) violent outbursts.
what i'm saying is that i take issue with it for the same reason gamzee is an ablist trope - john hasn't just convinced himself of this, he actually believes it and is experiencing what can only be called a delusion.
source: i have schizo-spec disorder & i know what being delusional looks like from having experienced it. and in john's situation i can see how one could easily be driven to being delusional, because it's made worse by the fact paranormal and messed up multiverse crap actually does happen around him all the time. ffs john is literally detached from reality at one point. many people who experience psychosis are able to seem 'normal' 99% of the time, too.
i haven't read homestuck 2 but i'd be curious to know if symptoms of disassociation and delusion are something that recur later for john.
Finally got around to watching this. I enjoyed the video, and I especially appreciate that it doesn't just ignore that The Epilogues are styled after fanfiction, or just pick at various plot points divorced of that context. I don't think that means you have to like it - even if it's a musical on purpose, everyone's still singing - but I wish that aspect of it wasn't ignored as often as it is, or to have it be reduced to a collection of plot points.
I recall you making a reply to a comment under your defense of the Homestuck ending video where you said you hate to give the Epilogues credit, but that they're about what the user was talking about. I found that a strange thing to say - even if you didn't like the epilogues - and I'm glad you seem more willing to give credit where you think it's due in this video (and criticisms where you think those are due).
I'm hopeful for Beyond Canon. I think I'm enjoying it more than you from the brief bit you said about it, but I do hope things start to move in it. It can't have been easy to pick up the pieces from the old team and to transition it into the story that they want to tell, but the updates so far do still feel like they're moving pieces around and catching the audience up to where everyone is. It's necessary, but at one update a month, I hope it's not too many updates before this transitional period is over.
Just started this, I've been curious about the epilogues for YEARS but have avoided them because people flamed them so hard when they dropped. Super excited to see where this goes!
edit: i cant believe I never connected cursed child as getting the same crit of "bad fanfiction" with homestuck before i literally gasped. I kinda love cursed child though because its camp to me and it makes people who like HP mad.
I really enjoyed this video and I feel like I've actually found someone who also enjoyed the epilogues. Actually watched all 3 hours lol. Also I very much agree on your sentiment on homestuck^2 and homestuck beyond canon. I very much hope they succeed in making the comic do something interesting now.
I only read homestuck^2 because tavros crocker is my goat
I was postponing watching this video for so long bc i was genuinely scared that you would change my opinion on Homestuck Epilogue. And then I watched all 3h. And you did change my mind. Again. Wow. I feel like I was just to lazy to go any deeper with interpreting it and I'm glad I forced myself to watch your video, no regrets
I'm actually re going through homestuck and I think what I enjoy the most is it's in my opinion a take on online friendships and as someone who married the person they met online homestuck serves as the feel good material that the connection I make can last a long time while still being me but maybe just a little different.
58:06 You need to imbrase the two Sollux theory like me! Also technically two Aradia's( and double nepetas and fefs)
Well it has to be since (Vriska) and (Terezi) still exist despite them being from a re-conned timeline. So of course the sollux that was fully blind and fully alive (thanks to the eridian and sollux fusion sprite) is still our there. Along with the one who is only half dead (and had to be because that sprite became davepetasprite)
Oh right! And the two Tavros's which one got turned onto Jake's sprite and one was helping fight English.
1:00:52 I chalk that one up to "alive characters have far more effect on the plot then dead ones". There are a lot of ghosts that fall but none of them change anything in the plot overall. True, it's mostly true with the ghosts in hs proper too! With a few exceptions but those were either Vriska, Meenah, or Not Vriska. I guess Kurloz too but it was more part of LE rising to power deal.
1:04:40 that is technically a retcon as homestuck pages were originally numbered by total number of pages of everything on mspa but it is a fun new page nonetheless
1:26:00 my take was that Dirk is not missgendering Roxy because of Transphobia but more part of his own self hatred mythos coming into question. Because for years Roxy was hitting on him because they were the last surviving people and it wouldn't work because Dirk is gay. But now that Roxy might not consider herself a women anymore, it brings Dirk into questioning how the hell he see's them. And ultimately pulls the Egbert move and pretend it didn't happen and not to think about it. Still transpobic as hell but in a more character driven way.
Personally, I couldn't finish reading the epilogues (Despite desperately trying) was because I simply never vibed with the aspects of homestuck they try to deconstruct nor the 'humor' of mocking one's own fanbase. Those aspects were always my least favorite part of homestuck, though i still enjoy them and think they were executed well, and seeing the epilogues throw away the characters I care about in favor of fucking with the audience was something I could never enjoy. Yet, I'm really glad that people CAN enjoy it and take meaning from things I can't even stand!
Whether or not it's being done for the purpose of "deconstruction" or some kind of irony, an officially sanctioned piece of media being fetish material is weird and bad.
just starting to watch now but man i have been dying for a pro-epilogues take, thank you
Candy-angled character from Meat-timeline frightens heel-adopt narrator and fans. Love it!
John could be the narrator of candy, narrator as the one describing the world not the controller, stating all the madness caused by the fan fiction nonsense
Out of curiosity, is that how you pronounce "fascist" normally, or is it an attempt to dodge demonitization or something?
Normally
@@caseyjarmes Oh interesting, I've never heard anyone else pronounce it that way before. Thanks for answering!
15:41 Funny you bring this up, waaaaaay back when the pesterchum chat client was good. I found a trickster cult. That they were acting weird, at first i thought they were just rping super hard. ( I was sorely mistaken). Anyway they made a skype group that i joined just to see what this was even about. They were going to "make a real homestuck session", but i didnt make the cut. i had made files about all that happened with me, but they're lost on one of my high school flash drives. 😅
Goddamn it why did I will this into existence
Dont worry, you didnt. This was years ago 😂
my brain so homestuckpilled i read the desc as "i think theyre meat"
They are in fact meat
I’m not done with this delicacy of a video quite yet but I just want to say something.
I am reallllllly afraid of the Epilogues. Like, rereading homestuck before I let myself even consider reading it scared.
I really get attached to certain characters and they mean a lot to me. From what I have heard, Epilogues literally tear all of my favorite ships and characters to shreds. So I’m a bit…. Nervous. Lol.
I just really really want to believe the story is all fan fiction written by the characters, if that makes sense. Like, Dirk is actually very healthy and relatively normal and with Jake and they’re good and everything’s FUCKING fine….
that's why it's specifically stated to be non canon. you can decide if you believe in it or not, like the santa claus of dubious literature. it can be a dirkjake detective pony masterpiece if that's what your heart is telling you
interesting to know wtf happened in deathly hallows lol
I think I love homestuck more now, I think is because the stupidily violent deconstruction is my favorite part of the comic
I'm sorry, but while I enjoyed the video up to 1:38:44, and tried to see your perspective of things, I couldn't with the whole Gamzee thing. Both you, the writers, and Hussie somehow, through a miraculous means of sheer ignorance that I'm both befuddled and saddened by, misunderstand him. So many clear lines drawn with his character that are entirely missed, only to be intersected at random intervals in the story. I just couldn't. I was gonna hear you out, but I couldn't sum up the will to do that while still trying to understand the fuckery that is the Epilogues. I refuse. I wanted to, but I couldn't.
I'm not sure what this means
@@caseyjarmes Sorry, my thoughts were very much conglomerated when writing that comment. I truly did appreciate your commentary on the Epilogues, but your unnecessary comments on Gamzee as a character when he truly served no relevance to the actual plot of the continuations besides to be a shock factor turned me off completely to continuing the video.
Also, for some reason, you said he had no relevance to the actual structure of the original plot of Homestuck, which is entirely untrue. I was genuinely confused when you said that, since he obviously and very much does contribute to the plot significantly - if not even more than nearly any other main character.
@@user-vf3pz4br1g I don't believe that Gamzee is irrelevant. When I say that, I am quoting Dirk, and showing on screen the line of narration where Dirk insults Gamzee and says he shouldn't be allowed to be relevant again. Gamzee is is a very plot relevant character.
And I do think that calling Gamzee the worst is relevant, when he is acting like the worst, and John is saying that he is the worst. Gamzee's shock value is a messy and I think it's the worst written part of the Epilogues, but it does serve a narrative purpose: to make John realize that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world, triggering his dsescent into nihilism.
I'm also very confused by the statement that Andrew Hussie misunderstands Gamzee. Gamzee isn't real. He's a fictional character created by Hussie who, through most of the comic, acts like a violent chaotic asshole and makes everything worse. The Epilogues have him at his most vile, but I do think that is in line with how he was characterized for most of the comic
@user-vf3pz4br1g Imo it’s less that Hussie misunderstands Gamzee but more that they alter the character because they stopped liking him at some point and didn’t like that people liked him, basically pulling a Thomas Astruc (creator of MLB)
The writing for Gamzee in the epilogues is consistent with canon because Hussie rewrote Gamzee in canon to become a caricature of himself and unrecognizable (and also with racist and ableist traits that say more about Hussie, who was in their thirties(iirc) at the time, than the character itself)
There’s a great video about it, made with contributions from people of color, called “How to find a Gamzee”, that explores more about these subjects if you’re ever interested!
2:42:40 my personal headcanon is that meat is the timeline where calliborn dominates while candy is where al comes from
At some points, this unironically kinda feels like one of those anti-sex fanfictions where the writer is making a bad faith argument about how the cast aging up and fucking ruins everything. x.x
I think there is some thematic poetry with a story as messy as homestuck having an unfinished sequel, and never be finished
Watching you break down meat and dirk's descent into evil was really cool and makes me want to re-read it fully. But it also made me realize why I don't like gamzee's character arc in the main story. His descent into villainy felt very undercut when he was turned into a character that got beat up for jokes interspliced between being a genuinely intimidating monster towards many other characters. He got neither the satisfaction of being a well built, intimidating villain like jack or LE nor just as a loser we could just make fun of like the dancestors.
I'm 55 minutes into the video and I have to go and watch a movie, so i'll recap my thoughts now cause I have a lot to say. I read the epilogues when they first came out and never since, so my memory is very fuzzy. I have always said that I hated the epilogues (and I never even read ^2 because of it, but this is not relevant.) Though, if I recall correcty, there were small parts I liked too. I think, now, I would say I liked and hated it at the same time. The ending of homestuck was amazing in my opinion even though I had never really put together the symbolic rejection John made in choosing not to fight. Even though I never realized it, I actually internalized it anyway just out of my desire to ignore the caliborn claymation scene as a doomed timeline of some description. I liked the happy ending. I feel similarly about all media. The characters in any game or movie or tv show are being observed by the viewer, but you do not see their entire lives when a scene cuts or time skips an hour or years. With this in mind, The prospect of what happens to a character when the cameras arent watching can be terrifying, principally the idea that they stop acting, they stop living, they stop thinking. Much like when john is trapped for a quadrillion years. Even in a happy scenario, when you work so hard in a game to, say, have a relationship, the game ends right after. but I want them to live on and enjoy it. After enjoying these characters, I want them to live on without my view, I want that happy ending (or a sad ending, just so long as it ends.) The epilogues are the same. there's a deep gut feeling that you aren't supposed to be here watching this. It is fanfiction in the sense that it's a single interpretation of what happens after the ending, and not canon because of it, that lets me ignore it. The undertale genocide route is the same. The story can be engaging at times, but it treats you like a villain for experiencing it. You should not be there. Undertale punishes your bad decision by killing loved characters - Homestuck punishes your bad decision by fucking with their personalities due to the curse that rose was dealing with (and killing dirk, my favorite character.) That's why i hate the epilogues. they're a venture into a land that shouldnt exist, shouldnt be percieved. the original ending of homestuck will always be the real ending for me. And yet, that doesnt mean the epilogues dont have good literary moments. i found myself pausing the video and reading screenshots ots several times even if i felt bad doing it. I still dont like the epilogues and dont plan on reading them again, but i can admit they can be enjoyable, just not by me, lmao. Also, in case you were agreeing with me too much, I always liked vriska and I always will :^)
these are mostly my thoughts too. i really enjoyed the epilogues while i was reading them! but only as a like... well written angsty fanfiction that i can pick bits and pieces from to go into my own headcanons of characters and ignore the rest. i feel the same about homestuck^2/beyond canon - i view it as a fanventure. it's fun, but only if i see it as that. if i were to consider it canon it would piss me off pretty bad with how it basically just disregards so many of the character arcs of homestuck proper. i get the deconstruction of narrative thing, but... idk. even post- [s] game over stuff was sloppy in how ooc the characters felt. but we at least got two awesome animations to finish it off with collide and act 7. i would have greatly preferred if the epilogues and hs2 didn't exist in favor of focusing on hiveswap. with smaller games like friendsim to hold over until each hiveswap act is released... i like the hiveswap and friendsim stuff because it's just supplementary material, with its own characters and a new adventure. it's not trying to drag out a story that should have just ended in 2016, even if that ending wasn't perfect.
I wish I joined your community earlier so I could participate in that poll. When epilogues first came out, I read them before hearing anyone else's opinion about them, and then was surprised at the amount of hate they got. Sure, they weren't great, but the idea of characters in a story taking control of the narrative in order to keep themselves alive and relevant sounded really fresh and novel to me. I also thought that the Candy route was purposefully made bland and boring in order to pass it off Meat as the stronger, more "canon" narrative.
Anyway I disliked what they did to certain characters and the tone shift was a bit sudden too, but that canon vs dubious canon premise sounded interesting. Looking forward to where James's team takes it!
I am going to try really hard to format this comment in a way that is coherent and legible, and translate my long long history and thoughts about homestuck into a meaningful read, which is the least I can do for an amazing video essay.
I read the epilogues when they came out, and they hit me hard. Johns death in meat was heart wrenching because dirks narration made the moment heart wrenching and cemented my anger towards dirk, because Dirks belittlement of John really highlighted how much he mattered. And Candy John believing Terezi is dead reopened those wounds when i got around to Candy. I viewed both as two halves of the story, and the ways the two foiled and mirrored one another made me enjoy them when I reread them after completing both. Even now, I would defend them not as perfect stories but as stories with merit that should be engaged with intent and analysis rather than gut reactions and a broad brush.
I say all this as a preamble to really take the fine tooth comb to some things that I like, that I know from talking to people at the time, received a lot of push back. I really think the epilogues are meant to be read twice (or four times? Since there are two? Idk). Like, once I had read the twist/reveal/revelation of the John/Roxy conversation in Candy, I went back and read both stories over again, and really interrogated my perceptions of the characters, trying my best to divorce the narrator in the case of meat. And the thing is, aside from Jane, I don't actually think any of the characters trajectories/outcomes in either timeline don't follow from the characters they were in the main story. Im going to home in on Jade, since aside from Jane and Dirk, she was the other big character that I remember people having a great number of issues with the way she was written, and for what its worth, I did not see you talk about her that much.
Setting Aside Yiffany for now (we will be back to her), the fact that shes out of the story for the lions share of meat, combined with her... less than ideal relationship with Dave in candy, made a lot of people dissatisfied with the way she was treated. The thing is: Jade Harley has spent most of her life isolated. Whether it be growing up on an island or spending years trapped on a ship traveling between the 4th wall, the universe has conspired to keep Jade Harley lonely. Even once she was able to be around her friends physically, she still felt isolated from them, and If i remember correctly, it is speculated in Homestuck this is due to her Classpect by.. I want to say Muse Calliope? Al? It may have been normal Calliope but I want to say it was Al. Regardless, this is an inescapable fact of her character, so when I read through Candy the second time, alot of her behavior that people took issue with was re contextualized, now that I could ignore John's unreliable narration. Like, her whole conversation which makes Dave and Karkat uncomfortable, is still kinda messed up, but from Jade's perspective, shes desperate for scraps, to feel like she belongs, like she is connected to someone, and is willing to beg for crumbs from Dave and Karkat. Its uncomfortable to read, to see a character that I really like act this way, but my thoughts on it is that this is kinda.. this is something that might have happened to jade anyways after the curtains closed. Interpersonal conflict and a characters problems wouldn't vanish once the story is over if it was real, we as audience just wouldn't see it, we just wouldn't be privy to their problems anymore.
Which brings us back to Yiffany. I.. actually like this twist? Not everything about it. I think Kanaya up until recently is really robbed of her role as Rose's wife, but as a big Jade fan, I really really get why it happened the way it did. The reasons Jade was never going to be okay with adoption or ectobabies is really the same thing I was talking about earlier. The universe and fate conspires to keep Jade Harley isolated, so Is it no wonder she wants kids, kids of her own. Is it any wonder why she need it to be hers biologically, for there to be unbreakable bond of mother and daughter? There is a gulf between Jade and the rest of the cast, one that Jade is in some part responsible for keeping as Kanya rightly calls out in her anger, but like: can you even blame her? She's been isolated for so long emotionally, im not surprised distancing herself and hiding her affairs (literally) has become a defense mechanism.
Kanya has every right to angry. Every right to be hurt. But so does jade. She wanted to be close to someone for so long, so badly she ruined Karkat and Dave's relationship, so bad that Dave dipped out on them. So badly she spent years trying to date anyone and only getting burned and burned again and again, and all her friends would do is lecture her on boundaries, when she just needed to be close to someone. Yiffany to her is that person and the irony of it all is that her doting is possibly going to end up with her suffering the same fate she keeps suffering over and over again.
I also really hate the toxic minefield that is jades... parts? It feels simultaneously bigoted and like there is potential to do compelling thigs with it, but Hussie is the last person I would want tackling this topic but we are here, and like, god can we just put it to bed? I think you could talk about say, Dysphoria Jade might have and there are some cool stuff you can do, but Hussie does not have the track record for me to trust him with it, but also I dont want to hear people discuss it because I think alot of it is knee-jerk reactions and not coming from an honest place.
There is so much more I could talk about but Im gonna wrap it up here. Thank you for the video essay. If people wanna hear more about my thoughts or need me to explain something lemme know in the comments and ill try and respond.
Not perfect but stories to be engaged with intent and analysts is how I see the epilogues
I only read the epilogues to hate on them more effectively and ended up loving hating them so much that i just kinda.. like them. lol.
Great video. I'm really glad the last Homestuck thng i read was the crow strider au . It was really good
Ty fam, i was jonesn' for some HS video essay
I don’t know how i feel about beyond canon but a good note is jane was literally groomed as an heir to the condesce in homestuck so that’s not a lot but a good deal of why she’s probably evil
if you're looking for a homestuck fanwork sequel that isn't afraid to touch on the meta stuff in the original comic, then i'd recommed "Mr tambourine man" it's one of the most beautiful, faithfull, and best written fan work's i've ever seen.
Thanks for the rec
Oh dang, this is taking me back to when I actually read most of the epilogues, in spite of what everyone said. I honestly wish I could look back and say I have strong thoughts and feelings about them and what happened there.
I came into homestuck at the end of some hiatus and got greeted by another one by the time I had caught up. I don't think I was able to appreciate its meta narrative very well at the time, and I honestly started to lose touch with it post-cascade. I just didn't find the relationship drama afterwards terribly interesting at all compared to the stuff before. After years to get that ending, I was mostly feeling apathetic. They got their happy ending, lord english was presumably defeated by the magic box or whatever, the end. I was honestly happy to have it considering all the drama behind the scenes that was slowly souring my enjoyment of the withering franchise.
In spite of my lack of strong feelings, i do think my thoughts at the time I read the epilogues pretty closely resemble Casey's. Seeing all the characters change as they grew up in candy and dealt with all that trauma in what felt like a more grounded, if purposefully bad fan-fictiony, narrative... It was sad and tragic, but it felt more real than if they had just stayed the way they were. Though this isn't the only controversial character development opinion i hold... *cough cough* Luke Sywalker in The Last Jedi made perfect sense to me narratively *cough cough*... It was still a weird slog, but it kept my interest, because I was apparently at least a bit interested in a deconstruction of fanfiction. I think the fact that I had not read much homestuck fanfiction was both a blessing and a curse here. On the one hand it was all new to me, but on the other I didn't have any context for the deconstruction. So I lost interest and moved on with my life part way into meat.
Also weird side theory. What if homestuck is a cursed creature that lives by making fun of its audience until it alienates them, and then only continues because it immediately picks up a new one that isn't the target of the jokes? I just, feel like there is a strange pattern there.
Anywho, thanks for this journey into my past. Also I'm hoping writing this will put some very old thoughts of mine to rest at last.
Sure glad DirkRose is canon, huh.
It isn’t?
Thank you for this video.
Can't wait to watch this, I'm in the same camp, I love the epilogues even though they're very stupid.
Commenting to bump it up hehe
THE 2:15:00 PLOT TWIST CAUGHT ME OFF GUARD OH MY GOD
Is anyone finna talk about the that jack and Jane both slept together in 47:55 like bro that wild
I now realize that the solution to people constantly misinterpreting the epilogues is simply put calliope and Dirk in the author section. Ao3 allows for collective authors so simply add them, it would be like the time loop nonsense that homestuck is built on
Page of Hope: Rise Up (?)
hiveswap video essay when
@@skittlegore 2026 maybe? I did consider making a video on Hiveswap, Pesterchum, or that clown game Hussie made for my 2025 essay, but I decided on a different topic. Although, maybe I’ll wait til Hiveswap is done in 2050 before making an essay on it
@@caseyjarmes lmao ill wait then your homestuck video essays r always good
i cant watch another 3h homestuck video this soon or can i
this except i dont like it.. but its conceptualization is cleverly ironic?.. i guess?.. the art is pretty 😎
woops i meant hs2. epilogues dont got art dawg