#hmtw

[nebulaeyedfish]

Eleanor, The Master of the Dungeon and all its Delvers and Denizens!

This was a very fun piece to work on, a friend asked for an illustration of her His Majesty the Worm character, Eleanor (formerly of House Hart.) As HMTW is a tarrot based system, it was really fun to draw her as The Fool! I also really enjoyed populating the piece with a few of the creatures and characters we've encountered so far in our adventures!

Tags: @imflyingfish @raise-me-up-take-me-up @swanofstorie

[solidago-j]

i’m kind of obsessed with my his majesty the worm character………. everlasting destiny i’d do anything for you…..

[mifhortunach]

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hmtw takes an intermission to talk about f-boy island

[assholepants]

One thing that keeps coming up on the homestuck made this world podcast that I'd like to reflect on (I'm on E5P3 btw, so apologies if something like this gets discussed later and I'm junking the gun) is this idea that characters are puppets that Hussie can guide, or shine a camera on, or influence, but they are ultimately their own things, that are somewhat separate from their full control as an author. And the hmtw guys, quite rightly, point out that this really isn't how fiction works in a broad sense. And yes they are 100% correct that this explanation is often used in contexts where Hussie wants to absolve herself from responsibility for choices they have made, and this is important when parsing how sincere Hussie is being with this idea.

But I do think this theory of fiction weirdly reflective of a form of storytelling that I have a fair amount of experience with, and that is TTRPGs. Where you have, what could be considered as a sort of central author who creates the world, the key plot points, all of the NPCs and basically does most of the legwork for guiding and shaping the story. Essentially what the Black text narrative voice does in homestuck. But the PLAYER characters in that story do exist as a separate entity, which the GM can guide and influence and attempt to push in certain directions, but who ultimately exist outside of the realm of direct control of the 'cental author'. And as a GM, you have to plan around these things, and consider how these characters work, the types of decisions they might make, and how you can tell a coherent story whilst still allowing these characters to act somewhat independantly from you.

I do think at some points, homestuck feels like it is written by a GM who has sort of lost control of the table a little bit. Character motivations seem to take precedent over story beats that the author really wants to hit, and copious amounts of time are spent pulling the train back on the tracks, only for another character to derail in another way. But what's odd, is obviously if this is the model of fiction we are using, Hussie is ALSO the person piloting the player characters. GMing a game, played solely by himself. And in this way I can see where this worldview comes from right? If as the author of a work you are considering what characters would do, as separate from and sometimes antithetical to where you want the story to go, then it makes sense that you might erroneously start to view them as distinct entities that exist by themselves and have lives outside of the narrative that you are explicitly writing. And when you write like 6 different characters that intentionally have elements of authorial, or GM power, it become very easy for these characters to derail what you, as the primary author, want to do.

Obviously we can never actually know Hussie's actual writing process and this is pure speculation, and also again the fact that Hussie has control over all of the 'player' characters makes it distinct from a ttrpg. It also means that this theory actually does not absolve it from responsibility for character actions at all. But as someone who has GMed ttrpgs and has this same issue of trying to balance story with character development and motivation coming from forces outside of my complete control, it's something interesting to think about, with regards to the way that Hussie constructs this theory of how fiction is made.

[bastardapple]

waarrghh I wanna play ttrpgs. I get to play Vagabond tonight and His Majesty the Worm later this week but I wanna find a Morkborg playgroup too.

I got the book the other day and ugh it's so fucking good. I love games that are like "we're going to make everything really simple and then kill you."

[monopeptide]

this podcast is gonna make me read homestuck huh 😔

[monopeptide]

purpo

[odddaysgeorge]

"what tabletop game is best for replicating homestuck" Monsterhearts :3