play Pesterquest Rewritten, it will make Aradia happy
(as of this posting, there are four completed volumes -- a prologue, John, Rose, and Dave, totalling roughly 30k -- with two more volumes actively being worked on! this silly build won't last so go play it while it's still available :))
so what was the deal with the drama around the art in the first requiem cafe art?
I wasn't here in 2023 so that is why i am clueless
First was that the depiction of the characters. It was on-model and not like the Pesterquest counterparts. So characters like Terezi, Feferi, and Aradia look thin despite fanon and Pesterquest has them looking plus sized. People accused it as fatphobic.
They also accused the artist (who is HONE, but nobody knew at the time who made all the art assets for the cafe since Requiem Cafe and WhatPumpkin had kept them anonymous for some time) as being racist because Roxy's hair was not curly like her Pesterquest self.
The biggest thing they accused the artist the most is the fact they think she PLAGERIZED someone's edit of Roxy. A Pesterquest Roxy edit had been posted on Reddit that had her with the scarf and people were surprised to see the promo art have this. People accused her for STEALING.
The worst part of all, Makin, who is in charge of the Homestuck Community Twitter and Discord server, WAS THE ONE WHO TRIED TO CALL OUT THE ARTIST AS PROBLEMATIC despite the fact they were the same group that were given permission to help PROMOTE Requiem Cafe.
The art for Roxy was then changed to avoid further backlash.
It wasn't long until AFTER the Homestuck x Requiem Cafe collab was over that it was revealed that it was HONE who made that art. HONE is a popular Japanese artist who worked on Homestuck. She contributed illustrations to [S] Collide. She says she made the old designs way before Pesterquest was a thing.
Makin did not apologize directly to her after this reveal.
TL;DR People accused the artist was racist, plagiarist, and fatphobic that the art had to quickly be changed. Makin, who runs Homestuck Community, tried to tell everyone that she is this. But when they found out the art was made years before Pesterquest release and was made by Japanese artist HONE, they backpedaled and did not apologize directly to HONE.
The old Roxy art with the scarf, was never released due to the backlash and we will never see the full body sprite because of this incident. I was lucky to have managed to get the full resolution of the old art before it was changed. The Jake and Jane sprites also had coincidentally had stuff like the Pesterquest counterpart (Jane's red glasses, Jake's black coat), but was changed to be separate from Pesterquest.
The longest-ever PQR volume, clocking in at 14 thousand words, a crossover of Hiveswap, Friendsim, and PQ... is done!
(Well, it's been done for a week or so... but the video is done, now, too!)
The video premiere is at 7:30 PM EST... see you there!
Also, can I just take the moment to thank all of my contributors and collaborators... but ESPECIALLY @horsesbones for contributing DOZENS and DOZENS of unique sprites to this route, including an original character, as well as half a dozen full-screen endcard drawings, an ANIMATED SEQUENCE... just. Holy shit. This chapter could not have happened without them. Shoutouts for fucking eel.
Bonus shoutouts to @flaringk for cleaning up a specific spriteset, doing a few crucial art edits for the early part of the route, and being supportive... and SPECIAL THANKS TO @vumigumi FOR DONATING A SPRITESET!!!! You'll see it at the end of the route, but vumigumi was BEYOND kind and reexported files in the format we needed. Just. King shit frankly
Yeah!!!!!!!! Thank you all for playing my game. The response since SAHCon has been outstanding :))))