Almost all the other monsters bounce and sway as well.
What’s weird about Papyrus’ battle is he doesn’t move at all.
His cape could be flowing in the wind. But no. Completely still. He could be moving at ALL but nope.
But you know what’s REALLY WEIRD?? During the battle…Papyrus’ mouth doesn’t even move.
watch a playthrough again….i’m right.
During Papyrus’ date he moves, his mouth moves, his expression changes, he’s very active.
But in his battle? Nothing. A statue. It’s like there’s a cardboard cut out of Papyrus. Papyrus, the most active charecter in undertale not moving a mother fucking inch.
Blink Motherfucker.
Hey so, real quick.
A Bunch or the reactions are people say “Oh! He’s concentrating on not killing you!”
Which…..I actually took the exact opposite interpretation.
Because, think about the movement in battles. Who moves the most?
Omega Flowey
Undyne the undying
Asriel Dankerr
Mettaton
Mad Dummy
People who are putting their ALL into killing you. Putting in all their concentration and effort into ending your little motherfukn lifu.
The people who move the least? (besides Papyrus the paper cutout)
Toriel
Nabstablook
most of the minor battles
Asgore
So, Toriel: Who does not want to kill you, and due to her lack of concentration on her attacks and more on her emotions causes the attacks to miss you. (Can still easily accidentally kill you) But still, distracted. Not putting her all into the battle
Nabstablook: Who needs ghost depression therapy. Really not feeling up to it right now. Not putting their all into it.
Minor monster battles: They do MOVE, and a lot of them do extensively, but they’re more still than like, Undyne or MTT. They’re only fighting you out of obligation. Not putting their all into it.
Asgore: He moves more than the other’s I pointed out, but his movements are small. He bounces slightly and slowly, if he moves it’s for his trident attack. Because well, he does NOT want you dead. He does NOT want that seventh soul. He’s not putting his all into it.
(Note: Sans is kinda an inbetween. bc he bounces a bunch and dodges and teleports a HELL of a lot. moves his arm. but he also like, aint moving a lot compaired to Asriel and Undying if you get me.)
D-Do you get where i’m coming from?
The Sprites that move the most? Putting in EVERYTHING into this battle. They want you dead. They are using all their energy and strength to end you.
The Sprites that stay still? Not putting in their all.
Not putting in their all.
Papyrus has the same amount of energy he usually has during his date, and the finale. He zips and zooms around the screen like a ping pong ball.
He is always putting in 110% into every little thing he does.
In his battle, he is still. A statue. A motherfucking plastic barbie. Not even moving his mouth.
(Note: I think some sprites don’t move their mouths in battle screens, but Papyrus moves his jaw later on the date, the dump, and in the finale. There is no excuse for him not moving his mouth during battle. But you know who else never moves their mouth bc he’s to lazy to? Sans the mother fu-. Sans is never putting in his all and doesn’t even bother to move his mouth to words.)
(Also note the only time he makes a diffrent expression is when you hit him, and not for long)
Papyrus isn’t putting in all his energy.
Papyrus isn’t putting in all his power.
Now listen, If when using his bare minimum, he can still control his attacks to a point where you cannot die, he can summon words spelled out and a GIANT FUCKING BONE, have a whole conversation with himself and not paying attention while fighting you, holy fuck.
I don’t want to know what Papyrus is like putting in his all.
The real reason Flowey befriended Papyrus was because of Papyrus’ unmatched raw power.
Good time to bring back the fact that everyone has two vines around them except Papyrus who has four.
Tbh with how much Flowey experimented with resets he could have seen Papyrus actually trying and I wanna see the look on that bastard’s face when he got yeeted from the ruins to new home and back.
papyrus could be an all powerful being, literally capable of killing literally everyone in the underground
but is like “NAH, I’M JUST GONNA CHILL OUT HERE WITH MY SPAGHETTI AND DINOSAUR EGGS OATMEAL”
that just radiates big mood to me, and i wish i knew why
shaggy, papyrus, and kirby are the trifecta of “can i destroy you in an instant? yes. would i rather just have lunch? also yes”
Homestuck isn’t even a bad webcomic y’all just can’t separate your bad experiences with the fandom from the actual quality of the source material
HONESTLY
And this goes for undertale as well as I’m sure MANY other pieces of media that someone worked very very hard on for the enjoyment of others, and the people who probably followed some long term ones for a good portion of their time and cherish it. Be nice and let people enjoy things you fucks.
well, it has dozens upon dozens uses of slurs, a sexualized japanese school girl caricature, that whole “CAUCASIAN!!!!” debacle, and a literal sjw caricature. among other things.
And some Very homophobic jokes
The statements “Homestuck had a lot of problems that should be acknowledged for how and why they are bad” and “Homestuck was a genuinely excellent piece of media that gets a lot more criticism than it actually deserves” are not mutually exclusive.
My point with making this post wasn’t to claim that Homestuck is perfect and has no problems. I recognize that it has A Lot of issues and that those issues should be addressed! I am in no way defending Andrew Hussie’s poor handling of certain characters, concepts, or relationships and I think it’s important to criticize those things in order to have a better understanding of those issues.
THAT SAID, however, none of this actually makes it an objectively bad webcomic, and especially not for the reasons a lot of people give! Homestuck was, in its prime, so incredibly popular that it regularly crashed online forums whenever it updated. It had a HUGE fan base, you could barely go anywhere on the internet or at any convention without encountering something Homestuck. There were dozens upon dozens of fan comics and fan games, someone made an actually working version of pesterchum, there were MULTIPLE online roleplaying sites made JUST for Homestuck roleplayers, there were animated music videos and songs and so many lyric comics that it coined the term “lyricstuck” (actually it had so many aus IN GENERAL that even other fandoms started referring to human aus as humanstuck), and NONE of that is even remotely touching on the fanart and fan fiction that came from Homestuck. Like, I don’t know if you guys remember all this or not but Homestuck was BIG and it had A LOT of fans.
And… it kind of crashed and burned. It was a very long term project with a lot of people working on it towards the end, and a project that Hussie originally intended to be a one off personal comic grew into this monster that demanded an epic finale. And there were problems. He got screwed over by a company that took the money and ran, the updates were taking so long to produce that the hiatuses became their own meme (there was this whole thing about the fandom going absolutely mental during hiatuses, and it was true for the most part. with no new content people would circulate old theories and gradually flanderize the characters until the actual comic was practically unrecognizable to most of the fandom once it actually did update), and a lot of fans ended up getting pissed off and left.
It kind of left off on a sour note. People who used to be rabid fans were suddenly dragging the comic to Hell and back for being shitty and terrible when they used to adore it. People weren’t happy with the end product and they wanted to make that known.
A lot of the criticism I see now… actually has nothing to do with the social justice angles. Like don’t misunderstand me, it has problems. Homestuck was written by a straight white guy who started the project with the social justice education of your typical redditor. But he also listened to feedback and actively strived to get better. There were homophobic jokes (I’m assuming at the beginning because I don’t actually remember any that much later on? correct me if I’m wrong) but he actually handled teen exploration of gender and sexuality a lot better than most other media I’ve ever seen! There were multiple same gender relationships, multiple nonbinary characters, and the comic even ended with multiple canonical gay relationships (and a lesbian wedding, people seem to forget that for some reason).
The thing about the “CAUCASIAN” debacle is that, that’s actually one of the examples where he listened to criticism and actually changed the comic in response. He acknowledged that it was a bad joke and took it out. The dancestors were honestly a mess but he also acknowledged that they were kind of shitty and did his best to do better, and honestly there are a lot of examples of times where he fucked up, was criticized for it, recognized that it was shitty, and strove to do better. The thing with the medium, though, is that once it was in the comic it was in the comic.
And I’m not trying to defend any of that. Those are perfectly valid reasons to not like the comic. But there’s a difference between not liking a piece of media because of its problems and saying that it is objectively bad because of its problems. The Lord of the Rings, Marvel, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and most other mainstream franchises have their own myriad of problems with racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ablism, but they are all still considered to be excellent pieces of media.
A lot of people also rail on Homestuck for being “confusing” and “overly complicated”, that the characters are bad and the relationships are bad and the plot was bad. But… all of those are personal opinions. A lot of people don’t feel the same way and in fact love it for those exact things. And whatever you say about Homestuck you do have to admit that the worldbuilding was incredible, the art and music were beautiful, the characters were fun and engaging, and the medium broke so many barriers wide open. There are analyses upon analyses about how Homestuck defied medium boundaries in a way that wasn’t seen before, taking the format of a webcomic and adding videos and games and altering the website itself and creating links to other sites and utilizing so many things that the internet provides that could never really be done before. A lot of people considered it to be nothing less than revolutionary in how it handled it’s medium!
And being “long and confusing” isn’t much of problem either. A lot of people considered Homestuck to have attained Epic status at its height. The comic is so long it takes several months to read and it was one of the highest word counts of any literature in the english language, and at the time this was all considered to be an amazing thing! It touched on SO MANY different tropes, concepts, themes, and ideas that there was (and still is) a popular trend of connecting things from other media to Homestuck. It was long and convoluted, but honestly so are most of the most beloved Epic stories in history (the Odyssey for one).
And honestly? I don’t think people genuinely hate it for any of these problems. Between how popular it used to be and how many people who tear it apart now used to like it themselves, I think it’s more likely that a lot of the visceral hatred of the comic that we see now is based far more on… negative experiences with the fandom.
Because you also see the same thing happen time and time again with other media! Undertale and Steven Universe are some of the worst examples of this! Everyone LOVED the game and the show when they came out. Undertale was such a genuine and heartwarming game that it was a serious contender for Game of the Year (if it didn’t win outright, I can’t quite remember). Steven Universe was and still is a fantastic show with lovable characters and excellent handling of complex social issues in a way its target audience (younger kids and preteens) can understand.
And then… something happened. Suddenly Undertale was racist and tone policing. Suddenly Steven universe was fascist and homophobic. Both were torn to shreds for being “problematic” and “cringey” and eventually “cancelled”. These unique stories with an abundance of diversity and interesting characters and plots are being dragged down into the mud after previously being held up as the height of storytelling, and people aren’t evaluating WHY.
And honestly? That’s what this damn post was about in the first place. You are COMPLETELY missing the point by trying to prove to me that “actually Homestuck was bad :/”, because none of this is based on whether Homestuck is actually bad or not (which honestly? It’s not. It’s just not.) This is all, 1000%, based on this site’s collective need to separate yourselves from the things you used to enjoy because they were deemed embarrassing. This is about actually good comics and games and shows and the hard work and blood sweat and tears of creators who put years and years and years of time and effort into making content that are being trampled on by the fans who used to adore it because they did the math and they don’t want to be socially ostracized for liking something everyone else has decided to hate. This is about people conflating their own personal feelings about the media with the actual quality of the source material, and deciding that since the source material is Objectively Bad that means nobody else should be allowed to enjoy it without being mocked for it. THAT’S what this post is about, not just whether Homestuck is actually bad or not.
And before anyone decides to leave a smartass comment on this along the lines of “I didn’t read all that but Homestuck is trash lol”, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
TL;DR: Homestuck has problems like every other popular mainstream media, and that doesn’t detract from the fact that it is still a genuinely good comic that pushed the limits of what a webcomic could do and has fascinating worldbuilding and engaging characters. The fact that everyone has deemed it trash has far more to do with people’s own perception of the comic than it does with the actual quality of it, as we have also seen time and time again with media like Undertale and Steven Universe. Ignoring all of this to tell me that Homestuck actually is objectively bad because it has problematic elements is completely missing the point of the goddamn post. You don’t have to personally like the comic, but at least let other people continue to enjoy it without being enormous assholes about it.
Essentially homestuck isn’t bad y'all just don’t want to associate yourselves with what you find “cringey” but instead of going cringe culture route you say “it’s problematic to enjoy this.”
Not to be controversial but so many of you talk about “chaotic energies” and what not while pretending you’re all BIG fans of chaos, when you can’t even handle a little pineapple on pizza. Stop chaosfaking.
Pineapple on pizza is too predictable of controversy to be considered chaotic. A real harbinger of chaos would dip pizza in chocolate.
I am Silver Tongue, I am an artist. I have many characters and you can check out my art in the art tag. I occasionally practice witchcraft though I don't do anything too complicated. I am girl 2 and don't know what else to put here.
