shacklefunk:

shacklefunk:

i woke up in a cold sweat thinking about homestuck so here we fucking go

the ending to homestuck is disappointing. everyone has said it. we all know it. there have been post both justifying and damning it and ultimately it doesnt matter, but im gonna chuck my two cents onto the pile anyway. i mean im gonna try real fuckin hard to articulate this and its gonna take some blood sweat and tears so buckle up chucklefuck were on this ride together

im not going to make any arguments abt andrew hussie’s “intentions” bc i think thats largely pretty pointless. it is almost impossible to tell when hes inetnding for you to interpret something a certain way and as significant vs when hes just fucking around making shit up as he goes so whatever, i dont care what he intended. this isnt rly about his artistic intentions

i think that at its core homestuck is just a fucking coming of age story. like a really good, in depth one. and everything else is just little flavor flakes andrew hussie sprinkles into our fishbowl because its funny or interesting

homestuck is funny. i would say its humor is the second strongest thing about it, and i could compare it rly easily to like. the hitchhiker’s guide style absurdist approach to cosmic coincidence and the meaninglessness of things (also in that both are very fucking long and feature a lot of Space, but whatever). Like, a lot of shit in homestuck appears to be connected in a very complicated way, but also in a mostly insignificant way, and thats kind of the joke. that life is just fucking full of weird improbable shit that we lend such significance to but that is ultimately just some pointless bs that doesn’t matter, and shit just keeps happening and being connected whether or not you observe it or want it to happen. this style of humor does a good job of humanizing its characters and ultimately serves the characters. shit just happens to them, mostly for no particular reason, with no heed for what they want. Its cruel like life and funny like life and meaningless like life and thats where i think a lot of sympathy for the characters is derived from. its where we learn what the characters learn as they grow up; life just fucking sucks, and you get to choose what you do with it

but ultimately the story is completely character driven. like, homestuck is funny, but so are plenty of hussies other works. id argue that the primary difference is the characters

and yes ive seen that post abt how the metanarrative in homestuck is about how real people ARENT characters and how life ISNT a narrative, and thats a completely reasonable (and likely correct) interpretation. it fits thematically. but its not satisfying and i think im beginning to rly understand why

because homestuck is a fucking narrative

the plot of homestuck, i would argue, is fucking irrelevant. its just a bunch of shit that happens to some people, and it only exists to serve the characters, and is therefor largely just a product of whatever hussie wants to say about them. its complicated and winding and hard to understand, and i think we put up with that because at no point has homestuck rly been about having a plot. its just HAPPENS to have one. what we’re all really there for are the kids and trolls (and whoever else, but theyre the primary characters here) and their development

the interesting thing abt homestuck, for me, is that i was about as old as the beta kids when i started reading it. im 20 now. and the way homestuck has progressed and the way its characters have aged mean theyre approaching my age currently, or were when the story ended. this is sort of an aside and sort of not, but im going to talk about dave strider and Bro. when i started reading homestuck when i was a kid, nothing about their relationship rly read as abusive to me.

i think this is largely chalked up to my age, but something interesting happens w homestucks narrative when it…breaks down the way it did for dave. like, what happens when you put very realistic characters in downright absurd situations. because all of the kids and guardians strife and they all engage in absurd, exaggerated behavior (bro fucking sliced a meteor in half, jade lived with her stuffed grandfathers corpse, etc) its extremely difficult to tell what was a stylized exaggeration and what was Oh Bro Is Legitimately A Terrible Guardian

and looking back on it, as an adult, i can see it. Not in the visuals of like..the literal happenings so much, although thats definitely also there, but mostly in the way dave TALKS about bro. most of homestuck has been conveyed through chats between the characters, through dialogue, so this makes sense

and its weird, as im coming to realizations about my own parents and about how shitty they may have been to me at the same time as dave, how things line up. and i cant say whether or not thats intentional-part of me thinks its kind of impossible for it to be-but thats a very interesting thing.

but thats just that. its a character arc. characters facing their core problems and either falling victim to them or rising above them is a fucking character arc. it exists to serve an audience through a narrative. homestuck is a narrative. it behaved as one. its characters behaved as characters. most characters in hs get some sort of arc the way that dave did. the story is SORT of about a bunch of friends playing a game together, but its also much more about growing up. its about looking back on childhood and seeing how youve changed, about suffering along the way, about the loss of childhood innocence, inheriting (or choosing not to inherit) responsibility. its about being shaped by the random cruelties of the universe and learning that you just arent in charge of fucking anything, about being humbled, about accepting or rejecting “destiny” and taking the fucking wheel on your own life all the while accepting that ultimately shit is just not fair and you can either choose to fight it or choose to let it fuck you. and a coming of age story intrinsically contain fucking character arcs, which are attributed to characters, which exist in narratives !!!!!!

so, when you have a coming of age story, a type of narrative that draws its meaning directly from the development of characters, what the hell is the point in an ending where everyone just…gets what they want.

no, really.

i get that this may very well have been the point, to turn shit back around on the audience and be like, “real life isn’t a narrative,” but. from the perspective of the audience, homestuck is a fucking narrative. it has acted like one this entire time. it developed its own thematic significance and its own world. we all paid the price of admission and watched the fuckin show, but then the curtain didnt even drop. the characters just walked off the stage, all the lights still on, and we sat quietly, waiting for something to happen until it inevitably Didnt

so…like, how does this work. if anything, shouldn’t this victory feel incredibly hollow to our characters, who have struggled through so much and finally emerged at the other end ? many watched their parents die. they fought all this time for worlds they hadnt seen in years, but mostly they just did it to fuckin survive. a hollow victory would, in my opinion, be much more meaningful. cruel, maybe, but when has homestuck ever held its punches when it comes to cruelty? a bleak ending would have been fucking excellent from the standpoint of being emotionally satisfactory and having a lot of meaning, even if it made people mad

so, is the victory just surviving? is the ultimate reward just an alternative to constantly fighting for your life ? is the point of a coming of age story that growing up is a process that has intrinsic rewards? because that seems like an incredibly hollow message coming from a story that has otherwise been very poignant and emotionally nuanced (well, sometimes)

i think the core issue is that it doesn’t solve any of the problems that were brought up within the characters, and it doesn’t solve them by…solving them. in an instant. and makes their struggles seem really pointless. and as an audience you understand that they HAD to struggle to reach this point, but why the hell were you along for the ride if it was essentially going to amount to nothing at all??

and maybe the pointlessness IS the point, i dont fucking know. but its certainly not satisfying for an audience waiting for a sort of…coagulation of meaning. bc the “life isn’t a story” meta-narrative, if it exists, seems at odds with the entire experience of homestuck as a whole. i mean, thematically it makes sense and lines up with the humor, but the entire fucking POINT of a narrative is to have meaning. we dont read stories to get fucking nothing out of them and learn nothing at the end. homestuck turning around and biting itself on the ass at the end is so at odds with storytelling even as a means of human communication that it is honestly fucking baffling

and again, who fuckin knows. like, i was pretty far detached w homestuck by the time it ended, and had p much lost interest since the introduction of the alpha kids. i p much just kept up via tumblr posts after that. ppl who r way more invested probably have better answers than me

but i guess thats my perspective. undermining the meaning of ur own story is…i mean, if thats what ur setting out to do as an artist and you do it, you have succeeded. but from the standpoint of an audience it kind of just feels like being cheated out of time and emotional investment. i guess thats my opinion

the best ending to a story isnt always the ending where everyone gets what they set out for, but an ending that means something to its audience. the two are not necessarily the same.

double spaced this post is five pages long. i wrote this at like 5 am bc my homestuck thoughts woke me up. i just wanted to show u all wjhat a tortured soul i am