WHat do we think the deal is with the Fanontinuum? [theorizing/discussion]

personally i feel like its a pretty safe bet to connect the fanontinuum to that big mutated house structure roxy and callie showed off in the dreambubbles. it was described in a way that sounds allegorical to the way fanon mutates hs canon, and the fact that its in the dreambubbles might be important and explain a lot of the eccentricities in its introduction

"The Fanontinuum" is actually a legacy concept from the original HS^2 outline, which can still be found on a web archive of the Homestuck Patreon:

"No longer must our heroes toil in the service of the "alpha timeline." The Prince and his Seers seek to preserve the Canon-That-Was at great personal and narrative cost. But inside the black hole, those who the paradox once discarded seek to claw back to relevance and escape to the Fanontinuum, a new fabric of story and space woven by the hands of new narrators, thousands of voices that fill the vacuum left by the death of the author."

I don't think the new version of the idea will play out exactly as described here, but I've come to suspect something similar; the Candy version of planet Earth is basically done with its story, now, and though some characters might eventually escape to chase after Dirk on Deltritus, it seems unlikely - and counter to many of their character arcs - that all of them will. So my guess is that, throughout the story's future Intermissions, we'll continue to see characters from that world fall through the cracks and end up in the Fanontinuum as Crowbar did, bringing some finality to their stories while still preserving them in a way that both keeps the fans interested and is respectful of the message the story is trying to tell.

Beyond that, the Paradox Space stylings of the first Intermission make me think future installments will follow suit and show us these characters in new styles, through the eyes of new writers and artists, in a similar way to what was originally promised.

When the update came out I actually wrote a bit about it, but I think the Fanontinuum is some kind of late night talk show that aims to just bring more characters back into the spotlight after they are deemed no longer "relevant" in Canon. I think the Fanontinuum and the way it works is that the people interviewed on the show have to have an "audience" care about them in some way, which is why there's a whole audience of Nepeta's who are watching, and presumably other people outside of this small bubble are too since it is a TV Show after all.

I think Jakemorph is spot on- It's where the rest of Candy (and I suspect, many other things) will eventually collapse into.

Commenting on this as a sort of bookmark, I forgot about the thing jakemorph said up there, but I do vaguely remember it.

interesting, i dont remember ever hearing about that. im certainly interested in seeing where it goes, and what happens to the candy timeline. I am and will always be an advocate for more screentime for those who didnt make it to the victory platform, so the prospect of all the 'irrelevant' characters getting some spotlight in the fanontinuum is something im really hoping for

This is how Equius comes back (if not as a Satyr) if Arquisprite is actually dead & gone for real. Fanon!Equius

doing backflips if we get more meowrails and seadwellers. we already got nepeta back...

im also wondering what the deal is with tvhost!nep. why does she have alive-troll eyes under those glasses? (or, at least an alive troll eye... weve only seen the one, im theorizing now that the other one is a ghost eye and the writers are doing some sort of schrodingers-cat thing with her. all of the other nepetas in the audience have their eyes either closed or obscured, which seems like an intentional descision to me.) also whats the deal with mr. gamby? is he a clone of gamzee? an unrelated troll who just happens to look like him? Is he going to have any relevance at all? so many questions...

It would be really appropriate if Gamby is a standin for fanon Gamzee as Nep's assistant

I would probably be okay with that, I think.

Okay, so I have a few thoughts:

Page 795: "Our est33med guest hasn't been told the rules yet. We'll get to that part later too." This implies that there are "rules" which need to be explained, which implies that this is a game show.

Page 796 has a panel showing a bunch of Nepetas clapping. Later, we learn that Ly'lac is known as "Ly'lac of the final applause." Is this a coincidence? Maybe, but I'm currently betting on those two things being at least somewhat related somehow.

@ethanclark thats true. a friend of mine pointed out that the introduction of Deltritus and Ly'lac comes immediately after Nepeta saying "and now a word from our sponsors," implying that maybe the Deltritans could be considered somehow responsible for the fanontinuum existing? (i feel like im probably wrong about this but i might as well throw it out there)