03-15-2024 Update Writer's Commentary (Patreon)

HAVEN, (haven): We’re back in the meat of it for this one. This update was fueled by a few questions: What’s this newly emancipated Jade up to? Why is Callie hiding in those vents? What does “post-canon” mean? And wtf do they think is gonna happen when they’re face to face with Dirk? Let’s go and kind of answer some of these questions!

JAMES, Director: Uhhhhhhhhhh what up chat its ya boy GamerJim85 we out here turning that mindset into a grindset. Bless up.

MILES, snorting special stardust: Bless up indeed.

FLORAL, flying into the sun: AAAAAAAAHHH!

JAMES: I think I might actually change my grindset back into a mindset. I’m really tired.

HAVEN: as we switch from candy to meat this update starts with a shot from space of The Schooner passing between a set binary stars; one red, one blue. 

MILES: I love this ship and its stupid sails and its ridiculous corncob pipe exhaust spewing pollution into space.  Just a complete asshole’s ship, it’s awesome.

HAVEN: coming off the heels of the previous update i wanted to switch from Kanaya (angry about what Rose did) to Kanaya (sad about what Rose did) and Roxys here i missed Roxy what's he been up to

FLORAL: Kanaya returning to her old hobbies, Roxy picking up some new ones.

JAMES: I think in the original draft of this, it was two pages. (Borrowing some images from the thumbnails) Roxy went 

ROXY: what 

ROXY: was dat 

MILES: I LOVED this sketch, LOL.

FLORAL: It’s SO GOOD.

JAMES: It made me laugh really hard. At some point the panels consolidated into one page and the face was changed a little, but its still a very good joke. Doing the artist and writer commentary separately is fun, but its actually really interesting how much the art informs the writing and the writing informs the art. This is probably really obvious when its one guy doing everything but functioning as a team like this makes you experience it differently.

All that being said, having these storyboarded visuals from writers has been invaluable. Floral and Haven’s scripts always have them. I have been trying to learn to storyboard from my animation friends and sitting in on boarding lessons and lectures in order to better understand how to convey and frame things. It's cwazy.

MILES: It really is.  I’m not much of an artist myself (I dabble) but its definitely been inspiring and motivating when it comes to trying to make sure you write and visdev out a scene worthy of our fantastic artists.  I think I’ve definitely improved in the short time I’ve been working on this, but how can I not, surrounded by maestros as I am?

HAVEN: Roxy’s making his nightly rounds checking on everybody on The Schooner which is apparently the name of the ship they’re on? When I was going through old HS^2 files I saw that the ship was labeled with this name and just wrote it in but no one else on the team had remembered or knew that the ship had a name at all. Internally we would usually just call it “The Meat Ship” which is kind of gross but also kind of confusing since there are 2 active ships in meat which lead to us calling them “The Life Ship” and “The Dead Ship”. I wonder what their ship’s name is, as in what is the name of the ship they are flying in. Though the ship name of the 3 of them could be like “Red Dead Redemption” or something cool like that.

ANDI: When I first saw the name “The Schooner” I thought it was a recent internet joke 😭

JAMES: Yeah we were calling the other one red ship at some point because everyone had red font, and it sucks. The Schooner is not a very good name. That's just like naming your kid The Child. Everyone get into my Ship, The Dingy. All aboard USS The Boat. Wack. In universe I guess Jake named this ship. How convenient that nobody has to be responsible for this weak ass name. Like when my half-brother used to visit over the weekend and we’d blame everything on him for the next four months. Jake did it.

FLORAL: Oh Jacob… what a screwball!

MILES: Like I said.  An asshole’s ship.  I feel like walking around and having everything be this green would be murder on the eyes.  They’re gonna finally get off this thing and see one (1) other color and pass out.  

HAVEN: Jades in here making a ruckus (as lovingly illustrated by the illustrious Chumi) and it looks like a little time has passed since we’ve last seen them. New outfits and Jades had time to set up a little garden room on the ship. They mention that they've been keeping Kanaya busy with making new fits for them, something to keep her mind off the whole Rose... situation...

MILES: I feel like this whimsical, rambunctious Jade is something all of us missed pretty severely.  There was like, an audible noise of delight the first time the fluyt gif dropped.  She deserves to just fuck around and enjoy horticulture and music for a while!

FLORAL: Was so happy reading this part, it’s such a great re-introduction to where Meat!Jade is at as a character and the way she contrasts Candy!Jade is so delicious. 

HAVEN: okay so now we’re talking epiphytes and thinking about the idea of something that lives on the hide of something larger without necessarily damaging their host. watch this space.

HAVEN: Roxy gifts Jade with a page turn and now she’s seeing stars. We immediately see she’s in space surrounded by dream bubbles? Also of note is that these bubbles are in real space as well, in contrast to the previous incarnations which only exist(ed?) in the furthest ring, how odd! 

ANDI: So very curious…

JAMES: Much to fathom…!

MILES: I’m not fathoming shit.

MILES: ... [fathoms]

FLORAL: wrow!

HAVEN:  Kanaya is here, along with the masterminds behind this not-so-dark pocket of space they’re residing in.

MILES: The little drawings of Roxy and Callie are SO CUTE.  I want to eat them.

JAMES: Phenomenal bit here with normal font and then little font when someone is far away saying basically the same thing. Great job.

HAVEN:  so Calliope designed this new dream space they’re meeting in, similar to the one they previously designed in act 6 act 5, did they create them from scratch? probably not. I imagine they retrofit a bubble to fit their specific needs. How bold of them. I wonder how the creator would feel about them doing this to their bubbles.

MILES: What a-

HAVEN: big ol house, this imagery was one of the first things i wrote for this update; the classic homestuck house (like from page 5605), but huuuuge and warped and stretching outside of the bounds of the panel itself. I wanted people to turn the page and go “Whooaa!” 

JAMES: Yeah! I think it really resonated with a lot of people. It worked!

HAVEN: :D

MILES: This House, in its current form, is badass.

FLORAL: Awesome use of the format! 

HAVEN: I know I'm kind of being a coy piece of shit in this commentary but as I go through more of the update the less I really want to spell shit out. What do YOU 🫵 think they mean by “outside influence?” Who could be changing the way this is being perceived? 

JAMES: Figure it out.

HAVEN: Jade immediately jumps to Dirk, apparently the same conclusion Callie reached. which makes sense, he is most definitely a mover and a shaker.

FLORAL: Everyone said he’s a problem.

HAVEN: sorry to Mr and Mr Davekat. also Miles added the “their chins do tend to wag...” line pretty late into production but it's so good, love their faux-british slang.

MILES: I love writing and editing characters who speak ridiculously.  I’ve been doing a lot of punching up on Jake-dialogue and while that’s extremely fun it’s kinda nice to spin into the more subtle world of a skeleton reptile anglophile who pretends to be British, as opposed to a skeleton-themed human who is just sort of instinctively British-adjacent.

JAMES: I’ve seen a handful of people confused about what this means. Too bad. Wow I love not explaining things Haven you were right. 

HAVEN: we’re seeing a bit of dissension about the gang's endgame vis a vis Dirk. 

JAMES: good running gag that nobody wants to say Dirks name.

HAVEN: it’s rude to talk about someone who might be listening.

HAVEN: case in point.

HAVEN: “i never left.” lower case calliope is flexing her omnipresence here in way that functions as an inverse of Lord English’s classic “I’m already here” and as a parallel to epilogue Dirk's “I'm already gone.” 

MILES: We did a lot of brainstorming on exactly how to land that line and I’m really pleased with how it came out.  alt-calliope is badass.

JAMES: That's how I feel about the fandom. Everyone’s always like oh Homestucks back? Guess again.

ANDI: I think making alt-cals name lowercase in each line was also very cool to me. We don’t often see those traditions broken with text but alt-calliope is a special case for sure.

HAVEN: hmmm...

HAVEN:  a few things here happening here; (dead) calliope hates it, (live) Calliope gets really quiet and scared around this other one but they probably hold a bit of admiration for it, and Roxy thinks it looks cool (thank you roxy i spent a lot of time on that). 

MILES: Without saying too much, the writers have done a Lot of talking about where Alt-Calliope is coming from in this whole conflict, and this is where we’ve started showing our hand, just a little.  She has a game-plan here, and a very, Very curated vision about what’s appropriate; the shenanigans up til now have been a messy spiral that she’s none too pleased with.

HAVEN: oh here's the Al bit, we’ve been calling her Al internally for a while to differentiate between the two calliopes  

MILES: FINALLY WE CAN CALL HER AL.  I didn’t even want to call her Al in this document until we got to this bit, but man.  Payoff.  Like I was saying earlier, we’re starting to get some tiny glimpses into Al’s beliefs and motivations, so it’s only right that she get a nickname.  Maybe she’ll grow into it.

HAVEN: literally same i kept going back and editing this doc to not call her Al until now lol.

JAMES: It looks like we’re saying AI (ai) but we’re actually saying Al (al) I hope this font doesn’t change so this joke doesn’t make me look insane on patreon.

HAVEN: how rude! 

MILES: Here we go, baby.  She’s big-leaguing these guys pretty bad right now, but that’s what happens when you’re a bazillions-year-old-story-demon-ghost-god and the little puppet people start telling you how to do your job.  What is she really protecting, I wonder?

HAVEN:  🫢

JAMES: I like this line a lot. I kind of do this in my day to day, even though it's not the most flattering trait, I’ll admit. Sometimes I am presented with an issue and take a simple decisive action and think to myself “Problem Solved.” and then never think of it again. I should probably not do this.

HAVEN: and the dream ends but the nightmare continues. I wonder what the other guy is up to!

MILES: Overall, I think this update was a long-needed glimpse into Al’s motivation and POV.  I won’t say too much now, because that would rob us of the chance to say it much more stylishly later in the story, but I’m excited to get more into what makes this supposedly benevolent protectrix tick.  I hope you guys are too; Al, to me, becomes so much more appealing with a little skin in the game.  If she even has skin.  Is it like, scales?

FLORAL: I’m scared to find out!

JAMES: We made it! Commentary Over.