on trying to pimp Homestuck
Jun. 10th, 2011 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotAs threatened! And because I can't be the only one who's been noticing the growing number of fic on AO3 and wondering what was up with that (I got it confused with Homestar Runner for a good couple months there...) and then if/when you do look it up, you end up on MSPaint Adventures baffled (or possibly worse, the MSPA Wiki, which in my experience is terrifying to the uninitiated.)(And then I spent two hours on it last night when I ran out of new pages...)
The brief explanation: [mostly spoiler-free, provided you don't click the links; I mention a few future things but trust me, there's a lot going on and I'm not giving any of the surprises away.] Homestuck is the latest and longest-running story on MSPA (unrelated to previous adventures, none of which I've read.) It's nominally a webcomic, insofar as you have to call it something; it might be easier to think of it as a detailed walk-through to an illustrated text adventure game that doesn't actually exist. It's not particularly interactive (with the exception of a few fun little RPG-style flash mini-games); it's not a game but an unusual narrative device, with the story being told mostly through text-adventure style descriptions and commands, and chat logs.
That's cool and all, I like innovative story-telling techniques, but they aren't worth much if you don't have a story to tell. Which Homestuck's got in spades (also diamonds, hearts, and clubs):
Reasons you shouldn't read Homestuck:
--If you don't like drama getting in your comedy, or comedy getting in your drama, in a big sticky angstbutter-and-crackcolate mess
--If you are highly allergic to reading dialog in chat logs and l33t speak (if you're just not a fan, that's okay; I would much rather read regular dialog, too. But it's necessary to the story and you get used to it.)
--If you're opposed to obscene language (mostly as you'd expect in trolled chats. Though often rather more bizarrely flavored.)
--If you demand chronological, linear storytelling and prompt explanations for bizarre occurrences (Lost has nothing on Homestuck.)
--If you don't have a few spare hours to lose by going to read "a couple of pages" and then not being able to stop hitting the next link
Reasons you should read Homestuck [warning that bolded links lead to spoilery animation, if somewhat incomprehensible out of context]:
--Twisty time-travel and a figure-out-as-you-go plot!
--Awesome music! (non-spoilery music-only link) (This is one of my faves - bgm to this very spoilery animation.)
--Surreal world-building!
--Peculiar symbolism and wild word-play! (it's rare for me to come across English vocabulary I don't know. I think I've picked up about ten new words reading this.)
--Hijinx and shenanigans! (Later in the story a cross-time message board is introduced, so characters can speak to other characters at different points in time - including chatting with their own past and future selves. One char in particular gets into flamewars with himself.)
--The world's most complex relationship schema (Troll romance is...unique. And a major reason why there's so much fic, I suspect. Doesn't hurt that the canon's slash-permissive, since the trolls explicitly do not get why we'd even have a word for homosexuality - they've got too much else to worry about when it comes to 'shipping to bother paying attention to things like gender.)
--And of course the characters!!!
Homestuck manages the trick of having a whole cast of people who aren't necessarily very smart or nice or heroic or even superficially very likable, and making you like and care about them anyway. They're not exactly realistic (for instance, the main cast are all supposed to be 13 years old, which they talk and act like approximately never), but most of them are sympathetic or at least understandable, and you find yourself cheering them on and hoping they come through, or else get their just deserts (...either of which is not guaranteed, I should mention - no spoilers there, but the story's awfully unpredictable and not done yet, so caveats.) They're also impressively well-drawn - not artistically speaking (they appear only as pseudo-sprites for the first half of the series) but in characterization - there are 4 major characters to start with, 16 by the second half, and they all have distinctive personalities and voices. (Hence the importance of the aforementioned chat dialog - it would be difficult keeping everyone straight without those cues.)
And among those characters are increasingly complex webs of relationships, enmities and friendships and friends becoming enemies and enemies becoming friends and love and loyalty and family and incredibly confusing-to-the-fourth-power troll romance, and people who genuinely care about each other in spite of it all (even if they have special ways of showing it, or even if their culture shouldn't really allow it.) (The relationships are especially appealing to me because the majority of the interactions happens online, with some characters only just meeting in person for the first time after being friends for years--as someone who's made some of my best friends thanks to the internet, it rings true to me, how well you can get to know a person even when all you know of them is from written exchanges.)
(Also there is Karkat!! ...I was going to link one of Karkat's signature conversations here. Except that would probably make you hate him. Actually just about anything Karkat ever says would. Oh, Karkat. <3)
So, that's Homestuck. If you're still not sure, I'd suggest going to the beginning and starting to read. The opening is mostly nonsense; the story takes a bit to get going, and you can skim until you get to the first chat logs. I'd recommend going through to the end of Act 1 before you really decide how you feel - that's only a fraction of the full work, but it'll give you a decent impression. (Oh, and I'd try looking at it in different browsers, or else turning off fonts - for some reason the primary fixed-width text is bolded weird and hard for me to read in Firefox, but looks fine in Chrome.)
The brief explanation: [mostly spoiler-free, provided you don't click the links; I mention a few future things but trust me, there's a lot going on and I'm not giving any of the surprises away.] Homestuck is the latest and longest-running story on MSPA (unrelated to previous adventures, none of which I've read.) It's nominally a webcomic, insofar as you have to call it something; it might be easier to think of it as a detailed walk-through to an illustrated text adventure game that doesn't actually exist. It's not particularly interactive (with the exception of a few fun little RPG-style flash mini-games); it's not a game but an unusual narrative device, with the story being told mostly through text-adventure style descriptions and commands, and chat logs.
That's cool and all, I like innovative story-telling techniques, but they aren't worth much if you don't have a story to tell. Which Homestuck's got in spades (also diamonds, hearts, and clubs):
Reasons you shouldn't read Homestuck:
--If you don't like drama getting in your comedy, or comedy getting in your drama, in a big sticky angstbutter-and-crackcolate mess
--If you are highly allergic to reading dialog in chat logs and l33t speak (if you're just not a fan, that's okay; I would much rather read regular dialog, too. But it's necessary to the story and you get used to it.)
--If you're opposed to obscene language (mostly as you'd expect in trolled chats. Though often rather more bizarrely flavored.)
--If you demand chronological, linear storytelling and prompt explanations for bizarre occurrences (Lost has nothing on Homestuck.)
--If you don't have a few spare hours to lose by going to read "a couple of pages" and then not being able to stop hitting the next link
Reasons you should read Homestuck [warning that bolded links lead to spoilery animation, if somewhat incomprehensible out of context]:
--Twisty time-travel and a figure-out-as-you-go plot!
--Awesome music! (non-spoilery music-only link) (This is one of my faves - bgm to this very spoilery animation.)
--Surreal world-building!
--Peculiar symbolism and wild word-play! (it's rare for me to come across English vocabulary I don't know. I think I've picked up about ten new words reading this.)
--Hijinx and shenanigans! (Later in the story a cross-time message board is introduced, so characters can speak to other characters at different points in time - including chatting with their own past and future selves. One char in particular gets into flamewars with himself.)
--The world's most complex relationship schema (Troll romance is...unique. And a major reason why there's so much fic, I suspect. Doesn't hurt that the canon's slash-permissive, since the trolls explicitly do not get why we'd even have a word for homosexuality - they've got too much else to worry about when it comes to 'shipping to bother paying attention to things like gender.)
--And of course the characters!!!
Homestuck manages the trick of having a whole cast of people who aren't necessarily very smart or nice or heroic or even superficially very likable, and making you like and care about them anyway. They're not exactly realistic (for instance, the main cast are all supposed to be 13 years old, which they talk and act like approximately never), but most of them are sympathetic or at least understandable, and you find yourself cheering them on and hoping they come through, or else get their just deserts (...either of which is not guaranteed, I should mention - no spoilers there, but the story's awfully unpredictable and not done yet, so caveats.) They're also impressively well-drawn - not artistically speaking (they appear only as pseudo-sprites for the first half of the series) but in characterization - there are 4 major characters to start with, 16 by the second half, and they all have distinctive personalities and voices. (Hence the importance of the aforementioned chat dialog - it would be difficult keeping everyone straight without those cues.)
And among those characters are increasingly complex webs of relationships, enmities and friendships and friends becoming enemies and enemies becoming friends and love and loyalty and family and incredibly confusing-to-the-fourth-power troll romance, and people who genuinely care about each other in spite of it all (even if they have special ways of showing it, or even if their culture shouldn't really allow it.) (The relationships are especially appealing to me because the majority of the interactions happens online, with some characters only just meeting in person for the first time after being friends for years--as someone who's made some of my best friends thanks to the internet, it rings true to me, how well you can get to know a person even when all you know of them is from written exchanges.)
(Also there is Karkat!! ...I was going to link one of Karkat's signature conversations here. Except that would probably make you hate him. Actually just about anything Karkat ever says would. Oh, Karkat. <3)
So, that's Homestuck. If you're still not sure, I'd suggest going to the beginning and starting to read. The opening is mostly nonsense; the story takes a bit to get going, and you can skim until you get to the first chat logs. I'd recommend going through to the end of Act 1 before you really decide how you feel - that's only a fraction of the full work, but it'll give you a decent impression. (Oh, and I'd try looking at it in different browsers, or else turning off fonts - for some reason the primary fixed-width text is bolded weird and hard for me to read in Firefox, but looks fine in Chrome.)
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no subject
Date: 2011-06-20 03:11 pm (UTC)And it doesn't get any less surreal - only more and more awesome and involved and whoa.
no subject
Date: 2011-06-20 07:23 pm (UTC)