[META(?)] How do ya'll feel about the way the Homestuck brand is bering handled?

Viz can eat penis but the way the HICU are handling it has been mostly great so far

The Mayor enthusiastically waves you over to his computer terminal, which appears to be constructed from several CONCATENATED SOUP CANS wired together with what might generously be called "networking cables." He begins constructing an elaborate timeline out of Tab cans to demonstrate the development of Hiveswap, occasionally knocking over sections to represent DELAYS, but then carefully rebuilding them even taller to indicate his unwavering faith in the final product. When you mention WhatPumpkin, he simply looks at you with confusion and gestures around his domain - what pumpkin? There are NO PUMPKINS here, only the finest aluminum-based infrastructure a democracy could hope for.

He becomes particularly animated when discussing the HICU, rapidly assembling a miniature CAN PARLIAMENT to show how well-organized everything has been, complete with tiny paper flags stuck in each cylinder. The subject of FRAF prompts him to connect multiple can structures with yarn, demonstrating how different creative works can now FLOURISH and COLLABORATE in harmonious civic unity, which is apparently the cornerstone of any functioning society. However, when VIZ Media is mentioned, his expression darkens considerably and he slowly, deliberately places a single crushed can in front of you, then makes a gesture that can only be interpreted as MAYORAL DISAPPROVAL of the highest order. He concludes his presentation by adjusting his sash and giving you a dignified nod, clearly satisfied that he has adequately addressed all municipal concerns.

confusing, more than anything. but it seems like stuff is getting out from the brief in-between period when things frequently changed owners*directors etc.? but I'm not an expert in any way, that's just the general vibe from what I gathered by reading most of the updates and blogposts and stuff

Homestuck is known far and wide for it's Loving Caregivers, and Loving Fangivers! The fans loved it when Viz Media printed 7 Books! Sadly the last book, Book of Bert, is lost to time. Probably because they were trying to Archive it on Youtube! What a blunder!

Personally, I'm a little disappointed at Homestuck as a comic not being supported officially on the web, though I understand that it is being worked on. Of course, fans always find a way, as they're supposed to, but I wish there was one concrete place on the internet to read the comic that I could recommend to people without them having to look through a million different mirrors with different content.

On a more positive note, I am very happy with this website and the HICU. As an MSPFA creator myself, I believe this will allow creators like myself to get their projects seen by more people, which is always fantastic.

Also, about Beyond Canon: I'm not personally a fan of how the Epilogues treated the source material, but I have been seeing a shift in the recent updates' context so that project has also become a plus in my book. Not to mention I FUCKING LOVE THE NYMPHS!!! I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE THE SATYRS!!!

Generally speaking, I think the course it's taking is pretty good. I'm excited to see where things will end up, and it being ambitious is definitely a good thing. Even though there have been multiple struggles (including Homestuck's website just... ceasing to function), it is nice to see the perserverance.

Despite any opinions on Beyond Canon in general I think the HICU has given Homestuck as a brand so much hope after years and years of everything feeling dead in the water. Its so obvious that the people behind everything care SO VERY DEEPLY about it, as a brand I don't think Homestuck has ever felt so communicative and professional, before it really just felt like things happened without much thought or reason behind it, that there was really no plan, likely due to how many cooks were in the kitchen, and how just about all of them (VIZ, What Pumpkin, and Hussie to a extent) had such different ideas of what Homestuck really was. But now, especially with this site (credit to everyone who helped put this together as well), things are looking on the up and up, and i'm glad Homestuck as a brand and a community is finally able to flourish again.

As for the monetization, I believe it wasn't technically legal before for them to make merch or a patreon because they didn't legally own the characters/brand, not that Hussie would intervene and stop them or anything, just on the paperwork side. Now I assume there are more opportunities with distributors and publishers that weren't available before, as well as being able to openly use the Homestuck brand.

I run a Homestuck bookclub discord (it is me rereading Homestuck alone with an audience) and I try to include page links in my summaries and the website being dead dead is what is pissing me off the most rn

Honestly, as skeptical and hard to please as I am, I think they are doing an amazing job at setting up a community. I've long thought that if Homestuck wants to stay true to its core then it should be opened up to fanworks in a similar fashion as Touhou was, and this is an audacious step in that direction.

If it flies it flies and if it flops it flops. Expect nothing but anticipate something.

I don't have a lot of faith in Hiveswap or WP's continuous perseverance but who knows. Things already have crashed and burned and changed hands many times, as long as the roil persists we can get something delicious out of it.

I do have to note that all the "partnership with the fans" comes from a "partnership with the fans the officials endorse" perspective, but this only depends on whether you already like where the team is taking this whole joint.

Hiveswap is bleeding out. it did somewhat poorly with act 1, and act 2 flopped incredibly hard. they can promise act 3 is coming, and maybe it will, but it won't be this decade.

WP was an incredible horror-show dumpster fire. enough said.

VIZ was genuinely one of the worst things that could've ever happened to homestuck, minus what's happening now. which is being officially unavailable for 6 months.

the HICU is both simultaneously terrible and good. it's allowed for the forum to come back, although somewhat poorly (i'll get to this). letting fan projects earn money is spectacular as well. apparently BC is going great, but i won't speak on it because I have 0 interest in touching anything connected to HS^2.

on the other side of the coin, they've been as transparent as a glass of milk. the homestuck website being relegated to "it's coming back soon!" for half a year is ridiculous. minus a complete and utter melting of every webserver, the comic should've been back up after 2 months at the maximum. even if it's a bandaid fix, it's still better to have SOMETHING up while you work on a more permanent solution.

something that also irks me is the whole hussie in the room so to speak. hussie sold homestuck to VIZ because at the minimum he wanted nothing to do with it. fair. bridges with the community were burned both willingly and unwillingly. but, having him just reappear with the HICU and being the owner of the brand again without any real explanation or word from him is weird.

i also really dislike how FRAF was dropped. they did an entire countdown sequence for 8r8k, but gave an incredibly vague months notice and a "hey look" without warning. why?

the final thing i'll touch on is SAHcon. i'm sorry, having the HICU involved at all completely goes against the whole philosophy of the con. it was a for fans by fans convention. but now with the official licensing, it's probably just going to turn into a Homestuck Direct so to speak.

FRAF. i'll be very blunt and to the point here. most of the merch is simply not good, the forum is missing major features, and certain parts of the site are busted. it's rough. but, it has soul. it has a lot of potential to be a genuinely good thing. with the right amount of community outreach and balls to the wall development, i can see FRAF being a major revival of the MSPA community. i hope that the managers of this project do it the justice it deserves.

my post is reeeeeeeeaaaaaaaally long, soooooooorry about that. that just means it's more correct or something.

I do agree that the website being down is annoying, but... do you think this what they want? Do you think they are going out of their way to make it take longer? No- of course not, in every single newpost Miles or Roach seem VERY annoyed when they mention the fact it still isnt up, its simply something beyond their control. Im only a, armature when it comes Web Dev/Design but seeing as before it was taken down SOME pages still worked, that implies that alot of the problems were on a individual page level, and uh.... Homestuck is very very long, so having to fix most pages INDIVIDUALLY sounds like a nightmare. And- not to be a purest or anything, but unless youre using the wiki to find page references, the Unofficial collection is just sorta objectively the best way to read Homestuck by a long shot. The website being down really isnt all that impactful at all, theres several other very accessible ways to read the comic.

I also think what you said about SAHcon is frankly really disingenuous and in bad faith, with no proof to actually back it up. Vast Error had its official license for a long while and absolutely nothing about it changed, sure maybe the team will show a couple things at the event, but acting like its just going to completely take it over is kinda ridiculous, especially consider Hiveswap (a official project) has been shown at SAHcon for years yet was only ever a very small part of it.

Another note about the website, you have to remember what they are doing is removing VIZ from the netcode, this might be legally entangled and thus they have to wait on a VIZ representative to move forward with somethings, or maybe all of code is under copyright, meaning they don't have to FIX the website they need to ENTIRELY REBUILD IT. There are frankly far too many factors at play to jsut write it off as inconfidence

Also, the HICU doesn't own the brand, that is untrue, yes they are running most things regarding the comic's future but they only have a License, they even go out of their way to completely disassociate with all previous Homestuck companies and personnel

if they dont start selling the quest for the missing spoon again i am going to loose it

ferris: Im only a, armature when it comes Web Dev/Design but seeing as before it was taken down SOME pages still worked, that implies that alot of the problems were on a individual page level, and uh.... Homestuck is very very long, so having to fix most pages INDIVIDUALLY sounds like a nightmare.

if each individual page is an actual html page and not just a single php file grabbing data from a database and formatting it, i would genuinely lose my mind. that would be a design failure so large that it would be genuinely astonishing that nobody said anything.

ferris: I also think what you said about SAHcon is frankly really disingenuous and in bad faith, with no proof to actually back it up.

i am, in no uncertain terms, serious with my opinions. there's very little incentive for it to NOT become a HICU mouth piece. official homestuck news and updates gets views and clicks. every update post on the @homestuck twitter account gets thousands of more eyeballs on it than SAHcon's. the hiveswap showcase on the SAHcon channel accounts for ~1/3 of the total views. it would be an incredibly bad business move to not attempt to funnel the some of the traffic to their platform.

ferris: Vast Error had its official license for a long while and absolutely nothing about it changed

apples to oranges, different situations. back when SAHcon first got its HICU license, it was pretty well established that official members would be sticking their thumbs in the pie, so to speak.

ferris:Another note about the website, you have to remember what they are doing is removing VIZ from the netcode

what the hell are you even talking about here?

ferris:maybe all of code is under copyright

this isn't how that would even work, but to humor you: the site should've been down a lot sooner than what's assumed to be 3 years after hussie reobtained the brand.

ferris:Also, the HICU doesn't own the brand, that is untrue, yes they are running most things regarding the comic's future but they only have a License,

i don't think i made this claim, but regardless, they do not "only have a License". They are a team that was put together and for all intents and purposes is ran by hussie. they don't own the brand, they are the brand.

"The HICU is a totally independent entity from Andrew, What Pumpkin, VIZ Media, or any other corporate interest. Andrew has given the union a free license, so they may legally work within the full Homestuck universe and monetize their efforts to support the members. The union is both creatively and financially independent, and no outside individuals or companies are receiving any royalties or payments."

"Andrew is not creatively involved with these projects in any direct way, but remains available to the union for consultation at their request."

"About a year ago Andrew approached me with the idea of finishing the HS^2 story, (which was originally just called Homestuck: Beyond Canon) and after a few months of kicking ideas around and finding the right team of people we're back baby."

"I've (Roach) handpicked a group of writers and artists I trust"

The team wasn't put together by Hussie, that is clearly false, his involvement seems to be very little, theres only a few key plot points he wanted left in (directly stated by the team several t imes), that being Hell Tier Vriska and Yiffy, with the former it was only conceptually, his original design is nothing like what they ended up going with, "Andrew’s original design notes for her in the outline said she would have red hair, blue skin, and look like an insanely demonic anime pirate lady."

I think its all alright :] sure it has its issues and all but what doesn't, I will say for the couple of years Ive been in the community this definitely feels the most hopeful of it, at least to me, fairly regular updates and fan engagement, as well as better ways for the community to interact with one another and grow together that isnt just tumblr or twitter. Excited to see where it goes in the future :] Sincerely, FedoraFreak