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Post by comicalArchitect on Jul 27, 2016 20:06:12 GMT
(Alternate title: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Act 7.)
Here's my Homestuck theory, one that I think is significant enough to warrant its own thread for discussion. It's not a theory in the traditional sense of being about worldbuilding details or history, however. It's a theory about Hussie's intentions.
Why was the ending of the story so anticlimactic? I posit that it's because it was't supposed to be climactic in the slightest. I believe that the intended climax of Homestuck was the retcon, and that everything afterwards served as a denouement, showing how much better the timeline became due to John saving Vriska. It meshes with one of the story's overall themes, which is characters rebelling against the story they were placed in (in fact, it's the ultimate expression of that theme), it features the character who, lest we forget, is the main protagonist of the story, and it's just unconventional enough to fit Hussie's style.
Not only should this help people come to terms with the ending, it should help people come to terms with the retcon itself. It's a much easier pill to swallow when you understand it as the entire point of the story, the moment everything has been building up to, rather than as a plot device thrown on at the last second.
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imglasses
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Post by imglasses on Jul 27, 2016 21:38:25 GMT
The reason I thought the ending was anticlimactic was because we hardly got any answers or twists, because we don't know if LE was defeated or not, because there was absolutely no dialog after the final battle when they were finally about to win, and because there were still a lot of character issues that weren't resolved, not even by the retcon. I never had much of a problem with the retcon itself, I just didn't like that the story ended so soon afterwards, when there was still so much left to resolve.
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Post by obsidalicious on Jul 27, 2016 21:50:07 GMT
As much as the Ending is a terrible climax, is the Retcon any better as a climax? As the shitstorm of Game Over was going down, we already knew that John had the power to undo shit. There was never any suspense there. So at best, we hoped for a twist in which the obvious retcon method was not how the problem was fixed. But no luck there, the retcon went ahead like we all predicted, and we all just sat there through hundreds of pages of John fucking around without (apparent) purpose like it was Act 1 again. Then when we got done with that 'ride' the result was less that satisfying. All that power, all that potential to take the Story in an exciting new direction and what did they do? They bring back a character who, all things considered, was never really gone from the story in the first place.
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Georgie
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Post by Georgie on Jul 27, 2016 23:46:25 GMT
Hm… Even if Act 7 wasn't supposed to be the climax of the comic, I don't believe that it works as a denouement either. If we go by the typical five-part dramatic structure, the ending that we have now comes across as 'falling action' if anything, which is defined, by Wikipedia, as such: "During the falling action, the conflict between the protagonist and the antagonist unravels, with the protagonist winning or losing against the antagonist. The falling action may contain a moment of final suspense, in which the final outcome of the conflict is in doubt." I believe that describes Collide and Act 7 fairly well. The problem, however, is that the action was cut short before we could see it stop falling, and we didn't get to witness the aftermath. In my opinion, we have yet to receive a true denouement, which, classically speaking, is supposed to be the part of a story in which conflicts are resolved, complexities of the plot are unravelled and the reader's tension/anxiety is relieved. A lot of people—myself included—don't feel as if Act 7 quite managed to do all of those things. I guess that what I'm trying to say is this: though I can accept the theory that the retcon was intended to be Homestuck's climax, it doesn't really do much to help me come to terms with the ending.
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wheals
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Post by wheals on Jul 28, 2016 2:37:18 GMT
This is what I've been saying for a while. In fact, this is probably why Andrew wanted to do everything after the Gigapause in one huge dump, though of course that didn't work out. But it's much clearer when you read it all at once, and I feel this has been confirmed by the various people I've talked to who caught up after Homestuck ended, who did read everything after Game Over all at once. The idea that it was less climactic simply because we knew how John would solve it is silly. (Like, is the climax to Star Wars made less climactic by the fact that we know Luke will blow up the Death Star with his torpedoes? Would it have been better if a new rule that let Jedi come fully back to life came out of nowhere, and it was Obi-Wan who blew it up??) This is also why it doesn't matter that Collide and Act 7 don't resolve mysteries themselves; they are only the very last part of the ending. Specifically, they show how the defeat of the various enemies preventing the creation of the new universe (HIC, Union Jack, Bec Noir) and Lord English, though only vaguely for the final one. For the most part (*cough*Jake*cough*), character arcs were resolved in A6A6I5, the biggest remaining mystery was answered in A6A6A5, and A6A6A6/A7 just cleared the table of all enemies. The reason I thought the ending was anticlimactic was because we hardly got any answers or twists, because we don't know if LE was defeated or not, because there was absolutely no dialog after the final battle when they were finally about to win, and because there were still a lot of character issues that weren't resolved, not even by the retcon. For the first part, the whole point of this thread is that the answers/twists after Game Over (like Vriska coming back, or fucking Arquiusprite being part of LE) were part of the ending. The lack of dialogue was pretty clearly a stylistic choice to guide the story to its end without any interruption. I was fine with it, especially since I realised in advance, thinking back on A6A6I5, that there would almost definitely be no major dialogues after it. That part of the ending had already been taken up. I gotta agree that not showing Lord English's defeat explicitly was a mistake, though.
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Post by obsidalicious on Jul 28, 2016 3:11:07 GMT
The idea that it was less climactic simply because we knew how John would solve it is silly. (Like, is the climax to Star Wars made less climactic by the fact that we know Luke will blow up the Death Star with his torpedoes? Would it have been better if a new rule that let Jedi come fully back to life came out of nowhere, and it was Obi-Wan who blew it up??) The difference is that in Star Wars, the fight still mattered. Of course the Death Star will be stopped, but how many pilots will the Rebels lose in the process(and is the Force actually a thing)? But here, due to the nature of John's power, Game Over didn't matter in that same way. You could rewrite that scene in a hundred different ways, as long as its still a Calamity, then the outcome will be exactly the same; John will Retcon and the exact same set of people will be alive. At worst, you maybe lost Jasprosesprite and maybe the John/Terezi black feels. But they were hardly the cornerstones of the ending were they? In the technical sense, yes the Retcon is a Climax in that it is a significant change of the Protagonist's Fate. But that doesn't make it a good Climax. Undoing/Redoing shit with Time Travel has been a recurring thing in Homestuck, and despite all it was hyped up to be, the Retcon was more or less just another instance of that same technique. Plus, as I said, the way in which the Protagonist's Fate changed wasn't that good. Plus, in a General sense, if the climax is the be The climax of the entire story, then it really needs to have that feeling of dramatically flip-flopping the whole story's situation from bad to good(or vice versa) But the Retcon kinda didn't. Bringing back Vriska certainly has a sense of "This should be interesting to watch", but I don't think many people, upon seeing that development would've said "Oh, the good guys definitely have this in the bag now". In fact I know that's the case, because I saw all the people who were expecting/hoping for a second Retcon because the first didn't fix nearly as many problems as it said it did.
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thedude3445
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Post by thedude3445 on Jul 28, 2016 4:50:48 GMT
Well, since Homestuck is secretly a Trilogy, we already have two other climaxes to show for it; s Descend and s Cascade. Both of them had pretty long buildups that let us know that some huge action was coming, and then had wordless flash sequences with a ton of cool stuff and big paradigm shifts for the story. Act 4 had an epilogue with minimal text that showed where each of the characters would be leaving off. s Cascade left everything in a complete cliffhanger. s Collide was very similar to this in form, with the pages afterwards acting like a bit of an epilogue, and then s Act 7 being the finale. So that was definitely intended as the climax.
If you think of it in movie terms, the Retcon was like the 2/3 point of the movie where everything is turned upside down, and then the story begins funneling itself towards the big climactic part. It probably would have felt more satisfying if there weren't 500 pages of teens talking in between the Retcon and s Collide, but that's definitely what it was going for.
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Post by Blaperile on Jul 28, 2016 5:56:00 GMT
To me, the real climax is [S] Collide with what comes next building up to the end, while [S] GAME OVER is simply a huge and important conflict and also climax of the Game Over timeline but not of the entire story. And in the meantime, the retcon and Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5 close the gap between those two climaxes.
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Post by amiabletemplar on Jul 28, 2016 8:22:00 GMT
The Retcon fails as a final climax for a variety of reasons: 1. It happens far too early. You don't put the climax of a book 10 chapters before the ending; those 10 chapters will feel unsatisfying if the climax is effective, and if it's ineffective, people will think it's just another 'bump' in the rising action curve. There is a very good reason why most fiction has, at most, a couple chapters and an epilogue after the "final battle" (or whatever is the appropriate equivalent in a certain story). 2. It's run entirely by villainous characters. The actors in the conflict that caused Game Over (and thus made John want to retcon things) weren't the "player characters," weren't the "protagonists." Aranea's outburst--whether a brief and new development, or the culmination of a diabolical millennia-spanning plot --is the main reason Stuff Happens. The other characters scramble to try to do something about it, but they're all cut down well before they can achieve anything. Jake's a pawn of Aranea, while Jane and Jade are pawns of the Condesce. For a climactic battle, it entirely failed to give the protagonists a stake. Ridiculous folly. Inexcusable.3. It leaves every important question unanswered. Moreover, it fails to even remotely address the biggest problems facing the group, and leaves several explicitly-known plot threads (such as learning the fate of the Tadpole, meeting GT!Calliope, and seeing Jake give LE his 'first defeat') completely untouched. The "climax" of a story is supposed to be the turning point; while every problem may not be resolved per se, they all need to be addressed, and the core conflict behind them needs to be laid to rest so that the denouement can focus on wrapping up the remaining questions. Game Over and the Retcon don't solve problems; at best, they show that something which was a problem may not have to stay that way if the group tries again. With those three facts in play? No, I cannot accept Game Over or the Retcon as the "climax," with everything coming after as just "cleanup duty." Fighting Lord English cannot, and should not be, relegated to a footnote in a story where he's been first a, and then The, Big Bad since all the way back in the middle of Hivebent.
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The One Guy
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Post by The One Guy on Jul 28, 2016 14:36:44 GMT
The climax of a story is supposed to be the culmination of everything up to that point where one side finally wins. But with Game Over the "problem" being addressed and solved is Aranea's sudden plan, something that had only recently been introduced. Aside from the issue of the mind controlled Jane and Jade (also a relatively recent issue), nothing else was immediately solved by the retcon. It would not be hard to replace the retcon (and the sequence leading up to Game Over) with some other way of dealing with Jane and Jade, while keeping the rest of the comic nearly entirely the same.
But let's just humor you for a second and say the retcon was the climax. Would that change anyone's opinions about the ending? it's still dissatisfying regardless of what part of the story it's supposed to be.
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wheals
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Post by wheals on Jul 28, 2016 14:41:27 GMT
The Retcon fails as a final climax for a variety of reasons: 1. It happens far too early. You don't put the climax of a book 10 chapters before the ending; those 10 chapters will feel unsatisfying if the climax is effective, and if it's ineffective, people will think it's just another 'bump' in the rising action curve. There is a very good reason why most fiction has, at most, a couple chapters and an epilogue after the "final battle" (or whatever is the appropriate equivalent in a certain story). This is definitely a distortion caused by the long pauses. If anything it came too late. Readmspa.org puts (the stat is based on words, pages, and panels) the entire story after Game Over as around 13% of Homestuck -- that's the last 52 pages of a 400-page book. Granted, that stat doesn't really take into account flashes; but at the same time, the events of the final two flashes could be summed up pretty quickly. 2. It's run entirely by villainous characters. The actors in the conflict that caused Game Over (and thus made John want to retcon things) weren't the "player characters," weren't the "protagonists." Aranea's outburst--whether a brief and new development, or the culmination of a diabolical millennia-spanning plot --is the main reason Stuff Happens. The other characters scramble to try to do something about it, but they're all cut down well before they can achieve anything. Jake's a pawn of Aranea, while Jane and Jade are pawns of the Condesce. For a climactic battle, it entirely failed to give the protagonists a stake. Ridiculous folly. Inexcusable.This actually helped me better understand my point of view. Specifically, Game Over was just the final buildup in tension before the climax at the retcon. I can certainly understand the criticism that only a few of the characters are involved, though. It's sort of in the nature of the thing -- John's whole motivation is that they're all dead -- but it probably could have been handled better. 3. It leaves every important question unanswered. Moreover, it fails to even remotely address the biggest problems facing the group, and leaves several explicitly-known plot threads (such as learning the fate of the Tadpole, meeting GT!Calliope, and seeing Jake give LE his 'first defeat') completely untouched. The "climax" of a story is supposed to be the turning point; while every problem may not be resolved per se, they all need to be addressed, and the core conflict behind them needs to be laid to rest so that the denouement can focus on wrapping up the remaining questions. Game Over and the Retcon don't solve problems; at best, they show that something which was a problem may not have to stay that way if the group tries again. With those three facts in play? No, I cannot accept Game Over or the Retcon as the "climax," with everything coming after as just "cleanup duty." Fighting Lord English cannot, and should not be, relegated to a footnote in a story where he's been first a, and then The, Big Bad since all the way back in the middle of Hivebent. I suppose this is about what kind of story Homestuck is. Ultimately, to me, John becoming free of any limitations, and assuming essentially unlimited power so that he can save his friends makes a better climax than just killing off the new Big Bad. And once he gains that power, it's hard to keep up any tension, since we all know he knows how to undo any mistake. (This isn't to say that I was happy with the defeat of Lord English not being shown explicitly onscreen. As I said before, it's one of my major complaints with the ending.) edit: The climax of a story is supposed to be the culmination of everything up to that point where one side finally wins. But with Game Over the "problem" being addressed and solved is Aranea's sudden plan, something that had only recently been introduced. Aside from the issue of the mind controlled Jane and Jade (also a relatively recent issue), nothing else was immediately solved by the retcon. It would not be hard to replace the retcon (and the sequence leading up to Game Over) with some other way of dealing with Jane and Jade, while keeping the rest of the comic nearly entirely the same. No, the problem was that rather than maturing or overcoming their issues, the people on the meteor were stupid pieces of shit all day, and thus unable to reach their reward. Having Vriska spur them to solve their problems in one flash was an unsatisfactory resolution to that, I admit. But let's just humor you for a second and say the retcon was the climax. Would that change anyone's opinions about the ending? it's still dissatisfying regardless of what part of the story it's supposed to be. TBH, I don't really expect to ever change anyone's opinion about the ending. Mostly I'm talking here to clear up some of my own thoughts about the ending for my own sake. But to answer your implicit question, I've seen a lot of complaints that the comic ends far too suddenly. It ends more suddenly than I'd like, but seeing the retcon as the climax makes it clearer that it's not as sudden as people think.
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loading
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Post by loading on Jul 28, 2016 14:48:36 GMT
Here's a new thought for all of you; The climactic moment didn't happen. The climax is the peak of the conflict, where some last few major bits of foreshadowing are supposed to play in, and where everything goes from mostly right to horribly wrong and back to right again. We didn't get that middle bit though. For example, remember all those theories about how the final door scene would play out similar to the end of A5A1? With either LE or HIC making one final last stand? THAT would have been a climax, and that's why it's so hard to find it.
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The One Guy
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Post by The One Guy on Jul 28, 2016 15:00:04 GMT
The climax of a story is supposed to be the culmination of everything up to that point where one side finally wins. But with Game Over the "problem" being addressed and solved is Aranea's sudden plan, something that had only recently been introduced. Aside from the issue of the mind controlled Jane and Jade (also a relatively recent issue), nothing else was immediately solved by the retcon. It would not be hard to replace the retcon (and the sequence leading up to Game Over) with some other way of dealing with Jane and Jade, while keeping the rest of the comic nearly entirely the same. No, the problem was that rather than maturing or overcoming their issues, the people on the meteor were stupid pieces of shit all day, and thus unable to reach their reward. Having Vriska spur them to solve their problems in one flash was an unsatisfactory resolution to that, I admit. Perhaps by doing so it sets them on the path to solving the main problems of the comic, I'll concede that much, but that's only setting them in the right direction, not actually confronting and taking down the main problems of the comic. But let's just humor you for a second and say the retcon was the climax. Would that change anyone's opinions about the ending? it's still dissatisfying regardless of what part of the story it's supposed to be. TBH, I don't really expect to ever change anyone's opinion about the ending. Mostly I'm talking here to clear up some of my own thoughts about the ending for my own sake. But to answer your implicit question, I've seen a lot of complaints that the comic ends far too suddenly. It ends more suddenly than I'd like, but seeing the retcon as the climax makes it clearer that it's not as sudden as people think. Well, this point was mainly directed toward comicalArchitect, who does seem to think that way, not to you.
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Post by amiabletemplar on Jul 29, 2016 7:39:26 GMT
This is definitely a distortion caused by the long pauses. If anything it came too late. Readmspa.org puts (the stat is based on words, pages, and panels) the entire story after Game Over as around 13% of Homestuck -- that's the last 52 pages of a 400-page book. Granted, that stat doesn't really take into account flashes; but at the same time, the events of the final two flashes could be summed up pretty quickly. I...frankly disagree. The drama and action that occurs in the final two flashes would have played out quite a bit longer than that. Epic final battles tend to be entire chapters, not a two-page summary, even when the amount of time those events take is only a few minutes. Consider that, in the final Harry Potter movie, the duel between Harry and Voldemort, plus all the ancillary combats happening nearby (like Molly going full-on BAMF Mama Bear vs. Bellatrix) takes maybe 15 minutes, whereas that segment of the book spans multiple chapters IIRC. Er...I don't understand what you mean. Game Over doesn't build tension, it releases it (in a depressing "downer ending" kind of way). And the Retcon itself cannot be a climax; there's no battle, no conflict, no overcoming. It is neither the "decisive moment," nor is it in and of itself the "turning point" (which, as noted by you and others elsewhere, is actually Vriska's poorly-written meteor intervention). Yes, Game Over provides the motivation, but that doesn't mean it provides tension. Game Over releases tension because we no longer have uncertainty about what might happen to characters we care about. With two exceptions (John and Roxy), they're either dead, dying, or suicidal. That's a huge release. John engaging the Retcon creates new tension by giving us hope that things can be different. But...that isn't a climax either. It is, in fact, pretty much a textbook definition of an anticlimax: "an event, conclusion, statement, etc., that is far less important, powerful, or striking than expected." Instead of having a climactic final battle, or a tense race against time, or an ambiguous situation where we don't know how things will end, we get one character boosted to Phenomenal Cosmic Power who can fix everything to be perfect forever. And John emphatically did not "grow" into this, he stumbled ass-backward into it, so it can't even be part of a narrative other than "sometimes, accidents make it so you can make everything sunshine and roses forever!" Which is not a compelling story, and in fact diverges sharply from the "free will vs. determinism" and "do we matter?" questions of Homestuck's narrative. It posits that everything will work out for the best, that we don't really need to think about things, that our mistakes will be corrected whether we matter or not. It is, fundamentally, a betrayal of the story Homestuck was, by dodging the deep questions we'd been asked all the way up to this point. I certainly agree that this is a problem, but it applies to literally everyone in the comic, except *maybe* Dave and Dirk. John doesn't grow or achieve a new enlightenment through the use of his powers; he remains exactly the doofy, bewildered kid he was at the start, but can simply wish away his (and everyone else's) problems. Jade and Jane don't actually learn from their experiences, and their post-retcon replacements don't actually show us what they did learn because all of that learning happens off-screen. Rose loses the entirety of her recovery-from-alcoholism arc, depriving her of the biggest piece of character development she's had in the comic since she started dating Kanaya. Vriska gets her insufferable self-importance validated, and the one shard of her that had gained even the tiniest bit of maturity is slapped down hard by author fiat and proved to be a useless weakling. In short, it's a clusterfuck of removing tension by deletion, rather than resolution, and the Retcon is fundamentally the cause of all of this. All the tension is bled out of the story, not by overcoming problems, but by wishing the problems away so they were never there in the first place. And for those who deny that the Retcon could even potentially be viewed as a climax, because it doesn't meet any of the defining aspects of being "a climax"?
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Post by Blaperile on Jul 29, 2016 16:30:59 GMT
But with Game Over the "problem" being addressed and solved is Aranea's sudden plan, something that had only recently been introduced. To be honest, I think Game Over (and what precedes it in Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 2) addresses multiple problems of which Aranea is only a part: - Aranea's plan
- Gamzee's abusive behaviour towards Terezi and the danger he continues to pose to everyone
- Jade and Jane being mindcontrolled (the former already having been 'solved' prior to the flash)
- Bec Noir and PM holding onto Jade's body
- The Condesce's stranglehold over the session
Here's a new thought for all of you; The climactic moment didn't happen. The climax is the peak of the conflict, where some last few major bits of foreshadowing are supposed to play in, and where everything goes from mostly right to horribly wrong and back to right again. We didn't get that middle bit though. IMO it all happened in Collide. Part 1 (Creata) is the final part of the buildup to the climax. Part 2 (Oppa Toby Style) is where everything goes "mostly right". Part 3 (Eternity Served Cold) starts with "horribly wrong" and slowly goes "back to right". Part 4 (Heir of Grief) finishes the climax off.
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Post by SpottedBlades on Jul 29, 2016 16:59:34 GMT
I don't think the retcon was a climax at all. If anything, it was a resolution element, that drove the story to another branch with its own climax (Collide) and resolution (Act 7). Although that resolution may only be partial, but unless we have an epilogue, that's all we've got.
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The One Guy
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Post by The One Guy on Jul 29, 2016 17:08:46 GMT
But with Game Over the "problem" being addressed and solved is Aranea's sudden plan, something that had only recently been introduced. To be honest, I think Game Over (and what precedes it in Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 2) addresses multiple problems of which Aranea is only a part: - Aranea's plan
- Gamzee's abusive behaviour towards Terezi and the danger he continues to pose to everyone
- Jade and Jane being mindcontrolled (the former already having been 'solved' prior to the flash)
- Bec Noir and PM holding onto Jade's body
- The Condesce's stranglehold over the session
Well, fair enough with Gamzee's abuse and I mentioned Jade and Jane being mindcontrolled in my post, but Bec Noir and PM holding onto Jade's body ultimately resulted from Aranea's plan, and the problem of the Condesce's stranglehold over the session wasn't solved.
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Post by comicalArchitect on Jul 29, 2016 17:30:04 GMT
To the people saying that the retcon can't be a climax because it doesn't resolve things in a traditional way: of course it didn't. That's the point. You can't berate a story like Homestuck for not sticking to traditional rules of storytelling. The point of the retcon wasn't to just "wish away" all the characters' problems. The point of the retcon is for the characters to say, "No more," to the author. That's why Homestuck is essentially a metafictional story; it asserts that its own characters have a right to a happier ending. Sorry if I'm not doing well at getting all this across, but it makes perfect sense in my head. (As a side note, I encourage you all to read Grant Morrison's comic series Animal Man; it deals with very similar themes to this.)
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The One Guy
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Post by The One Guy on Jul 29, 2016 17:49:08 GMT
To the people saying that the retcon can't be a climax because it doesn't resolve things in a traditional way: of course it didn't. That's the point. You can't berate a story like Homestuck for not sticking to traditional rules of storytelling. So you're saying Homestuck doesn't follow the traditional rules of storytelling, and then explaining how things fit into the traditional storytelling structure?
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Post by amiabletemplar on Jul 29, 2016 17:54:48 GMT
To the people saying that the retcon can't be a climax because it doesn't resolve things in a traditional way: of course it didn't. That's the point. You can't berate a story like Homestuck for not sticking to traditional rules of storytelling. The point of the retcon wasn't to just "wish away" all the characters' problems. The point of the retcon is for the characters to say, "No more," to the author. That's why Homestuck is essentially a metafictional story; it asserts that its own characters have a right to a happier ending. Sorry if I'm not doing well at getting all this across, but it makes perfect sense in my head. (As a side note, I encourage you all to read Grant Morrison's comic series Animal Man; it deals with very similar themes to this.) I don't see the distinction you're making. They did wish away their problems (well, John did), that's what saying "no more," and then having it immediately happen, means. Being a metafictional story doesn't let Homestuck off the hook, here. It's still got a responsibility--to its characters, and to the readers--to not betray its principles, to not pose deep questions and then completely dodge them, to not chicken out of serious investigation and growth. *Is* Rose better off, for having never truly faced the challenge of her alcoholic tendencies and then overcome them? *Is* Jade better, for having suffered alone for three years, rather than spending a few hours mind controlled? *Is* Karkat better, for having never worked up the courage to fight for the woman he loves? *Is* Terezi better, for having her freedom of choice taken from her by a version of her from another timeline? *Is* Vriska better, for having her hubris validated by reality, and therefore never getting a dose of humility? Besides, it wasn't the characters as a whole saying this. Hell, it wasn't even John saying this, even though he's the one who did it. It was Terezi. And she still felt like shit even after the Retcon! She said "no more," and the story continued to give her more. Even by your own argument, the Retcon and the lead up to R3M3MB3R miss the mark. I'm not saying the Retcon can't be a climax because it doesn't resolve things in a traditional way. I'm saying it can't be a climax because it doesn't resolve, period, traditionally, non-traditionally, or otherwise. "Resolve" means a problem gets fixed, that a solution is found, that tension is loosened. The Retcon doesn't do that. Any problems you could say it "resolved" simply never happened in the first place; they weren't given a solution, they were pre-empted, mostly through the profound kludge of "Vriska makes EVERYTHING better!" When the Retcon "fixed" something, it was by wishing it away--making the problem never happen at all, not growing and overcoming the problem. But it left a whole host of other problems still there, and still needing solutions, including Lord English. So instead of releasing tension and getting past problems, it said, "Hey, these problems are all back again--can they solve it *this* time?" That's not resolution or lowered tension, it's revived problems and *raised* tension! Plus, even more damningly, it created new holes that now have no explanation at all--like how the fight in Caliborn's Masterpiece could happen. Again, I am not saying the Retcon is bad because it is a nontraditional or metafictional climax. I'm saying it's not a climax by any definition whatsoever. No matter how you slice it, it wasn't actually a turning point; it was a soft reset. To use the video game analogy that Homestuck is so built on, the Retcon is a player loading up an old save file...after editing it to change some of the decisions they'd made. And *that's* why it's so profoundly unsatisfying, honestly. It's worse than save-scumming; it's editing your save file to make the game winnable, after you already made it unwinnable back at the end of Disc 1. Unwinnable games because of early-game, unforeseeable mistakes is Just Bad Writing, and save-hacking to get a "better ending" even though it eliminates half the story is even worse. Especially since that ending is only debatably better for most of the people involved! Maybe a better way of saying all of this is: I think Homestuck could still be a properly metafictional story, with a proper "we deserve a better ending!" revolt from its characters, without resorting to the poorly-executed, ill-conceived Retcon we got. There's a lovely fan adventure going right now, called " Double Death of the Author," which explores exactly this question, "how could Homestuck have ended differently?" Instead of resorting to a retcon, where everything they learned and everything they did is invalidated, the authors of DDotA invoked a thing previously done by Rose, way back in the early days of the comic: sending memories back in time from a dying timeline to a living one. Through the combination of John's timeline-altering powers, and Roxy's Rogue of Void abilities, they're able to give everyone a "second try"-- knowing all the shit that happened in the previous iteration. Vriska's still dead, but she's got the ugly example of her Dancestor's wankery to think about--hopefully in a more healthy way. Rose remembers her alcoholism and efforts toward recovery--so she's ready to be a proper Seer. Dave's had some chance to face his reluctance to act (though his working through that has been a difficult process). Etc. I don't like everything about DDotA--their versions of Aranea and Dirk feel all wrong--but its approach is so much better than the canon Homestuck ending, it's indescribable. The characters get to fight for their happy ending, rather than simply wishing their problems away. There's risk! There's excitement! There's miniature climaxes building up toward the final Lord English confrontation! It's generally well-written, and manages to be both a good regular-fiction story AND a good metafiction story at the same time. In my perhaps-not-so-humble opinion, Homestuck's ending failed to be either.
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Post by tentacleTherapist on Jul 30, 2016 6:10:37 GMT
I'm honestly going to try to do an entire archival read of the comic to see what seems like the climax to me (well, and for other reasons, like personal enjoyment, of course.). I will report my opinion when I am finished.
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Post by amiabletemplar on Jul 30, 2016 14:23:28 GMT
I'm honestly going to try to do an entire archival read of the comic to see what seems like the climax to me (well, and for other reasons, like personal enjoyment, of course.). I will report my opinion when I am finished. I look forward to your analysis!
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Aug 6, 2016 22:53:56 GMT
It's probably more accurate to say that Homestuck has multiple climaxes within it's story than one big climax.
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Post by amiabletemplar on Aug 7, 2016 9:31:41 GMT
It's probably more accurate to say that Homestuck has multiple climaxes within it's story than one big climax. Well, technically speaking, that's sort of like saying "this repeat-free list has multiple first/last elements, rather than one big first/last element." Stories do not have "climaxes" plural. They have one, individual climax. A climax is like the summit of a mountain. You cannot have multiple summits. You can have many peaks, but there is only one highest point, assuming you have any mountain at all. A climax is also like--as noted above--the first or last entry in a list where you don't repeat anything. Whether it's {blue, red, yellow} or {1,2,3,4} or {above, between, below}, a list that doesn't repeat things must have distinct first and last elements (as long as it has at least 2 elements, anyway; the empty set and any set with a single element are degenerate cases and don't apply, here). The order may be arbitrary, it may be semantic, it may be random, but for any given list of its elements, there must be one first and one last. A climax is the last peak of action in a story, the one that is the resolution point for the story's conflict. Having multiple actual climaxes makes no sense, especially if we're referring to the climax of the entire comic, rather than the climax of independent, smaller entities within it (such as the part typically called Hivebent). Like the mountain example above, if you look only at a single portion (a single peak), you'll find a local climax. But the mountain range, and the story as a whole, must have some particular peak which is the climax, the tallest peak, the highest point, if it has any variation in points at all. The problem is, as presented, the final climax either doesn't actually occur within the story (we see the spike in tension all the way through to the end of Act 7, but don't get to see the actual summit itself), *or* it occurred a long time before Act 7, and the teasing and drawing-out of the narrative after that point was just bullshit to keep stringing us along. Either way, there's a fundamental problem with Homestuck's climax: it was either very poorly done, to the point of masquerading as being just another hurdle rather than the Final Battle, or it was never shown at all. That's a pretty bad place for a (Western) narrative to be. As a note: non-Western storytelling--that is, storytelling not deriving from the Greco-Roman tradition--often features radically different construction and components, so these statements aren't valid for those kinds of stories. But discussing "the climax" of a Buddhist-style narrative is both completely pointless, like trying to discuss the feathers of a mammal, and completely off-base when applied to Homestuck. Because Homestuck is, despite all the claims to the contrary, a very standard Greco-Roman style narrative, with a hero (John), a variable cast of supporting heroes (the human characters, the troll children), a central conflict that gradually unfolds and expands (create and protect a new world), a series of antagonists (B1 Jack Noir, Doc Scratch, Betty Crocker/The Condesce, Lord English), and a variety of stock Western symbolism.
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Post by Blaperile on Aug 7, 2016 11:16:49 GMT
I still don't see how Collide doesn't fit as the actual climax of the story. It is the last peak of action, with all the villains being fought in battle and is the resolution of all the conflicts in the B2 session plus Caliborn's session, with the Lord English conflict being the only one unresolved out of 6 conflicts (8 even, if you count the Cans and Clover conflicts separately, the only two Felt members who had never been defeated before).
To me, I almost couldn't have wished for a better climax than this.
Lord English not being defeated on-screen was hardly a surprise, many of us had been predicting that for years, and we even got closer to actually seeing it happen than I originally could have dared to hope for.
And while in Act 7 itself I was pretty surprised when it was suddenly cut off, in retrospect it makes a lot of sense to me that a character who bends the story to his will is, from a meta perspective, 'defeated' by ending the story itself. Heck we even have the author of the comic give him a thumbs down just before the story ends.
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