Spoiler Weirdly enough, the appearance of Trickster Mode is now my sole hope that Hussie realizes what he's done and has more planned. Trickster Mode was a cheat that basically let you skip to the end, become massively OP, and get high on life - but then it wears off, and you go through shakes and withdrawal, basically, as reality sets in. Calliope passing around the Trickster mode lollipop for the wedding... Take the candy coating off, Hussie. All this cute nonsense is gonna lead to cavities Or maybe he just wanted a happy ending with no narrative effort, and I'm getting my hopes up just so Hussmeister can let me down again
Spoiler I feel like the narrative made a very big point about subversions and talking about them, with constantly rocking back and forth between the story of Skaia/SBURB and the story of Homestuck. And as events progressed, there was less draw to SBURB, what with the boss fight at the end being revealed in a flashback and a song with the Trolls, the Denizens always or almost always offscreen and generally ignored, and with the destruction of the main concepts of the game itself. Prospit and Derse were destroyed, the chess battle was upended thanks to a god character being created that should not have existed, and there was a lot of subversion of how SBURB and SGRUB were meant to be played. Meanwhile, the story of Homestuck became focused on the fate of these characters against a character who pre-ordained his creation and win condition. Every rule of SBURB, every negative event, can be drawn back to one of like six people. One of these people was someone who believed in going against the grain of the story to become a true Hero (Vriska), one was going against the grain because he hated his pre-ordained role in events (Bec Noir), and four (Caliborn, Gamzee, Doc Scratch, and the Codesce) were all about bringing forth an elder mobster-god beyond the power of the game itself, who exists because the game exists, and who torments because everyone played the game and helped to make him exist. It's like the story was building up to the resolution of the latter, only to decide that there has been enough pain and chaos and to go with the resolution of the former. All the while, the trappings of the latter still hang over events like a bog-soaked curtain. Gamzee and Caliborn are still alive. And no one wants to continue fighting back because the story is over, but the story is not over. Personally, I have to wonder if this was the intent of Hussie, a story that ends and doesn't end at the same time. There's a lot about paradox space in the ethos of the series, and you can't get more paradoxical than Schrodinger's End Credits?
Really at this point I don't think a proper "satisfying" ending is possible. Or even wanted in my case.
Other people have said it better, but -- it all started to go wrong with the Vriska retcon for me. It rushed through some character arcs and flat-out dropped others (barely any resolution for Terezi, Karkat sidelined, half the trolls outright forgotten, the sprites^2 introduced and then becoming unimportant) in order to get to a Sburb win condition. How the hell is Vriska a force of stability on the meteor? I'd buy it, I suppose -- fans have made compelling theories -- but the story has to sell it with more characterization than a few snapshots. I realize it's the height of hubris and reader entitlement to go "Andrew Hussie should have planned Homestuck better." Like saying Gaudi should just have lived longer so that he could finish the Sagrada Familia properly. I still couldn't help being disappointed.
No, I agree. I like a lot of what he's doing with the ending and these end credits in particular, but the pacing of the last two acts were shot all the bloody hell. I just am not sure what other end credit thing would have been better given the ending we got.
Yeah, pretty much. More fluff to follow the original fluff Spoiler It's a very saccharine sweet, fluffy ending. A very Calliope-written fanfic ending, dare I say it. They escaped Caliborn's narrative and wound up trapped in Calliope's Happy Cake and Fun Times. Come on Hussie, do something
Yeah, honestly my reaction is colored by acts 6-7, I'm not evaluating the end credits as a distinct entity. I'd probs have liked them more if what came before set them up better.
Spoiler: and another thing, bitter venting COULD WE MAYBE GET SOME ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF THE FRIENDS THEY ALL LOST?? Sweet Rosemary wedding is all very well, but no funerals? No monuments? Someone besides Terezi has to care! Vriska's not the only casualty that mattered! I'm gonna reread "thou with dark eyelids" and cry a little
Spoiler: Actually A Thing That Bothered Me Instead Of Just General Sad Analysis It's this that made me annoyed on how we got to see fuckin' Nepeta get annihilated in the black hole, and there's not any reaction besides Grimly Determined Terezi Gonna Save Vriska. Like come on Hussie, I'm sure you're bitter about the fans caring about unimportant characters to the point of harassing you over it, but that's just petty.
New plan: go back in time, convince myself to not like Gamzee Makara as a character. That's the only way this will end for me
I dunno, I think the fanbase has a right to critique the work. And I don't think a situation where the artist made poor decisions is comparable to a situation where the artist died.
That's fair. I was just being cheeky because it's impressive Homestuck was ever as coherent as it got, given how much of it was made up as it went along. But it held together so well for so long that this (possibly inevitable?) shaky dismount was both a surprise and a disappointment.
AND ALSO why the corporate future and why THAT corporate future? Does Jane seriously want to recreate a baking megacorp? In the beta timeline, she had a joke shop. But no, crocker Corp, red as the battleship condescension and the tiaratop. And WHY wasn't Jade in the SkaiaNet picture, she founded a version of that company and did it under arguably harsher circumstances! Does Jake even like making robots and tech stuff? Also it seems a little weird that two or more gods run corporations. Would it technically be blasphemous to compete against them?
I stopped reading shortly after Arquiusprite was created (I think, my memory's foggy...it was around there though) and I always meant to pick it back up in time for the ending but it just didn't happen. And now... *has flashbacks to when Lost ended and he was still 3 seasons behind* "Wait, so...should I actually finish this now, or...??"
finish reading homestuck so you can sort yourself into one of the "i read homestuck and all i got was this inescapable feeling" clubs
