11-2024 Writer Commentary

HAVEN, shaking: Guys? I'm scared. What just happened?

KIM, i don’t belong here: Don’t be scared. :)

MILES, considering doing his job: >:J

FLORAL, loving some bacon: THE HOMEWRECKER IS DEAD!!!!!!

MILES: The above is a transcript from a staff meeting we had a while back, when the Writer’s Commentary for this month was still blank.  For posterity, I am going to leave it in, unless my fellow writers erase it in which case this introduction is going to look all kinds of out of context.

JAMES, director: Mama Mia!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MILES: But enough of the past... let’s talk about this update!

MILES: Opening with Tavvy’s incredible letter.  It’s been so much fun letting him have a little independence, as a treat.  We’ve been trying to give him a little shade of passive aggression, just a hint of spice, and I think this letter was a fun place for that.  “Sorry but you guys are kind of weak as fuck, can’t do a single backflip, and so you need to sit here and eat these considerately provided packages of snacks while a real gymnast handles shit.”  It’s a flex, but I think it also demonstrates his caretaker tendencies.  Really this is a kid who grew up with not two, but THREE dysfunctional and mildly insane guardians.  He’s probably as much their custodian as they are his.  He’s still taking his self-imposed Yiffy rehab job very seriously, but it doesn’t mean he can’t also keep the two spoiled rich kids he throuplizes with out of danger and with nice full tummies.... he’s a good boy.

FLORAL: He’s so boycore. I love that Tavvy’s sliver of confidence is starting to show.

HAVEN: I love this child who is also a registered public notary.

JAMES: I remember this being an important note from me. It should be notarized. What a move. It evolved into him being able to legally notarize things. Can minors be notaries? I don’t know or care.

MILES: Unfortunately, he probably should have accounted for the fact that these two aren’t really inclined to listen to him.  When Tavvy flips the script on their established relationship dynamic, as he has quite a bit these days, it rubs at least Vrissy the wrong way.  Harry’s a little more haplessly along for the ride than a real momentum drive, but to his credit he’s still rolling out to recklessly endanger his own life yet again instead of staying inside where it’s bullet-free.  There’s a hero somewhere in there...!

FLORAL: Vrissy has her pride!! She may down talk the war a bit, from what we saw in the Epilogues, but she’s not going to be out performed.

JAMES: Good detail that Harry is still eating the trail mix and is picking out the M&M’s.

MILES: Perhaps a bit unluckily for these two, they stepped outside at kind of a critically intense moment.  But that’s just sort of what heroes do.  They get involved in critically intense moments... still, maybe it’s for the best that Rose was here to keep them from witnessing:

FLORAL: All according to keikaku…

HAVEN: Jade I won’t lie to you, it doesn’t look great.

MILES: I believe it was the esteemed scholar Scooby Doo who once said, “Ruh roh.”  Clearly shit is popping off a bit more flagrantly than the kids imagined.  Tensions have been building for a while, but blood’s been definitively drawn now.  It’s been a lot of setup to get to this point, but it’s super satisfying to see it all reach a boiling point here, even if it comes at the cost of poor sweet Jade’s cranial structural integrity.  There have been a couple sparks on the gigantic oiled up pile of TNT that is The War, but now, with all the relevant parties and a smorgasbord of expensive and deadly military machinery all gathered in one place, things are liable to get truly dangerous.  Darkwing Duck eat your heart out.

JAMES: Noted American Neo-Classical Poet, Scooby Doo.

MILES: Probably a pretty bad time to be anywhere near the meteor, huh?  Well, maybe n-

MILES: Shiiiiiiiit.... well I guess that’s it for everyone, then!  Good run, guys!  Homestuck Beyond Canon over!  It was an honor serving with you all.  

MILES: Oh shit there’s more!  Nice.  I knew that.

HAVEN: A proper “Mindfuck” here.

JAMES: They got us again they can't keep getting away with this. Anyway, a lot of really important things in those three panels actually. You can sort of figure out what's going on if you just look at them closely and make note of some important hints.

MILES: You’ll notice that, with this little gag (which felt so fun to do, by the way), we’ve returned to the ACT structure, abandoning the CHAPTER format HS^2 utilized before the production change.  This was a point of a lot of thought, for us, but ultimately we think that the Act structure makes more sense for the story it is that we’re trying to tell, for a variety of reasons that I’m not gonna get TOO into here.  That said, we’re coming up to the climax of what we consider... I don’t know, the “setup” period of the plot?  It’s been a long, long road, and it’s tough to say what final percentage of HS:BC this whole saga is going to represent, but capping it off all under the purview of one Act feels appropriate.  Everything, from the beginning of HS^2 to now, has been dedicated to fully selling the transition from the Epilogues to what has become Homestuck: Beyond Canon.  It’s been just over a year of updates on our end, and it’s so crazy to see this arc getting ready to finish!  It’s been going for five years!  Now, most of that was hiatus, but y’know.  Still.  Bombastic shit going down.

JAMES: I remember early on someone asked me about this and I forgot what I said so thanks for summing all that up. 

MILES: Speaking of bombastic... 

HAVEN: AH!!!!!!!!!! 

MILES:  AHHH!!!!!

FLORAL:

JAMES: why are you guys like this..

HAVEN: We have been waiting a long time for this. Like about a year now? Wow. Okay let’s get some eyes on this, let's put on our reading glasses and analyze this wall of flowery... purple. text...

HAVEN: “Negging” this is new! And again with this 108 number pattern, how curious. This person seems to drag on each sentence... Before snapping back to finality. This conversation harkens back to the message Karkat sent Jade back in act _ with the “SO I GUESS TODAY IS FINALLY THE DAY YOU FUCK EVERYTHING UP.” but more self defeating. And full of (these)-* bombs! What could it all mean!! 

JAMES: Haven knows exactly what it all means. I can see him typing right now. Go on. Deny it.

HAVEN: smirks silently and turns away

HAVEN: A lot of information here! TC and AA, who are curious characters and what could their roles be? (well I suppose you could guess their upcoming roles.)

HAVEN: oh, they worked on the game?

HAVEN: Here I think there was going to be a line specifying they had “47 friends lined up” but it got switched out. 

JAMES: I wonder if that's important. I guess we still need to be sort of coy about it.Which is horseshit.

HAVEN: Yeah, that IS horseshit! Anyway our coyness continues.

HAVEN: So yeah their shit exploded. One thing of note with this final part is remembering that Vrissy has only been going by that name for like 2... days? Only a few people even know about it. Damn I wish I could say more but we’ve got a ways to go still.

FLORAL: I love this loser.

JAMES: And thats it for the commentary! Case closed! Go home! Can you figure out our secret clues? Like comment and subscribe.