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journeysintowebcomics · 8 years ago

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Homestuck - Epilogue

It took almost a year and eleven months to finish reading Homestuck, it started on July 15th, 2015, and ended on June 3rd, 2017, with a total of 180 updates. The last of the first three liveblogs I started in this website is over. It’s like the end of a phase, when you think about it. But this post isn’t to talk about my feelings about the website, it’s about Homestuck, so let’s get that started. This is bound to get long.

Homestuck was...an experience, so to say. It’s certainly one of the most convoluted story I have ever read – at least one not from the mystery genre. I had fun with Homestuck, although all of you may have noticed my enthusiasm for it declined in middle of Act 6. But honestly, I feel I regained it in the very last part of Homestuck, one update or two before Collide, just in time for the end of Homestuck. Overall I can say I liked this long, long story, but despite that, I don’t think I feel like rereading it anytime soon...maybe ever. There’s something daunting about Homestuck that makes me hesitant to reread it. Who knows, maybe my opinion will change in the future, maybe I’ll read Homestuck again, this time without the constraints of having to keep a liveblog. Something as filled as details as Homestuck is likely to be fun now that I can see stuff like foreshadowing and that stuff.

That said...hmmmm...to be frank, my experience with Homestuck’s worse points has kinda wanted me not to touch Problem Sleuth. I know it’s pretty different from Homestuck, and that it has its own good points and all...but yeah, I don’t think I can handle Hussie’s surrealistic storytelling for a while. A long, long while.

So, it could be said Homestuck is an adventure story, isn’t it? It has what you may expect from a story like this one, in terms of what you’d imagine it includes: an overwhelming end goal, quirky characters, interesting and fantastical environments, antagonists that seem undefeatable...and in a way, it does deliver in all that stuff. What makes Homestuck outstanding is the concepts he build. Sure, the universe is ending and a new one will have to be created from scratch, I’m sure there may be other stories with such end objective, but no other story would have something like Sburb and its horrifyingly complicated mechanics. Other stories may have royalty or reality-destroying enemies preparing to obliterate everything, but no other story would have the origins Hussie envisioned for them or the actions they took throughout this tale. What makes Homestuck special is the originality it has, it’s so filled with originality it wouldn’t be a mistake to say there’ll be no story like this one.

Besides, Hussie’s strange way to tell the story is notable. First than all, it’s something that wouldn’t fly with a professional editor. I think many professional editors would have heart attacks if they heard of something like seventeen dialogues before the final fight, or about a dozen bit characters being shoved into the story just to never appear after their hundred or so pages are done. There’s charm in Hussie doing what he wants, but at the same way it’s frustrating. But...I can say I enjoyed most of Hussie’s daring decisions. I don’t know how much of it was intentional and how much was a happy accident, but I had fun. If I ever read Homestuck again, it’ll be because I’ll want to see if this bizarre mess makes more sense during the second read.

The art was interesting throughout virtually all of Homestuck. The simplistic way to depict the characters had enough variety to make most characters have a lot of individuality, and when Hussie and the guest artists decided to get more detailed, the colors and shapes really gave a lot of atmosphere. I think the best asset Homestuck has is its art. The flash scenes, the music, it all was the best asset. There are many flash files I’d like to watch again, if only to remember what I thought during them the first time. I’m also very into Homestuck’s music, and I have heard there’s a Bandcamp for it – whatever that is. I’ll make sure to check it.

For the sake of not extending myself throughout seventy pages here on the Word file I’m typing right now, I think I’ll limit myself to talk about the surviving characters plus the original twelve trolls, as well as the villains. That should give me enough fodder to talk for a long while. Knowing me, it’ll be so long it’ll take me two days to finish typing.

CHARACTERS:

John Egbert is the quintessential protagonist. Friendly, level-headed, considerate towards his friends, determined, and willing to take action against foes, he’s everything you’d think a main character would be. That doesn’t mean he’s some sort of bland character, though. John Egbert stands out thanks to his way to talk with the rest of the characters. He has such a good rapport with everyone he talks with it’s a delight to read. Pretty much everyone who bothered to talk to him for long enough appreciates John and likes him. I think Kanaya is pretty much the only non-Act 6 character that didn’t have ties to John in some way.

This kid can be rather supportive, but he also isn’t afraid of messing around with people just for his own amusement. He cares about his friends and tries to do everything he can to help them – and he does well, being the leader and all – and compared to the one other leader of this story, John is pretty successful at that. He has enough fortitude to do what needs to be done, even though at first he isn’t sure what to do with his retcon powers, he keeps practicing until he manages to have enough control to do what he wants! As a whole I’d say John’s actions shape the direction of the story. He’s the one who kickstarts his friends to play Sburb, he’s the one who enters first and finds out first-hand what Sburb is all about, he’s the only one who fights the denizen and gets killed for that, the first to reach god tier and use powers...heck, even his death is the big first pivotal event that leads to the rest of the session! John is definitely the most important character of the story...among the Wonderkids, that is.

It’s exactly because of that that I was surprised that John didn’t deliver the final blow to the Condesce or Lord English. It’s much better that Roxy did it, but given John’s importance I had taken for granted he’d be the one to do it. I for one am glad he didn’t.

His relationships with the rest of the characters were fun to read, John always had this dorky way to talk with everyone. I’d say my favorite one was with Vriska, he had this way of dragging out Vriska’s best traits and act as her morality chain...it’s a shame that once Vriska returned that didn’t happen anymore, both because Vriska wouldn’t want to and because John doesn’t talk much to her once she’s revived, at least on-screen.

I don’t think there’s anything I’d have done with John that didn’t happen here in the story, overall he had a nice growth and went through a lot of experiences. I’m satisfied with him.

Rose Lalonde was for quite some time my favorite of the Wonderkids. She’s smart, pretentious, but behind all her aloof behavior one could see she cared about her friends. I liked that of her, that despite all that she cherished her friendships. Unfortunately, the situation with her mother wasn’t as positive, Rose thought her mother’s behavior was passive-aggressive attacks directed towards her. The moment her mother died is the moment Rose’s characterization took a turn. Until then she had pursued a rather destructive approach towards Sburb, trying to find answers by wrecking everything by the seams, but once her mother died and she, you know, she died too and was resurrected through her dream self, I feel she took a bit of a more active role. The mission to blow up the Green Sun, for example. If I remember right, she was going to go by herself.

Once the meteor trip started...hmmmm...well, she started falling off my favorite character thoughts. I think it started by the time she started drinking heavily? I felt that it didn’t fit with Rose’s characterization, and to be honest right now I’m not sure if it did. Maybe it did, maybe not. On the most positive side, she also managed to form a relationship with Kanaya, and that’s great, I was happy for her. Every single relationship in this story didn’t last at all, yet theirs did. That’s pretty much a feat here in Homestuck!

It was to be expected Rose would lose importance in Homestuck, given the immense amount of characters they were, which wasn’t what I thought would happen. I had thought she’d be the secondary protagonist, so to say, someone who’d be John’s main help. Instead, she more or less was left aside with the rest. I think Hussie made a mistake by introducing so many characters. Hard to give each one a definite role. Ever since the Wonderkids arrived to the new session Rose was...just a character more. It’s a shame, because Rose is a pretty good character and I liked her, but that’s just how this goes.

Dave Strider is the Wonderkid who I didn’t think I’d like. He had seemed like a somewhat obnoxious kid who was trying too hard to be something he wasn’t, you know, ‘cool’. And turns out he indeed was trying to look like he was cool, but it wasn’t out of some sort of desire about standing out or being considered fun by everyone. I think once I noticed that is when I started liking Dave. It also helped that his conversations were pretty damn fun! His metaphors, his rambling...Hussie managed to do something great with Dave here.

There’s also his relationship with his brother. Bro isn’t going to win any prizes for best guardian ever, and Dave knew that, but he still wanted to impress his Bro. The moment Bro died was the moment Dave had to stop pursuing that goal and start doing something else – and the main trait his characterization had was that he never had the intention or temperament to play hero. He knew that, and he never tried to turn hero because he always felt he wouldn’t measure up to it. You know what I think? That once he managed to talk with Dirk and unloaded all that heavy stuff he had in his head and heart he left that behind for long enough to focus on everything without dragging himself down. I doubt he wanted to fight Lord English or anything, but I think by then Dave may have felt like he could move on.

Speaking of talking with people, I have a hard time deciding how much he cares about most characters. I did feel he loved the rest of the Wonderkids dearly, there was camaraderie with Terezi, and the talk with Dirk felt genuine to me, but other than that I’m not sure how much Dave appreciated everyone else he talked with – and by that I mean Karkat. Despite how close they ended being, I’m not sure Hussie managed to convey anything different with Dave’s way to talk to Karkat. It felt...exactly like before, somewhat antagonistic, but without being serious at all. Maybe later there was an undercurrent of affection or something, I don’t know.

As a whole I’d say Dave had the most defined character arc of them all. Hussie may have cheated a bit by saying humans didn’t have characters, but he still had a lot of growth and dealing with his feelings in ways nobody else in Homestuck had – except Vriska, but I’m not counting her because of something I’ll mention once it’s time to talk about her.

Jade Harley...poor Jade, her status in the story plummeted once Act 5 Act 2 ended. She’s a sweet, caring young gal who’s not afraid of using swears and shouting to the metaphorical top of her lungs through the chat client. Once Rose was dethroned, Jade took the place as my favorite Wonderkid, despite going through the same fate than Rose in terms of importance to the story. I think it’s because Jade was relatable in many ways, leaving aside the dog ears and weird space powers.

John may be the protagonist, but I think Jade was kinda more relatable because she was outright more affectionate towards her friends than the rest. Her way of talking and her personality reminded me a bit of girls I have known before. Despite growing up alone and by herself, she also ended pretty well-adjusted (better than Jake, at least!) which makes me respect her some more. Bonus points for Bec existing around here. What can I say, I’m biased towards dogs.

Buuut, as said before, Jade’s relevance in Homestuck was pretty much non-existent once Act 5 Act 2 ended. Cascade was the climax of her influence in anything, from then on she spent three years in the golden battleship, then was mind-controlled, then died, then in another timeline she was knocked out via psychic powers, and finally she was knocked out via a punch to the face. Wow. Way to go, Hussie, that’s one hell of a downgrade in relevance.

Still, I like Jade.

Jane Crocker, also known as a young Nanna, was...the most average person among the cast. Really, compared to everyone else, she doesn’t stand out. She’s not the leader of her session, for example, that’s Roxy. In many ways she can be defined by her power, she’s the healer of the group. Other than that there’s not really much to say about her. I think it could be mentioned that she’s skeptic about everything that’s happening, and that she couldn’t deal with her love relationships no matter what...but that doesn’t sound very flattering at all, does it?

And that sucks, because Jane is a perfectly nice gal. She just was dealt a bad hand. At least her father didn’t die. She got seriously lucky there.

Roxy Lalonde was my favorite of the new Wonderkids, and how not to like her? She’s such a brave trooper, and thankfully my worst fears of she being defined only because of her drunken behavior during part of Act 6 was unfounded. Roxy is a lot more than that! She’s extremely supportive of her friends and she took the leadership of the team, trying her best to keep them together. Her power was also very useful and important for the development of the plot, to the point that the Condesce imprisoned her to take advantage of what she’d be capable of.

While Dave had the most notable character arc, I think Roxy had the most satisfactory one. She was able to fight against the being that ruined her planet and life, she killed the Condesce! She also managed to meet Rose and formed a rather friendly relationship with her, something that undoubtedly would prove to be good for them both. She managed to get a grasp of her powers and saved a whole race of beings. All in all, I’d say Roxy got the most luck for her actions in this story! And good for her, I’m glad she didn’t sink in disgrace.

All in all, Roxy was a charm to read about, and I’m happy she exists. Good thing I’m not the only one who thinks that, because I’m well aware Roxy is very well-esteemed among the fans of Homestuck. I don’t know if she’s my favorite character, but she’s certainly on a very high spot in my favorites list.

Dirk Strider wasn’t a copy of Dave, like I feared he’d be. There’s a very obvious resemblance in his way of talking, but Dirk is, hm, more biting in his remarks, more sarcastic, blunter. Dave wasn’t the most competent person emotionally, but Dirk takes it to a whole different level. It’s what you’d expect from someone who grew up without any human contact until he was like twelve or thirteen. It could have been worse, though. He had the good luck of not growing up with a Lil’ Cal that included Lord English’s essence.

It’s awful that he was thrown away from everyone in middle of Act 6, though. I think everyone would have benefitted from him sticking around, including us readers. Dirk had a lot of development potential, and I think he achieved some through his clinginess to Jake – clinginess we didn’t see, so I’m not completely sure that counts – and his conversations with Dave.

He’s not as quotable or memorable as Dave, but he has great traits too. I can’t say I was looking forward to his conversations with the same eagerness I had for Dave, but his were almost always interesting. Overall...yeah, a less kind person than me would say Dirk was a washed-up Dave, but that’d be inaccurate, in my opinion. Dirk is cool in a way Dave isn’t. Dirk isn’t a shining example of empathy and humanity, but I think he tries. And what may be the most important difference between Dave and Dirk: Dirk was more than willing to fight for himself and for his friends. I really doubt he considered himself a hero, but he was prepared to get his hands dirty to save them. But...it was also shown what I think Dave’d do if he fought and failed: he’d just give up and let everything around him overpower him, like it happened when Dirk arrived too late to stop everyone’s deaths from happening.

Dirk had a lot of potential and I think he lived up to it for the most part. I just wish he had been more involved with everything instead of being shunted out of the session.

The autoresponder...I can take or leave, I don’t really care.

Jake English, hm...he may be my least favorite of all the Wonderkids, both new and old. Nothing against him personally...or maybe yes, because it’s mostly because of his dim behavior towards other people’s feelings. Leaving that aside, his powers could have been very interesting? He never was able to use them at will, at least in a way we could see it. I think he did use them willingly during Caliborn’s masterpiece, but we couldn’t see what he was thinking or what he did in order to use them. That may as well not count.

Unfortunately, I didn’t really grow very fond of him at any time. He’s just there. A shame, because I think his love of adventure and puzzle-solving could have used well during a Sburb session. It’s too bad he had the bad luck of being in a session that didn’t give him the chance to use them at all.

I don’t really have much to say about Jake, unfortunately.

Let’s do the trolls in zodiac order. Aradia Megido was an awesome character during the entirety of Act 5. She contacted the kids a total of once and that was it. The point of her character wasn’t to talk with the humans, it was how she worked behind the scenes. Her actions and her revival through Act 5 were great to see, but once that was over...she was way too behind the scenes. She contributed pretty much nothing to anything, and I feel her personality may have derailed a little bit since then. It sucks.

Tavros Nitram started rather well, kinda relatable, but the more his role in the story went, the less I liked him. He wanted more confidence and he acquired it by striving to be like Vriska, and nobody wants to have two of Vriska at once. You can imagine how downtrodden I felt about a perfectly nice character slowly degrading into a pale version of Vriska. The worst part is...that he succeeded. He didn’t have any of Vriska’s redeeming qualities, in my opinion, so he was like this ball of awful traits I came to loathe. I’m not going to miss Tavros at all.

Sollux Captor wins an award for mythological name. Too bad he doesn’t wins awards for being a minor character. Maybe if he hadn’t died to give the meteor a push he’d be more memorable, but he isn’t. It’s too bad, because he felt like the Dave of the troll group. Maybe it’s for the better that he didn’t stay long...like what happened with Tavros, it may be a bad idea to have two characters striving to be the same.

Karkat Vantas deserved better than what he got. He wasn’t a bad leader, I mean, he managed to unite a bunch of people from a bellicose race to follow a common goal. Only when he lost control of them due to circumstances he can’t have imagined things started to go badly for the trolls. The deaths of half of the trolls crippled his confidence on his leadership, which in turn meant he lost importance. I just realize pretty much all the trolls lost importance – except for Vriska, curse her.

How’d things have gone if he had tried to be the leader for the rest of Homestuck? Well they’d all be dead because that’d be a doomed timeline. I wish he hadn’t been treated like a nuisance during half of Homestuck, to the point where he was considered a joke. I know he wasn’t a god tier like the rest, but still...he could have gotten a bit more of respect from Hussie and the rest, right? Instead he was made kinda incompetent. I suppose I should be glad he was allowed to defeat Clover. But still...

...Karkat deserved better. I’m not satisfied with his role. In case it isn’t obvious, Karkat is someone I esteem a lot.

Nepeta Leijon, protagonist of the legendary Nepetaquest. Haha, did you know about that? Apparently that’s a thing, or so I was told. I don’t know for sure what it is because I’m not really interested in finding out, but that’s a thing that exists. Oh, what she did in the story? Well...she died and then was revived thousands of pages later in the form of Davepetasprite. Well that was succinct!

Kanaya Maryam got the best treatment among all the trolls, not even Vriska compares to it. Vriska got revived and thrown back into the story, but she was still treated rough. Kanaya in comparison got a much better deal...and that’s saying a lot, because life in Homestuck for Kanaya wasn’t exactly filled with roses and tiny bark beasts.

I like Kanaya’s personality and way of talking, she was deadpan yet approachable. Honestly, she’s the kind of person I wish I knew, because I know nobody like her. There’s this sweetness about her that’s not obvious, behind her offstandish behavior there was a sincere interest in Rose. She’s also cordial with other people, and had a lot of devotion for her race. Her relationship with Rose was also fairly genuine, although for some reason I didn’t feel like they were very interesting to read about.

All in all, I’m fond of Kanaya.

Terezi Pyrope is once another character I feel got a strong start yet started to fall from grace in middle of Act 6. If I had to guess, I’d say the moment she started dating Gamzee was the moment her characterization took a nose dive, thanks a lot, Hussie. I mean, the in-character consequences were obviously intentional, but even once the retcon happened and things were more or less okay, Terezi still was pushed aside. Her big moment was setting off the sequence of events that’d lead to John successfully doing the retcon. I loved that moment.

She was refreshingly weird, and although she had no qualms with messing with people to an extent a lot of people wouldn’t approve of, she wasn’t heartless or intentionally callous at all. She did seem like John’s death in another timeline bothered her, even though she downplayed her guilt – mainly because John was now alive so all was okay. When she saw the consequences of her actions in the shape of Dave’s corpse she showed a lot of guilt. Guess things are difference once you see it right there.

Speaking of Dave, I especially liked how she talked with Dave. I wish it had happened more often during Act 6, because I did notice that stopped happening as often as before. It’d have been nice.

Vriska Serket. Oooooh boy. I’ll keep this brief and nice: Vriska Serket is the character I feel was handled the worst. I think you may remember why I think that, don’t you? I kind of made it a big deal like twenty updates ago. I still have those opinions: Vriska should have stayed dead.

She was always a confident, headstrong and competitive person, and I liked that of her. I held her as the big standard of how trolls are supposed to be. I liked how she unashamedly ruined everything for everyone, just for the sake of her own selfish desires. It was all pretty interesting, I loved that! And I liked her actions while she was dead, too, looking for the treasure and continuing to work for everyone...as collateral, because it still was mostly for herself. I really liked it. I looked forward to seeing her.

And then came the big ruination: Hussie revived her. It sucked because her development and actions got thrown out of the window. It was the worst thing Hussie could have done. I won’t repeat everything I said back then when I saw it at first, but I will say again that characterization and development are sacred stuff. It’s one thing to have negative development like Tavros – turning into a worse person, that can be wonderful and tragic to read – and it’s an entirely different thing to throw the characterization away.

As if that wasn’t enough, Vriska beat up emotionally her dead self. I’m very glad her dead self kinda got a more or less happy ending, but the way Vriska treated her was simply cruel, and even more because it was herself. Sheeesh, I’m getting upset from imagining this. I think I’ll stop talking about Vriska...for my sake.

Equius Zahhak made a robotic body for Vriska and also he died. He’s a tier above Nepeta in terms of importance thanks to Arquiusprite and to Equius’ help and personality during Act 5 Act 1. Unfortunately, not much can be said. Well, there’s something...I thought I wouldn’t like Equius, but I did. I liked Equius.

Gamzee Makara...I’ll be honest: I’m completely neutral to him. I have no opinion. I did have fleeting emotions towards him, mostly despising him and disapproving his cruelty and furious rage, but other than that...I simply don’t sway in any direction. He’s just...there. I tried to think of something to say about Gamzee, but I simply couldn’t think of anything. Sorry, everyone.

Oh, wait, maybe there’s something: he’s the source of everything bad that happened. Lord English is the big villain, but Gamzee is like the soil that made the wicked tree grow. Lord English is the baobab plague that make the small planets explode, Gamzee is...I don’t know, the sap of those baobabs? It’s a literary metaphor.

Eridan Ampora can go screw himself with his wands.

Feferi Peixes is another rather minor character. Unlike Nepeta, once Feferi died she lost all importance and never appeared again...in a speaking role. Too bad, she seemed nice. She could be rather...hmmm...contemptuous, but she was mostly nice. There’s not really much to say about her.

Calliope is the best example of nature versus nurture Homestuck has. Cherubs are a complicated and lonely race; they’re not really meant to have contact with anyone. A lonely Calliope would have taken over the body and achieved god tier, soon turning out to be the key to destroy Lord English. A friendly Calliope who had contact with the New Wonderkids was completely different, creating bonds and slowly fostering the wish to cooperate with her brother for their mutual wellbeing.

It’s too bad that those bonds were her downfall and let Caliborn take over her, because she was hesitant to follow what her species dictated her to do – take over the body. But in the end, those same bonds were her salvation, because it’s what made Roxy and others want to revive her. All ended well for her, and now she can live in the new universe with everyone instead of wandering through space all by herself. It’s nice. I don’t have any big opinion on Calliope, but I’m glad she’ll be happier now.

---

Well, now that all the humans and all the trolls and one cherub have been mentioned, I may as well go for the long shot. Villains, let’s see!

Jack Noir had like six hundred iterations or so and all of them were antagonists. First there was Jack Noir from the original Wonderkids’ session. He really hated clowns, so unfortunately for him John prototyped a harlequin and made him go insane. He was a rather intimidating character, a villainous presence that seemed invincible and caused havoc to two different sessions. He was extraordinarily powerful! And theeeeen...then the level of threat related to him plummeted to the ground, for two main reasons: one is that he was flying towards the new session and it’s hard to destroy something when you’re doing that. The fact everyone except a couple trolls had god tier powers, that’d make it much more difficult to slay them. All in all, he was pretty much the beginning villain and nothing more.

Spades Slick wasn’t really an antagonist towards anyone, in fact he was pretty helpful towards the trolls in their session. He had quite a rough time getting killed and thrown into a bad timeline, getting beaten up by Doc Scratch, dying in the destruction of the universe, getting tossed into the ocean...and then he got his lucky strike when he flew to the New Wonderkids’ session. There he encountered another version of him, with Lord English’s powers...so he fought everyone at once and died.

...

Whazzat that again?

And finally, Union Jack was more than willing to do the Condesce’s bidding as long as it involved assassinations and stabbing, but then Caliborn came and ruined it all by forcing his evil influence into Jack, turning him into a beta copy of Lord English. From there Jack was more or less into a mindless rampage, I don’t think he had even a sense of identity or consciousness by then. Tough luck, Jack, you were simply too useful.

Doc Scratch was a smarmy jackass. He wasn’t the most pleasant person to see taking control of the story...just a tiny bit ahead of Caliborn on that regard. I’ll say the excellent host part was rather clever and I applaud Hussie for that. Other than that, well, keep him away from the narrative.

I’m going to take Lord English and Caliborn as the same person, for convenience’s sake. He was the big villain of Homestuck, the one to blame for everything that went wrong. He was this big intimidating presence that filled everything since the middle of Act 5 Act 2, and he kept his villain status until the very end. He seemed invincible for so long, and even when there was a plan to fight him, I wasn’t sure it’d work. In general Lord English wasn’t the most interesting antagonist character ever besides how badly he screwed everyone’s lives up, but then came Hussie and delivered in the form of Caliborn.

Caliborn is...an interesting fella. He’s this immature and power-hungry kid who wanted nothing more than triumphing over the game and everything else he got involved in. So what if some people had to die? He didn’t care at all! The concept, the situation, everything made Caliborn a rather interesting character, and while I didn’t have the patience to deal with him or pay much attention to the way he behaved, I can definitely see why some people like Caliborn. Even I can admit I liked a few of the moments he had. The pornography drawing session with Dirk, the masterpiece, those two were times I was genuinely amused about.

All in all, I think Lord English/Caliborn was a good antagonist for Homestuck and I think Hussie made the right choice by making him everything he was.

Her Imperial Condescension was my favorite villain of the bunch. She was this alternate version of Meenah that managed to not only rule over trolls with a strong reign, she also got into the human universe and destroyed civilization. Say what you will, but that was impressive. It also is great she was willing to do pretty much anything to get away from Lord English’s control and reestablish her reign over people. She was actually a rather tough customer, everything she did led to her success – until it all was ruined for circumstances she didn’t see coming, such as Aranea coming back to life to wreck everything, or the group fighting back after knocking out Jade and Jane. I also found hilarious the contradiction that was her way of talking in contrast to how intimidating she was. All in all, the Condesce was a fantastic villain.

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Now that I talked about pretty much the majority of relevant characters, I may move on to the next point: the setting. As I said before, there are many stories about the creation of something – I think. I haven’t really read many. However, the concept of it being through this big game that’s also a way for them to grow and develop as people is rather novel, I’d say. But then it went wrong because of circumstances the Wonderkids had nothing to do with. Thanks a lot, Vriska, Gamzee, Lord English. From then on the objective was still the same, but it turned out a lot more difficult than it was already.

The places inside paradox space were generally eye-pleasing and interesting to see. The planets, the dream bubbles, it was all a rather fun thing to watch and see in detail. Hussie built this whole big universe filled with colorful places, and managed to insert a compelling story in it. I think that besides the art, another of Homestuck’s strengths is the setting.

It works very well with the plot, too. Fantastic odysseys stories always have an environment that give problems to the characters, and Homestuck wasn’t different on that regard. While it’s true there was never much detail about things like the denizens, the consorts and a lot of other stuff, it’s because it wasn’t relevant to what was happening, but I always wanted to find out more. I think Sburb would be a damn fun game to play if it wasn’t because the world end component and the deadly stuff inside. You know what’d be cool? If someone in the future, a few decades from now, made an immersive game based on Homestuck’s setting. I know there’s a game being made right now, but I don’t mean that, I mean something different.

Hussie’s main flaws were that he is awful at things like pacing and editing. Maybe ‘awful’ is an understatement, because he outright sucked at times, going in tangents that brought nothing new to the table. You could have done much better than that, Hussie, seriously. The lots of choices, the diverging dialogues...it was neat at times, but there were other times where that was more of a hassle than it should have been. He’d have benefitted about having someone to take a look and tell him when something didn’t matter, but then again, Hussie doesn’t work like that, does he? He’s the boss of the narrative, I don’t think he’d let someone give him indications like that.

All in all, Homestuck was pretty enjoyable for the most time. Like everything it had its bad times, but overall I had fun. Curiously enough I don’t feel the same sense of longing I have for Scary Go Round, so...yeah, I guess Scary Go Round beats Homestuck in the rereading potential scale. Oh well. At least I feel this sense of satisfaction from finishing Homestuck, like I climbed a mountain that seemed impossible. It’s different from what I felt finishing Digger or Scary Go Round. Thank you for accompanying me in this long, long journey that started in the very first day of this website and ended just now.

So what’s next? Oh, a little something...it won’t be as long as the rest, I think at most it’ll be as long as Digger. Who knows. I’ll start preparing that for once it’s time to open that liveblog. Until then, have fun and enjoy life!

#homestuck #homestuck liveblog #webcomics #liveblog #webcomic liveblog

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