doctorwhooian:

boomstormmedia:

HOKAY, *SO*. A lot of shit’s been changing over the past few days-to-weeks surrounding What Pumpkin, Homestuck, and Hiveswap, and I feel like rambling about it a little. Dunno if I have a specific “point” to make with this post, but we’ll see where it takes us.

First off, to get it out of the way, I don’t despise the site redesign. I’m really glad that the flashes and games are being converted to newer file types, because I’ll be honest, I was a little worried about those disappearing once Flash gets phased out. It’s also neat that you can enjoy it on mobile now, so that’s cool. There are some things, of course, that seem to have been lost in translation, which is unfortunate, but for the most part, I am not completely against the changes, especially given the good things that are happening as a result of them. What I’m not too keen on is the pop-up ads. They are intrusive on the reading experience, and I would much prefer either regular banner or sidebar ads.

Now, it’s time to turn our attention to some of the less exciting happenings that have been going on. Let’s talk about Hiveswap. In case you guys are unaware, recently a large number of people (seemingly the entire team) have “left” What Pumpkin. We were previously aware of James and Phil leaving, but as of today, it appears that Toby, Cohen, Shelby, and most likely others that I am personally not aware of, have also left. In addition, any information relating to What Pumpkin as a company has been scrubbed from Hiveswap.com, as well as any related sites. This is very concerning to me. 

There are a lot of questions I have right now. The most obvious of which being, what’s going to happen with acts 3 and 4? What about Hauntswitch? Are they all cancelled? If not, who’s working on them? Is ANYONE from the old staff still on the project? Is Hussie even still involved in any capacity?

That last question is perhaps the one I’m most curious about. The new site doesn’t help assuage my concerns much either. VIZ was behind the most recent news posting on Homestuck.com, instead of Hussie as it is normally, and VIZ Media is now included in the copyright info at the bottom of the page. And with all these people leaving What Pumpkin, I’m really hoping the same hasn’t happened to Hussie. As far as I’m concerned, Homestuck, as well as anything related to it, are Hussie’s projects. If he isn’t there to, at the very least, oversee them, any new content that is released doesn’t “count” in my opinion. I’m also really curious about what this means for the epilogue, as I know it’s been said that VIZ is assisting with that as well.

So, all in all, I just really hope we get some official word about this soon. Nobody seems to know what’s going on, and the people who most likely do can’t say anything due to NDA’s. If Hiveswap is done and Homestuck is just straight-up owned by VIZ Media now, I think the fandom deserves to know.

Oh. @floralmarsupial