CaNWC Nitpicking

Making theories involves trying to understand every part of a narrative to see what new things can be discovered. But that also usually means finding a few errors in the work itself as well. That’s just the nature of nitpicking.

In order to clarify that I’m not taking these parts as fully canon, as well as to further demonstrate that o is not Andrew Hussie, this post will go over the mistakes I’ve noticed (although granted Hussie can make mistakes as well, like the missing “to” above). The very nature of CaNWC means that most “errors” can be played off as part of the joke, since objects do not maintain their appearance over time and people aren’t required to maintain proper spelling or grammar, but there are some genuine mistakes nonetheless.

Page 33: Swet Bro’s Body Disappeared

That’s about all there is to say about it. Some of the grass does look off where he was, so perhaps it was intentional, but I think that’s just a compression error.

Page 54: Copy-Paste Mistake

Your name is ROSE. As was previously mentioned you are without ELECTRICITY, although your LAPTOP COMPUTER still functions on BATTERY POWER.



o clearly copy-pasted Rose’s introduction page here from Homestuck. However, unlike Homestuck, it was never “previously mentioned” in CaNWC that Rose was without electricity. If this Rose has been directly taken from the Homestuck universe, perhaps it was mentioned there, but the most likely explanation is just that o pasted it without checking that everything there was consistent with CaNWC to just further emphasize that this Rose is like the one we are all familiar with. Jack was similarly introduced with nearly identical text, although that time it had been more appropriately edited.

This is one I initially thought was an error, but figured out. I’m keeping it on the list as an example of how well o has avoided these types of errors, as well as it being one of the initial reasons I started making this list.

So the apparent problem was that when Jhon connected to Rose on page 71, it was clearly as her server player, which was possible since he got both discs from Dadd. Yet page 94 claims that he was her client. So this appears to be a simple mix-up.

But if Jhon and Rose were planning on a two player session, then he would be both Rose’s client player and her server player, meaning either term could accurately apply to him, and since he obtained both disks by taking dadd’s hand, he was perfectly capable of doing this.

In fact, since Dabe had been “missing” for the last month and Jaed had never even heard of “sburn”, this is what had to have happened. (Edit: It’s not clear if this would be true for Homestuck as well. Dave was originally uninterested in playing SBURB and Jade claimed she wasn’t aware of it either, but apparently that was just her dreamself and she was perfectly aware of it.) We can question why they didn’t plan to include Jaed, as it seems especially odd she isn’t aware of the game since grandpather is presumably still the one to have transcribed the code from the froge temple.

This point also raises a stronger parallel between Rose and Hecka Jef, since he was planning on starting a two player session with Swet Bro. Each tried to start with a single other person and failed. But Jhon turned out to be Player 1 anyways, but through a very atypical method. Was he able to join because of his brief connection to Rose? Will that be a requirement for Player 4? Does that mean Swet Bro will be resurrected? Sure he’s dead now, but Sollux died too. That would probably undermine a lot of the current plotlines though, as well as make for some even weirder ectobiology relations, so I’m skeptical.

Anyways, points like this are a reason I try to nitpick. CaNWC is surprisingly good at standing up to it, and it opens up entire new areas to question.

Page 183-186: Dream Hecka Jef is not wearing his gold pajamas.

As Hecka Jef awakes on Prostit, he initially appears to have properly changed to his gold attire on page 182, but for the next few pages he’s in his usual blue clothing. While Jaed could theoretically have teleported to LODAR, the color of the room indicates this should indeed be Prostit.

Animation Errors

In s]hecka jef, around 17 seconds in, when the shot transitions from his feat to his head, his coat is seen for a fraction of a second too long, leaving a red “flash” above his head. [S) bunnie time has similar errors 25 seconds in with baby Roxy briefly appearing when the thought bubble is removed, and a screen size adjustment 44 seconds in. These errors might be attributable to the “Animaker” software o uses, but I have no background in animation and can’t offer much advise. I would certainly love to see o eventually get an upgrade to some better software, at the very least to remove that watermark. (Edit: It does have a certain charm to it. I just hope it doesn’t limit what can be done in the future.)

That’s about it for the way of mistakes that I’ve caught. Like I said, most other “mistakes” are integrated into the comic’s shitty style, so there are actually very few chances to make legitimate errors in the first place. I could make some other complaints if I tried perhaps, but not without becoming even more nitpicky than this.

In general, o has done an amazing job paying attention to the small details of his world, so much so that I caught less errors than I thought I would. For example, keeping track of Rose’s SBURB disks on her desk here. If you want to, you can keep track of that thing from its first appearance to its last anytime you see her desk. There are plenty of really small details you can only get by looking closely as well, like here where you can see HB’s ship coming to crush Dabe, or including a very tiny Derse on this map, or making sure the Hecka Jef kitchen matches its SBaHJ counterpart. It’s an impressive amount of detail for a comic so undetailed.