Maybe it'll turn out better this time
By Circlejourney
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machinasolis
SoundCloud.
Cover art by yoyoYolo
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NexusMeme
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Released 9/16/2023.
Duration: 3:31.
Listen on Bandcamp or YouTube.
Download MIDI/project files.
Read artist commentary.
Tracks that Maybe it'll turn out better this time references:
Download MIDI/project files:
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MIDI by Circlejourney (original composer)
Artist commentary:
This one's about starting the universe over when the old one doesn't work out. It's also about the worlds that Homestuck has inspired and spawned, both within its multiverse and beyond it.
I'm dedicating this one to UtopianParadoxist, who wrote the post that made this track appear in my mind in such blinding clarity I couldn't stop making until it was done.
I also have some extended commentary about this one--it's more important to me than I give it credit for.
When I finished reading Homestuck, I was...disappointed. That disappointment morphed gradually into disgust as I watched schisms violently open in the fandom following the Epilogues and Homestuck^2, and in the process I felt like I'd lost something.
I kept thinking that maybe, if I just read the comic again, it would turn out different. Maybe it'd be the story I'd once loved and it would fill me with breathless wonder again. Maybe it'd be better.
But earlier this year, a post by uP crossed my dash after he'd disappeared from my periphery for well over a year. He was outlining his plans surrounding Pumpkin Path, a story he's writing that runs adjacent to the Epilogues and (eventually though not yet?) gives these characters the futures they've earned.
And I realised...the way I'd been thinking about it, that's not how it works, y'know? It's not the story that has changed: it's my heart, my relationship with it. And the best thing I could do was take what this once-beloved story gave me and make something new with it. And that's what many people have done in the wake of Homestuck's end: we've all gone off and made new stories, for which this long-beloved comic was an undeniable progenitor.
It reminded me of a certain recurring motif in the comic itself. Every time the universe resulted in a corrupt or barren session, the players...well, they rebooted it. They left the old universe behind, and started a new one, billions of years all over again just to see where it would go this time.
There was no use in searching for the story that used to be, because it was me that had changed.
You may as well leave that old universe behind and start a new one from scratch.
This is the idea that seeded the above track, and it caught me off guard, because it was the first Homestuck music I had made in more than two years--after I thought I'd sworn it off for good. And then, two days later, Maybe it'll turn out better this time was done. (Two days is, by the way, a very short time for a track to emerge.) It was a small, silly, wonderful little thing, a sapling in the ashes, that proved to me that things could change.
But beyond my track, the entirety of LOFAM5A2 feels especially so. It's a startling breath of fresh air that emerged from so much genuine joy and excitement. I'm happy I got to contribute even just a little work to it and I really, really hope that the fandom sees it for all that went into it. An UMSPAF manager once said that my music always sounds hopeful, but it was never intentional until this one. Thank you to everyone who's made good art that has inspired others in turn, you create life with your own hands.
maybe it’ll turn out better this time is a title that immediately reminded me of the retcon. in the cover art, i decided to highlight how the joy of the post retcon timeline almost completely overshadows the suffering of characters that we actually followed for years. idk, replacing these guys with slightly different versions of them always felt weird to me.