Nick Eff (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
roadrunnertwice) wrote2010-11-28 02:40 pm
roadrunnertwice) wrote2010-11-28 02:40 pm
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Hooooooly shit. (mirror)
- I still don't know what Becquerel's angle is. Is he smart enough to plan ahead? And is he obedient to Lord English or not? Doc Scratch's intro implied that the secondary DNA donor is the limiting factor in a First Guardian's intelligence, so it's possible he's just jumping in to help Jade like a faithful dog.
- Come to think of it, I wonder if this was the result DD was hoping for when he used the MEOW code on Halley.
- Why would Vriska pick THAT moment to put the whammy on John? Well, she's probably slightly in the future from her previous reference frame, immediately after Karkat figured out that the demon was an export from the human session. I bet she's trying to help out her own side by keeping Jade out of the medium, frantically backpedalling from the help she just unwittingly gave.
- Note that until Jack got his tier four prototyping, Bro and Davesprite actually had him fought to a standstill. That's pretty badass, considering he was already able to wreck minor planets.
- Well, that's it for the rest of Earth, then.
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Part 1 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vrP8jefKEo)
Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9ZO5VN0JwY)
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Also, whoops! Edited the link for context. Anyway, it's part of a thing called Homestuck, which I think you'd probably dig; it's basically a comic with FMV cutscenes. The fact that it's more efficient to do exposition in the more static pages means the animated segments become these fantastically dense compilations of payoffs and action scenes.
Which definitely has a resemblance to the density of arty shorts like the one you just linked! But if you've been reading the comic, these cutscenes end up being that dense and yet fully legible, which is a hell of a thing.
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Also, what the eff. Those two videos I linked are already gone. They weren't mine, but I remember from the post dates I saw yesterday that they'd been up a while. Then I link them here, and poof, taken down by the anime studio. Hmmmm.
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(Don't skip the intermission; it ends up being more important than it looks!)
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Or was I supposed to wait when the curtains came down? I sat around for a few seconds, nothing happened.
Anyway, yeah, this is pretty surreal and amazing. The author is clearly a genius. I don't mean that in a funny way. This thing must be impossible to put together. It's so layered and complex. And you can tell he obsessed over practically every word in here.
His absurd sense of humor kind of reminds me of mine. I like to think if I had 50 more IQ points, I'd have been able to do something like this. At the same time, so much of it is totally new to me. I feel like I'm reading something from 10 years in the future of comedy. This thing opened up a new alley in my brain and is now right up it. It's hilarious and ambitious. I'm glad there are people like this in the world.
Also, I'm getting a SERIOUS David Foster Wallace vibe here. Are you? I haven't read anything of his in a long time, but right away I started noticing all these tricks and mannerisms that are unmistakeably his. (I can dig up specific examples, but I don't really feel like going through hundreds of panels right this minute.) I keep thinking that it feels like I'm reading something by an alternate-reality DFW who isn't dead, didn't become a novelist, and makes surreal webcomics instead. And just like when reading DFW, it feels like I'm working my way through a slow-motion nightmare described in excruciating detail, but full of comedy. Other similarities:
- The author has an obvious obsession with words: form, semantics, impact, etc.
- When they're on IM, the characters launch into these complex tangents, usually observational humor. I remember this kind of stuff from DFW's characters. Again, excruciating detail.
- Er, I guess that's it for now. And the above two points aren't that strong, but everything taken together really reminds me of DFW.
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Re: DFW: I'm not sure! I'd definitely say that the way Hussie works the aesthetic of maximalism ("I'm taking my own sweet time with this fucker and you're gonna love it—hold on, I'm-a cram a short story into this footnote") is reminiscent of Wallace, especially with the intermission and the first half of chapter 5. And there's a shared love of over-the-top verbal bombast (oh god, just wait'll Karkat shows up and starts unloading his 70mm rants on a regular basis—"IF SMUG WAS A MOTORCYCLE IT JUST JUMPED OVER A CANYON. THE CROWD GOES WILD WITH DISMAY AND COMMITS MASS SUICIDE.") Beyond that, it's not a thing I specifically noticed?
But I'm with you on the way some of the comedy feels like it's from the future, especially the way it builds structures of meta-jokes on top of the jokes the characters tell each other. That's some cool shit.
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Some examples I noticed:
- Early on, there's two or three analogies that go something like: "A dude without a hammer is like a gentleman without a pipe. THAT IS, HE CAN HARDLY BE CONSIDERED A DUDE AT ALL." I'm pretty sure I've seen this exact structure of belaboring in DFW.
- Then this specific thing:
"TG: im gonna fly off the handle
TG: im gonna do some sort of acrobatic fucking PIROUETTE off the handle and win like a medal or some shit"
... where Dave takes a figure of speech and exaggerates it. Extremely DFW.
But I don't read much anymore. Maybe these mean nothing, and maybe other people do it. Maybe DFW had imitators, and the Homestuck dude copied them. Or maybe these things floated around before DFW. Or they're too vague to be attached to any specific person.
Damn, I'm still not sure what intermission you're talking about. I might have to go back.
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