HS^2: Chapter 2 is out

[lillithRamie]

Regarding the narration talking about what is happening in the panels themselves. I fell like this may be an intentional thing that will be played around with later on.

In Homestuck the story itself revolved around the concepts of time; the alpha timeline, doomed timelines, time loops and what have you. The Epilogues served, as Andrew described it, a bridge between stories. It cleaned up loose ends to keep the timeloop stable and then focused moreso on what Homesick began poking at before: the narrative.

I believe Homestuck^2 will be focusing heavily on the concepts of narration as it's main concept of tomfoolery. Who the narrator is, their limits and powers on a story, and just plain messing around and subverting it. By having the narration plainly speak about what's already happening in the panels the writers are demonstrating and setting up something. That is, the relationship between what we see happening in the panels and what we read happening in the narrators voice.

We saw previously at the start of HS2 that Dirk was both writing the narration and creating the panels for us to see too (quite literally). He was the single narrator showing us his own happenings going on in Meat. I have no doubts that further into the story we will begin to see the panels, the wordless narration, and the text start to diverge as our narrators begin to fight for control.

The text describing what we already see happening in the panels is a clear sign to me that they are trying to establish a status quo of unity between the panels and narration. A false unity.

[JakeMorph]

dirk does literally acknowledge toward the beginning of h2 that there really doesn't need to be a panel showing anything at all, for a given beat of the story. the authors are at the very least aware of the line between image and text, and that it can sometimes be broken, restructured and dissolved.

i think the point is that h2 isn't just a "comic" like homestuck was ("or was it?" is a whole other conversation worth its own thousand words). in a comic the images ARE the text, and you're supposed to be able to tell what's going on outside of dialogue by looking at the pictures. but following on from the epilogues, h2 is now absorbing elements of what could be described as "a book" in general terms. in an illustrated novel the images don't replace any of the text; they merely supplement it. i think this can easily be viewed as just as much of a strength as a weakness: if you take away all of the images, most of the text is still gonna make perfect sense.

even ignoring the metafictional ramifications of stuff like this, it's a great boon for readers who might be blind or vision impaired.

[thorondraco]

dirk does literally acknowledge toward the beginning of h2 that there really doesn't need to be a panel showing anything at all, for a given beat of the story. the authors are at the very least aware of the line between image and text, and that it can sometimes be broken, restructured and dissolved.

i think the point is that h2 isn't just a "comic" like homestuck was ("or was it?" is a whole other conversation worth its own thousand words). in a comic the images ARE the text, and you're supposed to be able to tell what's going on outside of dialogue by looking at the pictures. but following on from the epilogues, h2 is now absorbing elements of what could be described as "a book" in general terms. in an illustrated novel the images don't replace any of the text; they merely supplement it. i think this can easily be viewed as just as much of a strength as a weakness: if you take away all of the images, most of the text is still gonna make perfect sense.

even ignoring the metafictional ramifications of stuff like this, it's a great boon for readers who might be blind or vision impaired.

In the end though the author/ narrator/architect/puppetmaster must show something. Word or image or even animation. Maybe a combination of things is what allows things to be more 'concrete' it becomes. When its but an image you can mess with the context of that image and what it means. When its prose you can have whatever else might be going on in the background you want as two characters talk and perform actions. When both combine it becomes less malleable but more sturdy 'canonically' speaking.

Its why i think that hiveswap might in fact be part of Homestuck^2 story. Of course it entirely depends on WHEN they get hiveswap done. I am hoping in a couple of years, maybe three. Kate said something about working on HS^2 for 3 to 5 years but it doesn't necessarily mean that is how long the comic itself will last, just how long she is willing to work on it. But if not, Hiveswap would have to be completed within a certain amount of time.
Though Kate's wording makes it sound like she is simply moving onto her own projects after 3 to 5 years and would pass her job to someone else.

[VASKA]

So commentary is out and can I just say: was not worth my money. I'm fine with talking about this because there is literally nothing told to us in this round of commentary. The commentary on the bonus update was good, but I guess it was written by an entirely different person.

I would rather them either not require commentary on every panel of the update or use the commentary for tangentially related jokes or entirely unrelated meta information. All I got for my money this time around was "haha I don't know what I'm supposed to say but I'm contractually obligated to write something here" which is *not* a very good reward for my support.

[thorondraco]

So commentary is out and can I just say: was not worth my money. I'm fine with talking about this because there is literally nothing told to us in this round of commentary. The commentary on the bonus update was good, but I guess it was written by an entirely different person.

I would rather them either not require commentary on every panel of the update or use the commentary for tangentially related jokes or entirely unrelated meta information. All I got for my money this time around was "haha I don't know what I'm supposed to say but I'm contractually obligated to write something here" which is *not* a very good reward for my support.

they must not have had anything to say. or didn't work on it..... kidna stupid. guess it depends on who they got writing it. You could get either something funny and insightful or just dumb jokes depending on who they hired and their connection to development.

[MorganMustDie]

I loved it!! They're all so adorable!!!! I can't wait to see more!!!!!!

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

Shoot. Jane's going to revive Gamzee while the Epilogues look the other way, isn't she?

[thorondraco]

Shoot. Jane's going to revive Gamzee while the Epilogues look the other way, isn't she?

That or TAvros hatepunch accidentally resuscitated him.

Then again he did in fact die and we don't know if that is gonna cause some kinda change.

[VermilionSpaceWitch]

Not sure what to think of the direction Homestuck 2 is going, an actual High School AU? dropping 2nd-person storytelling in favor of dramatic storytelling? Will we go back to Sburb mechanics? Is all the characters going to pass the torch to a new cast this time around?

Who knows? The absence of 2nd-person narrative in recent chapters instead using novel narrative is something I have to get used to, hopefully there’s always goofy captchalogue shenanigans to be seen for our new cast after this whole character introduction charade. Always start homestuck with inventory problems.

[ThePungeonMaster]

The new direction of the story is... Strange. I have to be the only guy who actually really likes the relatively mundane and goofy High School shenanigans. After coming out of both act 6/7 and the epilogues, it's a welcome respite. But the writing is, noticeably worse. To a much lesser degree for the characters, that's about as solid as it could be, but the narrations lacks the coarse and acerbic wit Hussie's writing had, something that made me fall in love with Homestuck in the first place. Really what will make or break this story is whether or not the authors will be willing and open to criticism, but judging by their current direction, I doubt that such will be the case.

[Sokota]

The new direction of the story is... Strange. I have to be the only guy who actually really likes the relatively mundane and goofy High School shenanigans. After coming out of both act 6/7 and the epilogues, it's a welcome respite. But the writing is, noticeably worse. To a much lesser degree for the characters, that's about as solid as it could be, but the narrations lacks the coarse and acerbic wit Hussie's writing had, something that made me fall in love with Homestuck in the first place. Really what will make or break this story is whether or not the authors will be willing and open to criticism, but judging by their current direction, I doubt that such will be the case.

Pretty much exactly how I feel, honestly. I don't think it's necessarily bad, it's just... lacking.

[thorondraco]

The new direction of the story is... Strange. I have to be the only guy who actually really likes the relatively mundane and goofy High School shenanigans. After coming out of both act 6/7 and the epilogues, it's a welcome respite. But the writing is, noticeably worse. To a much lesser degree for the characters, that's about as solid as it could be, but the narrations lacks the coarse and acerbic wit Hussie's writing had, something that made me fall in love with Homestuck in the first place. Really what will make or break this story is whether or not the authors will be willing and open to criticism, but judging by their current direction, I doubt that such will be the case.

Pretty much exactly how I feel, honestly. I don't think it's necessarily bad, it's just... lacking.

Had the same thought. Then i realized that this might actually be taking place in the interim week from when Vriska dropped into candy to when Calliope presumably leaves/John finally talks with Roxie. So i am more left extremely curious than anything.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

Not sure what to think of the direction Homestuck 2 is going, an actual High School AU? dropping 2nd-person storytelling in favor of dramatic storytelling? Will we go back to Sburb mechanics? Is all the characters going to pass the torch to a new cast this time around?

Who knows? The absence of 2nd-person narrative in recent chapters instead using novel narrative is something I have to get used to, hopefully there’s always goofy captchalogue shenanigans to be seen for our new cast after this whole character introduction charade. Always start homestuck with inventory problems.

I think that, unlike Catnapped, every "chapter" is going to be a perspective switch, but it may be too early to tell.

[JakeMorph]

I imagine it will change over time. i think we're going to get a lot of perspective switches at first so we know where everyone is and what they're up to as the main story gets set up, and then when all the pieces are in place we'll get to spend more time in the one place.

i was going to say "just like in homestuck 1" but i guess that's kind of the opposite of how homestuck 1 was? wow there were a lot of perspective shifts in latter homestuck

[thorondraco]

I imagine it will change over time. i think we're going to get a lot of perspective switches at first so we know where everyone is and what they're up to as the main story gets set up, and then when all the pieces are in place we'll get to spend more time in the one place.

i was going to say "just like in homestuck 1" but i guess that's kind of the opposite of how homestuck 1 was? wow there were a lot of perspective shifts in latter homestuck

As the narrators are active characters in the story here, i wonder whose perspective we are looking through. Is it calliope or is it Dirk? The writing sounds like Calliope but it could be Dirk fucking with us by emulating her tone. Though Calliope i think is still present in the candy at this time. I got confused before cause i could have sworn this was gonna be post epilogue stuff, but it seems like this is happening during the week John mentioned.
We won't know until the narrator shows their hand i suppose. Candy is a big question mark of if ANYONE can influence it cause its disconnected from the story. We don't know that yet. But yea we are popping around in terms of perspective here but we don't know if we are popping around the perspective of Narrators yet.

Wait a minute. wait approximately 60 seconds. Who is narrating the side stories? I can't imagine why Calliope or Dirk would particularly care about showing what is going on there right now. Maybe Calliope could have sent jasprose to try and counter what dirk did to Jane but.. Would that be worth showing?

God DAMN this series its making me paranoid. Though i wouldn't be at all surprised if a third party has risen up here and the side stories are where they are setting their claim on for the time being. Fuck might be twenty peeps fighting over paradox space by the time its all over. They could be deciding victory by playing Super smash bros of all things!

[lillithRamie]

Since HS2 is happening before the end of the Candy Epilogue I've thought of a couple things for why we are able to peer into it. Possibly alt!Calliope narrated the events of HS2 during her stay inside the black hole, and it's just being shown to us now. But, from the description on the Patreon we can assume that these characters in Candy will at some point be trying to escape the black hole.

But inside the black hole, those who the paradox once discarded seek to claw back to relevance and escape to the Fanontinuum, a new fabric of story and space woven by the hands of new narrators, thousands of voices that fill the vacuum left by the death of the author.

Now by 'fanontinuum' could mean a couple things in relation to HS2's story. It could be a completely different, selfcontained multi-universe of Homestuck unrelated to the Meat Universe. Or, Meat itself is a part of this 'fanontinuum'. Since the beginning of HS2 contains a reference to the fanfic Pony Pals I'll assume for now that Meat in it's entirety is part of the fanontinuum and those in Candy will be clawing their way out into Meat.

This is directly opposed to the line alt!Calliope gave us in the postscripts, 'Never again the twain shall meet'. This leaves me thinking that if the Candy side of HS2 is narrated by her, she plans on sending out her key players (Omega kids + whoever) before she leaves Candy, allowing her statement to stay true to her intentions.

Now that's all nice and tidy as a theory, but I don't think that alt!Calliope is the one narrating in HS2 (yet). What I believe to be happening is more in line with narration related shenanigans that I believe HS2 will be the focus of. Someone else is narrating the unnarrated sections of the Candy Epilogue, after alt!Calliope has left. Something kinda like a retcon that doesn't change anything in the original text, instead they are inserting their own story into the untouched areas that alt!Calliope never mentioned in her record of Candy, a 'flashback'.

Now, who this narrator is, is beyond me at the moment.

It could be Dirk, stretching his narrative powers into the black hole now that alt!Calliope is gone. That said, I don't really know the 'reach' of his own powers, the longest range we've seen is the battle with LE just outside of the blackhole. I can safely assume that information at least, can escape and enter the blackhole due to John's cellphone if Dirk needs some kind of feedback for his narrative powers to work. The black hole itself could act as a natural barrier to his powers though, but it could have been just alt!Calliope's powers blocking him while she was present. What his motivations for wanting to pull out certain people from Candy I can't really be certain of (kids to play his sburb session maybe?).

Alternatively there could be some unseen narrator taking advantage of the narrative gaps alt!Calliope left behind, whatever their motivations may be to free the Candy folks into Meat. They too, would be narrating this 'flashback' after alt!Calliope has left. Or they could be someone alt!Calliope has entrusted Candy to, and were narrating alongside her (until she left, which would mean our batch of characters would presumably be escaping after she's gone).

Lastly, the Candy side of HS2 could (currently) be entirely without a single overseeing narrator dictating characters and their actions. I'm not sure this theory is likely, given how things have been set up in the Epilogues. Had we started observing the story of Candy in HS2 after the postscript of the Epilogue, as opposed to before alt!Calliope's exit, it may have been the case that there is no narrator at all. Instead we are seeing a story in Candy well before the main narrator of the Candy universe has left. Seem's too suspicious to me...

[thorondraco]

Since HS2 is happening before the end of the Candy Epilogue I've thought of a couple things for why we are able to peer into it. Possibly alt!Calliope narrated the events of HS2 during her stay inside the black hole, and it's just being shown to us now. But, from the description on the Patreon we can assume that these characters in Candy will at some point be trying to escape the black hole.

But inside the black hole, those who the paradox once discarded seek to claw back to relevance and escape to the Fanontinuum, a new fabric of story and space woven by the hands of new narrators, thousands of voices that fill the vacuum left by the death of the author.

Now by 'fanontinuum' could mean a couple things in relation to HS2's story. It could be a completely different, selfcontained multi-universe of Homestuck unrelated to the Meat Universe. Or, Meat itself is a part of this 'fanontinuum'. Since the beginning of HS2 contains a reference to the fanfic Pony Pals I'll assume for now that Meat in it's entirety is part of the fanontinuum and those in Candy will be clawing their way out into Meat.

This is directly opposed to the line alt!Calliope gave us in the postscripts, 'Never again the twain shall meet'. This leaves me thinking that if the Candy side of HS2 is narrated by her, she plans on sending out her key players (Omega kids + whoever) before she leaves Candy, allowing her statement to stay true to her intentions.

Now that's all nice and tidy as a theory, but I don't think that alt!Calliope is the one narrating in HS2 (yet). What I believe to be happening is more in line with narration related shenanigans that I believe HS2 will be the focus of. Someone else is narrating the unnarrated sections of the Candy Epilogue, after alt!Calliope has left. Something kinda like a retcon that doesn't change anything in the original text, instead they are inserting their own story into the untouched areas that alt!Calliope never mentioned in her record of Candy, a 'flashback'.

Now, who this narrator is, is beyond me at the moment.

It could be Dirk, stretching his narrative powers into the black hole now that alt!Calliope is gone. That said, I don't really know the 'reach' of his own powers, the longest range we've seen is the battle with LE just outside of the blackhole. I can safely assume that information at least, can escape and enter the blackhole due to John's cellphone if Dirk needs some kind of feedback for his narrative powers to work. The black hole itself could act as a natural barrier to his powers though, but it could have been just alt!Calliope's powers blocking him while she was present. What his motivations for wanting to pull out certain people from Candy I can't really be certain of (kids to play his sburb session maybe?).

Alternatively there could be some unseen narrator taking advantage of the narrative gaps alt!Calliope left behind, whatever their motivations may be to free the Candy folks into Meat. They too, would be narrating this 'flashback' after alt!Calliope has left. Or they could be someone alt!Calliope has entrusted Candy to, and were narrating alongside her (until she left, which would mean our batch of characters would presumably be escaping after she's gone).

Lastly, the Candy side of HS2 could (currently) be entirely without a single overseeing narrator dictating characters and their actions. I'm not sure this theory is likely, given how things have been set up in the Epilogues. Had we started observing the story of Candy in HS2 after the postscript of the Epilogue, as opposed to before alt!Calliope's exit, it may have been the case that there is no narrator at all. Instead we are seeing a story in Candy well before the main narrator of the Candy universe has left. Seem's too suspicious to me...

My theory when it comes to the reach is that someone with narrative powers needs a kind of 'living receiver' to stretch their influence out, if they don't already got a 'narrative gripe' on the situation already. Like he had a grip on John so he could manipulate him and those around him even when he left the universe, but his powers had limitations and couldn't do whatever he wanted. He couldn't convince Jade to come back to earth.
Its what Calliope is doing with jade actually. She took one version and it allowed her to seemingly jump into more than one. We don't have evidence that she can do it to Candy jade. Why she doesn't do it with caliope i am not sure. Its possible she didn't want to fuck with her life, though she did accidentally. Or.. maybe she doesn't qualify AS another version of that calliope cause Callie did not eat Caliborn's soul but Alt callie did?

Either way if Calliope somehow is tapping into Jade's very existence, ultimate self perhaps, maybe Dirk can do the same thing. And basically manifest/assume direct control of his splinters in other places? If so then he could be using the Brainghost Dirk's as mediums for this control. They are kinda shards of himself and also part of Jake at the same time.

This makes Dirk very dangerous though cause it means he could start pulling shit in soooo many parts of the... Oh god his painting from that first release! What if he did that as an experiment to see what he could get away with in these dark corners of canon? These shaded areas that could be molded to his designs? He could pull sooooo much shit doing this with Bro.

I literally think that Hiveswap is somehow part of HS^2, thought it long before it even existed and especially after the epilogues. IF dirk has this 'assuming direct control' power, then its possible he could do this and create Hiveswap's narrative in the past, using Bro. Though it wouldn't explain how he is influencing Alternia. Unless he is able to do that with Doc Scratch which is a horrifying thought. Of course the question, much like what is going on now, would be his designs and need for this to happen. Could be he wants a rebellion's worth of trolls. It could be he wants Joey in particular, whose very existence he authored, and is using this to groom her towards his ends.

Though i would say that there is some evidence that it IS Alt calliope in charge right now. I remember distinctly that alt calliope pauses for quite a while before she enters the portal. So it could be her letting people through before she leaves. And even then i imagine that Dirk may have plans for Candy considering he has a bit of influence there....

another possibility for hiveswap now i think about it, is to potentially create another means of exiting Candy. If the portals survive the course of hiveswap, and what may or may not be happening in hauntswitch, and these portals are potentially able to breach the black hole? The portal to alternia may or may not exist but there would at least be two instances of the earth portal.