#cause bug people exist in the Epic movie universe but i need to give them a better name than hybrid

[homespork-review]

Homespork Act 1: The Note Dawdling Tension Plays (Part 1)

A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, 2009, is this young man's birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!

CHEL: Here we see the first page, and are introduced to our protagonist, ZOOSMELL POOPLORD! Sorry, I mean John Egbert. The joke names used as a running gag, and also the actual names which end up applied to the characters, were the suggestions of the players of the original forum game.

BRIGHT: Homestuck does start out strongly in several ways. It immediately establishes the protagonist and location. It sets the tone it will use, one based heavily on a text adventure computer game. It introduces the reader to the inventory system...

And here the first feature of Homestuck becomes apparent: although a hugely popular and widely known webcomic, it is very slow to get going. The new reader who arrives on the recommendation of others ends up scratching their head and wondering if they’re in the right place.

TIER: In ancient times (so somewhere in 2014/15) I actually attempted to read Homestuck to see what the occasional weird noises the name caused were going on about. I'm very certain that I didn't even make it to meeting any of the other kids I was so bored.

CHEL: Same here. It took me two or three attempts to get to that point. The problem is that the intro is left over from its days as a forum game, in which no one was expecting it to lead into the epic story it became. It worked great for that format, but less well now. And here we start on our first counts.

GET ON WITH IT!: 1 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 2

How Not to Write a Novel lists multiple errors which could be said to apply here:

The Waiting Room - wherein the story is too long delayed Here the writer churns out endless scenes establishing background information with no main story in sight. On chapter 3, the reader still has no idea why it’s important to know about [the background info, in this case how badly John fails at using technology]. By chapter 7, the reader would be having strong suspicions that it isn’t important, were a reader ever to make it as far as chapter 7. Zeno’s Manuscript - in which irrelevant detail delays narrative momentum Any scene can be killed by description of every meaningless component of whatever action the character undertakes. As in Zeno’s Paradox, in which an arrow never reaches its target because it must always travel half the remaining distance, the reader begins to feel as if the end is further and further away.

A comic about a kid failing to master a video game inventory system is mildly amusing once, but not when it drags on this long, and it’s not particularly fitting for an epic adventure involving the fate of universes. Well, that’s not quite fair; introduction to mundane life and slow revelation of the magical goings-on works fine for books like the Harry Potter series. But, to take Philosopher’s Stone as an example, multiple different odd things happen over the course of Uncle Vernon’s regular boring day, increasing in scale until it’s very clear something strange is going on, and establishing multiple aspects of the wizarding world, e.g. owls, their fashion, the existence and disappearance of a mysterious villain, the fact that the wizarding world is supposed to be secret.

John fucking about with his sylladex and putting up movie posters for page after page doesn’t tell us anything new. Failing to use the sylladex once would be enough to get the point that magical video game inventories are a thing in this world and John’s not very good at using them across, and then we really ought to move on, and we can already see the posters on his walls so we don’t need to see him hanging more. Possibly we could have needed the latter in a purely text format where we couldn’t see the walls, or in a comic without text description at the bottom where attention would need to be drawn to them on-panel. Admittedly, it does establish him picking up the hammer, which becomes relevant, but we don’t need a full page each for both the action of him picking up the hammer and the action of him hanging the poster.

… Who hangs a poster with nails, anyway? His walls must be in a hell of a state.

For that matter, that’s another HNTWAN entry or two:

The Second Argument in the Laundromat - a scene which occurs twice NEVER use two scenes to establish the same thing. We do not, under any circumstances, want a series of scenes in which the hero goes to job interviews but fails to get the job, or has a series of unsuccessful dates to illustrate bad luck in love. This works in the movies, where three scenes can pass in thirty seconds, but not in a novel. The Redundant Tautology - wherein the author repeats himself If you have made a point in one way, resist the temptation to reinforce it by making it again. Do not reexpress it in more flowery terms, and do not have the character reaffirm it in dialogue […] This point is worth repeating; don’t reiterate. HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 4

Additionally, people with a lower tolerance for “lovable clumsy dork” characters are going to come to hate John before the comic’s even started, though it’s probably best that people who are going to hate the main character learn that quickly so they can leave. I can understand not wanting to lose the forum game which originally spawned the comic, the other people involved would probably not be pleased, but perhaps it would be better saved as a side story and trimmed down when the comic proper was released. At least they could be compressed down by showing multiple failures and multiple poster-hanging actions on single pages.

One other minor gripe might be the neologisms, such as “sylladex” meaning inventory. I found it fairly easy to pick up and it does make the tone and narration nicely distinctive, but it’s a level of extra complication. How Not to Write a Novel has a couple points on excessively baroque wordplay - do you guys think it’s worth giving it a point for that?

BRIGHT: Possibly not in this case - wordplay is a feature of HS and this one is at least made fairly clear. There are plenty of offenders later on as I recall though...

CHEL: Okay, seems fair. In this case it is more of a feature than a bug. It does establish the narrative voice and add to the video game theme. However, the movie posters also bring up an addition to our third count.

Plus, a black president? Now you’ve seen everything! WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 1

A reference to the song “White Suburb Impressionism”, by IAMX…

"IAMX - 'White Suburb Impressionism" (Watch on YouTube)

… this count goes up whenever characters behave in a way which suggests they’re, well, white and suburban (or wealthier), despite any attempts to present them otherwise. This would have passed without comment, but Hussie later tried to claim he’d always intended the kids to be “aracial”, so any reader could project themselves or their preferred headcanons onto the kids. As we’ll show you, we don’t believe him, or at least don’t believe he succeeded. That would probably be difficult to pull off, anyway. Race affects a lot more than features on a stylised sprite.

FAILURE ARTIST: Now, I can’t quite put my finger on it but John’s and Dave’s opinion on black presidents in movies (that it’s a gimmick ruined by Obama’s election) feels like something that would only come out of a white mouth i.e. Andrew Hussie’s. Not the most egregious case of implied whiteness but still worth noting.

CHEL: The point of the joke here is not 100% clear, and that’ll be a thing which comes up later as well. See, I agree that’s Dave’s opinion, but I thought the point was that John genuinely didn’t know there was a black president at the time of writing because he’s already been established to be not exactly a genius and so far he’s been focused on movies and video games instead of real life. Maybe I’m underestimating him, though, since admittedly not very much of him has been shown at this point and it’s been a while since I read the whole thing. I’m not going to start using the ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY count here, though, because here Hussie clearly was trying to be funny. It just isn’t clear to me what about it was supposed to be funny. That’s probably my autism talking, though. Jokes are hard. I agree that it sounds like a white kid’s opinion either way - even the dimmest black American kid would know Obama existed, and so most likely would non-black people of colour.

Anyway! Things pick up a bit when John, under the username ectoBiologist, starts chatting to the second character to be introduced, currently known as turntechGodhead, though the second topic of conversation is a reference to a 1989 movie which, as time goes on, will be familiar to fewer and fewer readers. Luckily, the writer realises this, and the content of the conversation makes the reference sufficiently clear without falling into As You Know dialogue.

FAILURE ARTIST: Namely, their conversation is about a scene where - pardon me for being gross but it’s in the comic - a character accidentally ingests urine instead of apple juice. John and TG are surprised the character knew it was urine but I find it weird that someone with working smell would not know what it is. Urine has a distinct odor.

CHEL: Well, be fair. According to the drawings, the characters in question don’t have noses!

FAILURE ARTIST: On a more pertinent note, this conversation is an edited version of one Hussie and a friend had. Perhaps Hussie was TG? TG is practically an Author Avatar for Hussie. Sure, Hussie literally appears in the comic later, but TG seems to fit his true personality better. We’ll see how that affects things for better or for worse.

BRIGHT: This is also the reader’s introduction to the Pesterlog. This is one of those things that seems like it should be out of place in a webcomic - it’s just a page of two people talking to each other in chatlog format, with no other information - but the Pesterlogs actually work surprisingly well.

FAILURE ARTIST: When I first read Homestuck, I didn’t know you had to click on the Pesterlog to open it. I just sat around wondering what amazing conversations they were having. I’m not the only one I think who made that mistake.

CHEL: Yeah, I think I briefly had the same problem, but I don’t remember for sure. Possibly more attention could be drawn to the button.

TIER: I would've probably ended up in the same boat if the friends that recommended I read Homestuck didn't specifically tell me not to accidentally overlook them!

CHEL: That’s not exactly a writing error, so I’m not sure it falls under our jurisdiction, but it’s a point that ought to be brought up. The Pesterlogs do work well once the reader actually sees them, anyway. It’s actually pretty interesting to see how much information can be conveyed in a conversation without falling into As You Know Bob. Let’s check what points are introduced in this first one, for example:

- John really loves what he got for his birthday, a Little Monsters poster. From this we know he’s not spoiled (this is how you do it, Meyer) and easily entertained, and likely has a good home life, as he’s so happy and grateful about a gift from his dad.

-turntechGodhead has apple juice in his closet. This establishes his odd home life, and gets explained in more detail later.

- Some things about the personalities of both kids. John is enthusiastic and a joker, TG is mellower, sarcastic, rambles a bit, and at least plays at being cool.

- John really wants to play the SBURB Beta, a game mentioned earlier which is late being released. TG is less keen, again trying to be cool about it.

- Said game got “slammed” by critics, despite the fact that we learned earlier from John’s SBURB-logo calendar that this game has been hyped to hell and back and must be popular, with merchandise and reviews being released before even the beta version of the game is out. Something weird is going on; someone really wants a lot of people to play this game.

Not bad considering a total lack of body language reference or narration. Das Sporking’s seen authors using traditional narration do worse!

FAILURE ARTIST: The (adult) critics of Game Bro get into shenanigans that prevent them from playing the game they reviewed. Perhaps there’s something in the game that prevents itself from being played by adults, just like how adults can’t pilot Evangelions in the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion.

CHEL: Not sure. Doesn’t one of Dad’s online friends play it, or at least get caught up in it, later on? Though that part’s obviously supposed to be a joke… Maybe instead it’s a built-in way to stop anyone who might be listened to warning others what it does?

As established earlier, said beta is late; this is a reference to the originally planned launch date of the comic, three days before it actually ended up being released. Also, there’s a pun you may have missed in the background. The programming files on John’s desktop include the phrase “^CAKE”. The ^ symbol is called a carot. Get used to noticing those. It’s pretty amazing how many references, self-references, puns, and recurring themes are worked in, and people such as revolutionaryduelist have made semi-careers picking them all out. We won’t bother with all of them or we’ll be here all century, but we’ll pick up on any obvious ones.

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie majored in computer science so there’s lot of computer science in-jokes in the beginning.

BRIGHT: Something I just noticed: One of the other files on John’s desktop is ‘TYPHEUS’. It even has a Denizen icon! Probably something that has been brought up plenty of times before, but still nifty on a reread.

CHEL: Typheus and Denizens will come up later in the comic.

TIER: When he feels like it, Hussie is immensely good at foreshadowing later events in pretty subtle but solid ways. It's stuff like this that makes times when he does fumble look worse than they probably are in comparison.

[ivedonestranger]

Chapters: 24/?

Fandom: Teen Titans (Animated Series), Justice League & Justice League Unlimited (Cartoons), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe Rating: Mature Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Jinx/Raven (DCU) Characters: Raven (DCU), Cyborg (Character), Robin (DCU), Beast Boy, Batman, Green Lantern, Diana (Wonder Woman), Superman (DCU), Blue Beetle (DCU), Jinx (DCU), Koriand'r (DCU), Phil Coulson, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), See-More, Dorcas "Godiva" Leigh (DCU), Jason Woodrue, Bulletman, Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes, Zatanna Zatara, Komand'r (DCU), Stephen Strange, Karen Beecher, Kyd Wykkyd, Gizmo (DCU) Additional Tags: Multiple Crossovers, World Domination, Epic, Dark, Canon Temporary Character Death, Minor Character Death Series: Part 1 of The Midnight Saga Summary:

Though there were some in the know when it came to multiple realities, very few understood how expansive it was. Not only were their realities that changed fundamental parts of the known quantities, but there were also realities out there that were entirely different. Worse, there was something between those realities, and it wanted to get in.

All it needed was someone to open the door. She was his way in.

--------------------------------------

It was time.

The feeling flooded through Raven like a dawning truth, and it caused her eyes to pop open. She felt the thrum of excitement, the primordial terror of failure, and the fact everything was about to change permanently.

Raven and Jinx's naked bodies were intertwined among the blankets and pillows in her room of the Fortress and the pinkette mode in protest when Raven pushed her off. The woman walked over to the windows and throwing them open to allow the light to flood in. The rain from last night left everything glistening in the morning light as the sun came up.

It was time.

"Wake up, Jinx," Raven ordered as she pulled on her dark dress and fastened the control gem around her throat.

"Just five more minutes, Mistress," Jinx muttered rolling on her stomach and burying her head in the pillows. The Midnight Empress scooped up the leather belt and gave a good swat across the sleepy girl's exposed posterior which caused her to yelp and fall out of bed.

Fastening the belt around her waist, Raven leaned down to the surprised and sleepy girl.

"It's time."

The knowledge that the world was on a knife's edge was not lost on Robin when Batman signaled for the pullback of his team from Boulder. They all knew the alignment of the realities would give their lost friend a clear shot at opening the portal to Sovereign's prison.

The Quinn jet that had picked them up screeched through the sky towards the rendezvous, only miles away from Boulder, Colorado at the foot of Apache Peak. They did not want to sit on top of the portal point in fear of the rupture, destroying their chance to stop the evil creature. Robin leaned forward with hands together while Cyborg and Gizmo were going over some of their gadgets.

"You get the briefing, Robin?" Clint asked in the jumpsuit beside him. Robin nodded without looking at the bow and arrow wielding Avenger.

"We're air support on the southern flank. We're to keep Midnight's troops busy so Superman and Shazam can close in on Sovereign."

"And the Midnight Empress."

"Yes."

"You gonna be okay, kid?"

"Do I have a choice?"

Had they ever had a choice. Weren't he and his friends just curled up in Titan's tower only over a year ago eating pizza and watching movies? Now, he was part of an army that was trying their best to murder a woman that he once cared so much about.

'Not murder. Stop.'

This was war, and this was something that needed to be done to preserve the rest of reality.

"T minus 13 hours before optimal alignment," Iron Man's voice came through the speakers. His suit of armor flying in formation beside them. "Then, the party begins."

The Armies of Midnight rose like a dark cloud from the Fortress. The heroes and metas that allied with her taking the lead of Millinium's minions. The giant cyber bug himself was not far, towering over her thin frame like an ever-present watchdog with the power to level streets. Raven strode out among the troops, humans who had joined her cause, Metas who saw the truth of Sovereign and the cybernetic bugs that followed Sovereign's oldest ally.

Even clans of the Kaz-Kal, space insectoids from another galaxy had joined her cause, probably sensing the impending doom if they continued to resist. Blackfire and Jinx stood in the front of their legions, their heavy black outfit mirroring her own in their own unique cut. Jinx was showing some skin while Blackfire's resembled more battle armor of Tamaran.

"Lead, Archon," Millennium's voice thrummed in low pressure. "We shall follow you."

Wrapping herself in the golden light of her power, Raven rocketed into the sky, and the swarms followed. The first fight of the final battle about to begin.

The wind whipped and cut at her, but Raven pushed through, her mind focused on the goal, to land in the center of the point and ripped a hole in the fabric of space. The thoughts of Robin's laugh, Starfire's ill aligned words, and Cyborg's battle cry flitted across her mind, but she shunted it aside. There was a greater good to be fighting for, a greater good that required sacrifice.

'Can you do it?'

Sovereign's voice came through to her mind as clear as a bell. The alignment was almost perfect, and his presence could be felt.

"Can I do what?"

'Can you kill them if you face them?'

"I'll do what I have to do, my Sovereign," she answered, pushing her friend's faces out of her mind. "Whatever it takes."

Conveniently, the mathematics pointed to the entrance of the portal being in a field at the foot of Shoshoni Peak, and it had allowed them to dig in and hide among the sparse wood and rock faces. SHIELD and ARGUS agents with all sorts of weaponry, metas that Robin had never seen, and weapons of all sorts had been set up. Robin strode out of the Quinn Jet, his armor activating and the mask extending and wrapping his face. His titanium gap still billowed, but he resembled more a soldier than the hero of Jump Suit. The suit's optics kicked in overlaying the scene with augmented reality.

Cyborg strode up beside him and pointed to a cluster of trees.

"That's gonna be the best place to intercept any of the air attacks. We're gonna need to keep as many as we can off of Iron Man as possible."

Traveling a few more clicks, His new Titans found their spots and quickly hunched down to hide. Gizmo dropped a few scatter probes that masked their signature from any sensors. Starfire huddled in close to him. She had donned the full Tamaranian armor and face mask. Koriand' r had insisted as this was a fight for the existence of her own people too. Her eyes flitted to his mask a few times as they silently waited. Bumblee had shrunk down to a smaller size and up in the tree.

It was now time to wait.

The waiting was the hard part. The holo chronometer counted off the seconds, and the sun slowly rose into the sky, bathing them in its light. It had begun to get hot to the point that his suit's environmental systems kicked in to try and regulate. Birds were singing, and animals flitted to and fro as if nothing unusual was happening.

A few deer had taken up to eat in the center of the large field oblivious that they stood in the center of an intergalactic portal point.

"This waiting is killing me," Gizmo growled, his binocular lenses zoomed out giving him a strange insect-like look.

"Trust me; we're going to want to wait as long as we can. Once it starts, it's going to be all in." Cyborg responded. "There's no booyah in what we're about to do."

"Robin?"

Dick Grayson turned to his friend Starfire, who had come up close and lowered her voice. "I understand how difficult this is for you, but if you face Raven and find that you cannot do it. I will kill her for you. I am willing to take that burden."

"Star..." Robin started as a wave of emotion, choked him. She had spoken all their fear. Each had pretended not to hear her words, but he knew that they had.

"I'll make it quick. A snap of the neck and she won't feel a thing. It's the least I can do for someone who has meant so much to us."

"I'm not giving up on her," Robin said firmly.

"Dude," Cyborg said as quietly. "She's gone. If we don't kill her first, she'll take us out. You saw her eyes. Our Raven is gone. It's the Midnight Empress we're about to face."

Starfire returned to her spot to keep a lookout, and for the next hour, the image of Raven's lifeless body and the sound of her neck snapping played over and over in his mind's eye. It couldn't come to that. It couldn't.

"Heads up!" the speaker in Boy wonder's ear kicked in. "We've got incoming and a lot of it."

Robin looked up at Bumblebee as she zipped down and returned to size, her entire body covered with yellow and black armor, weapons at the ready.

"What is it?"

"They're sending in the grunts. Clouds of cyber minions and Kaz-Kal. They're going to try to overwhelm and hold so they can bring the bitch in."

"Alpha-2 this is central," Batman's voice came over, grim and somber. "It's a go. We see Midnight Empress in the center of the cloud. Pull those flankers away and give us our opening."

"Understood," Robin responded standing and turning to his team. "Let's do this."

Charging out, all of them shot into the sky. The jet pack lifted Robin off the ground while Cyborg's jet boots, had him going alongside Gizmo. Almost immediately the sky became alive with multi-colored energy bolts emanating from hiding spots cutting into the swarm and dropping them in droves. It seemed though that for every one killed, three appeared in its place. Bombs and bolts cut through them, and The New Teen Titans all banked north drawing a good swarm of them away. Below Robin could make out the descending mass being met by the colorful metas of the Avengers.

"Damn, all hell just broke loose!" Falcon called as he shot overhead, machine guns blasting away.

'No, hell is coming.'

In the center, Raven watched from her floating perch in the sky. The swarms had begun to descend, and as she had expected, Iris had set up, and they were mowing through her troops efficiently. She had expected as much. With their positions shown, the sorceress turned to Jinx and Blackfire and gave them a nod. With glee, the descended leading their armies with them.

The Midnight Empress watched closely as the battle raged, watching for her opening to cut through and to land. She could feel the urgency, the draw of the alignment growing closer. Raven could taste the anticipation coming off of her imprisoned comrade.

"Now!"

Without hesitation, she shot down towards the spot, and her guard followed. They twisted and turned as they descended, and she could feel the enemy focusing their firepower on her. Heroes flew by in blurs as the Kaz-Kal, allies, and cyber minions put themselves between them and her. She alighted on the ground and fell to her knees. She drew held her arms out, and the world became silent.

What was next was sheer pain as the power exploded out of her and into a forming vortex. An energy beam sliced through her shoulder spurting blood, but she could not care. Sovereign had come.

Forcing her eyes open, Raven saw the black portal that warped reality as if being pulled inside and from the distant stars. A form appeared and stepping out, floating in the air was a young man with brown hair, simple features but brilliant glowing gold eyes. He glided forward with a grin of pure ecstasy on his face.

"I. Am. Free!" he said with a laugh that seemed to reverberate through her.

"Sovereign!" Raven choked out a warning as she saw Superman come blasting from the woods, every ounce of energy thrown into the Kryptonian's influence. She knew that the blow he was about to deliver could shattered meteors, but when it connected with Jason's face, he barely flinched. Superman halted in front of him with a mixture of surprise and realization of how powerful the entity was.

"Hello," Jason said, a look of glee on his face. He backhanded Superman which sent him soaring away and impacting the side of a mountain. Shazam, in his red outfit, tried to hit also but found himself caught by the arm and hurled into the ground below, leaving a crater on impact.

Raven floated up to him, and he turned his eyes on her. His smile softened, and the girl's heart thrilled with excitement. It was horribly stupid of her, but she was glad he was handsome. Her Jason wasn't striking or adonis, but his eyes seemed ancient but kind. He ran his hand down her cheek.

"You've saved me. Thank you."

"Anything."

"Now, hold them off while I begin my process of bringing peace."

He floated upwards with arms outstretched and instantly, she felt a strange tug on her body and mind as if the world itself was beginning to shift and phase.

"SOVEREIGN!"

Raven turned to see Superman, bloodied and bruised charging in again with Wonder Woman right on his heels. Jason gritted his teeth and turned to face the attacker but caught the glint from the corner of his eye just like she did.

Batman stood there with Coulson with a strange bazooka, and the realization hit.

"No!" Sovereign's scream of anger reverberated through her.

Instinctively she flew up to him to shield him, but he dropped and grabbed hold of her. Instantly, she felt white-hot as if his hand was somehow cooking her body completely. She screamed in pain as he held her fast with no way to escape. The feeling broke abruptly when a bolt of red and blue energy struck him and dropped him to the ground. Raven could feel the power being ripped from him. Iris had done it. They had found a weapon to hurt him.

Dropping as fast, she caught the entity who had fallen unconscious, and as Superman darted towards her to grab her, she threw open a portal, fell through and snapped in shut cutting of the shout of rage from the Kryptonian. The next thing she knew, she hit the marble floor of the Fortress hard, the sorceress head slamming with a sickening crunch and though being ripped from her.