I dunno. People don't seem to have much trouble identifying certain characters as gangly or fluffy or what have you without canon reinforcement. Everybody thinks that Karkat is short and Equius is swole (also Tavros, I swear that used to be a thing) and Kanaya's slender and Jane probably rocks a couple extra pounds.

Hussie would pass it off with his hiccupy little stance of demographic neutrality - you know, calling the identical body types a visual placeholder for what would, in reality (or in a story where it mattered more), run a wider gamut. A gap for imagination to fill in. Whether or not you buy that argument, that's a bigger matter.

Also, "insult to the characters"? Come on. Let's not do that whole thing.

At this point, he's probably over halfway through what will be the final stretch, albeit possibly not included flashes, so it seems odd to make any major shift at this point. Maybe something that could work as part of the ending flashes themselves though, as some kind of "hero-mode super". But really, we're so late in the game that there's hardly anything in the way of room for change, so I'm instead gonna write about theoretic alternate decisions that could have been made in the past.

Personally, I think the whole thing might have been more enjoyable on my end if things were planned so as to avoid quickly spiraling into such a grander scope as it did once it hit the troll arc, as that would allow things to go into more detail with the plot that was already happening. Maybe it'd go in a direction like having the kids defy the game by going back and saving the bulk of humanity from the meteors without breaking the timeline or something. How it actually went was kind of like if partway through Harry Potter, it turned out Harry had pen pals from planet Namek and there was an invasion of Dragonball Z villains who made Voldemort a comparative small fry. On the other hand, I dunno if it'd actually be an improvement, or if keeping the scope contained would have ended up taking energy out of the project by settling things into the relatively expected. As an absurdly unimportant detail, having the kids' playing card shirts from when they were babies correspond to minor arcana Tarot suits that best fit their god tier abilities would have been a nice touch.

In terms of popularity, and revenue, I think Homestuck it set for the most part. It gets huge convention turnouts, got fronted over two million dollars from the readership for a game without any particular gameplay being conformed, and a website that brings in over sixty bucks in ads alone each day despite the comic not being updated in over two months, not to mention merchandise sales. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't even be that complicated to push it into something even bigger with just advertising and merchandise. Such an effort should obviously include macaroni, gummy candy, or cereal shaped like the characters' faces so as to let me pretend to be Lord English eating a bowl of the same while pretending to eat the souls of said characters.

I always thought it was done intentionally so that you can make your own interpretations.
Or that he didn't really care. Why make a stink over something that isn't really an issue?

>>73443
He didn't care, the fingerpuppet-like character designs were that way because it took pretty much zero effort to edit the base. Once people started making their own interpretations of that they looked like, and once there started to be a lot of people praising the simple designs because it allowed them to make their own interpretations, then he said that's why he did it. It was kind of a PR move. If you were around when he had a formspring (especially around the Fat Vriska/Feferi saga) you can tell that's not the opinion he's always held.

If he had drawn them with more detail in the first place, they would have all been thin and noodly. That's his style.

Honestly I think he should have stuck to the detailless designs and enforced it in flashes where he had contributing artists. It's just a big fucking mess. I deeply regret sticking to my style when he asked me to do things and I don't know why he allowed us all to do our own shit. I thought it was cool at the time, but looking back on it, it was a huge mistake. I see that he's continued to give a ton of slack/no direction to artists in Namco High and the result was really bad. Even though the character sprites in Namco High look good individually when they are together the portraits that it drags everyone down. The portraits aren't even the same size!

>>73444

Ahhh yeah I remember the formspring. Well, when you have such a vocal website like tumblr down your throat who is extremely difficult to coerce I can see why making a move like that would make sense. But still, losing your integrity like that has to hurt inside. I think maybe he just gave up then.

>when he asked me to do things [for flashes]
ooh saucy.

>>73446
I don't think he was "coerced" to become more PC by tumblr strawmen. I think he came to realise it was a cool idea over time, and that he did not have any particularly strong ties to whatever his own interpretations of the sprites were in the first place (if he had any at all, it's possible he didn't). He started backpedaling when he stated they were "racially neutral," and he got backlash because they aren't even though he didn't realise it--there were parts where John and Bro are referred to as white and people pointed them out. Then he made a mistake when he decided the best way to handle it was to censor those passages instead of just, you know, leaving them as they were, or changing them entirely. But it seems to me the reason why he bothered to say anything at all was that there was a portion of the fandom whining loudly about fanartists giving characters dark skin when they shouldn't because "it wasn't canon." He wanted them to shut up.

i feel like there is someone is trying to shitpost this thread off the first page so i'm bumping it to see if they will do it again

When Hussie re-uses panels...you know when he pretty much re-colors certain scenes.

It comes off as extremely lazy...

>>73486
>When Hussie re-uses panels...you know when he pretty much re-colors certain scenes.
Yeah, that's such an excellent use of time given the priorities of the comic and how how it was updated at such a swift and steady pace. Would have liked if more frequent use of the sprites was stuck with longer, actually.

>>73486
Given his output rate, it's hard for anything to come off as lazy to someone who's actually worked on webcomics before.

Not sure if this is a valid critique, but I wish that Hussie would actually tie up a plot line instead of adding more. At this point we have a vague understanding of most aspects of the game at best, and it's much too late to actually do them all justice.

goddammit can this shit just update already no one wanted to play some stupid ass dating sim with namco characters they just want a conclusion to the goddamn story you committed to like 4 fucking years ago Hussie

>>73513
hussie doesn't strike me as much of a "committing to things" guy

>>73513
i think he finally realised that if he continued to update every day he would just be stacking on more and more shit and the story would never end, so he decided it would be better to just do a mega-update whenever it was ready

however the "story can't end because it goes on forever" thing might actually not have been a result of updating constantly, but his general work ethic, so that it continues on today in silence

>>73513
He only had to spitball ideas and approve other people's writing for Namco High. He didn't do any writing or character designs or anything.

The biggest issues of the comic is the bloated-ness and the pacing. You have a bloated cast, a bloated plot amount threads that doesn't feel complete as some else also mentioned and a strange schizo pacing which could either be too slow for the story to get to the point or too fast where it feel rushed at times.

It seems like this comic could have just benefited more with just sticking to a much smaller cast(beta kids, the exiles, jack&co. and the 4 main trolls who were mostly introduced in Act 4 through their dialogue) and just developing them there with smaller scale and yet, more tightly written story.