- Arc Fatigue:
- "Pones" might just be two pages long, but it's still understandable that that's at least one page too long for some people when you remember that Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff was created specifically to be a bad comic. Amusingly this is actually lampshaded by the alt text on the second page which comments "we made u read this fore two days u fat nasty trash"
- "Night At The 100Dseum," due to being 10 pages long. As the comic gets one page a day except on weekends, this means readers had nothing but this story for two weeks straight.
- "The Thirst of Dornamon Gary
" is even worse than "Pones." Five days, or an entire week, of SBaHJ goodness. At least the story here is much more interesting than just Sweet Bro playing with a unicorn toy. - "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven" has twenty-four pages released over five weeks. At least it depicts the under-looked Felt and is penned by Hussie himself.
- Averted in "Secret Sufferer." It's 25 pages long, but the story was broken up by four holiday activity pages released between the fifth and sixth pages, and technically it consists of three smaller stories, reducing the risk of staleness.
- Awesome Art: "Hunting Lesson" is gorgeous. (Although really, most of the strips could fall under this heading.)
- Broken Base:
- The fan-made aspect. Paradox Space is considered either glorified fanfiction that validates bad writing, or an interesting experiment into making an Expanded Universe.
- "Headed For Stardom" was a miniature example, as readers were split between whether Gamzee's madness was hilarious, horrifying, or both. But given that this is Gamzee that we're talking about, it was probably deliberate on some level.
- Cronus' actions in "Damara" seem to have become quite a Base Breaker.
- Page 31 of "Summerteen Romance" wound up being censored due to Body Horror. For context... The fandom is divided as to whether this was a good idea.
- KC Green's comics. His Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comics are either hilarious out there surreal humor like classic SBAHJ, or cringeworthy attempts at SBAHJ that don't have the deliberately terrible feel of the original flavor. Whenever a comic focused on them comes up some fans are happy to see them while others want PXS to focus on Homestuck's cast and consider these comics to be a waste of time.
- Continuity Lock-Out: Paradox Space assumes the reader has some understanding of Homestuck, leaving most of the comic baffling to newcomers. Nearly anything mentioned in Call-Back, Continuity Nod and Mythology Gag are affected by this.
- "Prototyped" relies on the fact that reader understands the mechanics of a Sylladex, the Kernelsprite and the Monarch's rings in order for the punchline to make any sense.
- "Indemnity Double Reacharound" ends with The Reveal that the comic was a game played between Dave and Terezi on the meteor, two characters and a setting who had yet make an appearance in Paradox Space.
- Crosses the Line Twice:
- Gamzee's talent show. Starring the heads of the dead trolls. One of which he decides to make out with.
- The third story has John witness a group of monkeys shanking another monkey.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Critical Whale.
- The Psionic's hilarious appearance in "Suffering Through/For The People" elevated him to this.
- Esoteric Happy Ending: "Soul-Fraying Game" sees the Meteor crew abandon Terezi's D&D game to watch a movie without a second thought to the effort she put into it. The comic treats it lightly, but considering soon after Terezi would enter a period of self-destruction out of guilt, it's terribly sad to see all her friends abandon her so callously.
- Fridge Horror: In "Spritecon", we see cameos from sprites that look like John's Dad and Rose's Mom. Just what the heck happened there?
- Growing the Beard: A handful of the earlier strips were accused of not living up to the potential that the comic presented — even as far as simple throwaway-gag comics were concerned. Somewhere around "A Fun Day For Bec," the series as a whole grew on the fandom.
- Harsher in Hindsight: In "Summerteen Romance," Bro says that he's not fit to take care of children all on his "brone." Pretty funny, until Dave starts ranting to Dirk in a later Homestuck update about how neglectful Bro was.
- Memetic Mutation: The Critical Whale.
- Mood Whiplash: "Summerteen Romance" is mostly comedy, with Dave reading (and riffing) an AU wish-fulfillment fanfic written by Karkat. Then the second-to-last page makes it abundantly clear that Karkat is writing the story as a means of dealing with all the horrible stuff that's happened to his friends in canon, and trying to give them the happy endings he thinks they deserve, while his future self berates him both for everything that happened and for daring to write shitty fanfic about it.
- Narm:
- Right in the middle of "Damara," a trigger warning pops up and tells the reader that "the following page contains content that may be upsetting for some viewers, including implication of assault." The effect is the same as you'd get if a horror movie suddenly stopped in the middle of a scene to inform you that the following scene would be scary. Luckily, the trigger warning was moved to the beginning of the story after a few days.
- An In-Universe example. Karkat's story from "Summerteen Romance" makes Dave do a Spit Take with laughter at a point when it very clearly wasn't meant to.
- Nightmare Fuel: "Damara" in its entirety — understandably so, given that it's based on Tomie. Shortly after being posted, the Paradox Space crew added a warning that the story may contain objectionable content — which is saying a lot, given some of what has happened in Homestuck prior. It's absolutely justified given the content.
- Page four, however, deserves special mention. Cronus is heavily implied to have attempted to sexually assault Damara, and she died because she slipped over the cliff as she tried to push him away. His response when confronted with having done this is to deny it, then panic and push her to her death again.
- The ending is also terrifying. Cronus threatens to kill Damara yet again if she "makes trouble for him," to which she tells Cronus that it doesn't matter how many times he kills her, because he doomed himself the first time—and she "already knows when and where they're going to die." The Slasher Smile she boasts in the final panel does not help.
- Tear Jerker: The penultimate page of "Summerteen Romance" is surprisingly this, with a future version of Karkat harshly criticizing his AU fanfic of his life, pointing out all the Wish-Fulfillment and how it disrespects what actually happened. Especially cause this is one of those few Jerkass comments Karkat gives that are entirely accurate. And then he tops it off with this line:ONE LAST THING, AND I HOPE THIS STINGS YOU AS MUCH AS I'M ALREADY CERTAIN IT WILL: THE MOST TELLING THING ABOUT THE PATHETIC EMPTY GESTURE THAT IS THIS SCRIPT IS THAT THE KARKAT YOU WROTE INTO YOUR STORY WHERE EVERYTHING'S BETTER FOR EVERYBODY IS NOTHING LIKE YOU AT ALL
- Karkat's reaction to Future!Karkat's criticisms is heartbreaking in that he just doesn't. He rolls his eyes, states that it was stolen from Future!Karkat's Future Self and remarks that he's going to have to too. It certainly casts a darker light on Karkat's previous self criticisms when he likely doesn't believe them and only does so to create a Stable Time Loop and prevent a Doomed Timeline.Dave: damn son, i at least enjoyed your script ironically. you are literally your own worst critic.Karkat: DON'T GIVE HIM ANY CREDIT. HE PLAGARIZED HIS FUTURE SELF SAME AS I'M GOING TO. AND IT'S HARD NOT TO BE PERSUASIVE WHEN DISAGREEING CREATES AN ENTIRE DOOMED OFF-SHOOT OF SPACETIME.
- Perhaps even sadder is the self-deprecation being (at least somewhat) undeserved; the main difference between AU!Karkat and Alpha Timeline Karkat is in their personalities, not their actions.
- Karkat's reaction to Future!Karkat's criticisms is heartbreaking in that he just doesn't. He rolls his eyes, states that it was stolen from Future!Karkat's Future Self and remarks that he's going to have to too. It certainly casts a darker light on Karkat's previous self criticisms when he likely doesn't believe them and only does so to create a Stable Time Loop and prevent a Doomed Timeline.
- Win Back the Crowd: Most of the complaints with Paradox Space have been addressed with "Critical Miss," which introduces Vriska and Eridan and serves up some entertaining character-focused comedy. Not to mention Critical Whale.
Go back to Paradox Space.
