@@volnartheunforgiving3952 no joke, with the retcon powers he could do anything at all to their narrative. It’s literally the equivalent of going to a book and drawing a big ❌ over the page, instead of just time traveling which follows causality loops and doomed timelines.
It really goes to show how John embodies his aspect, fulfills being an Heir to Breathe. He is truly free, and therefore becomes its very definition. Also Eren Jaeger would be SUPER jealous rn
It just occured to me: Act 7 is a series of events that are occurring with circumstantial simultaneity. The comic invented the term basically to sync up event in different universes with disconnected timelines, but it's also got a ton of narrative and thematic weight behind it. In the end, Vriska, Caliborn, and the victorious heroes all get exactly what they want. It just happens that two of those three want to be at the head of a conflict that will almost certainly kill them. The kids who got out won, because they won't have to be cosmically important, and die for it.
my biggest gripe with the ending was how much karkat got sidelined :( he managed to survive the entire game without dying just like everyone else but got treated like he was useless while all the major ending battles were going on :(
Not at all: Karkat finally got the battle he deserved. He was always concerned with the major battles and living up to the massive standards he set for himself while always knowing that he was the weakest among the entire group. His fight against Clover allowed him to have a moment where even little victories mattered. Clover was no pushover either; a win wasn't just _handed_ to him, he had to earn that. He helped, he did the best he could, and that's what mattered.
I never really understood what the ending actually was. It just left me confused, with only understanding that "welp, they got a happy ending somehow, mcguffin hurray!". Now that you've explained what the Juju did to john and how all of that works, and for clarifying what happens in the ending I appreciate it far more than I previously did. Thank you kind sir.
I've always been under the impression that Lord English was defeated in a symbolic way, with his 8-ball eyes, the Cue Ball possibly being the juju, and possibly even being pocketed into the black hole, basically an extremely elaborate game of Pool. And I'm a much newer fan of Homestuck, recently finished reading it with friends in the span of 2 years and 4 months of streams. But I absolutely love your take on the ending of Homestuck, it just makes so much sense. I personally don't have an issue with the ending myself, I'll ask questions like what happened to Vriska, Davepeta, Aradia, Sollux, etc, but I just can't stop gushing over how good the ending is.
I just finished the video, and I think this is a wonderful ending! OF COURSE John could just choose to not complete the time loop with his narrative powers, why did we all assume he had to? His last arc is gaining the powers to do just that!
when i got to that point in the video i had the same realization. i am honestly shocked that it has been six entire years since this ending and i have never heard anyone suggest that this is why it ends this way. why DID we all assume he had to go back when such great lengths were gone to show that john can break what is meant to be set in stone. it makes so much sense, it makes the entire thread of john becoming unstuck and using his retcon powers a lot more impactful. even the strands of electricity as john reaches for the doorknob seem to be nodding to the "zap", as we don't see the same effect when karkat reaches for the sgrub doorknob. I really love this way of looking at the ending.
The problem is, John doesn't earn that power, it just fell into his lap. Also, the mechanics of the retcon powers isn't explained in a satisfactory manner. Also, there are characters other than John, that essentially got killed at the end, and were replaced with characters that we weren't following at all for the last three years of story. Also, story-telling rules exist for a reason. You can't just subvert them at your whim without fucking up the story itself. Hussie did a nice job of riding the line with fourth-wall breaks for a while, but when he made it part of the plot that he lost the authorship of his story to some nimrod characters within the story, they made the story unreadable and unenjoyable. He went against the purpose of his story. Unless the purpose IS to make the story unreadable and unenjoyable, but doing it with intention does not make it any less shit. I do find the idea of deciding not to complete a time loop sort of interesting if it's done in-plot and isn't some after-the-fact fan-speculation. But, as far as I can tell, the idea isn't fleshed out in-comic, except in the even more unreadable epilogues. And in the epilogues, alot of other garbage distracts from anything interesting that can be gleaned from this subject. Over-all. No, the Homestuck ending isn't in any way "good". In order to be convinced that it's good, you have to hop up so many layers of meta-narrative that the proper and interesting standard-narrative of the story is unrecognizable.
Headcanon: It's possible that the eight human kids that went after Caliborn in LoCaM were from a doomed timeline where they decided to go after him instead of facing the Condesce, which is not 100% stupid because that version of John had retcon powers too, so violating the Alpha Timeline is on the table. It's not the first time Doomed timelines are used to complement the Alpha, Davesprite and the Aradiabot army are prime examples of even doomed duplicates becoming relevant to both the main timeline and canon as a whole, sometimes even existing for way longer than the doomed should. As for the house Juju? My take is that it has three uses that are related to manipulation of reality-narrative: The first is the ability to absorb narrative, even freaking protagonists (as had happened in Caliborn's Masterpiece), The second is to warp and disloge things from narrative (as what happened to John, giving him retcon power), and the third and final use is to DESTROY reality-narrative. A literal STORY NUKE. Essentially, the House Juju's third use triggers a hard end to homestuck canon at the large cosmic scale, while at the local scale it simply deletes everything around it. So that is how Lord English and Vriska Serket, two of Homestuck worst spotlight-hoggers met their end: instantly deleted from reality (Serket Lovers can interpret that as a Vriska's final heroic sacrifice, while Serket Haters can see that as Vriska using a power she doesn't fully understand and being destroyed by it, the final punishment for her hubris) That's why we don't see anything after the Juju activates, when it's final use is triggered, it just blips everything around it with little fanfare or drama, like turning off a light or crashing a game. And do you know who else was in the House Juju's reality-anihilating blast radius? ANDREW FREAKING HUSSIE. The Author is double-dead, not even his ghost can suggest canon anymore. This is post-canon, everyone. Nothing is absolutely true, everything is equally valid.
Funny too how when the house door where everyone's gathered by turns white to mirror the house juju and John reaches out for it, the animation cuts right as he touches the door. The narrative ends before we get to see the ending.
I mean... It doesn't look like that's as clear as you're making it seem. John smashes his phone, which is also his connection to his friends. He doesn't say NO to Caliborn, he just looks angry and willing to go beat him up once again, which is what triggers "The Masterpiece". In fact, Caliborn's masterpiece begins with the kids Retconning in, which means John being unstuck from canon is a requirement of the timeloop in the first place.
He smashes his phone because Caliborn somehow got his contacts and is contacting him from within canon tho and because John going unstuck is within Canon, Calliborn and LE's aware about the retconning and can make prophecies with that in it.
yeah, like..? i get no one really paid attention to caliborn's intermissions, but the masterpiece is pretty integral to him becoming english, and english's demise. it *has* to happen for english to arguably exist. a version of john *always* has to fight caliborn for the masterpiece to happen, and for vriska to even care about the weapon in the first place. and even then the point about him not being controlled by the narrative, just, isn't true. the epilogues (as "dubious" as they pretend to be) are canon, and he was controlled BY THE PERSONIFICATION OF THE NARRATIVE to go fight english, to complete the loop.
This. This is what bugs me the most. Even if you ignore the Epilogues, the kids have still in no way shape or form gone outside the Alpha Timeline. Lord English's rise DEPENDS on the retcons, it was not erased by them. Caliborn took on the name "Lord English" because he was beaten by Jake English, who was retconned in there by John. The Ultimate Weapon was already in its post-use state before the Beta kids were trapped into it by Caliborn using it. The retcons were already a part of Paradox Space's past before they happen, meaning it isn't beholden to them. This was always how the timeline was supposed to go. There is no reason for us to assume that John has the option to not go back and complete the Masterpiece's time loop, despite all the yammering about him not having to. After all, he already completed every other time loop. John did nothing special. All of this retcon bullshit was, despite all the grandstanding about how powerful and influential it could be, ended up functionally the exact same as one of Dave's time loops, just on a bigger scale. The only difference is that with Dave, we ended up skipping to the part where he goes back and "changes the past". With John, we read three thousand pages of doomed timeline shenanigans and character development that did not matter in the slightest because it was all rolled back, and THEN we skipped through the equivalent of those 3k pages in the alpha timeline and ended up in a nigh-unrecognisable situation compared to the one we've been following.
@@paradoxicaloutcome1007 Well the thing is, Lord English was created before the retcon. He is trapped in the sarcophogus and then presumably sent to the death bubble. Assuming that John's time travel is actually the same as Dave's, this means that Lord English would have been from a doomed timeline, which is a known possibility due to death bubbles and Vriska meeting Younger Vriska(who is cosmically older). In addition, we are also not told from which timeline the kids who fight Lord English are from. They could **also** be from a doomed timeline, assuming I'm understanding sburb time travel correctly. We do know that John's time travel also travels through space, and since death bubbles are a way to come from other (doomed) timelines, John's time travel probably also allows for travel between timelines. Assuming it doesn't, though, my theory relies on the idea that the 4 heroes Lord English traps are ones that made it into dream bubbles before coming to fight Lord English, or some other high strung series of events. If everything I've said is wrong, though, then maybe the difference between Dave time travel and John time travel is that the narrative has control over Dave's, whereas simple physics has control over John's. Basically, for Dave, alpha timeline is the one we're used to, whereas for John, alpha timeline is the one where he stops time traveling. In addition, because the narrative has no control over John's time travel, it doesn't know where the timeline is going to go, and so has to follow John through his timeline, whereas for Dave's time travel, the narrative can simply skip to where it turns back into the alpha timeline, because it knows where the alpha timeline is.
In all seriousness, I’m going on a Homestuck nostalgia trip again after helping them on r/place, and this came out at the perfect time! The past week I’ve been having a mental breakdown thinking: “wait… was Homestuck shitty the entire time?!!” But this is a great reminder that was part of what made it great!
Making this video reminded me why I love Homestuck. There are so many small, fantastic moments that I rediscovered. It made me want to reread the comic, which I definitely don't have time to do.
Homestuck was and is a "LEGENDARY PIECE OF SHIT" Meaning is EPIC AND SHITY. A result of the culture of its own era, kind of a window to said era also. Think of it as those knightly scripture of the middle ages with giant snails and weird paintings. The scribes make them because they where bored transcribing all by hands for days. So is an epic scripture with shity drawings.
It's actually an awesome, EPICLY written ending. It perfectly ties in the effects of the mechanical difference between time loops and John's retcon powers, allowing him and his friends to LEAVE canon, and thus remove Lord English from relevance, or possibly, existence, due to them not being there to create him, and retcon powers being unable to create doomed timelines.
I really liked your interpretation of the ending. One detail that adds flavor that goes unmentioned is that the ending is affected by two things that are not explained within Homestuck. Yaldabaoth's Juju and Caliope's Black Hole. Both items involved in Lord English's destruction are both plot holes and literal holes in the fabric of reality. The epiologues are written as a fanfiction and are divided into two alt timelines-"meat" and "candy", with each explaining how one of the plot holes works and how it fits into the timeline. But the themes, the symbolism, and even the story are still fine if they are left as plotholes.
It DOES show the final battle! We see Vriska become the cue stick shooting the cue ball and punting Lord English into a black hole, completing the billiards symbolism and analogy. The cue ball was Caliborn's Juju, which contained the beta kids. We saw the beta kids get trapped in the Juju during Caliborn's masterpiece. He isn't slain. They can't kill him, so they have to defeat him an another way, which is by making him get sucked into the Black Hole for all of eterntity, which we saw Calliope make from the Green Sun during Act 7. That *is* the final battle. They don't actually fight him, they shoot him into the Black Hole. We see him and a bunch of ghosts swirling around in the Black Hole in the Snapchat credits.
My problem with the ending is that it felt rushed. So did just about everything Post [S] Game Over and I suspect Hiveswap was entirely the culprit of this. If you look at the state of Homestuck before John started retconning things, Hussie had written himself into a corner and there was basically no chance the comic wouldn't go on another 10 years getting out of it, and he had massive financial obligations to make a video game that he clearly had no idea how much work would be required for. If you look at it through that lens, it becomes clear the entire retcon arc was for the purpose of getting to the end as fast as possible. John revives Vriska. Vriska existing fixes nearly every single plot thread and ongoing character arc, and then they're all just "there" for the final battle. That's why it's unsatisfying. So for me, it wasn't just the ending that was disappointing, I had been disappointed for months and months of hiatuses leading up to it. I feel very strongly that had Hussie never started the Homestuck Kickstarter, the retcon arc would've never even existed.
Ok so I'm back and I spend a bunch of time ruminating over stuff and there's only like one thing I'd actually like to point out and that's that it seems the house turning white and flipping (which to me is most indicative of them leaving canon since the logo and less so the artifact represent the story itself and the fact its flipped means they're on the inside so them leaving frees them) actually seems to be spurred on by the artifact's usage and not John's retcon powers. Like we cut from the door of the artifact opening to Cal smashing the clock to the back hole and THEN to the victory platform's house changing. Hell, I specifically called out the artifact's usage but it could be the black hole too. I think it's very up to interpretation lol. It could be that another version of the kids entered the red house and those were the versions that went back in time, so our versions aren't obligated to, but like honestly it's really confusing to begin with and I'm not sure how involved John's unstuck powers actually were cause he was far away when the change happened lol
good video! i agree with what you said re: your poll, i think in the last 6 years the feelings on the ending have slightly shifted. i think if youd done the poll when it dropped it would have been overall resoundingly negative. (personally i always liked it though, haha) your interpretation of the snapchats was interesting, the take i usually see is that john IS baited into fighting lord english. the idea there is that they never meant to completely deny the fight with the big bad, they just decided theyd get around to it eventually. that eventually someday they would have to fulfill the stable time loop, but in the meantime they werent too fucked up ahout it either way its a beautiful narrative about escaping the narrative and being able to live outside the constraints and the tropes of storytelling and just live as people
I know that I'm kind of late to the party, but I just wanted to say that the OG ending gives me eerie feeling as if it's a false ending and something bad is coming. I mean, John's empty and lonely house in the ending makes me very uneasy This reminds me heavily about Ever17 visual novel endings. It's a game about people who are trying to get out of the collapsing underwater amusement park. After each false ending you're shown the screen in the security room with a number of living beings "aboard" and it's always above zero. This scene gives me creeps even now 10 years later
Evidentially, something bad was coming, as scene in the epilogues But yeah I love how the ending of Homestuck is simultaneously this incredibly happy ending and also an ending where it feels like something is very very wrong
@@caseyjarmes I know now that a lot of bad things happen in the epilogues, that's why I can't bring myself to read them. I also don't buy the "Ultimate-self" theory where it's alright for you to be the worst version of yourself and not trying to do something about it because somewhere exists another "you" who pushed themselves to the limits. I can see that it's aimed at taking the pressure off people but I also can see how this idea can be very destructive if people start to neglect their lives and become nonchalant with their life choices
My problem was mostly with Game Over. now an ending in a homestuck that didn't suddenly kill characters in the alpha timeline and then revives them in such a way that through away lot of their arcs with the exact same ending I would love more. But yeah you wouldn't like the epilogues it basically takes a dump on everything you enjoyed about the ending.
It was a cool af ending, but i also feel like it was missing something, probably cuz i was always on the theory craft side of the fandom, checking all the theories of how everything relates and how it ends (i loved reading bladekindeyewear tumblr and all his theories) so i was also disappointed that we didn't get to see it happen, so seeing it from this perspective i think now it makes more sense for me, we didn't get to see that final battle, but like a lot of paradox type of narrative hussie used, it did and didn't happened, so i guess that's fine.
the ending makes a lot of sense now that you put it into context. thank you for making this video! i really wanted to understand homestuck (i read it twice) and although i liked the characters and setpieces and music and dialogue and.. pretty much the comic's whole vibe! i never understood it, i couldn't connect really any of the plot points together, i just didnt understand it. theres a whole hell of a lot more to it, but just getting the general gist of the ending is something i'm glad i can do now with this video. if i weren't so busy with living my life, id like to reread hs, maybe with some friends, and really try to understand more of it and get more out of it. probably won't happen anymore, but i'm glad i read it, and im glad i can hear other people like you share their ideas and thoughts surrounding the comic. makes me wish i couldve been around for when it was big and people were talking about every update and every plot point (but i dont think 6-11 year old me couldve parsed any of it reading in like 2010-2016 lol) i wish i wouldve known about the juju stuff and what was happening in act 7 when i read it, but now i have a better idea. i agree that that does seem like a good ending. thanks for making this video!
I think the issue with the ending is that it isn't nearly as well explained in canon as you did right here, mostly because of how convoluted it ended up being by the end of it. I'm not saying stories have to hold your hand through their message to be good, but a couple more confirmations within canon that your interpretation was what was intended would have gone a LONG way to help people accept the ending
9:23 "than back in the future, there is also the past" This is the second best sentence i have ever heard in any homestuck video essay ever. EDIT: i take it back john egbert is no longer homestuck just became my new favourite, knocking the former to 3rd place.
@@caseyjarmes from jan misall's 'a video about homestuck What is this conversation even doing here, essey videos don't need to have PLOT "Oh, but this isn't a normal essey video, this is an essay video about homestuck"
I was already satisfied with the ending, but the way you explained your own view of it made it even better! I didn't pick up on the whole "John purposefully doesn't complete a timeloop by not fighting Lord English and they all run away from the narrative itself and get their happy ending that way" thing, but now that you've mentioned it, I can't stop thinking about it. It's such a...Homestuck way to end a story, when you think about it. Like, Homestuck's always been so meta, it's very fitting that the only way to "win" the game would be to just...say "no" to the story itself. Wonderful video. Also yeah, the Epilogues and ^2 were soul-sucking experiences with "terrible fanfiction" levels of writing, their only redeeming qualities being the art. You probably made the right decision in not giving them a read. They're not written by Hussie anyway; apparently Hussie gave the writing team some vague guidelines, but we have no way to know how much of it they actually followed, so I personally like to consider them infamous fanworks (or, as as I've seen some people say, fanfiction written by Caliborn to taunt John back into the narrative, it's giving the writing team too much credit in my opinion but I find the idea absolutely hilarious and very meta).
It's been a long while since I read it, but I read homestuck after it finished. So reading the comic and seeing the pages asking for the code was cocking dozens of narrative guns that all fired at once for me. I was so hyped when I got to the end I didn't even feel cheated out of the fight.
@@caseyjarmes fair enough, I personally see the act 7 animation as the end because it satisfied me. I liked it and didn't need any more. Tbh I also think I had Homestuck burnout because I was rushing to catch up to updates. Even to this day, I refuse to reread homestuck because it's just far too much.
oh my god i NEVER thought about Caliborn being stuck in his place because he ended up being trapped by the narrative by john refusing to be the hero. i already liked the ending on it's own, but this just made it even better!!
this actuallly explained alot about homestucks ending for me and made me enjoy it alot more! I already liked it along with the rest of the comic, (probably because I read Problem Sleuth first,) but now I like it even more now that I know what was going on.
thank you for this video, it's really good and captures the kinda magical, nostalgic feeling i get with homestuck proper. i'd love to see more videos like this about homestuck! personally, i have issues with the stuff *before* the ending - namely vriska being brought back and magically solving tons of problems, and the characters feeling kinda off and ooc afterwards. but overall i'm satisfied with it. the journey, the world, the characters, the fanworks that have come from it... those are the things i remember and love about homestuck. plus, the final animation was epic. ever since the epilogues came out, i've viewed them as like... decently written, canon-divergent fanfic. i enjoyed them a lot actually! i just don't consider them to be canon at all. not even dubiously canon. they are two paths out of an infinite number of "what ifs". homestuck^2 is considerably worse than the epilogues in terms of writing, even though it takes place in the same timelines. mainly it's just...boring. i'll read it whenever they drop the rest of the story, but i will always view it similarly to the epilogues: a mediocre, canon-divergent fanventure.
holy fuck i like the ending of homestuck now you are really REALLY good at scriptwriting/emotion in your voice, everything. You got a new subscriber, il keep watching (but plz get a new mic lol)
I was an adult when I found homestuck, had already toured most of the US east of the rockies, had started drug recovery etc. A big fan of counterculture and had been in several rhps cast shows. Homestuck pretty much encapsulated the concept of counterculture and outcasts in the new millennium. As well as ideas of metamorphosis and growth within the world especially within a world that seems destined to never let them succeed. Breaking the chains of both fate and expectations from society. My reason for liking homestuck as much as I do(even the trolls who I don't actually like by comparison to the other 8) is the massive ammount of themes they cover, even prolonging some of the villain arcs to help show that often they were the heros of their own narrative until they had a chance to fail...... or a complete slave to fate like gamzee but meh. Anyway, I like your synopsis
i mean like, the ending may not be satisfying but i feel like they gave the characters a little break from the strings pulling them (the narrative) and get to live their own life
wait you mean like at the end of act 7 john zaps himself, his friends, and the new universe into the transparent blank space? instead of just entering the new universe normally? is... is that what's supposed to have happened? have i just been missing this extremely critical plot point the whole time?????
It is not explained well, but yes. The Homestuck Epilogues confirm that Earth C takes place outside the continuity of Homestuck. It’s unclear if John zapped them there, but at the end of the comic, John and company are no longer part of the time loop that created Lord English.
Other things to mention: The kids don't run away. Sometime in the future, they do have to fight Caliborn as seen in Caliborn's masterpiece. We already know they will do this because we saw them do it. They'll presumably do it in the future. The epilogues explore how they aren't free. Also thought you'd mention some of the symbolism with the ending. Such as PM beating Jack Noir, breaking free from the predetermined narrative that Prospit will always lose to Derse. White won over Black, good won over evil, even though good was always fated to lose. And then other things like Roxy killing Condesce with Dirk's unbreakable sword, a sword she said to her represented everyone in the narrative who had died and didn't make it as far as she did. But yeah. Homestuck is about characters, in a predetermined fate and narrative, fighting against it and breaking free. It's amazing.
The only thing I didn't life is really the main characters not getting satisfying arcs. Like, everything pre retcon is suddenly pointless, then we only see a few back to back convos right before the big fight, and it's very anti climatic for a character driven story
I'm so delighted to see the slow but sure rise of more Homestuck analysis videos (since there is honestly a near endless plethora to cover), but I'm so happy to see this topic specifically. I honestly had no opinion on the ending, and this was so so enlightening. I love your style of breaking things down, I'm looking forward to seeing more stuff from you on really any topic/genre 👍 subscribed!
I never really liked the homestuck ending, but I appreciate that it was probably the best ending the series could have had. The ending is really a microcosm of my very mixed feelings about the whole comic and that’s ok I guess.
I can understand what you say in theory and in a meta-sense, but sadly Hussie just didn't pull that properly. Because John just "imagining" that he doesn't want to fight Lord English and magically happens is just too convenient. Like The comic is dense complicated and long, and it got resolves in an extremely easy and anti-climatic way. Like Lord English was just so ridiculous powerful in godmode that the only alternative Hussie did was pulled a "a wizard did it "move. Lord English was just so broken and overpowered that it really wasn't a "decent" way of defeated it that "off-screen" and "leaving it the audience imagination"? Is just... A very lazy and mediocre solution, the "blink and you miss it" for something so important is just not a good job. Like in the final animation something is missing at the end, like another type of clue that John was leaving Lord English trapped without fulfilling his destiny to be Lord English, of course that give us everything chewed up is not the idea, but putting that meta ending so cryptic that feels Hussie just run out of ideas and simply he didn't know how untangle the overly absurd complicated web that is Homestuck was just the worst of moves...
Agreed. I think the ending would've been 1000% more well received if the buildup hadn't been some of the worst stuff in all of Homestuck. Honestly my biggest wish for Homestuck is that it could be given a second draft, like I think starting from cascade if the pacing was swapped around and like some story beats were slightly altered, rapture could be the exact same and work much much better as an ending. I at least wish there was a last panel of John explicitly ignoring Cal's call, like maybe just a final frame with John talking with his friends and being happy. Would be nice.
Ok, very good interpetation! But a few points: - The masterpiece exclusively happens *because* of john, his retcon powers are what brings everyone to the final battle in Caliborn's Masterpiece. A big thematic part of the masterpiece's reveal is that its revealed in comic directly after John finishes his retcon adventure to fix the Game Over timeline. Caliborn talked about his masterpiece before the retcon, we knew tidbits of information about it, but it was all came together *after* John fixed the timeline. And it makes sense. If it weren't for John the masterpiece wouldn't happen, Game Over had nearly every important figure from the masterpiece killed, essentially making it impossible to happen. Im saying this because in your interpetation the 'foil' to Lord English's control was John's retcon ability allowing him to reject the comic, but in truth its just another 'thing' that was supposed to 'happen' to make the Masterpiece work, like most events in the comic that surround the inevidable Lord English time loop. The actual 'foil' (if you can call it that) is that all events that surround LE have to happen, but they're never mentioned *when* they will happen. The comic could close properly because due to the nature of john's power, he could theoretically make the masterpiece happens *after* the story ended, which is whats heavily implied to happen in [S] Credits. We don't necessarily need to see the 'event' happen if we can assume it'll happen off screen at some point. The same goes for the LE fight, we don't need to see it happen as we "know" it'll happen. We even knew the results of it more or less, as alot of visual clues from [S] Act 7 hint towards LE's defeat is being thrown into the black hole. There's a huge visual metaphor in the presentation of the LE fight scene, with depicting the White House Juju as a pool cane, the black hole as a pool hole, and LE as the 8 Ball, the final ball that needs to be knocked into the pool hole to win the pool game. These are all interpetations that are solely based on [S] Act 7, and happend way before the Epilouges released, I don't see the point in ignoring them when the ending is so open to interpetation without their context. - You also failed to mention that John directly answer's "I'll do it" to Caliborns taunt in [S] Credits, which kinda invalidates your point entirely. - I won't talk about the Epilouges too much since you haven't read them but the themes it explores that connect to the Paradox Space plot (Homestuck proper) isn't "continuing a story that doesn't need to continue", but "the consequences of having a story have a ending that doesn't make canonical sense". To further iterate both of these themes are explored, but the former revolves around a totally different plot thread thats essentially Epilouge exclusive so it doesn't really matter in this discussion at all. Im not trying to be a hater here, your interpetation is really good, but the only way it works is if you actively choose to ignore some pretty crusial details from the comic proper, and assume other things in their stead.
I'm not the kind of smarty who thinks this hard about media, but I'm just smart enough to follow along when a cool cat breaks it down. Thanks for this. As someone who HAS read and enjoyed the sequel/epilogue, this perspective makes me think that maybe I should resent them. Our heroes got free from our prying eyes, the contorted plot they were mired in, and we wrenched them back in for round two with our insatiable hunger for voyeuristically enjoying strife.
Wow, you actually completely changed my opinion on the ending. I never thought of Vrisca and Calliborn plot this way, but it actually has so much sense and it's somewhat really satisfying as and ending. Also yeah, don't read epilogues or Homestuck 2. But Hiveswap is actually pretty nice
This feels like an incredibly limited interpretation of the ending. Homestuck has a number of different big fights that we don't see, or only get to see the start of, or just get a shitty retelling of, in fact it probably has more big fights we don't see than we do, with Collide feeling like it probably tips that scale the other way just because it has so many at once. The fact we don't see the final battle doesn't mean it didn't happen, especially since it's in the middle of a flash where that battle would feel very out of place, and takes place right after we just got through a whole other fight with Lord English. As well as that, the way John's Retcon is shown to work, he can't just... leave the Masterpiece undone. The Masterpiece is how Lord English comes to be, and Lord English has to exist for the rest of the comic as we even know it to come to pass. For John to completely defy any sort of causality loop on a universal scale is much larger than he's been shown to do in the comic, only able to steal specific things, that he's touching, away from their narrative irrelevance. On top of that, even if John's power suddenly jumped into 'Can transport entire universes out of a doomed timeline into the Alpha one', this still isn't a 'good ending'. John Egbert would be willfully and intentionally leaving a god with limitless destructive potential unchecked inside the universe's reproduction system, Paradox Space. Lord English's threat wasn't just that he wanted to fight our heroes, it was that he wanted to destroy everything, forever, and our cast were the only ones suited to defeat him. If they abandon that fight, they don't 'make Lord English irrelevant' they let him do exactly as he always wanted, unimpeded, except he can't kill a dozen specific people he had a personal vendetta against. Even if your interpretation of the ending is right, that means the story ends with the heroes running away to another kingdom where they can frolic to their heart's continent while the villain destroys the very fabric of the cosmos they dipped out on.
Just to be clear, I do like Homestuck's ending, I feel it does a very good job at ending things at a breakneck pace, and I know anything else would have hurt way more, I just disagree with this interpretation
The thing about the ending that confuses me is that it feels like the ending we would’ve gotten had the comic wrapped up about 2000 pages easier than it did. In terms of the story beats it touched on, it felt more like an ending to act 5 or early/mid act 6. Hell, excluding the stuff with Calliope and Caliborn, maybe I’d even go as far as to say act 4. It created this weird dissonance that was foreign even to Homestuck and made the ending hugely disappointing as a result.
Hey, I just finished Homestuck. I went in relatively blind and got sucked in completely and totally. I really do love it, obviously it's not perfect, nowhere near that, but god it's just right for me. Like it just covers so much of the stuff and themes I love and it pokes and prods at so many of my anxieties and fears about the universe. ESPECIALLY predestination stuff. I just feel so anxious about the idea that for these kids, and for me, everything is already planned out, everything has already happened, he is already here. I've actually always kinda hated destiny stories for that exact reason. But when I watched rapture I didn't feel satisfied, because I didn't understand, I thought the ending implied they did fulfill the loop and they weren't free and that rather than a new reality Universe C would just give birth to caliborn or beforus or whatever. And obviously it is implied that Caliborn and Calliope existed in C but like that's besides the point. I just was worried that seeing seeing John smash his phone and say I'll do it meant he was gonna go fight him. Honestly Homestuck had drilled into my head the idea that everything needed to fulfill itself, even after the retcon stuff, that I kinda didn't believe there could be a happy ending. But this video made me see it in such a better light. Like I love the idea that John really could choose not to cause all of that stuff, to just rewrite an entire chunk of paradox space. I like the idea of, as unlikely as it is, an earth that could exist out there in a universe where it doesn't need four kids to cause the apocalypse, where four kids perhaps like John, Rose, Dave, and Jade could just exist and be friends. I love the idea that the people who had to brave the hardships of a universe seemingly bent on their suffering are able to just get out and by that very actions give a better fate to all those who came before and after. Obviously this interpretation doesn't make much sense, but to me it's the most satisfying. Maybe we can forget all this high concept bullcrap about timeloops and dream selves and universal replication and just settle into a simpler place. Like if behind the curtain the universe really needs all that stuff to function, so be it, but maybe it would be better of everyone if those curtains just stayed down.
@@caseyjarmes I read a summary on the wiki and like I just dont think i can do it LMAO like jane is racist and john dies and has sæx and like dirk is an ass and ascended and just even if it covers the themes i cant do it 😭in my mind everyone in universe C lived a non branching, average but still fulfilling life and died in a permanent non time loopy way and homestuck literally just never happened cause of the retcon stuff
@@caseyjarmes also i got a notification that said you hearted the comment and its not there which makes me think you did it as i was editing the comment (if you didnt know edits make hearts go away lol) and it sucks because this is the second time this has somehow happened to me q-q anyway unrelated but this was a great great great video and im glad my comment got noticed by you and wow homestuck sucks i love it
It was clear during Act 6 that Homestuck would never go back to being what it once was so many years ago. The ending was abysmal and everything following it a complete disgrace but the writing was on the walls for a long time that this is where the comic was heading.
Hey! Pretty good video! For me too was mostly sadisfyin, specially the animations. Would have like the epilogue but one can just imagine what would happen. Then the Epilogues drops, and i mostly like them. Both in narrative and outside of it. Have Meat Path (my favourite) where you have the fight with english and what you would expect of an epic of it scale. And Sugar, being more "the end?", Made mostly as a set up for fan fictions. Homestuck after all IS a fan made story, Hussie write most of it, but the begining and all the art was made by fans, so i like it as a gift to the comunity, a "lets hear your story now". That is why i dont take ^2 as canon (it really try to be "the sequel" but was fan made, kinda "having the cake and eat it too") so for me was just another fanfic, could have live and "earn" the title, but just wasnt good enough, a drop it at the begining, was kind of a drag, not to mention how it ties with Pesterquest, which at the end just proclaim itself "the new canon", pretencious as fuck, as just fanfic self indulgance. So yea, ^2 is not canon, everithing base in the epilogues is NO-Canon for me, could have been the "unoficial sequel" but didnt have what it takes. Also, sugar path looks to hint that the WHOLE epic is Calliope's fanfiction, with herself as the self incert, being the MUSE that lead her brother the LORD to make it a reality. SHE PLAN THE WHOLE CHESS MATCH! XD
Ho, also. I think the "retcone" was mostly to give Vriska a redeption ark, withouth her really changing in the main plot, as she being the MASSIVE BITCH WITH THE FAT ASS, that hassie love is pretty central to the ending and several parts of homestuck asyou mention.
THERE WAS ALSO THE HOMESTUCK SNAPCHAT EPILOGUES WHEN SNAPSchAT WAS AT ITS PEAK. i remember they used to have their Homestuck username public but now i dont see it no more...
Love your interpretation, one question though: Does Caliborn growing up on Earth C not kinda defeat the point of escaping if the kids are still in his timeloop there?
I think you're one of the few people I've come across that I think accurately pinpoints the thematic core of Homestuck, the existential dread/cosmic horror aspect (and no that does not refer to the Eldritch creatures). And, in fact, I think you would actually end up really liking the epilogues, both thematically and in execution... maybe (for the love of Jebus don't touch Homestuck 2 though). It gets complicated because of all the postmodern bullshit, but first let's acknowledge that the epilogues were announced kind of immediately after the "regular" ending, so I don't think anyone can rule out that there always was an intention to fill things out a bit more, for those that wanted it. Second, I think it's perfectly valid to be content with the ending of Homestuck as it is, because if you've been following the subtext, it works, as you've pointed out. But, if you're paying attention, you'll also notice that the ending is a break in theme. The taking back of control can be seen as poetic and cathartic, but really, it's just wanting to see a happy ending that would drive that perception. The way I see it, Hussie gave us the option of either indulging the urge to engage in escapism and end at the ending, or we could face reality by going on to the epilogues. They very much bring the loss of control back to the fore, because the fact that everyone, including John, is in fact part of a fictive narrative is an intractable aspect of the story, no matter what kinds of anti-canonical powers he gets. Don't see the epilogues as just being a showcasing of the showdown - that's a minor part, really. What it actually is, is a depressing reckoning with the realities of our own world, and that of the Homestuck crew. The work goes beyond being easily condensed, and I genuinely think it is high literature. If you ever feel like a dose of brutal existentialism, I would defs recommend the epilogues. If nothing else, it's the final nail in the coffin for the notion that Hussie ever respected the readers, what with their petty hopes and dreams and ships. These are notions fit for a story, not anything real. I think the people who disliked the epilogues really only say they do because they don't like dark material, and/or they didn't quite understand the thematic underpinnings of Homestuck's narrative to begin with. Anyone who doesn't fit into those categories would be in the minority, and I don't think anything but comprehensive statistics showing the opposite could convince me otherwise. So, uh. Epilogues good actually, and if you don't agree you're a rube. Homestuck 2 is trash
I have to disagree with you here: homestuck has 3 important elements: its themes, as described excellently in this video and your comment, its humor, and its characters. People disliked the ending mainly because they dislike the entire retcon thing (as you read in the many comments here) because they feel like it sacrifices a lot of the characters for the sake of the plot (or themes). People dislike the epilogues because they change characters a lot for the sake of absurdity and thematic relevance. I'm not saying there is no good shit in the epilogues, but if you are interested in homestuck because of the characters there is not much there.
I thought the whole point of the juju, and the reason we don't see it used on Lord English, is because nobody knows what it does? Sure, it could release the heroes and kill him, but it could also just outright destroy him or something. Was it ever specifically confirmed that it would release the heroes trapped inside of it, or is that just the option you personally believe in?
There still 3 problems with ending you don’t address 1. There still a black hole from the green sun that will destroy everything if not addressed 2. There seem to be a time gap not explain how they got from platform to planet and so there details missing 3. So what happened all the villains that still alive but not lord English?
1. If you interpret the ending as John not facing Caliborn it erases all of Homestuck, from my perspective thats what the black hole is, we see it's not only ripping apart conventional matter but also paradox space itself. It's purpose is to literally destroy that entire chunk because it no longer should/ever did exist. 2. They have Jade who can hop to wherever in the session so they prolly just teleported around and gathered everyone up before heading to the platform. 3. Condense is assumed dead, Lord Jack is definitely dead, so is spades slick, former Bec Noir and the felt are seen in the snapchat stuff on earth C, which is dubiously canon but it sort of just implies they just hitched a ride on earth.
dude you NEED to read the epilogues, they're mind blowing. They changed everything I knew about narrative structure. Homestuck 2 was...ambitious. I enjoyed it, but- well you can hear everyone's lamentations about it, and why it failed.
Thank god someone is talking about this!! Thank you!!! So many memories and ive always had a problem with Homestuck^2 tbh.... Ive read into Homestuck ^2 but its just not the same....
"he's given a fate worse than defeat - irrelevance"
i think that sentence alone retroactively made me love the ending
What better way to punish a narcissist who sees himself as the main villain than taking his future as the main villain away from him.
If John retcons Lord English out of existence he retcons all of Homestuck out of existence. Period. He can't do that.
@@volnartheunforgiving3952 he retcons himself to stay into existence 😊
@@hexogramd8430 I can't tell if you're joking
@@volnartheunforgiving3952 no joke, with the retcon powers he could do anything at all to their narrative. It’s literally the equivalent of going to a book and drawing a big ❌ over the page, instead of just time traveling which follows causality loops and doomed timelines.
Dave and Karkat fighting over drawing dicks in that book has a whole lot more thematic importance looking back 😂
It really goes to show how John embodies his aspect, fulfills being an Heir to Breathe. He is truly free, and therefore becomes its very definition.
Also Eren Jaeger would be SUPER jealous rn
100%
Eren's a pissbaby. John's well adjusted AND achieved freedom. Suck it, yeager.
It just occured to me: Act 7 is a series of events that are occurring with circumstantial simultaneity. The comic invented the term basically to sync up event in different universes with disconnected timelines, but it's also got a ton of narrative and thematic weight behind it.
In the end, Vriska, Caliborn, and the victorious heroes all get exactly what they want. It just happens that two of those three want to be at the head of a conflict that will almost certainly kill them. The kids who got out won, because they won't have to be cosmically important, and die for it.
my biggest gripe with the ending was how much karkat got sidelined :( he managed to survive the entire game without dying just like everyone else but got treated like he was useless while all the major ending battles were going on :(
Not at all: Karkat finally got the battle he deserved. He was always concerned with the major battles and living up to the massive standards he set for himself while always knowing that he was the weakest among the entire group. His fight against Clover allowed him to have a moment where even little victories mattered. Clover was no pushover either; a win wasn't just _handed_ to him, he had to earn that. He helped, he did the best he could, and that's what mattered.
The worst disservice Hussie did to Karkat was not making him meet with Spades Slick and get the best team up
@@christophermarsh1580Karkat being this vessel of doom and bad luck also finally works in his favor as he counters Clover's ridiculous luck power
I never really understood what the ending actually was. It just left me confused, with only understanding that "welp, they got a happy ending somehow, mcguffin hurray!". Now that you've explained what the Juju did to john and how all of that works, and for clarifying what happens in the ending I appreciate it far more than I previously did. Thank you kind sir.
yeah I didn't get what the juju did beyond time travel.
I've always been under the impression that Lord English was defeated in a symbolic way, with his 8-ball eyes, the Cue Ball possibly being the juju, and possibly even being pocketed into the black hole, basically an extremely elaborate game of Pool. And I'm a much newer fan of Homestuck, recently finished reading it with friends in the span of 2 years and 4 months of streams. But I absolutely love your take on the ending of Homestuck, it just makes so much sense. I personally don't have an issue with the ending myself, I'll ask questions like what happened to Vriska, Davepeta, Aradia, Sollux, etc, but I just can't stop gushing over how good the ending is.
I just finished the video, and I think this is a wonderful ending!
OF COURSE John could just choose to not complete the time loop with his narrative powers, why did we all assume he had to? His last arc is gaining the powers to do just that!
when i got to that point in the video i had the same realization. i am honestly shocked that it has been six entire years since this ending and i have never heard anyone suggest that this is why it ends this way. why DID we all assume he had to go back when such great lengths were gone to show that john can break what is meant to be set in stone. it makes so much sense, it makes the entire thread of john becoming unstuck and using his retcon powers a lot more impactful. even the strands of electricity as john reaches for the doorknob seem to be nodding to the "zap", as we don't see the same effect when karkat reaches for the sgrub doorknob. I really love this way of looking at the ending.
@@ihaveadilemma i called the split, just salty there's only two branches
one simeple phrase, caliborn's masterpiece. a version of john always HAS to go fight caliborn in order for the masterpiece to happen.
@@temerianlillies Yep.
And if he uses his powers not to?
Then he retcons the entire fucking story out of existence.
The problem is, John doesn't earn that power, it just fell into his lap. Also, the mechanics of the retcon powers isn't explained in a satisfactory manner. Also, there are characters other than John, that essentially got killed at the end, and were replaced with characters that we weren't following at all for the last three years of story.
Also, story-telling rules exist for a reason. You can't just subvert them at your whim without fucking up the story itself. Hussie did a nice job of riding the line with fourth-wall breaks for a while, but when he made it part of the plot that he lost the authorship of his story to some nimrod characters within the story, they made the story unreadable and unenjoyable. He went against the purpose of his story. Unless the purpose IS to make the story unreadable and unenjoyable, but doing it with intention does not make it any less shit.
I do find the idea of deciding not to complete a time loop sort of interesting if it's done in-plot and isn't some after-the-fact fan-speculation. But, as far as I can tell, the idea isn't fleshed out in-comic, except in the even more unreadable epilogues. And in the epilogues, alot of other garbage distracts from anything interesting that can be gleaned from this subject.
Over-all. No, the Homestuck ending isn't in any way "good". In order to be convinced that it's good, you have to hop up so many layers of meta-narrative that the proper and interesting standard-narrative of the story is unrecognizable.
Headcanon:
It's possible that the eight human kids that went after Caliborn in LoCaM were from a doomed timeline where they decided to go after him instead of facing the Condesce, which is not 100% stupid because that version of John had retcon powers too, so violating the Alpha Timeline is on the table.
It's not the first time Doomed timelines are used to complement the Alpha, Davesprite and the Aradiabot army are prime examples of even doomed duplicates becoming relevant to both the main timeline and canon as a whole, sometimes even existing for way longer than the doomed should.
As for the house Juju? My take is that it has three uses that are related to manipulation of reality-narrative: The first is the ability to absorb narrative, even freaking protagonists (as had happened in Caliborn's Masterpiece), The second is to warp and disloge things from narrative (as what happened to John, giving him retcon power), and the third and final use is to DESTROY reality-narrative. A literal STORY NUKE.
Essentially, the House Juju's third use triggers a hard end to homestuck canon at the large cosmic scale, while at the local scale it simply deletes everything around it. So that is how Lord English and Vriska Serket, two of Homestuck worst spotlight-hoggers met their end: instantly deleted from reality (Serket Lovers can interpret that as a Vriska's final heroic sacrifice, while Serket Haters can see that as Vriska using a power she doesn't fully understand and being destroyed by it, the final punishment for her hubris)
That's why we don't see anything after the Juju activates, when it's final use is triggered, it just blips everything around it with little fanfare or drama, like turning off a light or crashing a game.
And do you know who else was in the House Juju's reality-anihilating blast radius? ANDREW FREAKING HUSSIE. The Author is double-dead, not even his ghost can suggest canon anymore.
This is post-canon, everyone. Nothing is absolutely true, everything is equally valid.
Andrew Hussie only has one life left: His real one. He is no longer homestuck, and has as much control over the narrative as we do
Funny too how when the house door where everyone's gathered by turns white to mirror the house juju and John reaches out for it, the animation cuts right as he touches the door. The narrative ends before we get to see the ending.
I mean... It doesn't look like that's as clear as you're making it seem. John smashes his phone, which is also his connection to his friends. He doesn't say NO to Caliborn, he just looks angry and willing to go beat him up once again, which is what triggers "The Masterpiece". In fact, Caliborn's masterpiece begins with the kids Retconning in, which means John being unstuck from canon is a requirement of the timeloop in the first place.
Ha yes, more homestuck time shenanigans.
He smashes his phone because Caliborn somehow got his contacts and is contacting him from within canon tho and because John going unstuck is within Canon, Calliborn and LE's aware about the retconning and can make prophecies with that in it.
yeah, like..? i get no one really paid attention to caliborn's intermissions, but the masterpiece is pretty integral to him becoming english, and english's demise. it *has* to happen for english to arguably exist. a version of john *always* has to fight caliborn for the masterpiece to happen, and for vriska to even care about the weapon in the first place. and even then the point about him not being controlled by the narrative, just, isn't true. the epilogues (as "dubious" as they pretend to be) are canon, and he was controlled BY THE PERSONIFICATION OF THE NARRATIVE to go fight english, to complete the loop.
This. This is what bugs me the most. Even if you ignore the Epilogues, the kids have still in no way shape or form gone outside the Alpha Timeline. Lord English's rise DEPENDS on the retcons, it was not erased by them. Caliborn took on the name "Lord English" because he was beaten by Jake English, who was retconned in there by John. The Ultimate Weapon was already in its post-use state before the Beta kids were trapped into it by Caliborn using it. The retcons were already a part of Paradox Space's past before they happen, meaning it isn't beholden to them. This was always how the timeline was supposed to go. There is no reason for us to assume that John has the option to not go back and complete the Masterpiece's time loop, despite all the yammering about him not having to. After all, he already completed every other time loop.
John did nothing special. All of this retcon bullshit was, despite all the grandstanding about how powerful and influential it could be, ended up functionally the exact same as one of Dave's time loops, just on a bigger scale. The only difference is that with Dave, we ended up skipping to the part where he goes back and "changes the past". With John, we read three thousand pages of doomed timeline shenanigans and character development that did not matter in the slightest because it was all rolled back, and THEN we skipped through the equivalent of those 3k pages in the alpha timeline and ended up in a nigh-unrecognisable situation compared to the one we've been following.
@@paradoxicaloutcome1007 Well the thing is, Lord English was created before the retcon. He is trapped in the sarcophogus and then presumably sent to the death bubble. Assuming that John's time travel is actually the same as Dave's, this means that Lord English would have been from a doomed timeline, which is a known possibility due to death bubbles and Vriska meeting Younger Vriska(who is cosmically older). In addition, we are also not told from which timeline the kids who fight Lord English are from. They could **also** be from a doomed timeline, assuming I'm understanding sburb time travel correctly. We do know that John's time travel also travels through space, and since death bubbles are a way to come from other (doomed) timelines, John's time travel probably also allows for travel between timelines. Assuming it doesn't, though, my theory relies on the idea that the 4 heroes Lord English traps are ones that made it into dream bubbles before coming to fight Lord English, or some other high strung series of events.
If everything I've said is wrong, though, then maybe the difference between Dave time travel and John time travel is that the narrative has control over Dave's, whereas simple physics has control over John's. Basically, for Dave, alpha timeline is the one we're used to, whereas for John, alpha timeline is the one where he stops time traveling. In addition, because the narrative has no control over John's time travel, it doesn't know where the timeline is going to go, and so has to follow John through his timeline, whereas for Dave's time travel, the narrative can simply skip to where it turns back into the alpha timeline, because it knows where the alpha timeline is.
In all seriousness, I’m going on a Homestuck nostalgia trip again after helping them on r/place, and this came out at the perfect time!
The past week I’ve been having a mental breakdown thinking: “wait… was Homestuck shitty the entire time?!!” But this is a great reminder that was part of what made it great!
Making this video reminded me why I love Homestuck. There are so many small, fantastic moments that I rediscovered. It made me want to reread the comic, which I definitely don't have time to do.
Homestuck was and is a "LEGENDARY PIECE OF SHIT"
Meaning is EPIC AND SHITY.
A result of the culture of its own era, kind of a window to said era also.
Think of it as those knightly scripture of the middle ages with giant snails and weird paintings.
The scribes make them because they where bored transcribing all by hands for days.
So is an epic scripture with shity drawings.
Also, i am here for a "13 of april" video and now my youtube feed is 1/4 homestuck stuff..... Fun.
It's actually an awesome, EPICLY written ending. It perfectly ties in the effects of the mechanical difference between time loops and John's retcon powers, allowing him and his friends to LEAVE canon, and thus remove Lord English from relevance, or possibly, existence, due to them not being there to create him, and retcon powers being unable to create doomed timelines.
I really liked your interpretation of the ending. One detail that adds flavor that goes unmentioned is that the ending is affected by two things that are not explained within Homestuck. Yaldabaoth's Juju and Caliope's Black Hole. Both items involved in Lord English's destruction are both plot holes and literal holes in the fabric of reality. The epiologues are written as a fanfiction and are divided into two alt timelines-"meat" and "candy", with each explaining how one of the plot holes works and how it fits into the timeline. But the themes, the symbolism, and even the story are still fine if they are left as plotholes.
"John Egbert is no longer Homestuck"
Makes me cry everytime
It DOES show the final battle! We see Vriska become the cue stick shooting the cue ball and punting Lord English into a black hole, completing the billiards symbolism and analogy. The cue ball was Caliborn's Juju, which contained the beta kids. We saw the beta kids get trapped in the Juju during Caliborn's masterpiece. He isn't slain. They can't kill him, so they have to defeat him an another way, which is by making him get sucked into the Black Hole for all of eterntity, which we saw Calliope make from the Green Sun during Act 7.
That *is* the final battle. They don't actually fight him, they shoot him into the Black Hole. We see him and a bunch of ghosts swirling around in the Black Hole in the Snapchat credits.
My problem with the ending is that it felt rushed. So did just about everything Post [S] Game Over and I suspect Hiveswap was entirely the culprit of this.
If you look at the state of Homestuck before John started retconning things, Hussie had written himself into a corner and there was basically no chance the comic wouldn't go on another 10 years getting out of it, and he had massive financial obligations to make a video game that he clearly had no idea how much work would be required for. If you look at it through that lens, it becomes clear the entire retcon arc was for the purpose of getting to the end as fast as possible. John revives Vriska. Vriska existing fixes nearly every single plot thread and ongoing character arc, and then they're all just "there" for the final battle. That's why it's unsatisfying.
So for me, it wasn't just the ending that was disappointing, I had been disappointed for months and months of hiatuses leading up to it. I feel very strongly that had Hussie never started the Homestuck Kickstarter, the retcon arc would've never even existed.
Dang I wish I seen what could’ve been
Ok so I'm back and I spend a bunch of time ruminating over stuff and there's only like one thing I'd actually like to point out and that's that it seems the house turning white and flipping (which to me is most indicative of them leaving canon since the logo and less so the artifact represent the story itself and the fact its flipped means they're on the inside so them leaving frees them) actually seems to be spurred on by the artifact's usage and not John's retcon powers. Like we cut from the door of the artifact opening to Cal smashing the clock to the back hole and THEN to the victory platform's house changing. Hell, I specifically called out the artifact's usage but it could be the black hole too. I think it's very up to interpretation lol. It could be that another version of the kids entered the red house and those were the versions that went back in time, so our versions aren't obligated to, but like honestly it's really confusing to begin with and I'm not sure how involved John's unstuck powers actually were cause he was far away when the change happened lol
Act 7 was when they finally became unstuck
they were no longer homestuck so the comic went from being "homestuck" to "" meaning no more comic
mic quality kinda wonked, but HOLY FUCK this video is actualy amazing, probably the best "homestuck explained" type homestuck video ive seen
good video! i agree with what you said
re: your poll, i think in the last 6 years the feelings on the ending have slightly shifted. i think if youd done the poll when it dropped it would have been overall resoundingly negative. (personally i always liked it though, haha)
your interpretation of the snapchats was interesting, the take i usually see is that john IS baited into fighting lord english. the idea there is that they never meant to completely deny the fight with the big bad, they just decided theyd get around to it eventually. that eventually someday they would have to fulfill the stable time loop, but in the meantime they werent too fucked up ahout it
either way its a beautiful narrative about escaping the narrative and being able to live outside the constraints and the tropes of storytelling and just live as people
TBF looking at the Reddit today, I have been validated in calling it controversial. Lotta people in the daily readthrough who hated it
I know that I'm kind of late to the party, but I just wanted to say that the OG ending gives me eerie feeling as if it's a false ending and something bad is coming. I mean, John's empty and lonely house in the ending makes me very uneasy
This reminds me heavily about Ever17 visual novel endings. It's a game about people who are trying to get out of the collapsing underwater amusement park. After each false ending you're shown the screen in the security room with a number of living beings "aboard" and it's always above zero. This scene gives me creeps even now 10 years later
Evidentially, something bad was coming, as scene in the epilogues
But yeah I love how the ending of Homestuck is simultaneously this incredibly happy ending and also an ending where it feels like something is very very wrong
@@caseyjarmes I know now that a lot of bad things happen in the epilogues, that's why I can't bring myself to read them.
I also don't buy the "Ultimate-self" theory where it's alright for you to be the worst version of yourself and not trying to do something about it because somewhere exists another "you" who pushed themselves to the limits. I can see that it's aimed at taking the pressure off people but I also can see how this idea can be very destructive if people start to neglect their lives and become nonchalant with their life choices
My problem was mostly with Game Over. now an ending in a homestuck that didn't suddenly kill characters in the alpha timeline and then revives them in such a way that through away lot of their arcs with the exact same ending I would love more. But yeah you wouldn't like the epilogues it basically takes a dump on everything you enjoyed about the ending.
It was a cool af ending, but i also feel like it was missing something, probably cuz i was always on the theory craft side of the fandom, checking all the theories of how everything relates and how it ends (i loved reading bladekindeyewear tumblr and all his theories) so i was also disappointed that we didn't get to see it happen, so seeing it from this perspective i think now it makes more sense for me, we didn't get to see that final battle, but like a lot of paradox type of narrative hussie used, it did and didn't happened, so i guess that's fine.
the ending makes a lot of sense now that you put it into context. thank you for making this video! i really wanted to understand homestuck (i read it twice) and although i liked the characters and setpieces and music and dialogue and.. pretty much the comic's whole vibe! i never understood it, i couldn't connect really any of the plot points together, i just didnt understand it. theres a whole hell of a lot more to it, but just getting the general gist of the ending is something i'm glad i can do now with this video. if i weren't so busy with living my life, id like to reread hs, maybe with some friends, and really try to understand more of it and get more out of it. probably won't happen anymore, but i'm glad i read it, and im glad i can hear other people like you share their ideas and thoughts surrounding the comic. makes me wish i couldve been around for when it was big and people were talking about every update and every plot point (but i dont think 6-11 year old me couldve parsed any of it reading in like 2010-2016 lol)
i wish i wouldve known about the juju stuff and what was happening in act 7 when i read it, but now i have a better idea. i agree that that does seem like a good ending. thanks for making this video!
I think the issue with the ending is that it isn't nearly as well explained in canon as you did right here, mostly because of how convoluted it ended up being by the end of it. I'm not saying stories have to hold your hand through their message to be good, but a couple more confirmations within canon that your interpretation was what was intended would have gone a LONG way to help people accept the ending
Yeah, that's fair. The ending is a bit obtuse.
9:23 "than back in the future, there is also the past"
This is the second best sentence i have ever heard in any homestuck video essay ever.
EDIT: i take it back john egbert is no longer homestuck just became my new favourite, knocking the former to 3rd place.
What's the first?
@@caseyjarmes from jan misall's 'a video about homestuck
What is this conversation even doing here, essey videos don't need to have PLOT
"Oh, but this isn't a normal essey video, this is an essay video about homestuck"
I was already satisfied with the ending, but the way you explained your own view of it made it even better!
I didn't pick up on the whole "John purposefully doesn't complete a timeloop by not fighting Lord English and they all run away from the narrative itself and get their happy ending that way" thing, but now that you've mentioned it, I can't stop thinking about it. It's such a...Homestuck way to end a story, when you think about it.
Like, Homestuck's always been so meta, it's very fitting that the only way to "win" the game would be to just...say "no" to the story itself.
Wonderful video.
Also yeah, the Epilogues and ^2 were soul-sucking experiences with "terrible fanfiction" levels of writing, their only redeeming qualities being the art. You probably made the right decision in not giving them a read. They're not written by Hussie anyway; apparently Hussie gave the writing team some vague guidelines, but we have no way to know how much of it they actually followed, so I personally like to consider them infamous fanworks (or, as as I've seen some people say, fanfiction written by Caliborn to taunt John back into the narrative, it's giving the writing team too much credit in my opinion but I find the idea absolutely hilarious and very meta).
It's been a long while since I read it, but I read homestuck after it finished. So reading the comic and seeing the pages asking for the code was cocking dozens of narrative guns that all fired at once for me. I was so hyped when I got to the end I didn't even feel cheated out of the fight.
"Back in the future that is also the past" Perhaps trying to get into Homestuck this late was a bad idea
Oh, i can't wait for this
I never put the pieces together this way, but you're right, it makes for a beautiful, joyful ending!
Finally someone who was also so satisfied by the ending that they didn't bother with the epilogues. I thought I was the only one!!!!!
Well...the thing is...I did read the epilogues seven years later to make a sequel to this video. And honestly didn't hate them
@@caseyjarmes fair enough, I personally see the act 7 animation as the end because it satisfied me. I liked it and didn't need any more. Tbh I also think I had Homestuck burnout because I was rushing to catch up to updates. Even to this day, I refuse to reread homestuck because it's just far too much.
oh my god i NEVER thought about Caliborn being stuck in his place because he ended up being trapped by the narrative by john refusing to be the hero. i already liked the ending on it's own, but this just made it even better!!
черт, чувак, я закончила читать хоумстак год назад, и только после твоего видео поняла суть концовки. Хотя смотрела я её много раз. Спасибо огромное
this actuallly explained alot about homestucks ending for me and made me enjoy it alot more! I already liked it along with the rest of the comic, (probably because I read Problem Sleuth first,) but now I like it even more now that I know what was going on.
thank you for this video, it's really good and captures the kinda magical, nostalgic feeling i get with homestuck proper. i'd love to see more videos like this about homestuck! personally, i have issues with the stuff *before* the ending - namely vriska being brought back and magically solving tons of problems, and the characters feeling kinda off and ooc afterwards. but overall i'm satisfied with it. the journey, the world, the characters, the fanworks that have come from it... those are the things i remember and love about homestuck. plus, the final animation was epic. ever since the epilogues came out, i've viewed them as like... decently written, canon-divergent fanfic. i enjoyed them a lot actually! i just don't consider them to be canon at all. not even dubiously canon. they are two paths out of an infinite number of "what ifs". homestuck^2 is considerably worse than the epilogues in terms of writing, even though it takes place in the same timelines. mainly it's just...boring. i'll read it whenever they drop the rest of the story, but i will always view it similarly to the epilogues: a mediocre, canon-divergent fanventure.
holy fuck i like the ending of homestuck now
you are really REALLY good at scriptwriting/emotion in your voice, everything. You got a new subscriber, il keep watching (but plz get a new mic lol)
I was an adult when I found homestuck, had already toured most of the US east of the rockies, had started drug recovery etc. A big fan of counterculture and had been in several rhps cast shows. Homestuck pretty much encapsulated the concept of counterculture and outcasts in the new millennium. As well as ideas of metamorphosis and growth within the world especially within a world that seems destined to never let them succeed. Breaking the chains of both fate and expectations from society. My reason for liking homestuck as much as I do(even the trolls who I don't actually like by comparison to the other 8) is the massive ammount of themes they cover, even prolonging some of the villain arcs to help show that often they were the heros of their own narrative until they had a chance to fail...... or a complete slave to fate like gamzee but meh. Anyway, I like your synopsis
i mean like, the ending may not be satisfying but i feel like they gave the characters a little break from the strings pulling them (the narrative) and get to live their own life
wait
you mean like
at the end of act 7
john zaps himself, his friends, and the new universe into the transparent blank space? instead of just entering the new universe normally?
is... is that what's supposed to have happened? have i just been missing this extremely critical plot point the whole time?????
It is not explained well, but yes. The Homestuck Epilogues confirm that Earth C takes place outside the continuity of Homestuck. It’s unclear if John zapped them there, but at the end of the comic, John and company are no longer part of the time loop that created Lord English.
oh damn i wasn't satisfied with the ending when it came out but you raised good points
This is beautifully put! I really appreciate your take on this and just how beautiful it is when seen from this angle.
Other things to mention:
The kids don't run away. Sometime in the future, they do have to fight Caliborn as seen in Caliborn's masterpiece. We already know they will do this because we saw them do it. They'll presumably do it in the future. The epilogues explore how they aren't free.
Also thought you'd mention some of the symbolism with the ending. Such as PM beating Jack Noir, breaking free from the predetermined narrative that Prospit will always lose to Derse. White won over Black, good won over evil, even though good was always fated to lose. And then other things like Roxy killing Condesce with Dirk's unbreakable sword, a sword she said to her represented everyone in the narrative who had died and didn't make it as far as she did.
But yeah. Homestuck is about characters, in a predetermined fate and narrative, fighting against it and breaking free. It's amazing.
The only thing I didn't life is really the main characters not getting satisfying arcs. Like, everything pre retcon is suddenly pointless, then we only see a few back to back convos right before the big fight, and it's very anti climatic for a character driven story
Fair enough. I am planning to make a much more negative sequel discussing those aspects
I'm so delighted to see the slow but sure rise of more Homestuck analysis videos (since there is honestly a near endless plethora to cover), but I'm so happy to see this topic specifically. I honestly had no opinion on the ending, and this was so so enlightening. I love your style of breaking things down, I'm looking forward to seeing more stuff from you on really any topic/genre 👍 subscribed!
I never really liked the homestuck ending, but I appreciate that it was probably the best ending the series could have had. The ending is really a microcosm of my very mixed feelings about the whole comic and that’s ok I guess.
I can understand what you say in theory and in a meta-sense, but sadly Hussie just didn't pull that properly. Because John just "imagining" that he doesn't want to fight Lord English and magically happens is just too convenient. Like The comic is dense complicated and long, and it got resolves in an extremely easy and anti-climatic way. Like Lord English was just so ridiculous powerful in godmode that the only alternative Hussie did was pulled a "a wizard did it "move. Lord English was just so broken and overpowered that it really wasn't a "decent" way of defeated it that "off-screen" and "leaving it the audience imagination"? Is just... A very lazy and mediocre solution, the "blink and you miss it" for something so important is just not a good job. Like in the final animation something is missing at the end, like another type of clue that John was leaving Lord English trapped without fulfilling his destiny to be Lord English, of course that give us everything chewed up is not the idea, but putting that meta ending so cryptic that feels Hussie just run out of ideas and simply he didn't know how untangle the overly absurd complicated web that is Homestuck was just the worst of moves...
Agreed. I think the ending would've been 1000% more well received if the buildup hadn't been some of the worst stuff in all of Homestuck. Honestly my biggest wish for Homestuck is that it could be given a second draft, like I think starting from cascade if the pacing was swapped around and like some story beats were slightly altered, rapture could be the exact same and work much much better as an ending. I at least wish there was a last panel of John explicitly ignoring Cal's call, like maybe just a final frame with John talking with his friends and being happy. Would be nice.
I never even thought about it like this
i have always loved the ending, it makes me sad people don't seem to appreciate it
Ok, very good interpetation! But a few points:
- The masterpiece exclusively happens *because* of john, his retcon powers are what brings everyone to the final battle in Caliborn's Masterpiece. A big thematic part of the masterpiece's reveal is that its revealed in comic directly after John finishes his retcon adventure to fix the Game Over timeline. Caliborn talked about his masterpiece before the retcon, we knew tidbits of information about it, but it was all came together *after* John fixed the timeline.
And it makes sense. If it weren't for John the masterpiece wouldn't happen, Game Over had nearly every important figure from the masterpiece killed, essentially making it impossible to happen. Im saying this because in your interpetation the 'foil' to Lord English's control was John's retcon ability allowing him to reject the comic, but in truth its just another 'thing' that was supposed to 'happen' to make the Masterpiece work, like most events in the comic that surround the inevidable Lord English time loop.
The actual 'foil' (if you can call it that) is that all events that surround LE have to happen, but they're never mentioned *when* they will happen. The comic could close properly because due to the nature of john's power, he could theoretically make the masterpiece happens *after* the story ended, which is whats heavily implied to happen in [S] Credits. We don't necessarily need to see the 'event' happen if we can assume it'll happen off screen at some point.
The same goes for the LE fight, we don't need to see it happen as we "know" it'll happen. We even knew the results of it more or less, as alot of visual clues from [S] Act 7 hint towards LE's defeat is being thrown into the black hole. There's a huge visual metaphor in the presentation of the LE fight scene, with depicting the White House Juju as a pool cane, the black hole as a pool hole, and LE as the 8 Ball, the final ball that needs to be knocked into the pool hole to win the pool game.
These are all interpetations that are solely based on [S] Act 7, and happend way before the Epilouges released, I don't see the point in ignoring them when the ending is so open to interpetation without their context.
- You also failed to mention that John directly answer's "I'll do it" to Caliborns taunt in [S] Credits, which kinda invalidates your point entirely.
- I won't talk about the Epilouges too much since you haven't read them but the themes it explores that connect to the Paradox Space plot (Homestuck proper) isn't "continuing a story that doesn't need to continue", but "the consequences of having a story have a ending that doesn't make canonical sense". To further iterate both of these themes are explored, but the former revolves around a totally different plot thread thats essentially Epilouge exclusive so it doesn't really matter in this discussion at all.
Im not trying to be a hater here, your interpetation is really good, but the only way it works is if you actively choose to ignore some pretty crusial details from the comic proper, and assume other things in their stead.
I loved the ending. Homestuck was amazing.
I will legit never like that end.
But still prefer it (along with the credits) over the epilogues
In defense of the ending: It's not The Epilogues.
I'm not the kind of smarty who thinks this hard about media, but I'm just smart enough to follow along when a cool cat breaks it down. Thanks for this.
As someone who HAS read and enjoyed the sequel/epilogue, this perspective makes me think that maybe I should resent them. Our heroes got free from our prying eyes, the contorted plot they were mired in, and we wrenched them back in for round two with our insatiable hunger for voyeuristically enjoying strife.
Wow, you actually completely changed my opinion on the ending. I never thought of Vrisca and Calliborn plot this way, but it actually has so much sense and it's somewhat really satisfying as and ending. Also yeah, don't read epilogues or Homestuck 2. But Hiveswap is actually pretty nice
Already read. Made a three hour essay on the epilogues
@@caseyjarmes omg xd I somehow didn't realize it was your essay, sorry!
This feels like an incredibly limited interpretation of the ending. Homestuck has a number of different big fights that we don't see, or only get to see the start of, or just get a shitty retelling of, in fact it probably has more big fights we don't see than we do, with Collide feeling like it probably tips that scale the other way just because it has so many at once. The fact we don't see the final battle doesn't mean it didn't happen, especially since it's in the middle of a flash where that battle would feel very out of place, and takes place right after we just got through a whole other fight with Lord English.
As well as that, the way John's Retcon is shown to work, he can't just... leave the Masterpiece undone. The Masterpiece is how Lord English comes to be, and Lord English has to exist for the rest of the comic as we even know it to come to pass. For John to completely defy any sort of causality loop on a universal scale is much larger than he's been shown to do in the comic, only able to steal specific things, that he's touching, away from their narrative irrelevance.
On top of that, even if John's power suddenly jumped into 'Can transport entire universes out of a doomed timeline into the Alpha one', this still isn't a 'good ending'. John Egbert would be willfully and intentionally leaving a god with limitless destructive potential unchecked inside the universe's reproduction system, Paradox Space. Lord English's threat wasn't just that he wanted to fight our heroes, it was that he wanted to destroy everything, forever, and our cast were the only ones suited to defeat him. If they abandon that fight, they don't 'make Lord English irrelevant' they let him do exactly as he always wanted, unimpeded, except he can't kill a dozen specific people he had a personal vendetta against.
Even if your interpretation of the ending is right, that means the story ends with the heroes running away to another kingdom where they can frolic to their heart's continent while the villain destroys the very fabric of the cosmos they dipped out on.
Just to be clear, I do like Homestuck's ending, I feel it does a very good job at ending things at a breakneck pace, and I know anything else would have hurt way more, I just disagree with this interpretation
Finally someone who gets it
The thing about the ending that confuses me is that it feels like the ending we would’ve gotten had the comic wrapped up about 2000 pages easier than it did. In terms of the story beats it touched on, it felt more like an ending to act 5 or early/mid act 6. Hell, excluding the stuff with Calliope and Caliborn, maybe I’d even go as far as to say act 4. It created this weird dissonance that was foreign even to Homestuck and made the ending hugely disappointing as a result.
My brother died watching his ear drums exploded from ur mic
My kill count grows
This was a great video
this was such an eloquent analysis, thank you for this! I remembered how much I like this comic
Hey, I just finished Homestuck. I went in relatively blind and got sucked in completely and totally. I really do love it, obviously it's not perfect, nowhere near that, but god it's just right for me. Like it just covers so much of the stuff and themes I love and it pokes and prods at so many of my anxieties and fears about the universe. ESPECIALLY predestination stuff. I just feel so anxious about the idea that for these kids, and for me, everything is already planned out, everything has already happened, he is already here. I've actually always kinda hated destiny stories for that exact reason. But when I watched rapture I didn't feel satisfied, because I didn't understand, I thought the ending implied they did fulfill the loop and they weren't free and that rather than a new reality Universe C would just give birth to caliborn or beforus or whatever. And obviously it is implied that Caliborn and Calliope existed in C but like that's besides the point. I just was worried that seeing seeing John smash his phone and say I'll do it meant he was gonna go fight him. Honestly Homestuck had drilled into my head the idea that everything needed to fulfill itself, even after the retcon stuff, that I kinda didn't believe there could be a happy ending. But this video made me see it in such a better light. Like I love the idea that John really could choose not to cause all of that stuff, to just rewrite an entire chunk of paradox space. I like the idea of, as unlikely as it is, an earth that could exist out there in a universe where it doesn't need four kids to cause the apocalypse, where four kids perhaps like John, Rose, Dave, and Jade could just exist and be friends. I love the idea that the people who had to brave the hardships of a universe seemingly bent on their suffering are able to just get out and by that very actions give a better fate to all those who came before and after. Obviously this interpretation doesn't make much sense, but to me it's the most satisfying. Maybe we can forget all this high concept bullcrap about timeloops and dream selves and universal replication and just settle into a simpler place. Like if behind the curtain the universe really needs all that stuff to function, so be it, but maybe it would be better of everyone if those curtains just stayed down.
I hate to give the epilogues credit, but this is what the epilogues are about
@@caseyjarmes I read a summary on the wiki and like I just dont think i can do it LMAO like jane is racist and john dies and has sæx and like dirk is an ass and ascended and just even if it covers the themes i cant do it 😭in my mind everyone in universe C lived a non branching, average but still fulfilling life and died in a permanent non time loopy way and homestuck literally just never happened cause of the retcon stuff
@@caseyjarmes also i got a notification that said you hearted the comment and its not there which makes me think you did it as i was editing the comment (if you didnt know edits make hearts go away lol) and it sucks because this is the second time this has somehow happened to me q-q anyway unrelated but this was a great great great video and im glad my comment got noticed by you and wow homestuck sucks i love it
It was clear during Act 6 that Homestuck would never go back to being what it once was so many years ago. The ending was abysmal and everything following it a complete disgrace but the writing was on the walls for a long time that this is where the comic was heading.
Hey! Pretty good video!
For me too was mostly sadisfyin, specially the animations. Would have like the epilogue but one can just imagine what would happen.
Then the Epilogues drops, and i mostly like them.
Both in narrative and outside of it.
Have Meat Path (my favourite) where you have the fight with english and what you would expect of an epic of it scale.
And Sugar, being more "the end?", Made mostly as a set up for fan fictions.
Homestuck after all IS a fan made story, Hussie write most of it, but the begining and all the art was made by fans, so i like it as a gift to the comunity, a "lets hear your story now".
That is why i dont take ^2 as canon (it really try to be "the sequel" but was fan made, kinda "having the cake and eat it too") so for me was just another fanfic, could have live and "earn" the title, but just wasnt good enough, a drop it at the begining, was kind of a drag, not to mention how it ties with Pesterquest, which at the end just proclaim itself "the new canon", pretencious as fuck, as just fanfic self indulgance.
So yea, ^2 is not canon, everithing base in the epilogues is NO-Canon for me, could have been the "unoficial sequel" but didnt have what it takes.
Also, sugar path looks to hint that the WHOLE epic is Calliope's fanfiction, with herself as the self incert, being the MUSE that lead her brother the LORD to make it a reality.
SHE PLAN THE WHOLE CHESS MATCH! XD
Ho, also.
I think the "retcone" was mostly to give Vriska a redeption ark, withouth her really changing in the main plot, as she being the MASSIVE BITCH WITH THE FAT ASS, that hassie love is pretty central to the ending and several parts of homestuck asyou mention.
@@ericquiabazza2608 Yeah. I fucking hate that plotpoint, tbh.
THERE WAS ALSO THE HOMESTUCK SNAPCHAT EPILOGUES WHEN SNAPSchAT WAS AT ITS PEAK. i remember they used to have their Homestuck username public but now i dont see it no more...
Great Video
Love your interpretation, one question though: Does Caliborn growing up on Earth C not kinda defeat the point of escaping if the kids are still in his timeloop there?
I think you're one of the few people I've come across that I think accurately pinpoints the thematic core of Homestuck, the existential dread/cosmic horror aspect (and no that does not refer to the Eldritch creatures). And, in fact, I think you would actually end up really liking the epilogues, both thematically and in execution... maybe (for the love of Jebus don't touch Homestuck 2 though).
It gets complicated because of all the postmodern bullshit, but first let's acknowledge that the epilogues were announced kind of immediately after the "regular" ending, so I don't think anyone can rule out that there always was an intention to fill things out a bit more, for those that wanted it. Second, I think it's perfectly valid to be content with the ending of Homestuck as it is, because if you've been following the subtext, it works, as you've pointed out. But, if you're paying attention, you'll also notice that the ending is a break in theme. The taking back of control can be seen as poetic and cathartic, but really, it's just wanting to see a happy ending that would drive that perception. The way I see it, Hussie gave us the option of either indulging the urge to engage in escapism and end at the ending, or we could face reality by going on to the epilogues. They very much bring the loss of control back to the fore, because the fact that everyone, including John, is in fact part of a fictive narrative is an intractable aspect of the story, no matter what kinds of anti-canonical powers he gets. Don't see the epilogues as just being a showcasing of the showdown - that's a minor part, really. What it actually is, is a depressing reckoning with the realities of our own world, and that of the Homestuck crew. The work goes beyond being easily condensed, and I genuinely think it is high literature. If you ever feel like a dose of brutal existentialism, I would defs recommend the epilogues. If nothing else, it's the final nail in the coffin for the notion that Hussie ever respected the readers, what with their petty hopes and dreams and ships. These are notions fit for a story, not anything real.
I think the people who disliked the epilogues really only say they do because they don't like dark material, and/or they didn't quite understand the thematic underpinnings of Homestuck's narrative to begin with. Anyone who doesn't fit into those categories would be in the minority, and I don't think anything but comprehensive statistics showing the opposite could convince me otherwise.
So, uh. Epilogues good actually, and if you don't agree you're a rube. Homestuck 2 is trash
I have to disagree with you here: homestuck has 3 important elements: its themes, as described excellently in this video and your comment, its humor, and its characters. People disliked the ending mainly because they dislike the entire retcon thing (as you read in the many comments here) because they feel like it sacrifices a lot of the characters for the sake of the plot (or themes). People dislike the epilogues because they change characters a lot for the sake of absurdity and thematic relevance. I'm not saying there is no good shit in the epilogues, but if you are interested in homestuck because of the characters there is not much there.
I thought the whole point of the juju, and the reason we don't see it used on Lord English, is because nobody knows what it does? Sure, it could release the heroes and kill him, but it could also just outright destroy him or something. Was it ever specifically confirmed that it would release the heroes trapped inside of it, or is that just the option you personally believe in?
There still 3 problems with ending you don’t address
1. There still a black hole from the green sun that will destroy everything if not addressed
2. There seem to be a time gap not explain how they got from platform to planet and so there details missing
3. So what happened all the villains that still alive but not lord English?
1. If you interpret the ending as John not facing Caliborn it erases all of Homestuck, from my perspective thats what the black hole is, we see it's not only ripping apart conventional matter but also paradox space itself. It's purpose is to literally destroy that entire chunk because it no longer should/ever did exist.
2. They have Jade who can hop to wherever in the session so they prolly just teleported around and gathered everyone up before heading to the platform.
3. Condense is assumed dead, Lord Jack is definitely dead, so is spades slick, former Bec Noir and the felt are seen in the snapchat stuff on earth C, which is dubiously canon but it sort of just implies they just hitched a ride on earth.
Man.
Woman.
10:57 isn't Caliborn from Earth B2 ?
@@BatailleRapTishort Earth C is Earth B2, just at different points in time
dude you NEED to read the epilogues, they're mind blowing. They changed everything I knew about narrative structure. Homestuck 2 was...ambitious. I enjoyed it, but- well you can hear everyone's lamentations about it, and why it failed.
I’m sorry bro, it’s April 12, 2022…
You’re too early! Be more lazy next time!
Where are you getting these chapter titles? Did you mean Act 6 Act 5 Act looooooool
Official chapter titles: www.homestuck.com/map/story
I agree with your interpretation, but still think it makes the ending a piece of shit. Good video though, gave it a like.
the epilogues are p good, I can reccomend them.
but they're p explicitly not canon and not part of homestuck itself so you can do whatever lol
I
He he he 413 likes.
I WAS THE 413TH LIKE OMG
Congratulations now you're cursed
Thank god someone is talking about this!! Thank you!!! So many memories and ive always had a problem with Homestuck^2 tbh.... Ive read into Homestuck ^2 but its just not the same....