KOA -- First Year Retrospective
KOA -- First Year Retrospective
One year ago today (assuming this comes out on the 12th of June, 2025), Karkat's Ohio Adventure came into being.
KOA remains an underground cult-classic to this day, however, throughout its development, there have been many changes, scrapped ideas, and generally
a whole lot of miscellany worth noting.
You can sort of think of this like a DVD commentary for the episodes. I bet those would make a killing.
Episode 1 was created all the way back in December of 2023, long before it released.
The first 7 or so episodes were written as notepad files, in quick succession that winter. You may be
wondering what of the next episodes, to which I turn your attention to this:
Have fun speculating based on that.
Anyways, Karkat walks into the Burger King, and originally this episode was going to have artwork done in each pannel.
This fell through for a couple of reasons, my friend who pledged to get the artwork done did not finish them in time, I wasn't
confident enough in my abilities to finish the artwork either. I think KOA ended up better being text only, but I will admit that
some of the sacrifices made in removing art make me reconsider.
A glimpse at what we could've had...
I think ultimately the decision to scrap the artwork worked out in the project's favor, as now it is significantly faster to create new episodes. We here at
We at KOA may be dedicated to Karkat, but we really aren't that dedicated to the cause.
There were actually multiple iterations of art we went through, One with SiIvaGunner CCC-esque
dialogue portraits, of which only 3 were produced. (Credit for these goes to Daya, sorry we never used these, they turned out great!)
The others were more comic inspired, with various characters being drawn directly in the pannels. These ended up going nowhere.
There were some funny visual jokes though.
This removed Among Us poster actually appeared in a previous King for Another Day inspired project, more of which can be found here.
Episode 1 was made on a whim in a VC, as a "Homestuck fanfiction". The basic plotline was completely improvised. This lead to some interesting rewrites.
For example, did you know that the Grimace Shake was originally going to dye Karkat's blood purple and cause him to go into a murderous rage like Gamzee?
This was changed because it was just kinda stupid tbh, poisoning worked fine and it contradicted with pre-existing Homestuck lore,
along with generally being less interesting than other stuff we ended up doing.
v
Episode 2 was weird. Commonly cited (as in, 2 leading creatives) as the best episode of KOA,
Episode 2 was a dramatic social commentary on the horrors of the industrial prison complex. It also
introduced much of the world to AutoGunner, an AI which allegedly killed Drake and highjacked his corpse,
went to law school and passed using ChatGPT, got GornyPunner arrested for decades, and became an ultimate superweapon
which was easily destroyed with the power of friendship.
Auto's story has many twists and turns, but he originally started as a channel for fellow creative 34landon to
upload AI-generated/partially AI rips. This was during the phase where AI was more of a neat toy than anything that could
take jobs, and it quickly became an avenue to riff on infamous Canadian Drake. We actually got ChatGPT to generate some of the lines
AutoGunner says, however we significantly modified them. This is where the whole "troll-themed" thing comes from, by the way.
Past Episode 2, all Auto dialog is artisinally hand-crafted by our in-house writers.
The Minecraft Villager scene was fun to write, being Karkat's main challenge to overcome for the episode, having
Karkat get someone else to translate who only knew like 25% of what was being said was very funny. I don't know how obvious it was in text, but
Auto has no fucking clue what's going on here lmfao.
AutoGunner makes numerous appearances throughout MariGunner, 34landon's main ripping channel,
and associates as a real P.O.S., getting people hooked on nitrus, getting his rivals arrested, and generally
being a douche. Auto in KOA is significantly kinder by comparason. We've established the "MariGunner" Auto and
"KOA" AutoGunner as seperate entities in the lore, along with a third splinter of Auto being controlled by the FCC
to post and QC rips. For a quick guide, MariGunner's Auto is "Ye Auto" (named after Kanye West), KOA's is "Drake Auto", and KVGM's is "Sigma-7"
All three share a hivemind of sorts, which hasn't been elaborated upon in depth quite yet.
AUTO SAYS:
Drake auto
Ye auto
Sigma 7
All of these together make...
AutoGunners medias
In episode 2, Karkat teams up with AutoGunner to help him break out of an unjust prison sentence, before booking it out of the
courtroom before they can force him to play Desert Bus. Karkat is lucky enough to find a car to hijack here, transitioning smoothly into episode 3.
Before we get into the third episode though, Ajit Pai is chosen to be the main antagonist in the court scene,
Funnily enough, our editor Millie had no idea who Ajit was until the very end, despite being an avid fan of SiIvaGunner, which served as the inspiration for
his involvment.
In SiIvaGunner, Mr. Pai is a joke character obsessed with the Harlem Shake who was incorporated into the King for A Day project after going after net neutrality
legislation during the first Trump administration, repealing net neutrality and allowing companies to change the rate at which content loads, allowing for preferential treatment
and higher costs to access more of the internet. This was wildly unpopular, check any subreddit's top posts of all time and you'll probably find some post about it in the
top posts of all time, depending on how lax their rules were.
Here it is on r/technology.
Despite long since stepping down from his oosition in government, Ajit Pai is still fun to laugh at to this day. In KOA, Ajit has continued his reign over the FCC, and somehow made
Ohio it's own seperate country from the United States, with an oppresive regime that absolutely hates Homestuck. Obviously wrong, the Ohioan government is also woefully incompetent,
unable to kill Karkat and co despite being clearly far more powerful than them.
The thumbnail for this one is a picture of 34landon making ramen and broccoli. Reports say that it was "tasty".
Like 90% of the weird stuff Karkat gets up to is based on a Tony Zaret video called " I Got a Girlfriend (at the Homestuck Convention)
a masterwork of editing, that one. Much like wine, this video ages very well, but I prefer to pour it directly on my
meal like some sort of uncivilized rizz-lacking beta. This is why Karkat is so fixated on bucket throwing despite it not
coming up at all in Homestuck or Karkalicious, the two main places that Karkat's character is drawn from.
This episode hints at both the later utilization of AutoGunner as a weapon and Karkat's past, though it isn't explained in depth.
Basically, at a convention, one of the audience members had it out for Karkat, threw a bucket at his goofy ahh face, causing Karkat to
reflexively parry it into the crowd, killing several. This is played as seriously as possible for such a strange event.
This is what got Karkat banned from conventions, by the way.
This episode also serves as the introduction for MrBeast. You really get a fun glimpse at their dynamic of MrBeast just saying
unhinged shit and Ajit kinda sighing and going along with it. We definitely abandonned the scammer persona later on in writing, but left him as unhinged. I think overall the first 3 episodes are very solid.
Worth noting is that Episode 3 was originally written in the first batch of episodes, whereas Episodes 4 and on were written slightly later in late January of 2024.
I'm pretty sure the only reason Freddy Fazbear works with the FCC is because we had him listed as "phone guy" at first.
Originally in KOA, there was going to be the same rules for names as in Homestuck (eg. only
4 character or 6 character long names, stuff like JAKE PAULER, LOGANG FOLIFE, and INDEEP ENDENT) but this was pulled after a joke in episode 2 required
characters who's names didn't fit the form. This idea is still seen in a few places, like the main three (Eminem, Jonesy, and of course Karkat) having 6 character
long first names, Michael Jordan's suprise appearance in Episode 1 (Itself a reference to Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden), as well as Auto's name.
This is the first instance of people refering to the KOA guestbook as the FCC snitching hotline, something I decided to add to hopefully entice people to leave messages
we could feature. The exact purpose was never specified, I just wanted more readers using the
guestbook..
34LANDON SAYS:
Stevye is an eldritch horror who only roams the streets of Ohio.
This is also the first appearance of Peter Griffin (R.I.P.) who's writing is inspired by the very relevant at the time
inclusion of Peter Griffin into Fortnite. Same with Eminem honestly. The beauty of KOA is that
everything is a current pop culture reference that's already old by the time the episode comes out.
This is why there's such a long time between episodes (not really).
The main rooftop setpiece here was heavily inspired by some of the setpieces in Half-Life 2, one of my favorite games.
This revealed Peter's weird ability to display information to others via cutaway gag, which is rightfully never explained.
This also introduced the KOA trio's new base. This was first designed when KOA was going to have visuals, thus concept art was
created.
A ramshackle base made of various pieces of scrap metal, not dissimilar to the metal walls in Fortnite.
Giant chunks were also supposed to be taken from the battle bus, which contradicts with the next episodes' where they still have it.
I guess it's possible they had multiple or something.
Chandler Beast just revealing his home address here is one of the funniest bits in the episode.
Sometimes I worry that KOA isn't funny enough, but then I come back a few weeks later and get a chuckle out of the text.
I honestly can't explain the thought process behind boykisser showing up in the gay lambo. I'm pretty sure Lags17 was planning or doing the Boykissover
during the writing of this episode, and at the time there were plans to keep all the lore in one universe, so I'm pretty sure that's how this happened.
Jonesy then does a fuck ton of tutorializing about factions. This will probably become a running bit over time.
Karkat opens episode 6 by almost murdering his former associate Boykisser. This was supposed to be a vaugely
serious scene, but it really does not land the way it should I think. In the future KOA will probably try to
keep it's tone pretty light-hearted. Karkat then takes out the back half of BK's car for the bosst, leading swiftly
into episode 7. For the most part this episode is so short because we wanted Episode 8 to be the one where Vriska shows up.
Depending on how things go, this may even come out before then, giving the audience much to speculate and be wrong about.
This is also the point where the FCC finally takes over KVGM, before this it was being ran by Karkat, then Jonesy. Each change of
ownership leads to different metadata for the uploads. Karkat had the standard SiIva formatting, Jonesy formatted everything like Fortnite
Emotes, and the FCC lists the game title first.
An example in the form of the Super Mario Galaxy 2 playlist.
This was mostly done to give each channel host a bit more of a
personality, and seperate the channel from other ripping channels.
This was also around the time of the change in title from LagsMBH 2 to KVGM, of which there are still a few examples of the older name in earlier episodes.
An early element of site's design prior to the name change.
The name change mostly stemmed from Lags' lack of involvement in the channel. She requested the change, and overall I think it was
for the better.
Peter also dies here. R.I.P.
Finally, Episode 7, the battle against Sigma-7, and the first step to destroying the FCC.
Karkat and CO. work to fight AutoGunner.
Originally, during the rapping scene, Sigma-7 was supposed to have actual bars, but these were
replaced by nonsense because the original song kinda sucked. Do not request me to write rap lyrics if you want anything
remotely acceptable.
Episode 7's cover art is one of the first to omit the KOA logo in the cover art, which is mostly because my editor updated
and no longer accepts the scaling method used originally. Unfortunately, this is likely to stay the case for a while.
The Avante-Garde thing continues here as well.
I don't really remember much from the development of KOA's lost episode. I think it turned out to be one of the
better episodes of the series, certainly one of the funniest just do to the overal absurdity of it all.
I don't have that many stories about the development of the side stories, but we did end up creating this during part of
the development of The Lost Episode.
HEY NOOKSUCKERS.
I THINK YOUR SHOW IS "GREAT". I HATE THE CHARACTER NORM. I KINDA FEEL LIKE HE IS MY KISMESIS. I THINK YOU SHOULD INCLUDE A JOKE ABOUT JD VANCE HAVING "SEXUAL RELATIONS" WITH A COUCH AND A BUCKET. ALSO, IF YOU COULD REFERENCE HOMESTUCK AT LEAST ONCE (A FAMOUS WORK OF WOKE ART FOR LIBERAL BETAS), THAT WOULD BE GREAT. LIKE IF KARKAT FROM HOMESTUCK SHOWED UP? THAT WOULD BE #POGGERS. HE SHOULD BE A CRINGE LIPSH*T THOUGH.
I THINK THAT REFERENCING HOMESTUCK WOULD MAKE THE SHOW SIGNIFICANTLY MORE INTERESTING, AND FUNNY. ALSO, IT WOULD MAYBE PERSUADE WOKIES TO BECOME NORMIES (NEW NORM FANS).
PLEASE TAKE THESE INTO CONSIDERATION IN THE NEXT.
WITH LOVE,
KARKAT VANTAS
XOXO
fans of homestuck will surely love to see this.
Expect another episode of KOA in the coming months. You have been warned: it's peak!