Do you agree with the rumor that Hussie pretty much swindled everybody out of 2 mil and won't ever update again? I recently learned about the shitty things he's done before, so now I'm a little suspicious. Just curious about what you think.

Normally I don’t entertain the billions of asks I get (most of which recently are asking if I’ll reveal my prognostication methods after Homestuck ends, the answer to which is a resounding MAYBE), but this one really caught my eye. Now join me, dear readers, as I proceed to thoroughly debunk this anon, school you all in a bit of ancient fandom lore, and give my own prediction for when Homestuck will end.

First of all, no. I do not agree with that rumor. Hussie did not swindle everybody. The game is being made. That isn’t my personal insider scoop; that’s just public knowledge. It has a confirmed developer. If the Kickstarter was all an elaborate ruse to rob the fandom, no developer would have been announced. Now a professional company is risking their professional reputation on successfully making this game. For it to all be a lie at this point is absurd.

Now, whether Hussie will ever update again is a different story. There is no intuitive argument that makes it obvious Hussie will finish the comic, so I have to admit there is an extremely small chance this part of the rumor is true. Just like there’s an extremely small chance Hussie could update tomorrow, or even today. But that’s looking at the question from a purely logical standpoint.

Now let’s look at it realistically.

Hussie has been working on this comic for five years. He has an insane work ethic that other webcomic artists admire. In January he claimed that he was deep in the process of writing the rest of Homestuck and that it probably needed another month of writing before he could start working on panels.

It should be noted how often Hussie mispredicts how long a task will take him. Examples: [S] Descend was originally intended to be the 4/13/2010 flash. In March 2010 he thought he might end Homestuck on 8/26/2010. He originally estimated Hivebent would last one month. Then in early July 2010 he estimated Hivebent would take only three more weeks. He originally estimated Act 6 would be shorter than or approximately as long as Act 5. And probably many more instances that I can’t remember or find on his old formspring. (If anyone else out there can tell me some of the instances I’m forgetting, I would greatly appreciate it!)

My point is, if Hussie estimated he’d need one more month of writing, it probably means he took three more months of writing. But in any case, we have little reason to assume Hussie was lying about writing the rest of Homestuck. I mean, when have we ever known the great Andrew Hussie to lie to us?

Homestuck will update again, eventually. Again, this is not my own insider knowledge. This is my personal opinion based on my faith in Andrew Hussie to deliver a finished product. Will it update this year? I’ve seen a lot of people predicting update dates of either 10/25 or 11/11, but frankly, I don’t think either of those will happen. If Hussie finished the writing somewhere between February and April, then that was 4-6 months of Gigapause spent only on the writing (not to mention the writing for the game, which Hussie stated at the time was a higher priority). We can probably safely and arbitrarily assume that another 4-6 months of work went into drawing the rest of the panels of Homestuck, which brings us to somewhere between June and October. (This is also ignoring the numerous conventions Hussie attended over this time, constantly breaking up his work flow.) So why isn’t Homestuck finished already???

Animation.

In Hussie’s original Gigapause announcement, with regards to producing the rest of the comic, he stated “most of the effort will be tied up in animation chores.” Now, I’m not suggesting we take this statement literally and account 51%+ of the Gigapause to animation duties, but we can at least put it on equal ground to writing and drawing and add another 4-6 months to our total. Which gives us the extremely broad range of October 2014 to April 2015.

I can understand with the lack of progress updates from Hussie that people are starting to lose hope of Homestuck ever updating again. But, we are still well within a reasonable time range for Hussie to still be working on the comic! Especially with all the conventions and game minutiae he’s had to attend to, which probably add another 1-2 months to our ETA: November 2014 to May 2016.

So there you have it. Homestuck will probably update any time from right this very second, to eight months from now. That’s as specific as I’m willing to get, and even then, there’s a good chance I’m wrong.

One last note: What the hell are the supposed “shitty things [Hussie]’s done before”? Anon, I hope you’re still here to answer that. Because I’d really like to know.