AG: You know very well the channels of possi8ility at that exact juncture resulted from her decision paths as well as yours.
AG: 8ut even so, when it comes to your key decisions, the possi8ilities are pro8a8ly fewer and more discrete than you have presumed.
AG: Otherwise you would not see results consolidated into those vortices, would you? Possi8ility would resem8le an enormous hazy field of infinitely su8tle variations and micro-choices.
AG: Imagine if at that moment you truly were capa8le of anything, no matter how outlandish, a8surd, or patently fruitless. How would this vast amount of information present itself to you through your senses? What difference would it make in your final decision if all other tri8utaries of whim spilled into the same decaying future? And what would this make of your agency as a hero meant to learn and grow?
AG: Look at it this way. Imagine that over the course of someone’s life, they are truly capa8le of every conceiva8le action at any moment, and did indeed take each of those actions in different 8ranching realities. Doesn’t a scenario like that deaden a person’s agency just as much as one where their fate is decidedly etched in stone as a single path of unavoida8le decisions? Who exactly is that person who can and does take all conceiva8le actions, other than someone perfectly generic, who only appears to have unique predilections and motives when you examine the ar8itrary path they happen to occupy?
The typing quirks actually serve a purpose in the comic. Almost all communication among the characters takes place through chat logs, so the system provides a handy way to visually distinguish who’s speaking. They also reinforce each character’s personality and thematic associations—for example, the character quoted above (Aranea) is associated with spiders, arachnids in general, and the zodiac sign of Scorpio.
Unfortunately, all that is irrelevant in the context of a Rationality Quote.
Every time someone mentions Homestuck I resist (until now) posting this image macro.
I spent a few minutes reading Homestuck from the beginning,
but it did not grab me at all. Is there a better place to
start, or is it probably just not my cup of tea?
(Speaking of webcomics, I have a similar question about Dresden Codak.)
I spent a few minutes reading Homestuck from the beginning, but it did not grab me at all. Is there a better place to start, or is it probably just not my cup of tea?
It starts pretty slow. Most of the really impressive bits, to my taste, don’t start happening until well into act 4, but that’s a few thousand (mostly single-panel, but still) pages of story to go through; unless you have a great deal of free time, I wouldn’t hold it against you if you decided it’s not for you by the end of act 2. Alternately, you might consider reading act 5.1 and going back if you like it; that’s a largely independent and much more compressed storyline, although you’ll lose some of the impact if you don’t have the referents in the earlier parts of the story to compare against. You’ll need to front-load a lot of tolerance for idiosyncratic typing that way, though.
Which brings me to quotes like MHD’s: for quotation out of context, I would definitely have edited out the typing quirks (or ed8ed, if we’re being cute). The quirks are more about characterization than content, and some of the characters are almost unreadable without a lot of practice.
Dresden Codak, incidentally, doesn’t have this excuse. If you’ve read a couple dozen pages of that and didn’t like it, you’re probably not going to like the rest.
Dresden Codak, incidentally, doesn’t have this excuse. If you’ve read a couple dozen pages of that and didn’t like it, you’re probably not going to like the rest.
I’ve never been sure exactly where and how to get into the Dresden Codak storyline; but the one-offs like Caveman Science and the epistemological RPG are some of my favorite things on the internet.
The first real “storyline” Dresden Codak comic can be found here, That said, a lot of people I’ve spoken with simply don’t like the Dresden Codak storyline in any form, and prefer the funny one-offs to any of the continuity-oriented comics.
If you’ve read a couple dozen pages of that and didn’t like it, you’re probably not going to like the rest.
A couple dozen pages of Dresden Codak is almost a third of the entire thing...
Perhaps it’s just me, but I think it’s sufficiently short that the naïve strategy (start at the beginning, click next until you get to the end) would work in this case.
(Incidentally, when you get to Hob #9, remember to read the description at the bottom of the page.)
I disagree with Nornagest: I think the best place to start is at the beginning. They pretty much had me at “fetch modus”, I was hooked from then on. A lot of really inspirational things start to happen later on, f.ex. the Flash animation “[S] WV: Ascend”, but it might be difficult to comprehend without reading the earlier parts.
I would also advise starting at the beginning because I’m starting to grow dissatisfied with the double-meta-reacharaound tack that the comic is taking now… The earlier chapters had a much more coherent story, IMO.
Andrew Hussie
Is there a reason all the b’s have been replaced by 8′s?
Character typing quirk in the original.
The typing quirks actually serve a purpose in the comic. Almost all communication among the characters takes place through chat logs, so the system provides a handy way to visually distinguish who’s speaking. They also reinforce each character’s personality and thematic associations—for example, the character quoted above (Aranea) is associated with spiders, arachnids in general, and the zodiac sign of Scorpio.
Unfortunately, all that is irrelevant in the context of a Rationality Quote.
You’re right, never mind. Still internalizing the new set of ancestors.
I hate to downvote Homestuck, but there I go, downvoting it. The typing quirks and chatlog-style layout are too specific to the comic.
Every time someone mentions Homestuck I resist (until now) posting this image macro.
I spent a few minutes reading Homestuck from the beginning, but it did not grab me at all. Is there a better place to start, or is it probably just not my cup of tea?
(Speaking of webcomics, I have a similar question about Dresden Codak.)
It starts pretty slow. Most of the really impressive bits, to my taste, don’t start happening until well into act 4, but that’s a few thousand (mostly single-panel, but still) pages of story to go through; unless you have a great deal of free time, I wouldn’t hold it against you if you decided it’s not for you by the end of act 2. Alternately, you might consider reading act 5.1 and going back if you like it; that’s a largely independent and much more compressed storyline, although you’ll lose some of the impact if you don’t have the referents in the earlier parts of the story to compare against. You’ll need to front-load a lot of tolerance for idiosyncratic typing that way, though.
Which brings me to quotes like MHD’s: for quotation out of context, I would definitely have edited out the typing quirks (or ed8ed, if we’re being cute). The quirks are more about characterization than content, and some of the characters are almost unreadable without a lot of practice.
Dresden Codak, incidentally, doesn’t have this excuse. If you’ve read a couple dozen pages of that and didn’t like it, you’re probably not going to like the rest.
I’ve never been sure exactly where and how to get into the Dresden Codak storyline; but the one-offs like Caveman Science and the epistemological RPG are some of my favorite things on the internet.
The first real “storyline” Dresden Codak comic can be found here, That said, a lot of people I’ve spoken with simply don’t like the Dresden Codak storyline in any form, and prefer the funny one-offs to any of the continuity-oriented comics.
A couple dozen pages of Dresden Codak is almost a third of the entire thing...
Perhaps it’s just me, but I think it’s sufficiently short that the naïve strategy (start at the beginning, click next until you get to the end) would work in this case.
(Incidentally, when you get to Hob #9, remember to read the description at the bottom of the page.)
I disagree with Nornagest: I think the best place to start is at the beginning. They pretty much had me at “fetch modus”, I was hooked from then on. A lot of really inspirational things start to happen later on, f.ex. the Flash animation “[S] WV: Ascend”, but it might be difficult to comprehend without reading the earlier parts.
I would also advise starting at the beginning because I’m starting to grow dissatisfied with the double-meta-reacharaound tack that the comic is taking now… The earlier chapters had a much more coherent story, IMO.