How Do You Fix Necromunda, and Does it Even Need Fixing?

 

On the 26th June 2026 Games Workshop announced that the next major release for their gang-warfare tabletop game, Necromunda, would a complete re-launch of the title. Old rules would be thrown out, new ones would be introduced and new additions and alterations would be made to the core experience.

Within the community many fans had suspected that an updated starter set was a likely release for 2026, with the last general starter set being 2021's Hive War, and the 2024 Secundus boxed set being more of a self-contained spin-off. So most were in agreement that a fresh starter to draw in new players set was well overdue. What many were not expecting was a full system reboot. Given that all through 2025 Necromunda had seen a ream of new releases, including expanding the ranges for the Enforcer and Nomad gangs, the idea that all these new additions were to be immediately thrown out and re-written seemed somewhat inconceivable.

On top of all of this, it has to be said that for the most part, the iteration of Necromunda that was launched in 2017 still felt by the year of 2026 as somewhat unfinished. When the Ash Wastes expansion was launched in 2022, there was a general understanding that each gang was expected to eventually get models and rules for both an exclusive vehicle and mounted units. As of time of writing most gangs are missing either one or both.

Likewise, while there had been a steady release of miniatures over the years for multiple special characters, Hanger's On and "Alliance" detachments, there still remains a lack of official models for a large amount of character types described within the rules. The 2025 release for the Hangers-On boxed set seemed to suggest we'd see more of an up tick of these releases in plastic, but now that may not be the case.

All this is to say that many would agree that there was still places left for the 2017 edition of Necromunda to go, and wiping the slate clean feels surprisingly premature for an edition that has essentially been around for ten years.

Still, as any Necromunda player can tell you, we have to accept the dice as they roll. This is what Games Workshop has decided upon, and this is what we're going to get.

Reactions have been unsurprisingly negative. Other than the aforementioned fact that many players were still expecting model releases and Ash Waste expansions for their respective gangs, there is a worry based on GW's press release that the new edition will be overly simplified. Ask any Necromunda player and they'll tell you that the best part of the game is all the wacky situations you can get into with the expansive rules whacking up against each other.

This is a game for telling stories. It's a game that is tailored towards banking everything on an impossible shot, or the humble canon fodder saving the day. It's a game where using the rules to create a silly gang feels more rewarding than creating an overpowered one.

Yet, a change is coming along, and we're going to have to accept that some things we love from the game may not carry over, but I do think it is premature to start despairing right away. We know almost nothing about the new rules, and internet sleuths trying glean an idea of the changes based on the one announcement article are no closer to paying dividends.

Instead, I thought it would be worth thinking about what changes really ought to be made to Necromunda as it stands, and what alterations, eliminations and conversions the game could benefit from, both in the moment to moment experience and in terms of drawing in new players.

The way I see it, Necromunda has three broad problems:

Power Creep, Campaign Over-focus and Rulebook Bloat.

Power Creep.

When Necromunda first relaunched in 2017, the general load-out of weapons and gear afforded to gangers was fairly limited, and the special abilities of most characters all the way up to the Gang Leaders were moderately balanced. What this meant was that most games played out as a desperate battle of potshots and frantic close combat encounters. Gangers could be wiped out by a lucky hit early in the game, or cling on, struggling all the way to the end.

This all felt very in line with what the game was supposed to represent, a bunch of low-tech roughnecks struggling over meagre territory and resources. Most weapons did modest damage at around 3 - 4 Strength, while Armour Saves at 5+ or 6+ were at best a Hail Mary.

By 2026, Necromunda has become a game where players are fielding multiple instant death machines. Nearly every character is rolling out equipped with armour piercing weapons. Close combat specialists are charging into combat with 5 or more attacks. Most Champions are defended behind Armour Saves of 4+ or 3+.

When Necromunda began I would always sing its praises by claiming that the humble Lasgun is one of its most reliable weapons. By 2026 there are some gang load-outs where a Lasgun is almost incapable of doing any damage at all.

This problem is down to a variety of factors. Gangs with better than average Armour Saves started being introduced as early as the Enforcers in 2019, so the House Gangs were given access to better armour to catch up. More and more special weapon types were being introduced, so gang access to mainstays like Melta-guns and Plasma weapons became standardised. When specialist versions of gang Champions were introduced in the House books, many of these were designed as pure close combat specialists, hitting on 2+ in close combat with so many attacks that the odds were almost always in their favour.

The problem this caused is that games started to feature characters and load-outs that essentially became 'instant death' dealers the moment they got in range. For the person controlling these characters, it felt very cool and exciting, but to the player on the receiving end it was anything but, and not at all fun to be in a situation where you were losing fighters with no counter or recourse.

So, what needs to change to get things back in gear? Some stuff you just can't put back in the box. We can't un-do the special Champion characters, but maybe there are a few thing that can be tweaked to make them less overpowered.

First of all, maybe consider changing all characters with a +2 hit skill, be this Weapons Skill or Ballistic skill, to go up to 3+ instead. This is still a strong ability skill to have, especially with range modifiers, but moves them away from getting guaranteed hits nearly every time.

Likewise, there could be some re-shuffling when it comes to the way close combat works. I've seen some suggestions that a target's Reaction Attack should trigger after the attacker's first attack roll, with multiple reactions playing out concurrently if the target has an Attacks score higher than 1. This gives close combat focussed characters a better chance of survival, giving them the potential to kill their attacker before their full number of attacks can come into effect.

I've also seen suggestions that targets of close combat attacks should have some kind of 'block' mechanic, such as if the attacker has an Attack score of 3, and the defender has an Attack score of 2, then the defender should be able to sacrifice one of their reaction attacks to 'block' one attack, eventually reducing the attacker to 2 attacks.

All good ideas, but I have to say I'm not 100% sure on them. I think personally the entire game could do with a reduction in the amount of close combat attacks characters can have. Bring regular Champions down to 1 attack like a basic ganger, with only Leaders and special Champions having access to 2, and 3 attacks in rare cases for special characters and Brutes.

I think rapid fire weapons could also benefit this way, where the player can choose to fire a single shot, or on 'full auto,' with the player only getting the benefit of the Rapid Fire trait on 'full auto' but with a reduction to their hit roll. This prevents gangs like the Squats from being able to mince opposing players with just their basic weapons.

As for the rest of the power creep, I think there's some pieces of wargear, like Armoured Undersuits, that should be scrapped entirely. To me the game is much better when armour has that 'Hail Mary' factor, and the ability for players to just bump up their save by 1 for a down payment has been a contributing factor to the aforementioned power creep. On a similar note, I'd like to see the removal of Suspensors, bringing Heavy Weapons back to requiring both actions to fire, as well as the removal of scopes and other upgrades like Focussing Crystals that allow players to bump up their chance to hit.

When it comes to absurdly powerful weapons like Meltaguns, or Wargear ripe for abuse like Falsehoods, I think the game could benefit from an 'Exclusive' gear classification. Essentially this would mean that you can still purchase Meltaguns, Plasma guns, whatever, for your gang, but only one 'Exclusive' item could be purchased. So, should a player decide to give one of their Champions a Meltagun, that is their one 'Exclusive' piece of gear allocated to the gang, they cannot then purchase and equip another Weapon or Wargear in this category, so they cannot also, say, equip another ganger with a Plasma Gun, or a Falsehood. If you want one of these absurdly powerful items, you have to pick one, and only one.

I think there's a fair few pieces of gear that would suit being restricted in this category. Displacer Fields, Phase weapons, Rad weapons. I think it would get gangs back to focussing more on modest weapons like Lasguns and Shotguns, and prevent players from trying to build characters around the most broken combinations of Weapons and Wargear that they can.

On that same line of thinking, I'd like to see Tactics Cards get a bit of an overhaul, and some of the more powerful cards removed entirely. I think the more specific, low-scale cards like 'Click' and 'Last Gasp' make the game more interesting and competitive in comparison to cards that can completely turn a game around when used, like the ability to disregard an Out of Action or force an opponent into a Bottle Test.

These changes, as listed, would all be in aid of bringing back the 'tug of war' feeling to the game, over specific, powerful characters dominating the battle.

Campaign Overfocus

Necromunda was designed from the ground up with campaign play in mind. This is a good thing. The appeal of the game is putting the players into the mindset of these wacky and high-concept gangs, being able to watch them grow and evolve and delve more into a role-playing mindset. Campaign play absolutely needs to stay.

What has been a problem with the campaign focus in the past, however, is the fact that so many elements of the game have become exclusively wedded to the campaign mode, with no real ability to use these elements in a quick skirmish. While it certainly works to encourage players to want to dive into the campaign mode, it also has the unfortunate side effect of discouraging skirmish play, and by extension making the game look more off-putting to new players.

As an example, take the Secundus boxed set. This was touted as an independent starter set. It featured two gangs, Malstrain Genestealers and Van Saar Tek Hunters (with Spyres). With the exception of the self-contained scenario that was released with the box, neither of these gangs were legally playable for either standard Skirmish or Regular campaigns. If you bought the set and were completely green to Necromunda, you would still be left without a standard playable gang. The set was very much intended as a base for the Underhells game instead, with the Tek Hunters and Spyres featured as an expansion to existing gangs, and the Genestealers intended as Arbitrator controlled monsters.

As another example, 2025 saw the release of the Palantite Justicars boxed set. To a new player, one would think that this was a brand new gang that one could put together and play right out of the box. Upon further inspection however, you would discover that the Justicars are actually an "Alliance" detachment, that is intended purely to be used in campaign play. While they can be used as the base for an Outcast gang, these are not usually recommended as a starting point for new players.

The current iteration is riddled with instances like this. As it stands there are rules for Alliance gang detachments, which cover Merchant Guilds, Criminal Organisations and Noble Houses. There are rules for special characters known as House Agents, which includes the towering Ozostium Aranthus, the main villain of the recent ongoing storyline. There are multiple rules for Hangers-On, many gang exclusive, which work as permanent gang upgrades in the form of characters that 'might' show up in battle on a bad roll.

All of the above, by their standard rules, can only be used in Campaign play. There are no rules that allow these character types to be used in a skirmish outside of a gaming group's commonly agreed upon house rules.

While, again, this does encourage players to seek out and explore the campaign side of things, it can also make the game look bafflingly impenetrable to outsiders. If a new player likes the look of the Malstrain Genestealers, or the Water Guild Subnautican, or the Haera Helmawr model, they're going to be instantly deflated when told they can't just buy it off the shelf and use it in their first trial game.

On top of all of this is the fact that, in my experience, most people are playing more skirmishes than campaigns. This isn't down to the campaigns being bad, or players not wanting to do campaigns, but the vast majority of Necromunda players are adults in their 30's. Being able to get together with enough constant regularity to run a Necromunda campaign can be quite difficult and as such most of their play time will be one-off skirmishes as and when players are available. I know that speaks to my experience with the game, and I imagine it does to many others.

What I'd like to see is GW take all those rules and models that are exclusive to campaign play and adapt them to be used in skirmish. Give the Alliance detachment a numerical point count so they can be fielded along with a gang as normal, same goes for the House Agents and funky weapons buried away in the Black Market.

If players don't have the time to sink into a campaign, they should at least have the chance to use a lot of this fun stuff whenever they can find the time for it.

Rulebook Bloat.

Even from its launch in 2017 I always felt like Necromunda could be a bit cumbersome and unwieldy. I would frequently refer to Necromunda as "A game of twos," because there were multiple instances of two similar mechanics to keep track of. Ammo Checks and Ammo Rolls. Break Checks and Bottle Tests. Flesh Wounds and Wounds. Even for an experienced player, there was so much to keep track of that it was easy to forget where and when to do various rolls.

Over time, this only got worse with the inclusion of additional mechanics and traits. Gang bonuses, damage over time, extra rolls on 6s. With so much in the air, things easily slipped through the net, while the multitude of extra mechanics meant leafing through rulebooks to double-check how things worked was a common occurrence.

Over the years I've had a bad habit of forgetting to roll a Cool Check when activating a fighter after my gang has Bottled Out. Other players have frequently forgotten when their weapon was out of ammo and fired multiple shots before they remembered to reload. Character abilities have frequently been misinterpreted and incorrectly passed around by word of mouth.

Naturally, not all of these elements can be cleaned up and simplified, but I think the game really could benefit from changes that leave the players with less to keep track of and less rule book consultation.

Some suggestions? How about eliminating the Ammo Check and instead having a weapon automatically go straight out of ammo when the bullet symbol is rolled on the Ammo Dice? How about rolling your Cool Checks on every fighter for a Bottled gang at the start of the round, rather than on activation? How about resolving Blaze the same way as Broken rather than having to mess around with scatter dice?

Likewise, I think a lot of the weapon traits could easily be consolidated. Melta and Sever are basically the same thing, while trying to keep track of the difference between Power, Phase, Shock, Flash, Stun and Seismic makes things easy to mix up. I think the system could really benefit from being stripped down to a group of core, easy to remember traits instead of the dozens of permutations we have now.

On a similar note, I think the descriptions could be shortened to an easily readable statement. The description for the Power trait simply needs to be 'On hit roll, if 6, ignore armour save.' With very brief, straightforward descriptions like this, it would be much easier for the rule books to come with a 'cheat sheet' that fits all of the traits and abilities on one page.

This, I think, comes to the crux of the matter. There simply needs to be a reduction of instances that require constantly going back and checking the rulebook to see how things work. Traits, Abilities and Tactics that require multiple steps should be simplified or removed. When actions are written as, 'roll this, then check this, then roll again, then do this,' it wastes everyone's time and becomes easy to forget. Likewise, Special Abilities and weapon Traits that require rolling on a chart are such a bane on the game and stop the action every time it comes up. They need to go.

All things considered, I think I've made my argument clear. I've nothing against a plethora of traits and special rules, but they need to be easy to remember, follow a similar line of logic, and require as few steps as possible. Abilities like Dodge are great, you just need one roll of the dice on a hit. Abilities like Crushing Blow, where you have to nominate one of your attacks and that results in an extra roll, is cumbersome and easy to mix up.

Everything Else

Beyond all that there are a few more things I'd like to see alterations to, but given that we know so little of the scope of the new edition, it's going to be hard to speculate on what is sticking around and what isn't. I could go into the ways I think they could improve Chem Alchemy for House Escher, for example, but we don't know if House-exclusive mechanics like Chem Alchemy are going to remain in the game in the first place.

I could go on about how I'd like Dome Runners to be given more utility and weirder Wargear like Ratskin Maps and Mung Vases given more focus as campaign rewards. I'd like to see Bounty Hunters become more viable, with maybe the ability to hire them specifically to target troublesome members of opposing Gangs. I'd like to see the Sentries rules re-worked to be a bit more interesting to play and of course I'd like to see the Vehicle rules heavily simplified, because as-is trying to explain Ash Wastes rules to new players is a fucking nightmare.

And don't get me started on Spyrers.

In the end, I'd like Necromunda to thread the needle of streamlining the rules without losing any of its complexity and character. I'd like to see more elements folded into the Skirmish mode without Campaigns losing any of their appeal. I'd like to see the more powerful weapons scaled back without it feeling as though the gangs were being nerfed.

No easy thing, but Necromunda had had nearly a decade of revisions and alterations, so, if nothing else, I'd hope that GW has enough data and experience to make the right calls.

And if they don't, well, we have nearly ten years of content to keep us going if we don't end up liking the new edition, and that ain't bad.

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Jack Harvey 2026

Mechanicus 2 is a Great Game, but Shouldn't Have Been Called Mechanicus 2

 

Having just finished Mechanicus 2, I can safely say that Bulwark Studios' follow up to their surprise 2018 hit is a well crafted tactical experience, an entertaining cyber gothic jaunt, and a worthy entry into the canon of great Warhammer 40'000 video games. You wouldn't know it, however, looking at the average discussions on the Mechanicus game Reddit page, or from its currently mixed review score on Steam.

Truth is, I understand why some players feel sour on Mechanicus 2. It is a very different game from the first, with very different priorities. It zigs where the previous game zags. It focusses its attention elsewhere. If you came out of Mechanicus 1 wanting more Mechanicus 1, then Mechanicus 2 certainly does not deliver on that.

In many respects, the game reminds me of the similar situation Dawn of War 2 found itself in. A very smartly designed game with a lot of depth and creativity, that nonetheless was not what players wanted coming out of Dawn of War 1.

So, let's tackle that, I guess.

Part 1: Just Another Brick in the Wall.

One of the reasons that Mechanicus caught so many people's attention is that despite being a Turn-Based Strategy Game, it was mechanically different from what so many people were used to. Normally TBS games follow the core design popularised by XCOM. Units have a predetermined turn order, a limited pool of 'action points,' and inflicting damage is dictated by an invisible dice roll chance to hit.

Mechanicus, instead, eschewed nearly all of these conventions. You could choose to play your units in any order each round. Instead of having a limited number of actions, your units shared a pool of 'cognition points,' which were accumulated from various power sources across the map, and could theoretically allow units to make as many moves as they wanted. Attacks always hit, though damage could vary and certain abilities could negate it.

The only exception to these rules were secondary support units, which could only move and shoot once per turn, but these very much were supporting players in the fight, with your Tech-Priests in the starring role.

What this did was bring a great degree of tactical depth to the game, and allowed players to focus on a wide variety of strategies. It also allowed for a significant scope of progression. At the start of the campaign, players had to be very careful, as they were limited to only a few cognition points. By the end of the game, your Tech-Priests were running across the length of the entire map in Turn 1 and mauling Necrons in close combat, or firing off multiple shoulder mounted canons to wipe out the enemy before they could even act.

This, naturally, made the game something that obsessive players could easily get addicted to. Your Tech-Priests have a wide variety of skill options to choose from, and they can mix and match them from multiple trees. With some experimentation it is possible to reach some absolutely game-breaking builds, and the re-playability of the campaign meant that there was ample opportunity for such experiments.

What Mechanicus had in mechanical depth, however, it lacked in terms of narrative scope. The plot of the first game is relatively threadbare, with the Imperial war against the Necrons going on entirely in the background, and the missions themselves involving Adeptus Mechanicus strike teams embarking on expeditions to weaken the Necron war effort.

Each expedition works as a sort of Rouge-lite run, where the player has to navigate across the map of a Necron complex, avoiding hazards, and making logistical decisions that can potentially help or hinder the player in the battles proper. The health of the squad persists across these runs, so losing Tech-Priests early can doom one before it has truly begun.

While each run has a specific story conceit from the high ranking Tech-Priest giving the briefing, there are only four types of battles. Kill all enemies. Survive a number of rounds. Reach an extraction point. Kill a Necron boss. Despite all this, the variability of the game means that it never feels stale, and you barely notice the limited number of objectives when playing the game the first time around.

Wrap all of this inside one of the most infectious soundtracks ever committed to a game, and you've got the makings of an absolute cult classic, and that is exactly what it was. Mechanicus got by with very good word of mouth, sold well, and had players eagerly awaiting a sequel for years. When that sequel did arrive, however, it wasn't quite what the fans expected.

Part 2: Welcome to the Machine.

Mechanicus 2, is not Mechanicus 1. Despite sharing similar DNA, and being a narrative sequel to the first game, Mechanicus 2 is otherwise entirely its own thing. Most of the elements that made Mechanicus unique are significantly de-prioritised in the sequel.

The big contributing factor, I feel, was the decision to focus more on the secondary units. Unlike in Mechanicus 1, where most of the action was done by your squad of Tech-Priests, this time only one Tech-Priest partakes in the battle, the bulk of the fighting being done by your force of what were previously secondary units, which, again, may only move and shoot once per turn.

What this does is move the focus away from the cognition point system. Where in the first game your access to cognition points could make or break a battle, here they are primarily used for activating your Tech-Priest's secondary weapons and buffs. This change also transitions over to the Necron campaign, who don't have access to cognition points at all, but instead a 'Dominion' system, where the more damage the Necrons do over the course of a battle, the more powerful abilities they gain access to.

All this puts Mechanicus 2 more square in line with traditional TBS games. While it still has some of the original's more unique elements, you can still activate your units in any order, and attacks (nearly) always hit, the game feels much more designed with a casual player base in mind. If you were the kind of person who bounced off the first game because it was too unorthodox, Mechanicus 2 is being more traditional will likely win you over.

So too do these priorities relate to your character's skill trees. Gone are the sprawling levels of customisation from the first game, instead each character is already specced to perform a particular role, and has a skill tree to accompany that. Most of your points will be spent on expanding your deployment count and buffing your basic troops. There are no game breaking power combos here.

If you've read this far you're probably coming to the conclusion that Mechanicus 2 lacks a lot of the mechanical depth of the first game, and a lot of the unique aspects that made it interesting, and you'd be right. Why then, do I still consider the game great? Well, because I'm judging Mechanicus 2 by what it is, not what it isn't, and what it is is a solid, action packed ride through some of the more lesser explored parts of the Warhammer 40'000 universe.

Part 3: High Hopes.

While Mechanicus 1 had some very interesting characters with quirky personalities, and some great vocal taunts from its Necron villains, it didn't really have much of a plot to speak of. You arrive on the planet, you fight a bunch of Necrons, you beat them, roll credits. By contrast, Mechanicus 2 puts a significant amount of effort into weaving a detailed plot with twists, turns, surprises and betrayals.

Not only does it do this, but it delivers two campaigns that allow you to experience the story from different perspectives. There are mysteries raised in the Adeptus Mechanicus campaign that are resolved in the Necron one, and vice versa. Both campaigns have a sprawling cast of characters, from the cynical and demanding Omnisynnod council of Tech-Priests, to the Necron Phaeron's scheming advisors and generals, to cameo appearances from the Leagues of Votann and the Iron Hands chapter of Space Marines.

This widening of scope and greater priority on story means we get to experience a broader deal of the action this time around. While we don't get to partake in any large scale battles, you won't be commanding any tanks or aircraft here, we will still find ourself fighting on the planet's surface as much as we do in Necron tombs, and we'll even do battle in towering Forge-City spires.

All this is to say that Mechanicus 2's priorities are in a very different place. It wants to take you on more of a roller-coaster ride than the first game, albeit still at the kind of pace you'd expect with Turn-Based combat. This is a game that wants you to be absorbed into the fiction of its world more than that it wants you crunching numbers in order to unlock more powerful combos.

And I know some players are going to have a problem with that. I know many fans who have dedicated hundreds of hours to the first game are going to be disappointed to find that the sequel does not have the same degree of complexity.

It's very clear that Bulwark Studios didn't want to just sit back and do Mechanicus 1 again. They wanted to make a game with a different kind of scope with different priorities, and they absolutely nailed that in my opinion. Narratively, this game digs deeper into the backstory of both of its primary factions in ways that we haven't seen in video games before.

I love the cynical paranoia and duplicity of the Adeptus Mechanicus' senior Tech-Priests. I love the constant schemes and double-crosses that plague the Necron court. I love that the Votann are finally getting a bit of a spotlight. I love that I can joke that Scaevola and Nefershah have a toxic yuri relationship.

Alas, Mechanicus 2 just isn't getting a fair shake, and it is in no small part thanks to it's name.

Part 4: You Know You Just Can't Win.

I honestly reckon if they hadn't called it Mechanicus 2 then the game would have been embraced with open arms. It they'd called it, Warhammer 40'000: Battle for Heketeus IV, or Souls of Steel, or something, then audiences would have been more receptive to the changes. They'd have gone in understanding that the game is entirely its own thing, not something that picking up the baton of Mechanicus 1 and enhancing and evolving its gameplay mechanics.

I understand, though, that doing a name change probably wasn't really an option. In this current era of the digital economy, it is insanely hard to capture people's attention and get the word out. Had Bulwark Studios gone with a different name, they'd have run into the very real possibility that audiences would miss that it was a sequel to Mechanicus. They'd basically have to forgo the word of mouth and good will the first game had got in the hopes they'd find an audience all over again.

They had to call it Mechanicus 2 because brand recognition is the best form of advertising you can get these days. Better to run the risk of being labelled an unworthy sequel than languish at the bottom of the Steam charts on day of release. In a better world, in a more sane one that didn't have such a demented digital distribution process, Bulwark could probably have got away with a name change, but not in this one.

All in all, its a damn shame that Bulwark has found itself between a rock and a hard place. Mechanicus 2 is a great game, of that I have no doubt, but I don't really know what you could do to quell the dissenters. For many, this game is going to be the great disappointment of 2026. For those who spent years tweaking their Tech-Priest's power-sets and experimenting with combos, Mechanicus 2 really does have nothing to offer them.

This, unfortunately, doesn't bring me to an easy conclusion. It is highly likely that in time the opinion of Mechanicus 2 will mellow, but right now that mixed review score on Steam is really going to jeopardize the studio's reputation. I'm really hoping that the rumoured Votann DLC will smooth some things over and really let them reinforce that this is a game focussed on story first and foremost.

Mechanicus 1 hasn't gone anywhere. It is still there. Still available to play. Mechanicus 2 hasn't changed that. As the old adage goes, "Why not both?"

---------------------------------------

Jack Harvey 2026

Jack's May Update

 It is, once again, time for a little run-through of where I am with things this year. As mentioned in the previous updates, I'm still working away on projects in the background, with no real solid information about anything up and coming as yet.

That being said, I have been trying to put out a column once a month, sometimes on something topical, or just whatever has been on my mind. The most recent was my thoughts on the Homestuck sequel, Beyond Canon. Right now I'm just figuring out what is resonating with people, so whatever does well I'll probably go back to and explore more in the future.

As for conventions, a few more details regards to those going forwards.

- As you have probably noticed, I was not at the Newcastle Comic Con at Sports Central on May 23rd. This is because there wasn't one on that date. The event has been moved to Sunday 26th July. I still intend to have a table there as normal.

- Which makes my Newcastle Unleashed at the Vertu Motors Arena on Sunday 14th June my first Newcastle convention this year, rather than the second as originally planned.

- After those, I'll be at Carlisle Megacon on Saturday 22nd August at the Richard Rose Centre. It's the convention I've done the most amount of times, so it'll be business as usual. Looking forward to it.

- While my convention season will be at an end in August, I'm planning on heading to Harrogate Thought Bubble in November. Just as a visitor, nothing official, but I'm always up for talking to fellow creators and exploring the possibility of a collaboration. Hope to catch up with some familiar faces.

That's all for now. In the meantime I'm going to be working away on my writing and artwork. As ever you can find more of my casual ramblings and doodles at my Bluesky, Tumblr or Deviantart.

Thanks for reading!

Beyond Canon and the Messy Legacy of Homestuck

 

"All those Day-Glo freaks who used to paint the face,

They've joined the human race,

Some things will never change,"

Kid Charlemagne - Steely Dan, 1976

Part One: Let Me Tell You About the Thing This Article Is About.

If there's one thing few people agree on when it comes to Homestuck is whether it was actually any good or not. This is because there isn't really another piece of art out there that we can compare it to. Nobody else has done a project quite like Homestuck, save the various fan projects that are derivative of it. As such, one can never definitively state that Homestuck 'succeeded' or 'failed' at what it was trying to do because we have no other examples of what success or failure would actually look like in this nascent genre.

Since you're already here, it is highly likely you have at least some familiarity with the format of Homestuck, but just in case you are a novice anyway, here is a brief description for the uninitiated. Created by writer and artist Andrew Hussie the plot concerns a group of teenage characters booting up a reality-altering video game which puts them on a quest to avert the destruction of reality. Homestuck is typically referred to as a Webcomic, but that isn't really an accurate descriptor.

(With that in mind, I will at times refer to Homestuck as a 'comic,' but let me be clear I'm just using that as a shorthand.)

Homestuck communicates its story through a combination of a single panel of art with text displayed underneath, usually in the style of an early internet chat log, and narrated in the second person, as though the reader were the player of some kind of text-based video game.

Sometimes there are several images. Sometimes the images are animated gifs. Sometimes there are full blown animations with sound and music. Sometimes the story breaks out into interactive segments in the style of point and click adventure games or JRPGs. Generally though, for the most part, there is a large image at the top of the page and text underneath.

If that sounds like a weirdly cumbersome way to tell a story to you then you'd probably be right, and you'd probably follow that by wondering how such an offbeat and experimental format managed to propel Homestuck to the heights of its popularity. The truth is that, as with a lot of internet phenomena, Homestuck started small and managed to worm its way, virus like, into every corner of internet culture.

I was vaguely aware of Homestuck around the early 2010s, but paid little attention to it, frequently getting it mixed up with the Webcomic Shortpacked! That was until my first visit to New York Comic Con in 2011, where, as I was leaving at the end of my second day, I found myself surrounded by hundreds of cosplayers adorned in grey body paint and wearing orange horns. Even with only vague awareness, I recognised these as Homestuck's titular Trolls.

I was astounded, that in a year of an ascendant MCU, a golden age of Doctor Who, big releases for games like Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed on the way, and with Harley Quinn at the height of her popularity, it was Homestuck fans that outnumbered them all.

I knew then that I had to check it out. I had to know what the big deal was.

That was my origin story, but for many their introduction to Homestuck was very different. Homestuck has its roots in the internet culture of the Something Awful forums. Its very foundations come from the internet attitude of 'just fucking around.' While Homestuck is the most well know of Andrew Hussie's works, they truly cut their teeth on projects like Jailbreak and Problem Sleuth, comedy stories where they would ask fellow forum users to make suggestions on where the story would go next. The fact that they crudely drew most panels in MS paint made these quick and easy to produce.

Homestuck was likewise intended to be another project for 'just fucking around.' It started with a suggestion box where users were expected to guide the actions of protagonist John Egbert through the events of the story. The suggestion box was dropped quickly, however, as Hussie soon realised it was becoming more bother than it was worth, but the 'fucking around' would persist through the early stages of the story, which is why it is considered notoriously difficult to get into. It is a long, long road of characters futzing around their households before the story gets anywhere near gray skinned aliens and time travelling robots.

For a good few years, Homestuck was mostly for the 'fucking around' audience, but eventually it would break containment, getting attention from both the shitlords of 4chan and the Social Justice Noviates of Tumblr, two audiences that would inform its direction for good or ill. Before long large amounts of fan art, fan fiction and cosplaying would start flooding the highways and byways of the internet, drawing in the curious, and eventually its own immense cult following.

Part 2: Pride Goeth Before Destruction, And a Haughty Spirit Before a Fall.

Homestuck's golden age was undeniably the years between 2010 to 2014. If I were to go into all the ways it had burst out into greater sphere of the internet we'd be here all day, but needless to say it truly made its mark as a cultural icon. Beyond convention centres being flooded with grey faced cosplayers, the internet being flooded with (frequently NSFW) shipping fanart, and the comic earning admirers in minor celebrities like Dante Blasco and Bryan Lee O'Malley, online drama was quickly becoming intertwined with the comic, and internet urban legends of fans taking things too far were a frequent topic of discussion for both fans of Homestuck and its detractors.

It is hard to pin down what, exactly, secret sauce Homestuck had, but I suspect being in the right place at the right time had a lot to do with it. Homestuck was a story that is both influenced by and a comment upon internet culture. It was one of the first large scale stories that really understood the way internet friendships, video game minutia and the prevalence of memes had changed the way we communicated.

On top of all of that, it kind of had something for everybody. Teen drama and romance for the shippers. Ironic humour and satire that fit many internet subcultures. Its visual design was easily identifiable and toyetic. Most of all it had intensely complicated and interconnected world-building that made fans of the story feel as though they were experiencing something of vast importance and to detractors it made the fandom look like a cult.

More than anything though, Homestuck just managed to fit perfectly in its place and time. Launching at the tail end of the golden age of webcomics, and concluding just as the internet was starting to consolidate into singular social media sites, it feels of a time with the popularity of works like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Adventure Time and Steven Universe, which calcified into its ultimate form with Undertale (whose creator, Toby Fox, was a frequent contributor to Homestuck.)

Is it any wonder, then, that Andrew Hussie let the success go to their head? As a writer that had always kept their personal life very separate from their public persona, they no doubt avoided some of the worst types of adoration, but still, going from an internet nobody who made funny little comics to somebody whose creations were being cosplayed in some of the biggest conventions in the world would no doubt cause them to start believing their own hype.

It didn't help that Hussie wrote themself into the comic as a full blown character. I often find that writing an exaggerated persona of oneself into a story is a dangerous thing to do. It blurs the line between the real and imagined self, as well as that between the private person and the fan perception. To a lot of fans, Hussie was internet Jesus himself, an honorific they were far from ready to shoulder the burden of.

Part 3: The Only Way They Could Make Extra Money, Real Extra Money, Was to Go Out and Cut a Few Corners.

I think I can state that without a shadow of a doubt, the Homestuck Adventure Game Kickstarter was the biggest mistake Andrew Hussie ever made.

Of course, hindsight is always 20-20, and it is easy to say that now, because at the time, it probably made perfect sense to launch the project in 2012. The comic was at its absolute height of popularity. Fans were eager to spend money on anything and everything that carried its official brand. On top of that, Kickstarter had just become the hot new thing, and each successive high-profile project was was breaking higher and higher records in total funding raised.

No wonder they wanted to strike while the iron was hot. If they waited a year or two, they ran the risk of trying to raise the funds through waning interest in Homestuck. A Kickstarter project buried under a sea of completing Kickstarter projects. In that context, I understand why they chose to launch the Kickstarter when they did.

It was still, however, their biggest mistake. Despite having some working knowledge of game development, they vastly underestimated the time and resources required to manage even a small project like a point and click adventure game. They over-promised, and got the project stuck in limbo for years. At time of writing Hiveswap, the Homestuck Adventure game, is still only partially completed.

That they had now saddled themselves with this nightmare just as Homestuck was gearing up towards its spectacular conclusion ended up being a critical blow that would kill the comic's momentum and do irreparable damage to the IP.

As Hussie's video game project quickly devolved into development hell, Homestuck would see more frequent and longer lasting hiatuses as a result. The word of mouth hype that had long maintained a lasting reader-base was starting to run out of steam. As ever more convoluted plot elements were introduced, it was becoming more and more clear that Hussie wasn't going to be able to deliver a satisfactory ending.

There is a lot of gossip and hearsay of what went on behind the scenes with both the comic and the game around this time, but I'm not here to really speculate and delve into drama. I'm just here to talk about what we do know with regards to the creative decisions in public. Even so, it is clear from this time that Hussie was beginning to lose step with their audience.

By this time the edgelord readers from 4chan had mostly abandoned the comic and the fans of edgy humour from the SomethingAwful days had long since grown up. For the most part, the reader-base had solidified around socially-consonous and progressive types from Tumblr. This backfired a couple of times on Hussie when they made a few edgy jokes at the expense of this audience, such as the introduction of 'Trickster Mode' which explicitly depicted the characters as controversially Caucasian, poking fun at readers who tended to headcanon the characters as non-white ethnicities.

This moment backfired so badly that Hussie was forced to go back and change the sequence. A humbling moment for a writer who was once seen by their audience as a great 21st Century storyteller who could do no wrong.

As Homestuck stumbled on, though hiatus after hiatus, it was clear that Hussie's heart was starting to fall out of love with the comic. Despite the run up to the conclusion being well received, and a lot of fans being won over during the final few acts, there was still doubt that Hussie would actually be able to stick the landing and deliver a satisfactory conclusion.

Part Four: The Road Goes On Forever, and the Party Never Ends

I don't think it is unfair to say that Homestuck ends more with a whimper than a bang. Despite Hussie's best efforts to bring the whole thing together, the final conclusion was felt to be greatly underwhelming. Certainly that's how I came out of it. While the story is ultimately wrapped up, and a solid conclusion given to the protagonists, too many plot threads remained unaccounted for, and too many mysteries were left without satisfactory explanations.

A final, dialogue free, animated montage assuring us that the characters were all alive and happy certainly elevated some of the negativity, but all in all Hometuck left its readers feeling a little short changed. Its conclusion felt rushed for a story that spent the better half of a year messing around in its opening act. While nobody wanted a belaboured and drawn out ending, the general consensus was that this was all over too quickly for a story of such complexity.

Fans did hold out hope, however, that something was on the way. Something that would continue the plot and serve as a proper conclusion. Many expected Hiveswap would end up exploring some of the elements unaccounted for. Others kept wondering if Hussie would go back and expand the ending, Mass Effect 3 style, to fill in some of the gaps and mysteries and give the characters more definitive closure over the animated montage.

It was clear, however, that Hussie wanted to move on from the project. They still had a video game that they needed to get out, and Kickstarter backers had more legal recourse over their time than fans of a free webcomic did.

That was that. It was assumed that Homestuck was conclusively over. Hiveswap Act 1 launched in 2017, clearly cementing itself as its own thing, and after that there was more silence for the next couple of years.

Then, out of the blue, in 2019, Hussie announced a new entry to the Homestuck canon. Titled The Homestuck Epilogues, this novel sized, prose-only story was to be the final conclusion to the epic saga that the fans had been waiting for. A definitive explanation as to what happened to John Egbert and his friends, and the world of Homestuck as a whole.

Except, that wasn't what it turned out to be. Instead, what Hussie put out ended up becoming quite different.

This is where the shit truly hit the fan.

Despite being called The Homestuck Epilogues, this story served more as a prologue to Homestuck 2, but, we're getting ahead of ourselves. The Homestuck Epilogues pick up some years after the events of the main story. John Egbert and his friends are older, if maybe not wiser, yet all of them can't shake the feeling that something wasn't quite right about where they ended up. John is then offered a choice, he can either face and finally kill Lord English, the series main villain, once and for all, or leave their doomsday monster trapped outside of time, harmless, but unaccounted for.

From here on the story branches into two timelines, which can be read in either order. In the timeline where John faces English, Meat, he is mortally wounded in the final battle and ultimately dies. Meanwhile Dirk Strider, who has always been a character of questionable morals, concludes that people like him, with now god-like superpowers, have no place living a mundane life. He chooses to become the villainous heir apparent to English, and manipulates Rose Lalonde into leaving her wife, Kanaya Maryam, and joining him for parts unknown in search of new adventures to come.

In the timeline where John refuses to face English, Candy, the story jumps forwards to many years later. The characters have all grown up, got married, had kids, some have gotten divorced, and lived a relativity normal, millennial life. That is until tensions rise due to increasing xenophobia towards the alien Trolls, and a fascist state rises around them. Our cast of characters are forced to put together a resistance to battle the rising threat, only for the story to end with Dirk from the Meat timeline arriving with intentions unknown.

What stands out to me about The Homestuck Epilogues is that they take on the now-familiar story beats of what has come to be known as the 'legacy sequel.' A story where the protagonists, now older and changed by experience, are drawn back into adventure along with a cast of new characters from the younger generation. There are references to past events and iconography, revivals of fan favourite characters, and a passing of the torch to a fresh new cast.

So, why did a large chunk of the fanbase have a problem with all of this? Well, for starters The Homestuck Epilogues are much more serious and have a far bleaker tone than that of the main comic. The violence is much more graphic and the sexual content much more adult. While the familiar ironic levity is there for those who look for it, this is a story much more about growing older and the world passing you by. It is very different than what came before.

Additionally, the Epilogues took some of its characters in very controversial directions. For starters in the Meat timeline, fan-favourite couple Rose and Kanaya end up separated, leaving a bad taste in the mouth for readers who held a torch for them and were glad to see the couple alive, well and married by the end of the main plot. This was alleviated somewhat by them staying together in the Candy timeline, though later developments in Homestuck 2 would exacerbate that.

Another point of contention was the confirmation of a rather notorious fan theory that had originally developed in the NSFW corners of the 4chan fanbase. During the events of Homestuck, Jade Harley merges her physical form with her cosmic space dog, Beq. While in the main comic very little is made of this beyond granting her space powers and cute dog ears, the Epilogues make it fundamentally clear that this merger, without beating around the bush, gave her male reproductive organs. While certainly this development was left open to be explored in a more sensitive, mature manner (and there is no doubt people out there who are more qualified to talk on the subject than I am,) the rather rancid and fetishistic origins of that particular fan theory are hard to ignore.

Without a doubt the most controversial element, however, was the treatment of Jane Crocker. A character in the original comic who was, for the most part, an optimistic and wide eyed idealist. In both timelines of the Epilogues Jane becomes the figurehead for a xenophobic movement against Trolls, and an abusive spouse to beloved character Jake English (no relation.) To fans of Jane, to those who spent years doing fan art and cosplays of the character, it was an unforgivable character assassination to turn her into what amounted to a secondary villain and indefensible abuser.

While opinion varied on the quality of the writing, which was itself done by a team of guest writers and not purely by Hussie, the direction the characters were taken in was a frequent sticking point for most readers. The fact that the happy and optimistic ending of Homestuck had now been overridden by this more nihilistic and depressing status quo was exactly the thing fans didn't want to see for the characters they had so fell in love with.

For my part, I actually really liked the Epilogues. I liked the fact that it explored the idea that there isn't such a thing as happy endings, and that you can't just roll the credits once your teenage years are over. I like the fact that it confronted the idea that a final conclusion sometimes involves sacrifice, and that a domestic happy ever after would ultimately become a breeding ground for melancholy and betrayal. While I understand the contention at some of the story decisions, I'd actually defend them for the most part. Sure it kind of sucks that Jane becomes an abusive racist, but sometimes even the brightest of kids grow up to be the shittiest of people.

Even so, I get why most of the fanbase didn't like it, and ultimately, I think using the Epilogues as a lead in to Homestuck's sequel was always going to leave a bad taste in people's mouths. To write for them something they really don't jive with, and then you expect them to turn up for the next big project right afterwards? It was always going to be a difficult proposition from the start.

I think ultimately some of this stems from the fact that Homestuck had attracted such a disparate audience over the years. The comic had always been somewhat of a highbrow exploration of narrative storytelling and the burden of the protagonist, and it had its fair share of bleak, violent and serious moments. Some of the audience were into this stuff, but a lot of them were mostly in it for the goofs, hijinks and shipping. It didn't help that the lion's share of Homesuck's audience would have been young teens when they were reading it, and were probably just old enough to look back on it with rose-tinted glasses by the time the Epilogues dropped.

Yet, the Epilogues were what they got, and there was no time to change course, because Homestuck 2 was officially round the corner. Hussie had hand-picked a new creative team to take the reins while they presumably continued work on Hiveswap, and this was touted as a new project for a new generation.

Strap yourself in, things are about to get bumpy.

Part Five: It Begins To Dawn On You That Everything You Just Did May Have Been a Colossal Waste Of Time.

Before we go any further I need to talk a bit about how Homestuck deals with the concept of 'canon' from the Epilogues onwards.

The Homestuck Epilogues open upon a page reminiscent of a fan fiction website. This cements the idea that the story is meant to be taken as more of a 'fanfic' than an official entry. I get a sense Hussie knew it was going to be controversial and took this approach to cover themselves. Likewise, Homestuck 2 would go on to give itself the subtitle Beyond Canon, hinting to audiences that the project itself could be seen more of a hypothetical continuation than a 'canon' one.

Now Homestuck has always played with the idea of meta elements, where 'the forth wall' is something that actually exits in-story. Characters can disrupt and usurp power from one another by acting with self-importance and presenting themselves as a 'protagonist.' The story frequently depicts reality as something that can be altered by acting upon pre-existing tropes. It also comments on the fact that these powers can render something 'non-canon.'

All this is to say that there was an attempt by Hussie and the new team of writers to inoculate the Epilogues and Homestuck 2 from some of the worst of the criticism on the grounds that readers are free to ignore these entries. If you don't like where the story goes then that's okay, it isn't really canon anyway.

Of course, this was well intentioned but misguided. It is true that we as audiences are free to pick and choose what we want to 'count' in our fictions. All of it is equally fictional. Just because Disney said that the Sequel Trilogy would contradict and overwrite the pre-existing Star Wars EU doesn't mean those stories went away. You can still enjoy Dark Forces all these years later.

That doesn't mean there isn't still a hierarchy to these things, however. While we are free to pick and choose what we want in our own personal Star Wars Canon, it doesn't change the fact that the Sequel Trilogy is the more legitimate entry. Most general audiences will see the Sequels as the 'legitimate' continuation of Luke and co's story over the Dark Horse comics or the Del Ray books.

Likewise, it doesn't matter how much hand-waving the writers do around Homestuck 2 to say that readers are free to disregard it if they want to. Readers know that. It doesn't change the fact that for all intents and purposes it exists as a sequel to Homestuck, and as the project given Hussie's blessing, there are no greater claimants to that title.

All this effort achieved is starting Homestuck 2 off with a lack of confidence in its own existence.

Coming off the back of the Epilogues, and indeed starting as a direct continuation, many fans were primed to hate it off the bat. Indeed, Homestuck 2 makes no effort to be accessible as a fresh start. Those hoping that they could move beyond the plot developments in the Epilogues and enjoy the sequel as a stand-alone adventure were quickly disappointed.

Even putting aside the baggage the comic already had, Homestuck 2 undoubtedly has a wonky and stilted start. Where Homestuck began with an immediate introduction to its protagonist, with a straightforward and understandable motivation, its sequel instead opens with a lengthy monologue by Dirk, waxing lyrical on the nature of storytelling and narrative, his role as either a hero or a villain, and your complicity as a passive audience. It's heavy stuff, and at times quite enthralling, but it is a bafflingly cerebral way to open this new adventure raising more questions than it has time to answer, and dumping us in the middle of a story involving branching timelines and alternate universes.

I honestly reckon the story should have started with an homage to the original Homestuck, with one of the younger generation protagonists as the point of view character, working towards a seemingly simple goal and introducing us to the status quo from there. We could then fill in the gaps via period flashbacks to bring us up to speed on what has happened in the meantime.

Instead Homestuck 2 essentially jumps back in to where we were left off in the Epilogues, with characters caught mid drama and pontificating on where they feel things all went wrong. It isn't bad storytelling. I actually found a lot of the drama and character conflict quite well executed, but, again, none of this was ever going to win over the doubters, of which there were many, and Homestuck 2 would quickly gain a reputation as a train wreck long before it left the station.

As I said earlier, I'm not here to chat about drama, but I will say that during Homestuck 2's first year there was a lot of back and forth between fans and the writers that got heated. Some of the writers took it upon themselves to push back against the criticism, and this in and of itself generated even more controversy. This obviously took a toll on the writers, and the project was paused in 2020.

For many, this was assumed to be the death of Homestuck 2. Even putting aside the behind the scenes drama, the comic continued to make creative decisions that divided the fanbase. Rose and Kanaya's relationship was further fractured with the reveal that Rose and Jade had had an affair and a baby together, who was christened the rather groan-worthy name of Yiffany. Jane would continue down the path of straightforward villainy, while the comic would heap attention on the revived Vriska Serket, a morally dubious character who was divisive even in the original Homestuck.

Homestuck 2 went on hiatus mid-story in December 2020, with no real jumping off point. If it had have died there, that would have been understandable. The comic had a thankless task of trying to win over an already sceptical audience, or survive as best it could from the small cult following of defenders it had managed to retain. The negative feedback was clearly more than what a lot of the writing team could weather.

But to the god of death, they said, not yet.

Part Six: You Have A Feeling It's Going to Be a Long Day

"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!"

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925

Homestuck 2's hiatus ended in August 2023 with a team of new writers, though beyond it dropping the 2 and officially being retitled 'Beyond Canon' you probably wouldn't notice. Reading the story continuously, the 2023 update basically picks up right where it left off in 2020. While the temptation must have been there for the new creative team, this was no soft-reboot or reintroduction. No changes were made to the ongoing plot, nor controversial elements retconned.

This, ultimately, was probably the best thing for the comic. Had the new creative team decided to throw out some of the previous writing team's work it would have been seen as an admission of failure. Instead, the new team remained stalwart and committed to Beyond Canon's original intent, whether fans of the original Homestuck liked that or not.

To be honest, in 2026, it is actually refreshing to see a creative team of a controversial work mount a spirted defence. When compared to Lucasfilm and the BBC throwing The Last Jedi and The Timeless Child under the bus, it feels almost a rare thing for an IP to stand by the work instead of desperately trying to kowtow to its most objectionable fans.

All this being said, there is a palpable improvement to Beyond Canon from 2023 onwards. The pacing is much more balanced and the direction made much more clear. Plot points begin to converge, and the overall conflict is finally set up and introduced. Controversial elements like Rose and Jade's affair are confronted with more detail and nuance, though I suspect that this was always the plan had the 2020 team been allowed more time to get there.

Still, with a new creative team and a more professional attitude towards the parasocial relationships, we're off to the races. For those Homestuck fans who stuck with Beyond Canon, this is the point at which they cite the comic 'finally getting good,' though I think that is a little unfair, as there is a lot to love about the 2020 era, but there's no denying that a lot of Beyond Canon's strongest elements start to come to the forefront, and the role each divergent timeline plays becomes clearer.

Not only that, but the greater focus on animation, music and interactive sequences gives the comic that more classic Homestuck feeling that the earlier era was sorely lacking. A long animated stretch that finally explores what it takes for Vriska to truly be redeemed, for me at least, to be one of the best moments in the Homestuck canon, paying off a decade's worth of setup and character development.

For the next few years the comic would bound forward with confidence, focussing on frequent updates and avoiding lengthy gaps where possible. By 2025 the comic would have finally got round to introducing the Nymphs and the Satyrs, two new alien species set to play the cosmic game just as Humans and Trolls had in the original Homestuck, and opening a window to more weird societies that serve as a subtle and not-so subtle commentary on contemporary online friendships just as Homestuck had originally.

In spite of all of this, Beyond Canon still hasn't won over many of its detractors. This is probably due to a multitude of factors. First and foremost is the first impression that it gave back in 2019. Already controversial on the back of the Epilogues, Beyond Canon was written off by many as a failure from the get go, and that is a hard reputation to shake.

Second is the fact that Homestuck in general is already a huge body of work to embark upon. While a new generation of readers are experiencing the comic for the very first time, in no small part because of the animated pilot produced by SpindleHorse (It is too early to speculate on what impact that will have on the future of Homestuck,) even just getting through the original Homestuck on its own is a massive undertaking that a lot of people back out from. After finishing Homestuck for the first time, I'm imagining there are many who probably want to have a break before delving into anything similar.

Thirdly, and most crucially, is the fact that Beyond Canon is being produced in a different online age and ecosystem than Homestuck was. The online communities that existed under SomethingAwful and 4chan have long receded, and even Tumblr is a shadow of its former self. The fandom of Beyond Canon is fractured and split across multiple platforms. The unification to spread word of mouth just isn't there. It probably says something that on the official Beyond Canon news post concerning fan convention NYCStuck, the creative team expressed genuine surprise to see fans cosplaying as Beyond Canon Characters.

Part Seven: THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER THE END IS NEVER

So, where does Homestuck, and more pertinently, Beyond Canon go from here?

I don't know. Like I said at the start, It is almost impossible to judge if Homestuck is good or not, therefore it is almost impossible to judge if Beyond Canon is good or not.

Personally? I like it. Some of the more controversial elements do make me wince a little, but ultimately I'm game to see where the story goes and where it takes things. I'm happy to see that it is willing to take risks rather than do things for blatant nostalgia. It is possible that there are better Homestuck successors out there, I know that Vast Error has been very well regarded, but ultimately I can't fault Beyond Canon for being anything other than more Homestuck.

Ultimately that is the one thing it can't not be. The characters are there, the format is there, the sardonic humour is there, the overly complex cosmology is there. If you've been hankering for an experience like Homestuck since it finished in 2016 then I've got to be honest, you'd be hard pressed to find a more appropriate replacement than Beyond Canon.

There's a saying that has been picked up online recently that goes, "(Insert unpopular thing here,) tastes so good when you don't have a bitch in your ear telling you it's nasty," and I think that's how I feel about Beyond Canon. If you go in having heard about all the complaints beforehand then you're going to force yourself to hate it, but if you enter with an open mind, put on your good time hat, and roll with the punches, I think you'd be pleasantly surprised.

Does it have its problems? Sure, but so did Homestuck. Homestuck also had many, many problems, controversies and setbacks. In that regard Beyond Canon is in good company, and probably deserves more of a chance than it has gotten, especially considering that with Hiveswap still stuck in development hell, and the fate of the animated pilot up in the air, Beyond Canon is currently the most consistently available ongoing source of new Homestuck material out there.

Homestuck is always going to inhabit this weird point in history for internet culture. There are still people doing cosplays all these years later (shout out to the Karkat I saw at Thought Bubble 2024.) There are still people creating Fantrolls. There are people who were deep into it who now feel really embarrassed about the zodiac tattoos they got. There are people out there who are still convinced that the whole thing is a cult.

Maybe Beyond Canon was a bridge too far into an online era that doesn't really GET IT, trying to cater for a fanbase that has long since outgrown it, but it exists, it is there. It's still updating. It's still evolving. It's still Homestuck. That is fascinating to me. I can't help but find something enthralling about a project trying to keep the lights on long into an era that it doesn't belong.

Who knows what is next for the comic? If it manages to soldier on long enough to execute its big mid-story crisis event, or if it flames out into irrelevancy for the second time, but as the Byzantine Empire was to Rome, just because it is a shadow of its former glory doesn't mean it can't make its own mark on history.

And if not in this timeline, then maybe in the next.

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Jack Harvey 2026. Images used under Fair Use.