Floral, sick af: Hellooooo everybody we have another beautiful writer’s commentary here today!! I loved these strings of updates and seeing everyone's reactions was so amazing!
Miles, a member of the mid-write crew: Except obviously our writing isn’t mid at all, it might actually be whatever the opposite of mid is. Is it possible for there to be an opposite of mid? Let’s find out together.
Miles: Fuck yes.
Floral: Finally we get to see this crew again. I pitched this transition partially because I missed CD so damn much but also because it felt like a connecting thread, revealing a tad more to the mystery most of you did not even realize was a mystery and did not ask about.
Miles: Getting to write Agent Crew narration is fun because we get to pivot pretty dramatically and return to that comedic pseudo-noir tone Andrew established in Problem Sleuth and brought into Homestuck proper with the gang, which means that I get to write complete wonky gibberish like this first paragraph here. If only someone had told me to leave the wordplay to my betters maybe this segment would have been less stupid, but as the director I haven’t got any betters to leave shit to, and besides I think it turned out pretty damn fun.
Miles: The thing about the Agent Crew that we were so excited to get to here is that they seem to exist in basically every session as wild cards (sorry.) meant to undermine the “natural” progression of a game, especially as pertains to the administrative management of Derse and its arbitrary Antagonistic War Machine, which means that sort of by definition we as writers, as well as the characters within the story, get to use them to upend what might hypothetically Normally Occur during a campaign against Derse. Funnily enough, considering that we haven’t actually ever seen a fully normal session and still have very little idea about what that realistically entails, it might actually be more accurate to say that their presence within Derse as megalomaniacal opportunistic saboteurs IS normal; sort of a lever Skaia included in the process specifically to be, er, leveraged, by anybody crafty enough to get involved with them. I think that’s honestly really fucking cool! Throwing in a bunch of traitors to the stated default gameplay that can either aid you or be wielded against you depending on how you take advantage of them is a really neat system.
Miles: Anyway, seems like someone beat our players to the punch when it came to utilizing their services. The early bird gets the gang of conniving cutthroats, and their mysterious patron seems eager to make moves before a few of the late birds even wake up out of their nests.
Miles: Another fun thing about returning to these guys was getting to go back to their crippling pornography addictions. Or life-enriching pornography enthusiasm, as the case may be. We did a little bit of debating early on about what kind of loot would be sufficiently tantalizing bargaining chips for their mysterious malefactor to use, but basically we more or less always knew it was going to end up being pornography and candy and weapons, because at the end of the day money is just a tool for buying pornography and candy and weapons and it’s far less funny to see piled up in a room than pornography and candy and weapons. We threw in a bit of gold bars that are grey so maybe they’re silver bars for good measure, so you know this secretive funder has Boonbucks to spare, but what’s a lot more fascinating than their wealth is their taste. Or I guess their knowledge of their clients’ tastes. Perfectly picked for maximum enticilization.
Miles: Really, one of the repeated joys of getting to do a Homestuck sequel is getting to return to the various classic gags and bits that Homestuck’s formulaic pattern-seeking genius gets you addicted to, and it’s funny because every so often I wonder if it isn’t kind of regressive to do this kind of thing, but we love to do it anyway and you guys always react well when we do it so what the hell. We try to shake it up where it counts.
Miles: If anything, it was too enticing.
Floral: I won’t lie I love this update too because of the visual gags, Intermission truly is so peak partially because its so well paneled and paced, it really showcases Andrew’s years of comic strip work.
Miles: Exactly. Getting to play in this space even a tiny bit is a pleasure we weren’t about to deny ourselves. Like I said earlier, there are times when we do want HS:BC to have its own identity but we wouldn’t be here at all if we weren’t madly in love with the trappings of the original comic.
Miles: I forgot to mention it earlier but another thing I love about writing (and reading/thinking about) Agent/MC/Intermission-style narration is that it has an even more extremely conversational tone than normal, because it serves as the only real dialogue that Prospitian/Dersite characters are allowed to have save for any command prompts they enter, and the fact that the story makes space for them to still be able to talk in this way makes me really happy. It’s kind of interesting that, as game constructs, their ability to communicate is entirely limited to two modalities both of which are inherently tied into the progression of the game / wider story About the game. Maybe that feels obvious after so many years of Homestuckology but it’s cool to think about. What I’m really dreading is the possibility that they did have some pester/dialogue somewhere I’m forgetting about and everyone’s gonna come out of the woodwork all “Miles was wrong! Miles was wrong!” but who gives a fuck. My point stands.
Floral: I feel like the charm of any crew is giving an important job to the wrong guy.
Miles: The Agent Crew in general is great because they’re all kind of the wrong guy in so many ways. DD has this reputation for hypercompetence that I don’t necessarily think he’s even fully earned, because there are more than a few instances where he decides to delegate shit to CD out of what feels to me like a sort of can’t-be-assed laziness. There’s a smugness to him that I feel is a great Achilles Heel with which to hamstring him. Even though those aren’t even the same part of the leg. Jack obviously kind of a deranged lunatic. HB is just prone to losing his shit (and his head); he’s kind of a jobber, which sucks because he’s my favorite. All together though, while they cover each other’s weaknesses pretty well, they’re just such a surly and chaotic group of dudes that they’re just as liable to bounce incorrectly off of each other than they are off of any particular challenges they tackle. It must work for them well enough, though, and I’m glad we get to play toys with them.
Floral: “Colder tones,” hellooooo sailor, it seems Mr. Sexy has entered the building.
Miles: I could continue to play coy about it but enough people publicly identified that the Dunce’s mission is in fact to blow up the Omega kids. Unfortunately, it seems that instead of doing that he blew up Ly’lac’s room on Derse exactly at the same time that her real life room exploded and launched her dreamself right out the fucking wall. Luckily she wasn’t harmed or he would have been in even more trouble than he already is. You do have to admire his instinct for serendipitously coordinated cross-reality explosions.
Floral: CD NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! starts to hysterically rip the paint off the walls
Miles: I like to imagine that the rest of the gang were on the other end of the line listening to this happen doing a Metal Gear “Dunce...? DUNCE!? DUUUUUUUNNNNNCEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” type thing. Maybe instead of imagining it I could just canonize it right here and now. Let’s just say for the sake of argument that that’s exactly what happened.
Miles: Anyway, our Menacing Figure lunges right into our next update by another serendipitously coordinated violence. It’s here that we’re given our first in-person look at the legendary CC.
Floral: Wait… CC is AWESUM???????? Loved how Kim drew this panel, truly created hype and aura. Also wanted to mention I designed the nymph here, and yes, it’s a nymph. It’s always a nymph. The team was talking about how funny it is this species keeps fooling people.
Miles: It’s always a nymph unless it isn’t. But it almost always is.
Floral: Anyways kudos to Kim, he really uplifted this design because when I drew it was vagina to the max. I’ll put that initial exploration in artist commentary though.
Miles: I love, love, love this panel. Just such a great vibe in general, and the more you all come to learn of CC the more you’ll appreciate it, probably. I know they cover this in the Artist Commentary but I wanted to get into it a bit here too, we wanted to intentionally showcase other Satyr architecture here to emphasize more of their Asian influence. Honeyfall’s campus is very emblematic of the more grecco-roman stylings that definitely do have influence in their society, but a lot of that was something we wanted to play up specifically to evoke that sort of College Feel. In fact, Honeyfall was actually inspired pretty heavily by Kyung Hee University’s Seoul campus; that smorgasbord of cultural mishmash that comes from being an engineered species is something I hope we’re able to continue to get across.
Haven: Love. That’s the feeling you have for them.
Floral: All three of us hold these characters very close to our bosoms like one awful family but we also absolutely have our favorites and CC… well… that’s my fucking little guy. The typing quirk is just very easy for me to go absolutely crazy with without feeling like I have to try too hard. While the prior conversation with Ly’lac felt like trying on something new this conversation was the breaking in.
Miles: CC’s ancient early-2000’s web lexicon just feels like home for us. Every time we write CC I’m reminded of real conversations I had when I was like 8 years old on Neopets, or the deviantArt/Livejournal/etc halcyon days of yore. I might be getting old. Anyway, that sort of highly affected, maybe even a little performative quirkiness fits pretty well for CC’s character.
Miles: “get surped” still makes me laugh a lot.
Floral: Poor AA!!! AA I love you! Why are you being abused AA? But forreal what is the deal with prophecies and nymphs?
Miles: AA joins Swiss on the pantheon of Delta kids whose highly hands-on management style with their friends is repaid with getting clowned on by accident and also on purpose. More critically, though, this conversation gets into AA’s as-of-yet-offscreen conversation with TC and we’re able to glean a bit more information implying that TC seems to be informed to a degree that rivals, and indeed even surps, AA’s fixation on providence, at least where matters of the impending game are concerned.
Floral: Pees was a splendid group effort. When writing these pesterlog it’s always good to break up the important bits with a short, quick and attention grabbing joke. It sort of resets the rhythm of the writing. Anyways now we finally get to the bit that piques CC’s interest.
Miles: Having characters roleplay stupid shit is a really great way to do that.
Floral: It’s crazy that AA is literally so nice and literally cares so much. Writing this pesterlog truly was a joy because these guys have the best quirk juxtaposition of “wordy” vs “get to the point.” Even when CC is joking around, quick jabs, parrying jabs 80% of the time suit them best.
Miles: We also get into some of the first conversational acknowledgements of CC’s name being a matter of contention. Wonder what that’s all about...? There’s a lot more we could say now but I think future updates are going to get into it in a way where our commentary on the matter will be more well-served. If CC wants to move on from the topic, then let’s respect that and do the same.
Haven: What makes me laugh is that reading this over with the others a few weeks after writing it was the realization that the way AA talks to CC reminds me of the way a mother speaks to her eldest daughter. Also despite clearly having some sort of obsession(?) with Ly’lac she seems more relaxed speaking with CC. If AA is seeing her friends in some sort of arbitrary hierarchy she is seemingly sorting CC above Ly’lac in terms of reliability, CC is someone AA can let her tendrils down around. CC AA TC CT geez louise all these initials to keep track of @_@.
Miles: One of TC’s main functions throughout this bit of Act 2 is as a coordinator of multiple separate parties of characters, shuffling them expertly together like Shaggy and Scooby might shuffle together a stack of baloney and cheese to create a delicious sandwich of coordinated interspecies gaming goodness, but it’s funny to see more of how the decisions he makes on everyone’s behalf end up being taken by the various involved parties. Interestingly enough, Swiss and AA both accept his decrees despite one of them being one of his best bros and the other barely knowing or giving a shit about him; Swiss capitulates out of respect for his friend and faith in his... skill? Expertise? Clout? All of the above? Whereas AA capitulates seemingly out of grudging respect for the causal inevitability that the weight of his words seems to hold. There’s a lot to read into what it is that Swiss and AA each see in TC and Ly’lac’s game that might tell you more not only about those two characters, but the societies they come from.
Haven: This TC guy certainly knows a lot, doesn’t he.
Floral: That last line is one of my favorites in Act 2 so far. It actually be like that though.
Miles: When you’re a kid, a bunch of people you don’t know showing up to a group hang is one of the scariest things that can possibly happen. New friends? That’s fucking scary.
Haven: All these new weirdos in the groupchat, Ly’lac made her talk to a horse man that ruined her whole day? And the golem is after her? Her life really is shit.
Floral: Homestuck and harem? Much needed. This is a turning point joke in the conversation, another moment that’s suppose to make you blink. I love stuff like this, because it makes these conversations feel more private instead of written for an audience in mind. And I love breaching CC’s little fearmongering here and how well it reveals the mutualness of their friendship. Impish characters like CC tend to come across as obnoxious/unaware in media but truly funny people are usually also very observant and tend to understand their audience. CC KNOWS AA. And in order to defeat this fatalistic mood that means getting under AA’s skin and giving her some real motivation.
Miles: You see a lot of different forms of friendly antagonism in Homestuck; I’m reminded in certain ways of the conversations Karkat and Sollux used to have and the absolutely caustic vitriol of some of the insults they’d trade together, only to reaffirm at the end that they are, indeed, still friends. CC is definitely torturing poor AA with sinister visions of the looming specter of satyr dong but it’s out of love. Maybe also just a little bit because it’s funny. Just a little.
Haven: CC is preying on the poor innocent kindly AA’s earnest trusting spirit. It hurts to watch such a gentle soul manipulated like this.
Floral: BOOM! Hook, line and sinker.
Haven: The “PROBABLY!” makes me laugh so hard.
Haven: cute.
Miles: We end with a really fantastic zoom-out sequence revealing the abyssal majesty of CC’s home, then punctuate the gravity of this moment by quoting some bullshit.
Floral: Foreseer of The Killer was so fucking funny, I’m still not over it.
Miles: I really love how completely bullshit tidal turns are as a measurement of time. Just utterly unhelpful.