Reviews Webcomic / Homestuck

For an objective review, this is sure awfully subjective.

Isn't it hypocritical that you say that you don't have a problem with people liking it, and then state that it is bad as if it is an undisputed fact?

I think they meant the first paragraph is objective, and the rest of the review isn't.

Okay, but later on the review claims that Homestuck is not objectively good, which is a bit confusing. It seems as though this review bounces back and forth between subjectivity and objectivity.

Perhaps I wasn't clear: Its not objectively good OR bad. Nothing is truly good or bad from an objective point of view.

I see. Your review makes a lot more sense to me now, although I do wonder why you say nobody understands why you hate it. Homestuck has a pretty large Hatedom, some of which can be found in this very site. Surely you've met someone that shares your views?

Only about one or two people actually.

It's all about styles and preference.

Some people think Westerns are the greatest form of movie entertainment of all time, and that's really all they watch (speaking from personal experience). Me? I can hardly stand the slow pace, convoluted plot devices of Westerns as a genre.

Homestuck is a unique format. Some will like that, some won't; that's a given. In the entertainment world there's something for everyone, and no one thing is for everyone. This shouldn't be surprising or anymore noteworthy than a Western lover saying "True Grit" was the best movie of all time, and a Sci Fi lover just staring blankly in reply.

So the thing you hate most of all about it is something that isn't even it's fault, but is instead fans fault? So that really doesn't make a valid complaint. Neither does Wall of Text, becuase it's not really one person rambling. It's 2 (or more) easy to differentiate people having a humerous conversation. No one really has a wall of ttext, unless you are com planing about there being so much talking going on between characters, which if that is the case, I have no sympathy, like with all people who are TL;DR

^I can see what Tails means by his review. The Hype Backlash prevented me from reading past the introduction of the second girl character myself, so I can see how it can fail to live up to expectations. Also, as another review puts it, Homestuck's length is its greatest weakness.

But disliking something because a lot of people do like it is dumb. Seeing for yourself if its good or not and disliking it is fine, but disliking it because a lot of people do like it doesn't make sense.

"The Far Side" often has only a single panel, and text underneath it instead of speech bubbles. Homestuck typically has one panel per page, and text beneath it. Both not comics, I guess?

I wouldn't consider single-panel comics from The Far Side to be comics either, by Scott Mc Cloud's reasoning that a comic requires two or more static pictorial images that are related in some way, usually causally or chronologically. But Homestuck strays much further through its inclusion of music and animation; its images are no longer static.

Also, while text bubbles are not at all necessary for a comic, I do think Homestuck strays from the comic medium in that it includes a whole narrative that is totally separate from the images, to the point where the images often become simply illustrations that serve the text, and therefore basically redundant. See, for instance, most of the sequence that begins here (http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=003843) and ends with the beginning of Act 5 part 1.

(I would like it noted that I am a very serious Homestuck fan, but I am not blind to its flaws, can easily understand hatred of it, and am not in any way a fan of Andrew Hussie in general; I like to hope that Homestuck's true potential will someday be brought forth by someone more talented. The self-indulgent meta humor would have made me give up reading a long time ago if I were not so curious to see how the story will end.)

^ Homestuck is Andrew Hussie and Vice Versa. Nobody could do it better than him because if anyone else tried it wouldnt be the same thing that is so loved.

Not so much a review as a tirade on the evils of the fandom. I can summarize it thusly: "It's now a webcomic. Now that that's out of the way... I don't like parts A, B, and C about it, and I don't like it when the group of people defined by their fondness of it express as much." Yeah. This was more about you and the fandom than about Homestuck itself.

You know for someone who says this review is neither positive or negative, you're being very negative here. Feels hypocritical to me.

^Not really. He's not saying that it's terrible, he's saying that he hates it. And while normally the two go together, in this case they don't.

And yes, I personally love Homestuck.

"I hate it's immense walls of text"

same here, makes me wonder how people can even read it.

sure, the story, unique narrative, plot and characters may be good, but I think it's just all wasted on the walls of text alone.

^Because we don't mind it.

^ ...well of course. though now that i think of it. that makes homestuck loosely more like a web light novel than a comic. yeah, at this point it's pretty obvious that i'm not a literature fan.

I'm no fan of Homestuck (in large part due to the unbearably obnoxious fandom) but this review was ridiculously harsh. "I hate this! I hate that!" Did Homestuck kill your family or something? Hatred is something usually reserved for things that have actually warranted it; an overrated webcomic warrants nothing more than a dismissive shrug.

I've only played a few minutes of it, and I greatly dislike it. The gag where you have to "pick his name" is just... weird. Not funny weird, trying-to-be-funny-but-failing weird.

Plus, I refuse to dedicate all my time to clicking a sentence to see another bad picture and more minimal text. I like my walls of text very much, thank you :P

Mr Mallard, I'm no longer a fan of Homestuck, but you might want to try reading a bit further. There are plenty of walls of text in the pesterchum and troll logs, to the point that they actually alienated me, since I preferred the less-text format of Problem Sleuth.

I'll not dispute your affection or lack thereof for the comic itself. That's totally up to you. However, I have to contest your declaration that it is not a comic. Insisting that a comic, or webcomic, needs a particular format that it has to stick to (you mentioned panels and speech bubbles explicitly) is incredibly close-minded on the nature of comics. At its heart, and if you want to be incredibly generous (possibly more than is really necessary) a comic is a story in which the words and pictures work together, both telling a part of the story and revealing information to the reader. A comic does not need words at all, or panels, as long as the story is told. Inversely, simply because it is not formatted in the traditional manner of comics does not illigitimize it as a comic. The words tell a piece of the story, and the pictures that go along with it reveal information that the narrative does not. In fact, that it ignores panels and is formatted uniquely is what makes it, quintessentially, a webcomic. While there are a few that are formatted 'normally' (Dr. Mc Ninja, ect) the web opens up a thousand doors of opportunity for what can be accomplished to help story telling. That Homestuck is breaking some preconveived storytelling barriers does not make it less of a webcomic, it just means that it's utilizing more than some others have. I'm personally interested in how something like this is going to affect webcomic storytelling in the future, as a whole. (This is not to say that Homestuck is the first in its field to use odd tactics. It's just blazed through to become incredibly popular.) Really, in the end, I'm not the most articulate. Read through some of Scott Mc Cloud's work on analyzing the art of comics.

"Perhaps I wasn't clear: Its not objectively good OR bad. Nothing is truly good or bad from an objective point of view."

that in its self, your view. you may view things like that, but other people dont. if you havent read that far into homestuck, then you dont know what the art is like. the art changes. it becomes better.

Well, I'm glad you are treating your hate as your own subjective opinion, and not blaming the work in general for it.