In which I try to read Homestuck, a webcomic.
Homesuck. a review.
trying. trying to read homestuck. so far a badly drawn boy avoids birthday cake and gets a chest to land on the roof of his house. nothing in it has so far been in any way remotely interesting, except a catchy minor key ditty that played while some spirograph loading page animation played when a fake computer game is being installed on his pc. googling "when does homestuck get interesting?" failed to yield a link to a page that might not be 100% boring. staring to feel compelled to keep reading and review it, if only for one of 2 reasons, 1, a friend of mine really loves it, also likes Shakespeare, so can she be wrong? also other people like it, of course most people seem to like bacon and the smell of flowers, both of which revolt me. and 2, to serve as a warning to others. spoiler alert, should I bother saying that? it'd have to be interesting for anyone to be upset about plot points being revealed.
page 86, I think. still not really interesting. :/
not encouraged to see people online saying if you didn't find the beginning interesting, it probably won't get better for you, and by page 3000, still finding it boring. :/
some of the flash animations are too blinding. having to click "pesterlogs" to read dialogue, is stupid and annoying. so far I hate this. doesn't help that the art is blah.
page 122 has some nice violin music on it.
I still don't have a reason to care about any of the armless characters in this thing or their plight, an asteroid is heading towards the protagonist's house, caused apparently by a computer game that can manipulate reality. the game caused a toilet to be torn out of the house and placed in the yard, and the tub is on the staircase. the protagonist's father has come home, and noticing these things, does what any adult male would do, start baking. makes total sense, also fascinating storytelling. I am starting to understand why people find this so compelling. No, I'm kidding. and it's not nearly as interesting as I just made it sound.
now on what I think is page 146 (!) it says "end of act 1" there's an animation, with digital music which is not terrible, and our hero's house appears to have been destroyed, presumably with him in it. that's the first thing I've liked!
act 2. there's a thing to click to look at some pictures of someone wandering through a desert, which is not interesting, followed by a page of text I really can't find any compelling reason to read, once I start on it. ah. now there's an animation, hard to know when these things are over as they don't all loop.
seems like the kid's house survived the meteoric apocalypse and is now perched atop a mesa. the strip now seems to have some actual interactivity. well, not really. you can walk around a room. that's it. wow. there's something called a captchalog deck, virtual playing cards, but since they're not actually interactive, they are totally uninteresting. apparently his house has been transported somewhere. I'll let you know if I start caring.
I did read part of a thing for new readers which explained that originally readers were invited to dicate the actions of the characters, resulting in stupid boring random activities. eventually the author gave up on that. not sure at what point. page 72, TLDR text.
now I'm on what I think might be page 230. I say might because the url is confusing: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002230 but it's certainly not page 2,230, although it kind of feels like it. I think I just found the first joke! a new character has been introduced, for some reason he's reading a web comic and bored skips ahead a few hundred pages. self-referential humour? I'm hopeful when I click the link it will have that effect. oh well. ok that was definitely a response to people complaining that this webcomic is boring. I think a better response would have been to shamefully apologise and never do another one, also take this one down off the web.
page 238 http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002238 has an interactive music thing where you can click sampled loops of techno audio and layer them. they aren't particularly interesting, and don't make the story progress. I think someone was just having fun learning a programming trick and decided to show it off.
the new character (Dave)'s pages are so boring I am now clicking through them as fast as I can. I start to think about skipping ahead by punching different numbers into the address bar. this webcomic is so boring, it makes boring aspects of every day life, like cleaning your toenails seem fresh and exciting. so maybe it does have a purpose. kind of like when I was a kid, my dad took me to his fitness club and I went into a sauna, it was very very hot and unpleasant in there, I felt so good to get out of that room, that I actually went back in, just to feel much better upon exiting it. I think I was 8 years old at the time, roughly. I learned a valuable lesson that 39 years later I still recall, saunas are hot and unpleasant, so don't go into them.
back to homestuck, another annoying thing, sometimes the animated pages make you think, particularly in conjunction with some of the text below them, that they are interactive pages, and it might be important to the story, to click something that will effect the images, so far only once has this been the case, near as I can tell. comics be they printed on paper, or viewed on electronic viewscreens like my computer monitor, (incidentally, apparently this site doesn't work so well on internet capable phones, that doesn't bother me at all, in fact, it's almost charming. I am not interested in remaking my own website so it's telephone friendly, the internet should be viewed on things larger than postcards.), anyway, as I was saying, comics, consist of words and images, it's possible to forgo the words of course, the definition of comics is images in sequence that tell a story, generally. you can do that without words, but if you skip the pictures, it's not comics anymore, its words. most comics are a mix of pictures and text, which ideally work together to create something greater than the sum of the parts, and show the progression of time in ways which can't be done in other medium such as film and prose. to reiterate, there are 2 basic elements at work in comics, pictures and words, so far the problem I'm having with this webcomic is that neither the pictures, nor the words are compelling or even interesting. so it's got that working against it. at this point, page 266, continuing reading has become an excersize in masochism. I'm suffering so you won't have to. that is, if you suffered through this much of my review. I'll try to keep it short. apparently this thing is up to almost 4000 pages or something, does have an end planned by the author, but I'm still waiting for an interesting development, or character I have any reason whatsoever to care about, to show up.
page 271 beneath the art is the text "W > L. W > V." seems like it ought to mean something. keyboard command instructions? a clue? if only I had some reason to care.page 292 a demon thing shows up to pester the hero. I don't care. oh you can actually "fight" him, by picking things up and flinging them at it. then collect some points by gathering gems. wow. suddenly I'm playing a primitive boring video game instead of just reading a poorly drawn boring web comic. I had skipped that page, then went back, so I'm not sure if this is like a "choose your own adventure" thing where the story can really change based on your interactions with it. maybe I can go back and get the hero killed by the demon so it ends? I might try that.
tried to open that page in firefox (been reading in chrome) to see if I could, but I'd need to install a plugin and I am not going to. oh well. not having that flash plugin updated keeps annoying blinky flashy ads from loading. hmm. perhaps I should read the entire strip that way. skipping the pictures could make it go faster. no, gif pages load, only flash pages don't, and most of the pages aren't done in flash.
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002321 some text reveals some plot points, the boy's father has been kidnapped apparently. the turqoise blue text on white is too hard to read tho, so I am not going to. also I don't care. page 235, the boy's grandma's ghost tells him he is on a quest or something. page 263, starting to wonder if this isn't some sort of elaborate cultural hoax, wherein people who claim to be fans are simply trolling. yes, a sociological meta-experiment. here's my theory, the real fans know it's boring, but pretend its interesting, and laugh at the new fans who are trying to like it so they'll fit into the clique of loyal readers and be in the cool kids club, but they never can be until they realise they've been hazed, and somehow graduate to being a meta-fan, who knows it's stupid and boring and are just trolling new readers. lets see how many people we can trick into reading this profoundly boring web comic! I may have cracked the secret behind the series' success. I wonder if I publish this if I'll be mysteriously killed for revealing it.
page 385, I actually snorted lightly at a plank being withdrawn causing a demon to fall. slapstick humour. I think I'm now delirious with boredom though. it's getting late too.
the story gets faster as you go, since you start getting so bored you just click from one page to the next without really reading anything. maybe this is entertaining to 12 year olds? at least the pages load fast. there's one good thing about it.
here's a sample of some text actually quoted from the comic: (I think you'll agree it's pretty compelling stuff!)
"First you program your modus with a SCRABBLE POINTS HASH FUNCTION, adding it to the list. A=1; B=3; C=3; D=2; E=1; F=4; G=2; H=4; I=1; J=8; K=5; L=1; M=3; N=1; O=1; P=3; Q=10; R=1; S=1; T=1; U=1; V=4; W=4; X=8; Y=4; Z=10; This might be a cool function to use, but it looks like you'll have to empty your sylladex to select it. You're just not gonna do that yet. No way."
the older you get, the less you care about modern pop cultural references, when I was in high school and college, I could look at the cover of People magazine, and I knew who the people on it were. I am delighted to say while the magazine is still in print, along with many similar competitors, the headlines talk about the lives of apparently well known people, and I have absolutely no idea who they are, and I couldn't possibly care any less about them than I do now. it's great. something to look forward to kids, when you get older. instead of wasting brain cells recording useless information about people who are only famous for being famous, as opposed to for having accomplished something, anything, worthwhile, you can use those brian cells for something else, it's up to you. it's incredibly liberating. not something I would have predicted in my youth.
dave wastes a lot of time in his kitchen making a mess, fooling with fireworks and slicing off a puppet's nose. not sure why. also not sure why I should care. page 650, a jawa in the future carves a pumpkin. not sure how much longer I can hold on reading this. it's like an excersize in endurance. 657, now paying more attention to the page numbers than the content. oh hey, made it through act 2! act 3, a new character is introduced. like others, appears to have a boat on her head. on http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002669 you can make her play a flute with your keyboard. this does not move the story forwards. hit the z key to send her to sleep, assuming you yourself aren't already asleep as I nearly am.
page http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002721 features a gif of the new character playing a bass which expands transformer style into an instrument with 2 necks, and some keyboards and recording/sequencing gear. as a musician who likes weird instruments, I find this interesting and even neat. kind of doubting however this will move the story along, it seems to have been stagnating for many many pages, dozens I think. quote, page 731 "it begins to dawn on you that everything you just did may have been a collosal waste of time" change word "did" to "read" (past tense) and I think you're onto something.
page 737 I surrender and skip ahead 10 pages. page 800, I skip ahead 100 pages. still bored. skip ahead another 100 or so, page 3000, really? not sure. the jawa is wearing caution tape. I really don't care. now I have skipped ahead, 100 pages here, a dozen there, to 3280. I think. maybe. there is no way I can possibly read this entire thing, nor should you or anyone else. it's a collossal waste of time. not entertaining. there is no story. skipping ahead 50 pages at a time, I officially give up. I thought the art would get better, a story might develop into something interesting. I'm a little angry frankly and having wasted several hours trying to understand the appeal of this miserable ghastly monumental waste of pixels.
no that's it, I'm done.
in conclusion, homestuck is profoundly, deeply boring, the story goes nowhere, the characters have no soul, indeed no character to speak of, the art is amateur. it has absolutely no appeal of any sort, I can only conclude that my earlier theory that it's a horrible joke being played on the internet is accurate.
trying. trying to read homestuck. so far a badly drawn boy avoids birthday cake and gets a chest to land on the roof of his house. nothing in it has so far been in any way remotely interesting, except a catchy minor key ditty that played while some spirograph loading page animation played when a fake computer game is being installed on his pc. googling "when does homestuck get interesting?" failed to yield a link to a page that might not be 100% boring. staring to feel compelled to keep reading and review it, if only for one of 2 reasons, 1, a friend of mine really loves it, also likes Shakespeare, so can she be wrong? also other people like it, of course most people seem to like bacon and the smell of flowers, both of which revolt me. and 2, to serve as a warning to others. spoiler alert, should I bother saying that? it'd have to be interesting for anyone to be upset about plot points being revealed.
page 86, I think. still not really interesting. :/
not encouraged to see people online saying if you didn't find the beginning interesting, it probably won't get better for you, and by page 3000, still finding it boring. :/
some of the flash animations are too blinding. having to click "pesterlogs" to read dialogue, is stupid and annoying. so far I hate this. doesn't help that the art is blah.
page 122 has some nice violin music on it.
I still don't have a reason to care about any of the armless characters in this thing or their plight, an asteroid is heading towards the protagonist's house, caused apparently by a computer game that can manipulate reality. the game caused a toilet to be torn out of the house and placed in the yard, and the tub is on the staircase. the protagonist's father has come home, and noticing these things, does what any adult male would do, start baking. makes total sense, also fascinating storytelling. I am starting to understand why people find this so compelling. No, I'm kidding. and it's not nearly as interesting as I just made it sound.
now on what I think is page 146 (!) it says "end of act 1" there's an animation, with digital music which is not terrible, and our hero's house appears to have been destroyed, presumably with him in it. that's the first thing I've liked!
act 2. there's a thing to click to look at some pictures of someone wandering through a desert, which is not interesting, followed by a page of text I really can't find any compelling reason to read, once I start on it. ah. now there's an animation, hard to know when these things are over as they don't all loop.
seems like the kid's house survived the meteoric apocalypse and is now perched atop a mesa. the strip now seems to have some actual interactivity. well, not really. you can walk around a room. that's it. wow. there's something called a captchalog deck, virtual playing cards, but since they're not actually interactive, they are totally uninteresting. apparently his house has been transported somewhere. I'll let you know if I start caring.
I did read part of a thing for new readers which explained that originally readers were invited to dicate the actions of the characters, resulting in stupid boring random activities. eventually the author gave up on that. not sure at what point. page 72, TLDR text.
now I'm on what I think might be page 230. I say might because the url is confusing: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002230 but it's certainly not page 2,230, although it kind of feels like it. I think I just found the first joke! a new character has been introduced, for some reason he's reading a web comic and bored skips ahead a few hundred pages. self-referential humour? I'm hopeful when I click the link it will have that effect. oh well. ok that was definitely a response to people complaining that this webcomic is boring. I think a better response would have been to shamefully apologise and never do another one, also take this one down off the web.
page 238 http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002238 has an interactive music thing where you can click sampled loops of techno audio and layer them. they aren't particularly interesting, and don't make the story progress. I think someone was just having fun learning a programming trick and decided to show it off.
the new character (Dave)'s pages are so boring I am now clicking through them as fast as I can. I start to think about skipping ahead by punching different numbers into the address bar. this webcomic is so boring, it makes boring aspects of every day life, like cleaning your toenails seem fresh and exciting. so maybe it does have a purpose. kind of like when I was a kid, my dad took me to his fitness club and I went into a sauna, it was very very hot and unpleasant in there, I felt so good to get out of that room, that I actually went back in, just to feel much better upon exiting it. I think I was 8 years old at the time, roughly. I learned a valuable lesson that 39 years later I still recall, saunas are hot and unpleasant, so don't go into them.
back to homestuck, another annoying thing, sometimes the animated pages make you think, particularly in conjunction with some of the text below them, that they are interactive pages, and it might be important to the story, to click something that will effect the images, so far only once has this been the case, near as I can tell. comics be they printed on paper, or viewed on electronic viewscreens like my computer monitor, (incidentally, apparently this site doesn't work so well on internet capable phones, that doesn't bother me at all, in fact, it's almost charming. I am not interested in remaking my own website so it's telephone friendly, the internet should be viewed on things larger than postcards.), anyway, as I was saying, comics, consist of words and images, it's possible to forgo the words of course, the definition of comics is images in sequence that tell a story, generally. you can do that without words, but if you skip the pictures, it's not comics anymore, its words. most comics are a mix of pictures and text, which ideally work together to create something greater than the sum of the parts, and show the progression of time in ways which can't be done in other medium such as film and prose. to reiterate, there are 2 basic elements at work in comics, pictures and words, so far the problem I'm having with this webcomic is that neither the pictures, nor the words are compelling or even interesting. so it's got that working against it. at this point, page 266, continuing reading has become an excersize in masochism. I'm suffering so you won't have to. that is, if you suffered through this much of my review. I'll try to keep it short. apparently this thing is up to almost 4000 pages or something, does have an end planned by the author, but I'm still waiting for an interesting development, or character I have any reason whatsoever to care about, to show up.
page 271 beneath the art is the text "W > L. W > V." seems like it ought to mean something. keyboard command instructions? a clue? if only I had some reason to care.page 292 a demon thing shows up to pester the hero. I don't care. oh you can actually "fight" him, by picking things up and flinging them at it. then collect some points by gathering gems. wow. suddenly I'm playing a primitive boring video game instead of just reading a poorly drawn boring web comic. I had skipped that page, then went back, so I'm not sure if this is like a "choose your own adventure" thing where the story can really change based on your interactions with it. maybe I can go back and get the hero killed by the demon so it ends? I might try that.
tried to open that page in firefox (been reading in chrome) to see if I could, but I'd need to install a plugin and I am not going to. oh well. not having that flash plugin updated keeps annoying blinky flashy ads from loading. hmm. perhaps I should read the entire strip that way. skipping the pictures could make it go faster. no, gif pages load, only flash pages don't, and most of the pages aren't done in flash.
http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002321 some text reveals some plot points, the boy's father has been kidnapped apparently. the turqoise blue text on white is too hard to read tho, so I am not going to. also I don't care. page 235, the boy's grandma's ghost tells him he is on a quest or something. page 263, starting to wonder if this isn't some sort of elaborate cultural hoax, wherein people who claim to be fans are simply trolling. yes, a sociological meta-experiment. here's my theory, the real fans know it's boring, but pretend its interesting, and laugh at the new fans who are trying to like it so they'll fit into the clique of loyal readers and be in the cool kids club, but they never can be until they realise they've been hazed, and somehow graduate to being a meta-fan, who knows it's stupid and boring and are just trolling new readers. lets see how many people we can trick into reading this profoundly boring web comic! I may have cracked the secret behind the series' success. I wonder if I publish this if I'll be mysteriously killed for revealing it.
page 385, I actually snorted lightly at a plank being withdrawn causing a demon to fall. slapstick humour. I think I'm now delirious with boredom though. it's getting late too.
the story gets faster as you go, since you start getting so bored you just click from one page to the next without really reading anything. maybe this is entertaining to 12 year olds? at least the pages load fast. there's one good thing about it.
here's a sample of some text actually quoted from the comic: (I think you'll agree it's pretty compelling stuff!)
"First you program your modus with a SCRABBLE POINTS HASH FUNCTION, adding it to the list. A=1; B=3; C=3; D=2; E=1; F=4; G=2; H=4; I=1; J=8; K=5; L=1; M=3; N=1; O=1; P=3; Q=10; R=1; S=1; T=1; U=1; V=4; W=4; X=8; Y=4; Z=10; This might be a cool function to use, but it looks like you'll have to empty your sylladex to select it. You're just not gonna do that yet. No way."
the older you get, the less you care about modern pop cultural references, when I was in high school and college, I could look at the cover of People magazine, and I knew who the people on it were. I am delighted to say while the magazine is still in print, along with many similar competitors, the headlines talk about the lives of apparently well known people, and I have absolutely no idea who they are, and I couldn't possibly care any less about them than I do now. it's great. something to look forward to kids, when you get older. instead of wasting brain cells recording useless information about people who are only famous for being famous, as opposed to for having accomplished something, anything, worthwhile, you can use those brian cells for something else, it's up to you. it's incredibly liberating. not something I would have predicted in my youth.
dave wastes a lot of time in his kitchen making a mess, fooling with fireworks and slicing off a puppet's nose. not sure why. also not sure why I should care. page 650, a jawa in the future carves a pumpkin. not sure how much longer I can hold on reading this. it's like an excersize in endurance. 657, now paying more attention to the page numbers than the content. oh hey, made it through act 2! act 3, a new character is introduced. like others, appears to have a boat on her head. on http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002669 you can make her play a flute with your keyboard. this does not move the story forwards. hit the z key to send her to sleep, assuming you yourself aren't already asleep as I nearly am.
page http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002721 features a gif of the new character playing a bass which expands transformer style into an instrument with 2 necks, and some keyboards and recording/sequencing gear. as a musician who likes weird instruments, I find this interesting and even neat. kind of doubting however this will move the story along, it seems to have been stagnating for many many pages, dozens I think. quote, page 731 "it begins to dawn on you that everything you just did may have been a collosal waste of time" change word "did" to "read" (past tense) and I think you're onto something.
page 737 I surrender and skip ahead 10 pages. page 800, I skip ahead 100 pages. still bored. skip ahead another 100 or so, page 3000, really? not sure. the jawa is wearing caution tape. I really don't care. now I have skipped ahead, 100 pages here, a dozen there, to 3280. I think. maybe. there is no way I can possibly read this entire thing, nor should you or anyone else. it's a collossal waste of time. not entertaining. there is no story. skipping ahead 50 pages at a time, I officially give up. I thought the art would get better, a story might develop into something interesting. I'm a little angry frankly and having wasted several hours trying to understand the appeal of this miserable ghastly monumental waste of pixels.
no that's it, I'm done.
in conclusion, homestuck is profoundly, deeply boring, the story goes nowhere, the characters have no soul, indeed no character to speak of, the art is amateur. it has absolutely no appeal of any sort, I can only conclude that my earlier theory that it's a horrible joke being played on the internet is accurate.