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[Brentai]

The recaps tell you what's going on pretty explicitly, if you're lost.

We may or may not be getting another.  It's hard to tell if he's leading up to that or just extending the viewport-chain gag.

[Disposable Ninja]

Yeah, I have a really difficult time just reading the Pesterlogs that go on a little too long. So, as far as I'm concerned, those recaps are just giant middle fingers sprinkled with tiny pieces of jokes about my mom.

[Bongo Bill]

Okay, now this has become entirely too silly.

[Cthulhu-chan]

Did somebody order a recap?

[teg]

What the flying fuck just happened?

Apparently Vriska and Gamzee both tried to contact Jade at some point.

If nothing else it assures their survival up to the point of contact.  Which is odd because it seemed to be strongly hinted that Vriska was going to blow up somehow.

How was that hinted? Vriska makes an early cameo here. I think it's been implied by now that all the trolls survive until the end.

[Brentai]

I wanted to buy a Capricorn shirt, but 20+2.50 is a little steep for what is basically a shirt with a symbol few people instantly recognize but can definitely tell is purple.

I think it's been implied by now that all the trolls survive until the end.

Aradia doesn't! 

Also it's hard to tell but it seems Sollux was Really Mostly Dead there, so it's probably more that death doesn't stick very well.  Especially once Time Shenanigans start in earnest.  Technically Rose is the only human kid who hasn't died in some timeline yet, unless you count her Future Real Self ceasing to exist.

[LaserBeing]

This comic has officially started to irritate me.

[Bongo Bill]

It's obvious he's building up to his avatar getting some kind of extremely satisfying comeuppance. He will explicitly describe it as something along those lines as if that makes it okay, but it still won't be as good as if he'd continued without all this nonsense. We know it and he knows it and he's still going to do it anyway. He cannot resist meditating on the nature of the relationship between author, reader, and text.

I want to find out what happens next to Rose and Dave.

[Envy]

[spoiler]Vriska is..a PROSPIT DREAMER!?[/spoiler]

[Zaratustra]

Sollux has mentioned he'll die twice. So, one to go.

[Cthulhu-chan]

[spoiler]Vriska is..a PROSPIT DREAMER!?[/spoiler]

Why else would she be on the red team?

[Disposable Ninja]

Huh, Dream Terezi appears to be blind as well.

[jsnlxndrlv]

Did you know that Andrew Hussie has a Formspring account, on which he's answered 704 questions? I have so much to read. So much.

Hahaha. My regards to Troll Andrew. Regardless, for everyone person who dislikes how long the Hivebent arc has been going on, I'd say there's three of us who like what you've done with it. It's engaging and cool to read. OH CRAP NEED A QUESTION howru?
You know, there has been some buzzin' about it and what not, but I think the truth is it was never actually that controversial.

I've sampled reactions to it all over the place, and it always stuck me as quite a small pocket of the overall audience that ever had any dissatisfaction with it. The same was also true at the beginning of Homestuck. It was a very different thing, and a few people here and there got really restless about it, and swore up and down that MSPA had crested with Problem Sleuth. And of course these sentiments were not in the least bit vindicated in the long run, once we stopped being up so close and personal with the tree of Act 1, and got a little distance from the forest that is HS. I've regarded the vocal minority's present dissatisfaction as the exact same thing. It hasn't deterred me in the least, and even though the recent "AH trolls the fans" thing seems like a strong rebuke of this dissent, it's really very mild one, if one at all. It is meant as playful and humorous.

Now on the FLIPSIDE of this, there is significant group of people that really liked the change in direction this arc presented. In fact, rather than functioning as a drag on the readership's interest, I have observed the opposite. The troll stuff has been like pouring rocket fuel on the fandom. Daily traffic has only gone UP since it started. More people than ever seem to be energetically buzzing about what's going on, debating the merits of the characters and the nature of the alien world, drawing more fan art than I could ever possibly keep track of, creating troll personas and stuff like that. These are not the typical results of making a mistake in a story's direction.

On the subject of, "Was the troll arc, and to some extent the existence of the trolls altogether, really an elaborate set up as a long con to troll the readers?"

Yes and no. There is a little truth to it, in the sense that creating alien kid characters who were both internet trolls, AND literal trolls could very well have been a kind of racial avatarization of my own semi-trolling tendencies as an author, which had been on display well before their appearance. Psyche-outs, cagey self referential stuff and the like, it's all a little spunky, and I remain aware of this, and this stuff does fall into a certain class of trolling. Totally granted.

But all that became much more tangible with the introduction of the trolls. Everything about the trolls was always at least a little antagonizing with varying degrees of playfulness, both to the other characters, and to the reader as well. Their text is a bit difficult to parse (Not impossible! Just enough to make you aware of additional reading effort.) They are all a little ornery, and as it turns out, excessively emotional. Their role in the plot is one of bumbling sabotage and interference with the protagonists. And finally, in maybe the most trollish display yet, their entire introduction through a "detour arc" clearly is a bit agitating to anyone eager to see some of these cliffhangers resolved. It's entirely in the spirit of the indentation they have already made on the story. The reader can either fight it (trolls win!) or roll with it and embrace it on the terms it's presented. (Trolls still win.)

And even within the arc, there are numerous explorations of the trolling theme, like addressing topics that are sure to get people worked up. Examining topics like juggalos, furry fetish porn, shipping, and intricate studies on sci-fi romance, ultimately spiraling into soap opera plot dynamics and character interactions, heavy with conversational drama and teenage histrionics. It's all fuel for getting readers riled up a bit, and if you read it and get this itchy, agitated feeling in the back of your mind, that sensation is called "being trolled".

SORT OF.

None of this should be taken literally as a head-on attempt to troll the reader. It's just not that black and white. The purpose here is still entertainment, and humor, and advancing the plot in ways that have not become clear yet. I think in working on the troll stuff I have learned a little about my own policy toward satire. It's never absolute. Everything I mock is always embraced in some way. The juggalo character, Gamzee, is a good example of this. When he was introduced as a juggalo, people could see the writing on the wall. Here we go, time to do the juggalo shtick and laugh at how ridiculous juggalos are and their weird trashy culture and everything. And we did do that, to an extent! But after the initial !?! moment of revealing a juggalo and getting all hot and bothered about it, that material actually began to be incorporated at face value. It was folded into his character profile, and he turned out to be a pretty lovable guy who likes clowns and a particular beverage, and embraces the memetic affiliation juggalos have with miracles as a form of spirituality. In no way is the character a referendum on how ridiculous and lame juggalos are anymore, or how much we should all think ICP sucks. In fact, in a weird way, he starts to embody a CELEBRATION of those elements. Which to be honest, I think is a pretty good way to handle satire. The same is true, in varying degrees, of the inclusion of fandoms' zeal for shipping (Nepeta), weird horse porn (Equius), LARPing, delving into highly emotional, overwrought romantic intrigue, and so on. All of it is handled in a tongue in cheek manner, as satirical fodder, BUT ALSO played totally straight in some respects, as raw material to define the characters and build the story in a way that takes the elements at face value. With MSPA I am always on the lookout for raw material to manipulate in esoteric ways, and its usually garnered through satire. But then I ride that material pretty hard, and before you even know what's going on, it's not satirical anymore! Ask yourself this: at what point did John's love of Con Air cease to be a mockery of the film, and became more of a SHRINE to it? Hard to say.

That doesn't mean we lose sight of the fact that this stuff is ridiculous. It's still plenty ridiculous. The juggalo movement still strikes me as awfully silly, and so does overzealous shipping. The thing is, we can mock stuff and that's fine. It doesn't mean that stuff demands excessive scorn, or can't be treated as a legitimate topic to roll with in a story. So I think drawing your own horse porn is pretty weird. But who am I to say that's REALLY so terrible? I'm not better than anybody. I'll poke fun at it for a while, but then I'll just roll with horse dicks with a straight face for a while too. Maybe have a beer with them. Turns out they're a good bunch of dicks when you get to know 'em!

And pretty clearly, all of this is followed through with acute self-awareness, which is probably just a kind of handicap I have to live with. I just can't help but be aware of everything I do and all the reasons I'm doing them and apply intense scrutiny to those reasons, and it's very hard for me to feign obliviousness. I guess I'm not that interested in trying. As such, MSPA has always been a pretty meta thing, and from time to time we'll blur into things like troll Andrew. I try to keep it fun. Personally, I find it funny. Spiking Cal is probably one of my favorite pages at this point.

Booyeah.

Oh yeah, also the wolf. I like the wolf page.

Aaaaaaaah.

[Brentai]

I love how Hero Mode Vriska is just maniacally gleeful about everything.

I mean, now that she's killed her mom and dumped her boyfriend.

[Disposable Ninja]

She and Tavros seem to be getting along pretty well so far.

[Cthulhu-chan]

Tavros can deal with adventurin'.

Also, that's some mad boonbucks, dude.

[Zaratustra]

Vriska, like any ornery RPG player, can be pacified with tremendous amounts of loot.

[Bongo Bill]

<a href="http://spamtheweb.com/ul/uploads/2472010/132_project_horoscope.swf" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://spamtheweb.com/ul/uploads/2472010/132_project_horoscope.swf</a>

[jsnlxndrlv]

Cute.

Speaking of which, Nepeta's world just came up. Little Cubes didn't make much sense to me, at first. And then I lolled.

[teg]

I guessed that trolls just don't know what sugar is. Am I missing something?