homestuck – Page 13

tekkaguya:

amidst all this panic over Homestuck and Hiveswap potentially changing hands I do want to remind people of some things that might help with all the confusion going on right now. and remember, let’s positive thinking!

generally when it comes to production of media on a more corporate/less indie structure, there are things like story/universe bibles, setting notes, and other documentation that exist to keep things in line when there are multiple writers on a project. beyond just describing the mechanics of the setting, they’ll typically describe how to write characters, things to NEVER do, and so on.

andrew hussie, at the very least, has to still be involved with VIZ in some way, because he’s still doing the commentary in the print books. while it’s still unknown if that’s his only involvement there or not, it’s something – he inherently has to be still involved with the franchise in some form.

removing LGBT themes and content from Homestuck of all things in the year 2018 Anno fucking Domini would be complete and utter PR suicide on a monumental scale. I won’t lie and say I’m not concerned about future LGBT characters too, but we don’t need to go into full panic mode. VIZ does publish various BL/GL manga and while many of those may fall on the fetishization end of the scale (I have read exactly none of them so I can’t say anything there) that does mean that they’re willing to publish stories that contain non-heterosexual characters. that much is a thing. one of these was even advertised as being by the author of Wandering Son, a manga about trans people with various other LGBT themes.

while WhatPumpkin’s origins in the fandom are precisely why people are worried about them being replaced, it also added another detail that isn’t often considered: many of these people were very young when they began contributing to Homestuck. a recurring thing mentioned by members of the art/music team is that nobody expected Homestuck to blow up the way it did. what started as a small project between friends and fans became something they had to create an entire small business to manage, and it turned into an actual legal job. we don’t know all the details yet – depending on how amicably things went, it’s possible that they’re still involved with the franchise as independent contractors now, which would still leave them looking for full-time jobs. cohen’s twitter bio being changed to “made hiveswap”, past tense, does cast doubt on this, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible that it’s the case for others. even this could just mean a break and not a full leave.

(this is anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt) VIZ is largely an anime/manga company, and in my personal experience watching the ongoings and drama in that industry, it does tend to have a bit more respect for the community than others. this is possibly due to the way that despite the advent of the internet, conventions have remained a huge part of anime culture and as such so many of these companies are involved at what is inherently a community event (or thinking more cynically, bc if they pissed the community off half the company is right there in the riot zone) of course, I don’t have hard data for that and it could just be an inaccurate picture based on what I’ve seen of more respectable companies, so keep that in mind. but ALSO keep in mind that Harmony Gold is a western company in that industry that went full corporate bullshit and now they’re a zombie whose license on the one thing they can milk for enough nostalgia bucks to keep afloat is about to expire, and when it does they’re screwed. then there’s all the stuff that happened with 4kids. basically, there’s two big “hey, don’t do this” examples in VIZ’s industry that focused on profit over the community and got colossally screwed by themselves. (well 4kids might be a tad more complicated than that but fuck Harmony Gold)

all in all I’m anxious too but there’s no need to panic yet! being vocally apprehensive does send them a message, which is good if it’s needed, but I hope some of this can help you be less panicky if you needed it right now! remember, a company that’s been in the game as long as VIZ hopefully knows that PR and their community not hating their guts is significantly more profitable than a plotline voted on by a committee to be more marketable. even from a selfish or profit-based perspective, it’d pay more not to fuck this up.

if all else fails, hussie will probably save us by doing what he does best:
making comics about horses.

Tag: homestuck

problem sleuth and the other comics are fine, they’re under the read tab. the list of pages is still there under the log link for homestuck