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mobiusdoublereadaround · 18 days ago

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Death of the Author

warning in advance: this one might be a rambler? watch it, I'm ramblin here One of the things about discussing and reading Homestuck is that unlike a normal work, where in the act of reading you may come to understand something about the author, Hussie had an active involvement with his fanbase for a majority of Problem Sleuth, and Homestuck after that, so a lot of what we know about Hussie as a person comes from the comic and those interactions. Homestuck was full of commitment to bits that would have flown over the head of anyone who had not followed the previous works of Hussie, and of anyone who didn't read the author notes below each post. So much of his work was self-referential that it was something like a highly compressed jpeg ouroboros, eating its own artifact ass. Everything was always in service of a bit, or at least veiled behind the context of one.

And while we would learn quite a lot about Hussie's sense of humor as well as his artistic sensibilities, learning about Hussie himself has always been sort of a non starter. Having taken a pretty big step back after a while, for example, it's only through listening to and reading the works of others on the topic that I've learned Hussie has identified as any/all, though when this was something that they (I will be using he and they throughout most likely when referring to Hussie, although I reserve the right to use others) discovered I couldn't say. The exact method of delivery for this information was something of a Homestuck fan flashbang: Fashion Juggalo Hussie. I could not tell you if Juggalo Hussie is sincere or not; I trust that the any/all pronouns is. Being that Homestuck is, on a few levels, a story about identity as well as having the courage and strength to assert yourself against the horror of the world, it makes a lot of sense that the creator would end up on this side of the fence regarding gender identity. It also brings me to one of the more... divisive (I guess is the word?) decisions added in to the Homestuck canon; June, TGirl Vriska, and the fucking Toblerones.

All of these are things I avoid discussing when possible because a lot of people have very strong feelings about them, so read on with the knowledge that folk react to fictional characters and changes to them differently.

For those who aren't aware, around the time of the end of the original run of Homestuck, several chocolate bars of the Toblerone brand were signed by Andrew and hidden in caves, I believe in the USA, in reference to this image:

The people who found them were allowed to 'wish' anything they wanted into canon. And the first few people to do so used them to make existing characters trans; Specifically, John would become June Egbert, and Vriska would be retconned into having been assigned male at birth (or hatching), discovering her identity on forums/through her dancestor (as of the visual novels that have come out in the last few years I believe, I haven't read them but I have been told about them in some detail). Hussie clapped his hands together and said 'it will be done' --- then promptly handed it off to Viz.

To quote a man: "This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

On one hand this feels like inclusion on par with that of gay Dumbledore. Added after the fact, never elaborated upon within the fiction by said author, and changes nothing important about their actions within the established fiction. It doesn't provide context for behaviors we couldn't understand before or reveal something about them within the existing work. John becoming June feels odd; my own ability to scan out trans characters isn't perfect but it's curious to me that they'd choose the person who seems to have the most concrete idea within his own head of what masculinity is. A big part of what has led me to my own gender identity was the root of 'what exactly is a man or a woman? objectively and beyond biology, what are the things that define this?' John has never seemed to struggle with this part of his identity, and while that doesn't make it impossible (I passed and fooled myself for like 29 years) it does mean it would have to somehow account for John's pride in becoming a man his father would recognize as such.

I was talking in the largely trans server that started this blog in the first place, when I brought this up with a friend who's a first time reader, and this is what she had to say:

John really do be the worlds dumbest, most nicest man. Vriska in particular is strange because it changes nothing about her except for how a person might perceive her. It's the most retroactive kind of continuity change, and it only makes the idea of the trolls being echoes of their ancestors muddier for me.

Past that, we can look at how long it's taken to implement either of these within the canon. The change from John to June seems to never be destined to happen beyond that of the odd calendar image here or there of John's nails being painted by Rose. Even if it does come about it's happening in the dubious territory of Beyond Canon. If it's not even Hussie writing this, some people simply won't accept it as canon.

I bring all of this up because it's necessary for getting a picture of what Hussie the human is like, especially in regards to fan interaction.

So with all of that in mind, the reason I'm making this post to begin is to talk about Hussie the author vs Hussie the author the character, as well as their self insertion via Dave. I'll start with Dave, because it sort of ties in to my general understanding of Hussie, which informs how I read the work.

It's interesting that the character who most often employs the smokescreen of irony to defend his interests, Dave, shares the most tone and headspace with the creator. Not only are their posting and writing styles near identical, Hussie seems to be comfortable in Dave's skin in a way that doesn't translate to the others. When Paradox Space was a thing, there was a particularly graphic scene involving Tavros turning into a dick, written by Hussie. This made a lot of people upset, and in traditional fashion Hussie found a way to preserve the joke, by producing a WALL of Dave text describing the original panels in lurid detail.

Pleasant!

The thing about Dave is that he spends a huge amount of his time defending the idea of 'irony', when we meet him and through out a huge chunk of the story. 'Ironic bad art' is something he and Caliborn argue about, mirroring similar interactions Hussie would seek out on forums they used. The idea of enjoying something ironically is sort of silly to me, because how can you hold an idea ironically? How can you enjoy something and say 'well I don't mean it'? This is something we see Dave grow into, during his time on the meteor. His relationship with Karkat/His conversation with Obama during the epilogue where he never had a relationship like that say, to me, that these issues may have been weighing on Hussies own mind. Though Dave might lack the language to describe it because he spends his formative years on said meteor with the trolls and one other human, we can understand Dave is bi, both through his actions within canon events, the epilogues, and also through Hussie themself. It's sweet to me in a way that Hussie seems to be coming to similar conclusions about his own identity as they grow older.

Again, with Dave here, we see the self referential nature of Hussie's writing. And it's interesting to me because Hussie, the author, is historically at once very private and very public. There are photos of and from Hussie all over dead boards accessible via the wayback machine; his instagram has 30 posts, his formspring and tumblr are basically abandoned. We know a lot about people who have lived with Hussie; we have no clue what state they resided in. They say that they're taking a hands off approach to the beyond canon material; he provides the scripts/outlines for the creative team of Beyond Canon to work off of.

Hussie the person is almost a character, in their interactions. Cheeky and abrasive and encouraging parasocial relationships when they favor his interests. His jokes are edgy and provocative and when they don't land their response to backlash can be mixed. His views and the stories he tells are incredibly progressive; they''ll make an entire cast of characters with the intention of mocking keyboard justice culture and some disabilities. Andrew is a confusing person, who is full of paradoxical natures in their interactions, which is very human, to me.

This becomes even stranger when we account for Hussie, the Author, the Character, who behaves in... questionable manners sometimes.

When most people discuss the idea of 'death of the author' it's about separating the views of the creator from the work. Not only is that impossible with Homestuck, being a multiyear story told by one person drawing on a lot of personal author experience, the author is a character within the fiction. Further complicating this is the death of the author, an act which occurs within said fiction.

Hussie the character is one of the more interesting aspects of the story. An author being involved in their own work wasn't a foreign idea to me, I was familiar with Dark Tower and I cut my prog teeth on Coheed and Cambria ("If written wrote me even chance and the choice to save you", "Well, you say plenty of things, and how's that work? You're a bicycle!") so there was nothing new in the initial premise. When taken in the context of Homestuck, though, we end up with some weird shit. Andrew Hussie the character is he/him, a snapshot of a person who no longer is, in a sense. Andrew Hussie the character is dead, within the fiction. This doesn't change his tendency to meddle with the story and break the fourth wall, (traits shared with his human counterpart) but he also a ghost who is in love with a 13 year old troll, within that fiction. Even here, after the authors literal death, he continues to have input on the fiction with the guise of a troll (which is fitting, given his desire to poke at his own fandom).

We can safely assume that Hussie does not actually have proclivities for their own creation, particularly not those that are children. But they (the author) do play into those bits, on and off the platform. The now abandoned formspring and tumblr are full of back and forths of injokes between him and fans (the vriska thing was something I only learned about after the fact from other fans when I was very confused) that make their way into the comic eventually as an otherwise unexplainable behavior that the in-fiction author has. As such there's a necessary attachment of the author to the fiction, and then separation of them from their self insert within their work.

Furthering this is Calliope's message within the Epilogues, regarding the nature of stories being told by narrators;

"hence, we may view any story as speakerless, or spoken, so as to bring designations to the duality i have just presented."

"once a hidden speaker becomes unmasked, then retroactively the story may be considered spoken all along."

I guess what I'm getting at with all of this is that not only can you not separate the author from the work with Homestuck, you're supposed to actively view the work with the author in mind. You require advance knowledge of photographs/memes/injokes from forums that do not exist anymore. And it's interesting to me, the disconnect between Hussie as they were, edgy and a troll and eager to interact, vs Hussie as they are now, much more reserved and at the same time seeming to find their real self within the grease paint of a clown. I can't say that I blame them at this point, for avoiding the online public, but I also can't help but wonder what a world where Beyond Canon was being done with fan interaction would be like. The era of Juggalo Hussie posting would go hard.

#death of the author #homestuck #andrew hussie

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mobiusdoublereadaround · 22 days ago

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Remember, you're here forever!

In order to properly start this off I feel like we may need some context as to how I came to discover Homestuck and perhaps even what Homestuck is, just because by its very nature and all the lore surrounding it as a series and phenomenon we have to stray into territory that borders on Gnostic to discuss it (More on that later!).

The year was 2012, December, a few days after Christmas. I'd recently graduated high school and my father and his girlfriend at the time had given me my first personal computer. It's no shocker to anybody that a computer comes with an entire world of freedom and information, but for me it was mostly just a new way to mess around and finally get into some of that webfiction that my friends in high school had been telling me about, no longer shackled by the ties of communal school firewalls. After devouring various shorter form web comics (shout out to Dr McNinja and the dearly departed The Punchline is Machismo) and some webfiction (there was an attempt at some such as Worm, another insanely long webserial I bounced off and have continued to every attempt since; alas.) I encountered Homestuck kind of by chance, in the sidebar of another comic. Something about that face they used for the MSPA site's logo grabbed me immediately. The vacancy in the eyes, the open mouth complimenting the uncomprehending eyes. I saw the pagecount on Homestuck and reconsidered, but decided to go take a look at the other things that were available on the site. This, in retrospect, was smart because it gave me something of a primer on the type of humor that Andrew Hussie enjoys, a look at the machinery that makes up the man. There were also several jokes that would come to be played out to their conclusions in Homestuck later on (Jailbreak-pumpkins being tied to void and such) that I wouldn't have had the full context for without. Problem Sleuth was unlike anything I'd previously read online, thanks not only to the manic, even spastic gif work but to Andrew's own crack-fictionesque approach to fiction, his attention to his own detail. There was a satisfaction for me in seeing every single loose thread no matter how ridiculous come to a conclusion. Like, "duh, of COURSE the Snoop Dogg Bust mattered. What am I stupid? Trust the process." After experiencing the absolute blitz of a ride that was Problem Sleuth, I felt ready to attempt Homestuck. This, in retrospect, was foolish. What exactly is Homestuck? If you're somehow here and reading this without knowing, well... The simple and kind of really surface answer is that it's a webcomic, presented as a text-input video game, which is a coming of age story about a collection of kids growing into adulthood and playing a world ending video game. There is also necessary understanding you must have that the previous works, such as Problem Sleuth, were largely made with reader input. The more complicated answer is that it is a specific authors take on a creation myth, with parallels to several real world religions and levels of reference that run the full course from incredibly surface level to outright esoteric if they even are deliberate (I recall a fan theory that Davepetasprite was a sphinx analogue and clearly was meant to devour the serpent of Apep represented by Lord English/Ophiuchus???) as well as all the more fun complicated aspects of fiction such as alternate timelines, time travel, all within nearly one million words of media accompanied by animations, music, and sometimes entire games composed in Flash (another since dead medium. Boy do times change). The next few years of my life were occupied with Homestuck to varying degrees in between the pangs of growing into adulthood. The initial read and catch up (I recall finishing up with the available work at some point during what would be later known as the Caucasian Controversy), the many hours of debate with friends who existed exclusively through Skype and other online circles, and the groans if I brought it up with friends in real life. Throughout it all was the suspicion that this couldn't end... neatly, is the best way to say it. Then one day that stopped for what I initially assumed would be for good.

Surprise surprise - The ending wasn't final, or neat and tidy, and you'll be here forever.

I made an effort to keep up with the story as it continued - I need whoever is reading this to understand (if they can because so much of Homestuck was being there for it) that I sincerely did try. I read both Meat and Candy, and was incredibly uncomfortable throughout both for reasons I couldn't fully comprehend at the time as someone in an abusive relationship who lacked the experience or frame to understand the abuse they were experiencing, in a vein very similar to some of the characters. I have vague and hazy memories of the sequel sequels (was Homestuck^2 ever finished for example) and after a while I just kind of allowed it to fade from my mind. In the recent three years that's changed, particularly thanks to joining a larger discord server with something of a trend towards folks who'd previously read it. The webcomic the server is in service to originated on the MSPA forums (it's Kill 6 Bilion Demons and I can't plug it enough) and shares some themes with Homestuck, so the mindvirus rears up fairly frequently in there. Of course for as many as there are who were there for it, there are probably a hundred for those who weren't and have no real idea of what it is. They ask a few things pretty regularly but it all kind of boils down to: 'Is Homestuck good?' to which the responsible of us would usually answer:

'Eh kinda but like, no' This has me wondering what it was that I enjoyed in the series originally. Does that charm still sit there for me if I should hop back in? Is there something to be found of merit here in the archives of a bygone age? Can parts of Homestuck - per chance - be good? That brings us here to this blog. I'm going back in, gang. We're taking a dive back into the pit. I'm geared with 13 more years of life experience that feels something like 24. Obviously the entire thing is going to be full of spoilers; I'm not approaching this like a new reader and I won't necessarily be tackling things in order so much as in the manner ideas pop out at me. As such you can expect a probably appropriate level of eclectic jumping from point to point. I'll probably have to revisit the dreaded epilogue/actually read all of the sequels too. Can't pretend I'm looking forward to that at the moment. All that said where doin it man where making this HAPEN welcome to the MOBIUS DOUBLE READAROUND

#homestuck

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