#what pumpkin

[brawnie]

The first 10 or so panels of homestuck are so wildly important to establishing the nature of homestuck. It’s a give and take between author and audience, wherein both parties are trolling each other through the story. You read homestuck and in doing so you write homestuck. This is the main character of this story. What will you name him? Zoosmell pooplord? Fuck you. Where are his arms? They’ve been there the whole time you moron. The relationship between author and reader must be GENUINELY antagonistic, because that’s the basis of which the comic is built on. This is why, fundamentally, it does not work as a corporate product. You can’t truly antagonize a consumer base you’re trying to market to, and if you fail to antagonize them, you lose the core thread of what makes homestuck unique. In this essay I will

[hms-no-fun]

What's your opinion on the new HS^2 update? I'm really excited it's back but I'm a little worried. Like, the fandom has had a real problem with pretending all the horrible shit that caused it to end in the first place never happened. Is this just gonna sweep that under the rug even more? Is James Roach heading the project because he's less "problematic"? I love James roach and I'm sure he'll do great but what about all the transphobia? I just hope they finally fulfill the Toblerone Prophesy and make June Egbert cannon.

short version is, i'm cautiously optimistic! but this is a loaded question you've given me on a lot of fronts, so i'm gonna try to take it piece by piece.

to start with, the sudden revival of Homestuck^2 (now minus the squared) took me by surprise because to my knowledge, it was entirely dead in the water. my involvement with anything Official ended at Pesterquest, and pretty much the entire post-canon crew i was friends with in 2019-20 has moved on to greener pastures. i share a similar sentiment with @pochapal in that i would have put money on hs2 staying dead forever. i have, quite frankly, dreaded the inevitable day when official Homestuck media would resume production, because the fandom at large seems quite eager to sweep the ceaseless harassment and transphobia that ended hs2 under the rug and pretend that it just, like you said... never happened. when that california cafe used older Pesterquest-like character designs that omitted short chubby Terezi and black-coded Roxy, however well-intentioned and ultimately harmless that was, it felt like a sign of things to come. that, as you fear, the sharper & more personal queerness that we tried to bring to this series would be erased, in favor of something meant to simultaneously appease both tenderqueers and redditors, two sects of the fandom most responsible for the aforementioned harassment.

luckily, that really doesn't seem to be the case!

to your worry that James Roach was made director because he's "less problematic," i'll just say that's entirely the wrong way to look at it. it's not like WP (such that it even still exists) were cruising to get HS2 back up and running. by all accounts, James is the only reason it's happening again in the first place. i can't stress enough just how small an operation this Homestuck business actually is (or, at least, was when i was involved). this is not a Huge Corporation making cynical cash grab decisions. this is someone who cares about the material pushing to get something made where otherwise there would be nothing. check the new About page, where the principles of the so-called Homestuck Independent Creative Union are laid out in plain terms. this is something the original hs2 team fought for, so for this new version to start from there as square one is huge and a good sign of the possible longevity of the project.

next, let's talk about the question of this new team erasing the legacy of the old one. Kate Mitchell is on the record that she was reached out to about this new hs2, approved it, and declined to be involved. i don't know if the other writers were reached out to, but i have no reason to believe they weren't. this is a tremendously important gesture of good faith and goes a long way towards easing some of these worries.

but let's look at the composition of the team itself. do you remember The Perfectly Generic Podcast? originally hosted by future hs2 writer Kate, pgen became a flashpoint for community discourse, often opening doors between official homestuck and homestuck fandom. what made that show special was that, rather than relying on the imo tired genre of the liveread, pgen focused on a different topic each episode and explored it with one or two qualified guests. Kate's goal with the show was to encourage a more adult and quasi-academic discussion of homestuck, of its successes and its failures. if you weren't there, the weight i'm putting on pgen might seem overblown (not least because you can't find it anywhere anymore except on the internet archive). but it's not! when they decisively criticized the wild contents of the Skaianet debacle in episode 19, Andrew listened and worked to bring a more diverse group of creators into the fold. in the months after the Epilogues were released, Andrew issued a statement through pgen on episode 52 about how the Epilogues are meant to create bridges and offramps for the post-canon fandom. it's an essential piece for understanding the epilogues and their relationship to fanworks! that it wasn't included as the author's introduction to the Epilogues in the book version remains to my mind an astonishing oversight, but whatever. point is, pgen mattered to the folks in charge.

so let's look again at the writing staff of this new crew. James Roach first guested on pgen in episode 7, and would go on to be a regular. Haven, who did the Vriska and Roxy sprites in Pesterquest (and probably more stuff i don't remember), guested in episodes 81 and 87. Miles guested on episode 87 as well (unless it's a different Miles, i'm not familiar with their work and ugh this damnable linkrot). Floral, creator of one of my favorite hs fanworks & huge godfeels influence Liminal Space, first guested on pgen in episode 47, and would go on to be a regular (including once during my tenure as host to talk about Jade). on the technical staff side, Kohi built the hs2 website and has remained a backend mainstay both on the WP side and on Vast Error.

all of which is to say, if you were looking for a crew to cynically erase the past and appease the haters, these probably aren't the folks that'd be at the top of your list. of course, if you *really* wanted to cynically erase the past and appease the haters, you wouldn't bother reviving hs2 in the first place!

and that's the crux of the matter here. what cash is there to grab? what clout could possibly be chased? i struggle to think of a decision less obviously profitable and popular than continuing hs2 with a new crew right where it left off. i have to believe this is happening because the people involved want to make it.

so, yeah, i'm cautiously optimistic. i like this crew, i like the contents of the first upd8, and i'm glad as hell it's not a reboot! i'm grateful that by reviving hs2, the hs:bc crew have instantly yanked the epilogues & the post-canon project back into relevance in the broader community. and i always liked hs2 a lot! i was excited to see where they were going! i'm really looking forward to seeing more YIFFY!!!!!

but the thing is, this won't be the hs2 i wanted. i know that, and i'm not expecting it. my greatest hope for hs:bc, for this crew, is that they get the chance to take up the reins and drive this thing in whatever direction they feel most passionate about. if that winds up looking like the hs2 that was originally planned, great-- but more than anything, i want everyone on this team to feel just as empowered to leave a profound and personal mark on this series as the original team did, as i did working on Pesterquest. i hope the outline changes! i hope they take some really wild swings! i want to be surprised!! i want to be challenged!!!

above all, i want them to have the chance to pick a course, sail it, and see it through to the end regardless of what the public thinks. they deserve the chance that the original crew didn't get.

i have plenty of bitterness and cynicism in my heart over the events and circumstances of 2019-20, but as far as i'm concerned it has no place here today. i would never, ever wish the trauma and stress of that era on anyone. let the fandom at large react in whatever way it will, but i want things to be different this time. this is a second chance-- not just for hs2/hs:bc, but for all of us. even people who hate homestuck post-canon! this is an opportunity for everyone to choose to be better this time, and to push back when others might squander that opportunity. this team is not a group of celebrities, not an abstract fiction on the other side of the world, they are human beings who took a job. they've earned the opportunity to do that job, and they deserve to be treated with the respect and dignity that was so often absent a few years ago.

as to your last point, about june egbert and the toblerone. i've been saying for years that andrew's confirmation of june was less "the granting of a wish" than it was "a spoiler shared without input from the creative team." that there is any doubt about june's providence in hs2 can only be attributed to willful, aggressive ignorance on the part of people who refuse to engage with the written word in any way other than plodding literalism. the original team didn't unveil june ~immediately~ because they didn't think of june as a wish, they thought of her as a character in an ongoing story who needed time to develop naturally. i have never not felt entirely crazy about how thick everyone has been about this!

but will the new team make june canon? obviously i have no way of knowing for sure, but i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that probably the answer is "yes, when they're good and goddamned ready." just, please, for the love of god, don't go after every upd8 like "where's june? where's june? why hasn't june yet????" this was one of the worst results of the toblerone spoiler and it put INSANE pressure on the hs2 team. so just... just let this story be what it is. let this new team make the homestuck continuation they want to make.

and in the meantime, if you're really hungry for june... there's always godfeels :)

[davekat-sucks]

So James Roach did an interview and the basic summary is: Hiveswap Act 3 is happening, they just need to do all the assets and programming. WhatPumpkin now only exist to keep Hiveswap development. Hussie says to the team that they can do whatever to the IP because he doesn't care anymore. If this isn't a bleak outlook for the series for both Homestuck and Hiveswap, I don't know what is.

[homestuck-archive]

BREAKING NEWS (i think): WhatPumpkin, is dead.

WhatPumpkin.com led users to the WhatPumpkin website where you could buy Steam keys for Hiveswap. Now, it redirects you to Hiveswap.com. And so, WhatPumpkin.com finally comes to an end after like...14 years? I think?

From a music publisher...

...to a merch store (man, those prices)...

...to a game studio.

Welp, they had an admittedly, sort of just ok run. Goodbye, WP. For now I hope.

[scienceandfandoms]

Haven't carved one in many, many years, so of course I had to take some inspiration for Homestuck when I asked... What pumpkin?

[ender--slime]

there's about TEN DAYS LEFT to submit a recipe to Jane Crocker's Bombastic Baking Book Bonanza, a Homestuck recipe fanzine!!!!

ive got some absolutely amazing and creative submissions so far, and i'd love to see YOURS! submissions close on FEBRUARY 10th! (unless i extend it again...but dont count on it!) apply and submit your recipe here!!!

[conkreetmonkey]

PREDICTION POLL: Which will be finished first, Hiveswap or Andrew Hussie's natural lifespan?

Important notes to aid your guess:

Hussie is currently 43 years old, meaning he's about halfway through a typical human lifespan, give or take. This is assuming no huge medical advances occur within the next few decades that bump up the average a significant amount.

Hussie's net worth is estimated at over $1 million, which is nothing to sniff at but also nothing mind-blowing, so he's not getting any cyborg upgrades or anything. Given the dismal state of his franchise and the not-nonexistent possibility of a lawsuit based on the undelivered promises of his multimillion dollar Kickstarter, this number can only be expected to go down over time, further cementing a standard human lifespan.

If Hiveswap is cancelled, for the purposes of this poll, it will be considered "finished" and Hussie will be declared the winner by default. (Also he'll like 100% get sued into oblivion, but that's irrelevant)

Work is *allegedly* being done on the project, but then again, that's the case for Homestuck 2, and that's not even worth a poll because it's currently set to "outlive" the heat death of the universe. That's a little unfair, though, as there is very real evidence of development (character art, backgrounds), and What Pumpkin objectively does exist as a company with employees that do work of some kind. Still, it remains a distinct possibility that this is all a front for an intentionally meandering, aimless development process so Hussie can run out the clock and not have to face the repurcussions of somehow misplacing $2.5 million.

[starblasterr]

Girl boss snow man for a late cascade day

[kehelios]

I'm selling a bunch of old homestuck merch on my ebay, bids are on! I have both paradox space books, vodka mutini, and problem sleuth books 2-5!

[sadevergreen]

FUCK OK i know it’s late but have the karkat pumpkin

[dietchapstick]

For Christmas a year or two ago I made my friend a proxy of Brudiclad from mtg and decided to make the custom art this. Don't think I'll offer any explanation further, just appreciate it because I later pulled and traded him a halo foil showcase brudiclad which kind of took the place of the proxy instantly.

[omgitzlongdennis]

I WAS AT THE WELCOME TO NIGHTVALE LIVE SHOW AND THEY FUCKING SAID "WHAT PUMPKIN?"

[davekat-sucks]

I stayed away from the fandom for years. Can you summarize for me how Hussie (and some of his "friends") became such hated figures in this fandom? I know very little about what happened with Sarah Z's video and the drama of homestuck reddit vs kate mitchell

Andrew Hussie and WhatPumpkin had tried to sue Sarah Z for libel because of her critique on the shitty sequel that is Homestuck 2. It didn't help that HS2 was put on a long hiatus since December 25, 2020. He sent her a most unprofessional email like he would. But it wasn't until later on that it was revealed that Homestuck 2 was actually a money laundering scheme by Andrew Hussie to pay off his debts towards Viz Media. He lied to his freelance artists, claiming they are working on the project to help bring the series back to its full glory. The most funny part is that Hussie had tried to pitch Homestuck^2 to Viz Media and they rightfully REJECTED this and told him it was the bad idea. But he didn't listen. Andrew Hussie then decided to leave his name out of Homestuck, any future projects relating to it, including the HIveswap game that he Kickstarted and had misued the money, to live off with his money on IP alone. As for the Homestuck Reddit vs Kate Mitchell, besides the whole fact that Kate Mitchell is controversial for making lots of questionable remarks, takes, and had LITERALLY ADVERTISED HER NUDES ON HER PERSONAL ACCOUNT THAT WAS USED TO TALK TO HOMESTUCK FANS, she and Hussie had found out that Makin, the head of Homestuck Community Reddit and Discord, had created Homestuck.net. Which is an archive site for all things Homestuck media related. From art assets, fan games, music resources, and of course, Patreon exclusive posts for Homestuck^2. It was back in the early 2020s, way before the hiatus and Hussie cutting himself off. Andrew Hussie, Kate Mitchell, and others in WhatPumpkin like Aysha, are upset at them. Thinking they are infringing copyright in preserving some of the lost sprite art and other materials related to the series. There was rumors someone, not sure if it was WhatPumpkin or some random defender of Hussie, had accused Homestuck Community Discord, was sharing CHILD PORN, which was untrue. Andrew Hussie had sent emails to the mods and Makin, requesting the latter step down from his position and let Hussie and WhatPumpkin take control of the Discord. He also asked question about the mods sexuality for the sake of 'gender and sex composition'. Of course by the end, it failed and Makin is still around. I don't think it's been made public on either Twitter or Tumblr, as it is just kept within the Discord server itself. But they had release the email transcripts in a PDF file about all this. Of course, Makin isn't too much of a saint either as he accused the artist (HONE) for 'normalizing' the characters and plagiarizing a fan edit, not realizing who it was that made all the Homestuck Requiem promo art and that it was made WAAAAY before Pesterquest was out and approved by Viz Media themselves. He would then find out who it was and backpedaled, likely not having directly apologizing to HONE. The way I see it is two tards fighting each other. Wanna view the PDF file? (˵ •̀ ᴗ - ˵ ) ✧ I have been meaning to document some of the controversies and drama within the Homestuck series. Be it from Hussie, Whatpumpkin, and any other major incident. From how one Homestuck musician got kicked out for accusing Hussie on mistreatment of his music team to spending $10k on an office in New York to work on Hiveswap, it would be a history of all the things that had happened behind the scenes with evidence to back it up.

[caliborniastuck]

the modern day homestuck experience is desperately hoping hussie or what pumpkin is going to turn around and release something amazing, or apologize for their past actions, or some new piece of evidence will come to light showing that it’s all just a big misunderstanding. and then ishtead of any of that, you find out that hussie roasts babies alive and what pumpkin used the kickstarter money to euthanize homeless dogs.

thanks for the reporting @giovanh

[mspaintripventure]

[pastrymenschen]

drew myself a cover for my davejade playlist 💚✨❤️