Quote Originally Posted by Hussie's tumblr
“How far until UU is revealed?”

The answer to any question like this is “probably months” because things take a long time to unfold and develop. I update frequently but by the standards of readers’ humongous appetites for more, the rate of progress is still glacial. There are things like animation time to factor in, drawing lots more new “plot advancing assets,” juggling a bunch of different story threads and so on. It’s a slow, steady creep, but it’s always going somewhere, and that destination has become reliably combustible.

But making decisions to accelerate your plans because people are impatient is the same thing as making bad decisions. To put everything in perspective, think of it this way. Cascade didn’t happen 4 months ago. It happened about an hour ago, or maybe less. Because that’s how long it takes to read what I’ve written since then. It’s almost nothing. No matter what doldrums we appear to progress through serially, or what elusive payoffs seem to perpetually hover in the distance, all of that is insignificant and easily endured in the archival readthrough by the wide eyed and uninitiated. One who watched Cascade an hour ago is propelled through succeeding material still spurred by the energy and curiosity generated by that explosive multi-threaded plot crescendo. And if Homestuck were finished, they’d just keep reading to the end without handwringing over who’s gonna be introduced when or wondering why teen drama has replaced “real plot advancement” or stuff like that, because they don’t have time to form those thoughts because there’s always another page to click on. All those things are quickly contextualized and paid off because you just keep clicking next, while all the entertainment value is heavily compactified, easily compensating for the kinds of lulls or buildup measures that can absolutely torment some serial readers and push them to the threshold of bizarre histrionics and irrational ragequit oaths.

Wait, I’ve wandered into the serial vs. archival reading issue again. This isn’t even all that pertinent to the question. But it’s a topic I seem to get into a lot because it’s important, maybe even THE most important consideration for how a story is perceived, i.e. the rate at which it’s absorbed. Few seem to understand this. And those who do often forget, and get caught up in kneejerk judgments that would never be made otherwise. It kind of blows my mind observing some of the reactionary dementia that crops up in a huge serial readership, which is a double edged sword: fun to watch the day-to-day excitement over developments, painful to behold the ubiquitous impatience and the corrupting influence that has on the judgment of content. In many respects it’s a very bad way to read a longform story, dribbled out in pages rather than in big chunks. Impatience among some generates toxicity over time, like they’re gradually, unwittingly developing a grudge against the story because of the pace they’re forced to read at. This then warps everything they see. As if a tainted a witness. If they crave swift advancement, then pages that do not accomplish this adequately like gags or character developing interactions become like personal affronts to them. Good material is like a slap in the face. And the irony is, the more they like the story, the more toxic the attitude can get, because they badly want to see it get somewhere fast, and they can feel let down or like the work is in decline because they’re forced to sit through its responsible, judicious development in realtime. But this is an almost nonexistent phenomenon with archival reading, which lends itself to a little more detachment and reservation as one cruises through the material at the speed of reading. Judgments are formed less at the atomic level of the story’s building blocks, a bit more holistically, and individual developments are never agonized over. They may ultimately not love the story, but at least the resentment complex that can fester in the space of the serial drip never had a chance to skew the result.

Probably some people think it’s weird that I put emphasis on long term archival pacing when I produce a thing serially, page by page. I do think that is the only way to make something good in the long term. But aside from that, consider that by now the vast majority of the readership began reading relatively recently. Most current readers have experienced most of the story by catching up through the archives, so any attention I put on pacing that out with patience and discipline has directly benefited, it turns out: MOST READERS! This trend will probably continue as more pile on in the future and HS approaches its end. But then the funny thing is those people who catch up then dive into the huge serial mosh pit, and immediately assume the psychology and habits of serial readers, most of the time without even being aware of how radically this will alter their perception of all events that follow, better or worse. It’s kind of a strange mill of human perception I’m running here. A weird factory where droves enter curious, proceed fascinated, and exit frenzied. But while that process for them is quick, they should try to remember the factory took three years to build, and its construction is ongoing at the same slow pace it always has been.
Are you trying to tell me something Andrew?