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[JoshuaFH]

So, eh, I took the time to re-read all of Homestuck to refresh myself (and I never finished it in the first place, there's that) and after spending actual weeks of time of investment re-engrossing myself in the story, and then finishing the epilogues... that's fucking it?

I suppose its part of the meta-narrative, of the characters themselves trying to extend the story and failing? Even putting aside that the epilogues kinda feel like Hussie's one last trolly prank on his own fanbase by deforming all the characters into pseudo-adult themed assholes, I want to know what happens to those pseudo-adult themed assholes! But the story just ends! I not only don't get a sequel, I don't even get a conclusion to the original story in the first place! I mean, I guess you can infer a conclusion, but that's really preposterously lame when I'm very invested and want to actually see what happens rather than be given all the circumstantial evidence and then told to extrapolate from the evidence... unless...

Was the ending to Candy implying... that I should re-read all of Homestuck... again? But this time starting with the perspective that that very last monologue gives us, and taking into account that the nature of Homestuck's setting is canonically a unending cycle of temporal paradoxes, and then inferring all new evidence and plot details with that information in mind? I mean, I can think of one seemingly non-sequitur scene that that final postscript gives some clarity to, it's just that, damnit Hussie!

Guess I'll just have to wait a couple more years and wait for the "Epi-Epilogues".

[JoshuaFH]

So in my desperate, insatiable desire for actual closure to the story, I've done the one thing I know I should never do: immerse myself in the fandom. I'm honestly very surprised that R/Homestuck is still alive and well, active and populated like Hussie didn't drop them on their asses to mysteriously disappear without a trace; they keep the candle lit and the door unlocked, faithful that he'll return someday.

By chance then, I've stumbled onto a fanmade continuation of the series starting immediately after the Act 7 animation: Act Omega

I come today to advocate for this fan work, let's tick off the boxes:
Homestuck-style: Check.
Homestuck-humor: Check
Wonky Homestuck pacing: Double Check
Highly verbose Homestuck dialogue: Triple A Check
Slavish Homestuck-style attention to detail all the way down to making a flash animation that'd fit in just perfect it Hussie himself released it: THAT'S A CHECK.

I'm just really impressed, it's everything that I expected out of Homestuck's ending but never got, including the tons of loose ends getting tied up that were just plain forgotten by Hussie in the Epilogues, even ones I'd forgotten despite having the entire stroy still fresh in my head. It's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect out of a very talented fanbase, taking all the known information, and then extrapolating on it to produce a logically coherent extension of the story and completions to the many mained and forgotten character arcs that didn't get a chance to blossom fully in the canon story.

Really it'd be like if George R.R. Martin died and one of his fans went "Fuck all y'all I'll write the last Game of Thrones book BY MYSELF." and then he did and it was better than anything George ever did in his entire fucking life. Though Act Omega isn't itself finished, it is still receiving updates to this day, to my great surprise and enjoyment. I have the distinct feeling that noone around here gives a fuck about Homestuck anymore, I just thought I'd throw out that info for y'all, as I'll be keeping tabs on it definitely.

[quinnr]

So in my desperate, insatiable desire for actual closure to the story, I've done the one thing I know I should never do: immerse myself in the fandom. I'm honestly very surprised that R/Homestuck is still alive and well, active and populated like Hussie didn't drop them on their asses to mysteriously disappear without a trace; they keep the candle lit and the door unlocked, faithful that he'll return someday.

By chance then, I've stumbled onto a fanmade continuation of the series starting immediately after the Act 7 animation: Act Omega

I come today to advocate for this fan work, let's tick off the boxes:
Homestuck-style: Check.
Homestuck-humor: Check
Wonky Homestuck pacing: Double Check
Highly verbose Homestuck dialogue: Triple A Check
Slavish Homestuck-style attention to detail all the way down to making a flash animation that'd fit in just perfect it Hussie himself released it: THAT'S A CHECK.

I'm just really impressed, it's everything that I expected out of Homestuck's ending but never got, including the tons of loose ends getting tied up that were just plain forgotten by Hussie in the Epilogues, even ones I'd forgotten despite having the entire stroy still fresh in my head. It's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect out of a very talented fanbase, taking all the known information, and then extrapolating on it to produce a logically coherent extension of the story and completions to the many mained and forgotten character arcs that didn't get a chance to blossom fully in the canon story.

Really it'd be like if George R.R. Martin died and one of his fans went "Fuck all y'all I'll write the last Game of Thrones book BY MYSELF." and then he did and it was better than anything George ever did in his entire fucking life. Though Act Omega isn't itself finished, it is still receiving updates to this day, to my great surprise and enjoyment. I have the distinct feeling that noone around here gives a fuck about Homestuck anymore, I just thought I'd throw out that info for y'all, as I'll be keeping tabs on it definitely.

I haven't kept up with it but I remember watching that first flash they made that sets up the premise following the acts of Homestuck and I know just from that it looked pretty amazing. I'll have to check it out properly soon.

[Liber celi]

Oof got around to finishing the Candy route. I may've kinda dropped it out of second hand embarassment for a bit because I'm a weak little baby. Lots of insane relationship drama but if you can't tolerate that boy you won't enjoy big stretches of Homestuck.
This does clear up a few things.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The steel housing of Paradox Space is unbroken, suckers! Even sudden OP retcon powers cant break pre-determined causality, only produce "non-canon" branches that will never be relevant again and likely die to authorial neglect(or cruelty...). So irrelevant you can even kill Gamzee in there! Allegedly.
However, there are a few fresh possible loopholes. Rather explicitely, for the larger story Candy has been an incubator for the Meat postscript characters (godtier Aradia, robodave, possessed Jade corpse) and nothing else forevermore. But Vriska has a line to the outside too and she is fucking Vriska so she will probably have to make herself relevant again somehow. I'm not mad. I'm not. Not me.

What else do you have in Candy? Well, the inmates run the asylum now and crossbreed their OTPs to produce new, worse, more incestous shipping charts. Kinda cool actually.
(How did the creative process work? Did each of the co-writers write one of the epilogue pant legs after an outline and edited by by Hussie? I think I recognize the Meat main writer from weeeird fanfictions but she must've changed pseudonyms.)

You have John's spiritual journey to overcome his depressed solipsism. Its made abundantly cleared this isnt "enlightened" resignation, it doesnt really stem from any conscious philosophical or moral conflict, he just feels like the world isn't real because it isn't and then we spent much of the content and 10 years to get him out of that funk. We do get some good dialogue out of it. John being non-interventionist is OK, but:
HARRY ANDERSON: i really thought that my father might come see me for my birthday this year.

Oh fuck you, John. You had 0.5 jobs.

John staying out of it and Big Callie not even nerding out about it makes the civil war arc pretty pointless. Karkat is cool now who cares.

DAVE: m... mr president

DAVE: its an honor sir

Pfft hahaha OK all is forgiven. I don't think you should follow a nyarlahotepian politics warlock into the depths of his gold bunker. Nobody thinks you should deal with your dwindling heterosexual attraction to your doggone waifu by becoming one with the Davemind and shedding your flesh body to abandon your pocket universe in times of potentially genocidal war. Dave is definitely drinking the kool-aid. But the whole thing is pretty hilarious and the Obungler paints an exciting, expansive picture with a few frankly generic inscrutable sentences.

So was hologram Obama programmed by Dirk as a perfect lure or did he just pursue a weird Dirk-like agenda with weird Dirk rhetorics out of personal conviction? Are there hints or connections I didnt notice?

Thene there is the magic postmodernism dialogue near the end which somewhat lays out Big Callie's plan. Interesting. And the Candy postscript hinting at Meat Dirk's plans. Okay. Still so much more questions than answers. No closure never.

The Meat postscript makes more sense now obviously.

The presidential parts made me think of something that always vaguely bothered me about Homestuck, that our "real world" as far as featured in the comic is a neutral, even benign state of things. I feel like the better path as science fiction would've been to make the real world an Alpha World: it trains lonely kids in computer games and isolates westerners in suburbs and proliferates cool gun's to americans all to improve your chance at the SBURB game. Idk.

Was the ending to Candy implying... that I should re-read all of Homestuck... again?
[...]
Guess I'll just have to wait a couple more years and wait for the "Epi-Epilogues".

*contemplates stump*


I'll definitely chek out the Act Omega thing!^{secretly hoping for fedorafreak content}

[JoshuaFH]

In lieu of real canon, I've decided to make my own. There's no more hope for me, abandon me and save yourselves. I made this thread in r/Homestuck, detailing the significance of the events of the epilogue:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Title: Theory: Any timeline Lord English is in becomes the alpha timeline.

I'm making a few brash assumptions here, bear with me: We know that the alpha time holds almost all primacy in paradox space, any doomed times will get killed off by having all their inhabitants destined to be brickwalled on any progress and doomed to die. Lord English cannot die due to having unconditional immortality, ergo he cannot be killed by the contrivances of Paradox space that is built to assure its own continuation, ergo any timeline LE exists in becomes the alpha timeline by definition, and paradox space amends itself to assure LE's own continuation.

Also, I want to go out on a limb here and say that LE has a unique property, in that multiples of himself cannot exist ever, not even across different timelines. So, despite being the Lord of Time, he cannot use time travel to create paradox clones of himself, ala Aradiabots. I suppose it'd just be a real hassle if something of nigh unlimited power could replicate itself infinitely, and so LE has a highlander clause attached to his existence.

So, to reach even further with these assumptions, Alt!Calliope's plan in Candy is NOT to defeat or entrap Lord English, that was a crucial element but was not the objective. It was to contrive a timeline that was unique from the Alpha timeline, through subtle manipulation of John, and this new timeline was distinct in that it convinces Dirk to commit suicide, in order to consolidate his power in the (then) Alpha timeline in Meat. This was Alt!Calliope's plan, to assure a timeline without Ultimate!Dirk in it, and protected from his influence, but that's pointless if the timeline is a doomed one destined for self-destruction, and so she brings in Lord English. This makes Candy the new Alpha timeline, and transforms Meat, with Ultimate!Dirk in it, into a doomed timeline.

So the plan was never to defeat Lord English, it was to defeat Ultimate!Dirk, who is perceived as the larger threat. In this endeavor, Alt!Calliope wins.

[JoshuaFH]

So, eh, hey guys, how's it goin? ...

https://www.homestuck2.com/

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Dermonster]

Time has ended, and yet the great wheel turns back to the start.

And all of this will happen again.

God damnit Hussie.

[Rolan7]

Circumstances are cyclical

[Egan_BW]

Welp. I never got around to reading the candy epilogue, and now there's a sequel? Maybe I have had enough homestuck in my life now? Eh, guess it's something to pursue if I'm bored.
Also, reading that FAQ made me dizzy. I'm getting off the computer now.

[SOLDIER First]

THE RIDE NEVER ENDS

[Egan_BW]

The cycle! Pure, infertile!

[Frumple]

That dude would fit right in to all this, wouldn't it? KSBD/Homestuck crossover when?

[SOLDIER First]

Apparently Homestuck 2 has an Arby’s promotion.

I don’t think I can describe the emotion I’m feeling right now with words.

[Egan_BW]

Okay, I've finally read Candy Epilogue, now to see what this sequel nonsense is.

[Egan_BW]

I read it. I don't really have an opinion. This is the first ever time that I've been like, waiting for this comic to update.

Oh but, yeah fuck dirk, I'd like lots of content that's not about him please.