I wondered if you seen the document recently released detailing some of the harassment Hussie and members of the Homestuck team had faced.
So, if you've ever been interested in Homestuck drama, which I largely avoid -- and if you've never heard any of it, no reason for you to dig in the dirt now unless you feel the need to -- this pair of tweets (+ docky and thread) is what they're referring to. A good through-line from the rest of the Homestuck Community Team making sense of some things Andrew had alluded to in the Color Composer post that I'd previously doubted, heavy trigger warnings in general for that too.
I considered being a coward and not addressing this, but this echoes and makes sense of what private sentiments I'd heard from people who would know what was going on inside the various post-Homestuck teams. Put bluntly, I believe in the thrust of it and believe the Homestuck team members who contributed to this. It's a comprehensive effort I believe reflects their heartfelt perspective (and is obviously not AI), and I believe the people it names as dishonest bad-actors are not to be trusted on matters of Homestuck's works or the team. (The document was particularly enlightening regarding C&D notices vs legal takedown requests, and the rash of seemingly fake ones.) My blog isn't a drama blog and I have trust issues regarding who to listen to on this matter, so if you message me about it to argue for one side or another I'm not planning to respond to you. I just felt like y'all deserved to know I'd stopped sitting on the fence, afraid to have (much less express) a strong opinion, even if I'm admittedly afraid of (and uninterested in) arguing about it.
(Not that my believing in something has ever been too strong an indication of it being true. Hah!)
But the biggest reason I opted to respond to this message, and highlight any drama whatsoever on my blog, is that I feel like I've been a part of the problem, intentionally or unintentionally, and I really want to apologize for any grief or stalking my Classpecting crusade has caused anyone on any of the Homestuck teams. I've created an audience at least partially of Classpect zealots, and I wouldn't be surprised if my past behavior encouraged anyone to go too far seeking "answers". And I'm not immune myself (see under the cut). I feel responsible for that, and for letting the lack of healthy psychological boundaries between myself and Homestuck infect others. We all need to remember that this is ultimately just a story, and piling onto those responsible for it demanding certain answers or story directions isn't something we as readers are wholly entitled to do. We CAN just try and trust them to fulfill their promises if they've earned our trust, and then be disappointed if we eventually believe they didn't, without feeling we need to dig answers out of them.
Authors DO have a responsibility to not do foul by their audiences to a certain extent (a responsibility they've sometimes failed, especially with the Epilogues IMO), however I've believed for years (since therapy especially) and continue to believe -- believe -- that the creators of Homestuck content, including Andrew and on forward, have made a sometimes-flawed but fundamentally honest and continually improving effort to do their best by readers and not substantially injure them. I also believe that the current Beyond Canon team has proven itself one of the BEST teams imaginable to cater to the readers, proven that they deeply understand readers' emotional demands of the story, and what will bring joy to the vast majority of them without causing pain to those who emotionally identify closely with the characters. I don't think it's unreasonable to deeply trust the Beyond Canon team to largely not hurt us, and even if they mess up, I don't plan on taking it personally.
More on how I feel personally responsible as I mentioned earlier... Back when the original Homestuck was ongoing, I hung on every word of Andrew Hussie's and even those tangentially connected to the Homestuck project for hints to the Class/Aspect system that I zealously considered the key to understanding the whole story, something Andrew eventually pointed out I (and those like me) had likely gone overboard with in some of the Book Commentary. I was hyperfixated on the system, took the "story that is also a puzzle" deadly seriously, and I'm sure a ton of other people shared my views and crashed right along with me into the ending of Homestuck that ultimately didn't reveal SO many of the answers we had been expecting we'd been owed before the final page. We weren't owed anything by the story; we created expectations Andrew hadn't necessarily intended to nurture. He had a different ending message in mind for the story than us, a message of freedom from all the plot threads I practically worshipped him for keeping so well track of. The fact that I was heartbroken enough to need therapy before coming back to anything Homestuck (EMDR works wonders) shows how much I unhealthily attached myself and my sense of self-worth to what I expected, one-sidedly, out of the story. I was bitter about not getting the answers I wanted, but even more bitter about how I'd thought the author had valued the same things I valued in the story when that didn't turn out to be true, and luckily for everyone else I let that crush me inwardly instead of projecting it outwardly. I'm glad therapy helped me work through that and see the continued works of Homestuck, hopefully, more for what they are than for what I "need" them to be.
I'd like to say I was unrelated to anything detailed in the document, or in Andrew's account of stalkers in the Color Composer post... except I did engage in an instance of something close enough to stalking, once. Decade-plus followers of my blog might remember it, though I'm too embarrassed to link it (and am having trouble finding it besides). I had a Private Message exchange over the MSPA Forums with someone in Andrew's circle at one point, and one of their responses provided what I viewed as some juicy classpect history. So in my hyperfixated excitement, I immediately went to paste screenshots to my tumblr blog and discuss it... without asking if I had any permission to reproduce Private Messages from this person. They messaged me back that they hadn't appreciated what I did, and I quickly apologized and redacted the screenshots from my blog... I recall apologizing pretty profusely, and I also recall them at least appreciating that I'd acted quickly and expressed remorse. But even if I had some degree of forgiveness from them, I don't doubt that I contributed to the atmosphere of being stalked that people in Andrew's circle had to contend with, taken together with all the other people seeking out their every word and hint.
And if **I** made a mistake like that with my intense, emotionally-dependent hyperfixation, I can't imagine how many others I might have inspired to do the same. I can't apologize for that enough.
So please, be reasonable when doing any theory-seeking or classpect-hunting going forward. I'm also newly skeptical of how I've been doing reactions to the Artist and Writer Commentary on Patreon-- while I've made some effort to make sure I don't detail too much of what's sealed behind the paywall to preserve the incentive for folks to pay up to the Homestuck Patreon and see the fun stuff I'm excluding, "making sure I get all the potential theory content" as has been my obsession and the reason I reacted regularly to those posts isn't like... SO goddamn important that I have to be spoiling ANY paid content and potentially depriving Homestuck of funding by reproducing parts of it, y'know? Why does my "need" for early answers override their need to make a living? I've already made the one for this month, but thinking seriously about it now, going forward I may significantly reduce the way I reproduce Patreon content in my Commentary reactions, and perhaps keep things to paraphrasing and actionable bulletpoints in a significantly reduced form. Maybe I'll ask advice from someone anywhere close to the team's circle to see if I've been doing my strictly-partial Commentary reproduction-reactions kosher enough, and if it's fine maybe I'll keep putting in the same amount of elbow grease, but I really don't want to undermine the Homestuck teams in my obsessive search for answers on my silly overanalysis liveblog.
Sorry if this post was a bit of a downer, but as soon as this all started to occur to me last night I realized I had to get some of it off my chest, even if it'd mean harassment going forward. Fundamentally, the biggest reasons I avoided posting about fandom drama were to avoid tainting what I was too emotionally invested in AND even moreso to avoid getting caught in the shotgun-blasts of those who had taken one side or another because I thought I lacked the emotional bandwidth. Maybe I still do, given I'm still unwilling to engage. I'm afraid to be identifiable as a member of a marginalized community, but I can't avoid that forever. Hell, my fears have been reinforced because a dear friend of mine was recently convicted for protesting. I'm a coward who has always lacked the energy and determination to put myself at risk to stand up for what's right, and... I'm probably going to remain that sort of coward for the rest of my life, honestly. But I'm not going to be able to keep out of sight forever if I want to get out there and be myself, and that means that the VERY least I can do is briefly signal boost those who have been living in a position I've always been personally terrified to occupy.
You won't see me drama-post like this often, or like, much of ever really. Unless I really fuck up again and need to apologize for it, which I hope won't be the case of course. Heck, maybe I'm going a little far for apologizing for ages-old sins here, but a broader and more strong-throated apology from me felt overdue, and my chest feels lighter now.
I don’t usually put images from the latest updates on main outside a read-more cut, but I’m getting further people messaging in today saying they think THE DEVICE hidden under a sheet in HS^2′s latest -- the one at the very center of the noncanon singularity, where they believe bringing Vriska and having something too important for Canon to ignore happen will make a difference -- matches the shape of the Hiveswap door.
And it definitely, INTENTIONALLY matches the general SHAPE of the door as well as its “trapped under a tarp” aesthetic, but in Homestuck that’s no guarantee that the device is the SAME, much less even similar.
Plus, as much as a Hiveswap door gives things a “trading between worlds” feel in a story where we’re ALREADY bifurcated between Meat and Candy sides, and as much as Dirk is specifically afraid of Yiffy in a metatextual making-that-story-better-than-mine sense, there’s some reason to believe from Calliope’s language that the goal of the device is a bit more esoteric:
CALLIOPE: as far as everyone else is concerned, we might as well not even exist!
JOHN: is there no way we could let anyone know that we're in here...?
CALLIOPE: almost certainly not!
CALLIOPE: there are very few ways for anything to escape the kind of predicament that we are in right now.
If the device’s purpose were to more or less directly enlist the help of those in Canon -- at the present time, at least -- or pull one of them away while shoving another in their place who could relay the status of their current predicament, then Calliope answering John’s question this way would be pretty weird. Though, by using the weasel-wording “very few”, she does not rule OUT the idea that this device DOES allow SOMETHING to take place between Canon and Non-Canon. Especially since, considering their goal:
CALLIOPE: as far as we have been able to sUrmise, the only remaining method for escaping oUr grim confinement depends on leveraging the UniqUe properties of this location to create an event of sUch catalcysmic proportions that it simply cannot be contained within the black hole any more.
CALLIOPE: something SO dramatic, so hyper-relevant, that it becomes ontologically impossible for anyone to ignore it.
CALLIOPE: for that, we need an individUal of sUfficient narrative cloUt, so to speak.
--could easily be accomplished by forcing all of canon to heavily, HEAVILY depend on noncanon, by inserting some crucial event or extraneous factor at some important time and place, important beyond even the typical canon-centric doomed timeline’s occasional importance to the plot. Note, Calliope already mentioned, earlier in the conversation:
JOHN: you mean we ended up with the bad possibility.
CALLIOPE: not at all! since both possibilities depend on one another's existence, it really doesn't make sense to call them "right" or "wrong". they both just "are".
--that Meat and Candy could not exist without each other. Which could just have to do with the fact that “choices” matter to Paradox Space, especially the choice to do something Heroic for the sake of reality or to relax and sit back, and that if it weren’t important enough to have required a choice, then it wouldn’t have been important enough at all. But Terezi had interactions with people across BOTH sides of the coin flip, and Vriska specifically was able to get a message through to her on Meat Earth C from deep in Candy (which Calliope lampshaded she would have been very surprised to find out happened-- another thing that makes Vriska powerful for sending things back and forth even if the "event" may or may not directly involve her, (edit:) not to mention John too with Breath's mail/messages association!).
So, simply sending ANYTHING or ANYONE across the gap, if this tarped machine even DOES that, wouldn’t do on its own-- it would have to be something important, important possibly to all existence. If you wanted to get super-serious, maybe even the as-of-yet-unsourced final frog sent to young Jade. Thus proving that without the Candy timeline, Earth C’s universe -- not only the place of the kids’ victory, but the eventual birthplace of Calliope and Caliborn and the origin of Lord English -- couldn’t exist at all, and consequently either forcing the Candy version of Earth C out of the singularity or forcing reality to acknowledge the fact that the WHOLE singularity -- all of “non-Canon” -- has relevance, and thus stability. Alt!Calliope would have made her fanfic-timeline come true.
But, that’s just one theory. I wrote this post so y’all could reblog and debate other possibilities for both the machine under the tarp and the dramatic act of relevance that they intend to have take place. Some sort of silly dramatic kiss? Shoving Vriska into Hiveswap’s timeline? An “oops, all Vriskas” disaster? I’ll keep this up to date with some of your theories and addendums under the cut as y’all reply/reblog and send in asks. What exactly do YOU think is the eventual, silly-serious-or-both purpose of all this bullshit?
titenoute said: “There has been people thinking at the beginning of Hiveswap that the Portal could link the characters of Hiveswap to Earth C. Tbh, knowing that Earth and Alternia are going to be destroyed in Hiveswap no matter what it makes sense to have the possibility they’d survive this way, by going through the portal.”
Anon points out that Dirk could have the other side of a Hiveswap door on his end under the tarp he’s hiding from Terezi, and I had some thoughts on that in the link, including what he might use it for.
omg you're still here. hello! its been years. it brings me joy that your blog still looks the same. like walking into a memory
I do wish I had more free time to keep working on some loose ends here, but work has me tied up and exhausted more than I expected with what low energy reserves I have; and that PS5 beckons in the downtime, even if I’m mostly just playing Warframe on it. :o
I really need to take a weekend and revise the hell out of the Aradia inversion post to be LESS FUCKING SMUG, for example.
There's been speculation that the background colors on page 214 signify each Candy kid's aspect, making Harry heart, Vrissy mind, and Tavros breath. What do you think of that?
I have to admit it’s possible. Harry was already a lock for Heart, there were too many hats. (Plus other evidence besides. :p ) And Vrissy’s relentless concern for her outward appearance and self-serving deceptiveness could pretty easily be Mind player traits instead of just Thief of Light traits. (Tavros, so far, hasn’t done anything particularly Breathy besides being the one with the hovercar.)
However, it would certainly be odd to have the completely-genetically-different “spiritual successor” to Tavros be a Breath player like the original, but have the almost-genetically-identical and so-personality-similar Vrissy have such a different Aspect focus. Granted, Vrissy is only almost genetically identical, and was never proven to be exactly the same as Vriska biologically.
It’s possible that IF Vrissy is a Mind player, it’s meant to tie into them not being genetically identical... BUT, it’s also possible they’re going to say she’s a Mind player AND genetically identical, and that this is HS2 sending a message that that’s possible. Conventional bladekindeyewear classpect wisdom (whatever THAT bullshit is worth!) says that your hero title reflects your true potential and the way you would most effectively operate to affect reality around you... this has always been held to mean theoretically the same titles for any genetically-identical people, as that “potential” would lump in every manner and environment you could have possibly been raised in. And for what it’s worth, the pre-Scratch and post-Scratch Trolls kept their effective hero titles from all signs despite their wildly different growing-up circumstances, beyond some purely thematic allusions to their new descendants’ titles that never lined up as well with their actions as their original titles.
However, those could easily have been kept consistent on both sides of the Scratch through circumstantial-thematic means because these were the same people across tightly-linked game sessions, even if your title COULD be different if you were raised elsewhere. It was never a 100% hard line, just an assumption we made based on available evidence, and something some members of the fandom always imagined could be fudged (although usually by saying the pre- and post-scratch guardians and ancestors could have had different titles, which I always viewed as incorrect -- their cross-universe titles were clearly the same in Homestuck proper). A whole lot more divides Vriska and this coincidental “clone” of hers than was possible in the original Homestuck, given how far they’ve travelled outside the bounds of Paradox Space before Vrissy was born. As similar as they are, and perhaps even genetically identical, I could imagine Vrissy and Vriska MIGHT not share a Heart -- that if either Vrissy or Vriska ascended to their Ultimate Self, they might not share each others’ lives in their memories. Would THAT be enough to make the true Hero Titles emblematic to their individuality different? Wouldn’t it be?
Apparently Pesterquest IS relevant because Wakraya points out that there’s an intentional inconsistency pattern being followed that mirrors one of the routes in Pesterquest (spoilers)? Where intentional plotholes and inconsistencies are happening Candy-side, most noticeably the kids dropping Gamzee’s too-slippery-to-hold body and running off without him in one Candy update and then having it with them in the closet in the next one. Which indicates some specific non-canon-timeline instability with plot implications that happened at one point in Pesterquest. FUCK.
Inconsistencies covered by this Pesterquest-explained effect might include the divorce papers discrepancy that the authors have explicitly said they’re aware of and knew up front, or the eyepatch Vriska suddenly has to cover the head-wound-induced blurriness she was having in that eye in the Epilogues, or Harry noticing that John shaved his Epilogues mustache -- which could be just stuff that happened offscreen being explained, or could be further intentional inconsistencies. The Gamzee’s body thing seems INCONTROVERTIBLY intentional inconsistency, not offscreen-events-explainable and CERTAINLY not an accidental mistake.
(I so, so hate that this is a thing. We in the theory community spent ALL OF THE LAST THIRD OF HOMESTUCK pointing out pre- and post-retcon inconsistencies in things such as the conversations with Caliborn and alpha players that wouldn’t have happened the same way, only for Andrew to essentially tell us we were chasing our tails and should get over the small stuff. Now even the MILDEST continuity error is a PLOT POINT, meaning they’re expecting us to waste time and energy scrutinizing every single one when they can’t even get the age Rose had Jaspers’s funeral right?!? FUCK ME.)
((EDIT: From Wakraya regarding my above paragraph, "I don't quite think this is like that, and you're a bit heated! James talked about stuff regarding some of this but, again, spoilers, but it addressed exactly what you're talking about." So there's some hope that my pessimism is unfounded, but I'll only find out later.))
I know a bit about them pulling this in a certain Pesterquest route, and I was hoping theories that they were pulling it here were just overblown, but the Gamzee thing proves we have to watch out for it, which sucks. Especially since I can’t give you the FULL DETAILS of what the implications are of this new type of timeline-decay shittery yet, because I haven’t played Pesterquest.
Which means I HAVE to play Pesterquest. Fucking. Dammit. I wasn’t ready to swallow yet another piece of Homestuck media all at once. CERTAINLY not ready to blog my way through it like I did Namco High. (Which I literally video recorded myself playing through the entirety of.)
Maybe I’ll play it offscreen (this weekend, next weekend, or fuckknowswhen) and only share stuff from it that’s relevant when it’s relevant. That’s probably the best compromise.
Alright, as a follow-up to this post, it looks like there’s an actual full bit of Homestuck book commentary (around the pages nearing Rose’s grimdark transformation, Book 6 pg 115, HS pg 3305, thanks @ramiedersedreamer and @zandraxofnebulon) about how Inversion Theory (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) isn’t what we thought. Quoting and reading it first (not the whole reddit post but that portion at least), then discussion under the cut:
"Rose is a Light player, but her blackout effects result from arguably the nadir of her role as such a hero--that is, when she succumbs to Scratch's manipulations and other eldritch persuasions, and goes grimdark. This truth would appear to lend credence to a line of classpect thinking known as "inversion theory," which really isn't without its merits. This note has just gone to the bother of describing one of its merits, in fact. However, it is possible to get carried away with this line of thinking and use it to evaluate everything that happens in Homestuck. For instance, you could say "Well, Karkat is a Blood hero, and here's where he stops being as Karkatty as usual, so that means he's being the opposite of his aspect. Which means he's being Breathy instead of Bloody. So that means a bunch of other stuff, ipso facto, Homestuck has been EXPLAINED." That's not really the way all this works. Aspect lore runs deep, but it isn't the Rosetta Stone to the story. When in doubt, it's better to remember this: rather than an underlying mystical logic where all classpect roads lead to Deep Answers, HS is a comprehensive nexus of many themes, and all roads lead to the basic idea that this is a tale about kids who are trapped in the universal struggle associated with growing up."
I... hm. Dammit. Is that all he wrote?? This slippery author is a master of giving us tantalizing and insightful details without committing to any hard yes-or-no whatsoever. >:T
I’d been building myself up to reading this all throughout yesterday with gut-wrenching dread that at this late, late, late hour he’d finally given us a definitive “NO” on Inversion. Instead we get this quite interesting but more vague “eh, there’s merits, but don’t go too far with it”. Which is......
...about as potentially-optimistic as I put it in the previous post, if not moreso?
Andrew’s being careful to lavish odd praise on inversion theory, too. Which some people are going to interpret as (Option 1) “Nice try, but dead wrong”, like the anon who put a snippet in my inbox initially, and others will interpret as (Option 2) “The big ones are RIGHT, nudge nudge, but stop applying it everywhere cause the fans who say every line of the comic means ‘ghosting inversion’ are looking at the story wrong and annoying everyone”.
As someone guilty of being one of those fans described in the latter half on occasion, I can CERTAINLY agree with THAT last part. Andrew made it really clear with the ending of Homestuck proper -- “this side shit didn’t matter as much as you thought it did”. I was so enamored with the classpect system that I thought almost everything was being shown to us through those lenses, at one point -- but even though perhaps more than the random reader might have thought is there, like he says, it ain’t supposed to be no Rosetta Stone. Even when I WAS overapplying classpect everywhere, the people who did it too often in places I felt clearly un-merited REALLY pissed me off! I can’t imagine how much more that might’ve been magnified in the shoes of someone who happened to apply the correct, lower amount of classpect and had to put up with me babbling and slathering it everywhere, much less the author’s shoes.
But there is still a big hole in his criticism, one he intentionally seems to have left there to me. By saying “don’t look for it everywhere”, but ALSO that “there’s more than some merit to it”... I don’t think it’s a stretch to think the truth might not only be somewhere in between Options 1 and 2, but perhaps even closer to Option 2.
Aaaand HERE’s where if you’re someone who HUNGERED for me to admit wrongdoing by sticking with this theory for so long, you’re no doubt angry. Looking at me as making excuses in the face of this long-awaited OBJECTIVE PROOF OF TOTAL THEORY DISMISSAL... WHY won’t the deluded bastard FINALLY succumb to REASON? ANDREW HIMSELF spoke up on the issue, IS THIS NOT ENOUGH?!???
And, well... you’re right to be angry. To be honest, I’m a fair bit pissed off too -- I could’ve used a solid “NO”, traumatizing as it would’ve been to me!
But that’s not what we got, because... *rolls eyes @ author* ...that’s not how Andrew works nowadays. And as irritating as it is, I also have to respect it a bit.
Andrew has become pretty committed to not full-on table-flipping fan interpretations and fanworks, avoiding forcing one “correct” interpretation (see: central struggle of HS^2 and the villains labeling divergence from canon at all as “bad”) because both interpretations should be rewarded. If something is REALLY wrong and hurts objective appreciation of the lessons he wanted to portray in his comic, like people plastering Classpect everywhere to the exclusion of the story’s central canon-escaping themes, he’s willing to shut them down... but when it comes to effective-sounding interpretations of the comic that he possibly never intended but “could” have been what he intended? He’s REALLY careful not to step on them! Or even sometimes DISTINGUISH them from the ones that he DID intend, sometimes, to keep as many fan interpretations alive in our imaginations as possible.
Which, as someone who pins Inversion’s entire existence on the assertion that “Andrew deliberately intended this and it’s our DELUSION otherwise”, really pisses me off at times like this. This is a theory hinged on the idea that Andrew had been deliberately hiding INCREDIBLY clever evidence throughout the comic for these intense thematic moves. All the SYMBOLISM we thought was pointing to inversion would lose an incredible amount of its meaning if it were all an accident. What about all that cool imagery in the Breath and Blood post? Did any of THAT really mean what we thought it was there for, like between WV and PM? Was any of it REAL? Will we ever even get an ANSWER? The answer is “no, we won’t”, because Andrew persists in this method of keeping his cards close to his chest even if he has to take them to the damn grave, cause he knows we’ll have more “fun” not knowing ‘em. That considerate son of a bitch. >:(
I’m serious -- it really does make me more than a little angry. I really do wish he’d said more to show us where we’re off-course.
But HS^2 has brought us Terezi telling us that Mind and Heart are indeed opposites. He MIGHT be holding onto the info because we may get it later in canon itself...
Meh. I’ll try not to hope too hard. And I’d better clarify what I actually believe, here:
My TL;DR thoughts on Andrew’s commentary up above are that when it comes to Inversion Theory (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), he’s leaving room for some of the BIG events to have been right or almost right -- say, #1, maybe #2, and only POSSIBLY #3 or #4 -- while telling us to back off and cast SERIOUS DOUBT on stuff that could have more character-driven explanations, especially #5.
If there’s a seriously FUNDAMENTAL transformation in a character that isn’t fully explained by their character journey alone (as kids growing up), involves significant outside interference, and is reflected by countless visual cues, THEN we should want to see if Inversion Theory “has merit” in that sort of case -- while laying it up against other competing theories that account for external interference of a non-Inversion-related nature in their actions too. Things like pre- and post-ascension Aradia or pre- and post-dreamdeath Jade seeming almost completely different characters? Or Rose seemingly taken over by the Horrorterrors... only to do nothing to benefit them but throw her mainself at Jack and get killed so she’d be forced to ascend on the moon mission rather than God-tier-die? I’d say Inversion is worth consideration and -- daresay -- worth believing in, in such cases.
And it still might all be wrong. There are legitimate ways to read Andrew’s commentary above that would have people screaming that Inversion has been disproven, that the “merits” mentioned were just a nod of respect to the losing side that I’m completely overblowing. But those seem to me like carefully ambiguous words from a carefully ambiguous man, and if there’s anyone to blame for their ambiguity, it’s Andrew. Trust me; I don’t like it either. He’s had plenty of practice saying things in a way that we CAN’T really draw many assumptions from.
Heck, even the Redditor transcribing this summarized their thoughts in a way that draws some assumptions I don’t believe are there:
Mostly I think it's just interesting that he's actually addressing Inversion Theory, and the gist is basically "it's a cool idea and has some merits, but the classpect system and story are not quite that formulaic." Sorry BKEW. At least we know Hussie has been paying attention to our wild theorizing.
--which is a rebuke drawn on the common interpretation that Inversion describes too “formulaic” a classpect system, especially with specific-class inversion like Seer <-> Witch and such. But IS that what Andrew is saying? Andrew criticizes the overapplication of aspect theory in describing everyone’s actions page to page, but does that mean a quote-unquote “rigid” system (I’m not going to play out the old “specific-class-inversion-is-too-rigid” vs “youre missing the flexible potential a fixed system gives” arguments again) is ITSELF an overapplication of classpect to people’s actions and personalities? Is he perhaps hinting that only Aspect stuff mattered in Inversion cases and the Witchy Rose class stuff was just a separate thematic thing that fits by coincidence?? What does it mean? WE DON’T KNOW! AND IT’S PISSING ME OFF AAAARGH
...I think I’ve said all I can think to say for now.
I mean, I’m glad Inversion Theory wasn’t outright disproven. I think it’s neat. I have a lot of emotional investment behind it, and being told it was all a worthless goose chase would have made me vomitously sick! But as I struggled with at the end of Homestuck proper, constant ambiguity shows a fair bit of disregard of its own, and both ending AND epiloguing Homestuck not only without a “yes” on this but without even a clear “NO” has caused me more gutache and poor feelings across MONTHS than either answer ever would have given me. I thought we’d earned that by getting through it, that we wouldn’t have to wait for YEARS and then STILL get cockteased like this. And I wonder how much I’m going to regret, later, that this wasn’t just a clear, simple “NO”.
I’m being told there’s an upd8 just now and I should read it. I’ll get on that. Cy’all.
I understand your anger and you have the right to be pissed at the writers. I do it all the time with some authors of the books I've read in the past and don't get me started on fics. But you kinda left us hanging with who these three new kids are and just gave us the briefest of brief glimpses. It's one thing to gripe about a peeve, it's another to cut down summarizing for readers who DON'T have access to the bonuses (like myself) :(
Honestly, yes I cut it down because I was ticked off, but... I don’t think it was really that important.
I’ve been bending the rules quite a bit, but the main reasons I started liveblogging the Bonus material and the Commentary wasn’t to give you the full, enjoyable experience outside of the paywall they created; it was to relay anything plot-important to y’all from inside the paywall to out, so that the paywall wouldn’t be a barrier to fully understanding the main comic and its characters’ motivations, plus to provide a glimpse into my reactions for your enjoyment and a glimpse into the bonus content to see if it was worth paying for yourself.
If you want to enjoy the bonuses fully as just art and story content on their own, you should consider paying if you can, or going to someone else willing to share them past the paywall in their entirety. The only real HS^2-important information we got out of this bonus is that the kids who snapped the instagram of them with the corpse are being recruited to chase them and document their struggle on social media, which will help shape the public perception of their actions to be cashed in later in the main comic against Candy Crockercorp. Everything else about the bonus, while potentially enjoyable, was just empty calories as far as HS^2 Mainline is concerned -- and I’m still a little too dedicated to the comic to completely share that out when they’re asking us to put money down to see it.
