#(recap)

Here’s a recap of our historic Artemis II launch and a preview of what's to come.

Last week I dropped the Ultimate Homestuck Recap that summarized the webcomic that once dominated the internet, particularly Tumblr.

Today I bring you what it was all for, a video essay called Homestuck Is Good, Actually.

If you were wondering, "Homestuck, really? In 2025?" The answer is yes. This isn't ironic. It's 100% sincere. I love Homestuck. And I think you should, too. Let me tell you why. Let me tell you about… Homestuck.

Happy New Year, everyone! I'm squeaking by just in time for my 2025 retrospective! (It's still January 1st where I live! It doesn't matter that the sun's down, right?!)

Okay, this year was a WILD year for Shepherds of Haven! This exact time last year, I started off January 2025 mistakenly shadowbanned from Tumblr (🥹 obviously fixed now, but quite stressful to realize...) and not even ten days later, ShoH's previous hosting site Dashingdon abruptly shut down. Remember that, ya'll? Remember when the singular hosting site for all ChoiceScript games suddenly announced its closure with only two weeks' notice? That only happened 12 months ago. Feels like so much longer...

Anyway, those January curveballs massively accelerated plans and changes for Shepherds that I'd been planning on chipping away at much more slowly. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise, though, because under the new pressure of no longer having a working demo for Shepherds available anywhere, I managed to ship the new Twine alpha build of the game to Patrons in just 6 weeks, on the last day of February, finishing the port of over a million words of prose and code, putting the new UI and engine features out into the wild to be stress-tested, and incorporating new features like the game's soundtrack, interactive maps, and original art in ways that I had only once dreamed of!

This was shortly followed by the game's new public demo release in July! And was also accompanied by a new official website for the game, a newsletter, new social media channels, the itch.io pages, and an announcement blog as well... with an official Steam page hopefully forthcoming!

Suffice to say, it was an insanely busy and nerve-wracking time, and I couldn't have navigated it without all of your patience, encouragement, and support! I'm truly honored that the new Twine version of the game has been received so positively, and I'm incredibly grateful that people are continuing to play, enjoy, and share the world of Shepherds! 😭❤️ Thank you so much! 🙇🏻‍♀️

If that wasn't enough work, we also completed a slew of new character interludes, started Chapter 10, and finally debuted the long-awaited Ascendancy Festival for the first wave of characters, complete with Chandry's "Ember Island Players"-style parody play, festival minigames and activities, and pivotal confession scenes for Blade and Trouble, finally unlocking their official relationships! We also added Recruit Mode, the quickbuild, and a variety of other new features to the game.

In total, we added 160,000 words of new content to the game in 2025, on top of all of the work it took to port, release, test, and refine the Twine build. That's roughly The Two Towers, Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, Emma, Dracula, or The Grapes of Wrath in a year. This also brings the game's total wordcount to 1.4 million words without code: not sure if that's breaking any official IF records, but it does in my heart!

Other stuff: 18 art assets created, 20,000 words added to the Shepherds short stories on Patreon, 100,000 words written for my second novel manuscript. Oh, and the new engine and UI for the Haven University game started at the eleventh hour!

All this on top of planning a wedding, which is set to take place in March! ☺️✨

So, I'm happy to report that despite the screamingly stressful start to the year, we managed to come through it with a sense of pride, productivity, and accomplishment! We shipped major, momentous, pivotal updates--a whole new version of the game--crossed huge milestones, and are inching ever closer to the game's end stages in a real and tangible way! The threads are starting to get drawn together in a way that makes it feel like this is it! The momentum is real! It's all finally really happening!

As always, I want to thank all of you for being part of this journey. Whether you played the demo, shared the game, supported it on Patreon, reported bugs, sent a kind word or thoughtful message, or simply cheered from the sidelines, your enthusiasm and encouragement mean more than I can say. Shepherds of Haven simply wouldn’t exist in its current form without this community, and I’m endlessly grateful for your patience, kindness, and excitement as this world continues to grow!