I read meat first, then candy, which is my personal recommendation. Spoiler I I liked both of them overall, although meat more so. Better high points, and not as bad low points. The beginning of candy, in particular, was not easy to get through.
Reading candy first, because who the hell eats raw meat is why. First sentence: Spoiler “John thinks.” They changed the perspective from second-person to third-person. That can’t be good.
Spoiler So the best theory I've seen so far is that Meat is Caliborn's fanfiction and Candy is Calliope's. I'm not sure if it's true, but it's what I'm going to hold onto.
Spoiler So, i REALLY enjoyed the epilogues. i read candy-meat, and i think that was one of the most fucked up things ive had to read in, a while, that wasn't specifically dead dove fanfic. but man, it is a weirdly satisfying read. i felt an actual emotional gutpunch once dirk started talking in his meta voice. the link between that and muse calliopes talking about how different storytellers can warp stories (or whatever the hell all that was) just fucking destroyed me. also, the thing with the car and candy john being wrong in who, exactly, died in there? chefs kiss i also got it pointed out to me that dirks Ultimate Self involved doc scratch, lord english, and arquiussprite. so...while i dont think he fell apart physically like rose, i ALSO dont think at all that hes in his right mind. but, because of who he is and who hes absorbed, he doesnt realize that anythings truly amiss. muse callie also needs to shape the fuck up, candy was a nightmare hellscape, if aptly named. FINALLY i dont think that these characters cant be saved somehow. while i dont know what canonical machinations there can be to stop both the Ultimate Self and a fully realized muse, i can enjoy myself by thinking solely about another narrator beating them soundly about the head with a broom and yelling at them
Spoiler: Final(?) epilogue thoughts Slept on it. Opinion is still that it seems pointlessly meanspirited and nihilistic. I can understand that that's not the intent, but authorial intent only matters so much. The thing feels mean, cruel, and intensely nihilistic. None of which I'm here for, especially that last bit. Nihilism and I have never had a cordial relationship, and it's only grown colder the older I get. So back to my regularly scheduled 'Homestuck can't possibly be ended satisfactorily and honestly that's fine because I'm not even really here for that but instead the pieces of an incredibly flexible mythology that I am free to do what I please with', I suppose. I also still don't want a continuation to it. My thoughts regarding Homestuck ending in that regard remain the same as they were when Act 7 dropped. I'm just happy it's over and I want it to stay over because honestly the canon is beginning to wear out its welcome.
Spoiler I'm finding it easiest to just think of meat as the alpha timeline and candy as a doomed timeline. They both coexist in Homestuck Epilogue canon, which is essentially a sequel to Homestuck but not necessarily the only "possible" course of events.
rose: "Whichever way our fate unravels, there's too much of...something. Too much blood, too much sugar." and there's a third omnipotent narrator in this mess: hussie himself there might be a third epilogue incoming
That's what a lot of signs seem to indicate but at the same time I don't want to Sherlock fandom this and be sitting here waiting for a secret "real" ending that's never going to happen.
I have heard it said that on the thirteenth day of the fourth month in The Middle Of Nowhere, Arkansas that a certain boy found the Hidden Homestuck Epilogue on the deep web. This boy spontaneously realized the truth and reached Enlightenment and with him so did six hundred and twelve giraffes and one thousand and twenty-five swans and that the Godhead Pickle Inspector bowed his head to the ground in reverence and chanted the boy's name out four hundred and six times.
so the seadweller zine's opened mod apps! https://seadwellerzine.tumblr.com/post/184365847943/seadweller-zine-mod-application
I just finished both sides of the epilogue, and I really enjoyed it. I'm a little bit of a sucker for this sort of thing anyways (very much in the "I just want to see what it looks like when it all breaks apart!" camp), but I also didn't really ever get the big feeling that anyone was particularly ooc (as is the predominant take I'm seeing on other social media sites). Like, especially in meat, given that Spoiler: spoilers most of the cast are explicitly being manipulated to act differently by Dirk , but as a whole most of the so-called oocness just registered to me as "wow that person really changed over the span of like two decades. welp, guess that's what people do."
warning: jade shade Spoiler jade trying to get into dave and karkat's relationship was SUPER embarassing and i'm legitimately uncomfortable Spoiler WILL THIS HAPPEN TO ME? WILL JADES TRY TO GET INTO MY RELATIONSHIP Spoiler "IT'S BLACK CHEMISTRY" GIRL BYE Spoiler i liked the part about karkat for president though. that part was extremely realistic to my fanfiction of what dave and karkat would talk about but jade was ew ew ew ew ew imagine a person actually acting like this Spoiler imagine being happy in a relationship and then a girl comes and tries to spange on the love you share. you think you have a friend but after all these years, they're lonely, right, you see them slowly lose touch with what is appropriate and start to demand physical affection. IT JUST MAKES ME UNCOMFORTABLE BECAUSE I SELF-INSERT AS THE CHARACTERS TOO MUCH ITS TOO REAL I HAVE LONELINESS ISSUES AND IMAGINE GETTING THIS PATHETIC...
Ancestor Zine! lowkey I wanna start collecting zine info, but I gotta remember to add this to the fandom events thread
i haven't gotten through candy yet, i only read meat. idk when the choice was first presented (before the two options were out), i picked meat just because it ... seemed like it would have "more depth" in the ending? from the description? anyway Spoiler: meat spoilers now removed by like two days from it, most of my hurt feelings have subsided. i guess the only reason it feels meanspirited to me is that, like, it's one thing to write this shit as what-if fanfiction where you just wanna see shit burn? but i am like, hardcore, a happy endings only sorta person, so it bothers me having meat be any kind of canon. but w/e i love my strider's, and i can't ... say i'm surprised by how this dirk turned out - idk, if what he was saying about ultimate self being true (which! i am taking with a grain of salt because dirk is and has always been a self absorbed prick who can't see jack shit, even if it's right under his nose, if it disagrees with what he wants to be true. then he got narrative power to make whatever he wanted true), then, that means somewhere in there, lil cal and caliborn are in his head, right? (and like, gamzee, and i guess arquius) and i've always sorta ascribed to the theory that beta bro was "corrupted" by lil cal, so i feel like then dirk's ultimate self would be corrupted too? :( still. i am sad about it and GOD how he interacted with trans roxy and davekat was ... so gross. like i actually had to step away from the screen when he was trying to get dave and karkat to kiss, holy shit, that was so fucking creepy, and he kept making weird comments about top/bottom and whatthefuckever (which i mean, i guess makes sense since he's supposed to be Supreme Toxic Masculinity, but still) and then how he was like "but ..." with his whole schtick about "giving people privacy" and his rants about how we, the reader, were just gross voyeurs - uck uck uck. also like, personally i get it, but i so want to strangle dirk for jake. like! yeah! he broke your heart! because you were dumb teenage boys? that's like. what happens. in teen romance. yOU HAD ACCESS TO ALL OF 21ST CENTURY MEDIA, HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW THIS???? that's not like, justification of any sort for warping his brain so badly that you fucking broke it, because he wasn't actually in love with you and you made him that way, and then fucking. "you will never break my heart again" motherfucker fuck you. pobre jake :( also upset by how jane and jade got handled. i mean jade just straight up doesn't matter for a significant portion, which sucked, because i was so on board with davejadekat. like! she gave them graphs! i definitely feel that like, in a world where dirk didn't have narrative control, jade would've been the kick in the ass dave and karkat needed to stop dancing around each other. (then again, technically dirk had narrative control that entire time so idek) jane's whole xenophobia thing was just. idk. not what i wanted from her. i don't even CARE about the economy, dave, does it even matter when you're living in a post scarcity paradise. i did like the explicit parallels between her and feferi though johnrezi was so good though. i was so happy to see terezi give up on vriska. felt so good, man.
okay one last thing. i finally read that twitter thread linked earlier and i like that a lot actually. it does take out some of the sting for me
Spoiler also i love the way narrator!dirk taunts about viewing these cute teen moments and privacy. one of my favorite things about homestuck is how it makes the point about shipping being weird and then the narrator JUST GOES THERE... Spoiler ok i love john and terezi. there was always this guy in hsg who would ship john and terezi and every time, people would tell him he is crazy for shipping john<3<terezi but he just kept believing. i wonder if he's still with us now? Spoiler JANE IS FUCKING TWEEKING Spoiler KARKAT: SHE’S INDIRECT. SHE’S PRIVILEGED. SHE’S CONCERNED WITH HOW THINGS *LOOK* RATHER THAN HOW THINGS *ARE*. KARKAT: NO MATTER HOW NICE SHE WAS WHEN YOU WERE KIDS, HER DEDICATION TO THE APPEARANCE OF THAT “NICENESS” HAS ALREADY LED HER DOWN A PATH OF CORRUPTION AND DUPLICITY. i love karkat so much... he is me... im him OH... Spoiler so dirk is the transphobe?? should have been obvious this is very realistic to real life because in the castro at strut they have a picture of genderswap roxy on their advertisements. like for real stolen fanart. dirk is very accurate to how gay men view ftms lol. that's all i'm gonna say okay jesus christ this is all too much to handle or read at once BUT I LOOOOVE IT I LOVE IT WITH ALL MY HEART ITS SO DARK AND EDGY AND SOUL KILLING i always wanted to write fanfiction where everyone just fucking... loses their relationships and becomes lost to their psychological issues also they didn't get in the ovipositioning.
