Is getting 13000 points at Lazer Kraze amazing? Yes. Is acing
exams amazing? You bet. But nothing can beat reading a comic this big again and
picking up on details you missed.
I repeat, nothing. Nothing can beat this.
The first time I read this, I'll admit, I probably skipped
half of it. Reason being is the text shows up in a "chat" log format
that's hard to read at times. What if all of your texts were words to a book?
Wouldn't that be a little hard to read as well?
But this time I actually sat down and read it through like I should of
the first time and I can safely say my love for the story as a whole has come
flooding back like a huge nostalgia wave.
How real the characters act is another thing I absolutely
love. In other books the characters aren't easy to relate to. Take for example,
Tris from Divergent. She's definitely a bold one, and we can appreciate her,
but personally for me some of the things she did without really questioning
them ahead of time seems kind of unrealistic. Like how she jumped down a pit
for Dauntless when she first chose them. I don't think 99% of the population
would go ahead and jump off a cliff like that to prove something. Either that
or I'm an expert at living under a rock and this is a daily occurrence.
Because jumping off cliffs is totally safe and recommended
for kids. Don't you dare read that disclaimer.
But I feel like I can actually relate to the kids in
Homestuck. They're only a little younger than us at the very beginning, and
where it ends up with the Alpha kids they're only a little older.
Understandably, they freak out at first. They're not perfect. They have many,
and I repeat, MANY flaws, and I feel like that that's us in today's world. We
don't know what to do when faced with problems half the time, that's why we're
not grown up adults in the world yet. If we knew everything then we should be
out of our parent's hair, and I don't think half of us have taken a step to
untangle us from that extremely comfortable nest. But that was these guys too;
they were without warning chucked into 4 different planets basically with
"save yourself" without any guidance except for little sprites for
only a tiny amount of time. It's a surprise their session didn't crash and burn
and they made something of it. They didn't get into fights, they didn't buckle
under pressure. Two of the kids literally set a bomb at their feet and stayed
there, knowing they were going to die. But that's the kind of limits we're
pushed to when we're faced with a life or death situation. We go to radical
ends, not knowing what it'll turn out as. I feel like Homestuck painted this
picture extremely well.
^ Rose and Dave at the bomb before it blew up
Hopefully what I'm trying to say about the bomb is pretty
clear in this picture. The tubes and everything are a part of the "doom
device", so to speak. Yet they just stand there, looking at the time,
literally facing their own inevitable death without flipping out and running
away screaming. No, they sit there and count the seconds before they die in a
calm manner. Everyone, if you knew you would die and not flip out in response,
raise your hands.
....
....
Yeah that's what I thought. We're too human for that, our
sense of fight or flight would kick in. Though I think a traumatic experience
would affect that instinct. For example, Dave (pictured in the left) has seen
many different dead versions of himself. And Rose (pictured in the right) was
corrupted by outside forces, not to mention she was killed herself in a strife
and had to get revived. After facing death that many times, I think most of us
would grow numb to the idea of it, which the smooth transition between the
fight and flight instinct and the degradation of it is done extremely well and
smoothly.
Also, speaking of morals, there's a lot of moral dilemmas in
this. I mean this is a life or death situation, do you kill your own pet to
save a stranger's life? What's the ethics of replicating your friends and then
sending them on meteors? The author does an extremely good job making the
reader contemplate these kind of things and I honestly feel like I've grown as
a person because I've read it, 100% this time. When Dave saw his brother killed
by Jade's pet, he stated, "I guess it has been on my mind. Maybe I am
supposed to be a hero and rise to the occasion because there seems to be this
little persistent voice in my head nagging me about it, insisting someone's
gotta pay. And it's hard for me to disagree," (Hussie 5603). All of this
doom and destruction is going on around Dave, and all he does is sit there and
contemplate relatively calmly about what his next course of action should be.
Yet he's unsure. His consciousness and his better judgment are conflicting
massive time, and he's gotta end up choosing a side. But the fact that we have
to deal with our consciousness and our better judgment bickering at each other
quite commonly only reflects what we think in our lives. What if we were in
their shoes? Is it morally right? Does it have to happen regardless? Maybe I'm
that oddball person who thinks way too deeply into things (I wouldn't be
surprised with the amount of an oddball I'm already), but at least to me this
really reflects back on my way of thinking.
I don't beg often, and yet I'm here on my knees praying for
you to give it a chance. Please, PLEASE, go read it. I'll even give you a link right here.
I implore you, it will be one of the best decisions you make in life. It starts
out kind of slow, and the third intermission is a bit boring, but if you can
make it through that then you won't regret it.
Well now that I have that done, do you guys have any
recommendations for the next book I should read?
I feel like all of the moral decisions you talked about were situational. Depending on the who what and where, the outcome is likely to be different every time.
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