dingodad:

dingodad:

dingodad:

wow, speak of the devil and he doth appear: page 5 of Hivebent directly addresses the fact that things on Alternia are not going to beas dilly-dally as things on Earth were allowed to be;

You enter something predictably derogatory and this guy gets fed up by your shenanigans in record time.

This guy has a lot of troll pals and their adventures are going to be quite extensive and convoluted, to an even greater degree than one perhaps may be accustomed. He thinks that if you think that we have time to drag out every little gag and expected pattern along the way, you’ve got another thing coming.

Hivebent comes at you fast. It throws so much at you in such compressed narrative spaces. There are a few reasons for this. First, we’re plot-rebooting, as I’ve already pointed out a couple times, so we necessarily have to move through some pedestrian beats very swiftly. Much more so than we did in Act I, or else it would turn the pacing syrup we’re already somewhat mucking with here into pacing cement. Second, we’re getting an absolute MEGADOSE of alien worldbuilding so we can familiarize ourselves with the terms and culture of this planet, in order to better understand an actual story that originates there. The one we’re about to read. So all this stuff comes in pretty hot for a couple hundred pages. In this instance we learn that the kids get to build their own houses. That’s neat! Also that troll babies come out of caves, guardians are custodians, whatever that means, and the planet’s customs appear to be oriented around knowledge of Sburb. Keeping up???

I almost wonder if there’s intentional layers to this tract of commentary a few pages later. Andrew describes Hivebent as a ‘reboot’ of the first four acts of Homestuck, and says that’s the reason why everything needs to go so fast; then ends the paragraph with a reference to Alternia’s essential foreknowledge of the game.

That’s all true, of course, but it also applies in a Watsonian sense as well; Hivebent is literally a reboot of Beforus, and it’s because of this that trolls take game-related knowledge so seriously and try to do everything as efficiently as possible.

The lawnrings are empty. Blood skims the voids in your porous cranial plates, as if grazing the hollow of a threshed stem, or say, an abandoned cocoon. A sour note is produced. It’s the one Agitation plays to make its audience squirm.

It is your sixth wriggling day, and as with all five preceding it blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Here is the expected reprisal of John’s navel-gazing moment by his mailbox, listening to the wind. We clip that and move along more quickly, not just because it leads to better pacing, but because it also ties into Karkat’s unfolding character portrait. He’s IMPATIENT. He’s AMBITIOUS. And he is not about to put up with MY. BULLSHIT. In fact, he’s already proven he won’t, by slicing his fake name in half.

And then on the very next page we have commentary that very straightforwardly paints Karkat as the archetypal Alternian teenager he’s meant to be; his impatient and ambitious nature defines the straightforwardness and goal-driven nature of Alternian society as a whole.