Why I’m So Fucking Hung Up on the Masterpiece Being Written Off the Face of Homestuck

So here’s a little piece of the Homestuck ending that I feel most everyone has totally gotten over, and that I absolutely never will.

Caliborn’s Masterpiece.

Here’s a classic storytelling technique: showing the audience something that the cast don’t know. This can be something as simple as a scene revealing a character with a secret agenda, or showing an explosive with a ticking timer nearby.

Here’s another one: tricking the audience and revealing that their knowledge was wrong by widening the scope of context. The secret agenda was because a character was a TRIPLE agent, or the explosive was actually in a completely different place, and now a completely different character has been killed than the one the audience expected.

Caliborn’s masterpiece initially appears as one. I…. think…. it was ultimately meant to be the other? But it does it really terribly and here is why.

1. There’s no reveal.

The big moment when we find out that the Masterpiece was actually JUST A BUNCH OF PUPPETS or FROM A DOOMED TIMELINE or WAS ACTUALLY (JOHN) AND SOME POSSE OR GHOSTS or SOMEHOW AN ILLUSION or WAS THE MAIN CAST’S PLAN ALL ALONG never comes. Instead, we’re left to wonder, oh yeah. What…… happened with that?

2. It needs to happen.

It’s a crucial part of the narrative. Homestuck’s major theme of closed causal loops and beginnings and endings requires the origin of Lord English and of the House Juju to be explained. Which it was, and then, suddenly, with no explanation or even coy hints of what that explanation may be, it wasn’t. Or was it? Who knows.

3. My favourite character’s promised Big Moment was locked behind it.

Annnnd here’s where I get to what I really want to talk about.

The Masterpiece was rad for a lot of reasons. It recontextualized what we knew about the House Juju. It finally answered all the questions we had about lil Cal and what his deal was. It turned the reveal of Caliborn on its head – Caliborn WASN’T Lord English, just a part of him. It had Caliborn making vines with claymation.

Annnd it promised us a really baller ending for Jake English.

Look, I’m not too proud to admit that I’m biased here. Jake is my child. He is my son. He is my precious jungle baby. There isn’t even a contest for my favorite Homestuck character, and the Masterpiece got me REALLY, REALLY EXCITED. Jake gains control of his powers. Jake overcomes his Page weakness. Jake harnesses what he can do – to PROTECT HIS FRIENDS. To protect DIRK. The day would be lost without Jake, and at the critical moment, he leashes his shit, pulls it together, and saves everyone and gives HOPE where there was none. Holy. Fuckin. Shit.

Goddamn perfect.

When this happened, Jake was in a dark place. Right AFTER this happened, Jake went to an even DARKER place. He thought he was capable of absolutely nothing of value. Vriska insulted and abused him verbally. Jake believed her. She told him that all he could handle in a fight was the weakest target, Slick and the Felt, and she didn’t even give him any backup. He expressed doubt that anyone cared about him. He’d just been threatened with rape in Crockerteir Jane’s clutches. He rejects even ROXY’S love, thinking that she’s making it up.

He keeps specifically vocalizing that he’ll never be of value, that he’ll never get this big moment. But the audience is onto this. The audience knows that Jake is wrong and his darkest moment is is building up to something huge – to when Jake masters his powers and saves the day and saves everyone, especially Dirk. His and John’s log does a fun bit of foreshadowing for this, where John says that Jake is the sidekick character who shows up and saves the day while the hero character is overwhelmed. Dirk has already been visually equated with Batman.

With the Masterpiece gone, where does this leave Jake?

Uh, nowhere, really.

Remember how Vriska said that Jake was worthless? Called him “Joke” and “Jape” and said that he could take on the Felt and that’s it? Go watch Collide again. Jake COULDN’T EVEN DO THAT. Vriska set her standards as low as she could for him and Jake didn’t even get to measure UP to them, much less overcome them. Dad had to handle Cans, Karkat had to handle Clover, and the Striders had to handle Slick. Good job, Jake! You successfully defeated an enemy even weaker than Vriska, who vocally hates you, thought you could manage.

The Masterpiece being gone sucks for a lot of reasons, but for me? Oh man. This is the main one. Jake’s big moment, the culmination of all his shit, is locked behind it. I would have been fine with an ACTUAL bait and switch, here, but we didn’t even get that. Just a weird ellipse.

Jake is left with his shit hanging. Does the Masterpiece happen? When? Does it even mean what it appeared to mean for Jake when it does? Is it even OUR JAKE?

Who knows? Who cares. Andrew Hussie apparently doesn’t.

My boy deserved the ending he’d been promised. And if not that, he at least deserved the decency of having it plucked from his fingers.