Everything in Act 7 has come up, even the fact that Rose and Kanaya were the only characters who saw the “Thanks For Playing” sun (or were at least the only ones depicted as seeing it), so naturally Rose would be particularly obsessed with a meta-awareness, associating Earth C as being “a victory state.” I can’t say I personally saw that one coming, but I can say Act 7 predicted it.
Now we can only wait for something to happen that none of us could have predicted. <3
OP:Hey, I thought I’d share this commentary I saw in book 3 about [S] Jack: Ascend, because I thought you’d probably find it as interesting as I do (also it’s too big for an ask so I have to do it as a submission sorry):
Hussie quote: “[…] I think this one marks the start of Homestuck’s trend thereafter of dropping exceptionally violent, high-octane, game-changing animations out of nowhere. There are so many like this from on, right up to the end of Act 5. Only then does the number sort of taper off. But from this point on I just sorta started shoveling more and more red meat into the story’s maw. This stretch is where I was starting to get a feel for this type of sensationalistic storytelling content as something I’d later code (mostly for my own internal purposes) as “meat,” in the meat/candy binary of storycraft theory. I really shouldn’t talk about this yet, though. It’s too soon.”
This quote threw me for a loop, to be honest, and I’ve been mulling it over the last couple days. I wasn’t sure what the Meat/Candy binary was referring to at all, I was just kind of like uhh wtf?
Then I remembered this exchange, and I think things started coming together:
Meat and Candy are all Caliborn/Calliope eat. Which makes sense, since they’re the ultimate audience stand ins. Hussie gives us a good sense of what Meat means in his description: Very violent, very game-changing animations that move the story forward. Parts where people die and/or Get Shit done, usually delivered with a lot of visual spectacle.
Caliborn gives us a pretty hefty clue as to the second. Odds seem good “Candy” refers to shipping, or at least the very particular kind of shipping Caliborn is interested in.
Which is to say, Caliborn isn’t interested in watching Roxy and Jane have a real relationship, or grow as people, or wrestle with real feelings. He’s interested in the physical titillation they can provide him with by acting out the cute parts of a relationship. See also: Trickster Mode, where the characters indulge candy and become saccharine sweet and affectionate to each other while being entirely detached from their conflicts and issues.
Unsurprisingly, Caliborn’s also only interested in “candy” that caters specifically to his own sexuality, insofar as he consciously performs it.
So basically, Meat and Candy both provide different forms of titillation and satisfying “content”, from the fandom’s perspective. Meat gives us raw plot, the satisfaction of Things Happening, steaks being raised, etc. Candy gives us shipping fodder, absent conflict and growth that real relationships require.
This log also introduces a third concept into the equation, presenting an alternative to the Meat/Candy binary: Pumpkins, or Vegetables.
The implications of this one seem fairly obvious to me. Vegetables may not be tasty or satisfying to eat, but they’re good for you and necessary to a healthy body. Eating one’s vegetables is considered a sign of maturity, or at least being on the path to maturity.
I’m going to guess that in this framework, vegetables refers to content depicting the characters actually reckoning with themselves, facing their feelings and flaws, and growing as people, friends, and relationship partners. This is explicitly built into Dirk and Jake’s relationship symbolically, but really it applies to every endgame ship and to the character’s arcs more generally. Caliborn doesn’t give a shit about anything that has to do with the characters actually growing up.
Pumpkins are also Void items, which makes me wonder. If the most “important” romantic relationships for each character, the ones that help them grow as people, are the ones considered “Pumpkin” matter in the story, maybe that goes some way to explaining why we get so little explicitly romantic affection shown between, say, Vrisrezi, Davekat, and Dirkjake. That’s candy.
If that last idea is accurate to the story’s internal logic, it makes me think of this quote from The Little Prince:
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.
Anyway if I’m right about this at all, the real takeaway is that @sam-keeper was writing about this aspect of Homestuck openly way back in 2016. So, you know. Homestuck was good and meaningfully constructed all along, and everyone should listen to Sam forever. What else is new.
In the interest of respect for spoilers on a frighteningly dense piece of content that’s, relatively speaking, only just come out, I will be terse and vague.
Homestuck boils down to two fundamental elements, which go by many interchangeable forms. There’s “Time and Space” (or any ‘opposing’ aspect pair), there’s “Caliborn and Calliope,”
there’s “Vriska and Gamzee,” there’s “visuals and text,” there’s “meat and candy,” there’s “trolls and cherubs,” there’s “Platonic idealism-based physics and trolling,” and– I posit– there’s “I and you.”
“I” is a sort of Ultimate Self, you could say. “I” is who– I posit– the Prince wishes to make manifest, “why don’t we become One God.” Lord English is the closest Homestuck had come to representing “I” in one body, and it’s probably for the best, because “I” is the complete death of individuality, freedom, diversity, autonomy. “I” is reality beating to one drum, and in order to manifest, that means someone’s agenda has to be enforced over all else. So, instead, “I” is split into each and every character, and it’s up to them whether they want to focus on that “I,” and how much they would want to.
“You” is… well, for some reason I want to point at the Green Sun Black Hole, the emerald eye of the storm. “You” watches the spectacle of existence as an independent observer. Unlike the puppetmaster “I” God, “You” is more like Godhead Pickle Inspector, unwilling to intervene in the reality-threatening war. (“The illusory world of form is not to be interfered with, and the divine dance within is to be revered silently through His omniscient ogle.“) MSPA Reader is one of the clearest examples of a manifestation of “You,” and I don’t think I need to elaborate on that one. Every character, though, has a bit of “You” in them, and how much they focus on that “You” is reflected in how selfless they are towards others. The presence of “You” still has an effect, though, just as the presence of a black hole would. They still count as an entity with mass, they can still tip the scales, they’re just inherently harder to… notice?
…that’s all I got for this particular thought: Homestuck is a million-word abstract dance of manifestations of “I” cascading and colliding while watched by (and fearing?) the great “You.”
Does sound a bit, well, Saussure. I guess that’s my own tastes reflecting.
The end felt like a Sequel Hook to me. Homestuck’s puzzle has been laid out, and now the Prince storyline can come and be its own thing, in a new story with a new name. As alt!Calliope said, this is the end of this particular story.
Incidentally, I’m pretty sure the implication is this “new story” would involve a new game of Sburb on this other class-M planet, with Dirk trying to pull the strings to get himself and Rose (and John?) prototyped/immortal. Or perhaps not prototyped, but certainly immortal through another means. Hell, maybe Dirk wants to manipulate the Sburb game so he plays it by himself, in the hopes of achieving unconditional immortality that way. (Plus that’d only further cement the Prince/Caliborn parallels.)
And, presumably, the protagonists would show up on this planet and do their best to thwart this Sburb game.
I have no doubt at all that John will be prototyped, though.
Filled in a little summary of the Meat epilogue. Will do Candy next, probably later tonight.
I’m sorta doing this for the sake of getting a better picture of the overall structure. That’s my kind of thing. It’s certainly cool to see the way the Epilogue parts are divided.
The Homestuck Epilogues are a response to Homestuck exploring probable post-canon events and philosophical ramifications using the device of metatextual prose (of a caliber arguably on-par with the high-quality animation of Act 7). They are “canon” insofar as they are officially-produced, officially-endorsed, and distributed on the official site; insofar as they are fundamentally a separate story, they are “not quite canon” and one can still interpret/enjoy Homestuck without them.
So are they, then, truly an epilogue? This paradox is only the surface– the Epilogues are like a post-modern riddle, begetting layers upon layers of great Questions the further you read. Some Questions come explicitly, spoken by characters or narration, with many answers given or none at all. Some Questions, perhaps the most haunting ones, are only provoked by the phantoms of emotion– where you feel impassible grief, flaming outrage, indignant mirth, deep discomfort, you’d best take heed! for your body’s reactions are the surest way to know when you’re in the presence of everlasting mysteries.
In the interest of pursuing.. what you could call “a conceptual foothold” from which to better view the “textual landscape” of this tri-authored work, I figured I’d compile a rough summary. It’s marked by my own biases in what I chose to include or leave out of the outline, but if you want to take the outline and adjust it to your own standards for any purpose, you’re more than welcome to. I’ve included links to each page for convenience; they preface each entry.
There we go, both Meat and Candy are summarized. Couldn’t resist the urge to add a little introduction, at least to give context as to why this page even exists.
I wrote some fan music. It’s sorta personal, at least inasmuch as it’s about John, the hermit, basically watching himself age as time passes in the epilogues, and that means a lot to me. And it’s presented as if Caliborn wrote the song, because for some reason that’s the only way I can convince myself to share anything.
