Hey there, would you like to talk about Homestuck?

Ok, wow. No mention of Homestuck here yet at all?

http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6

It's a webcomic. A very long one. The longest. And it's still updating. And it includes flash games, music, and a fandom which raised 2.5 million on Kickstarter recently.

So yeah. Spoilers may ensure. So probably don't read on if you aren't up to date.

But wow. Damara's text when translated.

I think foul-mouthed is a light way to put it. I think the milk really put the stamp on it.

I would like to talk about homestruck.

I do not always read super crappy web comics,

but when I do, I read Dolan.

Once I read some homestuck, but then I didn't have time to read a novel-length chat transcript with each update.

I think that was a year ago.

Has the plot shown any signs of resolving, or does he just keep piling it on?

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

novel-length

like your name?

"

TheuberClips wrote:

"

caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaps wrote:

novel-length

like your name?

Longer.

Not so much novel-length as just well-fleshed out. Calling it crappy kinda ain't enough either, there aren't any points behind that. I mean, the extra dialogue helps to make the characters personality clarified, to stop them being one-dimensional.

So yeah. It is still ongoing. And the story is still running, because it's so darn complex. New stuff is happening, time is getting twisted round itself. Surprising, an ongoing plot which wants the reader to try and understand it, rather than tell you what's happening.

Also, as may be picked up, Homestuck is also one of the most hated fandoms for not very many reasons. Partly because somehow people think they shouldn't be able to cosplay it to anime conventions, partly because of small minority groups hitting people with buckets and jazz. But like other fandoms, these are a minority. Partly because a number of other fandoms decided to start a hate war then accuse the homestucks as the aggressors for continuing it.

But yeah!
Rosemary is taking place! Daverezi is going places! My JohnVris feels are being crushed into the floor!

So hey, quiet down with the crappy over there. It's gone from this kind of art -

to this (vaguely spoiler-riffic)


so the art's improving, and the story just keeps on getting better. So it's kinda nice to dig through in an archive binge, and reaching current stuff is just brilliant. Some of the fanventures are pretty good too, faves here being Guidestuck and Heinoustuck.

"

Serrational wrote:

Not so much novel-length as just well-fleshed out.

Eh, that's debatable.

When I stopped reading it, most updates were of the form:
human: blah blah blah
troll: bl4HHHHH bl4HHHHH bl4HHHHH
human: and so on
troll: foRRRRR 30 oRRRRRR morEEEEEEEE l1neSSSSSSSSSSS

Besides often being intentionally (!) difficult to read, the chat logs contained an awful lot of the characters just talking at each other (hi hello just bothering you go away ok bye) and vague references to things that haven't happened yet, things that are happening (hey is bob there no hes off doing that thing o ok i guess ill call him bye), or things that we're just hearing about for the first time just to make the story more complex. Oftentimes, it felt like absolutely nothing was accomplished in the chat transcript and maybe it should have been edited down -- and that contributes to:

"

So yeah. It is still ongoing. And the story is still running, because it's so darn complex. New stuff is happening, time is getting twisted round itself. Surprising, an ongoing plot which wants the reader to try and understand it, rather than tell you what's happening.

The story got lost. Remember when AH was saying it'd take a year?

Perhaps it's a consequence of the format, but it feels like there's no real editing process where the plot is trimmed. Instead, gratuitous time travel, alternate universes, and unnecessary duplication of characters just get added, and added, and added. First they were doing that one thing and now something else and so on, never really accomplishing any goals without those goals getting transmogrified into meaninglessness.

It's difficult to make a time travel and multiple universe story, and yes the result is often complex and hard to follow, but it's more difficult to make a good one. Complexity itself should not be the objective. Time is getting twisted, sure, but to what end? New stuff is happening, maybe, but does it have any relation to the years of material that preceded it?

Clearly there are some people who enjoy feeling they've seen through the obfuscation, I'm just not one of them.

In short, dude is making it up as he goes along and can't be bothered to do anything but add more layers of everything.

"

so the art's improving, and the story just keeps on getting better.

Incidentally, I don't really agree with this either. The two images are different, yes, but I don't see so much of a improvement as a change in style. And I think that's also one of the factors that led me to abandon it.

Wait, so people sometimes talk to each other about meaningless things? Surely not! Every conversation I have is a whip-snap of flurried "Go there, do this, come back."

They're supposed to be 13 for the parts you'd have been in, not mature people who know what they're doing a vast amount of the time. And the quirks are actually one of the more appealing things I'd say ; they're not difficult to learn or read, they add some charm to a character, and they make them easy to tell apart. It's darn easy to read if you just persevere. And say what, things get introduced in the logs?

NO WAY!

PEOPLE INTRODUCE PLOT POINTS INTO CONVERSATION?

I never knew. What a bodyswerve from the norm. Surely not. People talking about ongoing events, wow. Odd story thing that. Give me a nice simple narrative like OOTS to follow, where the bad guys are signposted and the endgame is inevitable and predictable.

So hey, a webcomic takes off and the author doesn't end it? The story wasn't even near ending. It grew a darn amount, and the 2.5 mil Kickstarter kinda indicates that it became a viable income source. And hey, goals change. the goalposts move. Jack became pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme. There's always a bigger boss, and they found the biggest. He's put a vague goal for when Homestuck will finish, and he's said that he knows how it will end. His original plans have apparently not changed a massive amount from when he made them, so hey.

And in terms of extra time travel and jazz, it's an attraction for me. Trying to work your head around it is fun, and Hussie has demonstrated a mastery of Chekov's Gun. So hey, some of the apparently stupid details have turned up later to affect the plot in some way.

So, you can't accuse him of making it up as he goes and really be accurate in that. He has a plan, he's aimed for it. It's going to be fulfilled at some point. When, who knows. But the ride is fun. Some of the details of it which seems scattergun may come from it being aimed at an internet generation, where increasingly people are making friends online who they may never meet in person. So in part, the story may seem slightly wish-fulfillment material of "guy meets his internet buddies and has an adventure", but from all the death and misery it's hard for it to feel like an adventure.

But the art, man. You cray cray. The second picture is clearly, CLEARLY, much better, more complex, more worked, more engaging than the first. Good grief, it's in full colour as well! Anyhow, shenanigans can ensue. Don't read if you don't like some of the weirder things. Fine by me. Be happy.

But seriously, do we really need bashing in here? We can both be better than this. Let's be better people and quit arguing.

"

Onionspam wrote:

I do not always read super crappy web comics,

but when I do, I read Dolan.

but when I do, I read http://elftor.com/elftor.php?number=1 (elftor)