CG: SEE THIS IS A CASE IN POINT. EB: what point? CG: THE POINT I WAS JUST MAKING. CG: ABOUT THE ULTIMATE RIDDLE. CG: YOU BLITHERING FECULENT SHITHOLE. CG: OK THAT'S YOUR CUE TO LAUGH AT ME SOME MORE I GUESS. CG: BECAUSE YOU SEEM TO REALLY GET OFF WHENEVER I FLAME YOU. CG: HUMANS ARE DERANGED. EB: oh man, i must be getting closer to the conversations where you're trolling me harder! EB: this is pretty exciting, i can't wait to see what you've got up your sleeve. CG: YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN??? FUCK YOU ABOUT THAT. EB: anyway, you weren't making a point about the ultimate riddle, dude. CG: YES I WAS, AND NOW I'M LOSING MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT DIPSHIT. EB: nope, we never talked about it. EB: yet... CG: OH HELL, THAT'S RIGHT. CG: DAMMIT, I GUESS THIS IS GOING TO BE CONFUSING. EB: oh, you're just starting to figure that out now? CG: SEE I KIND OF PAINTED MYSELF INTO A CORNER. CG: I STARTED TROLLING YOU AT THE END, JUST BEFORE THE RIFT. CG: AND THEN JUMPED BACK A LITTLE. CG: AND NOW I GUESS I'VE BECOME RAILROADED INTO WORKING BACKWARDS HERE. CG: UNLESS I WANT TO DO THE SORT OF DUMB SCHIZOPHRENIC HOPPING AROUND LIKE THE OTHERS. EB: oh my god, i know, you've already told me like a million times!!! CG: I HAVE? CG: WOW I CAN'T WAIT FOR ALL THESE AMAZING CONVERSATIONS TO TAKE PLACE. CG: IT'S GOING TO BE LIKE THAT HUMAN VACATION WITH THE GIANT RED CHIMNEY ASSHOLE UP IN HERE. CG: YOU KNOW, THE ONE WHERE A BUNCH OF MOANY NOOKSUCKERS SING AT A LITTLE PINE TREE I THINK. EB: man, i've got to say i'm a little disappointed by this "masterful trolling" you were bragging about. CG: I WAS BRAGGING? CG: WHY WOULD I BOTHER WITH THAT SORT OF PEDANTIC HUMAN HORSESHIT. CG: MAYBE YOU SHOULD CONSIDER THAT I WAS BRAGGING TO GET YOUR HOPES UP IN THE FUTURE. CG: ONLY TO LET YOU DOWN. CG: AND THUS TROLL YOU MASTERFULLY IN THAT RESPECT. EB: maybe, but that would be pretty weak too!!! CG: YOUR BRITTLE HUMAN CALCIUM BASED SKULL IS WHAT IS WEAK, AND IF YOU AND I WERE IN THE PROXIMITY OF A BLUNT INSTRUMENT I WOULDN'T HAVE MUCH TROUBLE PROVING IT. EB: w/e. EB: so what was the "case in point" you were making, anyway? CG: I WAS SCROLLING BACK AND NOTICED YOU WERE IN THE VEIL. EB: whoa, i am? CG: YEAH DUMBDUMB, YOU'RE TUMBLING AROUND ON A BIG GODDAMN METEOR. CG: AND YOU JUST CREATED YOUNGER VERSIONS OF YOURSELVES AND YOUR GUARDIANS. CG: PROBABLY BY MUCKING AROUND WITH THAT THING LIKE A DOOFUS. EB: wait... EB: these are baby versions of us? CG: HAHAHAHAHAHA, SO CLUELESS. CG: WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU WERE DOING THERE ANYWAY. EB: well... EB: i saw footage of my nanna, and some other people who i am pretty sure were like jade's grandpa and rose's mom and stuff from a long time ago. EB: and then... EB: there were all these little guys scurrying around. EB: so they are like cloned copies of us? CG: NO. CG: THEY ARE LITERALLY YOU AND YOUR GUARDIANS. CG: PARADOX CLONES. EB: huh? EB: what do you mean they are literally us? EB: do they go back in time? CG: YEAH, OBVIOUSLY. GREAT GUESS BRAIN HERO. CG: BUT TECHNICALLY THEY AREN'T EVEN SENT BACK IN TIME BECAUSE WITH RESPECT TO THE MEDIUM YOUR UNIVERSE'S TIMELINE IS MEANINGLESS. CG: SERIOUSLY WHY WOULD IT GIVE A CRAP ABOUT EARTH'S PAST OR FUTURE OR WHATEVER, FROM IT'S PERSPECTIVE IT'S JUST A BUNCH OF POINTS TO CHOOSE FROM. CG: JUST LIKE YOUR CHRONOLOGY IS FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE. CG: BUT I GUESS THAT'S A BUNCH OF SEMANTICS. WITH RESPECT TO YOUR PERSONAL CHRONOLOGY YEAH THEY GO BACK IN TIME. CG: A PARADOX CLONE IS BY DEFINITION A CORRECTLY CLONED DUPLICATE THAT WILL INEVITABLY GO BACK IN TIME AND BECOME THE ORIGINAL TARGET THAT WAS CLONED. CG: IF IT'S A MALFORMED CLONE, IT'S JUST A MEANINGLESS MUTANT THAT HAS NO BEARING ON THE STABLE LOOP CONTINUUM. CG: I DON'T SEE ANY TENTACLES OR EXTRA EYEBALLS OR WARPED BONE BULGES, SO THOSE GROSS LITTLE THINGS THERE ARE ALL YOU GUYS, WAITING TO GO TO EARTH AND GROW UP AND BECOME THE INSIPID BUNCH OF GRUBFISTED DOUCHEBAGS YOU ALL ARE NOW. CG: AND THIS WAS THE POINT I WAS TRYING TO MAKE ABOUT THE ULTIMATE RIDDLE. EB: what is the riddle anyway? EB: maybe i can guess, i am good at riddles! CG: HAHAHA, THINK AGAIN IGNORAMUS. CG: IT'S NOT EVEN THAT GREAT. CG: OR EVEN MUCH OF A RIDDLE AT ALL. CG: IN THE COURSE OF YOUR ADVENTURE YOU WOULD HAVE ENCOUNTERED ALL THESE FRAGMENTS OF LIKE WEIRD POEMS AND SHIT. CG: YOU FIND THEM ALONG YOUR QUESTS, WITH CLUES AND STUFF BURIED IN THEM TO HELP YOU SOLVE PUZZLES AND MOVE HUGE STONE COLUMNS AND MAKE STAIRCASES APPEAR AND LOTS OF NONSENSE LIKE THAT. CG: AND IT'S ALL MASKED IN THIS FLOWERY SORT OF FROTHY POETIC JACKASSERY THAT NOBODY REALLY CARES ABOUT. CG: AND I SURE AS HELL DON'T CARE ABOUT SPOILING IT FOR YOU. CG: BUT WHAT ALL THESE LOFTY SYMBOLIC ALLUSIONS BOIL DOWN TO IS SOME GRANDER STATEMENT ABOUT WHAT YOU SEE HAPPENING HERE. CG: THAT YOU WERE ALWAYS THE KEY TO SEEDING YOUR OWN EXISTENCE THROUGH THIS GAME. CG: AND ANY HOPE THAT IT COULD HAVE PLAYED OUT DIFFERENTLY OR THAT YOU COULD HAVE AVOIDED THIS WHOLE MESS WAS ALWAYS JUST A RUSE. EB: a distaction, perhaps? CG: WHAT? EB: nevermind. CG: BECAUSE IF IT DIDN'T GO DOWN THIS WAY THEN HOW WERE YOU EVEN BORN, GET IT. CG: WHICH IS ESPECIALLY PATHETIC SINCE PARADOX SPACE APPARENTLY WENT TO ALL THIS TROUBLE TO MAKE YOU JUST TO HAVE YOU FAIL AND DIE. CG: REALLY THERE'S NOTHING MORE TRAGIC THAN THESE NULL SESSIONS FULL OF KIDS ENTERING THE GAME AND FULFILLING SOME COSMIC DESTINY SHIT JUST TO GET WIPED OUT AND LEAVE BEHIND AN EMPTY POINTLESS INCIPISPHERE FOR ALL ETERNITY. CG: ACTUALLY IT'S SORT OF HILARIOUS. CG: OR IT WOULD BE IF IT DIDN'T AFFECT ME PERSONALLY. CG: BUT ANYWAY, THERE'S A LOT MORE TO THE RIDDLE THAN JUST THAT, LIKE WHAT WE WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT LAST TIME WE TALKED. CG: BUT THAT'S SORT OF THE GIST OF THE THEMES IT DEALS WITH. EB: ok. EB: well, if i run into some salamanders who tell me all about this riddle and get really excited about it, i will try to act surprised. EB: so this is the same kind of thing you went through? EB: with, like, being your own paradox clones and creating your own parents and stuff? CG: YEAH. EB: how did that even work, with 12 of you? CG: IT WAS REALLY FUCKING COMPLICATED AND I'M NOT GOING TO GET INTO IT. CG: OUR FAMILY STRUCTURES ARE ALREADY WAY MORE COMPLICATED THAN YOURS WITHOUT EVEN GETTING SPOOKY TIME SLIME INVOLVED. CG: BASICALLY WE HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON WHATSOEVER. CG: EXCEPT MAYBE THIS... CG: I WAS THE GUY IN YOUR POSITION, TO MAKE ALL THESE CLONES, AND FRANKLY IT ALL KIND OF FREAKED ME THE HELL OUT. EB: huh... EB: yeah, i guess now that you mention it, i am finding it all a little strange... CG: OH, ONLY JUST NOW??? CG: FUCK YOU ARE FAST, I HOPE YOU GOT THE MAD BOONBUCKS TO PAY OFF THOSE SPEEDING TICKETS. EB: no, no, i mean the ghost stuff and paradoxes are one thing of course... EB: it's something else. EB: it's just... EB: this is really weird... CG: WHAT'S SO WEIRD ABOUT IT. EB: well, normally humans hatch... EB: from like these slimy pods. EB: then we wriggle out as a little pink larva. CG: OH REALLY. CG: HUH, MAYBE WE HAVE MORE IN COMMON THAN I THOUGHT. EB: (hehehehehehehe) CG: MAYBE THOSE REALLY ARE MUTANT CLONES AND THEY AREN'T GOING BACK TO SEED YOUR PLANET??? EB: um... EB: sure...? CG: HELL, I'M CONFUSED NOW. CG: NOT THAT I GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOU AND YOUR POINTLESS AWFUL LIVES. EB: hey, i have an idea. EB: why don't you get back to me in a few minutes? EB: i mean like a few minutes of my time, not yours. EB: all of these little pink monkeys are getting way out of line and i have to tend to them. EB: if you message me in a couple minutes, we can continue conversing in a sane, linear fashion for a change! CG: UM, OK? EB: and then after that you can keep going backwards and then make fun of me riding my little red rocket. EB: you can tell me i look like a silly little paradox clone fresh out of my slime tube and this is just all a big nurseytime recess jamboree. EB: that would burn me good! CG: OK THAT IS PRETTY GOOD. CG: BUT I CAN'T USE IT, BECAUSE YOU SAID IT, AND THEN LATER, I.E. RIGHT NOW, YOU WOULD GET THE SATISFACTION OF KNOWING YOU WERE THE ONE TO COME UP WITH THAT BURN. CG: SEE, YOU ARE DEALING WITH A PRO, YOU CAN'T OUT TROLL ME SO JUST FORGET ABOUT IT AND STOP TRYING. EB: (hehehehehehehehehehehe)
I'm heading out for the weekend. I had planned on putting something up before I left, but guess I'm running late with it. Wasn't planning on a break of such length, but looks like there'll be nothing to see until next week, due to *mishaps*.
The first, an Exile-centric album brought to you by a collection of artists. The second, a solo album composed by Tyler Dever and performed by Erik Scheele. Both are great!
Are you running out of room on your ipod yet? You might have to start deleting some of that crappy non-HS music soon.
Two points of business to trouble you with. ONE: The What Pumpkin store has, mostly, been restocked. TWO: There's a good chance that the Bandcamp page will have new content some time next week.
I'll be out of town for a week, from 6/21 to 6/27. I will try to get some work done while I'm on the road, but updates will most likely be sparse til then. I am just doing you the service of liberating you from this extremely engaging web comic for a short period of time, so that you are free to go do other things, like play volleyball on the beach, and give high fives to your coolest friends.
I also feel that it is important to make an annual tradition of announcing a week long hiatus after sequences culminating in sloppy makeouts. What makeouts will be happening next year? How sloppy will they be? This is how I keep people hooked.
Volume 7 is pretty self explanatory. Contains many songs from the story, plus a bunch of other great new ones. I say this every time, but this is now the best HS volume. AND IT KEEPS BEING TRUE EVERY TIME I SAY IT.
On the solo album: M.G. Bowman has done a lot to shape the sound of Homestuck. Among his contributions were Explore and Sburban Jungle (end of acts 2 and 3 music). He is also a mastermind behind the ambitious Hare Force One project (people ship Con Air bunnies to each other all over the globe). For his album, he has created two characters whose names are featured in the title. They exist somewhere in the Homestuck universe, playing their own session, and each song captures something about their adventure. See his website for what he has to say about it personally. I think it's a really fun and creative album with a fantastic sound.
If you ordered something from the WP store earlier in the month, those items have either been shipped already or will be very soon.
Also, all of the charity squiddles have shipped too. If you ordered one, and it doesn't arrive in the next week or two, let me know and I will look into it. As for the charity sketches, those I will be completing and mailing shortly as well.
Music: Albums incoming. Hang in there. I estimate they will drop within a week. They will contain songs you have heard, and many you haven't. They are great.
Nine days without a new page is a pretty long time! What was even UP with me? 5 days in Toronto + 4 days animating I guess is what was up. Ok that sounds reasonable. Everyone agrees with that and holds the creator exempt from charges of gross dereliction. We all smile pretty hard and our faces begin to hurt a little.
Speaking of which, there will be more music on Bandcamp some time this month, won't there? Yes. Let me go talk it over with the music guys and see what we can put together for you over the next week or two. Hold on, let me go do that now, don't go anywhere.
Only John's and Vriska's are available for now. There are more planned for the near future. (i.e. Aradia's) Note that there are t-shirt versions of the hoodies too, at different shades for a little variety (the tee colors actually correspond to the darker color of the hoods in the comic). Also take a look at the new long sleeve Jade shirt, with her vintage atom symbol. I think it's a nice complement to Dave's broken record shirt, which has the same raglan sleeve style.
Also: PRINTS! There are many great HS fan artists out there, in the art team and otherwise. For a while I have have the idea to offer prints of selected works here and there. For now there are some by art team members Lexxy and SA. I hope to add more to this page gradually.
And one last point on the store. Please take notice of the new support system. If you have a question or a problem with an order, please go through that! The old What Pumpkin email address has gotten swamped with so many different types of correspondence, it's become very difficult to field support cases through it. If you use the new system, rapid satisfaction is considerably more likely!
I should also mention that soon I will be attending TCAF! If you can make it to Canada, you should come. If you happen to already be in Canada, then you really have no excuse not to go.
FACT: You will navigate the latest pages in different ways depending on your browser conditions.
At the end of Insert disc 2, on many browsers (e.g. mine), you will automatically be redirected to the next page when it finishes "loading", or you may get there by clicking the link to "[S] Seer: Ascend" inside the Flash panel. These features will not work for some browsers, and instead you will see this message. Accessing that url will redirect you to the next page, [S] Seer: Ascend.
Note that there is no hyperlink to the next page below the disc 2 panel, and never will be. You must venture into disc 2 through one of the ways described above! I probably wouldn't have even bothered mentioning this if not for the browser compatibility hiccup.
The SbaHJ shirts.....: it is turning into a proud tradition that several weeks after releasing any SBaHJ product I must inform you that they all do in fact glow in the dark, in case you didn't realize. Please suspend this alarming reality in your thoughts as you urgently scramble to use your dollars to make them become your property.
Speaking of scrambling, dollars, and your ludicrous zeal for all the insanely rad things I advise you to drape over your body, there will be lots of cool new things in the WP store, very, very soon.
But before we talk about that, let's carefully examine this fine new album by Clark Powell, who is responsible for such HS scores as Three in the Morning, and the Gate 1 Doctor remix, as well as a plethora of other album songs.
This one's very cool. Clark has a great ambient sound, and his idea for the album was to musically express the Medium's planets, through both their elements and themes. I think he nailed it. Cover art was tag-teamed by me and Cindy (the lady who touches all your WP shirts).
Also: New Topatoco items!
First of all, you will notice there are two new Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff shirts. People are always coming up to me and saying "we NEED more insanely shitty looking shirts to wear to places like church and stuff." What choice to I have but to serve these rowdy individuals with dollars in their hands and outstanding taste in their opinions???
In truth, Jeffrey and I cannot help ourselves from attempting to capitalize on this nonsense, because we both need aggressive psychiatric examination. But if you don't buy these shirts, we will both feel ashamed and foolish. Please buy these shirts. I'm begging you. If you don't, we will probably weep in each others arms, swaddled in an orange heap of 3000 dunking Big Men. As an incentive, I will make this solemn pledge. If I sell out of all of these SBaHJ shirts within a week, you are guaranteed to discover that I have permanently emblazoned SBaHJ iconography on my body somewhere, with real, honest to gog foreverink. You'll wonder how high I even will have had to have been. Fact. 8^y
Also note the classy Sepulchritude hoodie, perfect complement to your Sepulchritude tee. I will be coming out with HS god tier hoodies soon through What Pumpkin, and I thought that as long as such garments were being offered, it would be nice to have a Problem Sleuth one in the mix too. Plus, the godhoods won't have zipper fronts, and this one does. So if you like to zip up, like if that's your thing, then this is for you.
4/13/11
The two year anniversary of HS has come and gone. Not as much fanfare in-story about it as I'd hoped, but at least it got a nod. Remember when games came on multiple disks? You always were asked to swap during a kind of peculiar and underwhelming moment, like walking through a thing, or talking to a guy. Sometimes it was shortly after you got an airship, or something.
I had plans to do something a little more mesmerizing, like last year, but started running out of time. So I revised the plans, then ran out of time for THOSE too. And so on, til I said screw it. Disc 1 probably wouldn't have been able to fit another hefty animation in it anyway. Those discs are only like what, 700 MB??
It takes a lot to meet a deadline coming up fast, when the thing you are planning is meant to be a BIG DEAL, by definition. First you must come up with an animation idea, and that itself will take a long time to make. Then you must move the story along to the exact precipice of that moment, which also takes time, and must do so with enough time left to animate! Plenty of ways to blow it. Making this story on the fly requires not just a lot of drawing and writing, but the sensibilities of a producer. Knowing when to appropriate large amounts of effort for what purposes given various time constraints. I make adjustments to plans all the time, just like I did with the last 4/13 milestone (was originally scheduling end of act 4 for that). Hence this milestone was less jaw dropping, but then if you recall, the original 4/13 celebration was pretty underwhelming too. What will next 4/13 bring? Guess we'll see.
If I'm taking the time to reflect on two years of Homestuck as an achievement I'll do so here only as a gesture of gratitude to the steadfast readers, new and old. I am humbled by your devotion. This is not any sort of platitude to be dismissed as quasi-sincere acceptance speech fodder, or a dispatch from my PR department because sometimes you guys give me money for stuff. This is sincerely true. I look around and still cannot quite believe the magnitude of the enthusiasm that surrounds this story. I stopped being able to keep track of all the fan art for it more than a year ago, and even then there were thousands of fan-made images I would diligently attempt to pore through. I have honestly never seen so much fan art created for anything, anywhere, ever. Even things which have millions of dollars backing their production budgets. Maybe Harry Potter has more? (Alright let's get real. HS fan art is probably just now beginning to approach the subset of drawings that involve Harry being naked with somebody.) Greater and greater hordes of troll cosplayers can be spotted taking over the floors of conventions. You could have pressed me on the subject, but I never would have guessed anyone could be quite so tickled to be slathered in messy gray makeup and crowned by a homemade pair of horns. There is this seething passion for HS that is a self-organizing, autonomous entity unto itself, which is practically inaccessible to my understanding or involvement, even though I'm responsible for the content driving it. I've kept Homestuck's fire hot; its gaping furnace was hungry for coal so I got goddamn shoveling. But you have been responsible for breathing life into this monstrous organism which surrounds me, and now in its breadth transcends my work entirely. To thank you as a whole for this phenomenon almost doesn't sound rational. It's like thanking a furious thunderstorm for the deluge of rain it gave to your thirsty little box of poseys. My paltry utterance dissipates in the far deep rumbling. The clouds don't even notice I'm there because they're too busy swapping fan fiction. Maybe instead I'll offer something more significant than gratitude. Something more personal and experiential. I'll submit my amazement. You can't see me now, but it is a look of wonder and discovery. A boyish look of astonishment at something remarkable beyond words, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, but on a more cosmic scale and more viscerally shocking. Like a squealing horrorterror's gruesome Cesarean birth. That is the look I have every time I disrupt the tunnel vision that keeps the work's bright sun searing my eyes. When they adjust to the dark, I see the silhouette in soft black focus of the young planet sized monster, chirping its affections. I offer it this look because it is all I have to give, with the exception of the tears streaming down my face. Its hunger is piqued at the fluid and my only regret is I can never possibly provide enough to nourish the orphan, now that it can never know the taste of its dead mother's heinous teatbrine.