I keep seeing people talking about how the Game Over timeline characters were so much more well developed in this or that way, and that the new timeline’s versions are shallow and underdeveloped, and I strongly disagree.
The Game Over timeline characters were miserable. They weren’t “more developed” in any ways that were healthy or reasonable for 13-16 year old children.
Rose was allowed to wallow in her depression over her mother’s death to the point that she developed what would have been a life-long struggle with alcoholism.
Dave stayed caged and closeted about the abuse he suffered, and probably hadn’t come to terms with how immature he’d been about sexuality. He had a miserable relationship with Terezi that ended when she left him for an abusive fuckstick version of Gamzee.
Terezi, again, was miserable. The shit she went through is not something I’d wish on any teenager, no matter how much her angst eventually led to interesting discoveries about herself. She should be allowed to have those discoveries throughout the course of her life, not all at once because she’s been abused, manipulated, and left for dead.
Karkat was also completely miserable; the fact that he had so much affinity for and spent so much time with the dead versions of his friends instead of the LIVING ones who needed him speaks to a profoundly fucked up depression that a kid his age should not have to deal with. I’m not mourning the Karkat who missed Alternia, who still clung to the idea that HIC was the ultimate badass and who’s greatest ambition was STILL to be a general in her endless army of canon fodder.
I don’t know why so many people want the miserable versions of these children back, but please try to understand that trauma and angst is not character growth. Like Hussie is clearly communicating over and over again right now, just… let them be kids.
(I didn’t mention Vriska because fuck Vriska, I really hope something happens so that her stupid bullshit plan fails because having her succeed would just confirm for her that she’s the best at everything ever and sorry but validated narcissists are not my cup of tea. That it took eons for (vriska) to have the slightest, most minuscule amount of character development really speaks to who she is as a person. All I want in life is for (vriska) to find a way to cross the barrier between life and death and kick Vriska’s ass.)
huh. you know what, i was definitely in the ‘moping about game over kids’ camp but i changed my mind now. i like what you’re on about here.
Yes, this perfectly puts how I feel about Game Over. (Well, I also think thematically it was pretty appropriate, but that’s beside the point and mostly because I’m a newcomer, I realize.)
It feels like the end of the NGE anime vs. the End of Evangelion movie. Like, the end of the anime had Shinji happy and connected to society and his friends, but the movie was dramatic and had robot fights, so people liked it better, even though it ended with everyone dead and Shinji miserable. And post-Game Over we’re still promised exciting fights so it’ll be great!
I still believe that Game Over wouldn’t have been half as bad for anyone except that stuff outside of Hussie’s control made the Gigapause last way longer than it was supposed to, so everyone got really attached to the pre-Game Over kids, and got really invested in how they specifically would get happy again. So I kind of really hate seeing people blame Hussie for what they perceive as bad writing, when the writing is fine, it’s just that there was so much expectation that was frustrated. Which is fine! Frustrated expectations suck and I have definitely quit shows and books over them, but the Game Over wasn’t bad writing.
Plus the new updates have shown us that their development isn’t going to be abandoned.
Counterpoint: say you have a pet dog and it’s feeling under the weather. You take it to the vet to see about getting it treatment to help with whatever doggie ailment it has, but instead the vet just euthanizes it and gives you a new dog, claiming all the while it’s actually the same dog you came in with. That’s what Hussie did with the characters in Homestuck.
Of course the GO characters weren’t in healthy places, and of course trauma isn’t necessary for character development (though it does serve as a useful tool in narratives), but the new characters have almost nothing at all. The new characters have maybe a month of on-screen development (since if it’s not on-screen, it doesn’t count for us, the audience). Sure, it’s been a month of positive changes, but compare that to the years of watching the GO kids. I was emotionally invested in them. While I hope the kids end up in good places, it doesn’t matter unless I can watch the journey.
Rather than new Rose beating her alcoholism in a recap montage, we should have seen GO!Rose follow an arc sort of like Roxy’s. GO!Dave should’ve been the one to have the heart-to-heart with GO!Dirk. GO!Terezi was miserable, but she learned something important from killing Vriska way back when and after the big GO battle. This Terezi has learned nothing, and is still in an abusive relationship, but now <> with Vriska instead of <3 with Gamzee. Her position has not changed at all.
I don’t want these kids back miserable; but I do want them back.
Your dog analogy is just not right at all. Here is a more accurate one:
Your dog has been getting progressively worse and worse, until it’s on the very edge of death. You take it to the vet to see if it can be fixed, and the vet tells you that it’s impossible to save it, However, if you let him euthanize the dog, he can bring it back to life right before it got sick in the first place and give it another shot.
THAT’S what actually happened.
I really do have sympathy for people who got attached to GO’s version of the characters, just because it took 3 years of real world writing to get there, and people who were there the whole time in the fandom had time to fill in affection and headcanon for those three years. I especially feel sympathy for Karezi fans because their entire relationship was essentially retconned. But if you actually look at the text, very little time is spent on the character development for these characters other than showing us how miserable they are. There’s a reason why Andrew skipped quickly through three years of development with those characters and focused more on the alpha session, Meenah, and (Vriska) than any other character. WE filled in the empty spaces he intentionally left so that we WOULDN’T get attached. If he had actually finished things on schedule, the retcon outcry wouldn’t be NEARLY as loud. Sadly, he didn’t, which is both outside of his control and his fault, but it’s not bad writing.
Ask almost anyone who actually started and finished Homestuck after the retcon had already happened. The retcon is fine and nothing of value was lost. Andrew didn’t kill the characters we loved and replace them with dopplegangers. He gave the characters we loved another chance. What WAS lost is the value that WE built around it, all our attachment to events and the world that we constructed around them.
Like, I get it. I do. But try doing a full reread with an open mind and you’ll see what I mean. I did, and I realized that GO and the retcon were not only inevitable, they were full on telegraphed from the beginning. The feeling of loss we experienced wasn’t on Hussie. It’s on us.