Homesuck: Vriska Rising

[Loyal]

It's cool. We'll probably only keep three or four of the new crop after learning of some new and imaginative way for ghosts to be killed.

[Arcanum]

Guys. Guys. If Act 6 is supposed to be along the same lines as the first 5 acts, just condensed into a single multi-part act, then that means we'll get Act 6 Act 5: Hivebent 2: Hivebendier. We will then learn about the pre-scratch troll session and the "plan" Meenah mentioned that got them all killed.

And Snake will cry in despair, and it will be great.

jk love you snake

[POS Industries]

I was under the impression that the "plan" was simply scratching their session, which killed them all in the process due to their not having the means to just up and leave their universe.

[Ecks]

Are you afraid Snake? Of Hivebent 2.0?

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by Ecks

Are you afraid Snake? Of Hivebent 2.0?

Eh, Hivebent was awesome, don't get me wrong. A bit you-know-who heavy (if I'm lucky I'll ensure she's forever known as the next Volde---oops! Almost screwed up there!)

Additional content that mirrors Hivebent is never a bad thing.
Homestuck stretching on at a snail's pace is a bad thing.
I wish Andrew intuitively understood how, past a certain point, increased content in your story actually becomes a detriment to the overarching narrative.

I have a feeling if Homestuck was like actually a role-playing game, it'd be the single longest role-playing game in existence, and it'd be like "You have to invest 500 hours just to complete the first half" and you'd just be like fffffffuuuuuucccccckkkkkk man stop spending an hour narrating this pointless shit and let me play the damn game already
And I like Homestuck and I'm saying this
I have no idea how someone who merely felt ambivalent or was a newcomer to the series would approach this

But I think the ultimate issue with Homestuck is according to his Tumblr posts, Andrew's all like "This is designed for one-time readers who come in after the fact, that's why you serialized dudes are so upset with the content because you're reading it in real-time?" When, I can only imagine this working in a serialized context. Who the hell is going to find the idea of starting to read Homestuck appealing now? I remember it taking the majority of a full day to catch up with Homestuck back when I got into it again during the beginning of Hivebent, shit's become a nightmare since

Like it's not even that the story's complex it's that for a newcomer it's literally like "Oh hey why don't you read this fun story! It will only take you three full days of your life." And it's easy to make that investment on a day-to-day basis when you're already hooked, but fuck, no one new is going to find it worthwhile.

TLDR Version: Andrew's shooting himself in the foot in terms of Homestuck's longevity to placate serialized readers and stretch the story foreverz, even as he's claiming on Tumblr that he gives no shits about serialized readers

[rpgdemon]

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Like it's not even that the story's complex it's that for a newcomer it's literally like "Oh hey why don't you read this fun story! It will only take you three full days of your life." And it's easy to make that investment on a day-to-day basis when you're already hooked, but fuck, no one new is going to find it worthwhile.

That's how most books are, though. It takes days, sometimes weeks, for some people to finish books.

And at least Homestuck is actually fun/interesting, as opposed to the suck fest that was reading Problem Sleuth.

[Ecks]

As someone who rereads it every couple of months I actually see things in context when I get caught up to serial releases. The guy has a plan here, or at least a loose framework. I don't quite get the snail's pace comment, sure I get a little cranky when there hasn't been an update in a while or when there's an awful lot of pages and not a lot of logs, but what I like to remember is that Hussie does a lot of setup for payoffs later in the story. What we might not consider all that important or plot relevent right now could have consequences story-wise further down the road.

I guess alls I'm saying right now is

Get your settle down on maybe.

[Solid Snake]

Originally Posted by rpgdemon

That's how most books are, though. It takes days, sometimes weeks, for some people to finish books.

And at least Homestuck is actually fun/interesting, as opposed to the suck fest that was reading Problem Sleuth.

Maybe I'm just an abnormally fast novel reader and an abnormally slow Homestuck reader, then?

...Like for a while I thought it was just the format? Like I thought my issue there would be completely alleviated if the entirety of Homestuck was actually presented in novel / paperback comic form and I could flip pages and reference prior pages easily at random whims as opposed to be stuck on a linear point-and-click path where every new reference to previous events forces me to scramble through the archives blind.

...But then I bought Book One of Homestuck in comicz on paperz form and it was just as incredibly slow and meandering a process to read through as anything else

What's shocking there is, I can read through novels at breakneck speed, novels with far greater and more complex use of vocabulary.
Is it just like, it takes a few extra seconds to process the typing quirks thing?
Or is it just like, Hussie writes cool dialogue but his plots are so kooky-complex it takes ages to process them thing?

I don't know!

Originally Posted by Ecks

Get your settle down on maybe.

I think you're interpreting my comments as more angry than I actually am.
I'm actually not remotely upset about it, my typing style here is exaggerated for comedic effect if anything.
It's just a genuine mystery to me.
I'm genuinely confused as to why I enjoy Homestuck so much despite the fact that I don't experience it in a way comparable with any other work (even other comics!) that I've read.
I'm also a little peeved that the damn thing's not anywhere near ending yet, that's true too.

[Art of Hilt]

This discussion reminds me of how I just finished a book recently and it took me like four months to do it, even though the book isn't particularly big. It's just something I read on and off in my free time and keeping track of where I left it with a pretty dedicated bookmark.

I imagine reading Homestuck when it's finished is meant to be the same way. I mean, there is a Save Game/Load Game function, the bookmark is built into the site.

On the other hand, most people do the archive-binge thing when it comes to webcomics. Personally an archive which takes days to go through is something I actually enjoy and prefer. Scary-go-Round was a godsend when I first found it. I loved how long it took me to get to the end.

[Specterbane]

I think one reason Homestuck might take more would also be that pictures are worth 1000 words.

Ok that was bad of me, but really it's kind of true if you think about it. In a novel the author doesn't have the opportunity (to nearly the same extent which Hussie does) to through Red herrings out because they have to have you focus on every plot point. Hussie's able to toss things in the picture that might be meaningless might not be meaning less. And it's compounded by his sense of humor and the sheer number of red herrings he might be willing to toss around willy-nilly. If you dissect everything the way you can in a book I think you can find tons more useless BS in HS meant only to lead you down the wrong path in the plot maze that's being constructed here.