Something Awful and Friends - The roller-coaster train-wreck embarrassing downfall of a Web 1.0 giant and its tick offspring like from Cloverfield

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Turkey Beef said:
You just know the goonettes are gushing on overdrive about this news.
Senior Frogmin

Post in thread 'The Tumblr Files - Official Thread'

THE CANCER IS BACK I REPEAT THE CANCER HAS RETURNED.
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Reactions:Informative x 5 Islamic Content x 8 Lunacy x 2 Like x 1 Horrifying x 31 Thunk-Provoking x 2
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I think its more like "the tumor has started metastasizing again"
 
They still applaud trooning out your 6-year-old because he played with a Barbie doll?

(kid probably wanted a whore for his GI Joe)
 
The Fatriarchy said:
I'll still never understand how Homestuck took off. It was just Problem Sleuth except nobody was allowed to actually suggest future actions (the entire draw of MSPA in its first two iterations) and eventually devolved into walls of text and fake IM conversations that have no relevance to anything.
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Trollships.
People will pretend it was deeper than that but it wasn't. Characters that were introduced to parody internet personality types and then had a parody of Tumblr horniness and sexual fanfics fed back into the Tumblr ecosystem and generated more horniness. Was a female nerd horniness chain reaction, a sex fanfic Chernobyl.
 
Mellow Malevolent said:
Trollships.
People will pretend it was deeper than that but it wasn't. Characters that were introduced to parody internet personality types and then had a parody of Tumblr horniness and sexual fanfics fed back into the Tumblr ecosystem and generated more horniness. Was a female nerd horniness chain reaction, a sex fanfic Chernobyl.
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But it still had to take off BEFORE the trolls were even introduced. Or their... uhh... relationships. It was "big" before then, and I don't get why. The trolls and the degeneracy that followed was just the fanbase being who they were. It should have died as soon as he said "No, I'm ending the suggestion box and just writing whatever I want because it's too hard"
 
The only unilaterally good thing that came out of Homestuck was SBaHJ ...and that only had like 50 strips.
No. I didn't read the shitty KC Green book.
 
The Fatriarchy said:
But it still had to take off BEFORE the trolls were even introduced. Or their... uhh... relationships. It was "big" before then, and I don't get why. The trolls and the degeneracy that followed was just the fanbase being who they were. It should have died as soon as he said "No, I'm ending the suggestion box and just writing whatever I want because it's too hard"
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I think it just had the JJ Abrams style mystery box element to it enough that it hooked people on until the troll stuff went viral. The insinuation of greater continuity was something that was really important in a lot of the viral tumblr Fandoms like Doctor Who or Sherlock. Anything where you could write endless paragraphs of text about what everything means. And the novelty of the flash integration for project that large I think also kept people in. There was enough there that you could be fooled for a while into thinking it was going to be like Problem Sleuth but even better because it was planned out.

And also, perhaps more importantly, Isekai power fantasy. I remember finding out about Homestuck because someone in my last year of highschool got super into it, and he wouldn't shut about about the video game elements. Before Japan optimized the formula and added sexy waifus.
 
The Fatriarchy said:
I'll still never understand how Homestuck took off. It was just Problem Sleuth except nobody was allowed to actually suggest future actions (the entire draw of MSPA in its first two iterations) and eventually devolved into walls of text and fake IM conversations that have no relevance to anything.
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Homestuck was born off the back of Problem Sleuth/MSPA.

You need to remember that at the time Homestuck was getting started:
1) Earthbound/Mother 3 was "rediscovered" blowing up. I don't remember why, but it was getting a huge amount of attention. (I think someone had gotten their hands on cut content?)
2) Problem Sleuth was popular and went out on a high note, leaving people hungry for more
3) Webcomics like PREQUEL were out and with new capabilities were pushing the boundaries of what a webcomic could do, with stuff like pages that changed as you scrolled.
4) Broadband penetration was hitting critical mass in number of people who had access plus lowered costs.

Also remember back at the time Hussie was starting, he hadn't let IDPOL and coomerism completely hollow out his brain yet. He was making creative weirdfunny stuff like this
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So you have the new MSPA come out, and it looks like an upgraded version of Problem Sleuth with the same sort of irrelevant humor except with a massive capability upgrade in what it can do. IIRC they even had early Youtube embeds. and it starts out with the same sort of Problem Sleuth humor and word play.
Like Problem Sleuth was to Point-and-click adventures, Homestuck was going to be that except for Earthbound/16-bit RPGs.

Then there is just enough Young Adult coming of age story with the world ending, the main cast discovering powers, too keep you hooked and proven track record and creative content to make it look like it might get delivered. Hussie was also trying new stuff, a lot of it was tossing things at the wall to see what sticks but it was pretty cutting edge for the time. He also had a good team supporting him, Toby Fox at the beginning was making really good music for the project.
And almost as important: no hiati yet.

So that's why it got big before the Trollships started happening.

Coolio55 said:
The only unilaterally good thing that came out of Homestuck was SBaHJ
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Hussie once posted a SBaHJ article explaining how difficult it was to make the comics look as bad as they did.

Mellow Malevolent said:
I think it just had the JJ Abrams style mystery box element to it enough that it hooked people on until the troll stuff went viral. The insinuation of greater continuity was something that was really important in a lot of the viral tumblr Fandoms like Doctor Who or Sherlock. Anything where you could write endless paragraphs of text about what everything means. And the novelty of the flash integration for project that large I think also kept people in. There was enough there that you could be fooled for a while into thinking it was going to be like Problem Sleuth but even better because it was planned out.

And also, perhaps more importantly, Isekai power fantasy. I remember finding out about Homestuck because someone in my last year of highschool got super into it, and he wouldn't shut about about the video game elements. Before Japan optimized the formula and added sexy waifus.
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It was more than just JJ mystery boxes, as unlike JJ there was every indication in the world that Hussie would be able to deliver on those mystery boxes. He did lots of callbacks and extremely long set ups in his previous works, so it was expected that you were going to get extremely satisfying payoff.

Homestuck was honestly ruined by the fandom and the company Hussie kept. Shit like the Trollshipping were supposed to be ironic and making fun of retarded internet culture, but the fandom took to it unironically. Then Hussie I think got broken by success and was surrounded by libtards.
 
Coolio55 said:
The only unilaterally good thing that came out of Homestuck was SBaHJ ...and that only had like 50 strips.
No. I didn't read the shitty KC Green book.
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Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff actually predates Homestuck and comes from the Penny Arcade forums, it was originally a really mean spirited vehicle to mock a staggeringly incompetent webcomic whose creator got super defensive about his lack of skills. It was just appropriated and expanded for use in HS, probably because it was too funny to keep it buried in obscurity and confined to the inaugural three strips.
 
Seymour Duncan said:
Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff actually predates Homestuck and comes from the Penny Arcade forums, it was originally a really mean spirited vehicle to mock a staggeringly incompetent webcomic whose creator got super defensive about his lack of skills. It was just appropriated and expanded for use in HS, probably because it was too funny to keep it buried in obscurity and confined to the inaugural three strips.
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Correct. the mouth shape of SB was specifically taken from the webcomic that was being mocked.

Tons of stuff from his "Team Special Olympics" days found its way into Homestuck, such as the centaurs, Zoosmells, the horrific amateur fetish art with muscular horses, and I forget what else. Almost anything Bro/Dirk and Dave made or drew was something Hussie drew or based off of it and it made those inconsequential backgrounds seem really fleshed out and helped give the impression of depth and interconnectivity.


Before it went all way up its own ass, Homestuck was a fun webcomic with a lot of funnyweird easter eggs, call backs, and clearly a lot of high-quality effort and attention put into it.
I think it was somewhere around Act 3 or 4, basically around the first real hiatus, that Hussie really went up his own ass instead of just pretending. and I think it was Act 5 and maybe 6 (I think there was a 5.5?) that he was very clearly done with Homestuck but knew if he didn't finish it was going loom over him for the rest of his life. And everything after is basically him being completely bitter about everything - the fandom, the comic, and himself.

To the point where he gives the comic a questionably happy ending (its hard to say exactly because by that point he was so far up his own ass lie a reverse ouroboros that he had completed a second loop and while up his own ass had gone up his own ass again) [note: Like Hussie, I had checked all the way out by the time the final part hit the web. When the end came out I tried to read it/go back to read the final sequence, but it was so confused and dense I gave up and read others write ups. So this is my own crappy memory and the opinions of internet retards so dumb they read it all the way from beginning to end. Also I guess spoilers or whatever but lol you can't even read it now]
where the multiple doomed timelines ended in such a way that they spawned an intact non-doomed one, and the cast had a final battle with the villain and are implied to all be living in perfect pocket universes where they live out their idealized existences (which are left to the reader to decide what that is) and everyone in the normal timeline just had a normal life (again, the specifics of what that would look like left to the reader)

But fans weren't happy with this ambiguously happy ending so instead Hussie made (actually he employed others to make) the "Epilogue"* and "Homestuck 2"(now called Beyond Canon)*, where he spelled out in dark, bitter detail the ends of the main characters and ones that didn't make it to their perfect happy alternate universes (while saying the scenes there-in were just one possiblity and might just be another doomed timeline; mocking the reader for not being with his original ending)

There was also Hivestuck or whatever the game was.

anyway, this s a long gay retrospective to say that Hussie either needs money, is tried of being a nobody, and very likely both, and this is very likely what has prompted the cartoon. And as long as Hussie has creative control its only a matter of time before it implodes like the comic.

*I have never read either of these, and couldn't find a good write up** on exactly went these things contained, so you're getting pure third party impressions.
Actually that's a lie, I read like the first couple of pages of Homestuck 2 to see what it was, and if maybe Hussie was going to just wipe the continuity clean and go back to a funny comic, but then Hussie made Dave explicitly gay after getting the courage to come out and be a fudgepacker from a digital ghost of Barrack Obama on a destroyed earth.
**I gave up after like 30 minutes.
 
Ghostse said:
You need to remember that at the time Homestuck was getting started:
1) Earthbound/Mother 3 was "rediscovered" blowing up. I don't remember why, but it was getting a huge amount of attention. (I think someone had gotten their hands on cut content?)
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Earthbound is Mother 2. Mother 3 was a Japan-only game that got a fan translation in 2008, which is probably what you're thinking of. The fan translation was actually really good and was even accompanied by a physical guide book on Fangamer.com.
 
Something Awful said:
Earthbound is Mother 2. Mother 3 was a Japan-only game that got a fan translation in 2008, which is probably what you're thinking of. The fan translation was actually really good and was even accompanied by a physical guide book on Fangamer.com.
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Originally, Nintendo of America had translated Mother and was going to release it as Earthbound, but decided it was too late in the lifespan of the NES to release. The prototype leaked and was given the fan title of Earthbound Zero, and when Nintendo officially released it they titled it Earthbound Origins on the digital storefront and Switch online service.

Nintendo released Mother 2 as Earthbound, which leads to some confusion, as there was a preview of the NES translation of the first Mother published in Nintendo power under the Earthbound title.
 
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