I've
been meaning to type up something illuminating the process behind HS
since the end of Act 2. I tend to stay pretty tight-lipped about it
in
the news section, since I'd honestly rather spend time making it
than
yapping about it all day. But hey I still realize that now and then
I
should strive to descend from above the stage, perched on my
moon-shaped
swing with my legs all a kickin' and swayin', and with ukelele
cradled
to my bosom, let you folks in on my FEELINGS.
But I just
couldn't
get up the gumption to sit down and COMPOSE with a capital C, and
some
other capitalized letters, some serious self-contained literary
piece on
the subject. So instead I just opened up a Q&A session in the
MSPA
community and this is how it went.
Some of these answers
are pretty long. I guess because I like to pretend what I do is
complicated and nuanced.
Are
user commands really affecting all that much? Other than the occasional
"Squawk like an imbecile and shit on your desk" command.They are, but their influence is not always
obvious.
A
command is actually a pretty superficial thing. It is only supposed
to
influence the present panel through a single atomic action. It
shouldn't
serve the function of aa command like "Plot: Take a certain
direction I
have in mind." A command can't try to do too much, but they often
do.
With this sort of thing, there will always be tension between the
author
and the suggestors, whose main purpose is to leave their distinctive
personal stamp on the story, and as a result, often resort to the
outlandish, the overly elaborate, or the non sequitur. These are
fine to
embrace in small doses, but they are poison to a cohesive story if
resorted to regularly.
Consequently, actions of a more
straightforward variety become favored, and the appearance which
follows
is that the user voice has been diminished. This is compounded with
a
great abundance of commands. A simple example. The hero approaches
three
doors. Which will you choose? Obviously all three doors will be
suggested with a large enough pool of suggestors, plus plenty of
clever
non sequitur "option D" commands. Knowing this, which door the hero
goes
through was always up to the author, whether he pre-planned it, or
merely delayed the decision until the suggestions were made.
This
principle is in play even with more complicated examples. A room
full
of objects. What will you do? For all intents, every possibility
will be
suggested. When the author knows he will have the field of ALL
POSSIBILITY to choose from, it begins to mirror a more conventional
writing process. That is what a writer does. He sits at his desk,
combing through the field of all possibility in his mind, and
arrives at
the specific. This situation naturally leads to more pre-planning,
and
the greater appearance of marginalizing user input. But it is not a
slight to the user. It is the nature of the creative process,
rearing
its head through this format.
Any remark like "This story is
not
user-driven enough," I believe is code for "This story is not
haphazard
enough." The wild and unusual commands are the ones that really make
it
feel like a gaggle of whimsical readers is in charge, imbuing the
narrative with a sense of freedom, a feeling that the hero could do
truly anything. The essence of freedom in this sense is the
uncompromising subjugation of restraint. It is possible that this is
also the exact opposite of what a good story requires! Regardless,
the
truth is almost all the commands are user suggestions, even the
vanilla
ones, which soften the voice of the user. Some are commands of a
certain
type I was looking for in advance, to push the action in a direction
I
had in mind. That is fairly unavoidable. To avoid it all the time
would
be unnatural, like a lobotomization of the creative process for the
sake
of maniacal adherence to a gimmick. But probably more often than
not, I
select commands on a whim, without any such narrative
agendas.
I've
kicked the tires on this format pretty aggressively. I've done the
"pick the first command no matter what" thing, with its stream of
consciousness results. I've kept the command selection more sedate
and
rational at times. And there are some stretches when I'm practically
oblivious to the suggestion box, such as one or two week periods
where
my sole focus is on intensive animation chores, and the last thing
on my
mind is "How can I get the readers more involved at the helm of this
story??" At times there gets to be a point where, with a story of
this
scope, the author can start to hear himself say, "Oh great guys,
just
what I need. More funny ideas!" The format, if nothing else, has a
way
of turning the author into a firehose of ideas, or at least it seems
to
for me. It sounds counter-intuitive, but eventually the best way to
advance a story starts to be seeking strategies to curtail the
endless
stream of novelty, and slow the idea machine down a bit. I've done
this
at times by diminishing the influence of commands.
The
introduction of the Wayward Vagabond as the command voice was an
example of this. More on that topic later.
How much do you have planned in advance right now? It's
hard to quantify. It helps to understand what planning actually
means in this context.
When
you do something like this, it seems like the attitude of many
readers
is that the action should be almost entirely extemporaneous, or at
least
be sold to feel that way. Otherwise, why bother implementing user
input
at all? When evidence of planning becomes exposed, it carries the
appearance of cheating in a way. Like an improv comic, who largely
relies on the appearance of being off the cuff for his act to feel
authentic. If the audience catches on that some of the material was
prepared in advance, or that the go-to jokes are applicable
regardless
of what suggestion is shouted from the crowd, it loses
something.
But I'm not actually that concerned with this
issue. It's not a problem. Just an observation.
The
long and short is, some very big picture stuff is planned in
advance,
and has been since page 1. In particular, various SYSTEMS were
planned.
Systems related to how the game works, how items are manufactured,
how
the environment is manipulated, aspects of the virtual universe they
enter, and the ultimate purpose of the game. These are systems, but
systems alone do not a plot make.
When it comes to plot
elements,
very little planning is done, and practically none at all before
page
1. A good example of the story taking an unanticipated turn is the
post-apocalyptic elements, which I really had no idea I'd be getting
into from the start. It felt like a necessary dynamic to add to the
gaming system to help raise the stakes in the story. It was actually
influenced by the various apocalyptic movie posters in John's room,
and
the discussions they had about them. Those were not planted in
advance
as foreshadowing, because there was nothing yet to foreshadow.
Retroactive foreshadowing is a pretty common occurrence with
projects
like this. It often solidifies the illusion of planning. This was a
case
where some trivial nonsense I injected into the story turned out to
be
extremely relevant. Sometimes that happens with my own nonsense,
sometimes it happens with reader-supplied nonsense.
But
assuming
there is some element of planning - and there is - the only issue
remaining is how far in advance does story planning occur? That's
why
the subject of planning vs. extemporaneous story building is tricky.
Plans don't exist... UNTIL SUDDENLY THEY DO! For example, there was
a
time when Jade (then known as "GG") made casual reference to having
a
pet, and a grandfather. These simple facts become a lock in the
story,
and it would be months until those details were elaborated upon. In
the
passing months, while I attend to other parts of the story, I have
no
choice but to dwell on those things she casually mentioned, and
think
about who they are, and how they fit into the bigger picture. This
is
certainly a form of planning, and the reader was witness to the
plan's
conception. And though technically, plot details which are sat on
and
incubated for months can no longer be considered extemporaneous, the
ideas sure were extemporaneous when they were first
mentioned!
This
is exactly how most things end up being "planned". A concept is
dropped
on the reader, and then goes into hiding for a while. I think about
it
in the shadows. But even then, I deliberately keep the planned
aspects a
little vague and open-ended, so they can be modified to fit the
details
of the story when the time comes. This was especially evident when I
started replaying certain Pesterchum conversations, from the other
character's vantage in the past. At one point Dave was complaining
about
puppets. You could only picture what was going on at his end. In
fact, I
didn't even know, and I didn't really want to know. I let his
narrative
catch up to that point, then molded the events to match his side of
the
conversation. Again, the illusion of planning arises.
That's
what I do with every concept introduced. I try to keep it a little
generalized and flexible, something I can return to later with more
refinement, and mix with user input. That was the driving paradigm
behind all the game systems. Everywhere you look with the game
systems,
you see inherent flexibility. The ability to combine items with
other
items. The ability to prototype a Kernelsprite with anything, twice.
The
ability to manipulate a house in almost any way.
The
philosophy
here is two-fold. The obvious side of it is, it allows readers a
more
built-in means of influencing the world we create here. But the less
obvious motivation, and maybe the more important one, is that it
helps
spark the imagination of the reader. The story, ultimately, can only
go
down the path it goes down. But before it does, the reader can
understand these game mechanics, and speculate on all the
possibilities.
What sort of objects would you combine if you were playing the game?
What would you prototype with? What kind of villains would that
create?
There are millions of different versions of the game that could be
played, a unique instance for each player. This is all theoretically
supposed to be part of the fun.
Have you ever gotten ideas from the forum but not the suggestion box? Yes,
and in fact it's safe to say I get most ideas from the forum
community
at this point. At least more of the major story changing ideas come
from
there, while the suggestion box plays the role of driving the
page-by-page action.
When I integrated the suggestion box
into a
forum instead of a comments page, thus sparking a pretty vital
community
of story discussion, it changed a lot about how I interface with
user
input. Discussion and speculation about the story is much more
engaging
and nuanced than user commands can be, which are generally along the
lines of "Do this. It will be funny."
There have been a few
times
where I've read theories people are throwing around, and I'll just
run
with it in the story. Most often it will be a case where I was
vaguely
entertaining the same notion, but hadn't yet committed to it, and
seeing
it vocalized as speculation tips the scale in the idea's
favor.
One
example I can think of is when people were trying to guess what
Jade's
grandfather's interests would be. People often try to make guesses
about
this sort of thing, because I tend to establish a lot of patterns,
like
each guardian having a kooky collection, each kid having a certain
primary weapon and instrument, each kid potentially corresponding to
a
future desert-dweller, and so on. I then either adhere to the
pattern,
or disregard it, almost arbitrarily. This keeps readers on their
toes.
But in this case, people guessed quite a number of things, including
knights, mummies, and game trophies. I ran with those three, plus a
pretty strange wildcard interest on top of those to mix it
up.
It's
hard to think of a lot of good examples of this though, possibly
because all sources of inspiration have sort of blurred together. It
gets hard to trace back to the origins of many of the
ideas.
When
did the Wayward Vagabond come into play? Was it something vague like
"there's some dude in the future who accidentally stumbles his way into
these events somehow", or was he almost entirely just made up as things
went along ala the segment we "played" as him? Did you only decide
things about him playing part in a grander chess metaphor when you
started working with Nanna's exposition? Did you always know that he
ended up where Rose once was?That's a lot of questions! I'll group it all under what I'll dub THE WV
UMBRELLA.
WV
was introduced, indirectly, at the beginning of Act 2 as another way
to
experiment with the format. Though the reader didn't know it at the
time, WV was issuing the commands instead of the readers. All the
readers knew was there was a funny voice controlling John, and that
the
suggestion box was locked. Or put in a more story-relevant way, the
box
had been "blown up", a consequence of the meteor impact. The image
in
the box was
replaced
with a crater, and in the weeks that followed that crater
underwent gradual
geological
changes.
Of course, only those who looked inside the suggestion box were
privy
to this aspect of the story, but that progression of images would
resurface again at the end of Act 2.
The main purpose of the
WV
command experiment was to take a step back from that tension of the
author-user dynamic for a while, and see how that went. The tension
being primarily in the struggle to control the direction of the
story.
With a fictional character at the helm, you not only have a voice
that
can be more cooperative with advancing the plot (even though he
didn't
sound that cooperative), but also can be a more distinctive and
unified
voice of an actual character, with his own yet unknown agenda. It
stayed
that way for about a month I think. It was interesting for a while,
but
in the end I decided it wasn't the best way to drive the story in
the
long run, so I reverted to business as usual.
But the plan
with
WV, from the first command he issued, was that eventually he would
become a playable character. I thought he would be playable (i.e.
taking
user commands) while the kids' actions remained buffered in that
way.
Of course it didn't quite pan out like that. They all became
playable at
once, each with his/her own suggestion box. But the difference with
WV
was that I made a concerted effort never to plan anything about his
story arc. In fact, I've been pretty religious about keeping
everything
that happens in the post-apocalypse arcs as unplanned as possible. I
don't think about it until I have to. So WV's story evolved very
organically, entirely through cues from reader commands, much like
the
beginning of Problem Sleuth. But unlike Problem Sleuth, he existed
in a
world full of already well established story elements, so the
whimsical
material sort of collided with the more intricate storyline that had
developed. So I could use his slapdash shenanigans to continue to
expose
layers of the mythology behind the greater story, like the chess
metaphor and the kingdoms, all sort of indirectly through chalk
drawings
and cans of Tab and such. His arc was one of the more fun to execute
for this reason.
His involvement was pretty spur of the
moment, a
way to drastically mix things up. There was no grand architecture to
it
at all, other than "he will issue commands, and then later, users
will
issue commands for him." But given that, I'm surprised by how his
involvement made Act 2 feel like a fairly cohesive piece overall. It
began with him finding the underground bunker in a wasteland. We
knew
nothing of him other than what a few cranky directives indicated
about
him. We watched him learn and develop, and later, in interacting
with
him directly, he supplied some reasons to like him and root for him.
And
finally at the end of the act, he blasts off in that bunker he found
to
open the act, and we see sequences that tie back to the end of Act
1,
such as the meteor collision with John's house, and the geological
evolution of the crater that taunted anyone who tried to make a
suggestion for a month.
Of course, these sequences raised
more questions than they answered. After all, it was only Act 2.
Do you have any idea when you plan to wrap up Homestuck, or are you going to let it go until it reaches its natural conclusion? Originally
I thought it would run for a year, like PS did. From 04/13/09 to
04/13/10.
But
that seems unrealistic now. It has taken a lot longer to get the
story
revved up than I thought. This is largely due to experimenting with
and
taking the time to master different media, like Flash. But also due
to
the more general and universally applicable principal: EVERYTHING
WILL
TAKE LONGER THAN YOU THINK IT WILL, ALWAYS. I never planned to run
PS
for a year from the start. It just worked out that way. If I had, it
probably would have taken two years.
What I'm thinking now
is,
04/13/10 will still be a key date. The story will build to something
critical on that date. But then it will keep going for a while
longer,
to allow it to wrap up more naturally. Whether this is for another
year,
or less, I can't say. But I'd rather it not be more.
Do you know how Homestuck's going to end? And what do you think the next adventure might be?I
definitely don't. And I'm not even sure if there will be a next
adventure.
The
nature of this site's output is very fluid. The execution of content
is
quite different from what it was even one year ago (though still
stylistically similar). Exactly one year divides
this
update and
this
update.
If
I was showed the latter example one year ago, and was told to
produce
stuff like that in any sustainable way, I probably would have said
that
sounded kinda crazy! But that was before this self-imposed gauntlet
of
working with Flash and figuring out more efficient animation
strategies.
But
watching the site evolve to support that type of content has me
thinking it will just keep evolving. The broadest purpose of the
site is
to serve as a sort of accelerator for my abilities as a creator. At
least in retrospect, that is the purpose it's served. By the time
I'm
ready to move on to a new adventure, the footing may have shifted so
much, it may not even be an "adventure" as we know it. Regardless,
I'm
sure there'll be something to follow, and I'll keep producing
content.
Unless I decide to be a douche and just up and quit.
We'll see.
When did the first defined concept of homestuck hit you?At
some point during the last few months of working on PS. The
inspiration
centered around a simple scene I had in my head, and not much else.
I
pictured a kid playing a game in his room, while another player
manipulated his room the way you edit an environment in The Sims. I
pictured the kid being able to manipulate the other kid's
environment
too, but it wasn't long before I latched on to the potential
conflict
present in one kid strictly being at the mercy of the other. Over
time I
came up with other game mechanics to complement this, and add some
degree of purpose. In this time I also developed this image of a
story
template that combined an RPG like Earthbound with games like The
Sims
and Spore. Even now that still seems like a pretty good way to
describe
Homestuck, though the story didn't unfold the way I pictured at all.
I
also designed all four characters
shortly before I started HS. I didn't know much about these
characters
at the time, other than some really vague personality profiles.
Users
named them as they were introduced.
Did you have names to refer to the characters before they were named by the users, and what were these names if there were any?No,
but they did always have their Pesterchum handles before they were
named.
Was 'Homestuck' the only title you had in mind for Homestuck, or were there other titles you considered but decided not to use?The
only other candidate I considered was "Sburb", which was a sort of
deliberately ugly word reminiscent of the name of a Sim game. You
could
either liken it to Sim-burb, or to Spore, another crude 5-letter
word
beginning with S. But for that reason, that it's kind of crude and
really awkward to say, I thought it was best left as just the name
of
the game in the game.
Besides, Homestuck better follows the
templates of the previous adventure titles, like
Jailbreak.
If I remember correctly, the designs we have for the kids were your second attempt. If so, can we see the first designs?I
don't know if I still have the sketch. Probably not. Basically,
picture the kids as they are now, but with squarer heads.
Like
the thugs from PS. It didn't look right.
Did
you ever compensate for the age jump from 10 to 13 after the failed
beta, or do you still kinda think of all the characters as 10?First of all, the beta was a success in
that it helped illuminate what a horrible idea it was to do 100% of
the pages in Flash.
To
provide background on this, I started HS on 4/10 at first, using
this
method. I gave up, restarted on 4/13, with less frequent
interspersals
of Flash. Through the arbitrarily designated significance of the
starting date, it went from a story about 4 10 year olds to one
about 4
13 year olds.
To answer: not at all. The age never mattered.
There's a tradition in cartooning of ignoring the age of a child
when
considering his/her demeanor and degree of sophistication. See:
Calvin
and Hobbes. Cartoon kids will act according to their age when it
feels
relevant. Other times, they won't.
Maybe the biggest
difference
in the hop in age is the very slightly added plausibility to
speculation
on any romantic angle between them. This is very important for fans
who
aspire to, and are busy even now, shipslashing these characters into
oblivion. I have done the world this service.
Are you happy with the level of user input as it is? Do you wish there were more commands? Less commands? Less stupid commands?I
want the commands to be only what they are going to be. There's
always
going to be a lot of absurdity to sift through, and sometimes, to
run
with. That's part of the process.
Do
you intend to introduce a whole bunch of characters like in PS, and if
it's not too specific, will the TrollSlums become significant?I'm
sure there will be plenty more characters when all is said and done.
I've got ideas for what to do with the trolls, but as with
everything,
these plans remain vague until proven specific.
You make a lot of story and update decisions on the fly. Are there any you've regretted?No.
The stakes just aren't high enough for regret to be a factor. The
flow
of the story is always kept loose and pretty light. Once I've
committed
something to canon, it becomes a feature of reality. It doesn't need
to
be judged. Only built upon.
I can see if you are a creator
and
you are laying down some SERIOUS SHIT, like a really brooding
vampire
story, or a romance novel or something, the author may operate with
a
sense of anxiety that mistakes can be made. I will probably never
create
anything like that.
How do you
deal with the inability to go back and change details from earlier in
the story? Do you ever have good ideas that you have to scrap because of
something that happened earlier on?This question is related to the one above. It's a non-issue. Once
it's cemented in the story, that's it.
I
am never disappointed in not getting to use a good idea due to
conflict
with the facts. First, because ideas that conflict with the facts
never
actually occur to me. Second, because ideas are a dime a dozen. I
have
too many as it is.
I know you don't plan out much beyond the most barest of bones, but at what point do you take something and really roll it out?"Roll
it out" could mean a lot of things. The biggest variable here I
think
is how far in advance. Once a certain concept is committed to, it
becomes inevitable to follow through with it via some sort of plan,
but
it's rarely that far in advance.
Like with the WV sequence,
he
draws a chess board, and eventually it becomes clear to me he is
going
to play a simulated game of chess. So I think "Ok, he's already got
16
cans over there which can serve as the major pieces like knights and
rooks and such. I'm going to need another 16 pawns, so I'll stick 16
cans of Tab in the other vault." That's a plan committed to in
advance
by days, or a week, or whatever it was.
But then knowing
that,
it's a little deceptive what was planned that way, and what wasn't.
You
might think I stuck the oil and chalk in the room to manufacture
those
outcomes, the chess game and the wall drawings. Not true at all. The
oil, chalk, amber and uranium were stuck in the room strictly as
parallels to the four types of known grist. The fact that he used
them
in those ways was a convenient bonus, and could possibly be viewed
as a
happy coincidence. Honestly when I drew the firefly in the amber, it
never occurred to me that it would be released and become a cute
ally.
You
could look at these stories, HS and PS mostly, as huge strings of
these
happy coincidences. When I recognize the potential for those kinds
of
connectivity, I try to make as much hay out of them as possible.
The
kernelsprites seem like a great potential way to let input radically
impact the course of the story. Do you have all of the prototypings
planned ahead already, or do you intend to leave at least some of them
up to reader influence?There have been significant
allusions in the story that certain prototyping outcomes are
inevitable.
Will this pan out? We'll see. Nothing is set in stone.
But
this was always an area where I'd intended readers to have
significant influence, and I'm sure it still will be.
Were the Guardians already planned (with designs?) along with the kids, or were they designed later?All
the guardians were drawn a day or two before they first
appeared.
And for the really big things (lets say the flash), what's the averageish storyboarding time for it?Never
more than 10 minutes. Spending too much time on storyboarding feels
like wasting time I could be spending on the "real" work.
Time
spent on actual execution of a Flash animation on average is a day
(or a
night, more typically). The one requiring the most time was the end
of
Act 2 animation (obviously, I'm sure), which took something like 3
or 4
days. It's hard to say for sure, because I was making the WV
countdown
animation that preceded simultaneously.
A cruel irony for me
personally is that the longest hiatuses the site has to endure are
periods of time over which I am working the hardest.
OH WELL.
How much better at Flash would you say you are now than when you started?Good
enough to use it. More than can be said when I started. Speed is the
primary dividend of experience for me. It may seem like I'm getting
better with the quality of the animation at the same time. But if
this
is the case I think this mostly results from increased speed. When I
learn how to save time, I always tend to apply those time-savings to
producing things that are increasingly elaborate. The latter half of
Problem Sleuth documented this phenomenon with animated
GIFs.
Do you plan to use the same kind of sound effects shown in the first strife page of John for future flash updates?I
think I'm done with the SFX. They're sort of a pain to create and
add,
and I'm a bit neutral on how they enhance the experience. Later on I
might completely change my mind though. Who knows.
What is your favorite color?I
am equally suspicious of all of them, though we begrudgingly
collaborate through an uneasy truce.
Did you learn from personal experience, or did someone else warn you about stairs bro!!!!I
fell down some stairs once as a child and have been warning people
ever since. It just keeps happening.
Are
there any aspects of homestuck that were consciously modeled on
real-life experiences you've had? i.e. Do you have a grandmother who
would always bake you cookies, etc...My dad has always
been exceptionally doting like John's, and even to this day he tries
to
give me food in quantities and scenarios which defy rational
explanation. Similarities end there though. He's worn a tie maybe
once,
and has never thrown a pie at me.
A lot of the Pesterchum
dialogue is based on my own experience with messaging. Particularly
Dave's style is modeled after a chatting style I've cultivated with
a
number of internet friends. Some of his conversations have been
lifted
word for word from my own chat logs, modified somewhat for
context.
So, I know about the EarthBound parallels, kind of, but what about Mother 3? I
haven't played it. I hardly play any games these days, and all of my
gaming knowledge is flash-frozen from around 2005 and earlier. This
I
imagine is how creators become popculturally dated. They get to the
point where they spend so much time making stuff, they no longer
have
time to interface with popular media of any sort. I figure I have
another decade before all my frozen references start seeming
legitimately stale, and not in a cool retro way.
Guess that's
all I gotsta say for now!
I
would like to do some more fan art soon for other comics I like.
Though
I cannot promise these works will appear in books! They will at
least
appear in this blog. And soon, in your heart.
