Homesuck: Vriska Rising

[POS Industries]

Yeah, but there's a difference between a joke and just being a dick.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Yeah, but there's a difference between a joke and just being a dick.

I feel like Hussie more or less was always a dick, but pretty much got away with it back when his content was phenomenal, because a lot of creative writers and artists out in the world have dickish personalities and we often just assume it comes with the territory.

But now as Homestuck's become padded out into oblivion and the quality's dipped, the dickishness just sticks out more because there isn't much else left to occupy our thoughts.

And don't get me wrong, artistically speaking, from a purely technical perspective, Andrew's better than he's ever been. No arguments there. Only, this is all kind of proving another point, namely that your skills as an artist can only take you as far as the quality of the content you're drawing. Without a story, all of Andrew's ambitious improvements in animation and all his experimentation in the medium just don't mean much.

There's also only so many times an author can badger me with "THIS IS HOPELESS!" before I shout back "Okay, fine, it's fucking hopeless, but if it really is hopeless, how the fuck do you expect me to care?" Don't get me wrong on that count, the kids and trolls (at least some of them) are destined to "win", but at this rate their victory is going to be such a huge half-assed Deus Ex Machina that even that's no real consolation, because it doesn't feel like character growth so much as it feels like the characters are beaten to a pulp until the arbitrary moment that Andrew christens as "The Ending," when the tables turn so the expected outcome is achieved.

EDIT: I just feel at some point -- well over halfway after the story began, granted, but at some point before the story reached a climax, and really, probably before Act 6 began -- the Kids and Trolls as protagonists should have come up with some sort of Plan, which while unlikely to succeed would at least be consistent enough narratively that there were actual Stakes, and if everyone's goals are well-articulated you know exactly where you stand as a reader and what you're rooting for and what you're rooting against. And I think insofar as Act 5 worked, at least more than Act 6 has, it's because there was a Plan (albeit one that mutated as the situation changed) and there were Stakes because you knew that universe was toast and the Kids needed an exit strategy and everyone needed to join up and meet each other and we wanted that to happen.

But in Act Six, really, has there really been any plans whatsoever, or are the Kids and Trolls simply passive actors repeatedly getting screwed over by forces outside their control? Because the latter just sucks.
It's fun to have compelling, hard-as-fuck to beat antagonists who are capable of wrecking shit up, but the fun in great antagonists also stems from the knowledge that the protagonists retain some agency -- agency to fight back, or agency to cave in, agency to write their own stories in the context of the menace threatening to conquer them.

There's no agency here. There's no plan. There's no stakes.
We're near the end of the story and I don't even have the slightest fucking clue what the Kids and Trolls are hoping to accomplish, and really, at this juncture, the only thing left to root for is for them to stay alive, which has no true meaning anyway because there isn't even any meaningful consequence in death.

[Arcanum]

Yeah, I agree Snake. As for the plan in Act 6, the only one I can remember is "get the MacGuffin so we can beat Lord English" and then John stuck his hand in the MacGuffin. And I think some of them are trying to get Caliborn's sister (whatever her name was) to wake up? But that might've just been Rose and Roxy?

I dunno, it's been a while, and it was never clear to begin with, and a lot of the stuff that's been happening has really just been "oh look stuff is happening" instead of "let's work towards X oh shit now stuff is happening that is impacting how we work towards X."

So anyway, I guess the denizen-named browser icons were actual representations of the denizens instead of just abstractions. Unless those massive serpents turn out to be not the denizens, but to me it seems likely that they are.

[Flarecobra]

By this point, I'm hoping the villain wins, because at least Lord English's motives are clear.

[Locke cole]

Yeah, I'm totally rooting for the guy whose game plan consists of "smash whatever I run into", because I think that's the most compelling character in the story.

Wait, no.

...But, you know, carry on. Whatever I may think of the comic, I know there's no way I'm swaying anyone; I'm not persuasive enough, nor do I really think what I say could overturn how someone reacted to the story in the first place.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Locke cole

...But, you know, carry on. Whatever I may think of the comic, I know there's no way I'm swaying anyone; I'm not persuasive enough, nor do I really think what I say could overturn how someone reacted to the story in the first place.

Honestly like, my one and only criticism of your perspective is that you seem to be taking the criticism a bit to heart personally when, in reality, I completely get why a lot of folks love Homestuck, and still love Homestuck, and will continue to love Homestuck, and even when I'm posting rants about Homestuck here, I'm not trying to convince anyone who still loves Homestuck that they shouldn't love Homestuck, so much as I just want to share my own perspective on why I no longer love Homestuck.

Like, if I never loved Homestuck, and if I was completely unable to appreciate anything about it, I certainly couldn't be bothered to post anything about it now. The fact that a part of me is still hung up on how incredible certain earlier parts of Homestuck were is precisely what motivates my ire, and none of that ire is in any way directed towards people who disagree with me.

[Locke cole]

Yeah, I get that, and I really do need to back off that attention-seekingly pessimistic crap.

It's sort of the result of stuff I've been getting into elsewhere. Too much time and effort spent arguing fruitlessly with people over the internet, which ultimately leads to me simultaneously wanting to weigh in on something and wondering what the point even is in doing so.

So then I blow up and go on a whingeing rant like the one above. And that's something I need to work on.

[Arcanum]

I'm still reading Homestuck for the same reason I'm still reading Naruto and Bleach: I've been doing it for so long that I need to know how this shit ends. At least one of those is almost over.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Arcanum

I'm still reading Homestuck for the same reason I'm still reading Naruto and Bleach: I've been doing it for so long that I need to know how this shit ends. At least one of those is almost over.

Yeah, pretty much.

I used to at least look forward to the flash updates, but now I can't even expect those to be any good.

[Aldurin]

The writing has fallen apart, but I am starting to think the biggest mistake was "I should start making the video game RIGHT NOW" in the middle of the tipping point into a clusterfuck. The fanbase momentum has been lost to the point where the people who thought they remembered what's going on are going to be thinking "WHO?" at a good portion of the recent updates. If it wasn't for the Megapause, the general reaction might have been better.