"Well, that was an awesome video. I'm curious about the guy who exploded a head in a fit of rage. I wonder what the comments and video description say about him and the source material.

"The story's having its fourth year anniversary? As of June LAST YEAR? That's a LOT of archives to work through. A big time commitment, at a time when I'm already exhausted and struggling to get through my daily workload.

"I don't think I want to commit to that. I'll just read the wiki instead.

"Wow, this is a really intricate world. It's amazing how much thought and detail went into this. And these pesterlogs are great!

"Oh, frell. Now that I've inundated myself with spoilers and gotten myself interested, I want to read this comic. At least the knowledge that cool stuff is coming will get me through the terminally boring opening part. Seriously, when are they going to bring in the trolls?"

And that, my friends, is how I started reading Homestuck.

In some ways, judging by what I read on the Wiki, it reminds me of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. An intricate fictional world with an interesting set of fantasy mechanics; a color-coded cast of characters who each follow their own particular theme, leading to much fan analysis regarding the connections between their behavior and said themes; starting out mild, and then getting harsh.

If it's anywhere near as good as PMMM, and my brother said it is, I think I'll enjoy this. Even if I have already drowned myself in spoilers, and started to have weird Homestuck-themed dreams.

Yes, I started having dreams about this webcomic before I'd even touched the archives.

I dreamed that my paraplegic and incontinent cat had developed troll powers, and he was going to go on a rampage. And take over the world. And kill everyone. Or something.

This worried me very much, because it presented a distressing possibility:

What if, in the course of dragging his paralyzed butt around the world, he lost his diaper and peed on my bed?

This was obviously the worst-case scenario.

But I'm sure the comic will give me worse scenarios to dream about as the story progresses.

In the meantime, here's the video that got me interested in Homestuck in the first place. If you like awesome cartoon battles, perfectly timed with epic music, I think you'll enjoy this.

Now I'm curious:

Have you ever done something like what I did?

Did you take half an interest in something, read the spoiler-filled wiki, then decide to watch/read the story anyway?

I'd love to see your comments.

Emotional drama is great. Crossing the line into fictional whining and wallowing is not. But where do you draw the line?

Today, I'm going to explore three differences between tragic, sad, dramatic stories I enjoyed, and ones that left me rolling my eyes and wishing the characters would just get over it.

Tragedy in a story is like ketchup. It's a great addition to many dishes, but very few people want to drink a bottle of ketchup straight. You have to have other stuff on the table.

In other words, even the darkest story can avoid a descent into wallowing by adding bits of light and hope.

Yes, the situation is utterly horrible, but you've still got that one character who will keep fighting and believing in the possibility of a good outcome, no matter how bad things get.

Sure, characters are dying like spiders in a vacuum cleaner, but that just makes those who survive cherish each other more.

True, it is unbelievably hard for the characters to make any headway toward their goal, but once in a while, they do get to make an encouraging bit of progress, or fulfill one of their small, cherished dreams.

After all, conflict and danger aren't just there for their own sake - or at least, they shouldn't be. They're there to raise the stakes for characters we have a reason to care about, so it's important that the audience always has something to root for.

Unavoidable danger, tragedy or setbacks are heart-wrenching.

Pointless, avoidable and self-inflicted ones just make me want to smack my palm against my forehead. Or smack my palm against their forehead. Or both.

For example, in Spiderman 2, Peter Parker got into an accident and his bike got wrecked. As a result, he was late to MJ's play. Do you think he explained to her that he had a very good reason for missing her performance?

No. He just stood there, apologized, and let the situation get very avoidably worse.

Now, there ARE some instances where characters' downfalls are both self-inflicted and very moving. A certain character in Madoka Magica went spiraling into madness, broken by a series of events much milder than the ones that other characters in the series had survived, and her death was very avoidable.

But instead of being a cheap plot device, it was an exploration of her character, and of the different reactions that different personalities had to the same painful situation.

If Sasuke Uchiha had lived in the world of Azumanga Daioh, the poorly-aimed, self-destructive and utterly counterproductive vengeance mission to which he committed himself at one point would have seemed pretty understandable. (Details withheld for spoiler reasons.)

Unfortunately, he lives in a universe with characters like Gaara, who went through WAY more crap than he did, with far less support, and chose to become better.

The baseline level of angst in a story tends to affect my perception of the characters' reactions to various traumas. If a character loses his whole family in a slice-of-life, it's a big deal, and it's understandable if he becomes a rampant psycho.

If the same thing happens in a universe where almost every single character has lost people, and many of them have endured more abuse than the angsty character in question, it's still a big deal, but I find myself comparing the angster to his peers, and finding him whiny by comparison.

Admittedly, that assessment is probably unfair. But on an emotional level, that's what happens when a traumatized character rises well above their universe's standard reaction to traumatic events.

What do you think of dark, dramatic stories?

Where do you draw the line between engrossing drama, and annoying angst? Are there any differences I missed?

I look forward to hearing your opinions!

Have you ever wanted a behind-the-scenes peek into the process behind the books, and the world of the author who created them?

If the answer is 'yes', I have good news: this week, I had the wonderful opportunity to have an interview with Gary Vanucci, and the interview just went live!

In this interview, you'll discover:

1. The process I use to write my books, and the rule I always break while writing them
   
   
2. Some valuable advice for fans and aspiring authors
   
   
3. My favorite character to write, most recommended shows, and superpower of choice
   
   
4. And more!

The battle of wits between Scorpius and his new mental sparring partners was fascinating to watch. His devious side is in fine form, executing off-the-cuff bluffs and political maneuvers with the agility of an Olympic gymnast.

But he's finally met his match in the calculating, technologically advanced Kkore, and before he knows it, he's in WAY over his head - as Farscape characters usually are.

His daring nature, resilience, and ability to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat even when he's alone and without resources, are as impressive as always. And I loved the relationship between him and his new pet.

All in all, the comics would have been perfect if it weren't for one little thing... or should I say, one big, huge, HORRIFYING problem that completely ruined the entire series for me.

And that problem was... Scorpius wasn't Scorpius.

His abilities and skill set were there, but his core motivations and personality weren't. It was like half his soul had disappeared, and the resulting empty space had been possessed by the combined spirits of Starscream and Light Yagami.

OK, so I know the comics are canon. The writers can make the characters be whatever they want them to be, and I can't do anything about it.

But I just can't see comic-book Scorpius as the 'real' Scorpius because...

...in my not so humble opinion, NO story that involves the phrase "Scorpius assists in a genocide against the Sebacean race" has any place in Farscape's canon.

Now, maybe you're going to say that looking out for himself at the expense of everyone else is Scorpius' M.O., and that he was only ever using the Sebaceans to get his revenge.

To explore that, I'm going to refer to Incubator, the episode in which Scorpius' backstory and motives are first explored.

In Incubator, as in the comics, we see a young Scorpius being horribly abused by his violent caretaker, Tauza. What he goes through is enough to leave anyone vengeful and messed up in the head, but it's his conversation with Captain Molayne that casts doubt on the comics' portrayal of him.

When the captain finds out about Scorpius' quest for the truth about his parents, he asks if the intention behind his search is "so you can find out who you are?"

To which Scorpius replies, "To find out... who I should be."

Which is to say, he didn't already know.

His motivations were not yet set, whereas in the comics, they showed his vengeful streak as having been established before he ever escaped from the Scarrans.

When Tauza recaptured him, and asked him why he'd rejected the Scarrans, his answer wasn't "because you tortured me and did your best to convince me that I was weak and inferior". It was "you lied about my parents" - a motivation entirely ignored by the comics.

And when she tortured him for information, he laughed at her for her failure. But when she showed him the video of Rylani being raped, THAT was what left him weeping on the floor. When she told him that the Scarrans intended to wipe out the Sebacean race because they were useless as "breeding stock", he struggled to breathe.

He laughed in the midst of his own suffering, but was devastated by the suffering of people he'd never even met, and the prospect of the further destruction that could await them in the future.

That isn't the only time when he showed that he cared about Sebacean lives. In Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, when the Command Carrier was imploding around him, he didn't pull a Javio and try to evacuate right away.

Instead, he fought his way through the flaming wreckage to find a working comms station, so he could sound the evacuation (just in case the PKs hadn't already figured out that it was time to leave), and then hauled Braca's apparently evacuation-incapable ass out of the room.

He performed a similar act of Braca-saving when his favorite lieutenant got shot during the Peacekeeper Wars, despite the fact that the rescue required him to walk out of cover and into the line of fire, where he could have been shot in his unarmored face.

When Drillic sent a pilot into a wormhole prematurely, and the pilot died, he was punished for wasting a Sebacean life carelessly.

And in Season of Death, Scorpius could have allowed Kobrin, who was chomping at the bit to challenge Crais to a space race, to do so right away, thus diverting Talyn's search for them and decreasing the likelihood that they'd be found and killed. Instead, he kept the Moyans at bay until evading detection became impossible, and only then did he send the pilot out, when the Carrier was close enough to give him a fighting chance.

Long explanation short, while his own suffering may have contributed to his desire for revenge against the Scarrans, he seemed much more upset about the suffering and death of Sebaceans.

So when the comics portrayed his desire for revenge as springing purely from his own childhood abuse, and Scorpius himself as not caring about Sebaceans to the point where he'd assist in their destruction in order to increase his political power and save his own skin, it rang completely false.

Now, speaking of political power, that was also problematic. In the comics, he was obsessed with power and control. He couldn't cope with being an underling; he wanted to be on top of the food chain. Not as a means to the end of stopping the genocidal Scarrans, but as an end in and of themselves.

In fact, he wanted it so badly that he assisted a violent race in their quest to take over the galaxy... which is exactly what he spent the entire on-screen series trying to prevent!

So much for "I don't want power, I want revenge". Which is weird, because they actually showed the exact scene where he said that as a flashback in the comics... and then proceeded to ignore it by making Scorpius fixate on his own autonomy and political power above all loyalty, morality and self-preservation, and even above his cherished revenge.

I mean, sure, he got his revenge to a certain degree - by securing the Scarrans' surrender - but when the Kkore decided to go easier on the Scarrans than on the Sebaeans, Scorpius was OK with that.

What the actual frell?

It was like they decided to keep all the stuff that made him a badass antagonist, but completely get rid of everything that justified his ruthless use of his formidable skills.

It would have been easy... SO FRELLING EASY... to keep him in-character.

The fascinating battle of wits could have stayed intact. The displays of badass bravery didn't have to be rewritten. They would barely have even had to change the plot.

ALL they would have had to do was to have his ascent through the Kkore's ranks be motivated primarily by a desire to discover their weakness and destroy them, instead of being motivated by a desire for power, self-preservation and an utterly un-Scorpius-like admiration for a genocidal race.

Sure, the Kkore are "elegant, powerful and rational", as he put it - but the Scarrans could also be elegant, they were more powerful than the Sebaceans with whom Scorpius once sided, and they were sometimes more rational than High Command.

But he didn't side with the Scarrans, even when his deception of Staleek gave him the opportunity to do so. Instead, he joined the losing side in order to resist them.

Not because they abused him as a kid, but because they lied about his parents, let his mom and the other test subjects die, and threatened his mother's species.

All in all, while the character in the comics was a fascinating villain protagonist, he just wasn't Scorpius.

He was the boldness, intelligence, vengefulness and resilience of Scorpius, the self-centered arrogance of Light Yagami, and the power-hungry case of Chronic Backstabbing Disorder that was Starscream, all rolled into a single psychological mutant.

One that, compared to the selfless anti-genocide crusader I came to know and love in the on-screen series, could pretty much be summed up by a Jack Sparrow quote:

So, bottom line: are the comics worth reading?

If you're the type who sees Scorpius as an evil, self-centered villain, and you prefer him that way, go ahead. You'll LOVE these comics.

But if you, like me, find his selfless love for the Sebacean race to be one of the most endearing aspects of him, and you were impressed by the way he could go through hezmana and come out of it still capable of caring about people who would never care about him in return, then watching his body walk around with half of his soul missing will probably be about as enjoyable as receiving half a kitten for Christmas.

As for me, the day when I consider this portrayal of him to be canon will be the day when John uses a wormhole to blow up Earth, and everyone thinks it's normal.

Which is a real pity, because some of his maneuvers were truly brilliant, the hints at the coming plotline were tantalizing, and the relationship between Scorpius and his pet lizard John was absolutely made of cute.

Now it's your turn. Did you read the Scorpius comics?

Did you think they were in-character, or did they bother you, too?

I look forward to reading your comments.