The webcomics blog about webcomics

You’ll Have To Excuse Me

I’m in the midst of an archive binge of Homestuck and it’s taking up a lot of time and mental cycles. I’m not even a year into this story¹ and my mind is reeling from the sheer volume of how much work Andrew Hussie has done so very, very quickly. By the time I’m done, I’ll most likely have to go back and start the damn thing over again, as I’ll be trying to keep track of 5000+ pages of art and 300,000+ words, which would be the equivalent of 1.5 Crimes and Punishment or Mobys Dick.

  • Know what else is an overwhelming amount of comics? Ryan Estrada’s The Whole Story project, where four days remain to name your own price to obtain all those tasty, weird comics.²
  • Know what else is an overwhelming amount of extremely important and well-written words? Colleen Doran’s Very Bad Publishers essays. Every once in a while she takes the time to point people that may not have seen the full saga, and is doing so now, which is the perfect time for me to mention it again. If you haven’t ever read about Very Bad Publishers, then take a couple hours and do so.
  • Unexpected surprise of the day: This page has made much of Randy Milholland’s ability to write believable characters that behave in realistic ways, and to change their personal habits oh-so-slowly and organically. Nobody in the Something*Positive cast started out as damaged as Mike Dowden, but he’s come a long way. Today, he’s still not finding life entirely going his way, but at least he has a new haircut, one that doesn’t make him look like a sociopath that lives in his mom’s basement. As longtime readers may recall, he stopped being a sociopath sometime around Halloween 2004, and moved out of his mom’s basement prior to becoming a father in 2006. And, uh, damn I’ve been reading this comic a long time.

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¹ Homestuck began on 13 April, 2009 and I’ve made it as far as Rose: Knit the scarf. Ride the ogre., which ran on 11 March, 2010. It’s partway into Act 4, and I’m guessing about a quarter of the way through the story as written so far.

² As reported earlier, Estrada started with price tiers in his pay-what-you-want scheme, but later opened it up entirely to reader’s choice. Literally any amount will get you all those comics.

hate to point this out, but it’s actually just wrapping up Act 6: Part 3

Act 5 is /MASSIVE/, though. Really really huge.

Still only about a third of the way through the archive though; Act 5 is in two parts and pretty big. I binged the archives this month too, and needed a second reading to get a good grip on the story. This is a deep rabbit hole.

Act 5 is huge though and in two parts, so the ogre-riding is still only about a third of the way in. I’ve been binging on it this month too, and it took me a second reading to get a grip on the story; my brain still hurts but it was worth it.

PS: Sorry for the echo. I thought it had rejected my first attempt.

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