Reviews Webcomic / Homestuck

An unique and groundbreaking internet story hindered by pacing issues, too much text, and trolling

Now that it's actually over, barring epilogues or such, let's give it an actual review as a story as a whole, instead of as something you've only really seen so far.

It's got a lot of things going for it. The story as a whole is great, this vast epic thing that in its own way is the sort that hasn't been seen before at all, and it mostly works. It takes every possible advantage out of its highly flexible medium, constantly pushes boundaries and surprises the viewer with new things that no one else has done before. The cast of characters is varied and three-dimensional and for the most part well-written, and you'll probably find one or two to relate to and to want to follow this thing to the end. There are many great high points, great epic moments and great laughs and great cries and great shocks. You'll rarely know where the story is going, helped by the improvisation, which is a good thing more often than not. The art is good for the most part, if basic, with an occasional really high point. The music is top-notch to the end.

It's far from perfect, though. The story really starts to break up after the fourth act or so, and just keeps getting worse into act 6, jumping between an ever-increasing cast of mostly pointless characters, becoming a confusing jumbled mess that's hard to follow. There really is far too much dialogue, repeating things over and over in a slightly different way: about nine tenths could be culled and absolutely nothing would be missed. Both these things hurt the pacing, which the writer doesn't even seem to try to maintain in the first place. The flashes, too, are paced to follow the music, rather than the other way around - there are many second-long pauses that could be removed and the animation would feel tighter. Even if for the most part the constant improvisation and playing it by ear is to the benefit of the story, this is not always the case: along with the high points there are also moments of incredible low, anger and disappointment and resentment will be felt at some point by just about any reader. This is greatly exacerbated by the author's willingness to often do things just to troll his audience or rile them up, which hurts the story - anger fades, but the story never really heals.

Overall it's still pretty good, and worth checking out - although I'd recommend to start with Problem Sleuth, which is shorter, tighter, and suffers from very few of the problems just brought up, and those that do are involved to a far lesser extent. This makes it a superior story in my mind, but if you manage to read through it and enjoy it, Homestuck will probably be your thing as well.