Homestuck is almost impossible to explain because it's told in such a unique fashion and handles it's narrative in a very weird way. The plot and the method in which it is told are basically one and the same, but lets see if I can hit the basics.
Homestuck is the tale of a young boy and his friends, who set out to play a video game. This video game seems to lets you play The Sims with the other player's houses, but it turns out to be a mechanism used to end one universe and start another, keeping the constant death and rebirth cycle going; the kids enter a gameworld, defeat bosses, and set up not only their own existence retroactively, but plant the seed that becomes the next universe, into which they ascend as gods. Unfortunately, something goes wrong with their game; a minor NPC gains near-infinite power and starts fucking with stuff, so they are contacted throughout their game by the previous players, the trolls, in an attempt to figure out what went wrong. As of the most recent act, they've rebooted their game, and their entire universe, but it's going even more off the rails.
Homestuck is sort of a perpetual experiment in all elements. The art, the layout, the presentation order are all attempts to push various envelops of the medium. It's a webcomic in the truest form of the word; it cannot be presented, fully, in any medium other than a browser.
It's story is complex and nearly impenetrable. What we thought was an unrelated intermission turned out to be both canon and important, characters hold conversations across time and space (occasionally with themselves) and more than one character freely travels through time, setting up stable time loops. In fact, thus far the entire series has been a series of interlocking time loops. Homestuck is sort of like if Primer had been thirty five hours long and crossed over with Doctor Who, the Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter at various points. However, you don't feel much of that while you are reading it, because the story is presented such that you quickly grasp it's mechanisms; there was a very recent twist that a bunch of characters actually lived in the far future and were chatting back in time with others, and this was universally hailed as a clarification that simplified a great many things.
Here's a good quote regarding that.
"The unconventional style of storytelling present in Homestuck is somewhat reminiscent of an intense game of Jeopardy. Instead of most stories where a question is presented and an answer is searched for, in Homestuck, answers are freely revealed while the reader has no idea that it is an answer to anything or what sort of question it could be answering. It is backwards. When the question is finally revealed later in the story, the reader is reminded of the answer being presented to them way back when absolutely nothing made sense, and the entire plot begins to fall into place. The answers are often cryptic, subtle, or too obvious and ongoing for most to even consider them important. Everything seems to have some sort of meaning and each tiny detail seems to be some sort of important key to completely unlocking and understanding the big picture. ''After years of reading Homestuck, the fandom has finally gotten the hang of deciphering such an insane puzzle of a story. For example, if a banana was randomly placed in a panel, part of the fandom would speculate as to what the significance of the banana could possibly be, part of the fandom would attempt to prove that it is in fact not a banana, and part of the fandom would make a sexual joke."
Many characters are experiments in reader perception; how far can Vriska go before we lose sympathy for her? Will people call Jade a Mary Sue? Is Eridan sympathetic or just pathetic? In that way, the trolls themselves are an experiment in character interaction. There are 12 trolls, and we get to see most of them talk to each other at least once. They have fairly simple personalities, but very complex interactions with one another. This is exasperated by their amusingly complex notion of romance, which is multifold and based on the suits on a deck of cards; they've got love as we know it (the heart), a sort of hate/rivalry romance (the spade), a life partner/bromance sort of thing (the diamond) and mediated hatred (the clubs). Furthermore, gender is no object to them. So you've got twelve fairly fleshed out characters, with four ways to ship each, and anything goes. You see why they are popular with the fandom.
Seriously though, the only way to actually understand Homestuck is to read it. Yes, it's intimidatingly long and yes, it's complicated as all get out, but also tons of fun, with cleverly-written characters, an epic story, and a unique combination of light-hearted humour and dramatic adventure with a lot of imagination. If you are curious as to what it is, give it a shot and find out.
I posted this on Twitter, but forgot to put this in here too. Last weekend I was on a local demo-party/festival of digital culture/lan-party and in there I took part in graphics competition. Basically the rules were; still picture made with computer. My entry got to the 6th place out 12. I'm quite happy for that. My work "Programmer gets frustrated"
More Homestuck fanart. I also wanted to paint something in colour without doing greyscale first. It turned out alright I guess. The original sketch had the lava-spewing cog buildings in the background but it made things all busy.
I don't know if the fact that it is Dave ruins the joke, or makes it even funnier?
I noticed that while the broken record logo looks good in the shirt the record logo on the hilt of the sword looks out of place. I really sticks out and not in a good way.
Yeah the one on the hilt needs a going over now that I look at it.
I was going to have it so that Terezi had painted over the shirt logo as well, like she does in canon, but the record on the shirt came out so well I didn't want to ruin it.
The art for our new album, which will be a thrash/power metal parody specifically. I'm really not sure how to make this particularly over the top so I just aimed for as cliche as possible.
Comments
Homestuck is the tale of a young boy and his friends, who set out to play a video game. This video game seems to lets you play The Sims with the other player's houses, but it turns out to be a mechanism used to end one universe and start another, keeping the constant death and rebirth cycle going; the kids enter a gameworld, defeat bosses, and set up not only their own existence retroactively, but plant the seed that becomes the next universe, into which they ascend as gods. Unfortunately, something goes wrong with their game; a minor NPC gains near-infinite power and starts fucking with stuff, so they are contacted throughout their game by the previous players, the trolls, in an attempt to figure out what went wrong. As of the most recent act, they've rebooted their game, and their entire universe, but it's going even more off the rails.
Homestuck is sort of a perpetual experiment in all elements. The art, the layout, the presentation order are all attempts to push various envelops of the medium. It's a webcomic in the truest form of the word; it cannot be presented, fully, in any medium other than a browser.
It's story is complex and nearly impenetrable. What we thought was an unrelated intermission turned out to be both canon and important, characters hold conversations across time and space (occasionally with themselves) and more than one character freely travels through time, setting up stable time loops. In fact, thus far the entire series has been a series of interlocking time loops. Homestuck is sort of like if Primer had been thirty five hours long and crossed over with Doctor Who, the Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter at various points. However, you don't feel much of that while you are reading it, because the story is presented such that you quickly grasp it's mechanisms; there was a very recent twist that a bunch of characters actually lived in the far future and were chatting back in time with others, and this was universally hailed as a clarification that simplified a great many things.
Here's a good quote regarding that. Many characters are experiments in reader perception; how far can Vriska go before we lose sympathy for her? Will people call Jade a Mary Sue? Is Eridan sympathetic or just pathetic? In that way, the trolls themselves are an experiment in character interaction. There are 12 trolls, and we get to see most of them talk to each other at least once. They have fairly simple personalities, but very complex interactions with one another. This is exasperated by their amusingly complex notion of romance, which is multifold and based on the suits on a deck of cards; they've got love as we know it (the heart), a sort of hate/rivalry romance (the spade), a life partner/bromance sort of thing (the diamond) and mediated hatred (the clubs). Furthermore, gender is no object to them. So you've got twelve fairly fleshed out characters, with four ways to ship each, and anything goes. You see why they are popular with the fandom.
Seriously though, the only way to actually understand Homestuck is to read it. Yes, it's intimidatingly long and yes, it's complicated as all get out, but also tons of fun, with cleverly-written characters, an epic story, and a unique combination of light-hearted humour and dramatic adventure with a lot of imagination. If you are curious as to what it is, give it a shot and find out.
Last weekend I was on a local demo-party/festival of digital culture/lan-party and in there I took part in graphics competition. Basically the rules were; still picture made with computer. My entry got to the 6th place out 12. I'm quite happy for that.
My work "Programmer gets frustrated"
More Homestuck fanart. I also wanted to paint something in colour without doing greyscale first. It turned out alright I guess. The original sketch had the lava-spewing cog buildings in the background but it made things all busy.
I noticed that while the broken record logo looks good in the shirt the record logo on the hilt of the sword looks out of place. I really sticks out and not in a good way.
Other than that I like the picture.
I was going to have it so that Terezi had painted over the shirt logo as well, like she does in canon, but the record on the shirt came out so well I didn't want to ruin it.
I was just checking out his webpage and holy shit, I didn't know he had even more skillz.
Three months ago; the pinnical of my cartooning skills.
A warm-up speedpaint today.
Shitty cell phone picture is shitty.
http://imgur.com/a/Lpywr#1
I made a new sign for our front door when we're not at home and expecting a package to arrive.
The panda is based of a certain board game.
Also, ooh! Cliche 80's metal album!