11-16 Update Writer's Commentary (Patreon)

JAMES, Director: Hi, James here. Update 3 babey. Lets goooooooo. This is supposed to be our break but I’m making everyone do writer’s commentary anyway.

FLORAL, I Make My OWN Coffee: Hello!!

MILES, replaying Elden Ring: Howdy folks.

JAMES: How are you guys? I wrote this part before anybody else started editing this doc so this could potentially be really embarrassing.

FLORAL: I feel like I drank too much coffee… But about this update, I loved the first draft of it and I love its final version, it feels so meaty. I can’t buy steak for myself so this was really refreshing to sink my teeth into.

MILES: I’m great!  I’m busy.  I’m still recovering from Thanksgiving revelry.  I contain multitudinal meals.

JAMES: Wow incredible, or I’m sorry to hear that. I don’t know. I also wrote this part before I waited for anyone to respond. I’m really going to look like an asshole if its just me on here. Well, back to the commentary. I’m glad to see Man of Action, Jake English is finally doing something. What I’m not glad about is how hard it is to write Jake. I have thesaurus dot com open at all times, but you can’t just replace normal words with big words. Even just having a reference sheet of FuNnY oLd TiMeY pHrAsEs doesn’t exactly cut it either. There is a sort of cadence to it. You have to do it by feel and the last thing I want to be doing in this beautiful life is “feeling” how to “write Jake English.”

MILES: This update was another that I mostly just did some minor language/tone editing on, which is because it was so good that I didn’t really need to touch much of anything by the time I got my hands on it.  A lot of you may be asking “Miles, it feels like you haven’t really written much of anything yet!” to which I would respond, give me a bit!  My dark designs, my nascent narrative network, are/is woven deep into the tapestry of HSBC’s momentum, now.  You’ll all see… A lot of you also might not really be asking much about me or of me at all.  That’s fair too.

Anyway, I think a lot of people missed Jake.  I did too, though I didn’t know it until I started writing on HSBC.

JAMES: I used a lot of alliteration in the narration here. You know, I’ve always liked the second person narration because It sort of blurs the line between the author and the character. This isn’t Jake English narrating, this is me telling you what he’s thinking and doing. So you sort of have to do a little bit of an approximation of them. This is your impression of them. It's like that scene in Kill Bill where Bill is talking about Superman. It's exactly like it. Don’t look it up.

MILES: Jake would love that, though.  He’d love Kill Bill.  He probably DOES love Kill Bill.

JAMES: One of my favorite moments in writing room meetings is when we get into how Jake loves ALL movies.

JAMES: I would get so tired of looking at this color red all day.

FLORAL: This picture of Jane holding the cake is so silly to me, “Despite recent events, the battalion must never forget I still have interests outside of xenophobia.” Like be fucking for real, Jane bought that cake at Costco.

JAMES: Everyone's favorite bit, SPEAKERCRAB is BACK. Sort of. SPYCRAB is speaker crabs less popular cousin. I envision a world where it can also get up and walk around, and maybe do mundane tasks. And maybe.. be my friend.

FLORAL: “Did you get that Meenah? We gotta add this to the callout post.”

JAMES: Meenah CANCELED? Homestuck Gone Woke (NOT CLICKBAIT)

JAMES: I used to go fishing with my uncle at the pier every weekend as a kid. To “chum” is to throw a bunch of food into the water so that fish come and start feeding, then you cast your bait rig into the frenzy and the fish will often be tricked into biting it. The thing is, the chum itself is usually like cut up fish heads and guts and basically garbage that isn’t suitable to be used as normal bait. You can buy it in big frozen chunks. It smells really bad. So calling him “CHUM-ONE” probably makes Jake think she’s calling him a friend. She is not.

JAMES: Hey she’s back. We spent a lot of time writing this update talking about where Karkat is. Or at least I did. It was very important to me at the time. “How is Karkat hearing this information? Does Meenah just take all of his calls for him? Is he also in the room, listening on? Is he on the groupcrab? What’s he doing that's so important he can’t field an emergency call from what could be argued is their most important spy?” These questions all eventually get answered. I think.

MILES: It feels like the Karkat debate was like 70% of what we got stuck on when we were plotting this out, which is hilarious considering that he doesn’t show up in it, speak in it, or even get mentioned at all.

JAMES: I wonder where Karat is right now…

JAMES: I think wrote “groupcrab” and “prawnference call” but I’m not sure. I keep trying to make a joke about lobsters but nobody will let me. It's sort of an inside joke that nobody cares about but me. One time our old PA said “send in the lobsters” and I didn’t know this was an Amanda Bynes show reference and I just thought he was insane. I quickly learned it was a reference but I kept saying, “Well.. I guess we gotta send in the lobsters…”

I almost named Karkat’s special forces L.O.B.S.T.E.R. but I couldn't figure out the acronym. Large Ordinance Ballistics and Stealth Tactics Emergency Response. No. Light Operative Bionic Scout Team Extra Radical. No, these suck. Now you know why I never got anywhere with it. I just wanted to say “we gotta send in the LOBSTERS” completely independent of Amanda Bynes, who is a non-entity in my life.

MILES: Covert Reconnaissance Undercover Stealth Tactician And Critical Insurgency Agent Network?  Which I guess is like, stealth scouting stealth stealth planning important stealth agent stealth network stealth?  Trolls are all about redundancy though.  It’s fine.  The revolution will not be easy to pronounce.

Also I need to address the goons blasting backdoor line.  Really really good group effort on that one.  It got raunchier and raunchier as editing passes went by.

FLORAL: This is the most dadcore picture of Jake English in all of Homestuck.

JAMES: Jake’s like “yo fuck this crab”

JAMES: I think “jakey jakey eggs and bakey” is a really good line and have often fantasized that if I had a friend named Jake, that's how I’d greet them during breakfast hours. As it stands there are no meaningful Jakes in my current social circles. I know a guy named Jay. That's sort of close. I’m trying to think if I know any Homestuck names. Oh I have a friend named Dave. My other friend's brother is named John. At this point I am just bragging about all the friends I have. Hold on, let me just list all of them in order.

FLORAL: I feel massive gratitude towards the other writer’s because when it comes to writing Meenah, I will write like the “heart” of the line or joke, and then just walk away hoping one of them will see the fish puns I’m can’t.

I contributed “insturgeonts” and I was tapped out after that. “Sea-beef” is so deeply funny, I tip my hat.

JAMES: Well it was really good.

MILES: I think the most Specific Verbiage I put into this page was “big mean bitch pants”, which I had stuck in my head for a while after the fact.  I need to get me a pair of those.  Haven could tell you that I’ve got dedicated Big Pants, but Big Mean Bitch Pants are as of yet unprocured.

JAMES: You and Kim might be the coolest dressing people on the team.

FLORAL: God I love Jake getting his ass beat by these bubbles. This is what being on discord is like for me since I do not mute a single server I am in.

JAMES: Jesus Christ

FLORAL: Anyway, I was happy to write a bit of Jane for this update. Having the most ruthless woman you know scared to drink her own water is kind of empowering. But also a little sad. This lady is living on the precipice of winning big or seeing the fall of her Roman Empire. In her head she’s at the center of the world… who wouldn’t be plotting to kill her.

MILES: Also fun, insofar as spousal abuse can be considered fun, is the way that we got to write Jane dancing effortlessly between profanity and sort of endearingly polite verbal castigation.  Keeping BOBO was a big behind the scenes deal.  For me, anyway.

FLORAL: Like the previous panels with Jake being bombarded by speech bubbles, these in depth visual jokes are so integral to the reader’s enjoyment. I feel like our team really understands the strengths of writing comics and what you can only achieve within this particular medium. Which is largely a bunch of impossible silly shit..

JAMES: Was the BIMP a Haven Joke? It feels like a Haven Joke.

JAMES: I wanted to show more moments of Vriska taking the L when nobody's looking. Just completely eating shit. I think so many people get so caught up in her as a character that they forget she’s kind of lame. Like, the audience is buying into the facade she puts up just as much as she is. Sometimes you need to show a certain level of humbling mistakes. I know I am certainly being humbled on a daily basis.

JAMES: Like hey, chin up kid. Your leafs are falling.

FLORAL: Contributed a bit to this part of the conversation. Everytime John shows up on screen I have to put on the blue pajamas and make my little notes. Who else missed these two shooting the shit? In a way it feels like no time has passed for them, which is sweet and highly concerning since Egbert is literally in his 40’s and has had a child.

JAMES: Get it together buckaroo! I think John is difficult to write because he is very sincere, but he’s also kind of self centered. When you’re a kid that can be sort of endearing in its own way. When you’re an adult it just kind of makes you look like a turd. I want to touch on this theme a little bit. John’s always like bummed things aren’t happening, but then the second someone tells him things aren’t happening he’s all defensive. Like hey man pick a side.

MILES: I’ll admit I also have trouble with John’s tone, though it comes easier and easier the more I re-immerse myself.  The dude keeps haplessly ending up at all of these crossroads-es and just does NOT seem to have the gumption to handle them without someone else kicking his ass into it.  But we should give him some leeway.  It’s hard, being an adult and growing up.  It’s hard and nobody understands.