beautiful animation, but what was behind the decision to give races to these previously raceless characters? i found the allowance of self-insert and/or creativity in homestuck to be one of its greatest strengths

Long ago Whatpumpkin stated it would include more diversity in its merchandise and extratextual properties, but never delivered (until recently.) I basically include depictions of non-white features and characters as a way of giving people what they were promised, because that seems fair. 

I don’t believe doing this somehow subtracts those allowances, but there’s also the question of how advantageous they actually are. Araciality is not as uncomplicated as we would like, maybe. Homestuck is not racially neutral in its text or subtext, and in truth it would take more than just drawing these characters in a different way to address that. It’s something I’m keeping in mind going forward.