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Fear & Hunger, Creation, and Censorship

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Fear & Hunger is a 2018 indie game published by Happy Paintings. It’s infamous for its punishing game design and dark subject matter, both of which combine to make the game a memorable, frustrating but rewarding experience if you choose to stick with it. Everyone and their dog has already made a video essay about this game, but before we dive into the meat of this video I’ll just sum up my feelings on the game.

I largely agree with the conclusion reached by Super Eyepatch Wolf in his video, “The Cruelest Video Game.” The rewarding nature isn’t just the feeling of overcoming something difficult, but the feeling of learning and becoming better and stronger not just based on the game’s mechanics but based on your accumulation of knowledge. Knowledge being the most powerful currency in the game by far.

I would add to this point that because it is inherit to the experience that you will die over and over again, the game doesn’t actually feel too frustrating. As someone who doesn’t play many video games and isn’t especially good at them, I kind of found this game a joy to get through even though it is quite difficult. I think that’s because what would normally be considered a halt in progress (that being dying over and over again and having to start over) is how you progress. Dying and learning why you died and how not to do it again is half the point. While the game isn’t perfect with there being a few typos, glitches, and some questionable subject matter, overall, my feelings towards it are positive.

I wasn’t going to make a video about this game at all since pretty much everyone has already said everything that I would say, but then two things happened.

One was that the aforementioned video by Super Eyepatch Wolf was trimmed down, because even though it was largely censored, it still was demonetized and had to be adjusted. The other thing that happened is I saw a post expressing discomfort over the fact that the game’s new found popularity would lead to people breezing through it on the censor mod and that this audience may fail to fully process the game’s darker themes. I don’t want to show the post here because I don’t want anyone to be harassed over their opinions (by the way, if you use this video as an excuse to harass someone over their opinions, I will set you on fire with my mind) but the point of the post was very much that the widespread use of the censor mod is taking the Fear & Hunger out of Fear & Hunger. I kind of had negative feelings about both of these things for seemingly conflicting reasons, and I want to unpack why. I want to look at this culture of purifying media and why it exists, but also to look at this notion that maybe changing game play through fan made mods can have merit, at least sometimes.

So first let’s talk about why the censored mod exists in the first place.

There are a few different mods that censor Fear & Hunger, but one of the most popular ones was made by the YouTube user “No Commentary.” This particular mod censors out the nudity, replacing the breasts and genitals with either pine-cones or black bars, and removes the sex scenes entirely. This mod both in practice and design, makes this game streamable by lowering the risk that streamers or YouTubers will violate the terms of service on their chosen platform. While concern has been expressed that this might lead to widespread consumption of the game being a compromised version of it, I guess I find that argument difficult to agree with since streams are themselves already transformative works. The act of sitting down and playing a game is a different media experience than watching a stream or a video essay. And while I’m sure that a case could be made that a bare-bones silent stream of just playing a game might not be considered transformative in the mind of some copyright holders, that’s not what I’m here to debate or define. Your average face-cam commentary stream is its own type of entertainment that’s related to but separate from the actual game. And unfortunately, those streams and video essays can’t really exist without a censor mod in the internet’s current state, which is itself a problem. We live in a dystopia where adult only spaces are disappearing from the internet so more websites can run advertisements and make money. Content creators, especially those that rely on their content as a source of income, have to bow to the whims of corporations and advertisers in order to profit from their work.

And I do want to say, something that kind of strikes me as fucked up is how the Super Eyepatch Wolf video had a section where he actually criticizes the use of sexual violence in the game and that section was also cut out of his video. I just think it’s one thing to remove a section of semi-censored visual sexual content and another to remove a few sentences that critique sexual content in a work of art in like, an hour-long video.

But I digress.

For the record, I am not entirely exempt from this. While I don’t depend of YouTube for income, I also don’t want to risk a channel strike. Right now, you are currently watching a compromised version of this gameplay because I’m afraid of not playing by the rules.

But as I said earlier, this video is not a replacement for the game, it’s a transformative work. While YouTube videos and streams act as platforms for people to discover the game, the actual interaction and experience of it is mostly of the uncensored version. I did a little poll on Tumblr to see how people are discovering and playing this game. The majority of people either played the game uncensored without watching a video on it first, or watched a censored video but went on to play the uncensored game. The next two most popular options were people who watched a censored video, but didn’t play the game, and people who watched an uncensored video and played the uncensored game. I’ll admit my sample size was pretty small (only 151 people), so take this with a grain of salt. I probably would have gotten more responses if I put it on the website formerly known as Twitter, but I would rather die than use that website, so here we are.

Yes, it is deeply frustrating and a little disturbing that the only way game play and word of mouth can effectively spread is through a censored version of the game, but that’s not the version most people want for themselves.

But then there’s the other side of this situation that I want to explore. What about the people who do seek out a censored version of this game? What about the censored mod as a tool for accessibility?

And here’s something I would like to point out before we really get into this. To be clear, the popular censored mod for Fear & Hunger is not like, a cheerier and child friendly game. There’s still uncensored violence, self-mutilation, cannibalism, drug use, dismemberment, religious violence, potential child death, mentions of suicide, and basically every dreary and upsetting thing just sans nudity. I think this combined with the widespread uncensored use of them game makes me really think of the Fear & Hunger mod as a tool exclusively for accessibility either for streamers or for people who are genuinely triggered by that content. By the way, there is also a censored mod that just removes the sexual violence, and keeps all of the other nudity and consensual sex scenes. I would consider that version to be the same game as the uncensored version of Fear & Hunger, just a specifically curated experience of that game.

Like, if I were to fast-forward or leave the room during a scene in a TV show, that’s not really changing the TV show so much as my individual experience of that show. The uncensored mod of Fear and Hunger still exists, and you can play it. The artistic vision has arguably been changed in the censored mod, but not destroyed from existence.

If I’m being completely and 100% transparent here, there is an enemy in Fear & Hunger that triggers a phobia of mine. It’s just never been much of a problem because the enemy is pretty rare and pretty easy to defeat unless you get unlucky. But here’s kind of when we get into the nitty-gritty. The heart of this issue. If this enemy were a common enemy, one that you always have to fight and is core to the game’s mechanics and aesthetics, would I want a censored version of that game or would I just not play it?

And, that’s kind of the centre of the “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” argument regarding Fear & Hunger’s censored mod. What is the line between an individually curated experience and a totally compromised one? How much of Fear & Hunger as a work of art is taken out by these mods? Or rather, when does the gameplay itself move from individual experience and into a transformative work in and of itself.

Well, we’re going to answer that question today.

No, I’m kidding. We’re not.

I don’t think there’s like, an exact quantifiable percentage of a game that needs to be changed before it suddenly tips over into being a completely different experience. There are so many elements of games, and art in general, and some of those elements are kind of intangible. Atmosphere, tone, pace, etc. Even on the legal side of things, there isn’t a specific percentage of a work that needs to be used in order for the derivative work to be considered either fair use or a copy.

While fair use applies to things such as reviews and video essays, stuff like major overhaul mods of a video game are something else entirely. I was discussing this with a friend and he pointed out the ways that major mods compare and contrast to things like fan art and fan fiction. There’s the use of a piece of art as a basis for a different media experience, similar to the function of fan works. But mods can also have the unique property of using the original work as a tool to create a new piece of media rather than a starting point for a new piece of media. For example, machinima.

So, how does all of this tie back to Fear & Hunger?

If there were a truly censored version of Fear & Hunger, like one without the violence, the drugs, or any of the subject matter, I think that would be a completely different way of experiencing the game, separate from merely an individually curated experience. Or alternatively, at that point I could also view it as a completely different work, just with Fear & Hunger as its base.

And even though I think the current, popular censored version is still comparable to the uncensored one, someone might disagree. If they found the scenes with sex or nudity especially resonant or shocking or as a core part of their game play experience, I’m not sure I could confidently tell them they’re wrong. Like, Miro didn’t include any of that stuff by accident. It was a legitimate artistic choice on the part of the creator.

I don’t know. I guess the point is that I think the existing mods for this game are a net positive, at least in the current internet age, but I am somewhat understanding of the stance that maybe if you need the content of the game to be a G rating, then this isn’t a game I would recommend for you. But, I also feel like you could figure that out for yourself.

So, after unpacking all of that, I’ve reached no definitive conclusion on if there is or is not a correct way to experience Fear & Hunger. I guess I can only leave you with this; Fear & Hunger is a brutal, unforgiving game and truly making it something soft and palatable would stop it from being Fear & Hunger. But I think the assumption that people are playing the censored mod specifically because they don’t want to face the darker elements of the game misdiagnosing the issue of censored content on the internet. It is a problem that more adult discussions are getting pushed off of the internet in pursuit of a clean, advertiser-friendly image for platforms, but I think that trying to gate keep people from finding out about games through streams and videos is ultimately doing more harm than good.

Let’s Talk About How Good Trigun Is

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The 1998 Trigun anime is considered a classic among anime fans, and in my opinion, rightfully so. Its iconography, soundtrack, characters, and story are all fantastic, and the series has remained as part of the cultural conversation about anime for decades.

In 2023, the first season of Trigun Stampede aired; a re-imagining of the original show. And it’s… alright, I think.

The tone and parts of the story are pretty different from the original, but in a way I think is somewhat refreshing. In the modern glut of remakes, it’s nice to see something that isn’t wholly cynical or just a botched carbon copy of its source material. In fact, there are definitely some parts of Stampede that I think have improved on the 1998 show. It’s different enough that I could see someone who never got into Trigun getting into Stampede, but not so different as to be alienating to the original audience.

I do prefer the 98 show, but it’s not because Stampede is like…incompetent or even just kind of bad. If I’m being totally honest, Stampede isn’t really my thing. I tend to like my sci-fi to be a little more fantastical, like Starfinder, or Fooly Cooly, or a little more surreal, like Evangelion… or Fooly Cooly. The original Trigun is a lot goofier than Stampede, even though it still has a strong emotional core. While this is an aspect of the show I enjoy (in fact, one of my favourite things about anime as a genre is the way it mixes comedy and tragedy), I can just as easily see someone preferring Stampede for this exact same difference. I think it would short-sighted of me to pretend like every show must cater to my taste, especially when more serious sci-fi shows rank among some highly acclaimed and beloved anime.

That being said, I do find it a little bit hard to ignore how relatively generic Stampede feels as a sci-fi series when compared to Trigun 98. And, to be clear, I don’t want this to be comparison for comparison’s sake. I’m not insinuating that Stampede needed to be more like the original or order to be good, and I’m not saying that one show is garbage and the other is perfect. I just think that the original show is far more unique in terms of storytelling, and Stampede is more derivative. The shows make good comparisons for each other since they have a similar plot and setting, but a different way of communicating information to the audience, as well as other stylistic differences that can sway you in one way or the other in terms of which show you’ll prefer.

For the sake of being as comprehensive as possible with my opinions, this video is going to be split into three sections. 1) Ways in which Stampede actively improved upon the original. 2) How both stories convey information to the audience, and 3) Meryl. We’re going to talk about Meryl.

Okay, let’s dive in.

I’m going to start with my biggest problem with the original Trigun series, which is the casual sexism that kind of runs through the show. While I don’t think the female characters are poorly written, pretty much all of the named female characters either become damsels in distress, femme fatales, or are just dead before the series starts. There’s also a few jokes that I’ll generously say have not aged well. Also it’s super tonally awkward when you have these kind of jokey jokes about watching a girl showering and groping someone and then one of the most serious episodes of your show involves assault allegations. Like. Really.

The new show so far hasn’t had any jokes laden with misogyny and introduced the character of Luida, who is not a femme fatal, has not yet been a damsel in distress, and was not dead before the series started. So. Yeah. Good. Good job on that front.

The art style and production value are also pretty impressive in Stampede. While I am personally a huge fan of the 90s anime aesthetic, Trigun 98 definitely isn’t polished in its appearance. There’s lots of long still frames and panning shots, and scenes that just look kind of bad and have wonky off model character designs.

Not only does the new show appear more polished, it’s also on a very short, but hopefully expanding list, of CGI anime that don’t look like trash, so credit where credit is due. Visuals do matter in a visual medium. Also, that one episode where the art style changes also looks great. Praise all around.

I like episode five. I just think it’s a good episode, and I think it was an interesting idea to touch on the concept of mercy killing in a story about when it is as isn’t right to take life. They…don’t do much with that conflict, but still a good episode in my opinion.

I also like episode eight and how it fits in Vash’s history. The finale of the 98 show is doing a lot of work by being like half backstory and half final conflict. I think putting the bulk of Vash’s adolescence at more of a part-way point was a good idea pacing wise.

I think Stampede also invests more into the inherent conflict between humans and plants (for context, plants in Trigun are like, living generators). I have some issues with the way the conflict is explained, which I’ll get into later, but this is a conflict that’s introduced in like one sentence in the finale of the 98 show, even though it’s incredibly thematically relevant to the story as a whole.

Okay. So. Part two.

If you have seen literally any video on this YouTube channel, then you’ll know that I am an honest to god sucker for when a story decides to communicate it’s plot in interesting ways. Trigun 98 is a master at this and I think comparing it to Stampede kind of exemplifies that.

While I am going to be making quite a few comparisons between these two shows, I would like to once again make it clear that this isn’t a condemnation of Stampede, but rather praise of the original. Comparisons to Stampede just help to exemplify what the original did so differently and so well. It’s like Stampede kept all of the payoffs but none of the set ups to go with them.

For example; the setting.

Trigun 98’s setting can best be described as ambiguous, at least at first. Things like clothes and buildings reference iconic imagery of 19th-20th century America, but the weaponry and wild life are a little more fantastical. There also appears to be more than one sun and moon. These little inconsistencies force the audience to ask questions about the show they’re watching and to speculate about the setting. As the show goes on and we see more of the technology and backstory, the questions about the show’s setting start to get answers. This is a sci-fi story set in the future and it takes place on a different planet.

The initial appearance of the setting isn’t just a smoke and mirrors trick; it’s also thematically relevant to the story. This isn’t just the picture of humanity having migrated from one dystopia to another. This is a picture of humanity that has regressed and fallen into an infamously violent point of earth’s history.

Anyways the very first scene of Trigun Stampede takes place on a space ship where everyone is dressed in futuristic looking clothing and being flown onto another planet. Even once we get into the main plot, everyone is dressed in modern, stylish clothing. There’s no mystery, no intrigue to go along with that mystery, and no reflection of what has become of humanity communicated through iconography. It’s just a regular science fiction setting.

Another key point of intrigue of Trigun 98 is the plants. They are an immediate stand out as something that does not gel with the 20th century setting, but people speak about them in a way that feels natural. “Oh no our plant has broken down,” and then the characters understand the implications of that in universe. As an audience member, you put together context clues and figure out what the plants are through how people speak about them and interact with them.

It drove me mildly insane watching that scene in Stampede where they’re talking about plants and the script comes up with some very contrived reason for Meryl to explain exactly what plants are and what they do to What’s-his-nuts, even though it’s information that he already knows.

In the final episodes, there’s a lot of exposition that’s basically trying to justify why using the plants is okay but also why it’s not and a bunch of science mumbo jumbo and spiritual mumbo jumbo that wasn’t really needed in the original show since so much of it relied on showing and not telling. You as a viewer kind of had to make your own assumptions about how much Knives is telling the truth about and what the plants even are. The big infodump just wasn’t needed.

Speaking of plants, let’s talk about Vash.

In Trigun 98, Vash is pretty enigmatic. At first, he seems kind of like a cartoonish trickster character, but it becomes pretty clear early on that he has a good heart. He’s empathetic towards others and the mystery behind his ideology unfurls in the show’s later episodes. The fun thing about the original show’s cartoony nature is that Vash’s ability to do things like dodge bullets and shoot perfectly are disguised behind the veil of the surreal. Is Vash superhuman or is this a part of the show’s stylistic choices? Surprise it’s almost definitely both.

It’s not outright stated until the very last episode of the show, but long before then, the audience can put together what Vash is. The kind of no-going-back crescendo moment that demonstrates this is…a moment that I am definitely going to overexplain, but bear with me.

So in episode 12, Vash is in a gunfight when this happens. He opens up his fucking arm and pulls out a second gun. It’s punctuated with a zoom in, strong sound design, and Vash’s opponent commenting on it just in case you weren’t paying attention. This scene is important, partially because it’s just cool, but it also primes the audience to ask an extremely important question.

Where the fuck is the third gun?

Then you start thinking of the end of the theme song and the shot of the two guns across what we at this point we understand to be a plant. We have the hints of Vash’s past from an earlier episode where this one girl accuses him of destroying an entire town and he doesn’t remember it and then just a few episodes later, Vash’s fucking arm turns into a canon, and he destroys an entire town. If you’ve been paying attention up to this point, it becomes clear what Vash is without anyone having to say it. Things go very quiet, and Meryl cries as she finds out that Vash has been classified as an act of God and is therefore no longer her assignment. Great episode.

In the first scene of Stampede, Vash’s skin lights up indicating he’s probably not human. So yeah. The first episode is very telling. Not just in the sense that the exposition and set design tell you everything, but the tone is very familiar in a way I’m not super fond of. Meryl and Milly, two women who work for an insurance agency sent to track down Vash the Stampede, have been replaced by Meryl and Generic Mentor Character B. They’re news reporters, because I guess the insurance angle was too goofy and they need a motive to get involved. Meryl talks about getting her scoop because she’s a reporter in a story. Knives plays the piano now, because he’s the villain in a story, and I guess it’s part of the aesthetic. And I’d be hard pressed to call any of this like…actively bad or inept, but I’d also be hard pressed to call it original and iconic; two words that I associate with the 98 show in pure earnest.

So, this show’s got some new characters, but some familiar faces. Those familiar faces more or less act like their 1998 counterparts. Vash is recognizably Vash, Wolfwood is recognizably Wolfwood, Knives is still Knives, etc.

But one thing that really stood out to me when I was re-watching the old show is how different Meryl is. I’d say she’s only really the same character in name and basic design. Her general demeanour is different, her priorities are different, her relationship with Vash is WAY different, and it felt somewhat off to me. And this is where I kind of took a step back and said “Okay, am I just making comparisons for the sake of making comparisons. Do I really want or need this version of Meryl to be faithful to the original show, or is it fine to do something different?” And you know what, it is fine to do something different. This could also just be playing in to Stampede’s first season as the semi-prequel that it’s revealed to be. Like, this version of Meryl is not yet a part of the duo that is Meryl and Milly, and that’s fine. It’s fine.

But here’s why I’m not fully satisfied by that.

It’s another case of keeping payoff but axing the set up. The emotional climax of the season finale involves Meryl saving Vash, or at the very least being there for him when he is saved. After he comes out of the state he was in, he thanks her. She’s the other star of this moment. And it’s just odd because these characters don’t know each other.

I mean they’ve met each other, they’ve talked a bit, but they don’t have a) a rapport, or b) an emotional connection. Like, in a plot utility sense, it makes sense for Meryl to come help him because she’s here and wishes him no ill will. But dramatically it’s just kind of nothing.

It makes sense dramatically in the original show when she saves him because they do have a rapport and Meryl’s character has actively changed both in her philosophy and her feelings for Vash over the course of the show.

And yes I am painfully aware that the dynamic between Meryl and Vash isn’t the most unique thing in the world. The whole “it’s not like a like you or anything” is a trope in anime and the hypercompetent business woman ending up with the lovable goofball is like 90% of Western romcoms. But at least it is, in fact, a dynamic.

A lot of Meryl’s more emotional scenes revolve around Vash. She screams with frustration, she cries with heartbreak, he tells her about his past, something he doesn’t do on screen with any other character. She covers her ears because she can’t stand the sound of him being in pain. These all are just scenes, but they stand out because they form the building blocks of this emotional core that ends up being important in the second-to-last episode.

The only like, stand out moments for Meryl and Vash are when she first sees his picture and makes a comment about how he’s just a man not a monster, when she internally comments that he’s a quote “weird guy” in episode 2, and when she sees the markings on his body and comments on it. And then, you know, the season finale.

I’ll concede to the point that the comment she had about him not being as bad as the papers make him out to be was introducing her as the one who understands, but that’s how you open the story of a developing dynamic. It shouldn’t be the only thing it’s resting on.

And to be clear, I am not saying that Meryl and Vash needed to have romantic feelings for each other in order for this to be dramatically satisfying. I’m saying they needed some form of interpersonal relationship, platonic or otherwise, for the finale to be more emotionally charged in terms of stakes.

Meryl does have a dynamic in this show. There’s a character she has an evolving relationship with, who she stands up to, who she cries for, but it’s not Vash it’s whoever the disposable mentor character. And that relationship doesn’t inform or parallel her view of Vash, it’s just its own unrelated thing.

Honestly, the best bet probably would have been Wolfwood if they wanted to have a kind of cathartic ending where Vash is saved by someone who knows him better now but they had an adversarial relationship first. But. Eh.

Trigun is a great show. Arguably both Triguns are great shows depending on your perspective. I’ve shared my opinions but if you feel differently, tell me why in the comments.

…

Okay there’s two more things I have to complain about. I hate how Vash’s hair gets stood up all spikey in the finale, like that’s a thing that needed to explained and not just a stylistic difference.

I also hate how Meryl’s boss threatens to send her to insurance. That doesn’t even make sense in context and is purely there because the audience gets the reference. Okay I’m done now.

A Review of Thirteen Storeys

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Thirteen Storeys is a 2020 novel by Jonathan Sims. It’s a modern “haunted house” story, where each chapter explores one of the apartments of Banyan Court and the bizarre supernatural elements that plague the occupants.

Overall, I think the book is pretty good. I’m familiar with some of the author’s other work (which we’ll get to later) and it has a lot of the elements of that story that I really liked. Some social commentary, some strong scary imagery, a mix of episodic stories with an overarching connective tissue, and really creative ideas that I think are strong contributions to the genre as a whole.


A story that was an immediate stand out for me was the chapter about Jesus the art dealer. The haunting object in this story is a captivating painting. The way the painting is actually physically described is almost incomprehensible to the reader; an abstract piece that loosely forms a face. Jesus brings it into his home and at first I thought the threat would be something like the face in the painting coming to life and attacking him or sucking him in. But it’s just a painting. The curse it inflicts upon Jesus is supernatural fascination. It threatens his life because he spends so much time looking at and appreciating it that he’s in danger of dying of thirst. I love it.

I also really liked Carter’s story even though I thought I would kind of hate it when it started. It’s one of those “oh no the AI technology that I programmed is becoming evil and thinks I’m inferior” stories, but with a bit of a creative spin in the AIs motivations. It’s directly related to the way Carter markets his technology as something to let people self-improve. The AI doesn’t so much think that humanity is inferior, but Carter in specific. I liked Alvita’s story and the way the prose conveys this almost waking dream she finds herself in as she takes borderline poisonous medication and is barely able to perceive her haunting for what it is until the very end. I like how Damian’s story shifts the novel from regular prose into a video diary format. Not only is it cool hearing about the contents of the tapes from Cari’s story, but it also primes the audience for the sudden shift into multiple perspectives in the last few chapters. And the story of Jason and Max is my favourite in the whole book. Classic 1990s horror twist with some memorable imagery that’s put in a different context not once, but twice! We see things from Jason’s perspective, from a “normal” perspective, and from the perspective of someone else who can perceive the haunting for what it truly looks like in Janek’s chapter, which is great. I love it.

Getting into the meat of it, Thirteen Storeys is pretty clearly a story about the divide between the Haves and the Have Nots. Banyan Court has two distinctly built sections that receive different levels of prestige, quality, and general comfort for the tenants. The way each protagonist relates to their position in the social hierarchy and how they just relate to the other half in general varies from person to person. Cari is a little more sympathetic towards other people, such as Damian or even Derek, but is still very much a “have” coasting off of the wealth of her father. This contrasts someone like Laura, who while not extraordinarily wealthy, has grown to despise poor tenants partly to relieve the cognitive dissonance she feels when she has to evict them.

Laura falls under the same class of character of Carter, not necessarily in terms of wealth, but in terms of what their ghosts mean to them. Carter, Laura, and Leon have ghosts that are very comeuppance focused. They’re out here learning a lesson while also suffering. At first I thought all of the stories would be about people getting their just desserts, but this isn’t the case for everyone. Gill and Cari have stories more about horrifying realizations. They’re not really haunted by their own mistakes but instead discovering some cogs in the much larger machine. I haven’t even talked about Anna yet; the one child protagonist. One of the most striking scenes in the novel for me is her watching her “imaginary friend” Penny eat.

“She hoped no one else in the restaurant had seen the disgusting display, but no one seemed to have so much as glanced in their direction. Now Penny’s fingers dripped with ketchup and her face was smeared with grease, and if anything, she looked even thinner than she was before. Her bones poked painfully against her skin and her hands shook slightly as she looked longingly back towards the rows upon rows of fast food behind the till. Anna felt a stab of guilt that she had no more money to buy Penny more food, but she was beginning to think that perhaps Penny would always be hungry. She didn’t quite understand why, though. She certainly hadn’t imagined Penny that way.”

I love this passage and the way it portrays Anna’s feelings about watching her friend eat while paradoxically realizing that she is starving. Anna is too young to really understand most of what’s happening around her, but she is still living with this feeling of guilt at seeing someone suffer.

Oh, and if you’re reading this post and wondering if all of this commentary on society and how people are suffering under unjust systems is cloaked behind obtuse metaphors ummm. No it’s, it’s pretty on the nose allegory and metaphor. Leon, the spokesperson for an oil company, is haunted by a persistent and uncleanable stain. Cari wears a bunch of diamonds that bleed. By far my biggest gripe with this book is I do think it is a bit too on the nose sometimes with its imagery, and the writing sometimes feels like it’s over explaining things a bit. Like, I don’t need Leon to point out to me that the stain on his wall represents the oil spill. I was able to put that one together myself. But at the same time, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wearing your themes on your sleeve. To be honest I probably wouldn’t be as aware of this problem if I weren’t comparing Thirteen Storeys to The Magnus Archives.

Yeah. Here we go.

Thematically, Thirteen Storeys is very similar to Jonny Sims’s prior work, The Magnus Archives. I’ve made two videos on that show, so go watch both of those if you haven’t already. Both of these stories examine unjust power structures through the lens of episodic paranormal happenings. But TMA is a lot more up to interpretation in terms of what the commentary is really pointing too, as I’ve talked about previously. The themes about personal choice and bending to the will of entities beyond our understanding can be read as something relating to late-stage capitalism, or religion, or addiction, or all of the above or even none of the above depending on your perspective. Thirteen Storeys feels a bit more restrictive by comparison.

That being said, I do think there’s an interesting comparison to be made between Thirteen Storeys and the fifth season of TMA. That season in particular was more in the vein of Thirteen Storeys in the sense that each episode had a more clear-cut societal commentary than the series as a whole. As I’ve stated before, I didn’t like season 5 all that much, but it had nothing to do with the actual subjects of the episodes, I just didn’t like the way the statements were written, with some exceptions like “Strung Out” and “Wonderland.” I found a lot of them boring to listen to. But it is interesting that this book and that season were being written at around the same time. And if you’re asking the same question I was asking which is; was this book written (though not necessarily published) before or during the writing of TMA, the answer appears to be the latter according to the Fantasy Inn interview with Jonny Sims. If you’ve heard anything to the contrary, let me know in the comments, but for the purpose of this video, we’ll be operating under that assumption.

I think the novel does a much better job than season 5 of TMA at using the medium to covey this message about late-stage capitalism. While season 5 may have worked better as a book of slam poetry, Thirteen Storeys at least knows what it is. While I don’t think it’s nearly as good as TMA, it is better than TMA season 5 in my opinion. Both in terms of conveying a message and in terms of being an entertaining piece of fiction.

Getting into specifics, there is one line in Thirteen Storeys that I think summarizes what the book as a whole is really about and what season 5 of TMA was pointing at as well.

 “Their poverty, their lack of education and class, it wasn’t their fault. It was simply the by-product of a system. And Tobias had no respect for those who benefited from a system but could not stomach looking at the waste produced by it. This world was designed to generate winners and losers, and it showed a lack of character to wish yourselves a winner without accepting what it does to those who lose.”

This is the interconnecting thread that’s been weaving these stories together. Thirteen Storeys isn’t just about how rich people out of touch. The book is about how billionaires become billionaires. Workers aren’t underpaid by accident. Land and artifacts aren’t stolen by accident. Regulations aren’t ignored by accident. Environmental damage isn’t done by accident. They’re done because doing it either saves or makes someone a lot of money and they don’t really give a fuck about the consequences.

Although (spoilers incoming). While I do love the idea of all of these ghosts kind of overtaking the novel’s protagonists to murder Tobias, the scene did kind of walk the line between powerful and…once again a little on the nose. Like the book feels a need to really make sure I understand why these ghosts are killing this guy and it feels a bit…clunky, I guess. Like I think this could have been pulled off in such a way that I could have figured out the ghosts’ motivations myself because, once again, the commentary is pretty clear.

Also the foreshadowing left something to be desired. Near the very end before Tobias gets got, he just thinks like “What had he been told about symbols and their power? About how spirits could use the connections he had made if they weren’t properly bound?” And okay, admittedly I did read this book over the course of a few months, so maybe there’s something I forgot, but I really don’t think this was set up earlier. It would almost be better if it wasn’t explained at all and the audience could just say “oh I guess this is what happens when a ghost is cut loose” but it would have been nice if this reveal had been foreshadowed somehow. Could have created some suspense and made for a more satisfying reveal, but whatever. It is what it is.

I think this is a good book even though some parts could have been stronger. If you liked the structure, tone and subject matter of The Magnus Archives, then you’ll probably enjoy Thirteen Storeys. The two are definitely more similar than they are different.

In fact, it’s kind of hard not to talk about TMA when discussing Thirteen Storeys. I originally had a slightly meaner idea for this video that was kind of like “oh, we have TMA at home,” you know? But I realized I kind of had to take a step back and talk about the work for what it is and not what I want it to be. To not frame my expectations solely around Jonny Sims’s previous work and come in with more of an open mind.

And I guess that’s as good of a transition I’m going to get to talk about the other work of Jonny Sims that’s being talked about now.

The Magnus Protocol is a side-quel to the acclaimed horror podcast, The Magnus Archives. The podcast was funded by a Kickstarter holy shit did they ever make their funding goal. It’s set to air late 2023.

Look, this is a literary analysis channel, not a drama channel or a legal advice channel, so I’ll give you a really quick TL:DR version of what happened in late 2022.

The existence of more TMA was hinted at by Rusty Quill, before they revealed they were making a second series where the Magnus universe would make a return, but with new characters and a new plot.

While normally I would give a show like this a 100% chance of probably being bad since cash grab sequels are a dime a dozen these days, I was actually pretty hype at first, as were a lot of other fans. This isn’t some big huge TV network cashing in on 15 stretched out seasons of their long dead supernatural show. It’s a smaller network making something different, just using the foundations set by TMA. Jonny Sims and Alex J. Newall are both returning with rolls in the creation process, so that was reassuring. They did a good job the first time.

But the hype started to die down a bit when anonymous statements from alleged RQ employees made it sound like maybe RQ wasn’t doing so hot financially right now and maybe this really was just a huge cash grab that’s going to end up being rushed and pandering. But you know, maybe not, it’s um. It might be fine.

But then things got a kind of dramatic when an article was published highlighting the alleged failings of Rusty Quill as a company. Some of the bigger talking points were about bad communication, the mishandling of finances, and extremely strict NDAs. However, some scepticism arose after it was revealed that the article’s writer may have had a conflict of interest and misrepresented some quotes. Rusty Quill responded to the article and then the editors responded to their response. Links in the description.

Basically, it’s a PR nightmare on both sides. At time of recording, this is the latest I’ve heard about the whole situation, so if you’re watching this in the future, there’s a chance you have more information than I do. For the purposes of this video, I’m focusing on how all of these allegations and speculations are affecting how people think about The Magnus Protocol.

Public opinion is kind of a hot mess right now. Is this going to be a lovingly crafted companion piece or a deeply cynical cash grab desperately trying to save a failing business? Is The Magnus Protocol a proverbial cog in the capitalist machine where the workers are going to be exploited for the sake of a product? It’s kind of hard to be excited about something when you have this idea in the back of your mind that the people making it are not happy. Unfortunately, I think the only way I can figure out which one it will be is to stop trying to figure out which one it will be. Much like my approach to Thirteen Storeys, I’m hoping I’ll be able to see the podcast for what it is and not what I want it to be. It might be really bad, and it might be amazing. Rusty Quill might thrive as a company or they might completely sink and take people down with the ship. I don’t know and neither do you. At least not at time of writing. I’m sure I’ll end up making a post about it after it comes out because it seems like I can’t leave TMA alone no matter how hard I try, so I guess I’ll see you then so we can compare notes.

Love Sam: Unlearning the Narrative

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Love Sam is a 2019 indie horror game developed by Korean Linguistics Lab. It’s earned plenty of critical praise for its effective horror, emotionally complex plot, and creative structure. The latter of which I find the most interesting; this is a game that immediately drops you into its premise, pulls you into its genre, and eventually makes you question everything you thought you knew when you started playing.

It’s one of those things where you watch someone play it on YouTube, play it yourself, and realize that you absolutely have to write an essay about it, which you are now reading. Hello. Welcome.

Basically, I want to talk three main things about this game; the structure, the scares, and the main character. As always, I will be spoiling a lot of elements of this piece, with each section getting more and more spoilery, so if you want to play it yourself first, I would recommend doing so. It’s like 4 dollars on steam and can usually be played within a few hours.

Ok, so what is this game about.

Love Sam opens with our point of view character in what looks like a small apartment. The focal point that kicks the game into motion is a diary containing descriptions of the author’s love for a boy named Brian. The tone is somewhat off, though. A little obsessive, and shortly after you receive a phone call with a person just breathing on the other end. Then someone or something opens the window, and we find another diary page signed by a girl named Sam. The entry is about how she just transferred to this school and feels somewhat ostracized from her peers and ooookay we have our plot. Especially if you’ve read any description of the game and know it’s about a love story turned dark.

A few minutes in and, even though interactions are very limited, the audience can make some pretty clear assumptions based on our surroundings:

  1. We are reading Sam’s diary entries in kind of a before/after scenario.
  2. Someone is outside of our house and calling our phone, most likely Sam.
  3. The point of view character is a little more ambiguous, but the best guesses are either Brian, or someone else who is investigating this whole thing, like a family member. I’ve even heard the theory that we are Sam, and there’s like a psychological multiple personalities thing going on.

I find it extremely fascinating that coming to these conclusions is so easy that it’s basically happening on a subconscious level. And like, the game doesn’t tell you any of these things either directly or indirectly, your brain just fills in the blanks based on the extremely limited amount of available information. And it’s a good thing that the game never tells you any of these things, because none of them are even remotely true. Not even a little bit.

In fact, even the very fact of being in a room is called into question. As you get further into it, the room changes in some subtle ways, like paint appearing on surfaces seemingly out of nowhere, and then in some dramatic ways, like opening up into the inside of a high school bathroom. And when this first starts happening it’s not even clear if this is a hallucination or a dream or just an artistic choice. Like this might be happening outside of the diegesis of the game and is merely there to help the audience understand what’s going on emotionally.

Of course, basically all mysteries use red herrings and misdirects, but this approach is based less on character speculation and suspicious information, and more just…the story playing out as presented and the audience having to readjust their expectations.  The only example I can think of where the game actually feeds you something false would be the newspaper article describing Sam’s death as a suicide, but every other misdirect isn’t really told to you, it’s thought up by you.

The game basically breaks itself down; taking away information by way of giving you new information, and then that new information rebuilds itself into a new story after the breakdown is complete. Just as an example, an early assumption that I already talked about is that Sam is lurking around your home. A pretty early scare is seeing a figure under the bed reach out for you, but you can’t interact with it. I found this extremely odd at first, seeing as someone seemingly just broke into the house and you just have to…keep going. But this figure keeps showing up and moving and disappearing constantly in shadow or having it’s face distorted by odd angles and it starts to become clear that this isn’t even a tangible person which opens up the question of what is it and why is it tormenting you and now that the real question has been asked, the real answers will be given in time. And that’s just one example of how information flows through this game. It’s like watching someone unfold a piece of origami and then reshape it, and the whole process is happening slowly inside of your brain.

Of course, the questions are answered, but not in some grand reveal. Each piece of information has to be discovered in stages as the premise starts to come together. So, let’s look back at those basic assumptions:

  1. These are not both Sam’s diaries, they are written by two different people.
  2. Sam is not outside of our house (at least, not physically) and she is not calling our phone. She’s not even a stalker, and she never was.
  3. The point of view character is a character that is introduced pretty early on in the story, but seems completely irrelevant to the plot until waaaaay later, and this is a reveal that also happens slowly instead of all at once.

The ‘deception’ that’s not really a deception because the game usually doesn’t directly lie to you but, you know, the intended misdirects are fueled by a couple of things. There’s the genre savy-ness, leading to the assumption that the ostracized girl will reach a breaking point. There’s the connecting theme of the journals, both leading into discussions of loving the same person despite the disparate tones. And, of course, there’s heteronormativity. The unconscious assumption that everyone in this story is straight. Put a pin in those last two, we will be coming back to them.

Not only does this element of unlearning the narrative make the story interesting, it also feeds into what makes the game scary, so let’s talk about the horror elements at play here.

Myself an many others agree that this game is, to use a technical term, scary as hell.

The atmosphere and most notably the sound design are absolutely incredible. There’s very little in terms of music, and since most of the game is reading, a lot of it is very quiet in general. But when the sound is present, it’s very deliberate, whether it be the steady ticking of that clock, the beating of your heart, or the sudden laughter coming from whatever strange apparition just appeared behind you. Sound will also sometimes lead you where you need to be, so paying attention to your surroundings really pays off.

Not to mention that bone chilling hollow clicking sound that usually plays when you’re about to enter a fail state. It’s really unnerving because you don’t really know what’s making it or why it sounds like that.

And can we talk about jump scares? I wanna talk about the jump scares.

Despite being a huge fan of the horror genre, I generally don’t enjoy most mainstream horror movies. I know some people really don’t like the jump scares because of the perceived cheap-ness of them; just startling the audience to get a reaction without necessarily being scary. In my case, I find those fucking violin crescendo’s horribly anxiety inducing, so I do find it scary, but in a deeply unsatisfying and unenjoyable way. Either way, there’s an art to the jump scare, and I think Love Sam understands that art incredibly well.

Part of this is the inherent advantage that video games have over other mediums when it comes to depicting horror. They have the element of dread and helplessness; the feeling of being coerced into taking an action that will scare the crap out of you either because you need the game to progress or require information. Love Sam takes full advantage of this to accomplish its most effective scares, including jump scares. It doesn’t rely on the bullshit anxiety-inducing score to lead into the scares, but rather the knowledge that you are doing this to yourself and waiting to discover the immediate consequences of your actions. This part where you look through the peephole, see your own room with Sam sitting at the desk, and realize that you have to walk up to her nearly had me in tears.

I also really enjoyed some of the more creative elements that feed into this idea of walking into your own demise. Most notably, there’s a section of the game where you find a camera and have to take pictures in the dark using the flash to light your way. It’s tense and frightening knowing that each click of the shutter could reveal something new and grotesque on this ever-changing set piece.

And I love the part where you turn the bathroom light on and the game actively calls you out for being a coward and you have to turn it back off to progress. Might legitimately be my favourite part of the game.

But I think there’s more to it than just the helplessness of it all. I think the scares work on their own because the scenario adds flavour to what’s happening by being suspenseful and unnerving. The bursts of adrenaline are punctuated by sound but maintained through the understanding that there is a presence in the room with you that you do not understand and it means you harm.

I think suspense is the real name of the game here. Constantly having your back turned when you’re reading the diary, being lost in the dark, trying to navigate a room that keeps changing, and knowing that there is always something in this enclosed space with you. The actual game play is pretty mellow but the feelings that the game invokes are very intense.

I’ve talked on this channel before how a lot of good horror utilizes the fear of the unknown, and this is a prime example of that. It accomplishes a lot by constantly subverting expectations and having the monster and setting defy logic.

Ok, I’ve buried the lede long enough. Let’s talk about the game’s protagonist.

The protagonist is and always was Kyle. He’s the point of view character, he’s one of our two primary narrators, and his actions and motivations are what drive the story forward both in the present and in the story that took place three years in the past.

This story is about Kyle.

Kyle is also very much the villain in this story. Or, at the very least, the villain in Sam and Brian’s story. He ruins both of their lives; Brian’s temporarily and Sam’s permanently.

In his own story, he falls more under the category of just…tragic. The trait that leads him further down towards his own destruction is envy. Arguably it’s his obsession with Brian, which is implied to have started as a normal crush, but develops into something else as he struggles to supress the feelings that he doesn’t feel comfortable expressing. But at the end of the day, envy is what drives him into action. Very, very unhealthy and destructive action. On some level he’s aware that he’s jealous of Sam, and that he resents her for having the relationship that he wants to have but could never obtain. But he also tries to paint Sam as a villainous presence; trying to convince both himself and Brian that she’s bad news. That she’s undeserving and desperate and a time bomb waiting to fall apart. He’s pretty transparently projecting his own insecurities onto her to morally justifying ruining her life. The behaviours that he exhibits to frame Sam as a stalker also seem to come from a real place of wanting to do these things. He wants to hear Brian’s voice on the phone, wants to collect pictures of Brian, wants to draw those hearts on the wall like a love confession. He blames all of this on Sam to both cope with his unhealthy desires and actively sabotage her relationship.

I think to get to the heart of the emotional complexity at play here we need to take out that pin from earlier. We also need to ask ourselves the question of…how? How did the people at KLL convince the entirety of their audience that these two diaries, which have different handwriting, different illustrations, different tones, and an unclear temporal relationship, were by the same person? Well, according to the writer, this was dead easy because, quote:

“Kyle and Sam’s feelings are, in a way, the same. At first glance, the two diaries seem to portray different feelings for Brian; one is love and the other is obsession. However, many people don’t suspect that the two diaries are written by different people despite a number of hints suggest that they are. This is because we naturally accept that Sam’s sweet feelings can always turn into something ugly like Kyle’s. Some say Kyle is a psycho, but his feelings are not that different from Sam’s. It’s just that his anger and frustration was too much for him to bare.”

While playing the game, certain things that Sam said stood out to me.

Quote: “Calling Brian in the middle of the night for no reason is something I’ve dreamed of, but that doesn’t mean I actually did it!”

And also:

“Deep down, I know I want my own hearts on the walls too…”

I think these lines deepen the parallels between Sam and Kyle. These are the disturbing behaviours that Kyle acts on, but Sam isn’t fully emotionally detached from them. I feel like most stories about the thin line between love and obsession are about the process of falling into obsession; yet another genre trapping that leads us to believe both authors are the same person. But Love Sam’s exploration of this theme comes from the audience provably not being able to distinguish the two outside of ‘this one is healthy and this one is scary.’

Kyle is not a good guy, but his feelings aren’t shallow. To once again quote the developer:

“When I first decided to make a horror game, I thought about what makes people scared. The answer I found was simple: it’s the emotions we harbor. It’s the emotions we try to hide but slowly eat us from within without us even knowing. Everyone is familiar with jealousy, guilt, shame stalking them for all their lives, and I wanted to tell how destructive and terrifying those emotions can be if you keep running away. And since love is one of the most complicated and powerful emotions, I decided to write a story about the fine line between love and obsession.”

Kyle’s journey, some of which happens before the events of the story, is an ever-growing emotional burden that evolves in a sort of domino effect progression. He feels like he can’t act upon his feelings for Brian until maybe they graduate high school, so he keeps his crush a secret, which leads to an unhealthy obsession with Brian. Keeping this secret leads him to envying Brian’s girlfriend, leading to an unhealthy obsession with Sam, and this unhealthy obsession leads to his confrontation with Sam which then leads to his obsession with Sam’s death. This final stage is the point where we as players enter his mind.

Kyle quotes a short story; “The last man on Earth heard a knock at the door.”

This is the psychological paradox he finds himself in; feeling completely isolated, but constantly followed by an observer that exists in his own head. Someone who knows what he’s done and how he feels. Physically, this observer takes the form of Sam, and whether that ghost is purely psychological or also a literal spectre is up to the player’s interpretation. Either way, it’s another thing that no one knows about; the manifestation of his shame and guilt.

While this game doesn’t really have multiple routes, it does have a few alternate endings, none of which are very happy. In one, Kyle ends his own life. In another, he stays in denial and continues to be haunted by Sam. The closest thing to a good ending is Kyle turning over his journal to the authorities. It’s not really a ‘happy’ ending, because the implications are he’ll be facing the consequences of Sam’s murder, but it’s the one with the most closure for him as a character since it involves him telling someone everything.

I feel like there’s even more to this game that I could talk about. I have some nitpicks, like how I think the prose is only so-so, and that it’s replay value, while enhanced by the twist, is also kind of dampened by the lack of differing routes and limited gameplay mechanics compared to all of the reading. There are also cool little things, like how the setting and time period are never drawn attention to but are integral to the story, or the borderline fridge horror of certain dream-like elements being reincorporated into the waking world.

This game was really interesting to engage with, especially as someone who doesn’t really play video games that often. I know people have varied emotional reactions to it, but I definitely thought it was worth playing.

I Re-read Homestuck as an adult and here are my thoughts…

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I’m out here opening a bottle of wine while climbing into a dumpster.

Let’s do this.

Homestuck is a webcomic that ran from 2009 to 2016. It follows the story of four kids who accidentally end the universe by playing a video game. Winning the video game will create a new universe, but the aliens who created our universe have to get involved as their game session had some complications with far-reaching effects. There’s also time travel, moon civilizations, alternate universes, and many other things. That’s a massive oversimplification of the plot, but it’s a long story and if I described every location and character, we’d be here all day.

I was big into Homestuck when I was around 16-17, before I got an English degree and when I was also…you know…a child.

I fell out of the fandom during one of the big pauses, and after that I just…never finished this beast despite considering to be one of my favourite stories at the time.

I still had a fondness for it, but I never felt compelled to finish it.

UNTIL NOW, apparently.

In December of 2020, I heard that Adobe Flash was basically going completely obsolete, and I had this very surreal realization that the disappearance of Flash would basically destroy half of Homestuck unless they somehow reformatted it. I got curious, went to homestuck.com, discovered that they were indeed reformatting it, and next thing I know I’m on page 1000 of the webcomic and the effort justification starts to sink in.

So I finished it, and now I have to talk about it.

And for the record, this isn’t going to be a fandom retrospective. Now that it’s 2022 and we’re so far removed from Homestuck Mania™, we might as well try talking about the actual series instead of the fan culture that surrounded it.

This post also isn’t about What Pumpkin or the development of Hiveswap. Mostly because 99% of this script was written before I knew about any of that stuff, but also because this post is about Homestuck and not really about Andrew Hussie, although I wouldn’t blame you if your knowledge of the latter affects your thoughts on the former.

Part 1: Is it Good?

So, once I officially started rereading it, I went in with relatively low expectations. I’ve seen and read a lot more things now, and my standards as a teenager and my standards as an adult are vastly different.

So, imagine my horror when I got to Act 5 on my re-read and realized that I was still well on my way to giving the series a solid 10/10. Like, un-ironically. 

Trust me, I would love nothing more to make a Thing Bad post about Homestuck. Partially because that would probably do better on YouTube and also because I know it’s super cringey to admit to liking Homestuck in this day and age, but I’m not here to lie to you. I think it’s good.

I basically share all of the general praise that most people have: it’s wildly creative, the presentation can get really interesting, the character dynamics are entertaining, the dialogue is clever, it’s really funny (I found myself laughing out loud more this time around), and it’s legitimately compelling, even though it takes a while to get going.

I don’t think it’s perfect, and I’ll get to the bad stuff later, but I don’t think it’s in any way overrated. 

That’s not to say that having an older perspective hasn’t changed my opinion on some things, both positively and negatively. I definitely took more plot points seriously as a kid, even though in hindsight most of it is intentionally silly. Homestuck is a comedy, and while it does have some genuine emotional beats, the vast majority of it is more fun than it is deep.

And that’s not a bad thing, that’s just what it is.

On the re-read, I also couldn’t help but notice the glut of expository dialogue, but a lot of said dialogue is spoken by funny or interesting characters. Or, better yet, the stuff that they’re explaining is so weird that it’s just inherently interesting.

Plus, even though some of the bigger plot concepts require explaining, a lot of the actual story beats fly by at breakneck speed, and the reader is trusted to put the pieces together. The page titled “Cascade” is a 13 minute long video with almost no spoken dialogue, and it’s this page that ties a lot of major moments previously seen in the series together. It explains and displays the order that things happened in this incredibly non-linear story, plus introducing brand new and majorly important plot points. And then as a punchline, this is the point where recaps stop. You are forced to put this whole convoluted thing together based purely on the visual information.

And I love that. I loved it as a teenager and I love it now. Putting stuff together is my jam, and just creates a more engaging reading experience.

And the story truly is engaging. I once heard someone say “it’s the act of reading Homestuck that makes Homestuck fun,” more so than the actual plot, and I’m tempted to agree. It’s just fun to learn about new unique concepts, to enjoy the fantastic writing, to watch the style and format change in new ways, and to see how these seemingly disconnected plots all interact with each other.

Part 2: What is Homestuck Even About?

What I mean is; is Homestuck about anything?

I’ve heard it said that Andrew Hussie used almost a million words to say nothing at all, and I can kind of see what people mean by that.

Homestuck isn’t really packed with themes, especially for a story of its length, but it does get more thematically coherent as it goes on, and it’s definitely a coming of age story.

Most, if not all, of the character arcs revolve around two things: 1) Fully understanding your own upbringing and/or society. 2) Recognizing behaviors that need to be changed in order to fully mature as a person.

This can take the form of relatively simple and comedic stuff, like John outgrowing old movies, or stuff that’s actually kind of heavy. Stuff like Roxy realizing that she has a drinking problem or Vriska describing how her violent society and upbringing has made her okay with killing and thinking about how that looks from an outside perspective.

In my opinion, the most emotional arc culmination comes when Dirk and Dave first meet. They’re both in an awkward position where talking to each other forces them to confront some pretty harsh realities. Dave spent a good chunk of the early part of the series justifying and rationalizing his older brother’s actions, even though it was made pretty clear to readers that he, at the very least, wasn’t as happy with his life as he pretended to be. This conversation with Dirk is the first time in the story where Dave really opens up to someone about how he actually felt growing up; neglected, hated, disturbed, and hurt both physically and emotionally at the hands of his guardian. Meanwhile Dirk, ie the alternate timeline version of Dave’s brother, has be confront the reality that a version of him did this to Dave, and he’s not even really surprised. He spent a lot of act six talking to splintered versions of himself that he hates and dealing with romantic and platonic relationships in which he feels his involvement was always negative. Dave then pointing out that that’s the key difference between Dirk and his brother; Dirk actually takes time to contemplate the morality of his actions.

Speaking of Dirk, I also want to talk about Homestuck’s approach to LGBT+ stuff, because honestly? I think it was my (and a lot of people’s) introduction to the more fluid aspect of sexuality. Instead of just saying “being gay is okay,” it goes the extra step of saying “the very concept of being gay should be normalized.” That might not sound like a high bar in 2022 but at the time it was a more unique take. And I’m not making any claims that Homestuck was like…revolutionary in terms of queer media, I’m just saying that it got my high school friend group to think about it more, and I don’t think we were the only ones. The trolls don’t even have the concept of sexual orientation, meanwhile characters like Jake and Dave are actively questioning their sexuality and realizing that society might play a part in whether or not people see themselves as straight. Rose just casually comes out as a lesbian by asking Kanaya on a date, and then we have Dirk, who embodies many masculine stereotypes while also being 100% unambiguously gay and out of the closet.

Idk I guess it’s just interesting. It also leads to some good conflicts, some of which are comedic and some of which are emotional.

Alright, now let me get out of this clown costume and pour an extra glass of wine, because I’m going to actually talk about stuff I didn’t like.

Part 3: Stuff I Didn’t Like

Even when I read Homestuck as a teenager, I definitely preferred the first half to the second half. At the time, I never thought it got bad, but it did get worse.

I still like the Alpha Kids a lot, with Dirk (and now Roxy as well) ranking high among my favourite characters, but I feel like their romantic squabbles consist largely of stuff I’ve seen before. Something something love square. Something something the guy I liked forgot my birthday. Something something my friend wants to date the guy I want to date. Something something I’m insecure about my weight, etc. It just feels weird compared to the rest of the series, which is packed to the brim with stuff I’ve never seen before.

Admittedly, the dynamic of the love square is unique because of the time shenanigans and varying sexualities of the characters, but the actual dialogue and drama feels like it could have come from anywhere.

BUT I will definitely say that the Alpha Kids resolving their bullshit while on their God Tier beds was pretty great. I liked it.

Another big criticism I have of the second half revolves around Caliborn/Lord English. He’s not a terrible villain on a conceptual level, but Caliborn mostly just annoys me, while Lord English isn’t nearly as interesting as literally every other villain in the story. Jack is a drastically overpowered villain whos strength and abilities come from one of the kid’s strongest allies, and said ally affects his subconscious and emotional attachments. Doc Scratch is charming, evil, and has what are, in my opinion, by far the best fourth wall breaks in the series. The Condese is serviceable as a villain but made a bit more interesting since we see her alternate universe self in more of a protagonist role. Gamzee delivers an amazing monologue that I still find kind of suspenseful and terrifying even as an adult and satisfies the ‘comedic but unhinged’ villain role way more than Caliborn as he is actively involved with the central characters more directly. Vriska is so important that her death, resurrection, and character arc define the trajectory of the entire series. Lord English is annoying, and then he is big, and the journey that led him from annoying to big mostly happens off screen.

I also have mixed feelings about the Dream Bubble mechanic. I do think it lowers the stakes quite significantly. Like…death becomes somewhat meaningless when every character is just chilling in the afterlife. On the flip side, there is still a consequence of dying; stagnation. Dying just means your role in the story is over. The only reason we focus on the ghosts at all is because Lord English invades. The ghosts themselves can’t really affect the alpha timeline, making the Ring of Life a desirable object. 

Plus, the actual idea of the afterlife being a series of memories that you travel through is actually pretty interesting. The concept as a whole really is a mixed bag.

Of course there’s the problematic elements that are mostly concentrated to the game section with the Dancestors. Some jokes rely on racist stereotypes and arguably ableism which at best haven’t aged well and at worst really weren’t that funny in the first place.

But, real talk here, I think the only large element of Homestuck that’s a slog to get through is the excessive breaking of the fourth wall.

Don’t get me wrong; I love meta stuff, and I think most of Homestuck’s playing around with the fourth wall actually works really well…at first. Like, I’m okay with Hussie inserting themself to do recaps, I’m okay with having a very literal “fourth wall” be an item in the story, and I’m even okay with Caliborn’s interactions with Hussie as some unknown entity.

ALSO; the section at the tail end of Act 5 that takes place in Doc Scratch’s apartment was sheer genius in terms of presentation. Just saying.

With all of that said, there comes a point in Act 6 where the line gets a little too blurry. Hussie has way more in-story interactions that don’t really make sense, and the regular narration gets increasingly hung up on jokes at the expense of the story. Somehow all of this leads to Hussie both praising themself and insulting themself to the point where it becomes distracting. Plus, constantly drawing attention to the unreality of your own story makes it more difficult for readers to suspend disbelief. 

On top of all of this, Hussie actively jabs at/insults the audience a few times, and it becomes pretty annoying pretty quickly.

I’m not sure if this is a Hot Take or not, but I actually don’t mind occasional winks or jabs at an audience. If done right in can be fun and endearing, like we’re all in on the joke. However, if these jokes are overdone or too harsh, they become insulting in an unfunny way.

And look, I get that Hussie could get pretty frustrated with the audience.

Homestuck Mania™ was terrible and everyone was growing increasingly frustrated with second-hand cringe, but it’s still kinda shitty to outright call your fans a bunch of childish weeaboos who overthink everything when you’re out here writing a cartoony comic that requires a lot of thinking. 

Luckily, by the final stretch of Act 6, these jokes and meta elements become far less prevalent, and I could actually go back to enjoying the story.

Speaking of the end of Act 6:

Part 4: Game Over. Kinda.

One of the reasons I put off finishing Homestuck for so long was that I kept hearing that the ending was disappointing. I didn’t know what actually happened, I just knew it wasn’t well received upon release.

Umm…

I actually like the ending??? Quite a bit????

(Spoilers ahead).

I’m glad the story had a happy ending. There’s some stuff left ambiguous (mostly revolving around Vriska’s whereabouts) but for the most part I found it emotionally satisfying. 

I think a lot of people were expecting the climax to have more of a twist. Like, people wanted to see this epic plan go wrong in a cool way but it just…kind of goes as planned. This didn’t bother me because the big “oh no our plan has gone wrong” part already happened in Game Over. Having another attempt succeed in a story with a happy ending seems pretty standard.

Although I guess “standard” isn’t exactly praise worthy either. It’s true that everything kind of went off without a hitch after the Retcon, and maybe it’s fair to say that such a sprawling and incredible story should have been more creative with its ending.

I’ve also heard the criticism that the Retcon itself was kind of lame. It’s basically pulling an ‘it was all a dream’ type of twist but with extra steps. And yeah I normally truly despise shows that retcon entire plots for the sake of convenience, but I guess I wasn’t too bothered by this since I’m more fascinated with Homestuck as an experience than a plot, if that makes sense. The actual mechanic of the Retcon is, in my opinion, pretty cool on a conceptual level; going back to pages you’ve already read and seeing the other places where they lead. Plus, as someone who read Homestuck before the Retcon was written, I was very relieved to find out what all of those god damn question marks meant since I didn’t fucking remember them being there when I was 16.

On the smaller scale, there were also some details that left me and others in a kinda “meh” state. It felt like some character conflicts were never properly resolved, either because of the Retcon or things just happen off screen.

I also found Davepeta and Jasprose very annoying and they were an extremely weird 11th hour addition to the story.

Lord English’s defeat (?) does feel like a loose end, and I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be ambiguous or if Hussie just didn’t know how to wrap it up on screen.

With all of that said, I guess my thoughts are: the ending is good, but not as mind blowing as the end of Act 5. It definitely could have been stronger.

Alright. I guess that’s all I have to say about Homestuck. This post is over now and I can move on wi-

Oh.

Oh wait.

There’s something else.

Part 5: Press F for Flash

At the beginning of this post, I said that Homestuck was being reformatted so it could be read even if Flash was disabled.

I didn’t say it was being reformatted well.

Okay. 

Um.

I don’t even know where to start.

I guess the least offensive thing was replacing the animations with embedded YouTube videos. I mean, it still sucks since the people managing homestuck.com have to rely on another host site, and the embedding doesn’t look nearly as good as just having the animation play. Plus, the video quality is notably lower.

But whatever. It’s forgivable.

What they did to the flash games is not even slightly forgivable. 

Some of the early ones are in this weird text format where you choose which screen to go to next and it’s extremely tedious and annoying.

The later flash games are just in YouTube video format, so if you read the comic without Flash you’ll basically end up watching a play-through. It’s not as bad as the weird text option thing because at least you get the proper visuals and sound design, but it’s also a sad reminder that what you’re looking at was designed to be played and not watched. I want to control the pacing of the dialogue, and maybe I don’t want to look at every single object in the room. Ugh.

Also fucking pour one out for the puzzle game at the beginning of Act 6 Act 3. Great. I love it when I get to watch a walk-through of a puzzle instead of figuring it out myself. Equally as fun. 

Uggghhh.

At the very least, the game where Meenah walks through the afterlife to meet all of the dancestors is still playable. I’m beyond thankful for this because that shit takes forever and I honestly don’t think I could take just watching it for hours.

Also, the last page just straight up doesn’t make sense anymore. The page before the credits/epilogue is a short little flash that ends with a phone’s snap chat notification going off, and then clicking the notification takes you to the end.

Well, that second last page is a YouTube video now, so you can’t click the notification and there’s no fucking arrow button, so you just have to trust your instincts and type the url of the next page.

I don’t know how they missed that.

So yeah. Homestuck is objectively worse now than it was a few years ago.

That’s…pretty fuckin rough, not gonna lie.

In a perfect world, there would be a stronger reformatting plan with higher quality videos and maybe different game mechanics, but to be fair that would be a massive undertaking and the people involved are all working on other projects, so this is what we have for now.

Oh, plus the unofficial, dowloadable version, which I’ve heard works a lot better. So, that’s cool.

Part 6: So…What’s the Verdict?

I hate to say it, but Homestuck is really, really good.

It’s utterly fucking fantastic. I may have problems with it, but the good outweighs the bad to an overwhelming degree in my opinion.

Fuck it. It’s 2022. Cringe culture is dead, and life’s too short not to read good things just because a bunch of annoying 13 year olds liked it 10 years ago.

Alright. That’s it. Those are my thoughts.

Oh, and as for the sequel and dubiously canon material: I haven’t read them, and I never will.