i hate to say it, like i love watcher, but my thoughts on them leaving youtube is this is too much too soon, like the bulk of their fans are probs younger/unable to afford another subscription fee, plus youtube has always been where they've been?? it's just so stark to go from this being the site you put your content on for years and then to go full cold turkey, no more posting on youtube ever
and i'll be honest, they don't have enough content to warrant a separate site/subscription all together. dropout is able to pull it off because they have the full rotation of shows and cast as well (dnd, game changer, etc), whereas for watcher, they only have a few couple really successful shows and those are primarily only focused on ryan and shane.
and tbh, i don't think they have a big enough audience to launch it either, like their marketing team could do better on advertising their shows! like, i haven't been keeping up with their recent shows cause either i don't see it on my youtube algorithm at all or i have to go out of my way to go see it.
and i don't know this just feels like a kick to the face to their fans, like even dropout has shorts on youtube and keeps up all their content on youtube like some episodes and the entirety of season one of fantasy high, and now i'm seeing in the comments, that their international fans outside of the usa won't even able to subscribe cause of how payment works which is :///, so yeah, watcher, it's been nice knowing ya, but i don't know how this move will turn out for you, i'm sorry to say
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Yknow the shitty marvel movie type trope of diffusing all of your emotional scenes with humor? Homestuck does the same thing but with a RADICALLY different vibe. Like exactly the opposite.
Most modern media that does this is trying to distance the author from the text, by inviting the audience to laugh with the author. Oh, isn't this story silly, we're self aware, no need to immerse yourself. It's got this smug yet self depreciating tone, because it feels like the author wants you to like them more than their story.
Whereas when Homestuck does this it is self aggrandising, because it's meant as an explicit ATTACK on the audience. It is a purposeful attempt to draw the reader in and then pull out the rug from under them. It's not meant to break the tension, it's to give you mood whiplash. It shows a certain amount of confidence in the text, because the author truly believes in the text's ability to emotionally affect the audience so that this trick works.
I can definitely empathize with someone who finds this aggravating (that's sort of the point), but to me it's legitimately preferable to the self-aware jokey jokey thing because I don't think it diminishes the impact of the story itself. The narrative still exists as is, with all of its devastating events, and the jokes are a way of twisting that knife in a little bit further.
I would honestly go as far as to say that many of these style of jokes don't lighten the mood at all, but just add an extra element of poignancy or horror to a scene. Something ridiculous happening to the body of a recently deceased character isn't exactly light material, for one example. For another, more specific one, consider Dave's "acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle".
As a quick refresher, Dave says early on in the story that, rather than flying off the handle, he will do an "acrobatic fucking pirouette". This wording becomes a frequent callback joke from that point on. And then, much later, Dave finds the impaled corpse of the older brother who raised him, and decides on a symbolic gesture he'd like to make. He can't pull the sword out of his brother's chest, because he doesn't feel like he's worthy. He has to make a "clean break", by breaking off the end of the sword to take with him. But it doesn't work, and in the attempt he's flung backwards. And then he's just laying there, on the ground, while his friend points out that he has finally, literally performed his acrobatic pirouette off the handle.
And yeah, that's funny, but to me it's also absolutely devastating? This is a character who's recently been dealing with extreme self worth issues and a crisis of free will, who's clumsily trying to grieve for the very person who caused a lot of those issues in the first place. It makes the entire thing feel weirdly inevitable and that much more horrible for it, like, of course this would happen, his whole LIFE has been a joke to begin with. It doesn't detract from the moment. It invites you, the audience, to sit in that moment with the character and just kind of let it wash over you.
At least that's how I feel about it!
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the foundation offers arcanists the right to exist as long as they follow the foundation as martyrs, while manus offers humans the right to exist as long as they follow them as monsters. neither side is looking for equality. st pavlov seems like it, but their relationship with arcanists is conditional and controlled. their goal is less "humans and arcanists living together in harmony" and more "lessen the threat and utilize the power of arcanists for humans"
its easy to think of the foundation as the hero since we're experiencing the story as a member; surrounded by other members taught by the foundation, but at some point, it becomes clear they're not interested in the lives of arcanists
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