Homestuck Epilogues 1: FIRST IMPRESSIONS.

A few days ago, the first 3 pages of the Homestuck Epilogues were re-released onto the website, featuring a snazzy new Archive of our own inspired page layout. I keep trying to write a second sentence to follow that first one up, but I can't really think of anything. This is new for me, the epilogues are more or less completely new to me. I (think I) was part of Homestuck Twitter when it came out, so it's not like it just passed me by, it's just that the response to them and way people have talked about it since is, deeply off-putting. I decided that with all the arguing going on I wouldn't really be able to form my own actual opinion on it (things are a lot easier to like when you don't have people complaining about how much it sucks) so I'd read it after things died down, which never really, happened.

So here I am now! I promised I'd read the epilogues and I certainly am a girl of my word. I've decided that I'm going to bullet point a few things I've heard about the epilogues below and at the end I'll see what actually happened. Anything to get me a few more minutes before having to actually start.

• Jane becomes a Nazi/fascist
• Jade cucks Kanaya, leading to the birth of a child who is called 'Yiffany Longstockings'
• Ultimate Selves
• Dirk turns evil and tries to hijack narrative control
• Rose becomes a robot
• John transitions to female, taking the name June¹ as part of a toblerone wish².
• There's some kind of like, narrative black hole? Whatever that means
• Alt!Calliope is back, and is fighting Dirk for control of the narrative
• Meat / Candy storylines are a thing
• Karkat becomes Big Boss

Homestuck Epilogues

Ten years after their adventure began, the heroes are enjoying a well-earned retirement on Earth C. But John still has one last choice to make.

Chapter 1: Prologue

I don't know how to structure anything in these posts any more. It all started breaking down towards the end of Homestuck and I don't really have any way of going back from that, unfortunately. So I'm gonna just start of by noting things down and well, I'll see how things change.

Page 1

• John dreams of the continued destruction of paradox space, everything seemingly being subsumed into some kind of existence-spanning black hole. Also this is presented to him in some kind of anime style.
• Rose is seemingly suffering from some kind of illness.

Page 2

• Rose is taking drugs to manage her visions/headaches.
• Her visions seem to be related to her gaining additional awareness of other timelines/selves, which was something to do with ultimate selves.
• The visions are not good/bad, but 'essential'/not.
• Jade lost her first guardian powers which makes sense, Alt!Calliope warned her it would happen.
• Jade, Dave and Karkat are together now, apparently?

ROSE: You will need to travel back into canon and defeat Lord English.

...

JOHN: what does that actually MEAN though?

...

ROSE: Any event said to take place inside canon will have nonzero values of relevance and essentiality, while maintaining an absolute foundation in truth, by definition.

ROSE: Whereas events outside canon have diminished values of relevance and essentiality. Or, for the most part, can be considered neither relevant nor essential at all.

ROSE: But such events can’t be said to be untrue either. Instead, it’s better to regard their truth value as highly conditional.

...

ROSE: Events that are formally non-canon have no truth whatsoever, by definition.

ROSE: They may have relevance and essentiality values that are nonzero, or even quite high, but only as projections along an imaginary axis, resulting from highly subjective frames of reference.

ROSE: But due to those events having no truth, and thus carrying no real weight, the other properties are basically rendered meaningless.

Lord English must die to prevent earth C/the epilogues becoming non-canon/undergoing dissipation.

Only John is going, he'll build a team by recruiting younger versions of everyone seemingly. It also seems a little like he won't be coming back.

JOHN: we can talk all about it when i get back. i’ll fill you in on how it went, hopefully you’ll be feeling better by then.

ROSE: Oh. Um.

ROSE: Yeah.

JOHN: is something wrong?

...

ROSE: You’re going to do great.

ROSE: Goodbye, John.

John gets a text from Roxy, and they're off to check in with them.

Page 3

• Carapace Kingdom
• Roxy and John are talking about Rose's ultimate self type transformation/ascension/thing
• Rose and Roxy aren't really close any more, it seems.
• Neither is John and, anyone. He definitely seems to be more of the recluse type now.
• Roxy and Calliope are together in, some way that John doesn't understand. Being a POV character is frustrating!
• Rose has discussed John's new mission with Dirk to some extent.
• John is stressed by the fact he suddenly has to decide if he stays or if he goes

On one plate is a pile of meat: rare, almost bleeding cuts from animals you can’t identify. The other plate holds a generous heap of colorful, exotic-looking candy. You scoot to the side and peek into the basket to see if there’s anything else. There’s a book in there, but no more food. This is all there is.

The meat is nutritious, enriching and hard to swallow. The candy goes down easy but is unfulfilling, the sweetness is sickening.

It's the damn red pill / blue pill scene.

That's the end for today, but I don't yet know what the update cycle is like here. I figured there would have been new pages by now, but it doesn't seem so.