Been rereading with a friend who hasn't read it before. I warned him that the quality peaks in Act 5 and goes down from there, but we're on Act 6 Intermission 2 & so far I've been enjoying Act 6 more than I expected. Hell, when I look ahead at A6 A3 I'm excited bc there's so much great shit coming like Dirk: Unite & Synchronize & Caliborn.

But we just got to Aranea, and like when I first read it, my friend's started feeling alienated by the story. Then when I look further ahead, I'm legit dreading almost everything post-retcon. Like, Vriska is one of my favorite characters, but the way she just becomes a complete Mary-Sue in Act 6 Act 6 Act 5 is just so awful. Everyone other than John, Roxy, & Caliborn gets their character development completely thrown away after thousands of pages getting invested in them for the sake of narrative convenience. It's one of the most disappointing things I've ever experienced in a work of fiction, especially after how incredible Cascade is

The writing becomes fanfiction levels of bad in so many places only to then become literal terrible fanfiction in the epilogues/BC. They're so cringe and horrible to the point of being unreadable. It seems like that's the point and like it exists as an endurance/loyalty gauntlet to weed out all but the most diehard fans who want it to just continue no matter what. It's so bad that it made me forget how good the comic is in the first 5 acts, and things have been so good up til now in the reread I gradually forgot they get that bad until confronting it this past week. It gets so bad it taints all of act 6 in my mind. Idk why I'm writing this bc nobody cares, but I just wish the story got the conclusion it deserved. This seemed to be the consensus when the comic ended, but nowadays I mostly see people acting like it's genius, much like people who say that the star wars prequels are actually masterpieces. I don't get it at all

idk. at least we have acts 1-5