MSPaint Adventures - Homestuck Edition, the Final Acts

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > BSS: Bisexual Super Son > MSPaint Adventures - Homestuck Edition, the Final Acts

«‹›2217 »

Synthbuttrange: May 6, 2007

Rorus Raz posted:

At no point are we told why LE has green sun powers. I guess we just have to assume they weee part of the reward for killing his denizen, but like a lot of things it seems rather eh.

Huh yeah I mistakenly assumed that he absorbed someone during his creation that had green sun stuff but I was mistaken.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:40

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 24, 2024 18:49

WAMPA_STOMPA: Oct 21, 2010

PS I am rereading the Masterpiece and it also gives away what happens after Vrisky opens the door. Dave's sword is the only thing that can kill caliborn so presumably that + the loss of the green sun finished him off

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:40

Cabbit: Jul 19, 2001; _{Is that everything you have?}

Zoolooman posted:

They're retcon powers. That's the joke. It doesn't matter where they came from. They're retconned in.

It's a meh joke.

I know that's the joke, I'm just trying to understand if that's what was supposed to be conveyed.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:40

CuddlyZombie: Nov 6, 2005; I wuv your brains.

There was an update to today's blog update:

Hussie posted:

Edit: one more thing. If you're curious about whether there will be anything resembling an epilogue to this ending, yes, I've been thinking about that for some time. It'll take a while to produce though, whatever specific form it ends up taking. Working on Collide took months, and came right down to the wire. I've got more time now though obviously. But that said, I'm not in a huge hurry at this point. Keep an eye out here for developments. There should be plenty of other news in coming months too.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:41

Keiya: Aug 22, 2009; Come with me if you want to not die.

Zoolooman posted:

They're retcon powers. That's the joke. It doesn't matter where they came from. They're retconned in.

It's a meh joke.

Where they come from is pretty obvious: They come from the time Caliborn left the universe they just created and entered his session. Yes, that's billions of years. You'll note none of the still-mortal members of their team make it there.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:41

Classtoise: Feb 11, 2008; THINKS CON-AIR WAS A GOOD MOVIE

vannevar posted:

Not to kick the thread while it's down, but seems like BKEW won his bet.

Funny thing is this is literally a stopped clock scenario.

Literally everything between "Doc Scratch = Lil Hal" and "Arquiusprite is Lord English" is wrong, but the conclusion and supposition is right.

Alternatively, literally everything else that BKEW predicted was absolutely wrong! We did it! We won!

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:41

net cafe scandal: Mar 18, 2011

Lord English was gonna be really cool but they hosed it up really bad

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:41

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

Ursine Catastrophe posted:

Not going to lie, I got it but given the nature of the claymation and the heavy dose of "unreliable narrator", I wasn't expecting that to be the sole source of information, and I really doubt anyone else was either. Which is why this ending comes with such an abrupt, cut-off feeling-- it's like having an actor describe Chekov's Gun going off and you say "oh, well, this couldn't end before we actually see that", and then the play just ends. And then the playwrights says "yeah, it fired, that actor told you about it, remember?"

Exactly. Whether you like or hate this is up to taste, but it's part of Homestuck's postmodern narrative.

paranoid randroid posted:

heres my post mortem review of Home Stuck Dot Com, the Web Comic

its got the narrative flow of a Pynchon novel and the ending of a Chabon novel. its got some good parts and some bad parts and its huge enough that you can enjoy the good parts and write off the bad ones. its a thing that undeniably exists for better or for worse.

A true and correct opinion.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:42

Synthbuttrange: May 6, 2007

Oh well. I've gone through enough stories, books, movies, series that had terrible endings but I could still enjoyed them on them on the whole. It's just that I needed to vent right away while the grief is freeeesh

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:42

paranoid randroid: Mar 4, 2007

Classtoise posted:

Alternatively, literally everything else that BKEW predicted was absolutely wrong! We did it! We won!

thank gently caress for that much at least

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:42

net cafe scandal: Mar 18, 2011

I dont really udnerstand how Lord English sprouted out of Doc Scratch and I dont know if I even want anytone to explain it to me.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:42

Oblivion4568238: Oct 10, 2012; The Inquisition.
What a show.
The Inquisition.
Here. We. Go.; College Slice

So it just occurred to me. People were wondering during the final hiatus if parts of the End of Homestuck would bring down websites like Cascade did way back when. It turns out, the only website that was broken...

was Something Awful. :smug:

And, uh, probably large parts of Tumblr, but I don't care about them, so.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:43

Dolash: Oct 23, 2008; aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,

Zoolooman posted:

As the person who made this thread and most of the other MSPaint adventure threads, I thought this ending was a lesson in mediocrity--not incredible, not terrible--and relying far too much on the reader remembering everything despite year long breaks.

He'd already told us how the story would end literally a year ago in a claymation series, and he filled out the rest of the details necessary later. I was watching to see if he'd replay that in the main POV, trying to connect it together to the story we were watching, or if he'd assume it was enough to rely on the retcon powers and juju explanations. He assumed it was enough, which I think was the wrong choice, but whatever.

Three major plot things happen here.

1. The frog seeds a new universe. The kids use the door. We get a flash forward to their happy ending on the Earth that Jade resurrects. None of this matters to the rest of what happens below.

2. Calliope absorbs the green sun and most of the outer ring and LE powers down, losing his aura and his eyes finally turning to 8 balls instead of every other color. This makes him defeatable. The juju is dropped by Vriska, and out of it will come copies of the alpha kids, who along with Vriska and the ghosts will slay him. What happens after that sincerely doesn't matter to the ending, because you're supposed to just assume LE is defeated when he powers down and gets death eyeballs.

3. Caliborn gains his clockwork magic powers by shattering the clock that tracks his death. Immediately after this, Caliborn's claymation events will happen.

A couple of questions people asked me. Where do the kids come from in that claymation? Do they come from the kids using the door in Act 7?

God no, the answer was literally retcon powers. I'm not making this up, I'm not stretching to interpret this. Caliborn flat out tells you they come in using John's retcon powers. http://www.mspaintadventures.com/ACT6ACT6.php?s=6&p=009318

The kids are literally retconned into fighting Caliborn at that moment (meaning there is no other cause, you won't find one in the comic, and Hussie didn't decide to supply one). The alpha kids that were retconned in get trapped in the juju. The beta kids trap him inside Lil Cal, who seeds the creation of Doc Scratch, who becomes Lord English properly. Later, this juju will be used by Vriska to bring about the end of LE off screen, after the events of plot point #2.

This didn't seem complex to me because I'd reread Caliborn's claymation garbage only a couple days before, but Hussie was expecting waaaay too much out of most people if he thought they were going to put together through implication what he should've spelled out and shown us in panel and word. So I think the ending is coherent, and I think it's mediocre, and I don't think it ruined Homestuck or any of that jazz.

Are you suggesting that the group of players who warp to fight Caliborn and later end up fighting Lord English are some other group of kids, Beta-Timelined/"retconned" into existence purely to service the Caliborn/Lord English plot and not connected to the kids on the lilypad? As in, those kids go through the door to the new universe and get their happy ending while some other identical kids fight Lord English and... well, probably win, but what does that matter since they came from nowhere and there's no comment on what happens to them or any of the other people in the dream bubbles?

Because even if that's so, and that is definitely making some leaps from this ending, that'd be a garbage ending. Lord English has been set up as the villain at the heart of everyone's misery, giving away how the fight will probably go is already weird, pushing it offscreen in the ending is terrible and then just giving it to some other copies of the characters literally retconned in so the protagonists don't even interact with it is cartoonishly ridiculous. Why bother with the ending at all, at that point? Why show us even this little? What stakes were there ever if the final battle against Caliborn and Lord English was irrelevant to the outcome of the main characters?

And even if alllll thaaat was true and excusable, it still wouldn't defend the complete disappearance of character interaction and development that's characterized the ending and the lead-up to it. The number of reunions, relationships, realizations and so on that have been glossed over or deferred are staggering. The tiny glimpse that things are probably pretty good in the new world answers nothing. The tone and delivery of the ending is completely inconsistent with the rest of the comic.

It's a failure structurally, it's a failure in communicating what's going on, it fails to provide closure or satisfying resolutions to character arcs, it doesn't even provide a lot of the core entertainment Homestuck animations are known for (at least Collide was fun and dense). It looked pretty and sounded nice.

Homestuck might've been a great journey, but it still needed to arrive at a destination. This is hardly a bare minimum, especially when weighed against how every other act has closed out.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:43

Ursine Catastrophe: Nov 9, 2009; It's a lovely morning in the void and you are a horrible lady-in-waiting.

don't ask how i know; Dinosaur Gum

Cabbit posted:

So what, John retcons a duplicate set of kids there to do that? Because don't we see the alpha in the happy ending?

We've already seen a couple dozen other version of alpha kids, and Cali talks about his juju being lost in time and space. It makes a certain amount of "real-life" sense that causality wouldn't be so neat and wrapped-up as to have "the alpha kids we're following" (which aren't even the alpha kids we started with, John excluded) just so happen to be the same alpha kids that were in the juju.

Not seeing either the fight with the ur-alpha kids that got stuck in the juju in the first place, or said ur-alpha kids fighting with Lord English, is definitely a bit of a wet fart as far as climaxes go though.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:44

Spellman: May 31, 2011

Here's a question: if you seen this animation first, would you read homestuck to see how it got to this point?

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:44

readingatwork: Jan 8, 2009; Hello Fatty!; Fun Shoe

tentative8e8op posted:

No, the kids go via lilypad-door to juju-door, fight LE, and then zap to Caliborn and lose by becoming stuck in homestuck

Yes, this makes more sense.

Rorus Raz posted:

At no point are we told why LE has green sun powers. I guess we just have to assume they weee part of the reward for killing his denizen, but like a lot of things it seems rather eh.

Also eight balls were always part of LE's eye rotation, and I assumed he was just about to unleash unholy terror when he set them to black. He didn't give a weird look like "What happened?" or "oh poo poo." but more like "I'm gonna really gently caress you all up now." Just to nitpick the otherwise good animation.

My biggest issues with the finale aren't with what happened (though some wrap-up is still needed) but with how it was executed. It lacked the catharsis we were expecting and kind of rubs me the wrong way. We were expecting one final flash battle with LE himself featuring twenty final forms and whatnot, but it just didn't happen. Which is too bad because that would have been a pretty badass fight. Plus there were clarity issues which made just understanding the ending a challenge.

I still liked it though and don't regret reading this thing. Homestuck is good, Hussie just needs an editor.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:44

Seizon: Oct 10, 2011

is this a joke

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:45

MonsieurChoc: Oct 12, 2013; Every species can smell its own extinction.

This is kind of like the ending to Blade Runner's director cut, where it ends with Decker looking at the unicorn and smirking while thinking about Gaff's last words.

It's not an open-ended speculative ending. We already know most of what's gonna happen afterward.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:46

Mulva: Sep 13, 2011; It's about time for my once per decade ban for being a consistently terrible poster.

Dolash posted:

Lord English has been set up as the villain at the heart of everyone's misery

Actually Jack more personally hosed with everyone. Or Vriska.

readingatwork posted:

We were expecting one final flash battle with LE himself featuring twenty final forms and whatnot, but it just didn't happen.

I love that this is one of the things he's repeatedly said wasn't going to happen, and then it didn't, and so many people were surprised.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:46

Irony Be My Shield: Jul 29, 2012

Seizon posted:

is this a joke

Some people are desperately hoping it is

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:46

Ramos: Jul 3, 2012

It was a good ending and easily understood with some minor reflection.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:46

WAMPA_STOMPA: Oct 21, 2010

Dolash posted:

Are you suggesting that the group of players who warp to fight Caliborn and later end up fighting Lord English are some other group of kids, Beta-Timelined/"retconned" into existence purely to service the Caliborn/Lord English plot and not connected to the kids on the lilypad? As in, those kids go through the door to the new universe and get their happy ending while some other identical kids fight Lord English and... well, probably win, but what does that matter since they came from nowhere and there's no comment on what happens to them or any of the other people in the dream bubbles?

Because even if that's so, and that is definitely making some leaps from this ending, that'd be a garbage ending. Lord English has been set up as the villain at the heart of everyone's misery, giving away how the fight will probably go is already weird, pushing it offscreen in the ending is terrible and then just giving it to some other copies of the characters literally retconned in so the protagonists don't even interact with it is cartoonishly ridiculous. Why bother with the ending at all, at that point? Why show us even this little? What stakes were there ever if the final battle against Caliborn and Lord English was irrelevant to the outcome of the main characters?

And even if alllll thaaat was true and excusable, it still wouldn't defend the complete disappearance of character interaction and development that's characterized the ending and the lead-up to it. The number of reunions, relationships, realizations and so on that have been glossed over or deferred are staggering. The tiny glimpse that things are probably pretty good in the new world answers nothing. The tone and delivery of the ending is completely inconsistent with the rest of the comic.

It's a failure structurally, it's a failure in communicating what's going on, it fails to provide closure or satisfying resolutions to character arcs, it doesn't even provide a lot of the core entertainment Homestuck animations are known for (at least Collide was fun and dense). It looked pretty and sounded nice.

Homestuck might've been a great journey, but it still needed to arrive at a destination. This is hardly a bare minimum, especially when weighed against how every other act has closed out.

???? you dont get it. they went through the door and chilled for a while then john retconned them over to caliborn for a throwdown

quote:

(THE CLUE HERE IS THAT I STEAL HIS NAME. GOD. YOU THICK, STUPID FUCKS. WHY DO I BOTHER WITH SUB TEXTS, OR FINE LITERATUREY NUANCE. GOD. gently caress! GOD. I TAKE HIS NAME LATER. ENGLISH. THAT'S ME LATER. THAT'S MY NAME. YOU STUPID BRAINLESS FUCKS. HOLY poo poo, YOU ARE DUMB AS BOZOS COME. GOD!!!)

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:47

Keiya: Aug 22, 2009; Come with me if you want to not die.

I'm going to bed, who wants to bet when I get back I'll have to explain that the kids got from going through the lilypad door to Caliborn's Masterpiece the long way?

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:47

readingatwork: Jan 8, 2009; Hello Fatty!; Fun Shoe

net cafe scandal posted:

I dont really udnerstand how Lord English sprouted out of Doc Scratch and I dont know if I even want anytone to explain it to me.

Someone hosed Lil' Cal somewhere along the way.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:47

Clawtopsy: Dec 17, 2009; What a fascinatingly unusual cock. Now, allow me to show you my collection...

WAMPA_STOMPA posted:

I dont mean to sound like a tool but Have you read infinite jest

nah, worth a look?

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:47

WAMPA_STOMPA: Oct 21, 2010

Ramos posted:

It was a good ending and easily understood with some minor reflection.

Yeah

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:47

Comic: Feb 24, 2008; Mad Comic Stylings

net cafe scandal posted:

I dont really udnerstand how Lord English sprouted out of Doc Scratch and I dont know if I even want anytone to explain it to me.

Too Bad. Lord English sprouted out of Doc Scratch because Doc Scratch was a combination of Cal and a magic cue ball. Cal had the souls of Gamzee, Caliborn, and Arquissprite in it. And when he died the containment powers failed or whatever.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:49

net cafe scandal: Mar 18, 2011

WAMPA_STOMPA posted:

Yeah

Ice is really hot And you cant drown in water. Wheels are square.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:49

WAMPA_STOMPA: Oct 21, 2010

WAR FOOT posted:

nah, worth a look?

well its super long and way harder to read than Homestuck's most convoluted time shenanigans, and thats by design because the author literally wants to disrupt your train of thought and keep you a little confused all the time, but that said its incredibly good but also has many parallels to HS in terms of approach to narrative so in conclusion maybe. i started reading it because of homestuck actually someone linked the two in an early thread here and it makes sense. just image instead of sburb its tennis and instead of god tiers its weed

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:50

net cafe scandal: Mar 18, 2011

What was even the drat point of Gamzee. Think of everything that happened with him, and where it led.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:50

Dolash: Oct 23, 2008; aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,

^^^^Gamzee at least made some sense. Sort of a Lord English cultist who becomes part of him at some point. Jack English's head exploded and sucked the fridge with him in it to Caliborn's world/timeline, Gamzee raised him and cleared the way for his rise so he could merge with him into Lord English. Because he was a psycho clown.

WAMPA_STOMPA posted:

???? you dont get it. they went through the door and chilled for a while then john retconned them over to caliborn for a throwdown

I still don't get it. Explain it again. They go through the door, they hang around in can town, then John decides to fight Caliborn? Why?

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:51

Comic: Feb 24, 2008; Mad Comic Stylings

Spellman posted:

Here's a question: if you seen this animation first, would you read homestuck to see how it got to this point?

I'd say Collide works better for that, given how it's actually the final battle for our story.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:51

paranoid randroid: Mar 4, 2007

net cafe scandal posted:

What was even the drat point of Gamzee. Think of everything that happened with him, and where it led.

hes the only dude who got what he really wanted - to become part of the huge skull monster and kill all the mother fucks

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:51

net cafe scandal: Mar 18, 2011

I feel bad for the guys are spiritually dutybound to update the MSPA wiki. They must just be staring at the Lord English page like

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:53

Clawtopsy: Dec 17, 2009; What a fascinatingly unusual cock. Now, allow me to show you my collection...

Dolash posted:

^^^^Gamzee at least made some sense. Sort of a Lord English cultist who becomes part of him at some point. Jack English's head exploded and sucked the fridge with him in it to Caliborn's world/timeline, Gamzee raised him and cleared the way for his rise so he could merge with him into Lord English. Because he was a psycho clown.

I still don't get it. Explain it again. They go through the door, they hang around in can town, then John decides to fight Caliborn? Why?

I believe the door going white shows it now connects to the JuJu, not the reward. They go through it, presumably deal with Lord English, all the ghosts die, and then they claim the ultimate reward.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:54

net cafe scandal: Mar 18, 2011

A really good penance for Andrew Hussie for writing this silly ending that he made 600 unpaid interns animate would be to upload a thorough final recap page that explains in detail everything that happened in this comic since 2011.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:55

Dolash: Oct 23, 2008; aNYWAY,
tHAT'S REALLY ALL THERE IS,
tO REPORT ON THE SUBJECT,
oF ME GETTING HURT,

WAR FOOT posted:

I believe the door going white shows it now connects to the JuJu, not the reward. They go through it, presumably deal with Lord English, all the ghosts die, and then they claim the ultimate reward.

That doesn't make sense. When do they go fight Caliborn for Caliborn's masterpiece, and what would happen to the Beta kids trapped in the icon then?

The plotline that made sense was John and chums retconning to Caliborn, the Beta kids getting Iconized, then Vriska deploying the Icon for them to be released and fight Lord English. If they went from the lilypad to fighting Lord English then... I don't even know at that point.

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:56

Fender Anarchist: May 20, 2009; Fender Anarchist

almost 3 am on a wednesday and im still... unsettled over this

at least gunnerkrigg court is still here for me

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:57

paranoid randroid: Mar 4, 2007

quote:

EIGHT ASSHOLES SNUGGED UP IN THEIR GOOFY PAJAMAS APPEAR OUT OF NOWHERE, FOR SOME WRESTLING ROYALE WITH YOURS TRULY. THEY ALL STEAL A RIDE WITH THE WIND PRICK'S SNAPPY GHOST MAGIC, TO CATCH ME UNAWARES. IT WORKED! JUDGING FROM MY SKULL EXPRESSION, I WAS REALLY REALLY SURPRISED.

sez here that John retcons everyone to the Caliborn fight. so, again, either they just started feeling their oats and decided that theyd rather kick a 12 year old in the balls than win the stupid game, or theres eight hitherto unaccounted for copies of our protagonists floating around in the story

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:57

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 24, 2024 18:49

WAMPA_STOMPA: Oct 21, 2010

WAR FOOT posted:

I believe the door going white shows it now connects to the JuJu, not the reward. They go through it, presumably deal with Lord English, all the ghosts die, and then they claim the ultimate reward.

they get to caliborn via retcon though they use johns powers

# ? Apr 13, 2016 07:57

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > BSS: Bisexual Super Son > MSPaint Adventures - Homestuck Edition, the Final Acts

«‹›2217 »