Should canon be dencetralized and what is canon?

[thorondraco]

To put it forward i presonally don't think so but i feel like some peeps want a thread to talk about this stuff in. Compare and contrast other fandoms that are decentralized. Benefits and consequences if Homestuck chose to do so.

[Generalrabogolfo]

teh fact that it isnt decentralized contradicts with the whole epilogues thematic, imo, so i think that they should decentralize it.

[egg]

If Hussie hadn't stated that he wants canon to not be a thing that exists anymore, I'd have said no. Homestuck is a comic that benefits from having an authoritative voice and that was the way I preferred things to be.
However, if someone says they want to do something, I'd rather they actually put effort into accomplishing it.

[Shitpost Lizard]

"Death of canon" and "decentralized canon" don't make sense in a story where a small selection of people are writing the official plot.
If they wanted to actually go this route and be consistent about the concept, they'd pick user submissions, at random, to advance the story and characterization.

Obviously that would be complete fucking chaos and a massive contradictory shitshow, so I don't think that would benefit anyone.

"You can interpret the characters and the plot as whatever you want" has already existed well before Homestuck (and in Homestuck) in AU fanfic.
We already have that. I don't know why the official work tries to validate that by questioning what is and isn't canon, because it has already existed for ages and people have already been comfortable making it.

I think it's just a matter of trying to make everyone happy, no one upset (see: the retcon of Jane saying that she feels "caucasian"), and I just don't think that works in a story with an actual plot.

[calamityCons]

You're on the right wavelength, lizard. This is why I keep shouting for a proper reboot. Or making it Creative Commons. I understand Creative Commons is impossible due to legal tangles involving Viz Media, but when it comes to having a franchise that wants to Not Have A Canon, the only other way to approach that is to go the Mythos or Comic Book route. Just outright start a new story within the Homestuck franchise that is NOT directly connected to the original comic through timelines.

The biggest reason HS2 and Pesterquest aren't really meeting the goal of Destroying Canontm is because they all rely on being in the same timeline at their origin points. If OG Homestuck is this line:

-------
(7 dashes for 7 acts)

Then this is Pesterquest
_-----> Pesterquest
-^
(splitting at Act 1)

And this is HS2:
_______(meat)
_______{_____}---------> HS2
_______(candy)
(splitting post-Act 7)

Without a fundamental reality split OUT of this timeline's restrictions, Homestuck's always going to be trapped in Canon no matter how much it wants to pretend it isn't.

(Edit: WOW my formatting got borked, fixed it.)

[thorondraco]

"Death of canon" and "decentralized canon" don't make sense in a story where a small selection of people are writing the official plot.
If they wanted to actually go this route and be consistent about the concept, they'd pick user submissions, at random, to advance the story and characterization.

Obviously that would be complete fucking chaos and a massive contradictory shitshow, so I don't think that would benefit anyone.

"You can interpret the characters and the plot as whatever you want" has already existed well before Homestuck (and in Homestuck) in AU fanfic.
We already have that. I don't know why the official work tries to validate that by questioning what is and isn't canon, because it has already existed for ages and people have already been comfortable making it.

I think it's just a matter of trying to make everyone happy, no one upset (see: the retcon of Jane saying that she feels "caucasian"), and I just don't think that works in a story with an actual plot.

I definitely took the statement as a metaphor and, honestly, promotion for HS^2.

I think a detail we need to remember bout homestuck is while the story is Meta, the meta elements are actually in universe. The 4th wall does not divide homestuck from reality really. That is some other wall, maybe like the 6th wall or some shit. The meta IS a mechanic to how their universe works.

A lot of it is stuff that is still contained 'in universe'.

[thorondraco]

You're on the right wavelength, lizard. This is why I keep shouting for a proper reboot. Or making it Creative Commons. I understand Creative Commons is impossible due to legal tangles involving Viz Media, but when it comes to having a franchise that wants to Not Have A Canon, the only other way to approach that is to go the Mythos or Comic Book route. Just outright start a new story within the Homestuck franchise that is NOT directly connected to the original comic through timelines.

The biggest reason HS2 and Pesterquest aren't really meeting the goal of Destroying Canontm is because they all rely on being in the same timeline at their origin points. If OG Homestuck is this line:

-------
(7 dashes for 7 acts)

Then this is Pesterquest
_-----> Pesterquest
-^
(splitting at Act 1)

And this is HS2:
_______(meat)
_______{_____}---------> HS2
_______(candy)
(splitting post-Act 7)

Without a fundamental reality split OUT of this timeline's restrictions, Homestuck's always going to be trapped in Canon no matter how much it wants to pretend it isn't.

(Edit: WOW my formatting got borked, fixed it.)

Or you know they could only be talking about in unvierse 'canon'.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

I think Hussie is just a liar. You do get to choose what you "believe" to be canon, but no more than with any other story. Or, to put it another way, literally any story is up to interpretation, not just the ones that point this out.

I think he just wants the people who dislike the direction the dubiously canon content is going in to stick around so he can get to what he actually means by it. That seems dishonest to me, but oh well.

I think it's more about addressing the problematic nature of Homestuck 1 and how he no longer stands with the beliefs espoused by his former self, but that's only one facet. It's more about looking at things from different perspectives rather than dismissing stuff outright. And, if you still don't like it after reflecting on it, you should just move on to something else instead of waiting for the big stupid reveal.

There's also canon as in "the characters are gods and lord english is no longer the one who determines the alpha timeline. (now it's calliope i guess)" but I think I'll elaborate on that later. i don't understand the deal with biblical canon anyway. i've made small jokes about "who is the pope of homestuck?" because the pope is the authority on what's considered biblical canon. calliope and dirk are wrestling for that crown and vriska is somewhere out there.

[lillithRamie]

Once it was spoken about in the Epilogues, I began to see CANON (when referred in story and by any of the authors) as a mechanic of the Homestuck universe. This is very much so the same way the story treated the fourth wall and what it means to break it. CANON means something completely different in Homestuck then it does when talking about Star Wars or most other storys. (For the purposes of this post these two terms will be typed as CANON, and canon)

Like the fourth wall, CANON's introduction as a mechanic in the Epilogues (and beyond) is meant to examine what canon means to a story (and the characters), play around with it a little, and subvert it to hell and back. This too extends to anything the authors say in regards to CANON/canon, which leads to some confusion.

When the writing team states that the heat death of canon is to occur I believe they are speaking about that mechanic of CANON in Homestuck. They aren't talking about canon as it is defined for any other story, and I don't think they ever will going forward. I don't think that they're going to come forward and flat out say they are talking about a different definition of CANON/canon, that just isn't how Homestuck's communication with fans have ever worked.

Does that suck? I guess it kind of does if you're expecting answers straight from the horses mouth. Full disclosure I don't really mind it myself, it's par for the course at this point.

The main writers take on a certain kinda persona when talking about Homestuck's canon specifically. Nothing like, 100% changing into a different character, their individual personalities are still there at the forefront. More like they are acting as self insert characters (Like in comic narrator Hussie) in Homestuck speaking to us, where they need to follow certain rules and definitions. Rarely did Hussie break out of this sort of self insert persona when talking to fans, I can only think of a few exceptions where he addressed the story 'out of character' (like, apologizing for the caucasian thing, the cursed lore, some interviews with the news).

Anyway, back to this heat death/decentralization of CANON, with all the chat about giving 'canon' to the fans, destroying canon and all that. I believe that the Epilogues, HS2, and Pesterquest are intended to give fans the tools and knowledge needed to 'canonize' their own stories using the rules of CANON. Alternatively I also think it's possible that the 'heat death' foreshadowed is really going to end up with a story telling us that that almost none of the rules of CANON matter to make something canon in Homestuck. Candy is canon, but it isn't strictly CANON. Meat too is canon, but isn't strictly CANON. Both are labelled as dubiously CANON, and the reason for that label will probably be explored in the newer Homestuck works.

Being that Homestuck is a story with many connections to Gnosticism I can only bet that CANON as a mechanic will be directly referencing Gnosticism and it's own connections with the religions that grew/borrowed from it. I am however, not all that informed on the subject of Gnosticism at the moment so I can't say for certain the specifics of how that all lines up.

This all addresses mainly CANON is though, as a story mechanic relating to canon. On the flip side is just what is plain old canon. This is a bit more of a muddy, immortally bleeding zombie corpse of a horse that people can't and will never stop kicking. From the reaction I've seen of most people, canon to them is whatever Hussie/WP gives their stamp of approval on. B3N mentioned the Pope of Homestuck canon. People tend to gravitate to this 'stamp of approval' as the Popely canonization of a story, which I guess makes them Catholicstucks? Other sects reject his stamp of approval past the original comic, rejecting the Epilogues, HS2, and/or Pesterquest. Idk, we can call them Christianstucks or Muslimstucks, it's just a shitty metaphor here. Smaller few hold certain fan fictions up as true canon, these smaller cultstucks.

A lot of this canon discourse just kinda extends from that. It's what the WP team are currently exploring right now, through the use of the in story CANON mechanics. What parts of Homestuck (the games, fan fictions, stories, w/e) are canon to you, and why? Does canon matter for a story to be real? Does it need to be legitimized by Andrew Hussie to 'count'?

[MorganMustDie]

Since I've been mentioning it a bunch lately I feel like I should point to a great example of something with a decentralised canon that worked really damn well, that being the Slenderverse series of old, especially the big ones: Marble Hornets, EverymanHYBRID, TribeTwelve, DarkHarvest00, and like a thousand other ones

These series all focused on people in similar situations facing a similar antagonists that, if you thought about it hard enough, sure, could all take place in "the same universe" (with the exception of maybe Marble Hornets) which essentially gave us a decentralised canon in the world in which it was set. Creators could come in, make their own series, it would receive praise and set up its own canon, and then it would disappear. It was a wonderful set of different projects. Did some of them suck major ass? Absolutely, I actively dislike most of them, but the ones that were successful were beyond brilliantly made. There were, however, a lot of KEY DIFFERENCES between the way that the decentralised canon worked here compared to Homestuck, and ways that make the former work and make the latter nigh impossible:

- IT HAD NO CANON TO BEGIN WITH: any established "canon" by Eric Knudsen, the original creator, was incredibly vague, and was entirely retconned out by most series. People didn't really care about it, it was constrictive, and most people were entirely willing to look the other way on any rules that were originally set out. Homestuck, on the other hand, has FUCKTONS of rules. And things that are unarguably Real Canon from pre-Beyond Canon writing. If somebody were to try to write their own continuation that completely ignored the worldbuilding of Homestuck prime, the same way that Slenderverse series would completely ignore the worldbuilding of previous series, it would likely be written off or ignored, since a large part of what people enjoy about Homestuck is Hussie's worldbuilding. It is difficult to create new, interesting content when you are constricted by Homestuck's incredibly specific ruleset

- THERE WAS NOTHING OFFICIAL: at no point in the Slenderverse history was any particular series touted as "an official story" by the original creators. If Knudsen had had the reigns over Marble Hornets, no one would have ever watched any other similar series, as why bother? They're just shitty reinterpretations of the ORIGINAL CREATOR'S VISION, and there would be nothing interesting to glean from other people's work. Since HS^2 is OFFICIALLY overseen by Andrew, it is naturally going to generate more interest, more clicks, and more readers than anything else ever could, because why would anybody even try to compete with that? What would be the POINT of writing your own interpretation when your competition has the edge from the get go purely by literally being allowed to call itself OFFICIAL?

- EVERYTHING WAS FREE TO USE: from day one, everything was released to the public. Whilst Knudsen still technically "owned the rights" to the big man, he was openly very excited for people to use the character, essentially treating it as a creative commons, open source internet mythos. People could sell DVDs with him on the cover. They could stick advertisements all over their work. They could make fully fledged games and need to jump through very minimal hoops in order to get the use of him cleared for their projects. Homestuck is owned by actual companies. It is a business. The assets, rights, characters, locations, and world are owned by an actual business. Whilst I've never tried, I doubt you could just go and build a video game using John Egbert and friends as the main character and label it "SBURB: The Eight Rings" without Viz and WP breathing down your neck about signing some important legal documents, which limits any creators' freedoms immensely

- CANON WAS DECENTRALISED FROM THE BEGINNING: the JOY in these series was seeing how different people could interpret the same very vague starting points. The entire community was built around the idea of supporting different creators, choosing your own canon, sticking to the storylines you enjoy, and feeling free to ignore those you didn't like. It was how things worked! And this has NEVER been how Homestuck works. Lets compare Homestuck to Marble Hornets, Vast Error to EverymanHYBRID, and Act Omega to TribeTwelve. It is incredibly easy to watch EMH and TribeTwelve without never having seen Marble Hornets. You can entirely ignore MH if you choose to, since that's how the community worked. You would pick and choose the content you could watch, even choosing to ignore the big, original projects to instead focus on small independent ones and still be able to understand how the universe worked. You cannot read Vast Error or Act Omega without having read Homestuck. It doesn't work. Things don't make sense. And that's because other MSPFA projects are not made with decentralised canon in mind. In order for decentralisation to work, everything in the body of work needs to be made under the assumption that canon has BEEN decentralised. The sheer body of work that already exists in the extended MSPA fansphere makes it impossible to tell which bodies of work are decentralised, centralised, or complimentary to other bodies of work

These are just some points of comparison. I find that it's incredibly easy to find where the idea of Homestuck's decentralised canon falls short if you compare it to other works with decentralised canon that worked very very well.

It's also funny to note that Mark J. Hadley, one of Homestuck's oldest music team members, was the man behind The Eight Pages video game. I was blown away when I discovered this.

[thorondraco]

Once it was spoken about in the Epilogues, I began to see CANON (when referred in story and by any of the authors) as a mechanic of the Homestuck universe. This is very much so the same way the story treated the fourth wall and what it means to break it. CANON means something completely different in Homestuck then it does when talking about Star Wars or most other storys. (For the purposes of this post these two terms will be typed as CANON, and canon)

Like the fourth wall, CANON's introduction as a mechanic in the Epilogues (and beyond) is meant to examine what canon means to a story (and the characters), play around with it a little, and subvert it to hell and back. This too extends to anything the authors say in regards to CANON/canon, which leads to some confusion.

When the writing team states that the heat death of canon is to occur I believe they are speaking about that mechanic of CANON in Homestuck. They aren't talking about canon as it is defined for any other story, and I don't think they ever will going forward. I don't think that they're going to come forward and flat out say they are talking about a different definition of CANON/canon, that just isn't how Homestuck's communication with fans have ever worked.

Does that suck? I guess it kind of does if you're expecting answers straight from the horses mouth. Full disclosure I don't really mind it myself, it's par for the course at this point.

The main writers take on a certain kinda persona when talking about Homestuck's canon specifically. Nothing like, 100% changing into a different character, their individual personalities are still there at the forefront. More like they are acting as self insert characters (Like in comic narrator Hussie) in Homestuck speaking to us, where they need to follow certain rules and definitions. Rarely did Hussie break out of this sort of self insert persona when talking to fans, I can only think of a few exceptions where he addressed the story 'out of character' (like, apologizing for the caucasian thing, the cursed lore, some interviews with the news).

Anyway, back to this heat death/decentralization of CANON, with all the chat about giving 'canon' to the fans, destroying canon and all that. I believe that the Epilogues, HS2, and Pesterquest are intended to give fans the tools and knowledge needed to 'canonize' their own stories using the rules of CANON. Alternatively I also think it's possible that the 'heat death' foreshadowed is really going to end up with a story telling us that that almost none of the rules of CANON matter to make something canon in Homestuck. Candy is canon, but it isn't strictly CANON. Meat too is canon, but isn't strictly CANON. Both are labelled as dubiously CANON, and the reason for that label will probably be explored in the newer Homestuck works.

Being that Homestuck is a story with many connections to Gnosticism I can only bet that CANON as a mechanic will be directly referencing Gnosticism and it's own connections with the religions that grew/borrowed from it. I am however, not all that informed on the subject of Gnosticism at the moment so I can't say for certain the specifics of how that all lines up.

This all addresses mainly CANON is though, as a story mechanic relating to canon. On the flip side is just what is plain old canon. This is a bit more of a muddy, immortally bleeding zombie corpse of a horse that people can't and will never stop kicking. From the reaction I've seen of most people, canon to them is whatever Hussie/WP gives their stamp of approval on. B3N mentioned the Pope of Homestuck canon. People tend to gravitate to this 'stamp of approval' as the Popely canonization of a story, which I guess makes them Catholicstucks? Other sects reject his stamp of approval past the original comic, rejecting the Epilogues, HS2, and/or Pesterquest. Idk, we can call them Christianstucks or Muslimstucks, it's just a shitty metaphor here. Smaller few hold certain fan fictions up as true canon, these smaller cultstucks.

A lot of this canon discourse just kinda extends from that. It's what the WP team are currently exploring right now, through the use of the in story CANON mechanics. What parts of Homestuck (the games, fan fictions, stories, w/e) are canon to you, and why? Does canon matter for a story to be real? Does it need to be legitimized by Andrew Hussie to 'count'?

Here is my theory on all this.
Canon is already dead in HS^2 and pesterquest and such are showing in part how it 'died'. Basically paradox space was consumed by the black hole. The reason why it was consumed consumed was because paradox space, the furthest ring too, was damaged by the destruction of dream bubbles. And damaged even further by the actions of the Reader. To the point where reality was just consumed by the black hole.
John's journey wasn't just to complete the timeloop but to ensure the unstable reality was sucked into the black hole. We have no idea if someone can retcon over someone else's retcon, so the only option is the icksnay the entire reality. Destroy it.. mostly. I more than wager that the Reader saves his little Fixfic adventure. John seems to have created a bastion within the furthest ring's reality.

Its possible that the most important session in the history or paradox space is meant to revive paradox space. But by doing this the powers that be could be ursurped, for example by the likes of Dirk. Its possible Calliope is a servant of the powers that be in this regard.

What happens to the black hole is rather uncertain. it could be used as the catalyst, it could be broken open to release the reality within. it could simply be a black hole admist this new furthest ring reality.

[Dream Muttman]

Personally I don't really understand the whole 'death of paradox space' stuff. Meat takes place in Universe C which is undeniably part of Paradox Space. The black hole only destroyed everything within the circle Lord English drew.

[thorondraco]

Personally I don't really understand the whole 'death of paradox space' stuff. Meat takes place in Universe C which is undeniably part of Paradox Space. The black hole only destroyed everything within the circle Lord English drew.

Thought that as well but it appears as if it consumed much further than that. Descriptions on the patreon says the blackhole is so massive ti can contain an entire reality, and no mention of voidy black space in the epilogues either. Perhaps it jut kept growing and growing and feeding until it became that.

[eldomtom2]

The issue to me is less that Homestuck canon should be decentralised but rather that the writers claim they're doing it while not actually doing it.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

teh fact that it isnt decentralized contradicts with the whole epilogues thematic, imo, so i think that they should decentralize it.

The idea I got from the epilogues is that we shouldn't try to silence other people's perspectives but add our own. Because Dirk wanting total control over the narrative is wrong, but Calliope silencing Dirk's narration is also wrong, and possessing Jade so she can act as her authorial mouthpiece is blatant hypocrisy.

by dictating the reality of others through expressions which he and he alone can relate to, he resorts to comparing all experience to his own. presuming his status on this side of my horizon would forever go unchallenged, his hubris went unchecked. he exposed too much of himself to all who could observe his wanton display of self-gratification. many of his personal biases and experiences have leaked through the seams of textual causality, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by an adversary.

https://www.homestuck.com/epilogues/meat/27

It's true that Dirk's perspective is one shaped by his own experiences, but this aspect of Dirk's narration isn't malicious. Terezi's tendency to view life as a series of binary choices isn't malicious either. This is just how they are. If enough people had as much influence/power over the narrative as Dirk and Calliope, then Dirk would cease to be a threat. He can be challenged without being silenced.

This may scare Dirk, because he doesn't know how to have a regular-ass conversation. But it's what needs to be done. Turn the monologue into a dialogue, and then everyone gets along.

This is exactly what Andrew Hussie is doing when he adds other writers but doesn't remove his influence from it entirely.

tl;dr calliope is hypocritical, not whatpumpkin

[thorondraco]

teh fact that it isnt decentralized contradicts with the whole epilogues thematic, imo, so i think that they should decentralize it.

The idea I got from the epilogues is that we shouldn't try to silence other people's perspectives but add our own. Because Dirk wanting total control over the narrative is wrong, but Calliope silencing Dirk's narration is also wrong, and possessing Jade so she can act as her authorial mouthpiece is blatant hypocrisy.

by dictating the reality of others through expressions which he and he alone can relate to, he resorts to comparing all experience to his own. presuming his status on this side of my horizon would forever go unchallenged, his hubris went unchecked. he exposed too much of himself to all who could observe his wanton display of self-gratification. many of his personal biases and experiences have leaked through the seams of textual causality, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by an adversary.

https://www.homestuck.com/epilogues/meat/27

It's true that Dirk's perspective is one shaped by his own experiences, but this aspect of Dirk's narration isn't malicious. Terezi's tendency to view life as a series of binary choices isn't malicious either. This is just how they are. If enough people had as much influence/power over the narrative as Dirk and Calliope, then Dirk would cease to be a threat. He can be challenged without being silenced.

This may scare Dirk, because he doesn't know how to have a regular-ass conversation. But it's what needs to be done. Turn the monologue into a dialogue, and then everyone gets along.

This is exactly what Andrew Hussie is doing when he adds other writers but doesn't remove his influence from it entirely.

tl;dr calliope is hypocritical, not whatpumpkin

On the contrary, i think that is EXACTLY what dirk wants and the exact opposite of what Calliope wants. At this stage he is responsible for two people becoming their ultimate selves. one his ally, and with DAve he has manipulated into be a direct adversary. Dirk plans of being defeated while Calliope wants to be unchallenged. But if enough people gain the power of the ultimate self they could suppress Calliope together.

Calliope is seeking victory and Dirk is seeking defeat, but by no means an easy one and he will do everything he can to win. But that means he is planning on suceeding even in his defeat. I don't think Calliope honestly understands that... She thinks of Dirk like an extension of her brother. And she is wrong, cause Dirk is far more cunning and driven than her brother could ever have been.

[TH4NK YOU B3N]

He's scared of having a dialogue, and he's scared of dying, and yet he is suicidal. I think, contrary to what Dirk expects, the awakening of the narrative powers of others will lead to other narrators convincing him to "not commit die," as the kids say.

I mean, I think it'd be super fucked up and out of character for Dave to kill his brother for having an existential crisis. Dave's not a hero, he's just a guy. Killing Dirk would not be the slightest bit cathartic for him. It would just be sad.

~~~

The SCP wiki is collaborative to an extent, but it's more about collaboration as a means to win a popularity contest, since whether an SCP sticks around is determined by votes. There are a few exceptions, this Homestuck-themed SCP from 2016 being one of them. It's an unusually fitting example of the flaws of a system where what's canon is determined by votes. If you look in the forum thread, it's a bunch of civil posts by people who think the concept does or doesn't work with one helicopter joke that is immediately shut down. Then, in 2018, a bunch of transphobes and Homestuck-haters raid to downvote the article. The moderators decide that this is really dumb, since the vote count no longer reflects the quality of the SCP, so they protect the article. This prevents it from being rated. Then the transphobes whine about the decay of online democracy.

Although this voting system usually works for the SCP Foundation, having Homestuck operate according to similar popularity rules would conflict with a desire to amplify minority voices.

Calling Homestuck^2 official is a protective measure against reactionaries who are ruled by disgust. It's not an ideal scenario, but it's leagues preferable to the tyranny of the majority. Perhaps it could happen if the fandom as a whole could prove themselves trustworthy, but I'm not counting on it. Write your fanfic anyway.

[thorondraco]

He's scared of having a dialogue, and he's scared of dying, and yet he is suicidal. I think, contrary to what Dirk expects, the awakening of the narrative powers of others will lead to other narrators convincing him to "not commit die," as the kids say.

I mean, I think it'd be super fucked up and out of character for Dave to kill his brother for having an existential crisis. Dave's not a hero, he's just a guy. Killing Dirk would not be the slightest bit cathartic for him. It would just be sad.

~~~

The SCP wiki is collaborative to an extent, but it's more about collaboration as a means to win a popularity contest, since whether an SCP sticks around is determined by votes. There are a few exceptions, this Homestuck-themed SCP from 2016 being one of them. It's an unusually fitting example of the flaws of a system where what's canon is determined by votes. If you look in the forum thread, it's a bunch of civil posts by people who think the concept does or doesn't work with one helicopter joke that is immediately shut down. Then, in 2018, a bunch of transphobes and Homestuck-haters raid to downvote the article. The moderators decide that this is really dumb, since the vote count no longer reflects the quality of the SCP, so they protect the article. This prevents it from being rated. Then the transphobes whine about the decay of online democracy.

Although this voting system usually works for the SCP Foundation, having Homestuck operate according to similar popularity rules would conflict with a desire to amplify minority voices.

Calling Homestuck^2 official is a protective measure against reactionaries who are ruled by disgust. It's not an ideal scenario, but it's leagues preferable to the tyranny of the majority. Perhaps it could happen if the fandom as a whole could prove themselves trustworthy, but I'm not counting on it. Write your fanfic anyway.

i think its less that dirk is afraid of dying and more he is unwilling to die until he achieves his goal here, whatever that means. To die in vain to put it one way. His ego and i think him learning something and he feels. He says that he feels he is a good person still, but he is letting himself act by his ego in order to villafy himself. Of course dave wouldn't outright try to kill him. Kick his fuckin ass, without hesitation. But Dirk would likely do something that gives them no choice or sets Dave off somehow.
He is not afraid to e hated and being hated is one of his objectives.

Ultimately the question is his motives and what he knows that motivates him to burn all of his bridges. Even the Rose bridge has a good bit of gas soaked into it and an unlit match at the ready. And in the end, he would make it that Dave isn't killing him because of an existential crisis. He will make it that DAve has no other fuckin choice in the matter.

Calliope on the other hand wants to repress and suffocate any other force that can control Stories in paradox space. Its why she keeps on stating that John is gone for good because of his retcon powers. Its why she let him die anyway. She wants to replicate or sustain the status qulo of before.. And that status quo is very, very flawed.

[eldomtom2]

Although this voting system usually works for the SCP Foundation, having Homestuck operate according to similar popularity rules would conflict with a desire to amplify minority voices.

But it only has to be like that because the SCP Foundation has a centralised hosting site. No one's suggesting that they have to host fanworks on the "official" sites.

[Blob55]

Canon should 100% be de-centralized, because honestly I hate Meat so much and everyone in HS^2 in Meat isn't even a character, let alone a person.