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paradoxGentleman posted:I am not sure what you mean when you say that the story is "up its own rear end". Could you elaborate on that, please? He means it's recursive.
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Dec 13, 2013 11:33
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Tiler Kiwi posted:Hussie is the Hideo Kojima of webcomics. His games are severely lacking in gameplay?
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Dec 13, 2013 11:35
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CJacobs posted:His games are severely lacking in gameplay? That too.
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Dec 13, 2013 11:35
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Extra Koos posted:He means it's recursive. I am not sure where do you see that. While it is true that the story is extremely long, I don't remember a scene that I found completely useless, even if it is just to get a laugh. The closest I can think of is the infamous act 5 part with the trolls, but even then it's not like they came out of nowhere: we knew that they had something to do with SBURB and that they knew the kids where going to fail. Oh, and they were also aliens. Very well-characterized aliens at that. I wanted to find out more about them just because of that.
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Dec 13, 2013 11:48
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What he means is that the comic has so many things in it that too many of them are things that he doesn't like.
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Dec 13, 2013 11:55
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Bongo Bill posted:What he means is that the comic has so many things in it that too many of them are things that he doesn't like. Oh well. Like it was said before, Homestuck isn't for everybody. It just pushes too many of my buttons for me not to react like a teenage girl to Justin Bieber.
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Dec 13, 2013 11:59
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All that shipping discussion is all some people need.
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Dec 13, 2013 12:29
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CJacobs posted:His games are severely lacking in gameplay? His comic has more gameplay than most comics, though
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Dec 13, 2013 12:30
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Suaimhneas posted:His comic has more gameplay than most comics, though MGS4 had more gameplay than most films so it still works. I was going to compare Hussie to David Cage instead but I don't actually hate Hussie so I didn't.
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Dec 13, 2013 12:38
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paradoxGentleman posted:I am absolutely in love with Homestuck and I am not even slightly sorry. That thing has shown just how much you can do with this medium and if this was a fair world it would have changed the way people look at webcomics. It justifies its own existence. As in, probably half of the bulk of the comic (maybe more) exists to explain or give context to relatively minor plot points or jokes towards the end. It sprawls, and while I personally don't mind that, and it seems you don't either, some people are curious about the broad story direction but aren't really interested in all the tangential fluff. I can't really speak for them though, considering I found the pirate porn intermission to be entirely hilarious and not boring at all  Tiler Kiwi posted:Hussie is the Hideo Kojima of webcomics. And in spite of that continues to generate massive interest for his stories. A Good Analogy.
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Dec 13, 2013 12:42
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Oh, the pirate porn intermission. I remember thinking "Did Vriska base her whole life on old-timey smut?"
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Dec 13, 2013 13:37
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More things than you realize are based on old-timey smut. Like Dragon Age 2.
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Dec 13, 2013 14:18
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paradoxGentleman posted:Oh, the pirate porn intermission. I remember thinking "Did Vriska base her whole life on old-timey smut?" Yes. And it was glorious. I may be biased. For real though, even though Vriska is my favourite character ever, I kind of wish the trolls had never happened. Like most things, Homestuck was better when it was smaller and less well-known. I know it sounds like a horrible insufferable hipster thing to say, but fans really do ruin everything. I liked the era of "Dad is Problem Sleuth" and "Wayward Vagabond is Spades Slick and also is an Imp" and then the trolls happened and suddenly everything was typing quirks and speculation on whether or not trolls have tentacle crotches.
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Dec 13, 2013 14:59
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I would gladly read ten times more of the Mindfang journals. poo poo was fantastic.
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Dec 13, 2013 15:05
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I'm glad this thread is here because it means I get to read more Koos posts and Koos rules. I plan on one day playing 999,VLR and maybe even reading homestuck, however I do not currently have a 3ds, DS or a functional computer. I hope to one day be able to live up to the expectations of the nice people in this thread
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Dec 13, 2013 15:49
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Tiler Kiwi posted:Hussie is the Hideo Kojima of webcomics. I've always thought of him as the Grant Morrison. I remember checking out the comic and thinking: okay, this is like The Invisibles. (The Invisibles is a crazy-innovative kitchen sink rambling bullshit comic that takes every counterculture and conspiracy meme of the 90s and sticks 'em in a blender.) I loving love The Invisibles. It's basically incoherent but it's one of those "change your life" things if you discover it as a teenager. I also love Homestuck, and even if it's not your cup of tea, I believe it has merit because it so perfectly captures the zeitgeist of the past decade of internet subculture nonsense. If you want to understand how young millennials think and interact online (and, at the same time, read cutting-edge hypercomics that really push the limit of what the form is capable of) I think it's worth taking the plunge. (That said, I'm the guy who went ahead and wrote a goddamn 200-page book analyzing it, so I acknowledge my love for the comic might be BPD-level obsession.)
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Dec 13, 2013 16:50
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This post is dedicated to Koos. It was evident even from early on that Homestuck is one of the first high-profile, popular works to capture this generation's outlook. It's not just in the superficial details like the trolls' dorky hobbies. The ubiquity of the internet is striking: the way instant messaging literally transcends universes underscores the way the characters live as much online as off, but unlike the cyberpunk fiction of yesteryear, it doesn't draw a qualitative distinction between virtual and physical presence (much like how Sburb, dreams, and many other plot devices blur or outright erase all other boundaries between virtual and real existence). Call it post-cyberpunk until we come up with a better name for it: the previous generation's science fiction grappled with the novelty of virtual existence and imagined what it might be like, Homestuck is from, and about, the first generation for whom virtual reality is not a novelty and has already coalesced into an established form. Homestuck is the first great millennial bildungsroman. The story rambles because its author has a lot to say. It's a huge mass of related ideas and Andrew Hussie perceives them very clearly (and enjoys playing with them), as evinced not only by the content of the story, but also its form, its presentation to the audience, the persona he affects, and his tacit encouragement of the extremely modern (e.g. creative, active) ways its readers engage with it. Later authors will likely express Homestuck's themes more succinctly, elegantly, powerfully, artfully, approachably, pleasantly, or otherwise lacking in the excesses that frustrate habitual readers and make newcomers abandon it as an impenetrable slog - but they'll be followers.
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Dec 13, 2013 17:23
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Wow you guys write a lot of words, no wonder you're Homestuck fans.
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Dec 13, 2013 17:53
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Bongo Bill posted:Later authors will likely express Homestuck's themes more succinctly, elegantly, powerfully, artfully, approachably, pleasantly, or otherwise lacking in the excesses that frustrate habitual readers and make newcomers abandon it as an impenetrable slog - but they'll be followers. They'll probably also have the advantages of not being webcomics, which are post-each-page-as-it's-done affairs that result in most of them being first drafts of great stories but not actually great stories themselves. If Homestuck wasn't a webcomic it would have considerably more focus and better use of it's own themes, though ironically it also wouldn't be as good since part of it's equation is fan interaction.
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Dec 13, 2013 17:54
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SatansBestBuddy posted:They'll probably also have the advantages of not being webcomics, which are post-each-page-as-it's-done affairs that result in most of them being first drafts of great stories but not actually great stories themselves. If Homestuck wasn't a webcomic it would have considerably more focus and better use of it's own themes, though ironically it also wouldn't be as good since part of it's equation is fan interaction. There's some question as to whether close relationships between authors and audiences won't just become the normal way things are done. Webcomics are the future of comics, and soon (if not already) most text will be hypertext. But I agree that feedback on the scale of hours and minutes will remain an outlier; it's a pretty extreme way to compose.
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Dec 13, 2013 18:01
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fan interaction was bigger in the inital push to create homestuck and shape the story but post act 4 or so it's pretty much all hussie's own ideas. Really what the comic could use is better pacing. When it was still updating it was kind of just suffering when every update just felt it was prolonging the comic even further instead of getting closer to closure on... anything. btw, on namco high+homestuck could they have at least made Jane her evil god-tier form instead of just normal Jane from the beginning of her arc. or maybe include evil half-dog god-tier space-witch Jade instead.
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Dec 13, 2013 18:10
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Rita Repulsa posted:evil half-dog god-tier space-witch Jade instead. Also fyi the fact that this is a perfectly accurate description of a character is a good case study for the "why people think Homestuck fans are the new Sonic fans". I'm trying to keep some relevance to video games in my comments, can you tell?
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Dec 13, 2013 18:16
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Tiler Kiwi posted:Wow you guys write a lot of words, no wonder you're Homestuck fans. I love words.
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Dec 13, 2013 18:24
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I think Homestuck has lots of laffs and mysteries, I always want to know what happens next!
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Dec 13, 2013 18:32
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Incidentally, the thread title still says "the final acts". I could have sworn the comic entered act 6 like two years ago. Is this thing seriously still going?
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Dec 13, 2013 18:34
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Pollyanna posted:Incidentally, the thread title still says "the final acts". I could have sworn the comic entered act 6 like two years ago. Is this thing seriously still going? It's on one last, very long hiatus as Hussie prepares to release the rest of the comic in a single update. Heads will roll. It's been dragging its feet horribly ever since Act 6, though, which is why you won't find many fanatics for it outside of the tumblr people.
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Dec 13, 2013 18:36
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Rita Repulsa posted:fan interaction was bigger in the inital push to create homestuck and shape the story but post act 4 or so it's pretty much all hussie's own ideas. Well, things like tavros being in a wheelchair were silly fan theories that he made canon.
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Dec 13, 2013 18:50
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Homestuck is much like the popular video game series Metal Gear: It is bad and needs to end. Really though, it needs to end. Like, any of the plot points need to end. In Problem Sleuth it was part of the humor that poo poo just kept getting more and more bizarre and obtuse, but in Homestuck no plot points ever end. They just spiral into MORE bullshit, which spirals out into more, and etc, etc. This isn't even a case of Hussie needing an editor. He just needs to stop. ...So I guess it actually IS like the Metal Gear series, huh?
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Dec 13, 2013 19:02
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If Metal Gear stopped we wouldn't have gotten Rising, so I really don't see how that makes any sense.
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Dec 13, 2013 19:07
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ProfessorCirno posted:Homestuck is much like the popular video game series Metal Gear: I have good news for you.
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Dec 13, 2013 19:08
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It's literally coming to an end right now with one final update, so I guess mission accomplished. And honestly, I'd say up to about Cascade (the end of Act 5) things were going fine. There'd been a fair bit of doubt that Hussie could weave all the spiraling plot threads back together but the act finale did a wonderful job of tying everything up and apparently charging ahead to a climactic finish. Then the three-year gap while the heroes make it to the new session, and we have to meet all the post-scratch characters (and the pre-scratch trolls which were exactly something an editor should've cut no matter how much people like Meenah) and all momentum is lost. Now I'm pretty doubtful he can pull the same trick off again with Act 6 which has just absolutely ballooned in size compared to Act 5. I guess the real problem is the trolls, oddly enough, even though their stuff in act 5 ended up reasonably well-handled and tied up nicely. Hussie planned for the post-scratch kids from the beginning, since the relationships between the kids and their guardians are a big part of the coming-of-age theme. The guardians going from their faceless parent-figures to their peers and letting them confront their various issues with them is pretty standard storywriting. The problem is mid-way through the story the trolls show up and grab a whole lot more attention than Hussie was planning. He didn't even mean to introduce all twelve of them, their side-story just slowly grew and grew. And it was a fine side-story, and again, Act 5 seemed to tie it up well, but the problem was that after Cascade everyone was raring to go on the big story climax and Hussie has to slow things down again to introduce a third set of new characters. The trolls took over the place in the story where the post-scratch kids belonged, and even now Hussie can't leave well enough alone and has to keep bringing the dead trolls back and introducing new ones. So yeah, that's what I'd say is the big problem with Homestuck and why people have been losing interest over Act 6. It doesn't help that every individual update can be funny and entertaining on its own if the story as a whole starts to suffer.
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Dec 13, 2013 19:15
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Dolash posted:problem with homestuck The problem to me is the pre-scratch trolls - not anything post-scratch. What few purposes they serve they had usurped from other characters or concepts that haven't been fully explored (denizens!), they've become a focus at the expense of more developed (kids and trolls) or interesting (scratch kids and caliborn) characters and I do not know why they are even in this thing except as some running joke about how everything has to have an origin. The last few hundred pages with Aranea's dumb turn had me just mindlessly clicking the next button without even reading everything, just waiting for some semblance of a coherent story to return. I was one of the most vehement defenders of the Doc Scratch thing, and I still think it was probably the best way to do that and was a great piece in its own right, but now I'm thinking all the same criticisms about Act 6 that people were saying about that. MrBims fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Dec 13, 2013 |
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Dec 13, 2013 19:26
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Tunicate posted:Well, things like tavros being in a wheelchair were silly fan theories that he made canon. Yeah, while direct audience input hasn't been a thing for a while the audience still absolutely has indirect influence on the story. From fan theories and memes getting tossed in to entire characters who exist solely as parodies or stand-ins for groups of audience members. You see that sometimes in other serialized stories, though the (usually) frantic update pace, the rabid insanity of the fandom, and Hussie's grievous lack of an editor kind of heightens the effect.
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Dec 13, 2013 19:42
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The pre-scratch trolls were absolutely worth it just for Kankri, who is the most perfect shot at the group of people most deserving of having shots taken at them.
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Dec 13, 2013 19:48
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MarquiseMindfang posted:The pre-scratch trolls were absolutely worth it just for Kankri, who is the most perfect shot at the group of people most deserving of having shots taken at them. Almost the most deserving. Caliborn taking the piss out of mysogynists and portraying them as stupid children who cannot grow up takes that prize imo. SJW's are third place for that after otherkin, but the they are all millimeters apart at the finish line. Neither groups seem to notice they are not just being subtly mocked but Hussie is literally pointing at them and telling them how stupid they are and they still do not notice.
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Dec 13, 2013 19:52
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It's hard to notice when Hussie sometimes mocks with such loving reverence. Look at Equius and Gamzee, for example.
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Dec 13, 2013 19:59
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The pre-scratch trolls mainly exist so Meenah has people to talk to while her personality is developed (and so Dante Basco can officially have a cameo in the comic). Kankri and Cronus also happen to be amazing mockeries of horrible people who deserve to be mocked. But aside from that I can easily see why people would be turned off by a stampede of one-note throwaway characters in the middle of an already plodding arc.
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Dec 13, 2013 20:00
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The pre-scratch trolls are a symptom of the problem. This is why the job of an editor is tough - just because something's fun doesn't always make it a worthwhile addition to the story. At best the pre-scratch trolls could've been a one-off joke that never reappears, and even then people were suffering introduction fatigue by that point. Instead Aranea basically took over the whole direction of the story and even as much as people like Meenah that's time that should've been spent building the actual main characters back up.
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Dec 13, 2013 20:02
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It didn't help that after all those trolls got killed and helped lighten up the narrative burden, they all showed up again in the afterlife to contribute basically nothing except take away the impact of their whole dying business.
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Dec 13, 2013 20:03
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Even though some of the ancestors were cool, i would have been completely alright with them never being introduced, along with just erasing the concept of dream bubbles in particular. Just have Vriska be the one who kills Terezi, instead of the other way around, cut out the dreambubbles, and bam. Every problem in Homestuck is fixed.
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Dec 13, 2013 20:05
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