WhatPumpkin, LLC / Homestuck, Inc. : Chuck Tingle, Andrew Hussie and Friends - feat. Rachel Rocklin, Shelby Cragg, and Cohen Edenfield

[SketchyRichard]

My problem with Homestuck 2 is that I feel like they are overstaff themselves. 5 writers is bit too much like in movies, 5 writers basically death sentence of good script majority of time. They only need 2 writers and editor. It's only a webcomic with some animation.
I feel like what's taking the longest is the artwork itself. Like Xamag is amazing artist and example fanart can improve someone's artwork and style. I feel like she's also doing too much cause she's also lead artist of vast error.

I don't like how Homestuck 2 faq lowkey lie because Xamag's most iconic moments was in Cascade with her old art style along with some of dancestor sprites (if can count that), Vriskgram (in the beginning), and collide(when Heir of Grief beginning to play) . When I think I'm Homestuck artists, I think of Alexandra "Lexxy" (aka I stole Kickstarter money for webcomic that I did 8 pages) Douglass, Vivian Ng and heck even Shelby Cragg. Xamag are more known for their fanart than their contribution but later became part of the important team like Adrienne Gracia (Hiveswap).

I'm low-key going to miss the sprites because when I see Hussnasty and Hero Mode, stand out immediately.

 

[Bani]

My problem with Homestuck 2 is that I feel like they are overstaff themselves. 5 writers is bit too much like in movies, 5 writers basically death sentence of good script majority of time. They only need 2 writers and editor. It's only a webcomic with some animation.
I feel like what's taking the longest is the artwork itself. Like Xamag is amazing artist and example fanart can improve someone's artwork and style. I feel like she's also doing too much cause she's also lead artist of vast error.

I don't like how Homestuck 2 faq lowkey lie because Xamag's most iconic moments was in Cascade with her old art style along with some of dancestor sprites (if can count that), Vriskgram (in the beginning), and collide(when Heir of Grief beginning to play) . When I think I'm Homestuck artists, I think of Alexandra "Lexxy" (aka I stole Kickstarter money for webcomic that I did 8 pages) Douglass, Vivian Ng and heck even Shelby Cragg. Xamag are more known for their fanart than their contribution but later became part of the important team like Adrienne Gracia (Hiveswap).

I'm low-key going to miss the sprites because when I see Hussnasty and Hero Mode, stand out immediately.

Xamag is too talented for this bullshit. She originally was working on her own webcomic, but gave up on it for no discernible reason.

Same with James Roach. He's wasting his abilities on this backwash trash. Homestuck is old news. A lot of people who used to be in the fandom or involved with it in some capacity have moved on to bigger, better things.

I know of at least three former Homestucks who moved on to boarding for Steven Universe (which, yeah, speaks volumes about both the quality of the show and the cliquey-ness of animation): Lauren Zuke, Amber Cragg (who trooned out but I don't care so I'm still calling her Amber Cragg), and Miraculous Tang (Tangite/Mira). Then there's obviously Toby Fox, who worked on Undertale and recently Pokemon, and Emily Hu, who works for Disney (but may have been fired.) Finally there's the deluge of webcomics artists who started their own stories after building up fame in the Homestuck fandom. The women who worked on Helvetica, Starfighter, and Ava's Demon all got big originally from Homestuck. Note how I say originally, because they're all doing better shit with their time now.

JN Weidle (the creator of Helvetica) even had some of her artwork in Homestuck. But she still moved on to her own thing.

 

[Retrograde Mercury]

Xamag is too talented for this bullshit. She originally was working on her own webcomic, but gave up on it for no discernible reason.
View attachment 1030875
Same with James Roach. He's wasting his abilities on this backwash trash. Homestuck is old news. A lot of people who used to be in the fandom or involved with it in some capacity have moved on to bigger, better things.

I know of at least three former Homestucks who moved on to boarding for Steven Universe (which, yeah, speaks volumes about both the quality of the show and the cliquey-ness of animation): Lauren Zuke, Amber Cragg (who trooned out but I don't care so I'm still calling her Amber Cragg), and Miraculous Tang (Tangite/Mira). Then there's obviously Toby Fox, who worked on Undertale and recently Pokemon, and Emily Hu, who works for Disney (but may have been fired.) Finally there's the deluge of webcomics artists who started their own stories after building up fame in the Homestuck fandom. The women who worked on Helvetica, Starfighter, and Ava's Demon all got big originally from Homestuck. Note how I say originally, because they're all doing better shit with their time now.

JN Weidle (the creator of Helvetica) even had some of her artwork in Homestuck. But she still moved on to her own thing.

IIRC she gave up her webcomic because it had the same problem Homestuck has - it started out as something silly but eventually grew up into something bigger and a little more ... serious? So she would have to rewrite it from scratch.

 

[SketchyRichard]

IIRC she gave up her webcomic because it had the same problem Homestuck has - it started out as something silly but eventually grew up into something bigger and a little more ... sirious? So she would have to rewrite it from scratch.

She has a lot of good ideas but I thinking she afraid of executing them. I can't blame her. It is common fear with webcomic, even though its never perfect to begin with unless you're doctor McNinja.

I remember before she was into vast error, she was working on another webcomic project, The 6 Erratic Gigabytes. She faced a similar issue with it like her previous work. She's better as a team player than working by herself.

I hope the best for her but she's also friends with Kate so.....hmmmmm

Yeah

 

[Bani]

She has a lot of good ideas but I thinking she afraid of executing them. I can't blame her. It is common fear with webcomic, even though its never perfect to begin with unless you're doctor McNinja.

I remember before she was into vast error, she was working on another webcomic project, The 6 Erratic Gigabytes. She faced a similar issue with it like her previous work. She's better as a team player than working by herself.

I hope the best for her but she's also friends with Kate so.....hmmmmm

Yeah

It's why you write out the whole thing before starting to thumbnail pages. Y'know, like a sensible person. Actually finishing posting pages before you've even figured out a trajectory for the story is idiotic, and is the main reason for the glut of unfinished comics out there. What Andrew did while he was writing Homestuck was basically just write the beginning, the ending, and a skeleton for the whole thing, then make the rest up as he went along. He did this so that Homestuck could still have fan involvement like Problem Sleuth despite being a more plot-oriented story.

But I don't know if his "have his cake and eat it too" approach to fan involvement vs. plot was necessarily the best choice in retrospect. I honestly think fan involvement should have been limited to art and character names (fun fact: the original four kids and twelve trolls were all named by fans), not because the fans made bad choices, but because it meant that Andrew couldn't just write the whole thing in advance. This is part of why the post-cascade, pre-collide part of the story drags so much-- it's probably the part Andrew had written the least of in advance. I suspect that's also why that part of the comic has so much fanservice (the completely superfluous dancestors for instance), and why Andrew basically had to scrap most of that chunk right before the end. There wouldn't have needed to be a retJohn at all if the comic had just been written ahead of time. The story would also have been noticeably shorter, since revisions in the planning stage would have prevented all of the filler and plot cul-de-sacs in act six.

If you're reading this and you're looking to get into writing/comics, these two things should be your big takeaways from Homestuck: 1) you need to have lots of structure in the planning stages, even if you want the story to be flexible later on. It's not a good idea to have a solid idea for a beginning and ending and then have no clue what you're going to do in the middle, because the result is cluttered, meandering stories like Homestuck. 2) Well-written, interesting characters can be a story's saving grace. I've said it before, but the strongest thing about Homestuck was its character writing. People suffered through its mess of a plot and terrible update schedule because they liked the characters. The tragic irony now is that poor character writing is the very thing alienating people from the comics shitty peripheral plots (epilogue, games, sequel, etc.)

 

[ImBatman]

I know of at least three former Homestucks who moved on to boarding for Steven Universe (which, yeah, speaks volumes about both the quality of the show and the cliquey-ness of animation): Lauren Zuke, Amber Cragg (who trooned out but I don't care so I'm still calling her Amber Cragg), and Miraculous Tang (Tangite/Mira). Then there's obviously Toby Fox, who worked on Undertale and recently Pokemon

Toby Fox is probably the most successful person to result from this mess. He made a very famous game that probably made him at least a little bit rich by now and got contracted to work on not one, but three games made by a company worth many millions. And all it took was not being a whiny bastard on Twitter and actually doing shit.

 

[hors]

Freelance rates for Hiveswap, Pesterquest, and future What Pumpkin projects increased for all workers after success of Homestuck Patreon | Homestuck on Patreon

Official Post from Homestuck: The level of support for the Homestuck Patreon has been overwhelming, and What Pumpkin couldn't be more thankful this Thanksgiving. Fans want to support the independent artists behind their favorite works, and What Pumpkin has gotten to business making it happen.In...

www.patreon.com

The point of the Patreon wasn't only to fund HS^2. There are dozens of people working on Homestuck games and projects, and almost all of them came from the fandom originally. So they're spread across everything we're doing, like Hiveswap, Friendsim, Pesterquest, and now HS^2, contributing art, writing, music and programming.

One week old news but in case you missed WP confirmed they indeed need more money to finish Hiveswap.

Homestuck discussion on 4chan seemed utterly dead before the release of Homestuck 2. /co/, /vg/ and /v/ never had threads; the move to /vg/ never happened. The closest thing to a general was on /aco/ which is as hilarious as it is sad. That's 1 (one) positive of Homestuck 2.

I need to adress this post because it's only half right; one or more 4chan mods keep deleting Homestuck posting since 2016. Discussion is not even allowed on /trash/ and threads only keep up when there's actual news. Hiveswap was maybe the only instance of a mod banning a /vg/ general.

Seems a dick move but not only discussion quality awfully declined there since late 2015 but most threads/posters are from a Discord group (I hate to know this) using /co/ and sometimes /v/ as their rambling extension. Nothing is really lost and you should avoid those waters.

 

[Y2K Baby]

need to adress this post because it's only half right; one or more 4chan mods keep deleting Homestuck posting since 2016. Discussion is not even allowed on /trash/ and threads only keep up when there's actual news. Hiveswap was maybe the only instance of a mod banning a /vg/ general.

I was 100% right and you are a gay moron for thinking this is correcting me somehow.

Seems a dick move but not only discussion quality awfully declined there since late 2015

It's /co/; who gives a shit. It's clearly not quality control, just a virgin with rage.

but most threads/posters are from a Discord group (I hate to know this) using /co/ and sometimes /v/ as their rambling extension. Nothing is really lost and-

Lemme' in.

 

[Cyrodilic Brandy]

Spoiler: Trans griping

What pisses me off the most about vriska being trans is it’s so obviously an excuse for “angry bc she’s trans aren’t you?” and it adds nothing to her character.
Putting the abusive mom aside, there is no development that she gains from being trans. She would have enough money to transition and (from what i remember) trolls have the same genitals for both gender so that wouldn’t matter. And the only place where gender really comes into play on alternia is in instances where castes have specific gendered roles and ceruleans don’t have any. (That’s why I actually think lanque’s is interesting bc he’s basically going against the caste system by rejecting this role.)
it’s all a gimmick for the young teens that don’t know what bad rep is when they see it.

Tldr; kate pisses me off to no end and she deserves the hounding she’s gotten lol

 

[scathefire]

Discussion is not even allowed on /trash/

You know you've got a severely amazing work of media when this ends up being the case

 

[Y2K Baby]

You know you've got a severely amazing work of media when this ends up being the case

It's mostly because the mods are autistic and/or part of some kind of gay conspiracy.

 

[Ververg]

(from what i remember) trolls have the same genitals for both gender so that wouldn’t matter.

That's fanon and made up by tumblr faggots so they can make all their porn even worse than it already was. It's always the boys get fucked in the pussy and the girls have a dickthatsnotadick that they wrap around another girl's dick because that shit is never ever in any straight stuff.
Troll biology is the most successful tranny gayop ever committed.

 

[SiccDicc]

It's mostly because the mods are autistic and/or part of some kind of gay conspiracy.

#HiveGate when?

 

[KyouKasoya]

That's fanon and made up by tumblr faggots so they can make all their porn even worse than it already was. It's always the boys get fucked in the pussy and the girls have a dickthatsnotadick that they wrap around another girl's dick because that shit is never ever in any straight stuff.
Troll biology is the most successful tranny gayop ever committed.

I'd argue that it's more complicated than just "boys and girls have both pussy and dick". Part of it is fanon but it stems from canon.

 

[Archeops]

And in somewhat related news WhatPumpkin's talent is travelling to different media outlets, it appears James Roach is/was working on Steven Universe: Future as a Music Mixing Engineer.

ARCHIVE

 

[Crichax]

I can't believe how blurry the YouTube versions of some of the old Homestuck Flashes are.

https://www.homestuck.com/story/4085

https://www.homestuck.com/story/3520

The YouTube versions of the classic Homestuck Flashes "Attempt rare and highly dangerous 5x SHOWDOWN COMBO" and "3X SHOWDOWN COMBO" are 360p and extremely blurry in comparison to unofficial reuploads by some random YouTube channel (which can be found in this playlist).

This further goes to show that Viz Media and Homestuck is a match made in hell. I really hope they fix this by the end of 2020, but I wonder if that will ever happen.

 

[Sangria]

I agree with Bani's point's wholeheartedly; Homestuck was ultimately a victim of its own success. Its profitability and huge fanbase lead to it getting dragged through the mud with sub-par content. The comic really should've ended after the credits (or even the epilogue), but instead we're getting lazily cobbled-together VNs, a game that really should've been canned after its Kickstarter troubles, and a fanfic-y sequel nobody asked for. I guess the money from the merch just wasn't enough

 

[PeckingOrder]

Homestuck should’ve ended after Cascade. There are so few bits after it that were any good.

 

[The Littlest Shitlord]

Hussie was working very hard on Homestuck for such a long time that I think he must have just gotten more and more burnt out over time and turned to fan labor to do more and more of it. The problem was that the fanbase was pretty young and immature; it would have been a problem even if not for Tumblr mentality which of course made everything far worse. There's undoubtedly all sorts of behind the scenes drama bullshit that dragged things down even more. Also did he even have any experience managing a team before that? I feel sorry for him, but there's no salvaging Homestuck now unless he literally starts all over in another country with a team of competent, drama-free professionals. Like if some Japanese producer gets a license to make Homestuck the anime it was always meant to be.

 

[Sangria]

Hussie was working very hard on Homestuck for such a long time that I think he must have just gotten more and more burnt out over time and turned to fan labor to do more and more of it. The problem was that the fanbase was pretty young and immature; it would have been a problem even if not for Tumblr mentality which of course made everything far worse. There's undoubtedly all sorts of behind the scenes drama bullshit that dragged things down even more. Also did he even have any experience managing a team before that? I feel sorry for him, but there's no salvaging Homestuck now unless he literally starts all over in another country with a team of competent, drama-free professionals. Like if some Japanese producer gets a license to make Homestuck the anime it was always meant to be.

Well, Homestuck has found a cult following among Asian crowds, so...