Webcomics

Perhaps I should have seen this coming, the way he wrapped up the Fantasy crew’s quest. Ironically, the Fantasy theme had an open-ended finale.

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(From Irregular Webcomic! Click for full-sized history of the periodic table.)

While researching the xkcd post from earlier today, imagine my surprise upon discovering that while I had stopped reading it, David Morgan-Mar had brought Irregular Webcomic! to a rather abrupt halt.

What’s even more freaky is that my very last IWC post predicted that the plan of the Steve and Terry and Scientific Revolution crew to turn Morgan-Mar’s pseudo-author avatar into Hitler (yes, that actually happened, and I never accused IWC of PVP/Goats Syndrome) could have wide-ranging effects on the timeline and universe of IWC.

(Not that IWC didn’t try to contract PVP/Goats Syndrome at the end, or entirely restore the history we’re familiar with, as it’s heavily implied that Death of Choking on a Giant Frog is actually Hitler, in Me’s body, after being assassinated by Haken in that fashion. Also, to clean up some loose ends from my other IWC posts, Shakespeare does in fact turn out to not only be from the 16th century, but to know it, but this leads to nothing but an incredibly cheezy and deus-ex-machina (even knowingly so) ending to the theme.)

Anyway, while Me’s death didn’t quite destabilize the timeline, that was only because the Head Death decided to send him back to 2002, because he was “the pivot point of this entire multiverse“, whose death wound up destabalizing it. So IWC wound up ending in a fashion quite similar to how I once predicted it might: Me discovering this newfangled “comics on the internet” thing.

Don’t worry, I didn’t give him the idea. In fact, he’d apparently had it in mind for years… but only came to the decision to end the comic less than a year before doing so, which makes me wonder exactly how planned the Irregular Crisis really was. (Although I call bullcrap on that claim, considering he ended the comic shortly after hitting Calvin and Hobbes’ comic-count, as he’d claimed his goal was.)

However, perhaps the real shocker of the Irregular Crisis and Morgan-Mar ending the comic? IWC was actually putting demands on his time! Who would’ve thunk it was even possible, with how many nonprofit projects he had?

Penny Arcade, xkcd, AND Homestuck in just over a week? It’s the uber-popular webcomic trifecta!

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(From xkcd. Click for full-sized round number.)

I wanted to take a moment to honor the occasion of xkcd joining the 1000-Update Webcomic Club. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily difficult to crank out 1000 comics, considering how many comics have done so (after all, it’s hardly 2000), but it still requires a minimum of three years of cranking out a comic on a regular basis (more than I showed with my own abortive webcomic attempt that still lasted over a year). That takes commitment and people who are willing to support you in a thankless project with no monetary guarantees (not that xkcd is lacking in money).

Of course, this milestone does come with a dirty little secret, but MS Paint Adventures didn’t let its own dirty little secrets keep it from honoring when its URLs hit 6,000… (Yeah, xkcd, you’ve got a while to go to match that!)

Does the precise medical condition they’re dealing with help with the reaction?

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(From PVP. Click for full-sized relative strength.)

I have to admit, after some early bad signs, I have to begrudgingly praise Scott Kurtz for how he’s handled this storyline.

Not being familiar with the exact reasons why the treatment of Lilah’s miscarriage in Ctrl+Alt+Del pissed so many people off so much (and not necessarily sharing that reaction), I’m not sure whether I should praise or blame Kurtz for the continued use of humor to lighten the situation. But no matter what, there is one area in which Kurtz is far outdoing Tim Buckley, and that is in Brent’s character development.

Now, I haven’t read PVP on a regular basis, for various reasons, but when I reviewed it three years ago, one aspect of the strip that stood out was Brent’s inability to grow up. As with Ctrl+Alt+Del and Ethan, it seemed intentional and the character and strip had every intention not to let him (or the rest of the cast) grow up, but PVP seemed a little more self-conscious about it, to the extent that during his wedding, several supernatural entities told him it was time for him to grow up and let Skull (arguably a symbol of Brent’s, and PVP‘s, continued childhood) go, resulting in the incident that continues to define “PVP/Goats Syndrome” for me: Brent knocking the head off a living statue with a golf club in the middle of his own wedding. Yes, that actually happened, and it wasn’t intended to be a joke.

Well, now Brent is faced with his father in a vulnerable position, and is completely overwhelmed by the gravity of the situation. He’s being expected to take charge of the situation, and he can’t handle the responsibility. He’s being asked to be strong, and all he’s known is leaning on his father for strength, and now his father has none. More than ever happened to Ethan, and more than losing Skull did, Brent is being forced to grow up, very fast.

I’m not sure if Kurtz is going to allow this to lead to any major changes in Brent’s character or general outlook on life. But it’s still telling that this story arc opens the door for more character development for Brent, while Lilah’s miscarriage closed it for Ethan.

I really shouldn’t read TV Tropes’ Wild Mass Guessing section for stuff I follow. It keeps me from coming to my own conclusions and reactions.

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(From MS Paint Adventures: Homestuck. Click for full-sized punishment for faking one’s own death.)

So it turns out the post-Scratch session was not a red herring, and the real red herring was the notion of Hussiebot as Evil!Hussie, which maybe I should have seen coming. Still, I wanted to make sure Jane was safe and sound before saying anything about Act 6’s first intermission.

Yes, not only was the return to the characters we’ve been following for five acts consigned to an “intermission” within Act 6, but the first intermission, implying Hussie has at least one more planned for this climactic act. In fact, there are six sub-acts planned for Act 6, if one can read anything from the progression of curtains in a prior flash (although you could read it as five). It seems a little risky to sweep the characters we’ve been following for so long aside and put the focus on these almost completely new characters for the act that will resolve the central conflict of Homestuck, almost like these guys we’ve never heard of are swooping in and stealing the glory of the characters we’ve been following.

The main revelation of this intermission was that, while those characters are taking a trip to the post-Scratch session, it won’t be instantaneous – they will have to make up the entire three-year advantage the post-Scratch kids have on them. The three nanoseconds it takes John, Jade, and their ship to span the one yard they have within wherever-the-hell-Hussie-is will take three years for them, and Rose, Dave, and the surviving trolls (except Aradia and ghost!Sollux) will be riding the meteor to the new session over the same period of time. (I understand Sollux was able to speed up the meteor to get to the Green Sun, but how come Derse’s moon was so much faster?)

Keep in mind, everything that happened over the preceding five acts took place over a little over a day at most, from the kids’ seemingly-normal existences (and only knowing each other through online chats) to heading out towards an unfamiliar session while being god-tiered… and that will now take three freaking years. Three years of John and Jade stuck with nothing but each other, Davesprite, the planets Jade shrunk, and a big green backdrop. Three years of Rose, Dave, Karkat, Terezi, Kanaya, and Gamzee stuck with nothing but each other and whatever surprises the meteor has. Less than twenty-four hours ago, the kids led completely normal lives, and now they’re stuck with this for three freaking years. I can see why John and Karkat (none of whose “compatible” pairs are travelling with each other) might go a little crazy at the very prospect.

Oh, and a captivated Jack Noir runs off from the confrontation with PM, if only temporarily, while PM drops the Wayward Vagabond off with Rose, Dave, and the trolls, leaving it very possible that he might yet be revived. Rose implies that Noir will follow them to the new session, but between Aradia promising to buy them some time and PM giving hot pursuit, I wouldn’t be surprised if something happened between them at the Green Sun (even if only a repeat of what happened back at the troll session). The final showdown is starting to take shape.

For the moment, though, we’re back to the post-Scratch universe and session, where Jane’s dreamself actually managed to revive herself from getting killed by that session’s Noir, in a move presumably related to being the Hero of Life. (Whether her realself’s survival is also related to that, or (as she thinks) to the post-Scratch equivalent to Bec, is up in the air.) We also answered the question of how Jake’s dreamself died (and it’s one of the more humorous deaths I’ve ever seen) while raising more questions: what’s the “new management” over on Derse (it’s evidently not Noir), and why have they greenlit killing the dreamselves before the realselves even arrive?

So, is there any particular reason the dialogue balloons cover up the doctor’s face?

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(From PVP. Click for full-sized waiting room suspense.)

When I first pulled up this comic, the screen cut off right below the two-week-old headline, “Yes, We’re Serious”, making me wonder if this storyline was the PVP equivalent of what’s been happening over at xkcd, with both creators writing real-life medical scares into the comic. But no, it turns out it’s just another Scott Kurtz rant about how stupid newspapers are and how he’s the Certified Webcomics Genius(tm).

In any case, this storyline has been treated nothing like what xkcd‘s been doing (although xkcd has hardly been above making light of the situation). This storyline spun out of a bit where Brent was unable to cope with beating his dad arm-wrestling (a match Brent challenged him to after his dad opened a pickle jar for him and said he had “artist’s hands”, suggesting Kurtz flip-flopped a little here), hugged him, then saw him have a heart attack. The preceding comic to this one involved Brent blaming himself and worrying that he’d killed his father… and a little devil walking by and walloping him with a chain. If Brent’s worries prove founded – especially if it’s in Friday’s comic – I wouldn’t be surprised if people start having flashbacks to another webcomic medical scare: Lilah’s miscarriage.

That said, in this comic, I do think the slowly darkening panels and Brent’s visible regression in age is a nice, if subtle, touch.

To be honest? The only reason I’m reviewing this comic at all is to continue a new streak of posts every weekday.

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(From Penny Arcade. Click for full-sized vampire feeding habits.)

I have no idea what this comic is talking about, even after reading the news post. Maybe it would make more sense if I were reading the comics leading up to it, or the prior newsposts. I don’t know.

All I know is, reading it out of context like this? Makes it resemble some sort of surreal, horrifying Dadaist experience. And the expression on Gabe’s face throughout the strip isn’t helping.

(Wait, Gabe is referred to, within the strip, as “Mike”? I don’t even know what to make of that…)

We’re learning far too much about the bad guys’ plans for them to be remotely successful.

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized family affair.)

When I predicted that Nale and Tarquin might make up and form one side in the battle for the Gates, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

Although Tarquin seems willing to accept his son’s direction, as at least one person on the forum points out, he’s also equally willing to let someone else hold the official position of leader of the Empire of Blood, so he could be just as willing to try to manipulate Nale similarly. But that might actually turn out to be a far more interesting outcome than if he just let Nale run the show, and not necessarily because Tarquin would be entirely successful.

Tarquin knows a lot, but he’s not omniscient, and so far as we know, Sabine is the only person in that room who knows what the real power behind the Linear Guild is. The IFCC might be willing to put up with Tarquin joining the group and even calling the shots so long as it results in more conflict for Girard’s Gate, but it’s very easy to see a scenario where Tarquin takes the Linear Guild in a direction they don’t want it to go, or raises them beyond the level of “incompetent buffoons”. That could result in much of the comic’s conflict occuring within the Linear Guild, especially between Sabine and Tarquin with Nale caught in the middle. It’s been speculated that Nale might find out about and rebel against the IFCC at some point; we may be seeing the groundwork being laid for that.

At any rate, after spending so long inside the Empire of Blood, the comic is moving everything straight towards what’s shaping up to be an epic, multi-way conflagration at Girard’s Gate, one that’ll make the Linear Guild encounter we just had look like child’s play.

Tarquin, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized negotiations.)

Rich finally proved a forum theory wrong for once… sort of.

Quite a few people speculated that Tarquin knew something about the Gates, and while theories about Tarquin and Nale working in collusion had died down considerably, I myself was still toying with them. Both theories look like they’ve been pretty much shot down… with regard to anything that happened before this strip, that is.

When last we talked about OOTS, Tarquin revealed that he didn’t actually know anything about Girard, but still gave the OOTS a lead toward his gate – a lead his late ex-wife had let slip, and that she was planning to follow up on, shortly before her death. The OOTS figured that her source was likely a disguised Sabine, and that Nale killed her when she was no longer useful – despite the fact that, when speaking of Penelope’s death earlier, Tarquin used phrasing that someone less dense than Elan would figure suggested he himself was the culprit.

If Tarquin did kill her, and if this clue was the reason for that, it might have been the result of jealousy and not wanting her to return to her ex-husband, or it may have been that he sensed the importance of what she said and wanted to keep her from spilling more beans. That means that, in all likelihood, if Tarquin killed her it was likely after he learned that Nale was afoot.

Interestingly, Tarquin implies in this strip that he only knew of Nale’s presence after Penelope let slip her clue, which was only “a few weeks ago”, although it seems apparent that Zz’dtri had been present for longer (his elf-ambassador disguise is shown as being present when Penelope lets slip her clue in the original strip), and Nale had earlier told Elan that he had been here for “months“. I don’t see how Tarquin could have drawn the connection between what Penelope said and Nale’s presence if he knew Nale was there the whole time, which lends more credence to the notion that Nale killed her either when she outlived her usefulness or to keep from tipping off Tarquin to his presence – although the notion that Tarquin only recently learned of Nale’s presence seems more credible to me. (The two aren’t mutually exclusive, of course; though it’s unlikely, Tarquin could be telling the truth when he implies that he only learned of Nale’s presence in the last few strips.)

Why did Tarquin keep Elan around through the festival? Partly to make sure they were still around for it, rather than run off the instant they got their information or upon finding out this wasn’t the Draketooth they were looking for, partly to use the festival to draw out Nale, but maybe we should also consider why Tarquin said in the previous strip, “it is in our own best interest that they succeed.” Keep in mind, when he says this he knows nothing about the Gates or about Xykon, but he does know that Nale probably won’t be there when they get there, he knows that they are chasing “some cliched scenery-chewing villain bent on world conquest“, and we can reasonably assume that he has some inkling that he might want to chase off after them (especially since “cliched scenery-chewing villain bent on world conquest” is a pretty good description of Tarquin himself).

Everything Tarquin has done since we’ve first met him, then, has likely been aiming towards several goals: draw out Nale (doubtless engineering “Roy v. Thog” to help with this), weaken the teams of both of his sons, learn enough about the OOTS to properly incorporate them into his plans, send the OOTS on their way with enough time to stop the other cliched villain, find out what he can about what both teams are doing from a source likely to fold when he threatens him (he may have initially thought Elan stood a chance at qualifying until he found out how much of a Pollyanna he is), and maybe some other plots I can’t even fathom because I’m not the diabolical mastermind Tarquin or Rich are. Now that that’s been completed, it seems we have now officially filled in one of the “nine sides” going after the Gates (and Nale, like Xykon, presumably doesn’t know that the Snarl is pretty much worthless for conquest)… although it’s worth leaving open the possibility that Nale and Tarquin will make up and form one side.

I take two weeks off and already I’m completely rusty with these webcomic posts.

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(From MS Paint Adventures: Homestuck. Click for full-sized nanowatch.)

I stopped reading Homestuck for the past two weeks while my computer was down. As my posting prowess in the interim should suffice to show, this was not a result of my inability to post, but rather an inability to couple my Homestuck-reading with another, related project. I still shouldn’t be posting; I have too much to do to wrap up the quarter at school.

In the interim, the post-Scratch session has gotten weeeeeird.

It’s become apparent that the effects of the Scratch, for whatever reason, are not limited to simply switching the places of the kids and guardians. Elements of the trolls’ universe are seeping in, and not just the “thirteenth troll”. There are the lusii on Jake’s island, and there’s Lalonde’s repeated references to “wiggling day” in her last conversation with Jake. And the two characters we haven’t gotten proper introductions to seem to have taken the lead; they seem to know a lot more about the session they’re entering than Jane and Jake, even though the latter two have gotten plenty of information from the “thirteenth troll”, to the point of dictating the order of entry.

It seems rather odd that Lalonde and Strider would know so much about the game that Jane and Jake don’t. Couple that with Lalonde’s aforementioned “wriggling day” reference, and it’s easy to wonder whether they’re entirely what they seem – which would make Lalonde’s suspicion of Betty Crocker’s nature rather suspect.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the part where Jane just freaking exploded.

I imagine that, when this happened, all sorts of questions ran through the fandom’s heads, questions like how the story could continue with the equivalent of John dead (after Jake’s death had been foreshadowed in Jane’s dreams). As we’ve heard, Jane has been the subject of assassination attempts before, so she could conceivably survive this one. But the impression I’ve gotten from the latest interlude is that this entire post-Scratch session may well have been a red herring, allowing Hussie to toy with the fans with various bits of “fan-canon”, only to serve as a long-winded introduction to “Hussiebot” and his schtick.

That schtick, if we are to take this panel at face value, may well involve every piece of misfortune that has befallen this story so far. If Hussiebot is, somehow, the invisible hand behind every major death in the story, truly Andrew Hussie’s “evil twin”, then perhaps he is the true villain of the story, more supreme even than Noir, Scratch, maybe even Lord English – if he doesn’t have some sort of tight-knit connection with English somehow.

I won’t be able to remark on whatever happens next with Hussiebot, John, and Jade until Sunday at the earliest, leaving open the possibility that there will be some sort of major development on Saturday that will be immediately followed up on and leave any reaction I might have in the dust. It’s not entirely out of the question that the universe we just spent nearly a month getting acquainted with will still have some impact on the story, but I do have to admit: it is refreshing to get back to the main plot again.

Argh, is Elan being sensible when the plot calls for it again?

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(From The Order of the Stick. Click for full-sized race against time.)

After a year-and-a-half in the Empire of Blood, it’s looking like we’re finally starting to move back to the main plot.

Tarquin just took a single strip to drop most of the knowledge, for what it’s worth, on Girard that he’s promised during that time, and what it basically amounts to is a lead on the location of Girard’s Gate, but very little on Girard himself, other than that the notion that he might be dead by now is once again very plausible (or, perhaps, that he’s used aliases and illusions to keep himself young). That’s enough information, though, that Elan seems to be bringing the Empire of Blood interlude to a rather abrupt halt to chase after that lead – making me once again wonder if this interlude went on far longer than Rich intended.

On the other hand, while it originally looked like Tarquin’s “employment opportunity” for Roy and Belkar was going to be the pretense for putting them back together with the Order, that now looks like it might be rather hard to pull off – unless Tarquin takes a particularly keen interest in the Order’s journey. Adding credence to that, there’s a lot that doesn’t add up here: Elan decides that the Linear Guild pressed Tarquin’s ex-wife for information, then killed her, but Tarquin had previously indicated that he might have killed her himself… leaving open the possibility that Tarquin has his own knowledge of, and interest in, the Gates, one that doesn’t intersect with the Order’s in a friendly way.

Which is not to say it intersects with that of the Linear Guild in a friendly way either; I could easily see a scenario where Tarquin deduced that Penelope was helping Nale and killed her so she’d stop. In any case, it’s starting to look like the fight we just had between the Order and the Linear Guild may soon look like child’s play…