#i do know Egbert can just fucking retcon shit tho

[pixeljade]

i just finished my reread of homestuck

and i have thoughts

putting them under a readmore bc many of you wont gaf and thats fine

so first of all, it was SIGNIFICANTLY less shitty than i remember, both in terms of quality and "problematic" shit. Dont get me wrong they use the R-slur a fair amount in the early stuff, and portrayals later on get a bit insensitive, but *almost* all of it seems either A) From the era where People Just Talked Like That (Lets be real, virtually everyone said the R-slur back then, it sucks, but it was that common) or B) fairly self-aware. The only real exception which was exactly as gross as i remember was Damara, but thats literally just like, three pages she shows up on.

moving on from all that though, story-wise its INCREDIBLY solid! The only plotholes I can think of are Jade's granddad's appearance in the session early on (which can actually be explained if you just think about the portals under the elevator in the frog ruins and Time Shenanigans), and Gamzee's various appearances post-scratch (He seems to have the capacity for time shenanigans AND immortality which is just weird since hes not even god tier).

as for the characters, WOW. They're exactly as endearing and wonderful as the first time i read the story!! You know i remember thinking i would be a Harley-Egbert in this world (tho NO thats not why im named Jade), but after rereading it, i think im almost definitely a Strider-Lalonde, possibly somewhere in the Roxy-Dave range. I've got issues aplenty, deep deep irony poisoning, and I *constantly* say inappropriate / uncomfortable shit and then overpsychoanalyze myself in a rant about it. proof, this stupid fuckin paragraph here.

But Vriska, oh MAN. I can now absolutely say Vriska--Is the BEST character in this fucking story, if only by virtue of her complexity!!! She's absolutely not a *great* person, but she's not remotely evil, either. She sits in the grey area, but at various points, can believably flirt with both evilness and righteousness. Ultimately she's a character driven by her own desire to be loved, but sometimes that desire to be loved steps over into a desire to be feared. She's utterly fascinating, and I'm right to have defended her, even if she is ALSO a huge 8itch!!! Nobody should strive to be like her, but also, everyone should strive to write characters like her. ALSO, she absolutely DOES get something of a redemption arc in-story, across multiple versions of herself. She ends up actually being the key to bringing down their enemies by the end, and the story makes no bones about that. But, simultaneously, her mistakes are deudly in ways that can't be underestimated.

Also, the formatting is FAR more brilliant than i gave it credit for back then. Not only do you have the animation and playable segments, but you have branching paths, split paths, characters at some points changing the very site presentation, and then finally using a password-system to do the retcon (which is outright brilliance)! Truly its the best example of Scott McCloud's infinite canvas....so far, at least.

Now onto the disappointing bits, or parts that weren't BAD, but i feel could have been improved. First of all, the game mechanics are ALL OVER THE FUCKIN PLACE. Dont get me wrong, some of them are outright compelling (Shooting thru a window to get to another window in outside-story-space??? fuckin cool) but others are convoluted (Like John's retcon powers, which somehow change all of current reality, but not ghost bubbles?), and others still are just now-obvious deus ex machinas (Like all the time loop shit, "Oh this idea was spawned by taling to someone who brought it from after the idea was implemented" is basically just "Because i said so" with extra steps). This is fun in some ways like i said, but by the end it feels somewhat cheap, and makes the ending kinda predictable.

The humor too is something that i feel could be improved. Its almost TOO running-gag-y for its own good by the end. Like, okay, I get that this story was *about* online friendships and that IS how online friendships (esp at the time) spoke, but eventually the running gags feel like they derail a lot of the actual interesting character development. I dont need to see Hussie bring up the Sock Ruse Was A Distaction comic for the billionth time while Roxy is finally reuniting with someone she thought was dead. It almost feels like it waters down all these characters into catchphrase machines, but the catchphrases are shared amongst them.

Anyways I think thats all my thoughts for now. I'm really glad i reread this, I'd been wanting to for a while, and it gave me a LOT of great (and a few not-so-great) ideas for my own comics i'm making now. If you haven't read it since it came out, i strongly recommend giving it another go, and if you havent, give it a first try! The best way to experience is the homestuck unofficial collection, which is what i did, it keeps almost everything exactly as it was before flash died!