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kae-karo · 2 years

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{Director’s Cut Ask}

OMG PLEASE GIVE ALL THE DEETS ON THE “Ine-fish-ent” FIC 😭🤍🤍🤍

I reread that fic like once a week, I swear haha 🐠

ITS JUST SO GOOD!

AHHH YES HELLO HI THANK U 💜💜 askldjfjklsdf top tier choice this one was SO much fun to write lmao

for context - send me a fic you want director’s commentary on!

knights of favonius...always so ine-fish-ent - luckae

He just stares, while Kaeya flounders, literally, in the grass.

had to start it off with a pun in case the first one in the title wasn't obvious enough. i think this was my first 'crack treated so seriously that it's no longer crack' fic in genshin? there was a little bit of hand waving and subtle lore worked in, but really the idea behind this one was just...i want to make this as much fun as i can

“Why didn’t you say that it hurt?”

i'm such a sucker for kaeya's nonchalance to an absurd degree about his own pain/suffering/heartbreak/exhaustion, especially when diluc is the one to notice it. and then kaeya has to just downplay diluc's reaction as much as possible so he doesn't have to acknowledge the idea that diluc might care about him

“Ah, of course, how could that have slipped my mind. Certainly my first thought upon meeting you should’ve been ‘by the way, do you happen to be a fish?’”

i just want diluc to be a little unhinged about it all, probably to hide the fact that he's a little unsettled by how attractive kaeya is with a tail lmaooooo. besides the obvious tension between them (as per usual) i also wanted to make sure diluc was, at all times, slightly entranced by kaeya's tail. and, ofc, vehemently in denial about that fact, and trying to blame kaeya for his own attraction lmao

A fish out of water indeed.

i had a great time really leaning into kayea's dramatics in this one - often i let his dramatics be a side effect of like...genuine emotions that he doesn't know how to express, but my goal was a more lighthearted vibe for this fic, so i let his dramatics be more for his own entertainment than some convoluted attempt to show his true feelings

Namely, the sink.

this one is epi-inspired specifically, and literally a cornerstone of this fic in the sense that it set me up for just making as many awkward and embarrassing scenarios for kaeya to get stuck in (and more importantly for diluc to find him in). like, kaeya has spent so long crafting this perfect, aloof, unknowable facade, and it's all shattered magnificently in front of diluc's eyes as he watches kaeya get stuck in a godsforsaken sink lmao. i think that's really a part of what endears diluc to kaeya again too? like, just the sheer vulnerability and seeing behind the curtain in a way kaeya would never allow under typical circumstances, and most of it reminds diluc of when they were kids and kaeya wasn't so distant

“I should’ve left you out in that field,”

“Well, you didn’t.”

if you clocked this as the 'i should've left you on that street corner where you were standing' 'butcha didn't!' meme (x) then u were correct and i commend u for ur miscellaneous meme knowledge

“If you don’t intend to help, then at least leave me to suffer in peace.”

this i think is the first point at which i let kaeya like...actually express his emotions? like, he is mortified, he is way out of his depth (pun intended) and entirely at diluc's mercy, which ultimately is a terrifying thing for him - it's easy enough to keep diluc at a distance when their interactions are limited, to pretend he isn't the same as he was as a kid, but when he's seeing diluc's softer side, it's so much harder for him to deny that he's a caring person. and so much harder to cling to the nonchalance he uses as a proverbial life preserver

and, just as critically, kaeya's show of vulnerability gives diluc the chance to let down his walls as well, if only just a bit. just to laugh at kaeya a tiny bit. and the dam begins to overflow here for both of them, all those old emotions brought back to the surface now that they are, for lack of a better way of putting it, almost forced into vulnerability (kaeya especially)

You didn’t have to do this, not for me. Especially not for me.

ahhh kaeya's old nemesis, a degraded sense of self-worth (especially around diluc). the idea that diluc might be a caring person is perfectly reasonable, the idea that he might care about kaeya though? unthinkable. being presented with tangible proof of that only serves to short-circuit kaeya's thoughts even further. also, pool is a great resource for eventual smut :)

“Do you want to turn back?”

while i didn't harp in either direction on kaeya's adjustment to the merfolk body, i didn't want it to be an easy thing for him to decide on. he has to skirt the truth, a little bit - that he does miss aspects of this - while acknowledging that there are things he would have to give up entirely if he stayed in this form. i think i ultimately knew he'd choose to turn back, but he'd miss it anyway, having his tail back

Maybe hopes that he’ll run, because Kaeya is not entirely sure how to handle having Diluc’s attention when disdain is not involved.

my favorite flavor of kaeya is denial. it is an absolutely terrifying prospect to face the idea that diluc might not hate him, even worse to consider diluc actually liking him, and i think a lot of that falls into this place of comfort for him. he knows that if diluc dislikes him, then there's no chance to hurt him again, and he knows exactly what to expect in terms of diluc's distaste. but if diluc doesn't dislike him, that opens up all kinds of avenues for pain for both parties involved, and kaeya fears that deeply

Kaeya inhales slowly when Diluc pulls his hand away, and Kaeya supposes that he does hypocrisy quite well.

i like a self-aware kaeya? to a degree, anyway. he only lets himself find any kind of awareness for his own emotions when he observes that same thing in the other person - with diluc, it's only if he starts to believe there's a chance diluc actually doesn't hate him. and he absolutely knows when he's being a hypocrite lmao. i think this is partly where a fun contrast comes in between kaeya and diluc, too - kaeya knows his emotions, knows he's a hypocrite. diluc...less so, i think. he fights with his feelings til they settle, while kaeya acknowledges them for long enough to bury them (until they crawl back to the surface without his permission)

Diluc is perfectly relentless,

i talked abt this briefly in another director's commentary, but i find diluc to be the kind of character who holds everything back, then - with the right burst of emotions - all of that explodes. there's less caution, more direct action, whereas kaeya is the type to doubt just a little more? specifically with diluc, but he strikes me as more conservative, more uncertain that his affections are returned, and that ends up manifesting more in his actions when the proverbial dam breaks

“You don’t like me.”

this scene actually ended up more challenging for me than i originally anticipated? i really wanted to encompass kaeya's reservations and doubts without making the whole interaction excessively deep and angsty, and give diluc the space to figure out how to express his emotions in a way that kaeya could hear and accept without it feeling sudden or out of character. ultimately, i went for kaeya provoking diluc, and diluc showing his affection via obviously false denial/avoidance and action which typically suits him far better than words

“They certainly don’t teach that kind of thing to ten-year-olds,”

absolutely critical to make this smut as embarrassing as possible. ofc kaeya has no idea how to have sex in this form lmao. again, really tho, it all comes back to giving kaeya a particular brand of vulnerability that he'd otherwise never have around diluc - apparently, giving him a tail is a requirement lmao

“Yes, Luc. Please fuck me, I’m getting impatient.”

for me, kaeya always has a breaking point - it's not necessarily like diluc's, but there's always a point at which he falls from 'obvious, self-hindering doubt' into 'full acceptance that this is happening and he wants it', and the second he's over that line, he's into it. usually it requires like. diluc-with-his-cock-out levels of obviousness, but ultimately it's some action on diluc's part, and likely because kaeya knows him well enough that actions speak far louder than words

“You didn’t even thank the dear alchemist,” he chides, and Diluc’s stare turns hard.

once again, the goal was to make this story as comedic and fun as possible, including accidental interruptions lmao. and kaeya, ever the tease

Kaeya suspects it’ll be the latter, but he’s always had an especially naive brand of hope when it comes to Diluc.

actually this line basically sums up the way i characterize kaeya - he has it set in his head, what he thinks he knows about diluc, and beneath that, what he does know about diluc. and surrounding it all, he hopes anyway, and all those thoughts and tidbits of knowledge run counter to each other in ways that kaeya consistently fails to reconcile - but at the end of it all, i think he ultimately always has this hope that diluc will be how he was, that he'll like kaeya again, or tolerate him a little more at least

“Just stay.”

between the two of them, i think once there's some sort of acceptance on both parts, diluc tends to be the more forward. not so much that he's great at words, but unlike kaeya - who will come up with every excuse under the sun for why whatever admission or activity that just happened was not a true reflection of diluc's emotions - diluc will just. bluntly state it and make them both acknowledge it

“What do you say, Master Diluc. Care to join me?”

very important to know that, now that albedo has crafted an anti-fish potion, he's managed to backwards-engineer a potion to turn kaeya into his merfolk form. diluc has purchased quite a few of both types and blatantly refuses to answer albedo's questions as to why. kaeya finds it endearing and very hot that diluc likes him both as a fish and not - and they do absolutely traverse out to the ocean so kaeya can swim properly. he spends a whole day out there sometimes, diluc sat on the beach after he's grown tired of swimming along with kaeya, and kaeya will go as far and deep as he reasonably can before returning. the best of both worlds, in a sense, though they definitely still keep the pool

send me a fic you want director’s commentary on!

#luckae #genshin #genshin impact #genshin fic #ask game #fic game #ask #go-ask-ash #fic directors commentary

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homestuckhomestuckhomestuck · 7 years

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Summary of Homestuck fandom after [S] Cascade.

(2011) Homestuck as a general phenomenon was very active and developed at a swift pace from the time it was published (2009) onwards, especially in 2012-2013, including and past the first years of the Homestuck Kickstarter Project, a.k.a Hiveswap.

Between 2009 and 2012, Homestuck as a webcomic was infamous for updating daily, constantly, multiple times a day, at all hours, for years. There was a calculated average that Homestuck updated 5.5 pages per day, dropping entire bundles of updates of character interaction and plot reveals frame by frame, posted as fast as Hussie could write it. Though it wasn’t immediately obvious, this pace was sleeplessly breakneck, Hussie allegedly didn’t do anything but live, breathe and dream Homestuck for at least four years straight. I’m serious when I say updates came at all hours. I would wake up 2am on a week night and idly check MSPA to see if there was a new update, sort of like a trained parrot. Then in five minutes I’d tab back over to the Homestuck tab and refresh, just in case.

This lead to an phenomenon appropriately dubbed “upd8 culture,” which became the basis of the sheer evangelical furor people still associate with the Homestuck fandom. Quick history: MSPA/Problem Sleuth fans originated and migrated over from the Penny Arcade forums, Reddit, and 4chan to nestle permanently within the bowels of 2011 - 2013 tumblr, and were best described from a distance as ‘zealous.’ Even remembering it now almost feels like recalling a distant riot. If you didn’t cosplay, write up a detailed theory post, or scribble up a crazy level of appropriately detailed fanart within 10 or so minutes any given upd8, you were buried under the force of post overload and were officially late to the party. After years of this, fans had some idea of just how dedicated it came off as, which was used to further spur on fandom and made Homestuck into the most meme filled in-joke community you could possibly imagine.

What’s frustrating about describing Homestuck and Homestuck fandom is they both heavily affected each other and were both unique experiences within themselves, which makes actually trying to get across the atmosphere of the early 2010s a wordy process. Homestuck heyday updates regularly crashed tumblr servers, which became an actual fake rss way of seeing how much the plot progressed that day, which is unusual even if the tumblr servers 2011-2013 were not funded by the corporate might of Yahoo. The bigger the update, the faster the crash. I could tell you Homestuck dominated tumblr to the point it had a virulent hatedom of people who had never even read it and constantly saw it and never understood what was happening in it, and fans couldn’t stop themselves from chattering about it all the time. One thing that has to be noted is all this continual bickering and movement and development and competitive content production was honestly fun as hell.

Besides constant updates and a continual stream of new content, the story was completely unpredictable. Game-changing plot twists continued to happen up until the very ending, and while this made Homestuck’s plot happily convoluted, for fans this meant one thing they never lacked for was barely solvable mystery. Even the (fan)artists and (fan)musicians hired to work on Homestuck had to guess what would happen next even if they were part of animating the next update. Under similar principles of an ARG, story presentation was created with the vague expectation fans would work together to explain to each other what just happened.

What this meant in conjunction with Hussie’s oddly accurate tabs on fandom theory was that when an update dropped you had to release whatever you were doing fast, or you would be outdated, wrong, inaccurate, or irrelevant at some undisclosed unspecific time, very soon. Canon and fanon directly pulled from each other, especially in the small character details. The very fact the comic spun on such accurate knowledge of fandom that was purposefully fostered between fandom and canon means that even now reading Homestuck while updating is considered an experience different from an archival read, even though Homestuck was always a self-contained story.

Upd8 culture followed like this: Popular fan theories had multiple fanfictions written on them just to better explain what could happen next, and fan projects from voice acting to art to music to fiction were constantly being corrected, updated, and replaced by a deluge of new information and characters to pore over every single detail with a fandom magnifying glass. An endless amount of hyper ambitious fandom projects, games, animations, multi media fanstories made in rotating teams were abandoned for new starts JUST because the information they were working off became too outdated by the newest few weeks of updates. Cosplays were mocked up in hours (for the next morning of con,) art in minutes, theory in seconds. You threw everything out as fast as you could so someone else could build off of it. It did give a strong impression of collaboration and possibility. As the fandom grew bigger and younger Hussie seemed to shade more politic in his fandom communication, but Homestuck managed to maintain an “open channel” like feeling between fandom and comic for a long time.

Innovative form encouraged innovative output. The point was to create. Another aspect feeding upd8 culture was in the way Homestuck was told. Not only were Homestuck’s detailed plot points hard to predict, but so was what would happen to the site in a meta way. A page could range from a scribble to a 3 hr fully programmed rpg or 18 minute asset heavy style swapping animation, or most commonly, sprite art followed by several hundred words of dialogue and character interaction. Pages came by different artists, different styles, different mediums, different paces and focuses, but with a breadth-spanning understanding of memes and the internet. Factors of style, innovation and novelty affected the diversity of fan output. Part of my extreme willingness to take part in Homestuck fandom was that Homestuck was so crammed to the brim with open ended creative potential, just the multiplicity of cool ideas and plot mechanics and vivid characters and weirdly novel framing that had really good ideas and existed literally nowhere else, and I say that as a huge sci-fi fan. Time travel in Homestuck was excellent. It was an ambitious story and I really do think it pulled it off. Homestuck was once described as the fossilized excrement of someone’s personal creative experiments, and I think that’s a good way of putting it. Enthusiasm and confusing daring teemed off the page, and translated into a wide variety of fanfiction and art, in style, content, theme, and pov.

Lastly, Hussie had a tendency to canonize fan content and hire fanartists and fananimators if their output was solid enough with a gentle horse kiss of approval and a naturally internet-transparent hiring process, like a forum. This was a purposely fostered atmosphere in the spirit of experimental adventure, and was just fucking nuts. Fans never wrote the story, but they did heavily influence aspects of how it was told and where it went (by design, fans were pretty much involved in making the comic) and even get to actually flesh out the details, like the main character’s names, memes, romances, character, and scope. Everything from canon sprite art to bits of the Midnight Crew to Caliborn’s character to Calliope’s art skill to music and trickster arcs were all originally based on years of fan jokes and fandom. Homestuck was definitely Hussie’s sole property and precious baby, but he built it as interactive-ish and creatively as he could. It added an extra layer of galvanizing egging on to fandom purpose. I don’t know how else to explain everything that came of it. Fandom was like a roiling morass of bullshit activity, like a breaking news bullpen 24/7, there was so much energy sparking off of all facets of fandom because it was just so fun. Fan output was borderline insane in 2010-2013.

Hussie said fandom grew exponentially at the introduction of the Trolls in Act 5 in mid 2010, but I can honestly say I think fandom really started treating Homestuck like a hidden gem worth proselytizing right after the events of [S] Cascade at the end of 2011. Before then, Homestuck was tenuously good, and had a rep on tumblr for having weirdly ubiquitous fans and over- detailed fancontent, but [S] Cascade was the moment every single gamble asked of the reader in the story actually paid off. In fact, Homestuck’s plot was generally constructed to climax at [S] Cascade, as was apparent from the big explosion of fan reaction after the fact. At this point, you would be hard pressed to find a fan that wouldn’t say, “Homestuck is good.”

THE KICKSTARTER (2012)

Right after [S] Cascade, a lot of things happened in quick succession. Act 6 started, revealing what endgame would probably look like. It was slated to be shorter than Act 5, envisioned as a kind of denouement. Lord English, the final villain, was revealed. Hussie stated he thought the comic would end the following year. I think Hussie saw the ending was in sight and started trying to merchandise for real at this point, god tier hoodies started releasing at a faster rate, Homestuck book 1 came out (in addition to Problem Sleuth book 3), there was a Homestuck music (and track art) contest announced with hundreds of fan submissions, and the incongruous but hilarious public induction of Dante Basco, Hollywood superstar, who was instantly whisked into the Homestuck fandom’s fold as soon as he formed a tumblr. Homestuck had a bit of a reputation by then so the fandom (+ Hussie) was legitimately trying to woo him gently. This was entertaining for everybody, including Dante Basco. (For those who haven’t gotten that far, Dante Basco is a character in Homestuck.) (As some trivia, Grey DeLisle also briefly made a tumblr in this time, influenced by the instant rapport Dante Basco had, voiced some Vriska lines, then left due to some unrelated but tumblr-typical drama.)

There probably weren’t even specifics on who was going to be programming, illustrating, producing, and writing Hiveswap- and I’m still vaguely convinced Hussie scrolled through Promstuck and then hired Shelby Cragg (Calliope’s official artist) on the spot to illustrate all his future creative endeavors. I know Guzusuru got hired at least partially due to Lullaby for Gods, not to speak in the least for Paperseverywhere or Toastyhat (tumblr usernames used just in case, dril), plus a literal list of artists you could follow through various Homestuck fan production to official product lines. With Hiveswap, Homestuck went from hobby to full time job for some people. But before all that, in 2012 Homestuck as source material was apparently endless and constant, and let’s just say by 2013, Hussie never had to ASK for specific fan content, assets, musicians, artists, programmers, writers, even money. He just had to allow fandom a place, an address, an email, anything, to let them throw it at him. I have actually never seen anything like it, this weird businesslike use of talents within and out of comic. This is why mid 2012 art assets and minigames suddenly start becoming more populous, culminating in the nearly entirely guest art illustrated, programmed, and animated EOA6 and A7 and guest written post-canon snapchats in 2016. (This is also the time the MSPA forums crashed.) Also the art, programming, and music team for Hiveswap seem comprised of former fan musicians and artists.

One thing that’s no concern for Hiveswap: it will be was beautifully illustrated, scored, and animated by people who loved Homestuck.

In sum: 2012 Homestuck was in full swing. Homestucks flooded cons, more than usual, to such a volume of painted gray tweenagers that cons in general (and hotels) had to rewrite the rulebooks surrounding such things as panels, photoshoots, and draw meets. MSPA servers were still barely holding up, especially after big upd8s, and were constantly being upgraded. Tindeck made a whole genre tag on their site for Homestuck fanmusic. What Pumpkin and Topatoco couldn’t keep up with demand, everything was constantly out of stock. Staff and even Hussie didn’t announce when new products were released until weeks later because if they did, the entire store server would immediately crash for long periods of time. This remained true even into 2016, apparently. There were homestuck plushes, furniture, tattoos, rooms, board games, video games, cards, dolls, products you wouldn’t even think of– a whole years long scrum about establishing copyright and what could sell where to who. Promstuck was a once-a-year reality in random cities around the US or otherwise. Art Team and Music Team had quick fame gain, I know at least Music Team members could feasibly live off of Homestuck revenue as their day job. Ben Nye grey paint actually sold out before a con, and even to this day any gray paint on amazon will be utterly dominated by troll cosplay reviews. Even small trivially related products like the record of the guy who posted “I’m a Member of the Midnight Crew” on youtube was convinced to list the record on ebay for a couple hundred dollars in a sprightly fan bidding war. This was completely unremarkable at the time.

The most interesting thing about Homestuck is that it was a) entirely spread by grassroots efforts and word of mouth, and b) a free webcomic. Though unlike the T.V syndicated and advertised shows like Sherlock or Dr. Who or anime, or the multi-billion dollar industries of Marvel or Nintendo, with nearly zero effort to be anything but weird and internet obscure, Homestuck seemed just as bafflingly popular and literally impossible to avoid as professionally advertised hollywood blockbusters, popular anime, television serial shows, and multi million video games, at least on tumblr, reddit, and 4chan, and conventions. Because of all the factors that went into it’s circuitous development, if you hadn’t read through a huge chunk of Homestuck, you wouldn’t even understand and you couldn’t even properly explain why such a niche but undeniable popularity existed. It was such a phenomenon.

People who had (reasonably) never even heard of Homestuck would stumble upon a fandom antic and observe with growing confusion the busy masses hard at work. Bright blue horse dildo fundraised and sent dutifully to creator? (At least three different dildos on 3 different social media homestuck fan sites were fundraised publicly.) Gruesome artwork of puppet fetish websites carefully placed with pages of critiqued meta with way too much attention? Even the usual deluges of upd8 fanart and fantheory? Entire forum sites and rp sites and chat clients enthusiastically founded just for the constant need to discuss the story? Homestuck became recognizable by horns and grey paint and terrifyingly huge meetups, a nearly frantic aura and art meets or prom dances just for fans - “What the fuck is Homestuck?!” became a fandom catchphrase, because it was always being commented on. Tbh, Homestuck is the r rated precursor for Undertale in memetic inclination and story framing style. Memes, man.

And in the midst of this, in September 2012, Hussie suddenly announced a Homestuck Video Game Kickstarter. The long awaited scalemate plushes were introduced as a reward tier. And unexpectedly, a lavishly illustrated ostensibly Kickstarter exclusive Homestuck tarot deck by popular fanartists as one of the reward tiers.

For context: The entire premise of Homestuck is that it was a transcribed gaming session of a video game that didn’t exist. Opening a Homestuck Video Game Kickstarter was a fitting sequel, the equivalent of waving an 8th book prequel in front of Harry Potter fans, as illustrated by the cream of the crop, if every previous iteration of the Harry Potter series was also free. In addition, the goal was $700,000, and Homestuck had over 2 million online fans. There wasn’t a question if $700,000 was going to be feasible as a funding goal, it was more a question of how far the fandom could goad itself into trying to overshoot it. In fact, I remember being kind of disappointed we didn’t reach 3 million. We capped just below 2.5 million including the paypal donations. Homestuck started making “official” waves in news articles and such, of people who noticed a completely incomprehensible kickstarter got a lot of money somehow, and this in addition to the typically update culture-fast result (the funding goal was reached in about 30 hours of a month long campaign,) was regarded as very bizarre by everyone who didn’t know what Homestuck was.

Trivia: there was even a $10,000 tier introduced as a joke, where “your fantroll will become canon (for one panel, and then die),” which was hastily closed after two people actually took it. (One was an army vet who thoroughly enjoyed the story and basically wanted to donate as thanks, and the other has remained impressively anonymous.) First time I saw Hussie publicly searching for words. I really could say 2012 Homestuck was approaching some kind of mania. Considering how Homestucks were, if someone named their firstborn off a Homestuck character, I wouldn’t have been shocked. The game was funded.

Homestuck hiatus’ started in earnest. This was due to the increased production schedule of both the Kickstarter game being punted into development, the troubled indie game development cycle, and more detailed HTML5 games (openbound) in the comic, and product production, which is, you know, was fair enough. Updates were frequent enough to keep fandom active and frothy well into 2013, where the lack of Game Updates in conjunction with comic hiatus’ were both uncharacteristic and concerning.

Homestuck was abruptly shifted off of regular upd8 schedules, and upd8 notifiers were sadly put to rest.

HIATUS FANDOM (2013-2014)

Here was a unique factor of 2013 Homestuck fandom, for the lack of content, fandom moved en masse to an alternative ‘hiatus fandom,’ in some kind of effort to keep together over the wait. This literally singlehandedly boosted the popularity of games like OFF, Dangan Ronpa, etc. Homestuck hiatus fans were already pro at boosting popularity through word of mouth, and these obscure-but-popular video games were fun to pimp in the meantime. A more recent, toned down example would be 17776.

Here was also something weird. In December 2013 Hussie apparently (as creative director only) had some kind of mysterious would-be trial run with Shiftylook with Namco ips, resulting in Namco High, the Homestuck and Namco character dating sim, where you could date Davesprite (who had a surprising amount of meta character development,) Terezi, Pacman, and Galaga. It was so out of nowhere nobody knew what to do with it. It was an indication of what Homestuck as a franchise was probably going to expand into, though, and an intriguing move on the part of Bandai.

In the comic hiatuses and throughout the roadblocked kickstarter game development, canon-side, the Paradox Space quasi-canon side project and WeLoveFine (later ForFansByFans, who took over merchandising,) continued on the spirit of fandom support- notably the original Art Contest to make new merch- now streamlined into a “fan forge” where any fan can go through a voting process to say, pitch a new product and later be hired on the most recent calendar, then show up working a new Friendsim.... etc.

After this a new generation of internet fans appeared to ‘notice’ Homestuck, hearing it was ending, and joined in, making the Kickstarter garner a kind of shadowed conspiracy-riddled rumortale more than anything, which really outstripped the simplicity of what happened: hardworking but troubled development.

The End of Homestuck was hanging like the sword of Damocles over our collective motivations, you can still find mournful farewell Homestuck fanart floating around to this day! In fact, the fandom believed it was the End of Homestuck several times in 2014-2015. Fandom was tamping down on the corners, cleaning up fanart (relatively), tucking away the crazily ambitious scifi world spanning AU fic. The wild, raw creativity that used to be so rampant through all corners of the internet seemed vaguely diminished, tidier, more understandable, trackable, and efficient. Big Projects never showed their roughs and drafts until the final products anymore, small circles of discourse popped up in pretty polite language and with almost no capslock. The discussions weren’t on What Hussie Would Pop On Us This Time To Overhaul The Entire Plot Of Homestuck, it was more like, did he make the gay Gay Enough™? Vriscourse remained eternal, though.

And it isn’t just nostalgia talking. I’ve noticed some Homestucks still think fandom is a rush of collective community like they’ve never before experienced, that upd8 celebrations are pretty dang wild, and Homestuck convention presences are well-established, but now? In 2015-2017? This is calm and active, there are still some cool projects going on, but nothing like the insanity that was associated with Homestuck. Homestuck was the ‘biggest’ fandom I’ve ever been in, in terms of sheer forced commiseration and activity, and it just has not reached anything close to the levels of 2011-2013 bullshittery and spark plugs.

But the fandom is still present- people treat it like a phase, but Homestuck is still a clever story that retains all the aspects that attracted readers to it in the first place. Also, the fandom still regularly accomplishes minor feats of economics like this even in 2016:

because that is the level of fan fervor that Homestuck inspires, forever, apparently.

I’d last like to note I’ve skipped a lot, I tried to keep it as zoomed out and as general as possible. I’d like to explain the true foibles of 2013 Homestuck fandom, such as the forced formation of entire rp websites, apps, programs, and platforms dedicated to fanning Homestuck more efficiently, how fans formed new mediums and literal ways of expression and vast organized contests on how to express themselves and collaborate better, how there was almost a fan project-pipeline system in place, and how exactly Homestuck influenced Undertale (think of the meta) and an entire mini generation of webcomics and tv show story boarders spiritually, and I haven’t even tried to explain the aspects of Homestuck’s use of framing and how genuinely interesting it is from a storytelling perspective, and how the interaction of Hussie and the fandom and serial updates affected people’s connectivity because out of scope.

...But just for posterity and context of update culture: Quoth Gankro, programmer:

So the biggest thing to keep in mind with MSPA is that it's based entirely off of collaboratively riffing off eachother's ideas. It started out as a faux text-based adventure where people would post prompts, and Andrew would take the ones he liked and riff off of them. As far as I'm concerned this is Andrew's super power: the ability to take a pile of things (comments, art, music, ideas, people) and rapidly recombine them into amazing things. The chatlogs in Homestuck full of amazing back and forths? That's just what talking to Andrew in chat was. Constant riffing and feedback loops....

Anyway, this is all to say that the genesis of ideas, and even how things got developed, is honestly really murky with Homestuck? Everything was kinda adhoc, a riff-on-a-riff, and done in incredibly little time....

I can't emphasize this scramble enough. Andrew was a ceaseless content machine, and I don't think I was ever "blocked" on him producing content. Which is ridiculous considering how much content is packed into our games. (like, hundreds of pages of dialogue)

Michael Bowman, music team:

Volume 5 going out of its way to include gobs and gobs of material definitely changed the project; the floodgates opened. I think people admired Andrew's astonishingly prolific pace from 2009 to 2012, and between 2010 and 2011 the music project had the same vibe: we released one or two albums monthly.

-fan interviews courtesy though the efforts of u/drewlinky

Homestuck and it’s fandom has the unique distinction of being nigh unexplainable, as in, it took this long just to fully outline how the Homestuck Kickstarter was always going to be wildly successful, and how development was always going to take years even without the incident with the Odd Gentlemen, who clearly didn’t understand why Homestuck was popular or even why that mattered, (pre- Undertale), in the first place, but with the news of Viz taking on Homestuck’s license on account of that viral-like marketability so now there’s an actual possibility that Homestuck will finally become…… anime, why not hearken back to the good ol days and be relentlessly picayune for the hell of it?

Happy 10/25!

#HAPPY 10/25!#homestuck #hiveswap development is such a saga too #i also didn't talk about specifics of recursive fandom (fans of fans of fans) but wow #2012-2014 #hscom

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