Homestuck

After constant squee from various folks on lj and tumblr I decided to give the webcomic Homestuck another go and my lord the awesome is overwhelming. It's hard to give a synopsis, hmm. It's self aware scifi humour implemented as if you're playing an illustrated text adventure game where you give the characters commands.

It drags a bit here and there, especially at the beginning, but after a while the seemingly surreal randomness starts to make Perfect Sense and the silly little characters and plots dig their claws into your heart(*). I can't think of any other webcomic so perfectly embedded in the medium, it plays around with the fact that you are reading it on a computer really cleverly, most obviously the fact that it's framed as if you, the reader, are playing a computer game, but also with chat transcripts and integrated animation (whose loading screens themselves form part of the experience) and linking back to earlier sections for flashbacks, timetravel etc. I'm just starting Act 5 (the most recent act I think?) there's a LOT of archive to get through and it gets a bit confusing here and there but from Act 3 there's the odd synopsis which is very helpful.

EDIT: I just got up to date, and I am still overcome by the awesome, though some bits did bug and/or bore me, and you have to wade through some in-character obnoxious trolling by 13 year olds with all the hipster(**) ableism/anti-fat crap etc that implies. Pretty good with gender, imo.


(*)This seems to be happening to me a lot recently. See also: Avatar the Last Airbender, various Bioware games.
(**)Thanks for reminding me for the term, reweird.

Fanart: The Sound of Mass Effect

I rewatched "The Sound of Music"(*) and realised it has EXACTLY the same plot as my first playthrough of Mass Effect 2. (Ok not exactly. But amusingly close in some ways)


ME2: The sound of Mass Effect by ~sqbr on deviantART, has a transcript.

It's funny how my attitude to these characters changes in different playthroughs, my first Shepard was pretty swoony over Thane but my second thinks he's a bit of a jerk.

(*)Which was a lot of fun, it held up pretty well all told. I'd forgotten how snarky Captain Von Trapp is, though I agreed with my childhood self that his transition to niceness was not entirely convincing. Plus the whole "The problem with the Nazis was they disrespected Austrian autonomy" angle which confused me at the time.