[Solid Snake]

It's kind of funny to have two people misrepresent aspects of your argument in two different ways. (I guess Bard was closer than RPG, somewhat?)

The point I'm trying to make isn't that bad things keep happening to the characters; I like a good tragic narrative as much as anyone else. I usually like my tragedies to be a result of protagonist agency, however. The Red Wedding works in Game of Thrones because it's not just an objectively shitty event but it's also an objectively shitty event that appears initially to come at you out of left field, but then you meditate on the circumstances and the politics of the world and you're like "Shit, [Dead Characters] totally fucked up and had it coming."

By contrast, everything the trolls and the kids seem to do ends up only creating the very circumstances they're trapped in and there's absolutely nothing they can do about it, even now, near presumably the very end of the story, except create the very circumstances they're desperate to avoid. We're nearing the end and no one -- least of all John, the guy who just caused this retcon, seems to have the slightest clue what he's doing or why he's doing it. It's not as if even Terezi, seer though she is, was like "Oh, by having John retcon everything I'm actually just engineering the circumstances in which Lord English will come into existence and threaten everything!"

I guess my hope for Homestuck was like, at one point or another the kids and trolls would sufficiently master the 'rules of the game,' for lack of a better way to put it, to give themselves a chance of earning their victory as a result of a coordinated strategy? Or, alternatively, that the kids and trolls would utterly fail, but at least that failure would stem from something I could wag my finger at and say "It's because they did X or Y or Z."

Where this finally ties in with Bard's point is that, no, the narrative absolutely shouldn't drag on for years and years on end if the kids and trolls aren't making any progress. "The kids and trolls, in an effort to avoid the consequences of a doomed timeline where everyone dies, have John use his newfound powers to retcon everything, only to realize they've created the exact circumstances that led to Lord English's rise to power" is not only the exact same twist we've seen before (but with Jack Noir the first time, when it was at least better written), but it's something you can easily, easily, as Andrew Hussie, establish in maybe 20% the total content.

I want to spend time with the kids and trolls as they're learning how to actually take charge and resolve these seemingly impossible issues with seemingly insurmountable odds. We don't need to spend years watching them get kicked in the teeth, only to finally get to the 'good part' where they're going to finally enact a plan, succeed or fail, and then just have that confrontation span all of a single flash or a mere pittance of updates. That's the *important* part of the story.

EDIT: Then there's the entirely separate yet equally valid grievance that we just spent years following versions of the characters who themselves aren't 'real' anymore, insofar as their newfound retconned selves are actually completely different characters with completely different relationships, aspirations, and mentalities, none of which we've actually even seen so far.

EDIT 2: Like, you know the really easy way Hussie could've written this to give the protagonists a shred of agency and actually make this whole subplot interesting? Have Terezi, John and Roxy know that retconning is going to lead to a timeline with the 'birth' of Lord English, but have them talk it over and realize they miss their dead friends so much in this timeline that they're willing to do that anyway. Sacrificing entire universes to selfishly revive those they love and preserve the friendships that are important to them, costs to others be damned -- is there any more prototypical a choice for teenagers to make? It gives those characters sufficient agency that I'm like, okay, everything we just witnessed these past couple years actually is important because it's about those three characters -- explaining a difficult decision they made, rendering them less than perfect but all too human.

That's good shit.

You know what's NOT good shit? "Oops! We just so happened to stumble ass-backwards into that very nightmarish situation we were trying to avoid, without having the SLIGHTEST GODDAMN CLUE what we were up to!"

That kind of Deus Ex Machina stuff works maybe like once or twice, but eventually it just starts to feel like a really lazy plot device that strips the characters of any actual role in the story aside from being dopes.