Let Me Tell You About Webcomics: A New Postmodern Genre
by Paige Gelsimino
In Homestuck when disc two is inserted, it goes into a flash animation that slowly begins showing signs of glitching because of the damaged disc.
A few panels later, even the the panels begin to glitch.
By the time it gets to the second flash, [S] Flip, its glitching so badly that the flash essentially breaks and the narrative switches back to panels, the first of which say that the disc is too badly damaged to continue playing.
This brings a continuity between the flash animations to the panels, making the broken disc responsible for the switch in media.
Another example in Homestuck is when one of the characters, Caliborn, takes over the narrative from the author, Andrew Hussie.
The whole website changes from its normal colors to Caliborn’s preferred color, green. Also the links on the website are changed to say things like “worthless garbage” and “overpriced trash.”
Then a flash animation begins of Caliborn playing a song on a keyboard and where the reader can usually click the next button to go to the next panel, the reader is not able to click next until Caliborn’s performance is over. If the reader tries to click the link an image appears above it of Caliborn saying things like “Very rude,” or “Hold for applause,” until he is finally done and the reader can click the link that now says “Begin Homosuck.”
Then Caliborn begins telling the story of Homestuck his way, calling it “Homosuck” and drawing and writing the panels himself. This really shows how Caliborn completely takes over the whole website, while still keeping continuity with the webcomic and the story itself. Especially with how the reader can see Caliborn’s personality through all of his changes in the website. And when he begins drawing his own panels, they are extremely different from Hussie’s style and it’s very obvious that Caliborn isn't very good at drawing.
The changing of medias and the abrupt change of the whole website in the narrative makes complete sense and is very unified in its way of presenting itself to the reader.