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Now that I think about it Bec Noir's rise to power and conclusion all seemed more satisfying than LE's. Man, the more I think about it the more  I get. Act 5 was peak HS, I agree.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:11
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paradoxGentleman posted:What was Homestuck trying to do, in your opinion? Because it most certainly had LE as a major antagonist and then sort of forgot to get rid of him in a satisfying way. Yeah I don't see why you need some cheesy scene like that. It's always been said that he'll only be defeated by abusing glitches in spacetime, and the juju and alt-calliope's destruction of the Furthest Ring seem to count, in that respect. It's left as an exercise to the reader to figure out how it all went down exactly, and there's definitely still some extra pieces of the puzzle that don't quite fit, like where Caliborn's masterpiece fits in. Again, I think he wants us to think about this for awhile and come to our own conclusions, and hopefully we'll get some more light shed on things in the epilogue and we can find out if we are right. Homestuck's always been about that "puzzle" of the underlying themes and idea of the creation myth and growing up and how this fits into this wacky bullshit adventure of a bunch of kids and trolls and crazy green people. That's why I'm not surprised it took this route for the end. There's a lot of talk about character development too in regards to the ending and it's gotten me thinking about how we approach the characters and how a lot of people seem to take issue with retcons and alt-timelines and not having a resolution to their "arc". But all the talk in the story about how the multiple aspects of each character make up the whole, as well as stuff like Dave and Rose's discussion about how if people even have "arcs" or not makes me wonder if the entire point was for us to view the characters and how their different selves change AS that whole as opposed to trying to follow it more traditionally. Since it seems like if you don't, and all you're interested in is the endpoint, you just end up with this silent ending that feels a bit empty for a lot of characters. I don't know, like I said I'm still trying to sort all of this out in my head and see if it all makes sense and I'm not claiming it's the answer or anything. But I've always had some faith in Hussie's ideas and intent for the story and I refuse to believe that he just "gave up". I still feel like this ending was a specific choice for him and is meant to be taken at more than just face value, so I'm going to at least try and make some effort to look deeper and figure it out.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:12
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After
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Apr 13, 2016 12:12
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At least Andrew Hussie's self insert wasn't in the anime
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Apr 13, 2016 12:14
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WAR FOOT posted:I don't remember who said it earlier, but you're going back to the striptease after the sloppiest of handjobs.  (In actuality I will not be re-reading Homestuck because there are too many video games to play, television shows to watch, movies to finally see, and books to flat out ignore.)
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Apr 13, 2016 12:14
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Bye, Homestuck.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:15
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cathead posted:There's a lot of talk about character development too in regards to the ending and it's gotten me thinking about how we approach the characters and how a lot of people seem to take issue with retcons and alt-timelines and not having a resolution to their "arc". But all the talk in the story about how the multiple aspects of each character make up the whole, as well as stuff like Dave and Rose's discussion about how if people even have "arcs" or not makes me wonder if the entire point was for us to view the characters and how their different selves change AS that whole as opposed to trying to follow it more traditionally. Since it seems like if you don't, and all you're interested in is the endpoint, you just end up with this silent ending that feels a bit empty for a lot of characters. Yeah, Hussie basically said "the point" outright, but people just don't want to get it I guess.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:16
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Apr 13, 2016 12:20
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Maleficent posted:Now that I think about it Bec Noir's rise to power and conclusion all seemed more satisfying than LE's. Man, the more I think about it the more I think Lord English's rise to power was just fine, except that it didn't really have a reason for us to... care. Bec Noir wrecked house at basically every point in his ascendancy, things were climbing in both power scale and personal stakes. Lord English on the other hand was just sorta there, off doing his own poo poo, and he was honestly pretty harmless to where the actual plot was going on. Sure, he killed a universe, but everyone was already gone when he did it. Caliborn's side of things was pretty fun, honestly, I was all on board with him being the big final villain, but we were missing any reason to stop him that wasn't his laughably lovely art.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:21
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I mean this as benevolently as I can: gently caress Off.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:26
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I am glad it's over. Homestuck is great but the constant state of hiatus the last year or 2 has been really trying my capacity to remain invested. Hell I am halfway convinced I wouldn't be so down on the A6 kids if the update schedule had remained consistent. But I am satisfied with the resolution and look forward to going back and rereading the whole mess at some point.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:28
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I think a lot of you guys just don't like more experimental narratives "with a point" and that explains the frustration. I mean, if you've read a lot of modern and post-modern books this isn't particularly off track. Just look at Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (book chosen randomly off the top of my head) for another story that doesn't have neat arcs completed by the end.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:28
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Cleretic posted:I think Lord English's rise to power was just fine, except that it didn't really have a reason for us to... care. The only personal stake anyone had with Lord English was that he was a creepy misogynistic dick to Jane and co. Apart from that he didn't really do anything to any of the kids or the trolls. He was just some vague figure that was killing ghosts. Did we even see him eat a universe? The universes we saw destroyed got done in by Rose and Dave when they created the green sun. For all we know, the bit about him eating universes was just Scratch trying to loving show off. They had no reason to get involved with him beyond "welp he's the final boss".
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Apr 13, 2016 12:33
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MonsieurChoc posted:I think a lot of you guys just don't like more experimental narratives "with a point" and that explains the frustration. I know when I think of great postmodernist literary triumphs, Homestuck is one of the first names that comes to mind
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Apr 13, 2016 12:33
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WAR FOOT posted:HOLY poo poo IT'S ANIME After years of following the comic and reading the thread on and off, this this post at the end of it all has made it all worth it.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:36
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Cleretic posted:I think Lord English's rise to power was just fine, except that it didn't really have a reason for us to... care. Let's tally things up: LE killed some ghosts. Not even ghosts without living/other analogues, just...a bunch of ghosts. Jack killed: Bro, Mom, Dad, a fuckload of trolls, John (multiple times), multiple semi-planets, Jade's dreamself (by proxy), an army of carapaces, three exiles, and a universe.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:38
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WAR FOOT posted:I know when I think of great postmodernist literary triumphs, Homestuck is one of the first names that comes to mind I wasn't putting them on equal levels of quality, but trying to make a point about genre expectations.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:41
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I liked it, to an extent. I thought Lord English being defeated by both God-Tier Calliope destroying everything in the furthest ring contained within the ring he created in his rampage and Vriska doing something with the Icon was okay. I also am not surprised the kids never went and fought Caliborn, as I always assumed that fight was a doomed timeline set of kids. The new world was nice and Lord English ended up not mattering to the main narrative because he really didn't matter to the game players themselves. His loss is off-screen because the kids only need to know he's lost, not be a part of it. The two who are a part of it both have a reason to be so. Vriska finally gets to steal the ultimate spot-light, and Calliope fills her Denizen's Choice. By sacrificing herself she stops Lord English from continuing his rampage. Do I want a different ending, yes. I'd have liked a different ending because this ending is a bit hollow, but I can be happy with it.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:41
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why didn't the comic end with john saying "well, guess we're not stuck anymore. time to go home"
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Apr 13, 2016 12:42
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MonsieurChoc posted:I wasn't putting them on equal levels of quality, but trying to make a point about genre expectations. Your expectations seem to be the ones more at odds with the thread, though. This is DBZ with troll genitalia discussion, not Proust e: before we get 'but the majority can be wrong!' that means that the writing is bad/lacking clairty/not meeting the perceived expectations of the majority of consumers.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:43
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I liked it. Homestuck is over now. Mods please close this thread and ban all of its inhabitants.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:44
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Who What Now posted:I liked it. Homestuck is over now. Mods please close this thread and ban all of its inhabitants.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:48
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I've been thinking abput it and honestly if the anime turned out to be Caliborn's final lovely twist to make Homestuck end badly, I'd be okay with it
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Apr 13, 2016 12:48
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WAR FOOT posted:I know when I think of great postmodernist literary triumphs, Homestuck is one of the first names that comes to mind 7 years and you are still here 
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Apr 13, 2016 12:51
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Lord_Magmar posted:Do I want a different ending, yes. I'd have liked a different ending because this ending is a bit hollow, but I can be happy with it. I would have settled for an interactive Street Fighter style flash fight with you taking turns controlling each of the 4 kids to drop LE like..4 or 5 years ago and would have been happy with it, really.
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Apr 13, 2016 12:51
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why do people keep assuming we're getting an epilogue
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Apr 13, 2016 13:16
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the newspost. we're not free
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Apr 13, 2016 13:19
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SynthOrange posted:the newspost. we're not free ahhhh. i hadn't refreshed since i loaded it up at midnight. now people don't look like dummies hoping for a thing that nobody has mentioned.
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Apr 13, 2016 13:20
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Apr 13, 2016 13:29
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MonsieurChoc posted:I think a lot of you guys just don't like more experimental narratives "with a point" and that explains the frustration. One of the books I finished recently was Blake Butler's "Three Hundred Million" and that thing was as post-modern as a spherical mailbox with a Gucci bag. Please don't imply illiteracy in the people who are not satisfied with Homestuck's ending. Especially considering the bulk of its audience is probably in its early twenties, tops, and I doubt most of that demographic is intimately familiar with the works of Calvino. Postmodern works don't have to concern themselves with more traditional arcs and resolutions for plot and character, but they still need to set up and answer larger thematic questions of a story - message, moral, etc. Those things are the skeleton of any story, they always need to be present no matter the shape or all you get is a big blobby inchoate mess. And by the end of Act 7, the question I found myself asking is the one we've semi-ironically asked for years - what the gently caress is Homestuck even about? Is it a creation myth? Because that's definitely the ending we got. But if it was just a creation myth, then why did we have these tons and tons of cruft that ultimately went nowhere and did nothing? One of the things I always liked best about Homestuck was the fact that it was Hussie's story and no one else's, that it wasn't really beholden to the expectations of its readers, so I can't really run to the barricades over the fact that I was totally unsatisfied with its conclusion. But even then, at some point you need to step back and ask yourself what kind of story you're actually trying to tell, and Homestuck moved away from even the most oblique type of mythic tale years ago. Its characters usurped its core plot as early as Act 5, and then the final ten minutes ignores all of that to get back to the main plot. Dissatisfaction is understandable. Is it about growing up? Because most of the cast did none of that. Once Act 6 began we got several years of stagnation which were then de-railed and altered in the course of a five-minute Instagram montage. We never see the character development of the final iterations of the cast. The story attempts to excuse this by making explicit its idea that "all iterations of a character are the same character," but I called bullshit on that before and I'm doing so now - you don't get to try and hide behind the trappings of postmodernism to explain pacing and development failures, which Act 6 was riddled with. Davepeta's little speech to Jade and the ideas it presented wasn't unconventional, it was cowardly. And then it uses that same "postmodern" facade to avoid giving a conclusion to any of the major characters - "real people don't have arcs," Dave says, but they're not real people, they're fictional characters, and their development prior to Collide had followed fairly traditional structures up to that point even with all the time-travel nonsense. Karkat in particular rankled me, because he spent his whole time in the comic tortured by the fact that he was trying to be something he's not; he wanted so, so badly to be a fighter, but all his strengths were in empathy and communication even as he kept self-sabotaging that with his own attitude. And his last act in the comic is...being a fighter, winning the most petty, meaningless victory possible, so that he's finally happy with himself. It makes him look sad and deluded, and he still got off better than most, because even if his character has a bad ending, it still ended. Is it about kids and fun? For the last year and a half of updates, we certainly had kids, but very little fun. Fifty percent is insufficient! As far as I'm concerned, the ending was a failure. And it wasn't even a particularly interesting failure - it went for flash and spectacle over finishing its thoughts on anything, and a bunch of other works have hosed up in similar ways. If anything, it was noteworthy only in showing how badly the serial-updating format of webcomics can both benefit and damage longer works. Homestuck became popular on its erratic but breakneck update speed, its unconventional presentation, and its eclectic cast of characters. It ended with huge pauses that exhausted both the readers and the creators, collapsing under the weight of its own indulgence, and short-shrifting its whole cast in its effort to finish the story it had wanted to tell before it had first expanded so hugely. The ends...were bad.
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Apr 13, 2016 13:33
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loving lol
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Apr 13, 2016 13:37
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Toxx/Oxx are the heroes we deserve. Oh, it was Freak Futanari that went to bed beforehand! I'm sorry in advance, for everything
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Apr 13, 2016 13:40
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I found Lord English interesting as a villain. As Doc Scratch explained he doesn't really do anything directly, the main damage he causes is via his associates who completely screw up the post-scratch universe. Bec Noire was basically there to perform a task for LE afterall - he was the one who introduced Lil' Cal to the troll universe. Then he also started destroying the space between universes which I assume would have negative consequences meaning he really had to be stopped
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Apr 13, 2016 13:40
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I obviously disagree about Act 6 being bad, Oxxidation, and your entire argument is based around that, so whatever.
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Apr 13, 2016 13:41
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Oxxidation posted:As far as I'm concerned, the ending was a failure. The outcome nobody saw coming.
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Apr 13, 2016 13:42
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Boogaleeboo posted:The outcome nobody saw coming. The ending being bad, Or T/Oxx hating it regardless?
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Apr 13, 2016 13:45
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Oxxidation posted:It ended with huge pauses that exhausted both the readers and the creators, collapsing under the weight of its own indulgence, and short-shrifting its whole cast in its effort to finish the story it had wanted to tell before it had first expanded so hugely. The ends...were bad. I could almost swear someone posted something along the lines of what you're describing having happened years ago. poo poo, a number of people probably said the same thing. Simply put, with the addition of a shitload of new characters the story probably got so stupidly big that there simply wasn't time to sufficiently put an end to every single character's plotline. Honestly, from a really early point on I thought that Hussie, focusing on the whole "Double Mobius Reach-around" idea that was prominent early(er) in the comic, was going to simply make it so that Earth created Alternia and vice-versa. However, somewhere along the way it got so convoluted that simply keeping up with all of the characters in the story got to be too much. I mean, if you took out all of the Beforus trolls, how much would actually have changed? Meenah wouldn't be around, but who can even name a single one of the others off the top of their head who was really all that super-relevant to anything whose role couldn't have been filled by anyone else (except maybe Aradia's alt, but I can't remember her name either)?
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Apr 13, 2016 13:51
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still slightly disappointed the last panel wasn't gamzee wearing a smoking jacket, sitting in a leather chair in front of a rustic fireplace, smiling gently at the reader, taking off his glasses, and closing the book titled HOMESTUCK
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Apr 13, 2016 13:54
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GENUINE CAT HERDER posted:I could almost swear someone posted something along the lines of what you're describing having happened years ago. poo poo, a number of people probably said the same thing. Simply put, with the addition of a shitload of new characters the story probably got so stupidly big that there simply wasn't time to sufficiently put an end to every single character's plotline. Did Meenah even really do anything? She got the idea for the ghost army but that was mostly down to Vriska. And then the ghost army accomplished nothing at all anyway. The only relevance Meenah had was as a peek into how Condy thought. Yup, Hussie could definitely have not made the Beforus trolls a thing and it wouldn't have made a drat difference. We had no real reason to care about them, and if he had to do the whole scratched session thing he could have focused on the Beforus versions of the existing trolls. The trolls people actually had a reason to give a poo poo about, and be invested in what happened to them in another timeline.
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Apr 13, 2016 13:58
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I liked it but there was some more stuff I wanted to see but the more I think about it the more I liked it, but now I'm also on the hook for the epilogue and Andrew Hussie will never stop toying with my heart.
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