Retcon opinions

[MorganMustDie]

Okay it's late and I've been stuffed full of frozen yogurt and also my fingers hurt so I'm gonna leave my ice cold response to all your scathing retorts until the morning when my brain can put words together good

also hey Muttman it's cool to see someone else looking at Homestuck with a deterministic perspective, even if you believe the opposite thing that I do
we stan ultimate self chidi anagonye

[thorondraco]

Sorry if I'm a bit late to the party on this, but in response to claims that the retcon was a means of showing the deterministic consequences of people placed in different situations: The comic already had plenty of avenues to explore this with, in the dancestors and both instances of the scratch. Part of what makes the retcon noxious is it decouples the characters from their interactions with the ghosts that had most recently shown us this (in a really shallow and underwritten way). There was room for a direct Meenah/Condesce comparison, but that never rendered fruit and the Condesce was allowed to stay underdeveloped up to the end.

I'd also argue the comic doesn't actually believe in nurture over nature, overall. By the end, it believes in ultimate selves with esoteric effects on characters' development and personality, and it believes in intrinsic characteristics that have nothing to do with what the characters want or have worked for or have had their environment push them towards (See Karkat be made into a running gag about wimpiness). Karkat is a "born peace-time king" just because, not because of formative experiences.

To say that its only determinism ignores the reality that, holy shit some of these kids just hijacked the narrative!

The biggest question i feel Homestuck asks about itself, is if the Determinism is the natural course of their world, or if its an artificiality imposed by an artificial system? I am starting to lean towards the latter. That it is a machine. Like someone set up a computer in the middle of the woods. Even if it seems to have always been there for thousands of years, it is without a doubt a piece of technology in a god damn woods.

[Dream Muttman]

They hijacked the narrative and made it... Kinda lame and boring. The simple fact is both John and Dirk are characters and by definition dependent on the will of a writer, not independent actors.

Hussie gave John the reins of the narrative, but John still had his own set of reins, and whoever held them didn't know what to do with them. There's a reason John doesn't retcon the Condesce into a disaster movie, and it has nothing to do with his beliefs or desires. It's really just that it's simpler for the writer if he doesn't.

Without a writer willing to go the distance and roleplay out the narrative decisions of the characters, narrative control doesn't mean much. Even the epilogues limit the extent of that control, by making other characters randomly oppose it in ways the writers prefer.

[thorondraco]

They hijacked the narrative and made it... Kinda lame and boring. The simple fact is both John and Dirk are characters and by definition dependent on the will of a writer, not independent actors.

Hussie gave John the reins of the narrative, but John still had his own set of reins, and whoever held them didn't know what to do with them. There's a reason John doesn't retcon the Condesce into a disaster movie, and it has nothing to do with his beliefs or desires. It's really just that it's simpler for the writer if he doesn't.

Without a writer willing to go the distance and roleplay out the narrative decisions of the characters, narrative control doesn't mean much. Even the epilogues limit the extent of that control, by making other characters randomly oppose it in ways the writers prefer.

Think you are thinking too literally when it comes to the Meta of homestuck. Like yea Hussie has a self insert who writes homestuck but this self insert is an entity within Paradox space regardless. Without question Hussie was and still is writing homestuck stuff. And its not Dirk writing the HS^2 its other writers. A collective of them in fact. But in universe, it is now Dirk writing Squared.

I like to refer to the real world as the Furthest Meta in context to Homestuck. Homestuck has parallels to readers and authors but we aren't directly referenced.