Y’all know I’ve not really been following hiveswap super closely. This sinking feeling in my gut has almost nothing to do with that. This stupid fucking anxiety twisting up my guts is about Homestuck, it’s about sprawling weird gloriously complex hilarious and awful and great and foul and obscene and emotional and earnest and fucking gay as all goddamn get out HOMESTUCK. It’s about dave and rose and roxy and dirk and karkat and kanaya and meenah and found families and nature vs nurture and character arcs and fucking catharsis.
It’s about how I was pretty much at peace with Homestuck being done and over and being satisfied with what I got and happy that my grievances with its ending didn’t end up ruining my perception of its overall goodness, that there was a piece of media I loved this much in my life again, it’s about how I was okay with what seemed to be happening and now who fucking knows?
It’s about Homestuck having a multi million dollar company making news posts under an inaccessible corporate name while the actual people, the interesting and imperfect but invested and very talented and overwhelmingly queer group of real actual people who have worked very hard to keep the IP alive are all slapping their resumes on twitter and moving on under an NDA that ensures we’ll probably never know what happened
It’s about how now there’s this looming worry in my soul that this company won’t just leave it the fuck alone
just leave it the fuck alone. Just don’t fucking touch it. Please just don’t fucking touch it I know how corporations treat queer stories and I would way way way way rather never know where the fucking masterpiece fits in with our current understanding of canon than have some fucking soulless company roll in and give reddit everything they fucking want
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.
Question: if we sold our souls to Hussie, but VIZ takes over, does that mean they own our souls now, or…
much like how lenders can sell your student loans, souls also exchange hands in the same manner! if homestuck belongs to viz now than apparently our soul are too.
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