Was Homestuck Act 5 a mistake?

Was Homestuck Act 5 a mistake?

Are people still butthurt about this character?

Act five was pretty great. 5-2 much more so than 5-1 but it was still plenty enjoyable.

Act 5 introduced the Trolls.

Act 5 was fine. Even Act 6 started off exciting and intriguing; it was the execution which was completely fucked-up, with year-long breaks and the meandering plot and lack of focus on the threads and characters that we'd been given reason to care about up to that point.

People say the trolls ruined Homestuck but honestly with all of the four Beta kids getting along so well, having an external group of peers who introduced friction and conflict was a great idea and mostly well-implemented. Things only crashed and burned later once Hussie lost his focus during the whole Kickstarter fiasco.

Homecuck was a mistake in general and its community is brony-tier

That doesn't really strike me as a meaningfully informed response to OP's question.

I'll say this about Karkat: He started off strong and got more and more interesting as the story progressed. Why DID a genetically engineered character like him have this unheard-of mutantcy built into his DNA? What WAS the blood aspect all about? What about these missing 'limebloods' which occupied the place in the hemospectrum which one would expect a troll with the 'cancer' symbol to occupy? What was up with the seeming connection he had with the cherubs, Calliope and Caliborn? One with Karkat's red blood colour and the other with the lime-green blood colour he should have had? Pretty intriguing! And then we learn they're two beings occupying one body. Does that hold any relevance to the mysteries of his origins and biology?

And then the story ended without addressing any of these questions whatsoever. In fact, the last time Karkat ever got to say or do anything relevant to the plot was when he shooshed Gamzee in act 5. Beyond that, the story literally would not have changed one iota if he hadn't been there at all.

I think Hussie had big plans for him which he spent the better part of a year weaving into the plot and then just said "Fuck it" and abandoned them all before resolving any of them. That was the greatest crime both of the comic and with respect to this character.

I don't think the trolls were a mistake but the fanbase it brought in definitely was. I know a lot of people felt Karkat could be best described as "wasted potential: the character" by the end of the comic (along with many other characters of course), but I'm not really sure if Hussie actually wanted to do anything with him in the first place considering his love for subverting readers' expectations and whatever.

Don't forget about Calliope having the Cancer symbol on her sleeves, or how Karkat's typing color is placed exactly between Calliope's and Caliborn's respective shades of gray.

I felt my case had already been made without going into every little bit of minutia, but you're very correct; Hussie had loaded up the story with the shiniest, most ostentatiously gleaming Chekhov's Gun imaginable and had it flaunted about before our faces capriciously for a year or so, finger gracefully and lovingly stroking the trigger as it was pointed this way and that. And then in the final act of the drama, the gun was placed in a drawer with nary a word said about it ever again, and expected us to find this conclusion satisfying.

Who fucking cares a8out this cuck!

Here is the 8est character right there!

>In fact, the last time Karkat ever got to say or do anything relevant to the plot was when he shooshed Gamzee in act 5. Beyond that, the story literally would not have changed one iota if he hadn't been there at all.
Joke's on you. That part got retconned and it never happened.

Huh. I never thought about it, but I think you're right, didn't it? Vriska subdued him somehow or other in the retcon.

So where does that push Karkat's last act of plot-relevance to? Ordering Equius to kill Gamzee and thus getting him and Nepeta killed?

>and then just said "Fuck it" and abandoned them all before resolving any of them

I hate that the comic makes me feel this way. I can't decide whether Hussie did just give up and rush the ending or he had all these character arcs planned in advance

It's obvious he had SOME stuff planned in advance. Apparently the Act 7 animation was completed years ahead of time, so he knew in broad terms who would be where and doing what, though the absence of any of the sprites from that scene suggests that they were late additions to the plot, after the animation was completed.

Aside from that, who knows. The ending of act 6 was such a clusterfuck, suddenly introducing us to these alt-timeline versions of characters who we'd spent five years following and emotionally investing in before they were so suddenly killed off.

To me the most insulting thing aside from Karkat is Jasprose. Not because I mind the character, but because she was THE Rose we spent half a decade following the story of. She was the one we cared about and were invested in. Then this other Rose suddenly appears, and shoves the still-living Sprite of the one we actually gave a shit about out of the spotlight. It was this Rose who got the "Thanks for Playing" scene with Kanaya rather than the Rose we'd spent the past five years with. Who even cares about this doppelganger compared to the one we'd spent so much time with? Why was this supposed to be emotionally satisfying to us?

Hussie basically dropped Karkat's plotline with Karezi. I don't think he had any idea where he was taking Karkat in the first place though.
Also holy fucking SHIT people are flipping out over there being a JohnRose shirt in the WLF store.

>Also holy fucking SHIT people are flipping out over there being a JohnRose shirt in the WLF store.

I think it's telling that that's more controversial in a selection devoted to romantic shipping than one with Jade and Rose together - who spoke like.. two or three times from the start of the comic to the end... or for that matter a Rose/Roxy shirt, which one might think suggests an even greater taboo.

i like Karkat
i hate his "arc" if you could call it that

Lesbian shippers are fucking crazy, even moreso than yaoi shippers. You wouldn't believe the warehouse 13 shitstorm when it ended.

Karkat fulfilled his role when he managed to corral the 11 other trolls into a good enough state that their Sgrub was beatable.

After that, forces larger than Sburb were at work and he was no longer relevant, passing on his cancer-baton to the next group of children who then became important in the next leg of the plot.

epilogue John right now is basically post-sgrub karkat. Irrelevant but still existing.

Technically the Intermission introduced the trolls.

Do you hate karkat because his arc was unfulfilling, or did you always hate him?

Because I feel like whenever someone says they hate a homestuck character, it's because the character didn't end up like their headcanon versions.

the intermission was the best part of homestuck and the last good part of homestuck

i always liked Karkat, but his arc was both unfulfilling, disappointing, and mostly dropped
He never got over, or got with Terezi himself
His relationship with Slick or Gamzee ever came up again
Being gay with Dave came out of nowhere
He might as well have died before the end because he didn't belong there

>Karkat's last act of plot-relevance
Being Dave's girlfriend.
Being involved with the retarded Davekat vs Davejade fandom war.

>Being gay with Dave came out of nowhere

And went nowhere.

It's less controversy, more crazies being crazies. But like, them threatening to kill JohnRose shippers and set them on fire if they buy those shirts kind of crazy.

For better or worse, she at least got shit started and got shit done. She made things get interesting even though a lot of the bullshit was directly/indirectly her fault.

I personally dislike dead weight characters. Anything at all at least would have been better than what he did in the latter half of the story. Unless I've completely forgotten something significant he did.

>or for that matter a Rose/Roxy shirt, which one might think suggests an even greater taboo.
you're forgetting the audience, here.
For them there is nothing more eye-gougingly offensive then a male/female (who are also not-related by blood) relationship.

They do realize that a male/female relationship is why they exist, right

>For better or worse, she at least got shit started and got shit done. She made things get interesting even though a lot of the bullshit was directly/indirectly her fault.
aside it being her fault that Jack got made (a total jobber in the end) she stopped doing anything directly for the plot
She ended any interesting arcs characters needed, with instead of them growing, it turns out they only needed her

Either they're aware of that and absolutely resentful of the fact or cognitive dissonance has set in hard and they think they're the product of immaculate conception or spawning from a locker room floor.

user, you are talking about plot device Vriska.

The real Vriska became a fart and only exists to cuck Karezi shippers.

Wrong Terezi

The fact that Vriska/Terezi was red in that situation after an unambiguous black relationship was a dumb thing.

Yeah, but that was wholly irrelevant to the plot. It neither added anything nor served any purpose. I'm talking about the last time he did something which mattered to the actually relevant events of the story. That's like saying that it was relevant to the plot when John changed clothes for the second time. It was all just window dressing.

He wasn't even Dave's girlfriend at the end. he was absolutely nothing. Hussie refused to talk about it and basically dropped it.
I mean, I don't blame him, but still.

g8t

>Also holy fucking SHIT people are flipping out over there being a JohnRose shirt in the WLF store.

Good, let them. They can smell their deaths, and the sound they'll make rattling their cages will serve as a warning to the rest.

All of Homestuck was a mistake.

Humiliating himself in front of the ghost army? (And then we later find out in a book commentary how Hussie was trying to show us that Blood is inspiring people to fight)

Yes indeed, Homestuck was a mistake.

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audience pandering ruined it more than anything

>(And then we later find out in a book commentary how Hussie was trying to show us that Blood is inspiring people to fight)
Hm, where?
I mean, they kinda say that in the comic too, but did Hussie really say something outside of Homestuck?

>Also holy fucking SHIT people are flipping out over there being a JohnRose shirt in the WLF store.
Where's the controversy? I mean, duh, it's on tumblr, but do you have a link? I don't know how to use that website.

I'd post screens, but the janitor gets mad at stuff like that. Because the janitor is a fucking idiot.

So can we bet on Hussie finishing up that game, and then taking maybe 2 or 3 years off, and then coming up with a brand new comic?

I forgot to mention if Hussie ever released an Act 6 Book and that he needs to point it out to us.

Just do it.

The Janitor even ignored this thread.

>Terezi
Was she a character at all

I stopped giving a shit about her when Hussie hinted Karezi

Fiiine

How do you relate with a cardboard cutout who is featured as "boring lesbians" on the first result in google image search?

>Was Homestuck Act 5 a mistake?
Yes
>Are people still butthurt about this character?
I don't know but Trolls are objectively what killed the story

Were fantrolls a mistake?

This is why you ship wholesome ships, not trash like davekat or rosemary

Are john/rose shippers the homestuck equivalent to trump supporters?

This

And what are wholesome ships?

Karkat's mouth/Vriska's 8ulge

Fantrolls are only a mistake when good porn artists draw them more than the actual characters.

How did such an innocent ship get so villified?

Rosemary is one of the most popular ships
Homestuck's fanbase hates "het ships"
Andrew personally spoke out against the ship

Something something gay erasure

And what the fuck does Andrew know? He can't even manage a company, let alone a webcomic.

Lesbian erasure. :^)

Only the original storyboard was finished ahead of time. The actual animation was completed some time during the final hiatus.

>She's literally me
>She's intelligent, nihilistic and with a wicked sense of humor!

These people don't function in normal society, do they.

If you don't think trolls ruined the comic then you are part of the problem.

What if I think it was a series of failures in storytelling structure that just so happened to become prevalent at the time when the Trolls were being introduced?

trolls were a symptom

...

lmao, it's true

Says the guy posting on Sup Forums about a comic that ended a year ago.

Homestuck was a mistake period, you sad shit taste having fucks.

>That doesn't really strike me as a meaningfully informed response to OP's question.
On the contrary, it's 100% accurate.

You don't ship shit at all, you shitty shippershit. Fuck off to whatever gay-ass forum you came from.

You don't sound very smart.

Let's not forget the Intermission, where LE aka Caliborn has Karkat's exile safe locked up under the Felt mansion for no apparent reason.

My personal theory is that, when LE entered the A Universes, he retroactively created a "glitch", the calling card of his presence.

It was Karkat. Caliborn saw Karkat, recognized himself in him, and changed his (and his ancestry's) blood to his own. Karkat is literally the cancer.

More like Ron Paul supporters

You sound like a dumb motherfucking newfag with shit taste who doesn't know that shippers were universally reviled on Sup Forums not too many years ago. Though I suppose I shouldn't expect too much from someone who likes Homestuck, never mind still discusses it.

This sounds like the best theory.

>being this assblasted
kys

I already said you don't sound very smart, you don't need to convince me any more.

Except he didn't. Eridan mangled his quest and tried to kill Sollux. Aradia literally killed Vriska, and Vriska probably fucked Tavros in the ass at least fourteen times during the session's course. They all very nearly died against BK if it weren't for Vriska's hax and Gamzee's OP classpect. And even then they missed the point of SBURB so hard that they didn't even really deserve to win.

Karkat's "natural leadership" is the definition of an informed trait. We don't even see his speech to troll the kids, the ONLY time we see him taking an actuve leadership position.

What the fuck is this junior high level response supposed to be? Is that what passes as an insult or snappy reply on Gaia, or wherever the fuck your shipping ass crawled over from?

...

Are you just saying random words hoping they mean something?

>implying a retard knows how to stop being retarded

You don't sound very smart.

>merely a coincidence, goy
really dude

Right, my mistake.

...

You can't blame an inability to show, not tell on the Trolls. You can't blame a lack of consistent tone on the Trolls. You can't blame a lack of proper mystery-reveal-mystery cycle on the Trolls.

...

...

trolls were good

a story just about kids playing a game
is lame

I can blame the following on the trolls:
-Subverting the entire plot of Homestuck
-Taking the story on a massive pointless tangent that is completely retconned out later
-Literally pandering to Tumblr shipping scum for merch sales
-Abandoning the idea that resolving plot holes is worth the effort
-
-The dancestors
-Tricking 2 mentally retarded people into giving Hussie $10,000 each
-A bunch of degenerates spitting into a bucket
-Andrew gaining enough popularity to make the most cringey dating sim ever made
-Dulling the big reveal of the alpha kids, and causing their characters to reflect more of what tumblr wants rather than adhering to any themes established in the first 4 acts
-Long-winded pesterlogs about inane bullshit written in leetspeak
-Hussie spanking it to his waifu in the comic every time she was forced back into it

>Was Homestuck Act 5 a mistake?
yes

>Are people still butthurt about this character?
yes

But let's face it, you'd burn someone in a davekat shirt.

>Not feeling innate disgust for anyone wearing any Homestuck shirt, let alone a Homestuck shipping shirt

Wouldn't even matter if it was that one ship that I like, it's my secret shame because it's shameful.

>mfw Vriska was one of my favorite characters and was really interesting
>mfw I thought that her death was the perfect ending to her arc
>mfw she was brought back as Meenah's underaged girlfriend
>mfw she was brought back as the savior of the entire session