Unpopular Opinions Thread

[chromaticThespian]

HS^2 isn't nearly as bad as a significant part of the fandom says it is. Same goes for PQ.

Vriska's PQ route was fine. Something something death of the author. Not saying I agreed with the implications of it, but the actual writing was fine. Same goes for just about any other PQ route that gets a lot of flak.

The only badly drawn PQ sprites so far are Nepeta (her profile shots look off-model to a frankly ridiculous degree and her frontals look like they're gazing into my soul) and, to a certain extent, Dave (midget proportions). Everyone else was good. Vriska looked dopey, but not bad. Karkat looked fucking awesome and anyone saying otherwise is wrong.

June Egbert is not canon and would be such a wild swerve for John that nothing short of actual in-comic evidence will ever convince me otherwise. MTF Vriska doesn't have me hooked just yet but I'm not averse to the idea.

Squaredsprites were dope. Ultimate Self was dope.

[syrupsand]

Davepetasprite^2 didnt ruin Davesprite

[irishTunes0701]

I think Gamzee is a good character that deserved better.

[peper_steak_caravan]

here's my hot unpopular opinion, everyone

homestuck was never trying to represent anyone in the first place and the fact that so many people clung to it as the pinnacle of representation when it very clearly wasn't trying to be is not only extremely depressing but also indicative of how our society views the lgbt+ community

the fact that homestuck fans just jumped at the fucking gun when hussie canonized june egbert when it was such a disingenuous event that it honestly makes me incredibly sick

i do not like how the inclusion or mention of lgbt+ characters is handled because fans will consume this content without understanding how harmful the actual text in homestuck is

you wanna make lgbt characters? write them and actually care about what happens to them. hussie's priorities were definitely not here.

also i think it's absolutely hilarious how many financial problems whatpumpkin has had in the past because damn guy. just fucking. damn. it looks so incompetent

[pfeffer-29]

here's my hot unpopular opinion, everyone

homestuck was never trying to represent anyone in the first place and the fact that so many people clung to it as the pinnacle of representation when it very clearly wasn't trying to be is not only extremely depressing but also indicative of how our society views the lgbt+ community

the fact that homestuck fans just jumped at the fucking gun when hussie canonized june egbert when it was such a disingenuous event that it honestly makes me incredibly sick

i do not like how the inclusion or mention of lgbt+ characters is handled because fans will consume this content without understanding how harmful the actual text in homestuck is

you wanna make lgbt characters? write them and actually care about what happens to them. hussie's priorities were definitely not here.

also i think it's absolutely hilarious how many financial problems whatpumpkin has had in the past because damn guy. just fucking. damn. it looks so incompetent

I don't completely agree with you, but I think people need to see this. Homestuck has a long way to go before it could ever be classified as "queer media". The writers' practice of revealing that Character X was actually LGBT+ all along kinda smacks of J.K. Rowling. They've had some good representation (Dirk, the trolls, maybe Roxy), but some of it feels...flimsy. They use theories that not all fans subscribe to as incontrovertible proof that a character is LGBT+. The problem with this is that each person interprets the text a bit differently, and thinking that a character isn't LGBT+, therefore, is an entirely valid opinion in lieu of solid evidence that said character is.

Dirk works because he was revealed outright as liking only dudes and he liked a dude in-comic. Roxy is a bit iffy in Meat because we can't see their internal monologue and they don't question their gender out loud, while they're okay in Candy because the "what's my gender" stuff is right there for the audience to read. Vriska's Pesterquest contained trans-coding. It would be entirely possible for someone who never interacts with the fandom or writers to think that Vriska is cisgender after playing it.

Homestuck has representation, but not all of it's good. I think people cling to it so much because (a) admitting something you love has flaws is kinda hard and (b) like you said, there's not much out there with this many openly LGBT+ characters.
Disclaimer: I am not trying to bash trans characters or trans people. I now realize that including two trans characters as examples of bad representation may not have been the best idea considering the massive fight a few pages back. I do not mind that they are trans. I just don't think their transness was written well.

[JakeMorph]

I respect your opinion but I cannot fathom why you think it belongs in the Unpopular Opinions thread when you're aware there was already a big discussion about it a few pages back. it's not an unpopular opinion. can people start thinking of something new please

[calamityCons]

Wouldn't it make sense for a thread dedicated to unpopular opinions would attract many people who share the same unpopular opinion? The balance is already skewed in favor of these ideas on this thread, I find it still suits the thread.

In the spirit of sincerity though, I'll share an uncommon-in-this-thread opinion that I believe is unpopular to the general Homestuck fandom. I have been very vocal and loud and zealous about my love and appreciation for the Carapaces in the past, and in fact I like the Carapaces more than I like the Trolls as a worldbuilding concept and as a part of Homestuck's narrative. I find carapace lore more tightly crafted, and more relevant to the parts of Homestuck I enjoy to the death. For this reason I find No Sburb/Sgrub AUs less compelling because I like the Carapaces too much to just let them Never Exist, and I also tend to evade stories where the Carapaces become humans instead because I like them as they are: chess people! Hiveswap and Homestuck^2 continue to follow the antics of trolls and the perspectives of humans interacting with trolls, and I really just want to see a reality where the players of Skaia's Game pull WV out of retirement from his failed rebellion, I wanna see the RPG plot elements on all the Lands and the Moons and on Skaia itself, I really just wanna see a game of Sburb played properly for once, you know?

(Many fan adventures tend to stop before even entering the game, hence my sadness.)

[ThePungeonMaster]

Unpopular opinion contrary to the previous unpopular opinion: The lore of SBURB is the least interesting part of Homestuck.
Hear me out here:
I actually like a lot that happen inside and because of SBURB. The Capracians/Exiles are rad, and the idea of a war between chess people is simultaneously quaint and cutesy but epic ("epic" as in the Illiad or Ben Hur) in execution. I like alchemy as a system, and time shenanigans are probably my favorite part of Homestuck. But I think these elements exist better in a vacuum as opposed to having video-gamey connotations. The Echellader tiers at the start of the story are cute, but it makes it feel less like John and Co. are getting better through genuine experience with this new world and its systems, as opposed to the game giving them experience because they did a thing good. It's much more interesting to think that time shenanigans happen because the whims of fate and forces of the universe compel them to, as opposed to a construct of the game wouldn't like it very much. It's probably why I liked act 6 more than most. It felt less about SBURB and more about the world surrounding SBURB, the forces that compel it and the universe around it.
It's difficult to articulate exactly what makes me dislike this where as others like it, but it probably stems from the fact that it makes the story seem meaningless. Not meaningless as in of no importance, but meaningless as in a work of fiction, like I'm reading a story inside a story. Only when the kids break through the fourth wall at the end of cascade, do I feel like the kids are making the world they live in their bitch, making fate do their bidding, instead of the other way around.
It's likely because I've played so many videogames myself. Acts 1-5 feel like roaming the wilderness in Breath of the Wild, sure it's fun, but you're constantly reminded that it is a videogame with all the contextual button prompts, unreasonably large inventory size, and the giant walls at the edges of the world constantly reminding you that you're trapped. But act 6 feels like anything could happen, at any time, for better or worse, and I think such a feeling of liberation is worth the sacrifice of unpredictability.

[BrobyDDark]

I've never liked Trolls. I think they're god awful in most cases, and in the few cases where they're not god awful, they're still unbelievably fucking obnoxious.

As an aside, I also hate the god damn Cherubs. Just trolls 2.0 except there's less of them so all the worst traits of trolls are tightly compacted into two ugly little green creatures.

The Beforan Trolls somehow manage to make me even angrier that the Alternian Trolls, too. I can't tell you how much I wanted them to disappear from the fuckin story entirely. Every single one of them was shallow and pointless, adding nothing to the overall story. Except for Meenah, but Meenah is a special case, seeing as how she's basically an Alternian in personality.

Meenah and Vriska are the only two Trolls I can say for certainty I actually like.

[calamityCons]

Snip

I don't find being limited by the rules of a world or system to be that much of a problem personally. Sburb and its constructs and the game abstractions present in Homestuck were a huge part of the reason I was interested in the first place. Audience interaction, interactive storytelling, system management, inventory management, and creativity and risk and all those other wonderful factors were huge draws for me. I wanted to see what would happen in this bizarre world where the kids were sucked into a video game. I had the entire idea in my head for the longest time that activating Sburb was like an alternate reality game where after it was created, everyone in the story was transported within the world of Sburb and everything that happened around it was like, hand-crafted for the kids.

Later on the ectobiology meteors soundly destroyed any idea I had that Sburb was actually another reality from the one we began in and I accepted that the story was something else entirely. But still, I find Act 6 extremely frustrating because of how few rules there were for what to expect or how to experience it? idk, I think it's just a side effect of being able to Leap In to a story and just like, go inside of the world and immerse myself in a video game. I know the abstractions are there but after a while I forget that it's a video game and I just know "I'm going to use this tool" is a shorthand for "I will press this button to open the inventory screen on the computer, where I can navigate to the item I need in order to progress in the video game."

Snip 2

I feel you on almost all of that. My only real caveat is that the Trolls that I really liked and that I thought had potential and who appealed to me as characters wound up being obliterated or have their character deleted and replaced with something shallower (Tavros, Nepeta, Equius, Gamzee, Karkat). The rest of them are either funny side characters who are pretty neat I guess but do dickall (Aradia, Kanaya), wasted potential (Eridan, Sollux), or just complete enigmas to me that I have no grasp of and do not understand (Feferi, Terezi).

I also agree that in terms of Homestuck as a story, Vriska is the only one I like. In terms of characters who resonate with me or that have interesting concepts tied to them, most of the Trolls are pretty neat as characters. But as a story element introduced to Homestuck late in the game, and as a designed alien species, trolls have more or less diminished my ability to engage with homestuck fandom on twitter and tumblr (which is where the majority of it lives afaik).

[Guy-Rocketram]

Nepetas crush on karkat was never supposed to religiously inspire nepkat shippers and only existed to show how off kilter nepeta is for pursuing karkat despite karkat refusing her multiple times and called her autistic.

quote from the commentaries. make of this what you will, i'm just telling you that it exists

[Guy-Rocketram]

wow reading through a forum with like, links that aren't dead and somewhat modern topics is fuckin' weird. like most forums i read through are archived and from dead forums and stuff. anyway here are my unradical unpopular opinions!!!

> Homestuck's main flaw and biggest problem is all the character revivals. Homestuck would've been a better comic if all the characters who died, stayed dead, or if death was a threat, but rarely happened. the fact that i knew, despite not being spoiled or reading ahead that in [S] game over all the characters would be revived is sad.

> oh yeah, [S] game over is the worst part of HS, fuck you, dogbert.

> i am totally neutral towards trans characters. don't care either way.

> vriska is ok. not too crazy about her, but she isn't terrible, but i'm not crazy about her either.

> mituna's quirk is not at all hard to read. have no idea what people are talking about. it's just 1337sp34k and mispellings, with an occasional dfp'joaejo;fsghgtdifu thrown in there every now and again.

> i don't see the HS characters with any real skin tone. like saying if you see john as black or white or whatever is like saying if you see mickey mouse as black or white. it's like asking what's your racial headcanon for shy guy? it's fine if you see them as a certain skin tone though.

> the ancestor explanation was so bad it made me want to quit reading homestuck when i got to it. it's ok if you like it though, i just personal found it boring.

[egg]

> the ancestor explanation was so bad it made me want to quit reading homestuck when i got to it. it's ok if you like it though, i just personal found it boring.

I like ancestors conceptually but Mindfang's journal is so unbelievably dull that even though I've re-read Homestuck about five times it is the one thing I skim over.

[calamityCons]

> the ancestor explanation was so bad it made me want to quit reading homestuck when i got to it. it's ok if you like it though, i just personal found it boring.

I like ancestors conceptually but Mindfang's journal is so unbelievably dull that even though I've re-read Homestuck about five times it is the one thing I skim over.

Agreed. Mindfang is a horrible narrator. Doc Scratch's exposition on the ancestors was more engaging and also there were some kickass dark fantasy concepts introduced that would be pretty rad if it weren't a huge distraction from the main plot.

[Generalrabogolfo]

i dont know if someone already said it (probably) but god damn, i really hate dave post retcon and specially how they villified bro.
and, now that i think about it, this hate is a reflection of my overall hate about how act 6 slowly started to take jokes from the previous acts and made it something serious, bro being the biggest example of this. because one thing is taking a joke too far, like the bunny or cal, but still managing to make it funny, and other is taking a joke that is daves relationship with bro and turning it into a drama that, lets face it, nobody asked for.
same as all this drama that poped up with not only the alphas but with every character (im looking at you, lilypad reuinion). this story was just some kids destroying earth and playing a game, it was not necessary for it to start doing character intronspection at every chance, making the chatlogs denser than the center of the sun.
anyway, you can all proceed to ignore me and continue discussing trans shit.

[ThePungeonMaster]

Fuck it:
Unpopular opinion contrary to the previous unpopular opinion: Revengeance: Bro was never a good guy
I guess it's fine to say that you didn't like how Bro Strider was vilified, but I don't think that it can be honestly said that Bro was a good guy, even knowing what we did know about Homestuck acts 1-5. We were just told to accept it due to the unconventional upbringings of the other kids. Really I just think it's a matter of opinion when Homestuck taking itself seriously works and when it doesn't, but in this case, I would say it works. Bro being abusive is something that seems obvious in hindsight, as he was the only one of the guardians to instigate conflict with their kid, and in my honest opinion, his psychological tormenting of Dave is a much greater offender of what I would classify as "abuse" than violence. Not to mention, I think that reframing Daves and Bros relationship under this context really helps to flesh out Dirk's character, and give him a satisfying arc.

[Generalrabogolfo]

never said he was a good guy. in fact, i think he was a complete asshole. however, this asshole was right about his training and preparation and did as he saw good, and that? you cant villify that.

[calamityCons]

Just because he thought he was doing it "for his own good" doesn't mean shit. He still tormented and abused Dave to an enormous degree, as did a lot of other characters in Homestuck receive unimaginable abuse that was played off as a joke because Homestuck was ambiguous regarding What Is Real Violence and What Is Cartoon Violence.

I wonder if Bro Discourse belongs in the Dirkcourse thread, though.

[BrobyDDark]

Here's the thing, though, right? The facade of Bro being a positive male role model for Dave was broken long before Dirk and Dave had their discussion about it.

Dave needed to confront his brother's shitty behavior to play SBURB- and he did it with violence, knowing full well he couldn't beat his brother in a fight, but he damn well had to try, and ended up destroying whay Bro used to torment him in the process.

Up until the pages leading up to Collide, I had assumed Dave was the kind of character who could take a beating, mentally and physically, shrug it off and fight back. Seeing someone who basically already undermined all the shit he'd internalized from his brother's abuse, and still show love and respect for someone who did a lot of shitty things to him, suddenly basically 180 and diss the guy seems strange to me.

It may be more realistic, to denounce your abuser after years and years. But I don't think Homestuck was ever made for realism. It was made to be anime as fuck.

And Dave had two whole fights devoted to proving he wouldn't take anymore shit from Bro, and that his ironic bullshit wouldn't phase him anymore. And it wouldn't. He quite literally cut through it all.

I don't think people should ever praise Bro for his child raising skills. Kinda like how Andrew Jackson should ever be praised for his racial tolerance skills. But Bro at least did some very cool things, like cutting a meteor in fucking half, and fighting off Jack for a bit. He can be given props for that.

[BrobyDDark]

ALSO, situations in Homestuck should never be compared to situations in real life, at least in my opinion. I think on the base level we can all say what Bro did was shitty...for Homestuck characters. But I think that's as far as people can say. Homestuck is very much a comedy webcomic as much as act 6-end tried to make it Serious Business.