i read the epilogues (lol)

and the first thing I wanna say after searching up on people's experience on the epilogues before I read it is that it is very very very obvious that they're supposed to be treated as the direct sequel to Homestuck and I mean come on. The whole "canon" bullshit talk is interesting (but still annoyingly meta) for the plot but to see people discuss about it irl unironically feels like a gigantic larp.

The only thing I enjoyed reading was John's recruitment and fight with LE because it was the answer to what happened after Act 7 and was also the reintroduction of the pre-retcon cast of kids that I still viewed as the "real" version of themselves, even though it was super brief. It was a nice read. I probably enjoyed it too much because now that version of Dave that's both pre-retcon and ACTUALLY lived out his destiny of fighting LE pretty much died being the real Dave to me, so now reading the other two versions of Dave in the epilogues there's a part of my mind that's calling them frauds which was something I couldn't change like with the other cast of beta and alpha kids (now adults).

Everything else felt okish. It's clear on how different the characters have become and whatnot but I don't think I was really invested in any of the characters that entered Earth C anyways. Themes got darker, like way darker, and although it was nice for a change, it's still hard to take all this existential shit seriously when it's the same story that has Dave talk to Obama himself or Jake listening to Gamzee fucking his wife.

I can perfectly understand why a lot of people hated the epilogues, and even though I really hated how the romance stuff got focused more to satisfy all the shit ton of shippers while it also directly made some victims of it feel very bland, it was overall too boring to hate in its entirety.

Speaking on the romance stuff, Dave & Karkat felt like borderline fanfiction for how their convos played out and how painfully obsessed they are for each other, which genuinely sucks because they used to be my favorite characters and honestly still are whenever they're doing their own thing. I think its pretty clear on whatever ship the Homestuck community used to be the most fixated on, it was between those two, and I hate it so much man. There was like a page about them holding hands or some shit and I felt like I was losing my fucking mind.

Like apart from the changes of the characters themselves, there were a lot of questionable stuff happening that was making up the plot. Like how the fuck does being the Prince of Heart even make you the narrator in the first place that also makes you aware of us readers? Ultimate Dirk is somehow stronger than Lord English and is on the same level as Alt Calliope and that just makes absolutely no sense. Fuck the super powerful master classes when you can luck yourself with whatever Dirk got, wtf would a master class of the Heart aspect even look like? Hussie himself?

It all feels like Hussie is just refusing to let this story end because of the revenue and/or narrator's love and whatnot. Epilogues are supposed to provide closures, but the Homestuck's spin on it ended up expanding the plot massively as its now revealed to be the prequel to HS^2 that's still running today. It felt like the only way they could continue the story was to make shit even more meta, and then Ultimate DIrk and Alt Calliope having a narrative dance off came to be.