Homestuck.XYZ 2.0

okay what the Fuck is up with this. It's a pain in the ass to read, with all that post post postmodernist prose, but the author clearly knows a lot about Homestuck. I can't stop thinking about it.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/10619 ... s/23486718

I think it's a puzzle. Certain characters represent Hussie's friends and are referred to as goons (members of Something Awful, the forums where SBaHJ was created).

Khalid Bhandari = Tauhid Bondia (And It Don't Stop)
Ian West = Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics/Ryanquest) Never actually shows up. Possibly the author of Modern Cannibals due to an offhand remark about Ryan writing fanfiction?
Mitchum Graves = Team Special Olympics Andrew Hussie, delighted by the perverse. Mitchum seems to respond in voice and form to people's hidden desires (Kiki's desire to be raped/Max's desire to be desired/Khalid's desire to challenge the rapper). Dissolves into orange goop, like comic!hussie. The Kelpie.
Andrew Hussie = Andrew Hussie. The Unicorn.

Maximillion Ackerman is Pegasus Maximillion from Yugioh, but I'm not sure what he represents. Why are the four horsemen relevant - and who is the fourth? What connection does Khalid have to cherubs or Lord English's host doll?

Ultimately, Max isn't being eaten at all, just changing; the Homestuck Fans are unambiguously good. but what does this say about the title?

What's Z's deal re: androgyny? Zelda and Link are confused in people's minds because of the title of their games.is this something similar? Zelda Fitzgerald? Zelda the typhoon?

I enjoyed modern cannibals, a lot, without really suspecting it of hiding a secret horseman puzzle. Buuut I've been thinking about it all day too and you've got me thinking more.

I immediately had the same thought about Ryan North, which made me confused about Mitchum Graves. You are probably right. I suspected KC Green for about a minute but that almost immediately felt hugely unfair of me (sorry KC) and then the whole thing started to unravel. I'm not exactly sure what I get out of playing the game it might want me to play here, is there a prize? Thematically I think it's as sound a work as it would be if Mitchum was like, definitely Hussie, or Byron, or whatever. But I kind of went in thinking that the search for biographical content was maybe a bad idea and kind of indulgent and inappropriate. If reading someone's work is cannibalism then what the hell is pretending to be them and writing a conversation they have on the phone about their dead dad?

For Cal, Cal is kind of a jackass, right? Logistically all the things that bother him initially make sense, and he is clearly a guy dedicated to his craft. But his callousness to Kiki just feels wrong in the moment. He is patronizing and lacking in empathy, his conversation with her in the hotel room as well as his general perception of her is utterly chilling, condescending. God I loved this bit;

"Seek self-betterment instead," said Cal. "Always strive to improve."

"Not if it KILLS YOU!" said Z.

That's got some similarity to some of the themes in homestuck that LE is around by virtue of being the biggest bad, the one that makes the rules. But that's as far as I can get with that thread, really.

Time to throw something totally crazy out there; Z gamzee? Very little is ever genuinely given out re: developing a realistic psychology for that character but if it was I think we'd see something like this.

"She wanted him to hate her, if that meant he no longer ignored her. Much as Maximillion must have known, deep down, that dressing in gold and speaking so fast and driving his car would make Hussie or Graves or that unseen, phantasmic Ian West hate him. But a hated object becomes a necessary object, a thing to be touched and interacted with, even if crushed and killed. Crushed and killed rather than discarded and abandoned; and she knew, most of all, that neither he nor her knew how to make the others love them. She knew that the task of being loved was so impossibly distant as to be unachievable; but the task of being hated at least she could reach."

I enjoyed modern cannibals, a lot, without really suspecting it of hiding a secret horseman puzzle. Buuut I've been thinking about it all day too and you've got me thinking more.

I immediately had the same thought about Ryan North, which made me confused about Mitchum Graves. You are probably right. I suspected KC Green for about a minute but that almost immediately felt hugely unfair of me (sorry KC) and then the whole thing started to unravel. I'm not exactly sure what I get out of playing the game it might want me to play here, is there a prize? Thematically I think it's as sound a work as it would be if Mitchum was like, definitely Hussie, or Byron, or whatever. But I kind of went in thinking that the search for biographical content was maybe a bad idea and kind of indulgent and inappropriate. If reading someone's work is cannibalism then what the hell is pretending to be them and writing a conversation they have on the phone about their dead dad?

:)
I don't mean to say that it's exclusively a puzzle box. but the fic is operating on multiple levels and I want to take it apart and see how it ticks! All these names are being dropped for some reason. I wasn't looking either, until I made the Tauhid connection and then I was like fuck it - if it's out there I wouldn't be surprised if this author used it, given how utterly SA they're willing to go, so it's fair game.

For Cal, Cal is kind of a jackass, right? Logistically all the things that bother him initially make sense, and he is clearly a guy dedicated to his craft. But his callousness to Kiki just feels wrong in the moment. He is patronizing and lacking in empathy, his conversation with her in the hotel room as well as his general perception of her is utterly chilling, condescending. God I loved this bit;

"Seek self-betterment instead," said Cal. "Always strive to improve."

"Not if it KILLS YOU!" said Z.

That's got some similarity to some of the themes in homestuck that LE is around by virtue of being the biggest bad, the one that makes the rules. But that's as far as I can get with that thread, really.

Hm. the most Cal Cal gets is during the rap battle when Mitchum calls him lil - and then Mitchum takes over the English role with his flagpole with a ball on the end being like LE's pimp cane

Time to throw something totally crazy out there; Z gamzee? Very little is ever genuinely given out re: developing a realistic psychology for that character but if it was I think we'd see something like this.

"She wanted him to hate her, if that meant he no longer ignored her. Much as Maximillion must have known, deep down, that dressing in gold and speaking so fast and driving his car would make Hussie or Graves or that unseen, phantasmic Ian West hate him. But a hated object becomes a necessary object, a thing to be touched and interacted with, even if crushed and killed. Crushed and killed rather than discarded and abandoned; and she knew, most of all, that neither he nor her knew how to make the others love them. She knew that the task of being loved was so impossibly distant as to be unachievable; but the task of being hated at least she could reach."

I don't know what to think of this so I'm just going to leave it here!

:)
I don't mean to say that it's exclusively a puzzle box. but the fic is operating on multiple levels and I want to take it apart and see how it ticks! All these names are being dropped for some reason. I wasn't looking either, until I made the Tauhid connection and then I was like fuck it - if it's out there I wouldn't be surprised if this author used it, given how utterly SA they're willing to go, so it's fair game.
+
Hm. the most Cal Cal gets is during the rap battle when Mitchum calls him lil - and then Mitchum takes over the English role with his flagpole with a ball on the end being like LE's pimp cane

Oh sorry, absolutely. You're right & making me realize how specific Mitchum's con booth scene/the Q&A scene really is... it's interesting that the text actively self-problematizes, which is very Homestuck. The story is(?) making a comparison between the selfishness and immaturity in human relationships & the ones in a readership-- we're all cannibals, the author, the reader, the subjects. And I feel a little bad for it but oops I bit the apple and read the whole thing in two frenetic sittings! Unlike homestuck it actually ends, and punctuates its problematization of the theme by resolving it.

I am also now wondering about the Yu-Gi-Oh thing. I mean, that character also steals souls. Maybe it was just a clue-in to the elements that would emerge later.

Good catch with the cane. Yeah, I tried to keep an eye out for visual callouts like that but missed all but Ian West & Uhhhhh brother guy going down the stairs, which is maybe a stretch but I cackled anyway.

I don't know what to think of this so I'm just going to leave it here!

A perfectly healthy reaction to the ravings of a madwoman.

popped into this thread out of curiosity, had never heard of Cannibals; subsequently stayed up all night reading it. glad I did! I'm completely intrigued, so thanks for pointing me onto this journey.

coming into the story I did think there might have been some hidden meaning to it, but by the end I'm not so sure there's really a puzzle to it. certainly I'm interested in the symbology of the work, like what the horses could mean and what the fourth one might be...

but I think the author uses existing homestuck concepts and names less as a means to lay down a homestuck-related puzzle and more as a means to help us understand the characters by connecting them to a wider mythology, which is a technique andrew uses a lot in homestuck. dirk takes a lot of obvious but inevitably meaningless mannerisms and quirks from equius; therefore even though the characters don't necessarily represent each other in any serious way, we can understand dirk further by understanding equius.

in this sense I don't think Khal necessarily "represents" Tauhid or Lil Cal the puppet; rather we get an immediate level of understanding of what kind of character he is by tying him to things we already know: the comic And It Don't Stop and a puppet belonging to dirk. I love the Cannibals characters too much to want to call them "versions" of homestuck characters, but I'll tell it how it is: Khalid is the "Strider" of the group. similarly the way she speaks and her consistent association with lavender and purple colours paints Kiki as a very Rosesque figure: even if she doesn't "represent" Rose in any meaningful way, a person who already knows who Rose is will have a headstart in knowing what kind of person Kiki is.

(I don't think the comparisons between the homestuck kids and the Cannibals kids are necessarily hard and fast and I don't think they're very important for understanding Z. or Max specifically, but I feel like it's worth pointing out that Max becomes solidly associated with the colour blue for most of the story.)

it's hard to pin Graves down as representing any one specific person... I think "old edgy hussie" is probably the closest you could get to a definitive answer, but the beard and constant references to Canadianism did have me convinced that he actually was West/North as he initially claimed. but then wasn't Andrew notoriously appearing in a lot of photographs from Canada sporting a huge beard around the time this fic was being published? to me that might indicate that the version of Hussie that Graves represents might not be so dead and gone after all.

the fact that Ian West, who never actually appears, is so obviously named after a real person while Pegasus and Graves aren't makes me think the both of them might represent different aspects of Andrew or the people around him. Graves represents the dark humourists Hussie has been known to surround himself with throughout his career; note that IPGD is one of these people and is also the one known for taking the photos of Andrew with a big beard in Canada.

Maximillian is more of an enigma, but I'm thinking about it now, and the fact that he wants to be North/West makes me wonder... does Graves represent Andrew's desire to stick with the crowd he was originally known to hang around with despite their unpopular senses of humour, while Maximillian represents Andrew's desire to break into the mainstream, to ditch the problematic aspects of himself and become someone capable of being rich and famous like North/West is? even in 2017 it was obvious that despite having the same humble origins, Andrew and North's careers were going in completely different directions: while Hussie was struggling to keep the money he needed to make a game his fans had funded for him, Ryan was working for big name comics publishers like Archie and Marvel (and continues to do so to this day).

note that while Graves is inwardly convinced he isn't a predator (that it's just "jokes) despite showing clearly predatory behaviour, Maximillian seems to be seriously concerned that he is one despite only seeming to be an innocent helper on the outside?

Maximillian is more of an enigma, but I'm thinking about it now, and the fact that he wants to be North/West makes me wonder... does Graves represent Andrew's desire to stick with the crowd he was originally known to hang around with despite their unpopular senses of humour, while Maximillian represents Andrew's desire to break into the mainstream, to ditch the problematic aspects of himself and become someone capable of being rich and famous like North/West is? even in 2017 it was obvious that despite having the same humble origins, Andrew and North's careers were going in completely different directions: while Hussie was struggling to keep the money he needed to make a game his fans had funded for him, Ryan was working for big name comics publishers like Archie and Marvel (and continues to do so to this day).

Damn, I had not considered that angle but I think it enhances my reading a lot. (As many heebie-jeebies as it gives me to psychoanalyze even the completely fictional doppelganger of a person.)

I have been pondering a while if I am a huge hypocrite for liking Modern Cannibals while not really approving of the epilogues, despite understanding & agreeing with what they were aiming for. I think MC manages better to be an utterly cursed experience without ever making excuses for itself. It's an uncomfortable read, it does inappropriate things, but it never even tries to justify its presence. It just exists and you have to deal with it! The ending is also very... sweet? So if anybody is poking their head in here wondering if they should give it a read, I have finally come around to wanting to openly recommend it, but with a content warning for Literally Everything.

I think one of the big differences between Cannibals and the Epilogues is that while Cannibals is a story about Fucked Up Things Happening To Children, the modus operandus of the Epilogues is more about how These Children Are Adults Now And That Means They Will Take Part In And Be Subjected To Fucked Up Things.

I won't say either of these things are more conducive to good storytelling - I enjoyed Cannibals and the Epilogues differently, for different reasons - but I can say that one thing that gets said about Homestuck over and over again is that it doesn't "do a good job" at depicting children going through fucked up things. in Homestuck stuff happens to characters in metaphor. Vriska isn't the victim of child abuse - she was just manipulated by a puppet into doing evil things! Dave isn't the victim of child abuse - his parent was just training him to be a ninja! Gamzee wasn't a juvenile substance addict - he's just a clown who eats pies that make him act funny!

The Epilogues turn that pattern on its head by having the characters go through Real Problems as adults; meanwhile, and again, I hate to say Modern Cannibals is "like if Homestuck was X" because I have so much love for it as a standalone piece of text, but I think Cannibals tells a completely different kind of story to that by employing the original Homestuck's brand of coming of age whimsy to talk about the same sort of Real Problems; instead of fighting imps and dealing with interstellar alien relationships the Cannibals kids are subject to racism and homophobia and sexual abuse.

I don't think this angle is seriously conducive to interpreting Cannibals as a text nor do I think comparing Cannibals to the Epilogues is helpful or chronologically accurate, but if you feel differently about the two stories i think these things are key factors as to why that might be.

I don't think this angle is seriously conducive to interpreting Cannibals as a text nor do I think comparing Cannibals to the Epilogues is helpful or chronologically accurate, but if you feel differently about the two stories i think these things are key factors as to why that might be.

Well me neither!

But I was wondering where the disconnect was happening for me re: Fucked Up Things. And I think your explanation is likely as correct as mine, they are different because they are different and their contexts are different, Duh Momo, mystery solved. Ultimately I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I like how Cannibals dealt with its nastiness, and that's as true as it would be in a vacuum.

oh I didn't think you did! I'm mostly reassuring myself, in a way.

I'm very cautious about comparing Cannibals to other things because of the unique relationship it has with "Canon" and "Source Material". I think it sort of dares the reader to try to compare it to something else, almost to the point of mocking the idea of comparative literature.. or maybe I just feel too much for the characters to try to break them down into platonic chunks of digestible concept, like some kind of.. hmm.

I really loved Modern Cannibals, and I've talked with the author a couple times. Ian West seems like obviously Ryan North, but the author said the naming scheme is a coincidence, so I guess not.

The good thing about this work is that it's still good even if you don't analyze it that deeply, especially considering the viewpoints we're given. A puzzle is a good way to put it.

Oh, I didn't realize it was on AO3. I thought it was just on ff.net. I still haven't bothered reading it, but this does make the prospect a lot easier.

As someone who read a post on tumblr about Cannibals and saw a tag that said "I recommend it to people who loved the Epilogues," I was confused because the content of the post seems to be the opposite.

Homestuck cares a lot about the concept of Death of the Author, with fractals upon fractals of perspectives, the concept of a singular canon/continuity being compared to an oppressive fascism. While the post said that Modern Cannibals seems to posit a more solipsistic approach: that the author is the only one that matters. And also there's four Hussies? Whatever.

Plus, I don't think it could top Karkat Goes To A Convention, which also takes place at a convention, but we'll see about that.