#cannot muster up a single fuck to give about the ancestors though i have no idea how anyone does

[zapsoda]

i dont think people are allowed to be mean to eridan anymore weve had 14 years of that. enough is enough

[love-laika]

homestuck reread: act 5

sso , as a follow up to this post (jesus christ did i really write that over two weeks ago?), i figured i ought to post my thoughts while rereading act 5 of homestuck. obviously spoilers if you still care about that at this point

when most fans talk about homestuck today, they’re really talking about act 5. its when some of the more infamous aspects (trolls, absurd time shenanigans, ridiculously meta storytelling) come in full force. i also happen to believe it’s probably the best part of the whole story (well so far, i still have to reread act 6). before jumping in, pretty much all of my previous complaints remain.

The trolls are great. That’s really all there is to say on the matter! Seeing how their session plays out is really fun, especially since unlike the kids, it is aggressively abridged. It’s so short, I’m actually curious why Hussie chose to have it be an Intermission rather than Act 5 Act 1... or well, actually given the events leading to Cascade, that might not be true. It’s a nice meta way of signifying how the A and B sessions are intimately tied.

Either way, I thought it’d be fun to examine how I feel about each troll! 

Karkat - Everyone’s favorite, really. His ridiculous screaming rants and obsession with feeling important brushes over his intense insecurity. The obsession with hiding his blood (even after Alternia is long gone), insistence on being leader, past/future self-hatred... he’s got a hell of a complex. actually, the story shines a light on how he agonizes over every mistake he’s ever made, to the point where he dissociates his actions from himself by calling past/future him a FUCKING IDIOT or whatever. He’s a good boy

Aradia - On my previous read, I never thought much of Aradia. there wasn’t really anything in particular i disliked about her, she just never stuck. which of course is dumb, and past me is stupid for glossing over her. especially after going god-tier, she’s like... i can’t even really describe it. i guess is just safe to say i like alive aradia a lot because she’s just a little bit crazy

tavros - maybe its my bias towards vriska, but i kind of don’t like tavros. you know, maybe its some sort of reflection of how i feel about myself or something about how his coward schtick is annoying to me. (his raps are fun to read aloud though)

sollux - sollux is a complete asshole (basically to the end if i remember right), but even if he’s written to be unlikeable his position as a snarky jerk fits well within the troll group. though, surprisingly after his introduction he doesn’t do very much because he never interacts with the kids. his bifurcation gimmick though, and how its basically some absurd foreshadowing for act 5 as a whole is just. its so cool.

nepeta - nepeta has always been a favorite troll of mine even though she was basically born to die and plays no real role in the alpha timeline at all. despite this, fans like myself latched onto her because she’s a catgirl duh! the anime is inescapable. nepeta’s just cute bu her death scene makes me really sad... she didn’t deserve it! and being taken out by gamzee is just cruel. i guess this is what fanfiction is for???

kanaya - you know im starting to think my thoughts on all the various trolls were warped by the Vriska Distortion Field. I didn’t give a shit about the rest because vriska is the best!!!!!!!! this time around, i really noticed vriska and kanaya’s relationship sort of blossom all the way through act 5. its kind of touching after she had a pretty rough time in her own game after the Pupa Pan incident. kanaya’s great especially her transitioning from humorless broad to snark extraordinaire. i especially like to read her speech as just the most posh and practiced british accent Because It Makes Her Sound Sophisticated When Shes Saying Really Something Dumb Like Shout Pole

terezi - terezi’s gimmick is just so... so much. the obsession with justice and law (particlarly brutal troll law) makes her just totally silly. she hangs her stuffed animals from her treehouse. the blindness, the licking, H3Y D4V3-ness is a joy to read. it also helps that her harpsichord-led music is some of the best over the entire discography.

vriska - you know how i feel about vriska. you cannot beat her in a troll-off she is simply the 8est there is

equius - i don’t like equius! hes a creep! his gimmick is that hes a sweaty space racist! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! i really don’t understand people that get attahed to him! i wish nepeta got to spend more time separate from him!

gamzee - ah yes the most important character in homestuck. i like gamzee, but 

i dont like his position with fans as the fuckin yaoiest boy to ever live when hes actually a horrorcore clown murderer

how long he remains in the story. way longer than he ever should have stayed. i understand he has to do stuff for lord english and all that, but i kind of wished he died on the meteor. oh well!

eridan - ah yes the other space racist. eridan i can actually stand though because he’s basically every shitty boy you’ve ever met. he’s totally desperate and pathetic and then when he gets rejected he gets violent. for such a silly comic, i think it stumbles into something weirdly real there. eridan’s a douche until the very end. i also give him like chavviest voice i can muster. it is a blight on the queens english and i apologize

feferi - i really noticed that feferi is a little bit deeper than i originally thought! i always just thought of her as “the nice girl” but she can be pretty devious and even cruel occasioanlly. She has an interaction with Vriska in what of the Alterniabound flashes is just so... prickly? on both sides.

ANYWAYS when we get back to the kids, I’ll admit I don’t remember a lot of the details. john goes to explore skaia and spends a lot fot ime with vriska. dave builds up a ridiculous amount of money, rose fucks shit up, and jade eventually gets to start breeding frogs after fianlly entering the game. i can’t exactly explain why, but the pacing here just feels better. maybe its variey of environments and general avoidance of pointless distractions, but its a much easier read than the earlier parts. i mean, i guess id hope so after the comic has gone on for 3 years at this point i think. Act 5, in totality is about the same length as all the previous parts combined, but goes by way faster! it kind of sucks that you know, you have to dig through a lot to get to the good parts. but man those parts are really good.

ad then we get to the buidlup to cascade, the parts in doc scratch’s room. I feel like some of the realest shit is right here. vriska’s triumph/death just kills me every time. i kind of take john’s side here on her past. at the very end, when she really starts to show remorse and to wonder who vriska really is breaks my heart. terezi’s end as well. the culmination of their friendship and rivalry coming down to a single choice. kill her, or let her go and doom everyone. its sad in a way very little else is in the story (except maybe dave and rose’s suicide mission). even knowing what happens much later, it just... its so rough yall.

i remember crying reading most of these parts. i have very specific memories of it happening. i wish it was easier to show new people some of these parts because they are just ugh... so choice. im a sucker for it. also there’s the sotry of the troll ancestors, her imperious condescension, lord english, etc etc etc.

i dont have much to say about cascade, a lot has already been said by everyone else. it is almost certainly the climax, even if the story has a ways to go, and its a triumph! It almost feels like it should be the end of the story in some ways because of how it is the culmination of everything that has happened since the very beginning.

thats all i can really say about that without getting bogged down in minutiae. Act 5 is fantastic, period. Now that Lord English is here (or rather, he already was), a new arc begins in Act 6. It’s approximately around here where I caught with the story as it was coming out! I’m really really curious about how I feel about when reading it in one go because it’s also around this time that updates got slower and slower, due to increased production time, then the exceptionally troubled development of Hiveswap.