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Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 5, "YOUR 3Y3S H4V3 B33N CLOS3D"
🕑 Added 2020-02-25 23:19:13 +0000 UTCFirst off, let's talk about the elephant in the room: One very long page. There were a couple reasons for this authorial choice, which was planned quite a long time before reader support made this the first "second update," which we can call a happy coincidence.
It's a little too soon to be discussing the full reasons for decisions like this, but this will be far from the last chapter to be presented in a prose style more typical of the epilogues – or, indeed, most fanfiction. This style change lets us luxuriate in a moment a little more than panels do. Making the images happen in the reader's head allows an increase in sensuality, appropriate for how we're 'playing as' Terezi in this scene. Her view of the world is more abstract and imaginative than most of our sighted characters.
This approach also has the added benefit of frustrating the kind of people who enjoy doing things like "trying to count dollars per page" in the name of quantifying the value of the art presented, a sort of fundamentally capitalistic perspective that treats art as a sort of raw material resource, as measurable as bulk tomato paste or what-have-you. (I'm making pasta for dinner tonight.) Perhaps it is juvenile to engage in this sort of nose-tweaking, but it's wholly in line with Homestuck's occasionally churlish response to the attention placed upon it over this last decade and counting.
Anyway, let's talk about the actual content here.
First, the script specification and sketch for the beautiful tapestry panel Xam provided to open this update:
I don't know what we did to deserve Xamag. You'll notice a slight change in the order of the panels from script-to-page. It's nice to have this sort of back-and-forth creative dialog between artists and writers. Very little is set in stone or the work of an Individual Visionary. Many of us are used to working alone – it's tremendously enriching to have a whole team of people who love the work we're doing here.
Terezi peaced out from Dirk and Rose's endlessly masturbatory philosophical wankfest, as any reasonable person would do, and went back to her favorite pastime – staring at Rose's unconscious body. The narration here implies this is an old favorite activity of hers. What a weird fuckin' girl.
Most of this conversation was written well before the launch of the first chapter of the comic. There's a lot of little time capsules like this, guiding bits of text from mid-2019 that will likely be finding their way into the comic in some way or another over the next few years. Personally, I find it helpful to have those sort of things to 'write toward.' But I am just one manifestation of the many-headed authorial cerberus. Some of us prefer to live in the moment, and all power to them.
One of the things that makes Dirk and Rose's little Team Rocket thing so exhausting is that they are advancing the same sort of discourse that rages outside the page, namely: Should this story continue? I think Terezi reflects a lot of readers – most of whom will not, in fact, be reading this commentary or even this comic – when she expresses exasperation and resignation. With the "primary" version of its original protagonist dead in a wallet, why prolong the story at all? Why not simply let it die and let the audience imagine their own happily ever after?
This is actually a similar question to one explored by a series that shares a lot of Homestuck's creative DNA, Steven Universe. What happens after a happy ending? Peace, placidity, and a truly satisfying resolution are a comfort to imagine, and certainly what we have been taught to expect from our media. Our characters reach the end of history, and our desire to see them act further fades, or even becomes a direct assault to our comfort with the story's original stopping point.
But, much like in real life, history never ends. The work of maintaining a society, the work of heroism, will never be done. Just as recent episodes of Steven Universe have the young protagonist grapple with the consequences of this – and despair at the seeming futility of seeking resolution at all – the modern continuation of Homestuck's canon does the same. Many of us heads-of-cerberus have put it various different ways, and this parallel is not a new or unique advancement. Storming the Ivory Tower, one of the most engaging critical voices in this space, published an article on this last year, before HS^2 even began. It's a pretty good read.
Regardless of its dialectical backing, Terezi isn't buying Rose's shit. At a certain point, she gives up on really winning the argument – can anyone ever win an argument against Rose and Dirk's endless cyclonic pseudo-rationalist bullshit? The focus becomes on causing chaos. Getting a rise out of Rose. A risible Roserezi Rose rise. Where were we, I got distracted by alliteration.
A couple astute readers noted an early conversation between Rose and Terezi from the original run of the comic, where the two Seers playfully enthused about their destiny to be "B3ST H4TEFR13NDS FOR3V3R," sharing a "beautiful soulgrudge[...]surely authored by the constellations." This engagement was certainly a long time coming. These are two dangerous women, confined together long enough to learn all of each others' weaknesses, and sharp-edged enough to exploit them.
There's been a great deal of inveterate sapphism in the history of this comic, of course, but this might represent something of a peak for it to date. There's really not much to say here: There are deep erotic undertones in play. That's on the table, and we simply have to acknowledge it. This scene definitely could continue in any number of ways, which you are certainly encouraged to consider and explore in fan work.
Dirk, unfortunately, cucks the audience from seeing the scene's "true resolution." What an asshole. I've never been madder at this guy than I am right now. I bet he didn't even provide a warranty.
Comments
Aepokk
God I'm so glad you pointed that out, I wouldn't have caught it
BlastYoBoots
From the upd8: "Rose had first threatened suicide when she was eight. (She couldn't bear the thought of attending the funeral her mother was organizing for her beloved cat, Jaspers.)" Some have pointed out the date's wrong on that. Probably a misread of page 929 of Homestuck when it cuts to just before Jaspers vanished and died: It says it was "almost nine years ago", which can be misread easily as "almost nine years old". Rose really would have been closer to four years old when Jaspers died, though I haven't calculated the exact date from the screenshot and the weeks-later bit a few pages after.
David Kligman
someone already did it like two hours after the update went up https://archiveofourown.org/works/22887526
June Serket
"which you are certainly encouraged to consider and explore in fan work." I was already on it
