homestuck
patreon
Sketches and Commentary: Chapter 4, The Contest
🕑 Added 2020-02-21 21:19:14 +0000 UTCHi everyone! We thought we'd do something a little different for the commentary this month, and bring you an exciting and VERY serious live discussion between two of the members of the writing team. What witty and engaging insights will they choose to share, I wonder...
Pages 119-123
A1: Gina’s art, though. To kick things off.
a2: oh my god gina's art though. like holy shit are you seeing this?
A1: Those trees.
a2: that landscape.
A1: Whenever I try to comment on the art it’s always just like, Will Smith hands. LOOK AT IT!
I don’t know how to talk about art, really.
a2: i think that's a pretty common experience among, well, artists.
a2: but then again i don't know how to talk about anything.
a2: as will surely become apparent over the next like, 500 words or whatever.
A1: In commentaries I always really want to hyper-focus on a specific aspect of the story, and I know that’s not how they’re supposed to work.
A1: But yeah, Gina’s art really blew me away. It’s a pretty hard style pivot, but at the same time I think it works really well. Like...we’re on a new planet, right?
a2: yeah, for sure. homestuck has always been fond of changing up its art style to suit various moods and so on, so i think it lends itself well to having a variety of guest artists come in and make stuff their own. and i think gina really did that with this update, haha.
a2: from our perspective it's a bit like magic really. we just write a handful of descriptive words, and then the artist comes back and it's just the way you imagined, but invariably much better. and that takes an enormous amount of work and skill, and i'm so grateful to get to work with these people.
A1: Also they just really ate it, didn’t they?
A1: That ship. Terezi. You didn’t even try.
a2: i'd hate to see her "try" parallel parking.
Page 124
A1: *heart eyes emoji* is basically how I feel when I look at this panel.
A1: But in that old-fashioned cartoon way when the dude sees a sexy lady and then his eyes turn to hearts and bust out his damn face.
a2: not to toot our own horns here but i think it's true to say that we really came through for the queer community in this update, in more ways than one. and in this case, xam's rosebot design is just. oh my god. if there was any doubt that this project is populated by a whole lot of gay people, well. there's your evidence.
A1: And this extremely Jojo pose is even more evidence.
A1: Rosebot’s outfit is based on a Greek chiton, but obviously orangier. Oranger. More orange.
A1: Actually, I have no idea if the ancient Greeks wore orange.
a2: i think it's fair to say that whatever they wore, it could have stood to have been significantly orangerier.
Page 125
a2: so if on the previous page you were like, cartoonish heart eyes, on this page it's much more like, damn bitch, you live like this?
a2: the team has relocated to a cave full of junk, apparently.
A1: “Let’s get down to business,” Dirk says. “Anime business.”
A1: This looks like a dorm room.
a2: although of course gina makes it look a lot more aesthetically pleasing than any dorm room in the history of creation.
A1: Actually I think a cave might have been nicer than some of the dorm rooms I’ve lived in.
A1: But enough of this bullshit.
A1: TEREZI
a2: LOOK AT HER
a2: aurgh i just... xam is soooo good at this stuff you guys. commentary is hard for me because often it just turns into a one-person fan club of my colleagues' work.
Page 126
A1: Back to sprites. Feels good, feels organic.
a2: yeah. i was pretty pleased with the little detail that rose's light symbol clasp glows in the dark, that was neat.
A1: Terezi doesn’t want to participate in the philosophy, which honestly. Good for her. Get out of that cave.
a2: live your life free of bullshit. you earned it.
A1: The imagery is, admittedly, a little heavy-handed. Terezi leaving the cave for the light, the other two remaining in the darkness to talk endless circles around each other.
A1: The complacency of the learned.
a2: ohhhhh that's the thing. like, the homestuck thing. i remember that one. we sure are smart.
A1: I love a refrance.
Page 127
A1: First of all, let’s get it out of the way: WHAT ARE THOOOOSE
a2: hahaha. god. i have to admit that i fucking love those shoes and i want them.
a2: terezi's whole outfit is something i would actually love to cosplay.
a2: i saw a lot of people doing edits of it after the upd8 dropped where they like, made the colors 'better' or 'more harmonious', and while i absolutely respect and cherish all fanwork, i have to ask the people doing this: why the everloving fuck do you think terezi pyrope would give a shit about color theory.
A1: She puts together outfits solely on smell and taste.
A1: Don’t be a coward.
a2: right. she doesn't care how loud it is.
a2: lots of people have been debating where she got that jacket from, or why it was that she grew her hair out. they're very good questions. very good questions indeed. keep asking them.
Page 128
A1: I want to actually talk about some of the writing at some point, but I gotta comment on Dirk’s yaoi hand here.
A1: Just a big ‘ole hand.
a2: is a man not entitled to the size of his own hand?
a2: far more yaoi to my mind is the gay pink magic shit coming off it.
a2: there can be no heterosexual explanation for this, imo.
A1: Well, there’s nothing heterosexual about this cave in the least. This is an extremely gay cave.
a2: a gayve, if you will.
A1: I regret everything.
Page 129
A1: Rose ripping on Dirk’s clumsy philosophy references are honestly my favorite part of this chapter.
A1: There is honestly no excuse for calling your ship the Theseus. It sucks.
a2: yeah. whoever decided to call the ship that must have been a complete dipshit.
a2: dirk is clearly a much worse writer than we are.
A1: Every own on these characters is actually a self-own. Or an own on Andrew, I guess.
a2: yeah. it's kind of like he handed us his precious children, whom we love, and we decided to repeatedly point out how silly they are. are we... are we bullies? are we cyber-bullying the characters of homestuck here?
A1: I think he cyber-bullied them first.
A1: Although I guess that’s like saying “hey if you didn’t want your kid to get bullied, why didn’t you have a better kid?”
A1: Also credit to my girlfriend who came up with the “Kant” joke.
a2: not to be vulgar, but one of my favorite things in the epilogues is the first canonical usage of the word "cunt". it felt like it was long overdue. and of course, karkat had to be the pioneer in this regard.
A1: I really like that word! I wish it wasn’t so taboo. People say “dick” on American network TV.
a2: you heard it here first, people. get out there and cunt it up.
A1: I think the most-quoted line from this chapter is the gay cowboy line.
A1: I guess this means we’ve sort of canonized Dirk’s Texas accent?
a2: yeah, but i think this was a foregone conclusion. the dude lived in post-apocalyptic texas, and he's ABSOLUTELY the sort of person to adopt a long-dead accent for no reason other than historical accuracy.
Page 130
a2: ok, so this is the big meaty words page. i think we could stand to talk more about the writing at this point.
A1: Yeah, this is the page that actually does most of the heavy-lifting in this update. We get through a lot here. And by that I mean, we sort of go in drunken circles of Dirk and Rose trying to out-bullshit each other and convince themselves they’re doing the right thing.
a2: we tried something a little different for the writing process of this update, which is that for large sections of the dialog we just rp'd the characters.
a2: andrew copied large sections of early homestuck from personal chatlogs with friends, and i always thought that lent it a special kind of humor and rapport that can be hard to capture by yourself. i think this approach worked pretty well for us.
A1: It was really wild, because after a while I kind of forgot I was talking to my friend and colleague and just felt like I was talking to Dirk Strider.
a2: that's possibly the most terrifying thing anyone has ever said about me.
A1: I don’t know if that’s normal? I’ve actually never RP’d much before.
a2: oh, me neither. i think people do it a lot on the internet for horny reasons? but i think it's heartening to know that we basically perfected the art style on the first try. go us.
A1: Philosophy RP. I mean, I guess Plato used to do this all the time, but he did it with his OC Socrates.
a2: right. his rps were of course, strictly platonic.
A1: Jesus.
A1: Moving right along. We see more of Dirk’s casual manipulation of Rose’s mental state, that he rationalizes away. It’s not actually that bad if she was going to agree anyway, right?
a2: i think a lot of the chapter deals with the kinds of paradoxical moral issues that seem to crop up so often in homestuck. i mean, it doesn't deal with it in the sense that it comes up with an answer. but it's a large part of what this chapter is about.
a2: what is the right thing to do when you're functionally omniscient?
a2: or omni...whatever these kids are.
A1: Yeah, the question of whether morality actually has anything to do with running a system like this. Can god be moral?
a2: and of course, that's kind of the same question that i ask myself a lot when writing. authorship is a peculiar thing.
a2: homestuck has never shied away from talking about the process of its own creation, and i think rose and dirk can function as avatars for author figures in this update, among other things. i was having feelings while writing them.
a2: i don't know if it was the same for you, haha.
A1: I don’t know if I ever thought of it consciously like that, but it’s definitely there. The awareness they have that they are telling a story definitely changes the flavor of the experience.
Page 130
A1: Everyone’s favorite thing: ectobiology. It’s been a minute.
A1: I love Dirk’s assurance of like, don’t worry, we aren’t going to cut off our arms and then make people out of that.
a2: don't worry, i don't want your stanky-ass rib or anything to make these new people out of.
A1: I think we did a fairly good job of getting the Adam and Eve references in there without it getting too weird.
a2: yeah. as much as that's possible, really. biblical shit is just very weird and there's no real way around it.
a2: i guess it's appropriate that now dirk and rose are leaning hard into the Being God stuff, their lives start drawing even more heavily from various religious influences.
A1: Dirk especially has always had a kind of “epicness” around him. Last man on Earth, living at the top of a tower in the middle of an ocean. Everything he does smacks of destiny.
a2: i can't believe you'd neglect to mention his most epic feature of all, which is of course:
a2: teh animes xD
A1: Yeah he’s a Kamina reference. Or maybe just an anime reference.
A1: I don’t think that Andrew had actually watched Gurren Lagann, he just saw a bunch of teens with those anime glasses.
A1: Anyway let’s go to another fucking cave.
a2: LOL
Pages 131-4
a2: this machine was fun to make. i think a lot of people, myself included, miss the era of homestuck where a lot of the action involved playing about with wacky technology. so this sequence was a personal favorite.
A1: You did an awesome job!
A1: I wanted to make sure we included some Rose and Dirk just actually having fun, or whatever passes for fun with the two of them. So far it had mostly been snarking.
A1: You know, just getting some quality time in. Dunking on god and the straights, slime ghosts. Normal stuff.
a2: that does sound uncannily similar to my real, actual life.
A1: All gay people have a slime ghost.
a2: we don't talk about the slime ghost.
a2: the incestuous slurry mention gets another outing here. would it really be homestuck without it? also it's an extremely fun phrase to type, i have to admit.
A1: Almost as fun as “genetic infidelity bonanza”.
a2: hahaha i was really pleased with that one.
a2: along with "SBaHJification".
A1: I’m glad the Broblerone made an appearance.
a2: you know its a good update when the broblerone blesses you with its presence.
Pages 135-6
a2: i was responsible for the animation on the sprite panels, which was fun. it's obviously imitating andrew an awful lot, but i think that lends it an aura of homestucky authenticity. andrew is low-key really good at animation.
a2: the one on page 135 where the captchalogue cards fly onscreen and bump each other around was one i was pretty proud of. idk, it's weird the things that you take satisfaction from.
A1: I don’t know the first thing about animation. I made one gif once. Never again.
a2: i also really like that rose and dirk look like they're at a rave in a gay club on 136. that mental image is very fun.
Page 137
a2: another wonderful gina panel. i just love the composition of this one, and the way she draws dirk.
a2: her take on the classic homestuck hero mode is amazing.
A1: I have spent a lot of time staring at this panel, I love it so much. The pointy elbows.
Page 138
A1: Behold...
Page 139
a2: our creation.
Pages 140-142
A1: I think I remember saying “it should look like ditto but sick”, and then you were like “oh I’m way ahead of you.”
a2: hahaha, this little creature quickly jiggled its way into everyone's heart, including mine.
a2: making deliberately shitty stuff is difficult, as it turns out. i tried not to spend too much time designing this, to give it that aura of stupidity that it deserved. but then i had like, an extended panic about it looking *too* shitty. making homestuck is weird like that.
A1: I’ve seen a lot of “Don’t talk to me or my son ever again” stuff with this smol blob. I love him.
a2: me too :')
Page 143
a2: aaaaand one last gina panel to finish with. rose may have had her doubts about this contest at first, but as soon as dirk made a little creature with tentacles she's like, fuck it, this is all i've ever wanted actually.
A1: She is gonna fuck this shit aaaallll up.
a2: and you are going to thank her.
See you next time!
Comments
Foxella 07
Hussie you have taken my money and soul. Thank you for continuing homestuck because stuff like homestuck is unable to be replicated. Unless it is replicated by more homestuck.
Maggcat
The comment about how everyone missed the sburb tech shenanigans warmed my heart!
