Welcome back folks! I actually couldn’t help myself, and so I decided to keep right on reading after I finished my last blog post. I actually read all the way through the intermission and well into act 4, but let’s go ahead and look at act 3 for now. Let’s head back Homestuck.
I just began reading act 2 of Homestuck and sh*t just got real. To whom do those unsettling eyes belong? Why have I not encountered them? Who is speaking to me? Is it the sprite? Is it the player? And why do I suddenly see the reader as a player instead of a passive audience? I guess I’ll find all the answers as I continue to explore the world of Homestuck, a world that I don’t fully understand but ultimately grabs me by the lapels and says “You WILL read me.”
- No, seriously. For some reason one of my deepest fears is the idea that something is looking at me through dark windows. So those eyes in opening parts of Act 2? Where all the windows go dark? Yeah. They creep me the freak out. Seriously.
- I think that the reason I’m inclined to start calling the audience “the player” rather than “the reader,” is because of the walk-around at the beginning of the act. It makes me feel more connected to the experience. Even though I have no power to change the story, I still feel like I’m interacting with the comic on a deeper level than simply reading it. Homestuck seems determined to blur the line between me as the observer and me as I exist in the world it is creating.
- Oh noes! John’s dad is missing, and so is the bunny! Only a thin puddle of petroleum based product remains in their place! That’s… ominous. I can’t really say it’s frightening or anything, it’s just strange in a way that’s subtly off from the norm. I guess that’s probably a common theme in Homestuck.
- Who is speaking the various commands? They sound very… distinctive which makes me think they are not the same as the commands we saw in the previous act. Also: All caps. What’s going on here?
- Ah. I see who is speaking now. But is it possible that these messages are being sent into the past? How does that work? I mean, ideas of causality are pretty messed up as they are. This machine that the wanderer is using is even screwier. How can the future so directly affect the past without having serious consequences. Normally I have a pretty good grasp of time-manipulation, but this is just mindbending. Maybe the consequences will become more apparent as the comic progresses?
- I really like Rose’s walkthrough. She is a wordy person. I enjoy wordy things. Of course, I also enjoy them because they offer a nice recap to things that we’ve seen. In a comic with a convoluted plot, sometimes it can be helpful to see the previous events from a different perspective. Something that may see terribly complicated from one angle can seem remarkably simple when laid out in a different way. I feel like that is what is really happening as Rose shares her knowledge on the mechanics of SBURB.
- I have the feeling that I’ll like gardenGnostic when I finally meet them. Don’t know why.
- I’m a little confused. I really think I ought to hate Dave, but for some reason I like him. I’m afraid, however, that I could not muster the courage to go through his webcomic.
- Interesting. Dave’s brother seems to fit something of the same role as John’s dad and Rose’s mother (Not entirely the same role, however. Dave actually seems to like his brother.) Many of the same parallels are present. The most striking seems to be the Harlequin, Wizard, and Puppet collections. Plot-important, or just a running gag? I’m inclined to say it’s a running gag.
- I’m sure it would make John very happy to see that he’s not the only one that has difficulty using his sylladex. I do feel sorry for that bird though.
And that’s all I read today. I kinda wish I could read some more, because this webcomic has really grabbed me at this point… but sleep is also a very good thing. Hopefully tomorrow will be full of Homestuck.
Yesterday, I finished the first act of Homestuck, a webcomic (I use this term loosely. From what I can see, Homestuck is not a traditional webcomic in any sense of the word. It seems to be more of what I would call a “multimedia experience,”) which a couple of my friends have encouraged me to read for quite a while. Having gotten to what I assume is the “meat” of Homestuck one of my friends has encouraged me to start blogging my reactions to the comic.
