>Neshomeh: Catch up. [Spoilers]

> MSPA Readers: Contemplate the end. by Fasoula on 2016-04-13 11:49:00 UTC Reply

This morning the final act of Homestuck was released (obviously, major spoilers), thus marking the end of a story that has spanned several years and several thousand panels.

I've not been on this ride for as long as some of you guys, but I'm not sure I'm ready to see it stop. I literally just watched the ending animation (and what an animation), so I am still sorting out my feelings on it, but what are your thoughts? Feelings on the end, and the fact that it's ending?

I'm disappointed, unfortunately. by Phobos on 2016-04-13 20:50:00 UTC Reply

The ending feels tacked on and not very satisfying. I mean, the animations were beautiful and all, but what did the characters accomplish? How did they grow through these fights? What did they learn?

Unfortunately, the answer is...not much.

Spoilers and ranting lurk beyond this point. You have been warned.

Let's look at Karkat, for an example. He was requested to accompany Kanaya to meet with her Denizen. Echidna tells Kanaya that it is important that Karkat be kept out of the battle because he is important to the future universe. So he gets KOed by Kanaya and left on LOFAF. He wakes up in a dream bubble and joins the Ghost Army, where he is a joke. He makes the first charge, and is immediately owned. He wakes up on LOFAF. He gets into a fight with the weakest (fighting-wise) of the Felt, and is immediately owned. We get a lovely moment of him crying. He eventually triumphs over that single, relatively weak member of the Felt. End of Karkat storyline. He accomplished nothing. He learned nothing. He didn't grow. He might as well have not even been there.

Karkat deserved better. So did Kanaya, Terezi, Vriska, and even Gamzee. The same goes for various Lalondes and Striders; for Egbert and Crocker, English and Harley.

Before, we were shown a battle lost because of bad decisions, but when it was corrected, we didn't see what the good decisions could do.

We were shown Aranea unlocking Jake's latent power, and it going out of control. We didn't get to see what happens when his powers manifested naturally.

We were shown a world in which Karkat and Kanaya were powerless to help the people they cared about. We never got to see them become stronger, there wasn't any need for it.

We got to meet Calliope and see her get her life back, and then watched her get pushed aside for a God-like version of herself who didn't really do very much and wasn't very interesting.

Most of what happened didn't really matter, and some of the few things that could have mattered (Dirk's heroic death, for instance) were undone.

It just all felt really weak. We had a "bad" timeline that was interesting and significant, but we traded it for a "good" timeline that was boring and insignificant.

So...yeah. Just kinda disappointed.

-Phobos
>ST: Fondly regard creation. [Spoilers] by SeaTurtle on 2016-04-13 16:48:00 UTC Reply

...Mr. Hussie's Wild Ride is over. It's actually over. Well, he does mention an epilogue, but the main part is over.

All that matters is that Can Town is real, Dad Crocker, John, and Jane survived, and Caliborn is defeated. That ticks all the "happy ending" boxes for me. I can be at peace now.

Now I can continue my wild speculations on classpects in peace, without the stress of having my favourite characters killed off to appease Hussie's mad designs.
Welp, time to catch up. by Neshomeh on 2016-04-13 16:01:00 UTC Reply

I got stuck on the part where everyone is sitting around talking on the frog disc, because seriously, so much text, but I guess I'll just have to power through that.

I came to the party late myself, but I got sucked in because I just had to stick around long enough to figure out whether Hussie actually knew what he was doing or not. It turns out he did! Or he's just an absolute master at BSing his way out of corners, which is almost the same thing. Anyway, it's been fun, and I'm interested to see how it all works out.

~Neshomeh

>Neshomeh: Catch up. [Spoilers] by Neshomeh on 2016-04-14 18:27:00 UTC Reply

I caught up. And... I guess I don't have any particularly strong feelings one way or the other. I'm content.

While I do agree with Phobos that the ending felt rushed, and that—as several characters observed themselves—most of them lacked narratively satisfying endings, I also feel like it was explained well enough that I'm okay with it. I think it was Davepetasprite^2 who talked about how the contributions of every single doomed timeline mattered, and all came together to result in this final victory. So, we got all the character growth, the struggle, and the sacrifice. The fact that it didn't happen to these particular iterations is the point. Heroes always struggle and die so that other people can have relatively happy, carefree lives. In this case, the people they struggled and died for were themselves. Homestuck is just meta enough to get away with crap like that without it annoying me.

It would have been really nice to see the full contrast that Phobos talked about, though, between the bad timeline and the good one. That way all the efforts of the doomed iterations would have been more rewarded.

What I really, truly believe is that Homestuck needs a second draft now. This is a great first draft, with loads of entertainment value for its own sake and even greater promise, but now it needs editing to prune out the BS that isn't needed (especially in the first three acts), tighten up the plot, and maybe develop that ending some more.

I kinda hope that, in five, maybe ten years or so, we'll get that second draft. Maybe in the form of an animated series or something. That would be sweet.

For now, I'll just reflect fondly on the journey to get where we are now. It's been great.

~Neshomeh

Well, it means I can at last have a life... by Scapegrace on 2016-04-13 13:03:00 UTC Reply

Without people badgering me to read bloody Homestuck. =]

Having finally finished the damn thing (I wasn't interested to see where the story went as eager for it to be over with), I still don't like the art style at all and the seizure-inducing flashing images are a particular bugbear of mine. That said, Collide and Act 7 are actually pretty good examples of how to show story without dialogue - hell, without text. That's good storytelling, even if I don't think Homestuck has a good story. Sprawling, yes, world-bestriding, yes, but good? A chacun son gout, I suppose.

Still, given that I legit despised the damned thing when I started reading it two years ago, that's probably progress. You've come along way, Homestuck, and I am so proud of you. For a narrative that can be described as "what if the cast of your standard Teenagers-Who-Save-The-World plot of Western kids shows was - get this - bad at it", with massive influences from a vast panoply of animé series as well, it turned into this very grandiose space opera thing. And it still found the time to give a moral at the end, like all those kids shows:

Live well and love well, for everyone who can't.

Pretty good moral, as far as I'm concerned.