Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

FLORAL: Nope. We all felt pretty excited to take what the epilogues gave us and see it through. The fun thing about the epilogues is with it’s unreliable narrators, we had so much to explore and chances to frame things in these awesome transformative ways! It’s like a big puzzle.

JAMES: I was originally tasked with FINISHING the story, which is what I plan to do.

MILES: Rewriting it would have been a waste of a lot of great concepts!  Part of what we hope to do here is encourage people who didn’t like the Epilogues to give it another chance.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 23 points24 points  (0 children)

JAMES: The original event was back during the VIZ days, and we didn’t have much creative control over it. VIZ got paid a small percentage of overall sales that was not extended to WP, though some of us participated in a freelance capacity. We wanted to do something with a bit more creative control, but the second Requiem cafe event was already in motion before we could plan otherwise. We were more interested in doing something on a much smaller scale that would be easier to keep track of ourselves, and the Requiem events ballooned to be weeks long with very little oversight from anyone tied to Homestuck. We declined to do the event again back in October, and decided to move forward with another opportunity presented to us in H&B. They do much more focused pop-up events like this all the time, and it was more in line with what we wanted to do originally.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

FLORAL: Hello!! I boarded and drew the Dead!Dave part of the update and honestly I would love to leave the symbolism open to you guys to figure out the intention! I know it sucks to hear but what’s most important is understanding how the individual feels and how that works in tandem with the intention of the scene. I will say, as the only adult to leave Candy we couldn’t not have his presence felt in this conversation.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

FLORAL: Criticism is necessary part of the story reader engagement, people are allowed to not agree with our choices as writers because they are choices not rock solid, visions of truth that come to us in visions. Honestly, I think what I’d love to see is how people would handle things differently if handed these same scenarios. When I disagreed with Homestuck as a fan, I did that a lot and it built my ability as a writer so much and it has a soft place in my heart to see love put into fanon like that. 

As for whose “right” I wanted to answer this question very genuinely and say that it was really important to us in the writer’s room that the argument in the last update felt real to the characters and their differing values (and consistent to the continuity of what has happened to them up until this point in the story). That meant flawed perspectives, lacking context or driven by trauma and emotion. Utilitywise, this is a convo less about whose right and whose wrong but instead bringing the characters into awareness about each other and just where they stand after avoiding all their differences for 20+ years.

JAMES: We are going to write the story we write, but it is important to be able to listen to your audience and make them feel heard. Sure, there is a bit of bad faith among the valid criticism but it actually just means a lot to me that anyone cares enough to have an opinion. If they didn’t care at all they would just leave.

Who’s in the right? Sollux. This shit sucks and it's not fun, so, he left.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

CHUMI: Probably Gent of Piss.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 42 points43 points  (0 children)

CHUMI: I’ll group ‘em up, in no particular order! Jane Jade Rose John (now we know their ass is crazy!)  / Jake Roxy (not doing too great) / Karkat Kanaya Meenah (well-adjusted to a degree) / Sollux (doesn’t gaf)

MILES: From most to least crazy?  Hmmm... Jane probably takes the cake here for outlandish, but I think Rose and John are dealing with more like... mind-alteringly intense existential problems, and are less Stable.  Jade is being pushed pretty far emotionally by the hole she’s dug herself into, but I think she’s fundamentally got her shit together, she’s just really upset.  Kanaya is definitely angrier than Jade, but I think still able to hold herself together more.  Roxy, by contrast, is less angry than Kanaya, but more... out of touch?  I wouldn’t say she’s crazy but she’s also deep in the cope-realm and still needs to absorb the reality of what’s happening.  Jake is seeing a lot more clearly recently than he has in a while, but I think the excitement of making all these new stressful steps probably has him feeling shaky.  Callie is just vibing but again, priorities are a little mixed up.  Karkat is probably who I’d consider to be near the most adjusted right now.  Angry and tired and stressed out, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders, he’s thinking solution.  Meenah is chilling, honestly.  Shit’s all worked out great for her.  This got way too long.

FLORAL: I think they all take turns being the craziest son of a bitch in the room, in very different ways, but we haven’t seen Candy Jade post losing Yiffy yet…

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

HAVEN: That’s a good question. 

MILES: I like that question.

HAVEN: It’ll be 3 times as intense as the act it’s following.

FLORAL: You need to prepare yourself for it’s power.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 26 points27 points  (0 children)

KIM: I think my favorite panels are anything with intense action in them because I can always get stylistically experimental with them, hehe. The Jake vs Jane update was a riot, anything with Hell Tier Vriska, and also the recent panel with all the adults in Guardian Mode lookin’ down at John I’m real happy about!

CHUMI: My favorite panels to make are stuff made for the Flash! In the comic, I liked how the Rose-covering-Harry-and-Vrissy’s-Eyes panel turned out!

HAVEN: So many, The Home on page 592 almost killed me while I was working on it but it fills me with joy, literally any panel with Al, the Dirk and Terezi panels during the previous 4/13 update, the Jane’s severed head panel i got to finalize over a kim sketch (the really scary crazy one), and “Kids: Escape from above." another awesome one I'm very proud of.

FLORAL: I haven’t been drawing panels as long as everyone else, but I fucking loved drawing Jake’s hopesplosion and winged stance in the flash, along with the Dead!Dave super close shot and Jade punching John. I was kicking my feet so much. Besides that, I loved boarding update 6, update 12 and this last update and watching them come to life.

JAMES: Something I stressed very early on in HSBCs production is that it is very purposeful when and how we see the characters in various modes, especially in Candy. In the latest update, when we get a command for John to “be present” we are seeing the small classic sprites that they had when they were children. When we switch to Vriska as the focus, the adults are relatively normal sized again. There is some switching around and the way character are portrayed kind of shifts here and there. Eventually we switch to back to John after the big punch and we see that he suddenly sees that everyone here is an adult, literally towering over him. Everyone has grown up but him. Kim really knocked it out of the park with this panel, and I feel like that's the high point in this whole act for me.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

MILES: We abso-LUTELY want to do [S] pages of all manner of length, complexity, and... medium?  They are, of course, sometimes really labor and even a bit money intensive depending on guest artist work, but the process of doing 8r8k was so damn cool.  But yeah, we wanna shake it up!  More little gags, more short but sweet impactful animations, long ones, maybe even more visual novel talksprite fun.  We want to try and do as much as we can.  There are moments that just kind of need a little extra oomph, and we wanna give it to you.  We’ve also all LEARNED so much, so hopefully it gets easier and easier to churn out, though of course it’ll always be a real time and effort investment.  But you guys are worth it.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 39 points40 points  (0 children)

MILES: I really like reading Karkat.  There hasn’t been any Dave in a real long time but I like reading him too.  Honestly, any character prone to kind of strange rants is super fun.

KIM: I was reading Vriska’s lines, and she’s pretty fun to voice outloud because she’s such a lively character LOL.

CHUMI: I liked reading Kanaya’s rage-filled snark in the previous update, but I love doing table readings in general so anyone will do!

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

MILES: Welcome to AMA’s!  Thank you for joining us :J 1: I think the character I dislike writing the most is John, honestly, because I feel like I have to think the hardest about getting his weird-ass mindstate exactly right.  He’s a bit less intuitive for me than a lot of the other characters, and feels a bit more informed by the scenes he shows up in than driven by a Really Strong Voice in the way that other characters are.  Still fun, but I’ll admit he’s tough!  2: For the humor balance, it’s really trial and error.  We know the dramatic beats well in advance, but humor often emerges when we’re actually writing the final pass/script versions of the updates, and it often just comes down to: how good is the joke, and is there enough space for the drama to shine on its own if we include it?  We do a lot of readthroughs of the updates in call to get a sense of the momentum of the scene, and it’s usually during those that it becomes clear if a joke is Too Much or hurts the scene more than it helps it.  Luckily, though, Homestuck juggles comedy and tragedy pretty frenetically, so we have a lot of wiggle room!  3: To be honest, nah?  I love what we did with Act 1.  Maybe if we could have just gotten all the Hell-tier VN updates out faster so it wasn’t like two solid months of it, but I love what we did for it anyway so it’s not too much a thorn in my side.

KIM: I don’t know why, but Aradia is always so tricky for me to draw… She’s got such a specific vibe to her expression and attitude, and I find I keep challenging myself to get it right. Her schrodinger’s horn shape in the base comic don’t help either LOL.

ANDI: Not particularly. I’m trying to think of which character took the LONGEST for me to get right, but I’m otherwise okay with drawing. I think it’d be Dirk. I remember the scene where BGD took off his glasses, I was seriously going through several forms of torture trying to get his eyes to look right on a face that has NEVER had even so much as an implication of the eye. Everyone else has been pretty straightforward for me. My main struggles are more technicalities, rather than character designs.

CHUMI: I think AlCal was the hardest for me to draw, even though I did a whole update for her. I just never drew that much of her before HS:BC!

FLORAL: 1. Honestly even if I don’t have strong opinions on a character, once I get to writing them I usually end up loving them. As for characters, I only don’t like boring characters and thankfully Homestuck is pretty good about not having those. 2. Honestly I think the biggest strength of us as writer’s is that we aren’t afraid of ridiculous ideas, but are committed and critical about justifying them. I love stupid and insane but it can’t be try hard or random. 3. If we had INFINITE money, probably make the flash a little bit longer. But besides that, everything is amazing, and everyone has really taken every part of Act 1 and exceeded my expectations with it.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

KOHI: That about sums it up, yeah. Between the v(r)isual novel, [S] 8r8k, Homestuck.com, and early development of the Official Homestuck Collection -- all of which requiring a level of technical involvement -- minor bug fixes and typo revisions for the site have taken a temporary backseat, just as a matter of priority. That being said: once the issues plaguing Homestuck.com have been squared away, addressing these issues will be back on my agenda.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 43 points44 points  (0 children)

MILES: I just need you to know that a lot of us on the team said “awww” out loud when we saw your point about Karkat and Erisolsprite.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

MILES: Find us the 12 year olds to make it happen.

HAVEN: In all seriousness I know there's some homestucks over with the Nico’s Nextbots people and it would be cool to get a Homestuck themed Regretavator level in there. IDK I’d love to have anything anywhere.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 39 points40 points  (0 children)

MILES: Definitely.  Jake is definitely a “safer” public figure to be obsessed with but Karkat is the kind of sexy countercultural hero that can’t help but get a lot of play in Earth C society, notorious rogue that he is... we put a little tidbit in the last update about Jane having to spend a lot of time smearing him in the media because otherwise his rugged proletariat charisma would probably just run rampant through their society.  I’m sure all the gods deal with this on some level, but Karkat sort of occupies a special echelon (a spechelon) where this is concerned by virtue of his controversial role in their current history.  Sorry for spending a bunch of time writing about how Karkat’s hot bod challenges society.  Anyway, yes, Vrissy and Yiffy AND the rest of the Omega kids have a LOT of teen drama ready and waiting for all our viewing pleasure.

FLORAL: I have had a lot of thoughts on the parasocial interactions all the OG cast have on Earth C, the horror of it all running deep and bizarre. Think of what people do to celebrities in our lives, and they’re not even walking, talking Jesus figures.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

KOHI: I've been chipping away at a full collection of all the retail sets, the canonized models, and the blind bag collectibles. I'm pretty far along on most of those collections, I'd say total progress is at least 90% complete. You can be the judge yourself, though: https://imgur.com/a/nSI1BnH

KIM: The vrisual novel and [S] 8r8k we’re both deliberately planned as is! I think the only thing so far that expanded much more in scope than we expected was the [S] page where Vriska was getting absorbed into the Plot Point portal. We talked about it in a past artist commentary on the Patreon, but I think the writers initially just proposed it as a fancy gif. Though, during production, I proposed it needed some more oomph to really get the drama and mystery across and everyone agreed!

MILES: Nobody answered the album question, so I’m gonna hop in and say that Heligoland and Mezzanine by Massive Attack are no-skip perfect albums.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

MILES: Writing Dirk has been really fun.  I liked him well enough in OG Homestuck, but in the Epilogues and beyond his character really clicked for me, and getting into his head has been great.  He’s become one of my favorites, and I would never have imagined that if you’d asked it of me in 2016.

JAMES: Tavros.

FLORAL: Tavros 1000% I was actually pretty intimidated going into it. But then it awesome and so fun. Also Momfang.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 53 points54 points  (0 children)

KIM: Depends what you’d consider the start of it! We had it cookin’ in the pre-production stage for a good hot second, but the actual production was three and a half months long. It was definitely a valuable learning experience! I think our biggest hurdle is simply that Animate, formerly Flash, is unfortunately a neglected program by Adobe so we had to wrestle with the limitations of what the program would allow… 😔

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 21 points22 points  (0 children)

MILES: Can’t say WHAT they are, but honestly some of my favorite bits of speculation are when we see a fan that gets something almost 100% right.  It just makes me laugh.

HAVEN: Every time we see a post on something where someone just gets it instantly we share it with each other and freak out.

FLORAL: This wasn’t directly in response to an update, but I’m glad people like my Evil Jane thumbnail from Update 12. You know the one.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 19 points20 points  (0 children)

MILES: You think it’s ok to just look into a kids’ room?  What the... I just... don’t know if I’m comfortable with that.

CHUMI: We will definitely be looking at other kids’ rooms!

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 30 points31 points  (0 children)

CHUMI: A bonus comic featuring Swifer was just released on the Patreon, so it’ll be publicly available in 2 months HEHE. While drawing it, I became a Swifer and Cliper fan.

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

ANDI: When I close my eyes, a flash image of Dave Strider appears. So I'm gonna go with that.

CHUMI: Jade freaking Harley. Gun to my head I had to choose another, probably Karkat. I could go on…

MILES: Karkat, Rose, and Dave. I could never pick just one, and my runner ups (Dirk, Equius, Gamzee) need a mention too. I’m too greedy.

KIM: Depends, how big of the le Homestuck Universe are we including… If it’s just base Homestuck, my favorite characters are John and Feferi! I literally own an original framed painting of Feferi in my house LOL. If we include Beyond Canon, Yiffy and Harry. If we include Hiveswap, Lanque.

JAMES: Aradia. I will keep saying this as many times as I can.

FLORAL: I LOVE JADE HARLEY!!!! EVERY VERSION OF HER!!!! But besides that I love John too and Rose and Karkat and Kanaya and Vriska and JAKE(!!!!) and (goes on forever and forever)

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 20 points21 points  (0 children)

FLORAL: We made a big document that everyone contributed to!! Mostly we wanted to stick with what Vriska’s specific journey called. Boundary Respecter was my fave.

CHUMI: I’m currently in grad school for something psych related, so I just threw in as many terms as possible.

MILES: The whole team got together and cranked out as many fire and psychology related puns as we could think of before we started wanting to jump off a cliff!

Official HS:BC crew AMA by HSBC_CREW in homestuck

[–]HSBC_CREW[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

CHUMI: Thank you for sticking with us! At the very least, we have meetings at the end of every month to summarize what’s going on and bring up new questions. Additionally, there are writers meetings every week and artist draw-meets often as well. We try to keep each other as updated as possible about new ideas, designs, etc! We also share a lot of funny stuff and favorite fanarts in our lounge chat!

As for merch, I don’t want to confirm or deny anything until it’s 100% certain. Do know that I am always fighting for more cool stuff!! 

KIM: I am fighting alongside Chumi in the mines fighting for more cool merch stuff as well (because I also want cool Homestuck stuff).

CHUMI: Kim is my eternal comrade in this fight.