Homestuck Animated Pilot Containment Thread

I like how inventive the animation is with Dave "physically" being present with John through his phone.

It's a smart adaptation.

ppl are really hating on the artstyle for some reason, i think it looks fine imho

in the past 24 hours ive cycled through all the stages of grief over this show and now im just accepting that this is happening. bring on vivziestuck im ready

This is proving to be a very interesting month to be getting back into Homestuck.

I'm interested to see the ways its going to be different. So far an obvious bits are that the kids are all talking out loud rather than needing the gift of gab to communicate outside text, john has a cellphone with a bunny charm, karkat's room seems to be the version from the midnight crew intermission ending rather than hivebent. I kinda hope they're open to getting different with it further and maybe having some june egbert stuff in there? but that one's more of an out there hope.

Not so much in the realm of changes but moreso in the realm of casting and designs I hope if we get to see the alphas in any way we see some poc voice actors cast, and lean more into designs like vintage foods did for roxy in pesterquest.

Also for casting I really hope if we see vriska we get a trans woman to voice her.

mildly tired of the constant "vivziepop is making the show vivziepop is heavily involved the show is gonna be full of unfunny swearing" misinfo train thats plaguing the nation right now. shes an executive producer which basically means nothing in the film world. she manages their finances and not much else. all the writing is still andrew's, and i'm also putting my faith that toby would not voice act lines he found disingenuous to homestuck's energy, considering how much he Still loves this comic to this day.

I feel like Vivziepop being involved at all has poisoned the discourse massively, especially on sites that aren't this one. Even if she wwas going to wwrite the showw, there wwould undoubtedly be other cre8ve voices on the team that wwould moder8 it and stop it from turning into a carbon copy of her other showws.

This is a bit of a tangent but I feel like people are assigning very little agency to Hussie in this. The general sentiment on twwitter seems to be that Toby and Hussie have no idea wwhats going on and have no idea wwhat Vivziepop has ever done, and that they are going to ruin Homestuck by bringing her onto the team wwithout realizing it. Like... This has been in the wworks for at least a year. I think if they had any idea that the showw wwas going to suck big time they wwould have just dropped the partnership...

I also, personally, don't even really mind the jokes that Vivziepop generally seems to enjoy. It seems that there are many wwho agree wwith me, because Hazbin Hotel is one of the largest indie anim8n projects of all time, iirc.

Also +1 to a trans wwoman voicing Vriska. Maybe meeeeeeee ::::) (please hussie hmu if ur reading this please please please)

I also volunteer as Vriska VA but only if I get paid nothing and everyone else gets more money in exchange. I have a history of voicing Vriska and Vriska adjacent characters but you aren't allowed to know about it. thank you, my contact info is in my profile. I expect to hear from you shortly.

So! reactios to the recently released interview with Skye Henwood?

https://divinestsmite.wordpress.com/2025/08/10/ds-interview-the-director-of-homestuck-the-animated-pilot/

This honestly gives me less hope for a continuation, 

This really quick pipeline seems to usher in an air of uncertainty.

i was under the impression the animation had been finished, if not for some time.

But, this says to me that there aren't any other things on the spinderoo docket right now if they are still using all their resources to work on the pilot.

And if a September release is to be expected, id have to assume that unless they already have other projects at least *started* in the pipeline, that we can expect a swift decision to either continue or not.

Ultimately, it comes down to two factors imho

A: how many views the pilot itself gets

B: how much money Vivs team makes off the Helluva Colab merch

Because at the end of the day, it has to be at least somewhat of a return on investment, or can be expected to be a return on investment on Viv's end, seeing as she's footing the bill.

i have faith that Skye will advocate for its continuation regardless, as she does seem to be rather passionate about homestuck, and even seems to be willing to help fight for ways to keep the comic accessible. 

Anyway, I'd love to hear more perspectives and takeaways from this article.

I don't think this changes my mindset much at all. The anim8n not being finished wwhen they announce it seems strange to me, but I am also not in the industry. Maybe it is normal and wwe normally just don't hear about it.

I am hopeful that it wwill gain enough success to be greenlit though. I feel like there's probably enough latent interest to get enough people to wwatch it for a positive decision to be made.

@temporarilytaciturn

Thats true, thats my hope too.

to be fair i havent been properly a part of the fandom for too long so i dont have as much of a guage of how far the OGs and like you siad Latent intrest will take it.

i feel as far as newgen and Viv fan backlash goes we'll be fine cus ultimately knowing how messy the helluva fanbase is too Viv wont backdown cus of potential flamewars lol

frankly, im just happy to see buzz and feel the fanbase active in general

no matter the discourse and potential after the pilot

@cubecrow that's actually super reassuring, the Hiveswap art director thing.

@perigator I also think Vriska should be voiced by a trans woman VA and honestly? Give Sollux a trans man VA & Eridan a trans VA too ideally along with that. I know I'm asking for a lot though, but Vriska at a minimum should absolutely have a trans voice actor! Another big thing on my wishlist along with trans VA Vriska is Dante Basco Rufioh.

I'm really excited for the actual pilot itself, I hope it gets picked up for a full series which knowing how Vivz has a tendency to catch lighting in a bottle, it just might.

Just eagerly looking forward to being able to see another resurgence in HS fandom.

I hope the series works out, I'm honestly a little worried pirmarily because I have not been big on Vivziepop's popular work (so Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss) but I would love to see Homestuck in a show format. I do hope we get the regular Homestuck music though because my main issue with Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss is how important the songs are and yet how annoying I find them so I skip them

If the show works out and I hope it does I look forward to when we meet the Alpha kids because I love Roxy and Lil'Hal (I'm Strilonde biased in general but especially for those two) so seeing them in a show format would be incredible

i don’t see a problem with it tbh

the fandom will probably just go back to 2012 homestuck with the humor, which isn’t that bad

Alright, I'm permitting myself to have some opinions on this. I can't spend all my time discussing Hussie's shit behavior.

Visuals: They're fine. I know people aren't fans of Spindlehorse's overall style, but I don't think it's intrusive here, the characters look more-or-less analogous to what I'd expect if the series had been adapted much earlier. Personally, my favorite character designs in the series are the ones used for Summerteen Romance. Still not far from the default, but with added details for noses and ears, and distinct body types to make the silhouette of each character a little more distinct. For what we got, the movement is good, the backgrounds are good, and there's nothing offensive about it.

Story: I am kind of spinning wondering exactly what material the pilot will cover. If it's really eleven minutes, then they're going to be a jam-packed eleven minutes (this is a nice way of saying the pacing will be utterly cranked). It seems like it's covering act 1, which I always thought would fit well into a 22-minute TV episode when you cut all the faffing about, but it also has Dave, Jade and fucking Karkat in plain view. Given the interview it sounds like Karkat just went back further to have his first conversations with John, so maybe that works, but he's clearly in his house in the trailer, so...either way, this has me intrigued. It's possible that this may be more of a sample and would get replaced if a full series were to be picked up.

Audio: Well, everyone sounds just fine. I do think they're all pretty fucking white, as someone who would scatter the cast across the entire racial and gender spectrums if he were in charge. Obviously as a Sonic fan I'll be repping Colleen, and I don't doubt Richard Horvitz's talent as a voice director. I'm also surprised nobody was cast for Dad. I'd have thought the easiest adaptational choice to smooth things along would be giving voiceless characters voices. So no Steve Blum as Jack Noir for me, I guess. Honestly, my one little pipe-dream for a show like this would be casting a trans girl to play John, who alters her performance during the timeskips and is June by the end of the story (rather than waiting all the way to Beyond Canon), so that didn't happen.

Unless Toby Fox becomes a girl in real-time while working on this. Which, I mean...

Writing: This is the thing I'm most concerned about. Andrew Hussie is capable of writing clever dialogue. Whether that dialogue sounds any good or can be followed as spoken performance is an entirely different story. Homestuck is wordy! I'm not sure I'd call most of the dialogue naturalistic, even at the best of times. There are just some sentences that shouldn't be adapted directly for the sake of pure clarity.

Viviene Mendrano: Honestly, all of us are in a glass house and you guys need to put down these fucking stones. She's not working on the script, and the worst I've reliably heard about her is that she's certified Not Pleasant To Work For™. In other words, she and Hussie sound fucking perfect for each other! What's your problem? Yeah, Hellaverse fans are annoying, but I don't give a Taxidermized Peacock about that, we're Homestuck fans! They learned it by watching you!

Anyway I hope it gets picked up for a full series, and then I'll pirate it.

Place your bets everyone, what's gonna happen

(1/2) Captchaloguing gets heavily simplified

(1/2) Sburb pre-entry & entry gets heavily simplified

(1/4) Lil Cal gets voiced, Bro doesn't

(1/5) The teaser/pilot/etc. is a bait and switch, the story heavily diverges from the original

(1/9) Karkat sounds like Invader Zim

(1/10) Octopimp cameo

(1/50000) Fully animated The Baby Is You musical number