Homestuck post the second
Sep. 14th, 2011 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rallamajoopI have spent the last four days solid suffering from a moderately bad cold while trying to resurrect my desktop from a miserable hell of corrupted hardware. No data lost, thank god – the hard drive at fault went through so many warning spasms before giving up the ghost that I had ample time to back everything up – but, without going into all the fine detail, so many complicating factors turned up during the task of removing the dodgy drive that I eventually gave up, formatted the surviving disk and am now reinstalling everything from scratch. (Were I more superstitiously inclined I might wonder about the odd coincidence of timing by which my computer and myself have been progressing back to health more or less simultaneously, and find myself reinstalling some more drivers to see if it makes me feel any better. But that would be crazy talk.)
The upside, such as it is, was that I spent a more or less guilt-free weekend reclining in bed with my laptop and a large box of tissues waiting for this to format or that to install on the desktop, and have consequently finished Homestuck and now have my life back again. With that milestone cleared I feel the need to say a little more about the experience in post-mortem – not a full review, because my reviews get wordy enough under normal circumstances and I don't even know where I'd start on something the scale of Homestuck. The long and short of it is: I loved it, and probably more than anything else I've fallen for since Cable & Deadpool. But I can see why the latest act has been so controversial among its fandom, and with that in mind, I think I'm rather glad I didn't discover Homestuck any sooner, since I suspect I would have dealt with all the suspense, heart-rending tragedy and pages and pages and pages of Vriska's bullshit a lot less well had I been reading those pages as they came out.
There's plenty of reasons to recommend Homestuck. It's an online multimedia storytelling experiment that really works. It is, as the mood strikes it, hilarious, touching, gripping, heart-rending, and then usually hilarious again. It has id-fodder in spades – a bunch of 'regular' kids who, despite being definitively out of their depth in the magical land of SBURB, are allowed to take level after level in Badass right in front of our eyes, the animated RPG-style segments, the race of pansexual space trolls, all the antagonist relationships we get to watch morph into friendships, the glorious rainbow of shipping possibilities and all the related in-jokes. It has a writer who, yes, okay, has something of a reputation for trolling his fanbase, but who by all appearances is refreshingly self-aware about exactly what he's gotten himself into (some of the answers on his formspring account are worthy of losing an afternoon to in their own right “Q: Any idea why the popularity of Homestuck has exploded lately? A: Troll romance. Pages and pages and pages of troll romance”). And if the shear convolution of its hyper-complicated plotline doesn't put you off at the door, it is quite breathtakingly well though-out. Even the bastard lovechild of X and Doctor Who would barely compete with Homestuck for timey-wimey shenanigans cowering under the shadows of the hands of fate, and yet everything hangs together so well that you would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of pin-sized plotholes. I'm not going to make out that it's flawless – the format and the job of keeping track of everything alone are bound to put off as many fans as they attract, and there were plenty of times I found myself wishing character X would stop faffing around and get on with the plot – but the fact I have read through more than (if TVTropes stats are to be believed) 300,000 words of story presented largely in the form of massive long walls of chat transcripts in the last week without more than very occasionally finding myself skimming a single word – that alone speaks volumes about the quality of the writing in this monster.
The main trouble, I think, with the darker change in tone in the latest act is that in a story built in such a non-linear fashion out of so many self-fulfilling time-loops, where we have voices from the future loudly assuring our protagonists that it's all going to hell long before we have any inkling of how or why, is that it sort of blindsides you to the possibility that completely unrelated things may be about to go terribly, terribly wrong. It's tempting to believe that if characters X, Y and Z have made it through events L through Q without a scratch they must have been labelled invincible for plot purposes; not to mention that having characters coming back from the death constantly has been established as a core game mechanic. The tone richochets around as it pleases, but the revelation that what you have been reading is not above killing off a character you may have gotten rather attached to purely to demonstrate that Shit Just Got Real comes only when you're already a long way in. A lot of long term readers apparently did not respond well to that, hence some of the fannish reputation of the whole trainwreck. I can't entirely blame them, but nor can I understand how anyone could believe it's not part of the bigger plan. If I have ever read a story that was planned out in such excruciating detail as Homestuck so clearly was from its early acts, I cannot think of that.
If I have one real complaint, it would involve cursing that wonderful opening page to Act 5.2 – set well into the future from our protagonists' POV – for lulling me into such a false sense of security about what was soon to go down. (I still love just about everything about the conversation that took place on that page, mind. It was a glorious exchange. But wow does it look different in retrospect. Curse you, John Egbert, for managing to be so adorably upbeat all the time!)
The upside, such as it is, was that I spent a more or less guilt-free weekend reclining in bed with my laptop and a large box of tissues waiting for this to format or that to install on the desktop, and have consequently finished Homestuck and now have my life back again. With that milestone cleared I feel the need to say a little more about the experience in post-mortem – not a full review, because my reviews get wordy enough under normal circumstances and I don't even know where I'd start on something the scale of Homestuck. The long and short of it is: I loved it, and probably more than anything else I've fallen for since Cable & Deadpool. But I can see why the latest act has been so controversial among its fandom, and with that in mind, I think I'm rather glad I didn't discover Homestuck any sooner, since I suspect I would have dealt with all the suspense, heart-rending tragedy and pages and pages and pages of Vriska's bullshit a lot less well had I been reading those pages as they came out.
There's plenty of reasons to recommend Homestuck. It's an online multimedia storytelling experiment that really works. It is, as the mood strikes it, hilarious, touching, gripping, heart-rending, and then usually hilarious again. It has id-fodder in spades – a bunch of 'regular' kids who, despite being definitively out of their depth in the magical land of SBURB, are allowed to take level after level in Badass right in front of our eyes, the animated RPG-style segments, the race of pansexual space trolls, all the antagonist relationships we get to watch morph into friendships, the glorious rainbow of shipping possibilities and all the related in-jokes. It has a writer who, yes, okay, has something of a reputation for trolling his fanbase, but who by all appearances is refreshingly self-aware about exactly what he's gotten himself into (some of the answers on his formspring account are worthy of losing an afternoon to in their own right “Q: Any idea why the popularity of Homestuck has exploded lately? A: Troll romance. Pages and pages and pages of troll romance”). And if the shear convolution of its hyper-complicated plotline doesn't put you off at the door, it is quite breathtakingly well though-out. Even the bastard lovechild of X and Doctor Who would barely compete with Homestuck for timey-wimey shenanigans cowering under the shadows of the hands of fate, and yet everything hangs together so well that you would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of pin-sized plotholes. I'm not going to make out that it's flawless – the format and the job of keeping track of everything alone are bound to put off as many fans as they attract, and there were plenty of times I found myself wishing character X would stop faffing around and get on with the plot – but the fact I have read through more than (if TVTropes stats are to be believed) 300,000 words of story presented largely in the form of massive long walls of chat transcripts in the last week without more than very occasionally finding myself skimming a single word – that alone speaks volumes about the quality of the writing in this monster.
The main trouble, I think, with the darker change in tone in the latest act is that in a story built in such a non-linear fashion out of so many self-fulfilling time-loops, where we have voices from the future loudly assuring our protagonists that it's all going to hell long before we have any inkling of how or why, is that it sort of blindsides you to the possibility that completely unrelated things may be about to go terribly, terribly wrong. It's tempting to believe that if characters X, Y and Z have made it through events L through Q without a scratch they must have been labelled invincible for plot purposes; not to mention that having characters coming back from the death constantly has been established as a core game mechanic. The tone richochets around as it pleases, but the revelation that what you have been reading is not above killing off a character you may have gotten rather attached to purely to demonstrate that Shit Just Got Real comes only when you're already a long way in. A lot of long term readers apparently did not respond well to that, hence some of the fannish reputation of the whole trainwreck. I can't entirely blame them, but nor can I understand how anyone could believe it's not part of the bigger plan. If I have ever read a story that was planned out in such excruciating detail as Homestuck so clearly was from its early acts, I cannot think of that.
If I have one real complaint, it would involve cursing that wonderful opening page to Act 5.2 – set well into the future from our protagonists' POV – for lulling me into such a false sense of security about what was soon to go down. (I still love just about everything about the conversation that took place on that page, mind. It was a glorious exchange. But wow does it look different in retrospect. Curse you, John Egbert, for managing to be so adorably upbeat all the time!)
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no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 08:15 am (UTC)I started reading at some point last November or December -- I forget the exact date, but I do remember thinking of the "ball drop" page as my first major "event" in the Homestuck fandom. At first I tried to make predictions about where the plot was going, but almost every time I turned out to be wrong, and the few times I was right after all came only after the story had gone through so many twists and turns that I'd given up on my original theory. I'll always be quietly pleased with myself for calling the proper end to Vriska and Terezi's confrontation, but I don't try to make predictions anymore. I just sit back and trust that Hussie has it all under control, and that whatever is going to happen, it's going to be totally sweet.
By an amazing coincidence, since making that decision I've gone on to have a completely positive experience with reading Homestuck, and have formulated no major complaints with the progression of the story. XD
no subject
Date: 2011-09-15 03:43 pm (UTC)are you sure my last post doesn't count?My official answer would be, oh I wish! Homestuck is just so well written and all the character voices are so distinctive and so unlike anything I've ever written before that I don't know how anything I could create could ever live up to it.Of course, the irony of the above statement is that it's more or less exactly what I said on getting into Cable & Deadpool fandom too, so, uh, who knows, I guess? It's a tough canon to do much with, when everything is so tightly plotted and hard to predict. Short of going straight into wild AU territory, that is. (Speaking of wild AUs... is that a Promstuck icon?)
but I do remember thinking of the "ball drop" page as my first major "event" in the Homestuck fandom.
Ball drop, ball drop... uh, is that when Jade's laboratory when flying?
The consequence of digesting the whole 4000+ pages of the archive in under a week is that I never had the time to theorise much (I like to think I might have been able to figure out what The Big Screw Up that hits as Jade finally enters the game was going to be - it was so well set up - but I honestly never saw it coming). Now of course I'm passing my time waiting for the next updates by trying to figure out how much the story about the Troll universe reset is likely to mean for what what kind of parallel Earth we might be seeing after the Scratch. But even if the obvious theory is right, I have no idea what that's going to mean for the story. And honestly, I am Really Okay with that. :3
I just sit back and trust that Hussie has it all under control, and that whatever is going to happen, it's going to be totally sweet.
...and this would be why! It's pretty much been what I've been working on since I first got hooked, and it hasn't let me down yet.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-16 09:40 am (UTC)It is a Promstuck icon! From the CPR flashback, I think. I'm due for another archive binge. And I totally hear you on the wild AU thing. I can appreciate a really good page tag or whatever you call it when an author neatly shoehorns a fic into the flow of canon, but whenever I sit down to work on fic for this fandom I end up writing these sweeping epic AUs. On the bright side, I've never been so prolific!
...Would. Would you like to read my fanfic? You don't have to! But they're right there on AO3, if you think you might be interested in an AU in which the psionics run everything, or a story in which Eridan has Karkat's blood. Uh. Here's a link to my account: http://archiveofourown.org/users/winglessdrake but it is totally your call, you don't even have to respond to this part of the comment if you don't want to. Uh, moving right along.
Yeah, it's when Gamzee watches Jade's lab fall off her tower and go rolling down the hill. I can't stop thinking of it as the ball drop because the update came out on New Year's Eve.
I was So Excited when the ancestor update came out! Alternia is probably my favorite part of Homestuck, and even just the little glimpses and fragments we've been given about the ancestors are just. Completely awesome to me. XD I do feel a little bad for all the people who created these sweeping headcanons for the Sufferer and Aradiacestor before we found out about the Signless or the Handmaid, but the canon versions are so interesting that I can't complain.
I do keep swinging back and forth on whether or Psiioniic's design is ridiculous or awesome, though. He kind of looks like a deliberately retro superhero. Your thoughts? XD
no subject
Date: 2011-09-19 02:08 am (UTC)Promstuck is going a very long way to tiding me over until the content freeze is done. Does not hurt that it panders to both my OTPs for Homestuck. :3
...Would. Would you like to read my fanfic?
Um, maybe? I am kind of on this big John/Karkat and Rose/Kanaya binge for the moment, we will see if I come out in the mood to try more general fare when I am done.
I was So Excited when the ancestor update came out! Alternia is probably my favorite part of Homestuck, and even just the little glimpses and fragments we've been given about the ancestors are just. Completely awesome to me. XD I do feel a little bad for all the people who created these sweeping headcanons for the Sufferer and Aradiacestor before we found out about the Signless or the Handmaid, but the canon versions are so interesting that I can't complain.
To be honest, the ancestors were one of few bits that hit the "Aargh, too much complexity I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!" stage for me (did not help that I was so close to being up to date by the time they showed up and had pretty much been reading the archive for nearly three days straight), so I wasn't paying that much attention to their segments. I do like how they fleshed out the history of Alternia, but my favourite parts from their sections were actually the places where they turned out to be completely different from their descendents (Tavros' ancestor was a totally badass? Karkat and Nepeta's had 'the love that transcended the four quadrants? COMEDY GOLD!)
What I found most intriguing about the ancestors was the detail about how they'd switched out with their descendents post-reset - that tells us just enough about where the plot is likely headed to get me even more excited for the next updates.
I do love Alternia on it's own merits though. Between the troll love quadrants and lusus and blood colours and zodiac signs and crazy psychic powers and all the rest, I don't know whether to classify Alternia as a brilliant piece of sci-fi world building or just an absolutely cracked out exercise in fanservice wish fulfillment. Probably both.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-20 06:29 am (UTC)With Hussie, it's ALWAYS both. Always. XD
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 04:59 am (UTC)