WhatPumpkin, LLC / Homestuck, Inc. : Chuck Tingle, Andrew Hussie and Friends - feat. Rachel Rocklin, Shelby Cragg, and Cohen Edenfield

[Kaabi]

Mostly just because a.) they needed more money, b.) their management was shitty, and c.) they were likely too inexperienced to work on a 3D title.

If you feel you don't understand what's happening now, or missed the details on why they changed to 2D, READ THE THREAD. I cannot stress that enough.

Lol, calm down.

I've been reading this thread on and off and just discovered Viz owns Homestuck.

 

[Questionable Ceviche]

When did Viz officially buy the IP? They might have been able to get it for cheap considering the fanbase is dead and the game was embarrassingly underwhelming.

 

[D. Sweatshirt]

Lol, calm down.

I've been reading this thread on and off and just discovered Viz owns Homestuck.

Wonderful.

When did Viz officially buy the IP? They might have been able to get it for cheap considering the fanbase is dead and the game was embarrassingly underwhelming.

Based on some past research, either right around the time Hiveswap: Act One came out or (more realistically) during the summer beforehand. Kind of an odd time considering Hiveswap was right about to come out, but I guess he knew it would flop regardless of how much work they put in.

 

[Vile Vulture]

I didn't even know that the What Pumpkin store still existed? Didn't they shut that down ages ago and move all their merch over to WLF/By Fans for Fans? A few years ago they had a big sale like this one where they unloaded all their stock.

It's supposed to be closed by now but there was too much stock leftover from their last closing sale.

 

[BuckBumble]

lol at Toby Fox still working there and getting fired along with the rest. Guy's set for life anyway.

 

[D. Sweatshirt]

Today I’m going to be talking about Shelby Cragg. Not just because she’s the archetype for every Tumblrina with a foothold in the industry; it’s also because she grabbed ahold of Homestuck in a big way and turned it into what it is today: a garbage fire.

Some of you mentioned earlier in the thread that Shelby was responsible for some pretty cancerous stuff in the fandom. Promstuck and Gamzee and Terezi’s awful, awkward blackrom later in the comic stand out in particular. But did you know she was likely the one responsible for ruining the ending to Homestuck itself?

Take it straight from the horse’s mouth:

Spoiler: Shelby Looks Back

“Back in 2010, I was a young college student. I was massively depressed and confused about my identity. My mental illness had isolated from me from my friends and family, and my life felt hopeless. So, as many young people do, I channeled all of my heart and soul into creating fanart, fanmixes, cosplay, fan fiction, and meta posts about my favorite webcomic: /Homestuck/, by Andrew Hussie. I was SO prolific in the fandom that in 2012, Andrew asked me to do the canon art for a fangirl parody character, “Calliope”. Of course, I accepted right away! It was so much fun getting to put a lot of myself into this character through her art.

Calliope is an alien character that shares a body with her “brother”, Caliborn. Together they live in complete isolation, chained up and only allowed to talk to people on their computers. Caliborn is a raging misogynist who is determined to break down Calliope’s will to live and ultimately kill her. Calliope’s goal was to reform her brother, to make him more like her, so that their personalities could integrate into one powerful being, with her as the dominate force.

Throughout 2012 and 2013, my popularity and following in the fandom grew due to my insanely prolific nature. (Seriously, my mental health was so bad that Homestuck was the ONLY thing I let myself think about. I lived my entire life in a dissociative haze.) I became, as they are called, a “big name fan”, and as such, I started to receive a hell of a lot of harassment. A lot of it was misogynist in nature, and a lot of it came from my own blunders and mistakes as I tried to figure out my identity and sexuality while in the public eye. (I made a lot of mistakes in my early 20s, as pretty much everyone does!)

Online fame has a way of making you lose yourself in the hatred. I related more and more to Calliope, and grew increasingly attached to her character and fictional plight as a coping mechanism to deal with all the abuse and isolation. The more I isolated myself, the less people online treated me like a real person. It was a vicious cycle!

At some point though, the constant harassment became too much to bear. I stopped allowing myself to enjoy my hobbies, and I focused hard on building my life again. I started writing original fiction! I killed the part of myself that enjoyed fanwork, because at a certain point, she was bringing me nothing but misery. I became afraid and ashamed of how deep I was into my coping mechanisms, and several toxic people around me just reinforced this view over and over again. I retreated into obscurity, leaving my fandom days behind me and trying desperately not to think about the kind of person I was in those days.

I never left Homestuck behind, though! I continued to do freelance work for the comic, and became increasingly involved in What Pumpkin Games, where I now work full time on the Hiveswap series. But I told myself over and over again that this was just a job, that I had left behind my embarrassing fandom days that in my mind, had brought me nothing but misery.

But… here’s the thing: I was lying to myself.

Through the Homestuck fandom, I met my amazing wife! I had so many opportunities to share myself with an audience, I found inspiration and meaning in my life, and it launched me into a promising artistic career! A LOT of good things have blossomed from that strange coping mechanism. to think that it brought me nothing but pain was nothing but my distorted, PTSD-addled brain telling me that I was garbage.

So, why did I let myself stop enjoying something I loved SO MUCH? I don’t have any one good answer, but I do know one thing now: I’m done living like that! I am a queer person, I’m an abuse survivor, and I am a writer and an artist and a cosplayer and god dammit, I fucking love Calliope and Caliborn. So, this mix is for them, but it’s also for everyone out there in this awful culture that makes women feel like shit for daring to speak, for daring to like things and have opinions, and for being weird fangirls.

I have news for everyone, though. Weird fangirls are amazing, and we are going to win!”

Shelby came up with the concepts for Calliope and Caliborn, both of which proved to be pivotal to the ending of Act 6. She used Calliope as a Mary Sue to express her own problems with life, and later shipped her with Roxy in-comic to parallel her relationship with Amber Cragg, her wife (and Steven Crewniverse member); effectively making Homestuck into a self-centered fanfic. Words cannot how describe exceptional that is.

My theory is that Shelby probably played some kind of role in ghostwriting Act 6, considering the shift in writing style. We do have confirmation that Shelby helped write for Act 2 of Hiveswap, since she tweeted about it a little while before the layoffs. She may have also had something to do with Andrew hiring Cohen to replace him as Director of Hiveswap. Since her sister Michaela was dating Andrew at the same time, it’s possible she could’ve used this as a bargaining chip to get what she wanted. However, it’s hard to tell until we find out more from the team themselves after the NDA expires.

Here she is talking about writing for Act 2...
http://archive.is/W2wJt

..and here's her moping about getting laid off.
http://archive.is/uBHPu
http://archive.is/ILK7d

Today, Shelby is only making money from the Patreon page she has for Neokosmos, her tasteless Homestuck rip-off, thanks to Viz Media laying off the entire Hiveswap team. Even though she did the art for the recent Dating Sim, she’s not getting anything from it aside from her name in the credits. Good fucking riddance.

Y2K Baby's Opinion:

 

[Pickle Inspector]

Hussie had an interview with Entertainment Weekly regarding Viz publishing Homestuck books:
“let’s wrestle this horse back in the barn, and call the internet what it really was, which is one huge mistake.”
http://ew.com/books/2018/04/19/homestuck-hardcover-preview/

 

[Rakdos92]

Picked the Friendsim thing up, it's not a friendsim at all. Tried the hot-dog route first, turned out to be gay as fuck.

 

[morninghomo]

Picked the Friendsim thing up, it's not a friendsim at all. Tried the hot-dog route first, turned out to be gay as fuck.

is the player character an actual character, with a gender/name/appearance? or is it just ur self insert that u probably named "dick eater" or something

 

[⋖ cørdion ⋗]

Picked the Friendsim thing up, it's not a friendsim at all. Tried the hot-dog route first, turned out to be gay as fuck.

This is my gripe with Homestuck and probably exactly what they went at with this game.

Everyone had a boring childhood in which everyone else seemed more interesting. Playing Hiveswap, the kids had both friends, die-hard hobbies, a band, pictures on their walls, interests, skills, at the age of.. 14? When most kids probably can't even talk about their feelings?

How do we double-down on this? Dating sim! Damn look how deep and complex these kids are, and you're just as cool in their eyes, despite being generic and boring!

I can even remember when my Teamspeak got into a Homestuck phase. Everyone suddenly had a favorite game, color, smiley, behavioral pattern. It really is a build-a-persona&personality universe, and at this point probably only works out because of nostalgia from this target audience.

 

[D. Sweatshirt]

So Shelby made yet another tweet about her role in the comic.

I have a lot to say about creators doing in-canon parodies of fandom, but I have a very strange and specific experience with it that was extremely positive, wrt Homestuck. (I did the in-canon art for a fangirl parody character, and was asked to do so cuz I was a big fangirl)

Calliope, the character, involved some jokes that poked fun at fangirls a bit, but overall she was a plot critical important and sympathetic character that always felt inclusive of fangirls rather than alienating...

It’s one of the few canon fandom parodies I’ve seen that lifted up the creative silly “female” side of fandom while putting down the entitled nerdbro side of fandom, and I really appreciated it. It’s just... it’s possible to comment on fandom in an actually interesting way.

Homestuck was plenty antagonistic to fans in various other ways, but it never made me feel stupid for liking shipping or being a fangirl, which is. Very rare in media which breaks the fourth wall in that specific way.

Anyways in conclusion: “LOL SHIPPING AND OCS EXIST!” as your entire punchline is lazy as hell, boring, and targets young girls unnecessarily. Stop doing that and try a bit harder.

Pretty much all but confirms what I've said before about her relationship to the comic. Her reasoning for joining on the team is very vague and I'm sure there's a lot more corrupt to it than just "lol I was a huge fangirl."

Side-note: I'm planning on updating the OP soon for newer readers. Not everyone viewing this thread cares about Homestuck, or knows the people behind it. Having a brief intro for new people who don't know much about the comic or the people behind it might help clear things up for them.

 

[Xerxes IX]

shipped her with Roxy in-comic to parallel her relationship with Amber Cragg

That's quite unfortunate implications since Calliope was supposed to be an 11-12 year old.

 

[D. Sweatshirt]

That's quite unfortunate implications since Calliope was supposed to be an 11-12 year old.

Yeah, I know. Also, big thing I forgot to flesh out in my post: going by the second tweet in past post about her, she's never even read the whole fucking comic. Jesus Fucking Christ.

 

[Fat White Bitch]

Homestuck was plenty antagonistic to fans in various other ways, but it never made me feel stupid for liking shipping or being a fangirl, which is. Very rare in media which breaks the fourth wall in that specific way.

Wasn't the artist this drawing was made to mock a fangirl?

 

[Fandom Trash]

I had no idea Shelby created Calliope!

I knew she was a character created to represent a fangirl but It makes sense if Shelby was the one who made her.

I thought Calliope was adorable if not strange, but I didnt know she was shipped with Roxy, I thought they were friends?

And I dont know if Calliope even did something in the end?

 

[Mutie]

That's quite unfortunate implications since Calliope was supposed to be an 11-12 year old.

While her personality has always come off very young to me, she's 11 in the same way the trolls are 6; she's functionally the same age as the human children she communicates with . I know it's popular here to say that Cohen and Shelby made this up for shipping shit, but I disagree. I made this assumption way before they were involved, because that's just generally how Homestuck works--11/11 were the act 6 arc numbers.


That said, Shelby’s tweets are asinine. This “pure good ‘transformative’ female fandom vs icky toxic ‘curatorial’ male fandom” bullshit is tiresome and inaccurate. Traditionally female fandom spaces can be just as “toxic” as traditionally male ones, if not more so. The two things she cites as fangirl things—shipping and OCs—are like the biggest source of drama in fandoms. I can’t believe in this age of anti harassment and public death threats to creators because someone’s ship didn’t become canon she could actually unironically type these tweets. People pin the whole Zamii incident on the SU fandom, but the truth is that a good portion of the hate was coming from people who had a problem with her back in her Homestuck days (not to mention a lot of HS fans migrated to SU anyway). She talks about “entitled nerdbros” but the people in the type of fan spaces she’s referring to get more entitled by the hour. Remember that batshit fucking letter to Jensen Ackles where the author basically acted like he had made a threat to her actual person and was making her unsafe because he brushed off the idea that his character was bisexual? That sure seems entitled to me. :powerlevel:I don’t say that as some misogynist fanfiction-hating meanie, I say this as an insider whose been around this stuff for over a decade.:powerlevel: Fuck the term “nerdbro” while I’m at it, nothing screams “I’m a nerd, but I still want to look down on nerds that are men like everyone else does” quite like it. You’re not cooler than them just because you have a vagina, you dweebs.

 

[Xerxes IX]

This “pure good ‘transformative’ female fandom vs icky toxic ‘curatorial’ male fandom” bullshit is tiresome and inaccurate. Traditionally female fandom spaces can be just as “toxic” as traditionally male ones, if not more so.

Has she ever paid attention to the Homestuck section on AO3? There's lots of fucked up fanfiction especially when you get into the sexual and fetish topics, and fanfiction is mostly a female creator space.

 

[D. Sweatshirt]

Has she ever paid attention to the Homestuck section on AO3? There's lots of fucked up fanfiction especially when you get into the sexual and fetish topics, and fanfiction is mostly a female creator space.

I don't think so. Remember, she's never read the whole comic; apparently she only read portions of it while it was in progress.

 

[Mutie]

I don't think so. Remember, she's never read the whole comic; apparently she only read portions of it while it was in-progress.

She said she's never read it as a complete work. I'm pretty sure she means she hasn't read it in full since it was finished, not that she hasn't read all of it. She was reading all of it when it was updating.

Shelby was a Homestuck BNF and associated with other BNFs. Of course she's seen A03, she has work on AO3.

 

[ARealLunker]

Wasn't the artist this drawing was made to mock a fangirl?
Ver archivo adjunto 434184

Former fangirl. Hell, actually apparently the original piece that inspired this was made as a collab between two former fangirls.

So the basic story is here, but more details were given in this post by one of the girls who collaborated together to make the fan art which apparently "inspired" Hussie. Though they made the claim that Hussie stole their design. Honestly, you can see the original design in these two links, it's a generic bishi/anime/whatever design, these fangirls probably just threw a fit for the sake of attention.

The two artists in question, whethervane and rukafais, had left the fandom shortly over throwing this fit, from what I remember (though admittedly I think it was mostly whethervane who was publicly starting drama over this, lmao). I don't think they did much Homestuck related stuff after this incident, and at worst nowadays you might find some of their art (whethervane art here and rukafais art here) to be worthy of the SJW art thread or something. You'd probably have to go way back in their art tags for anything particularly post-worthy though, it seems they've both mellowed out somewhat since this incident. I think at one point whethervane got a callout post for some Wander Over Yonder non-con porn they were making? I have no idea for sure.

So yeah, basically they threw a fit for like 2 seconds of fame and then never did anything else with the Homestuck fandom again. Which, let's be honest, it's probably for the best.

Edit: I guess for the sake of thoroughness, apparently the rukafais fangirl had a Deviantart page here, but the last upload was in 2015. Could've sworn their gallery had a lot more cringey Homestuck art in it (hell, that's how I found her years ago just before the two started claiming that Hussie stole their design), but maybe she deleted it all. The whethervane one also has her own gallery here, but that's no longer active either. They probably purged their galleries of Homestuck art after this incident, if they ever posted anything there at all.