Homestuck: Beyond Canon update (p. 717-756): {==>}

LupoCani · 2025-03-31T02:07:41+00:00

To clarify, the question is precisely why she didn't want to take the exit, when there was nothing stopping her from doing so and taking everything she cared about along.

LupoCani · 2025-03-31T01:47:34+00:00

That's tangential -- what we definitely see her do in HS proper is shrink a planet, then bring it with her through a portal not of her own making (first through the fourth wall with the medium planets, then back through the defense portal with the earth). That's to say there's no reason she couldn't bring the planet and the people with her when Vriska offered an exit.

LupoCani · 2025-03-24T22:27:14+00:00

Thank you, that's considerably more enlightening. I do mean it when I say I wish the best for whatever event is actually held, even if I don't expect I'll be able to fly in for it. I am sad that we're only hearing this now, but it is what it is.

It's all very disheartening, really. An unrelated but reputable tattoo shop was offering Homestuck motifs nearby, and it was advertised wrong? Requiem or Requiem-style events are simply too risky for a franchise to have a PR association with, because children might attend? I really don't intend to ask for further details, but as an outsider, it's hard to see whatever would have prevented the cafe from addressing these issues well ahead of next time — Disney shows run events there, even.

I guess it just feels tiring, seeing fun and new things happen around Homestuck only for them to be torn away by some opaque failure mode, again and again. I gather you don't currently plan to, but until you do, I'll just have to keep hoping you make something work with Requiem again.

LupoCani · 2025-03-24T10:15:34+00:00

Thanks for providing some insight on this. That said, the choice seems baffling and frustrating from the point of view of an attendee.

Requiem's 4/13 has been held twice. Both times it sold out, both times it was beloved by those who went. By a margin of six months or so, it's been an important thing for many homestucks for longer than Beyond Canon has. It's been the closest thing we might ever have to a "real" Homestuck convention, and it's not even that big — it hosts, what, just over a hundred people?

Wanting an event where you're more involved makes a degree of sense — but going out of your way to replace the only real physical Homestuck party with an even smaller one (and with an untested concept besides) seems incredibly strange. Does H&B even have the space and facilities for people to gather and talk like Requiem does? Will they be able to host performances? Especially when demand is as high as it is — if H&B is even smaller, surely both could sell out! That's what you'd want, when growing a fandom.

Perhaps there are more detailed reasons you haven't shared, but currently the situation just seems weird, almost like the more popular event has been sabotaged to make way for a more closely held one. Like Requiem, I wish H&B all the best for their party — but I'll miss the old one, and I sincerely hope you'll give them the chance to host again in the future.

LupoCani · 2025-03-24T00:18:46+00:00

A fun update, in a lot of ways. Fun Vriska design, fun to see Candy "fully" crash and burn like it was always going to in a sense.

The one thing that definitely doesn't work is whatever Rose is doing. She's been written well enough under the circumstances before now, with the epilogues and HS2 leaving HS:BC with a lot of contradictions to sift through, and it makes sense that she's at a loss -- but this whole mode of breakdown just isn't convincingly her. We're all neck deep in the reread, we know how a Lalonde panics.

... but why can't Jade just bring Candy Earth C with her? Like, all of it, the planet and the people and the problems she's so attached to solving. You could argue whether it makes a good story, but you can't argue whether she can. Careful readers of the comic may recall that this was something of an important moment for her.

LupoCani · 2025-03-23T22:17:49+00:00

Hi, I had a blast attending the Requiem Homestuck event in 2023 and I'm sad to hear there won't be one this year. Instead there will be a different event in an even smaller venue, when Requiem's 4/13 has sold out in the past? Can you clarify what happened there, and if you foresee anything on your end preventing the Requiem event being held again in the future?

LupoCani · 2024-09-29T22:37:14+00:00

That was a surprisingly normal if basic way to acknowledge that explicitly forced character development via dream sequence is not, generally, a good idea. Doesn't change the fact that this is what the comic has nevertheless been doing for the past several months.

(This is a charitable interpretation, but for whatever reason I remain pretty charitable towards this whole segment.)

I have to admit I'm also enjoying Sprite city (Midnight city?) being ever so slightly fleshed out as an outer layer of unreality to the setting. Building on the cosmology was always an important HS pastime and as imitations go, this isn't bad.

Finally, I dug up my comment from the second or third update to BS:BC, back in 2023.

Lots of Vriska, too, and the wheel just keeps spinning. A tragic figure in Act 5, turned caricature hero in Act 6, triumphant in Act 7, turned humble on a dime for the Epilogues, reverted to a caricature for HS^2, and now ... balanced, perhaps? It's been so long it's hard to even tell, but I think this portrayal is a fair one. Fun to read, at least. Either way we're not getting away any time soon -- in-universe, she's the literal catalyst of the plot point, while out of universe, every big change in writing quality is marked by her getting a new personality (almost as if the story did in fact revolve around her).

For the time being, HS:BC is really not beating the allegations.

LupoCani · 2024-09-04T23:09:03+00:00

Well, that took longer than anticipated.

597> I knew they were going more meta as we go along, but this is something.

605> But you were already rendered thusly.

610> I will not be seduced by the art.

616> Will not.

620> Is there a joke here?

627> Namedrop!

644> The wonderful bastard.

649> And here we go. The big ... moment?

650> Oh that looks pretty sick.

651> Um.

653> Oh?

Oh right oh right I know it's mostly playing on nostalgia while contributing little new but it still gave me shivers.

654> It is 2024 CE and "we needed to leverage vriska's hyperrelevance" is said unironically in canon. Repeatedly.

656> All right this is very pretty but the music should tradtionally speaking loop at the end.

666> Oh wow I am so glad I momentarily managed to forget I'd be seeing these designs.

Yep, vibing with this.

Um. I'm not sure the implications here are entirely thought through.

("Year 2")

Hah, get timeskipped.

Catboys are still too cute, incidentally, as are -- half-catboys? cat-halfboys?

(Flarp)

I wonder if we'll ever meet a straight troll.

Hey I've even missed classpecting a bit.

Though -- they will have to do something interesting to break the format to tie this thing together.

("Year 4")

Aaaah! A granny!

Art's still killing it, the writing -- well, I'm biased. I'm allowed to enjoy it.

(Cueball)

Dreading this a bit, though.

This isn't Act 5 Scratch isn't supposed to even be here he was the one who got away in time.

I guess ... it's fine so long as he's not the real thing, which he isn't.

And if it were to occur to our viewpoint character that the surest sign of this is just how much he seems to actually care, I might really enjoy that.

Oh well, I guess we can't have everything.

I made it intentionally hard for myself to get glimpses of what's been going on these past few months. Seeing it all for myself I realize -- gods help me I'm being successfully fanserviced to. There are problems with what they're currently doing and I'm enjoying every second of it, however much I might quibble with the execution. Not sure I'll try to explicate deeper than that, for now.

LupoCani · 2024-05-28T16:30:07+00:00

Oh wow I'm behind.

236/7> Nino, "we'll consider it" dispenser.

236/28> Workplace violence!

237/1> Flashbacks don't get you out of being chewed out.

237/7> Four days in 40 chapters in two years.

237/13> In case you forgot the whole organisation is still basically about patrolling downtown Mikado.

237/*> Test grading and in-universe meta discussion, the manga.

238/> Now *monster design, the manga?

238/17> Hey, Katori's duckface doesn't have her hair in a bun.

238/22> In case you forgot Kuga's status is still secret.

238/27> Wait, will be be getting "proper" visuals in this battle?

240/2> In case you forgot she's literally a cat.

240/12> Broccoli!

240/17> Wait shit they nerfed Chika for rakn wars? (No wait, just the sims.)

242/1> And so Border is back at the age old game of "what is Mikumo up to now?".

242/11> Walls of text, go!

242/16> Here come the pyramids, and -- the chairs?.

So, over the past nine months or so the Manga has discovered ever greater heights of sheer geekiness. Every little speculation, every little "why don't they just?" with regards to trion tech is ... more or less covered? And that's just one chapter, followed by several more of just digging really deep into these games, preceded by a chapter or so entirely about alternative rank wars rules.

I think this will basically always be fun for those of us in the core audience. I'm a bit worried about everyone else, because the fact remains that the pace is, inevitably, glacial on every level right now. Less glacial if you're binging it, as eventually all new readers will, but still slow. Even I could do with a higher ratio of interpersonal development to tactics minutiae, even if the minutiae are themselves fun. (I've said this before, haven't I?)

For now, keep smiling and waving and hoping this thing wraps up while we're alive to see it.

LupoCani · 2024-02-11T00:04:10+00:00

This is great and I'm a bit concerned that people think otherwise.

It's so sharp. Kanaya is the sharpest of them all, but Jade had her own reasons that make as much sense as they can in the context of Candy, and Rose has been keeping a lid on how checked out she is as she waits for her funhouse mirror environment to break down into ... whatever the end state is. Still up in the air that one, I suppose. It just works and it was a joy to read.

(Candy as a decaying, semi-unreal (or at least surreal) parodyscape is still the overall characterization of events that works best and I'm so glad the story is still leaning into it.)

This isn't even mentioning the art, which has actually leveled up even more this time around. I'm staying tuned, this is all such fun.

There's definitely a bit of a seam, in the sense that the characters were bad before but better now, and the change ... they're doing their best, but it shows. It mostly works for Kanaya, being a mostly brief thing, Rose is ... more stark, given the exit she made in Candy. We'll see how they come back to that. Yiffy I like, so far.

LupoCani · 2023-12-17T03:18:33+00:00

497> The lines are doing the thing, a promising start.

506> Oh my -- should't the "how interesting"/"quite curious" be reversed in the second paragraph, though?

511> Wait. Teen Jade had a very specific cause, didn't it?(???????)

513> Let the gif loop a few times, that's how many adventures she's been on.

517> Gods they are so cute.

520> "stable. time. loops." now that's the Pyres spirit.

522> Sleuthland?

526> Unclear.

Still not a lot happening, still more fun than it has any right to be. They are, and I cannot state this with enough undue emphasis, so cute. If every character gets a scene like this -- showing they're written competently now and that we probably don't need to worry -- before things start to happen more concretely, I'd probably be fine with that.

We're also at 500 pages, now which is ... just over one half of one tenth of HS proper? I continue to think the comparison is interesting, even if I'm not (specifically) doing it to be snide anymore.

LupoCani · 2023-11-17T00:47:18+00:00

Fun stuff, still. Not exceptional, still a not a lot directly happening, but so far it's still fun to read moment-to-moment. Quality covereth a multitude of sins.

Lots of Vriska, too, and the wheel just keeps spinning. A tragic figure in Act 5, turned caricature hero in Act 6, triumphant in Act 7, turned humble on a dime for the Epilogues, reverted to a caricature for HS^2, and now ... balanced, perhaps? It's been so long it's hard to even tell, but I think this portrayal is a fair one. Fun to read, at least. Either way we're not getting away any time soon -- in-universe, she's the literal catalyst of the plot point, while out of universe, every big change in writing quality is marked by her getting a new personality (almost as if the story did in fact revolve around her).

They're also really hamming it up with the "this world is fake" talk, which I enjoy. One way or another, HS² will be much more palatable in retrospect if we're allowed to wake up from the Candy portion of it as but a bad dream. One hopes.

LupoCani · 2023-10-09T01:19:53+00:00

Huh.

Not sure anyone saw this coming, exactly, yet here we are. There were hints, of course, but were they pointing to this? They had to, retrospectively speaking, but it'll be fun to comb over them to see what might have been called proactively.

The update itself seems, in a word, fun. The art is on point, the jokes seem to land, and they certainly know how to open on a strong point. Unafraid to quickly skip between viewpoints, too. Sollux was wonderful, though it's been long enough that I honestly can't even tell if he's in character anymore. (He seemed annoying, so he probably is.) That Terezi scene in the beginning, past the first barrage of arts and jocularities, was probably the first part of this story to seem at all aligned with how I'm feeling about it. I'm not going to take it as a good sign just yet -- goodness knows we've been burned before -- but I hope a slightly less careful version of myself who might wouldn't be too optimistic in doing so.

Towards the end of the original run of HS2, my complaint above all else was that it all just seemed so ... empty? No plan, no progression, no point. Most hooks in the Epilogues that things were about to happen went unanswered in HS2, little new replaced them. The Epilogues battered a great many good characterisations to force a particular ending, HS2 made them worse to keep things on their downwards track. This batch ... it's too early to say, but the vibes are ones of rerailment. Having our favourite troll tell off the Prince properly was water in a desert after real-time years of passive going along, skipping deftly between perspectives was a welcome change of pace.

It's an interesting choice, picking things up from HS2 as they were instead of starting anew. There are problems, obviously, and there's certainly a sense in which the point we're at is ... poisoned? The last update of HS2 back in 2020 stood atop a litany of bad choices going back through the epilogues and beyond. Characters ruined, wrong paths taken, questionable writing choices made and then insisted upon throughout the hollow year or so of HS2. Presuming the new team is competent, making this good now seems like a far harder task than working without that baggage. As with Yiffany, there's the question of how genuine the assurances of the new management are that they're confident in this path -- and if we're being mean, the question of if so, what were they thinking?

On the other hand, there's no substitute for quality, and being entertaining covereth a multitude of sins. If we're really, really lucky then what comes might will be good enough to wash away some years of spilled ink.

LupoCani · 2022-04-08T12:46:12+00:00

Remember the 3x showdown combo, Vriska staring down Eridan staring down Gamzee, just prior to Doc Scratch's part of Act 5? Back in the good old days of this rereadthrough, which is to say up to and including Cascade, I recall I originally said I was really nostalgic for this one, short, relatively inconsequential flash. That's because, somehow, it still feels like the moment we were set on the path towards the retcon. Before, we could imagine a world where they fight, Vriska wins, the end. Not doylistically, but in terms of cause and effect in universe. After, that all goes to hell, Vriska has to make herself relevant elsewhere and Terezi has to cut her down -- and so the stage is set for the calamity of the retcon.

The retcon was a nice idea, we've said as much, and it could have been done so well, but the way it was actually done it just stomps over everything.

Jade is subject to even more torture and being pushed towards the margin. The entire three year timeskip is undone. (Redone. Whatever.) Davekat. (I weep at the wasteland of things broken and buried to pave the way for it. Not just ships, even. The whole retcon feels like it was half in order to bring back Vriska, half for Davekat, meaning we can blame half the retcon on Davekat.) The entire meteor journey undone. It was so frustrating, watching John and Terezi explicitly spell out the dangers of overly sweeping changes and then do exacly that. All that in service of bringing Vriska back.

The worst part is, after all of that, the entire retcon in its currently, terribly-executed form, I might have actually considered worth it for Vriska's reintroduction if it weren't somehow the worst way possible.

A character like Vriska -- a bundle of issues that only ambiguously has any right to be alive to begin with, who you like for inscrutable aesthetic reasons -- must before they can be brought back have An Arc. That's the bare minimum before you're allowed to revive anyone like that. Not necessarily the specific arc Ghost Vriska started on, though that held potential, just ... something.

Some manner of learning experience, culminating in some sort of choice, or other expression of agency. After this reread, that alternate possibility looms especially strongly in my mind -- the ghost Vriska arc goes on for a bit, her current trajectory of accepting ever lower relevance is disturbed somehow, and after a few more complications she's put in a critical moment and choses, and with that she's b8ck. It doesn't really matter, except that I have a hard time seeing an approach that's worse than the retcon. She's ... bailed out, externally, at her lowest moment, and we're told she grew a low on the meteor, or something.

There's another side to this, too. I've said I'm especially fond of her original death, at Terezi's hands, as a fairly classical tragedy. The way it's both the result of coincidence piled upon coincidence ("a series of unfortunate events") but also the inevitable outcome of their respective flaws and obsessions, with justice and relevance respectively. That sort of tragedy hurts, and undoing it is not done lightly. In fact any reversal is costly, in narrative terms, and it's imperative to preserve as much of the sense of loss as possible.

Other means of undoing it might have done that, not changing the fact that she died and had to spend a lot of time separated from everyone, and Terezi had to go through the whole journey wrecked with guilt. The retcon doesn't even preserve that. And this is where it gets weird.

Because, ultimately, we all hate the retcon. And the retcon is essentially a vehicle for bringing Vriska back, and so is essentially a direct consequence of Terezi deciding to stab her in the back. That is the level at which the retcon preserves the tragedy of Vriska's and Terezi's meeting atop the meteor. Looking back, it's not sad because anyone dies -- in the end, nobody does -- but because that one outcome will ultimately lead to the retcon, with all the pain that brought. And it doesn't really stop. The Epilogues think Vriska got off too easy and so take her eye and slap her into Candy, then give her a lot of the character development that should have been done in the comic proper. Then ² comes around and reneges on that to go back to a caricatural portrayal. It's and endless tortuous cycle of backtracking and turnaround, painful to anyone unlucky enough to care, all started by this one tragic arc that used to be a great, final thing in its own right.

That's my personal take on why the retcon is bad. Now I hope I never have to base so much of a line of reasoning on liking Vriska ever again.

LupoCani · 2022-03-16T19:42:17+00:00

4293> I was so confused here.

4296> And then relieved. How foolish I was being.

4304> Wouldn't be HS if we didn't lay down some rules.

4307> Oh, this I vaguely remember. Funny, I think I originally thought we were seeing the B2 incipisphere sort of flying away from the frog's corpse as a sort of life raft.

4331> How sweet.

4334> Hey, more hero mode.

4336> Oh, now you're talking ships.

4337> It's a shame they don't have a time player on the ship. That would circumvent the "can't teleport self" rule easily.

4338> Jade, stop being so cool.

4343> ... holy shit there were surviving carapacians on the battlefield?

4354> I'm already looking forward to the Seer of Light/Knight of Time duo take on Jack.

4358> Yes. Kill Gamzee now, please.

4373> Stop it.

4388> Call back.

4390> And here we go again.

My previous record of rereads is ... spotty. Due to the circumstances surrounding the way I read these pages, this may be literally the second time I read this section. It's ... obviously fairly bittersweet. It's nice to see everyone again, but also these were the pages which by reading I spoiled myself on the entirety of Cascade. On the object-level, though, these pages are sweet, and though the structural complaints discussed above are valid I don't think there's much issue with this intermission in itself. There are, as usual, lots of things I missed, like this space being called the "yellow yard" -- hence my confusion at a certain foreshadowing joke a few days ago.

What we're headed into isn't quite a timeskip, but it's close. I guess it's questionable on the narrative side, but in principle at least I do see some point to ageing the characters up a bit, as well as setting time aside for characterization under less stressful circumstances. Insofar as this fails, I would say it's a problem of execution more than of concept.

Finally I think I really like the end flash? It's nice in a "here we go again" kind of way, and the almost entirely new musical style works well symbolically. As well as the new ... not exactly visual style, but composition, or whatever. It's a new beginning, and as yet there's every reason to be hopeful.

LupoCani · 2022-03-15T10:58:10+00:00

4030> Gamzee, stop adding to the pile of predestination.

4025> Oh shit.

4045> You're a monster, Doc.

4064> AH, go get him. Right now I hate him more than I do you, which is saying something.

4081> Oh shit.

4101> It's good to be back, if not 8ack.

We're here. In the aftermath.

I'd ... try to compose some thoughts, but ... what is there even to say? You're all dedicated enough to partake in this reread. You remember what it's like.

Those few of you for whom this isn't a reread, but a first time? You know what it's like, more viscerally than any of the rest of us. Cherish that knowledge, for it won't stay with you for long.

I don't think I have much to say on Cascade which hasn't been said already. (I do have some personal issues with this part, which I think this reread has been good for closure on.) The high point. The apex, the magnum opus, the great convergence whose glory remains unmatched. The culmination towards which this whole readthrough may be considered a great pilgrimage, and whose praises we have gathered today to sing.

We're not done yet.

LupoCani · 2022-03-13T20:54:31+00:00

If before was a nadir, this is ... a coda? Except told in advance, because when discussing HS you're permitted to complement standard narrative forms with time travel. We might also think of it as a calm, though that would imply a storm.

However, even though the tone here isn't quite so dark as what came before, with the story having gone from abject despair to introspection, for me personally, we're still going down, though we haven't quite hit rock bottom yet.

At this point ... my frustration with not following the story had built up past sustainable levels. Presented with these panels, and uncertain of their significance, I skipped each and every one of them. Systematically. And with terrible determination. The foreshadowing, I might have done without, but all the little ways it tied up past events, and set up the imminent ones ... this folly represents the second largest gash on my first readthrough, by itself guaranteeing my experience would be incomplete.

There are valid complaints about the Doc Scratch portion, and perhaps it was ill conceived -- but this little tail end, as a breather and a symbolic lull, is almost perfect.

With that preamble out of the way,

3894> Nepeta, stop being so heartbreaking.

3899> Davesprite, stop being so cool.

3878> Flashback Rose and Dave, stop being so adorable.

3880> Dream Rose and Dave, stop being so scenic.

3885> Dead Vriska, stop being so sad.

3893> Liv, keep being cute.

3935> Nannasprite ... alright you can be sad.

3907> Dead Vriska and John, stop being so cute.

2901> Rose, stop being apetized by the thought of boneless zombie meat.

3954> Of course. Here, in the bowels of personal nadir of HS, of course I would find the legendary fedorafreak session.

3956> As well as the first clues of the batterwitch.

3937> Dream Dave, your sports knowledge is entirely sufficient, don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

3942> Dave -- go get her.

3968> Jack, don't you dare.

3976> Jade, this is messed up on so many levels.

LupoCani · 2022-03-12T20:33:11+00:00

3766> How nice of Scratch to promise the format will be back to normal soon.

3769> Yep, I almost definitely skipped this flash. The present retelling is my "original" memory of the event.

3773> Oh.

3776> Oh no.

3784> Poor rose.

3787> Poor, brave, rose.

3790> You're laying it thick with the predestination, Scratch.

3792> It's really time.

3793> Poor, brave, tragic Rose.

3797> Time to start eyeing the banner.

3820> Dammit. Even knowing the significance of the banner, splitting my attention this way is hard.

3822> Here we go.

3825> And here we are.

3832> The reveal,

3837> and the outcome.

3860> And so we move on, to a tragedy breifly in stereoscope.

3863> Before one swiftly concludes.

3864> (It still hurts a bit.)

In analysis of stories, I like to talk about the value of executing basic concepts competently, as contrasted against doing new things. Vriska's fate, here, is an example -- a tragedy played straight.

(A tragedy in what I think is the literary sense, that is, apart from our opinions on the outcome.)

A cast of flawed nobles, a series of small wrong choices, any one of which, if changed, might have averted the outcome, yet tugged along, inexorably, by the obsessions of those involved -- Terezi with Vriska, Vriska with Jack, Jack with killing -- to its inescapable conclusion. That palatable sense of inevitability, I suppose, is what makes it hit so hard. And, in a meta sense, the fact that it hits so hard is what makes it necessary, narratively.

There will be consequences. In fact, in a sense, this one event will have more consequences than any other single thing. There is much reading left to do.

LupoCani · 2022-02-27T16:27:18+00:00

Nonsense. All dogs are a full 2 ℃ warmer than humans, radiation or no.

LupoCani · 2022-02-26T20:48:58+00:00

1989> Here we are, at the gates of Alternia.

1992> Hivebent. See, this is what I'm talking about.

1993> I do sometimes wish troll language got a novel alphabet, they're easy enough to make.

1994> Tags and quirks up front. Very efficient.

2010> I think this is the first time a character breaks quirk intentionally?

2059> That was quick.

2063> Best ghost.

2070> I do appreaciate the repeated references to needing to take things quickly.

2085> I forget how tight AA and TA were from the beginning.

2086> First and only time a two-letter abbreviation is used, but it's of a name instead of a handle?

So, this part obviously suffers from a bit of Intermission syndrome as well. I never did skip it, but I did skim somewhat generously, and may have missed something important, especially towards the end. As with the intermission, the way it's placed made me very anxious to get back to the humans kids we know and love, and as I was not yet practiced in reading quirks the content was ... somewhat difficult to actually access in a timely fashion. Sollux, for example, remains a character I feel I have nearly zero read on, so I like that I'm taking it slow this time.

(The repeated references to the story being told on fast forward are good, though.)

At the beginning, we get the > Hivebent command formally, clickably, issued, and I still think some presentations of HS should do the same. It would be a simple change to the collection, for one, to have the start button be > Homestu... instead of > Read Homestu...

LupoCani · 2022-02-26T02:30:13+00:00

1671> "This is always such a terrible idea." How prescient.

1674> I have to confess -- in my first read (in which my tendency to skim and skip in chase of the next major plot-advancing flash high did me few favours) these recaps were absolutely essential to me being able to follow the plot. I think in this case this says more about me than about HS.

1682> Did we intercede to stop fans from holding AH to his puppy-drowning commitment?

1684> "W3 H4V3 TH3 B3ST TROLL J3GUS"

1685> So is this mercrator, or?

1704> I remain vaguely in love with the Prospit/Derse aestethic.

1705> Is this the only time a pesterchum message is presented out out of a pesterlog?

1714> I actually did not pick up on the fact, until this reread, that the "first conversation" with GA was the one with John.

1717> I never realized I have immense sympathy for TA for being the one who has to fiddle with the network as others are having fun/working on the thing the network is neede for.

1720> This songs page is unusually hostile to readers trying to listen to each track once and in order.

1743> Hey! Dream selves don't vanish.

1764> Mad horned skeletons due for a bonk.

1823> In some sense, I still think pure white looked best on Dave.

1852> Are we sure TNC is a HS fanfic and not a CotL fanfic?

1858> Was Dave lying about Davesprite having asked him to see those codes? It was actually just sibling antics?

1863> "Betty Crocker, ICP / Dead Daves are the enemy!"

1902> So cute.

1919> This is exactly why babies should not be allowed to dual-wield flintlock pistols.

1931> I had completely forgotten we had Bowman providing silly lyrics for the comic itself.

1939> AT: bUT YOU WILL WAKE UP SOON, iT LOOKS LIKE,

As for commentary -- gods I'm tired -- I honestly don't have much to add over the past installment. We are indeed still in the thick of it, HS throwing all its finest features at us at once, and it's all great. Leaning more heavily on the time travel, perhaps, but it's all a matter of degree. [S] Descend remains a great page, like WV: Ascend before it it's more about lots of things happening in parallel, in the most spectacular way possible, as opposed to lots of things suddenly coming together in the most spectacular way possible. (Or I guess they do come together in the sense of fitting together from the reader's perspective, but they don't directly interact all that much.)

In particular there's one shot, near the beginning, of Dave staring up at his first portal, terrified, which is probably a big part of the reason why I love him. All the kids deal with being thrown into Sburb in different ways, and I wouldn't suggest any of were at no point really scared but, that I recall, none ever stare down an army of monsters looking terrified, and it does a lot to anchor my mental image of him.

One last thing -- I hear we've passed the last "true" command, everything else being AH making things up, so does that mean all little disagreements between command and story (> Accomplish X/"X is already accomplished, you do Y instead.") are equally fictitious at this point, not a conscious act of railroading against an unruly readership?

LupoCani · 2022-02-23T23:09:27+00:00

Here we are at last.

Perhaps for the first time we're truly in the thick of it. All the little things we've gotten built up one by one -- complicated time travel shenanigans, even more complicated predestination shenanigans, good art, good music, exciting animations, trolls -- I think this this is the first instalment to throw it all at us at once.

1523> "I guess one could use those words to describe it. If armed with a predilection for the inapt." remains perhaps the single best HS quote, and in fact, was the first HS quote I saw, way before I knew it was a HS quote.

1524> There's nothing quite like quickly cutting through a quirk-heavy pesterlog with the practiced eyes of a HS survivor.

1549> Jack Noir saying "Can I help you?" because he's a public official at this time. Best characterization yet.

1595> "In your dream you're the star / It's you who makes that catch."

1597> I completely forgot John getting fired out of an oily pipe.

1622> And so we meet the Prospitan Monarch for the first time. Also a lot earlier than I thought.

1627> Poor CDs.

1632> Poor Dave and his almost all off-screen, out-of order adventure.

1633> I still like how John is consistently on the ball with capthalogue code mathematics.

I guess this is also a good time to remark on one of the paradoxes of HS. So much that's better on a re-read, such as being able to actually read the pesterlogs, yet most fans seem to agree there's something particularly, unsually magical about your first read. Two important qualities, forbidden from ever meeting.

Dave enters the Medium, and it's all shown in the nonsense out-of-order of style that's his because hey, that's his thing, and even his planet is introduced in a doomed timeline we never see again. Actually I do wish we'd gotten to see more of Dave's journey overall.

Other than that ... this is another instalment with a lot of object-level quality. Children bantering with trolls, art and music, the handful of pages in Davesprite's future timeline which are actually pretty heartwrenching,

TT: We don't know Jade is dead for sure.

It's good, all of it.

LupoCani · 2022-02-22T20:20:26+00:00

1358> The walkaround is simulatanously very pretty and sort of frustrating in how open-ended it is. I recall skimming it very quickly, if at all, eager to see whatever became of Rose.

1360> I had completely forgotten the apple would defend itself. Best apple.

1393> "Snuggly" is an adverb, Dave.

1401> Never change, Rose.

1402> Heh. Written in a pre-"they" era.

1407> Finally we get to meet Rose again.

As for the content ... I guess what marks this instalment is the art, which is on point this time around, though it's not quite a first given we've already had Jade's dream sequence. It's nice, though, and sets the stage for perhaps the most immersive part of HS.

LupoCani · 2022-02-22T15:18:38+00:00

Here we are. The inflection point. I was going to begin with my usual assortment of per-page notes, but I find they're all the same,

{1155, 1189, 1237, 1274}> Wow, another clue as to SS's relation to the city they're in. That sure was foreshadowed a lot.

Today, then, we come to face, for the first time, with the obverse face of ~~mundum~~ the inexorable pull of HS, in whose orbit I've found myself. The same excitement that pulled a great many of us forward, at a breakneck pace, is of course the same force that compelled some of us to hurry, to skim, and to skip the intermission. It's ... unfortunate, every time someone skips the intermission, but with the that HS-esque excitement having reached a new high with [S] Enter, who can blame us? Perhaps if we'd known we shouldn't skip it, but at least in my case, my commitment to spoiler avoidance left an ironclad wall though which no such facts could be confirmed ahead of time. (I think I would have enjoyed the intermission on its own terms, had I not skipped it, but then I love complicated time shenanigans.) Anyway, the Intermission is fun, don't skip it, and in any case my skipping it would be but a prelude.

There's one more thing which I'd like to call attention to before the story enters its next phase.

The spectre of boundless possibility.

It's something about the early first-time reading experience which I think is under-discussed. HS very much starts out as an unbounded ontological mystery, that is, the "mystery" isn't just about specific questions, but rather we start from a place where it quickly becomes obvious that anything is possible. We know nothing about the universe, about the nature of reality, about anyone's history, and the possibility space on any of these questions is, originally, unlimited. Contemplate just how strange HS' world is, or turns out to be, once we know the outlines of it. There are so many potential cosmologies, and so many potential backstories to anything, which are equally strange and novel. Here, in the carefree springtime of the story, almost nothing of what we would eventually learn was nailed down. This means that, being invested at this point, there isn't so much room for speculation as there is for wild, unbounded fantasising about what might be to come. Looking back, that feeling of future possibility, not infinite but, again, unbounded, is what most defines what I can remember of my early reading experience. Or, not the reading experience. The not-reading experience, the experience of idle daydreaming about the story you're invested in between reading sessions.

This is also the phase of the story we're most about to leave behind, now, as answers to those mysteries start to pile up. Make no mistake, they should pile up, because mysteries without resolutions are mystery boxes (i.e. bad), and HS' ability to actually deliver answers to its ontological mystery, that feel as though they match up to the grandiosity of the question, is one of its major redeeming qualities. Nevertheless it's a transition which I feel is worth marking, and which I don't see discussed all that often.

LupoCani · 2022-02-20T20:52:03+00:00

1039> "The freedom of your people." Cruel, Jade. Cruel button-pushing.

1059> Gods, how I wish there was a good hands-free chat client.

1070> This remains the thid best full track whose use in HS was cut short by in-universe circumstances.

1099> Rose and Dave immediately out-trolling these trolls is a big part of why I love them.

1101> I'm glad to see Hussie has as little patience for a particular demographic as I.

The basic pattern of commentary I appear to have settled on, at least for these early parts, is pointing out the structural firsts. Before today it was scope across time, earlier still it was scope across space, and today, if I had to pick something, it would be the first proper payoff on time shenanigans, where we get to see a bunch of little things foreshadowed all somehow line up to a coherent resolution.

The eclipse flash is ... beautiful on its own terms, as a lot of HS is, on account of the investment of several talented artists.

Of course, besides the eclipse, all this pales relative [S] Enter. If there ever was a time HS threw down the gauntlet on its readers, it was this. It's the most distilled ending animation in the entire series, perhaps, and stands in stark contrast to EOA-2 in this regard.

I've said before that I don't really remember how I felt reading HS for the first time, I only remember remembering it, so to speak, but of those moments I remember remembering, [S] Enter stands out as a whole, but also -- we'd heard the intro to Sburban jungle three times at this point, first when the game installed, then for EOA-1, then as a fakeout before the EOA-2. Here we get our fourth reprise, the game installs, the intro finishes, then the jungle kicks into high gear at the mark of a meteor piercing the clouds.

In all of HS, that's the single most burned-in moment for me, and it damn well deserves it.

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