one of the first things i put up on my site was a meandering article on the nature of sequels to works that engage with meta themes. i was wondering about the 'why' and the 'what' of things.
while most of my wonderings didn't make it into the article, i was thinking about a lot of stuff. why do creators of these complex meta-works go back and do sequels when the risk of producing a flop is so high and the potential reward so low? and what are they trying to say with the new work? what is there to explore that the fans can't contribute on their own?
sometimes, sequels like The Magnus Protocol feel like celebrations - victory laps. So far, I feel vindicated in my optimism of that project: it might not hit the same way as the original, but it's not trying to. it is suffused with dramatic irony, instead of mystery.
the fans know far more about what is happening than the characters do. The Magnus Archives was about finding out along with the characters: Protocol is about seeing it all go wrong again in a way that echoes exactly what we've seen before, even when people who know MORE than us are trying to stop it. it is an avoidable tragedy, and that is why we're listening in, begging things to be different, knowing it's not going to be.
"It's a sad tale, it's a tragedy. It's a sad song. . . We're going to sing it anyway." -- Hermes (narrator), in Hadestown
unfortunately, in Homestuck's case, every adaptation and follow-up seems suffused with a desperate energy for 'more of the same'.
in fact, I said about the Epilogues, way back, that they were most likely not intended to be punitive towards fans, but instead uncomfortable meta-commentary on this topic:
"I think it's reasonable to conclude that, for all its (many) flaws as a work, the twin-forked Epilogues tome is just… metacommentary on the myth of closure. It posits that we, the audience, are doing all this much-decried damage to these characters ourselves, just by insisting on more story. These characters could have lived their lives, but our insistence on voyeurism mandates more conflict, more stakes, more stories that push them into making mistakes and changing as people."
I still agree with this, but increasingly view their premise as flawed, because the creator of HS is making the same mistakes.
On the one hand, HS was -from the outset- a reader-collaborative experience. Input was not just welcomed but a central premise of the format.
On the other, HS was -from the outset- skeptical of the idea of reader entitlement, fan culture, and the entire premise of sincere emotional engagement with art entitling the viewer to a 'stake' or 'control' in that art in any way. It was not always disdainful of these things, but it was obsessed with the fundamental hostility of the power structure between creator and audience.
but, as I've learned more about the way Hussie has interacted with fans, shaped the direction of HS as a 'franchise', and generally positioned themselves, a fairly clear pattern has emerged.
regardless of what she says, Hussie's ultimate position can be interpreted to be that is that she should be in control if and when she wants to be, entirely at her discretion, because HS is hers and she is letting fans play in the space (and who she has a latent disdain for, not as individuals but as a cultural mode of engagement prone to irrational 'cult-like' behaviour).
and yeah, legally, sure. that's how copyright and IP works. you own some IP? it's yours, you control where it goes, and even how people produce and distribute works that contain substantial portions of your IP, even if those works are original works.
but despite being someone who has repeatedly acknowledged that the 'ownership' of a fan community is ultimately illusory in the face of the creator's real, meaningful power (legally and also informally, both as a person in the community and as someone whose intentions and qualities left their fingerprints on the works in question), Hussie wants to eat their cake and have it too.
as a fan, if you want more of a work you have to accept that things will change and therefore recontextualise the original work. as a creator, you have to accept that the audience's desire for more content and for participation cannot be both legitimised and overriden.
hussie wants a fan-driven community full of fan works and fan projects and fan characters and fan stories. hussie wants at least some of these fan works to be legally licensed. hussie also sometimes decides they want veto power over arbitrary parts of the community they have previously endorsed, because they are the creator and the prime mover, and it is theirs, and thinks nobody should object or get upset when this tramples over what the community wants.
you can't have both.
note that this doesn't require ill intent to go wrong: only disagreement. there is usually one particular way disagreements resolve when the other party holds all the legal power, and it isn't in your goddamned favour. it doesn't matter how much they prommy not to screw you: they can still screw you. and that potential matters.
if you want to give something entirely to the fans, there's a really easy way to do that: release your works under an open license.
if you do not want to give something entirely over to the fans, and instead want to manually dole out permissions so you can maintain control over things like "making sure people who you think have bad intentions can't use your IP", then you can't claim that you have given up control, because functionally you can revoke permissions as you please at any time.
you should act like this is the case, with no pretense, and not get surprised when people become emotionally attached or upset when disagreement resolves in your favour (because you have legal and social power and they do not).
this is a problem that open-source software has grappled with over and over again: see the 'ethical open source' movements that occasionally spring up for details on how difficult it can be, because ethics is an unsolved problem and people are prone to using the power they have when disagreements arise. that's what people do when they think they are correct and others are incorrect: they act to resolve the disagreement.
i think people are kidding themselves, at this point, when they engage or contribute to 'licensed' or 'official' HS projects. a big draw in the current HS epoch is "fans get to make the future of HS", but that comes with a massive, massive caveat: Hussie can and will override people at their will, socially and authorially.
if you get involved, you are playing in a shifting sandpit. there is, demonstrably, no certainty. there is no 'independence' from hussie's mercurial intent. there is no distance. there is no way to insulate yourself from the potential that they will resolve disagreements unilaterally, or even retroactively.
it's all the worst parts of being a fan and all the worst parts of being an employee.
