Arctic Light

You guys you guys! Homestuck is updating again!

Has anyone read it?

Does anyone want to talk about it?

( Cut for spoilers )

I missed two weeks of Homestuck updates while I was away, and when I got back ... I started reading them and realized that I don't actually care enough to wade through the chatlogs anymore. 32 major characters (not counting alternate versions of all of them, people from other species, etc) is too many for me, and I never have bonded to the "new" kids the way I did with the old ones. And the level of plot entropy in the comic has gotten to be too much for me; between the time jumps and the sheer randomness, I've long since lost the thread of what's going on. I'd have to go back and reread the entire act to figure it out, and I don't think I actually care enough to do so. I'm still curious about where it goes, but more in an "I've invested this much time in it, so may as well see it through to the end" kind of way than in a desperate-to-know-what-happens kind of way.

I've been having a lot of fun playing with my new computer, though I made the unpleasant discovery that iMovie 11 sucks. I'm sure it's possible to vid in it (you can vid in basically anything) but it's really, really not set up for it. And my old version of iMovie doesn't play on the new computer. Woe! But wait! When I bought my old Mac, they were having a special on Final Cut Express, so I went ahead and picked it up at the time. I never learned to use it because I was doing everything in iMovie and wasn't properly motivated to manage the learning curve. But I spent a lot of time yesterday learning Final Cut, and the more I use it, the more fun I'm having with it. After years of vidding in iMovie (read: working around its limitations) Final Cut is great. Multiple video tracks! Masks! Clips that don't have to be trimmed to within an inch of their lives to save hard drive space! It's awesome. I'm working on a Once Upon a Time vid, since I have my shiny new DVDs. :D

Finished reading Homestuck, so this will be potentially spoilery through Act 6 Intermission 2.

First off, as noted in the comments to the last post, xparrot has a good introduction/pimp post to the series if you're wondering what it is or thinking about reading it.

I gotta say Homestuck is one of the most bizarrely original things I've seen. The closest thing I can think of to compare it to is Homestar Runner - not that they're alike other than being Flash-based, trippy and weird, with a certain disregard for linear storytelling or the "rules" of their medium. Homestar Runner is more closely akin to animated kids' cartoons, whereas Homestuck is based on webcomics/video games/anime/heaven knows what (but at heart it's mostly a webcomic, though with animated and interactive parts).

Like I said in the comments to my last entry, Homestuck really isn't going to be for everyone; it's glacially paced, incredibly vulgar (though not, I realized when I was trying explain it to my husband, in a racist/sexist/4chan kind of way, and there's no actual nudity or sex; on the other hand, profanity and jokey sexual innuendo are EVERYWHERE), full of bizarre tangents and random weirdness, and it relies heavily, especially in the beginning, on a general familiarity with video games and pop culture of the late '80s and '90s.

On the other hand, it's epic in every sense, hilarious, has some gorgeous animation in later installments, and somehow manages to keep a cast of dozens of characters unique and interesting, even when they only communicate in chat most of the time.

Everything under the cut is completely spoilery for character deaths, big reveals, etc...

( Spoilers )

So yeah, there I am. I really don't see Homestuck ever becoming a fanfic fandom for me; I've looked up a few vids and some fanart, but mostly, I'm not even that interested in that sort of thing. I'm just interested in reading and discussing new canon, and wallowing in the sheer addictive weirdness of it. :D