Board 8 > Man...Homestuck...

(+) Yeah! (+)

Just been thinking about it.

It sure was a trip, huh?

https://youtu.be/5NACWZBDtN8

Nothing like it since nor will there be anything like it again, for better and for worse.

I dropped out early but it was something. It had an appeal. Kind of hard to define.
I wonder how Problem Sleuth holds up, actually.

After the...2nd megapause was it? The one just before the ending was when I dropped it. Always meant to go back and finish it but by then so much time had passed and rereading everything felt like a chore so I never actually finished it.

MysteriousStan posted...

After the...2nd megapause was it? The one just before the ending was when I dropped it. Always meant to go back and finish it but by then so much time had passed and rereading everything felt like a chore so I never actually finished it.

I think I dropped it during the first megapause? I remember horses on a calendar. But yeah, same reasons as you.

You can download and read it all offline now and I'm tempted.

Post-Cascade is definitely a notch and a half below Pre-Cascade.

I dont think its as neat as pre-Cascade and post-Cascade because the latter is most of the story and has highs well above the former, but also plenty of lows.

Anyway, Homestuck was good. There is a really good podcast thats analysing it that rekindled my love for it a bit.

paperwarior posted...

I dropped out early but it was something. It had an appeal. Kind of hard to define.

This is very similar to my experience

Homestuck was kind of like... being on a long hike or road trip or at summer camp, and making up a story with your friends/siblings as you went along because you were so bored

Pre-smartphone, of course

Nothing really made sense, but it was fun to keep piling things on and exploring creativity

Homestuck wasn't quite the same, because it wasn't made by me or made by a friend, it was just some guy. That's why I dropped off

Just listening to the OST, should have gone to sleep hours ago.

https://youtu.be/w0haC4QkPO0

https://youtu.be/OEB1uh0T9UA

God it was just such a huge part of my life at the time.

Never went back after that huge pause, and now I don't remember anything

MysteriousStan posted...

After the...2nd megapause was it? The one just before the ending was when I dropped it. Always meant to go back and finish it but by then so much time had passed and rereading everything felt like a chore so I never actually finished it.

This.

I always meant to finish but just never felt the motivation to do so after so long and now it feels like I would need to start over. Or at least reread the last couple acts.

I think, with age and wisdom, we now agree that Equius was the best troll

Second mega pause was were I stopped. Never really got back into it.

I have friends who did get back into it and tell me I should finish it. If not just for completeness. But at this point I would need to skim read the entire thing again and I don't wanna do that.

GANON1025 posted...

I think, with age and wisdom, we now agree that Equius was the best troll

I'm still Vriskapilled.

I've come to appreciate Aradia a lot more with time, though.

I was all in on Terezi, but Homestuck itself seemed to want to deny me of that by the end.

I quit pretty close to the end (I think) and I've always regretted it, but there's just too much to relearn for me to actually finish it.

Add me to the "second megapause killed it" crowd.

The second megapause? Or the gigapause?

I guess probably giga? Pretty late into it.

I used to have a program installed on my computer where a GIF of Terezi licking my screen would pop up every time there was an update and it would play the first 2 seconds of Sunslammer.

Mannnnnnnn.....

I don't know which pause it was but yeah I never finished it either because of it.

It's really a shame for something that had caught the lightning in a bottle to become a nerd culture phenomenon to just kind of fizzle out like it did.

Yeah the gigapause was a huge mistake. Hussie should have either delayed the kicksterter by a year or just said Im ringfencing the funds for the game and not doing anything until the story is done. What ended up happening as a result of that was a huge mess that hurt both the story and the game, as well as resulting in a substantial hit to Homestucks overall popularity. It was still more or less at its peak when the gigapause started and while it was still pretty damn popular after, it wasnt quite the same. Its a shame because GAME OVER would have absolutely shattered the previous peak in terms of Homestuck audience, and the fact that it still got kinda close to those peak levels speaks to how wild it was.

I would recommend finishing it though, there are plenty of good recaps. I also feel, that now that it is settled the ending is pretty great.

Homestuck: it's good despite the flaws. Maybe even partly because of them?

I've been listening to a podcast called Homestuck Made This World. I'm not usually a podcast guy but I'd highly recommend it. It's two guys, both academics, one new and one who has never read it before, going through Homestuck piece by piece and taking it apart and putting it in historical and cultural context. It's a great nostalgia trip where you also learn about media history and philosophy. It's great! Their other shows are too and again, I'm not a big podcast guy.

Anyways it did inspire me to go back through the whole thing (yes, including the Epilogues) earlier this year. There's a lot of parts that haven't aged well, but as a whole I think it mostly holds up! Like a lot of people ITT are talking about how the pauses turned them off the comic, and it is remarkable how much Act 6 benefits when you aren't waiting for it update by update. It's good, actually.

Nepeta best troll

I read like 10 chapters because of Ed Bellis, didn't really get it, and that's my Homestuck experience

Leonhart4 posted...

I read like 10 chapters because of Ed Bellis, didn't really get it, and that's my Homestuck experience

Honestly I don't think its possible to 'get it' without getting somewhat into Act 2 because there's not a lot to 'get' before that as the plot and character development doesn't really start until the end of Act 1.

Unless the humor of Act 1 REALLY gels with you I do think Homestuck has a pretty high barrier to entry.

Can someone post a link to a good recap site? Maybe it will be the motivation I need.

Not only does it have a high barrier to entry but that doesn't really go away. It just changes constantly. I don't think there's a single part of this damn thing that's straightforwardly easy to read.

Maniac64 posted...

Can someone post a link to a good recap site? Maybe it will be the motivation I need.

I think the best recap site is going to be the fan wiki pages for the summaries by act. But I do really have to plug the HMTW podcast again here because it is also great for that, or even if you just want to not read it at all but have it explained.

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

I think the best recap site is going to be the fan wiki pages for the summaries by act. But I do really have to plug the HMTW podcast again here because it is also great for that, or even if you just want to not read it at all but have it explained.

I've been wanting a new readthrough/watchthrough podcast lately so I'll check it out

Never finished it (can never get far after the first pause) but holy shit it was great stuff. Never forget Make Her Pay, Jack: Ascend, or Seer: Ascend.

Eridan was totally the best troll

totally

Eridan is a character that has aged unfortunately well.

Homestuck was a mistake

I think I miss the memories and feelings more than the work itself, if that makes sense. Like I remember it fondly but I would never re-read it. Especially since everything since the official has kinda hurt its legacy. (don't read the epilogues or 2 or any of that, please) (the parts of hiveswap that came out were fun tho)

I thought the Epilogues were pretty good. Didn't touch Homestuck 2 though.

The Epilogues are very good actually and while HS^2 is not, it was more of a victim of circumstance than anything else. Like its worst sin was that it was very slowly paced and could never get off the ground, all while the fanbase judged it so harshly that the creators gave up on it. It was a shitty situation!

I have the Homestuck Epilogues in physical hardcover but I've never read a page, lol.

If there's one thing I can definitively state about the Epilogues, it's that their reputation has kind of spiraled out of control into this kind of cursed object to be spoken of in hushed tones. But really it's just a fucking book, it can't hurt you and you're better off just reading it yourself than listening to what anyone else has to say about it.

This has also happened to Homestuck itself! It's dumb there too!

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

The Epilogues are very good actually

nah

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

Like its worst sin was that it was very slowly paced and could never get off the ground

nah

HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

But really it's just a f***ing book, it can't hurt you and you're better off just reading it yourself

nah, it retroactively diminished my enjoyment of the original

The Epilogues tried something, it didnt totally work and they were far too long but they really went for it. HS^2 on the other hand was a wreck unfortunately.

The only Homestuck thing I ever interacted with was this insanely long recap by Sarah Z:
https://youtu.be/ohFyOjfcLWQ

Ah yes the actual most controversial piece of Homestuck-related media: the video that prompted Hussie to kill the franchise for a year and a half by responding to it lol

The Sarah Z video I think was an honest try but frankly it doesn't even cover the half of it

I watched that for the first time last night as a result of making this topic.

Some interesting stuff in there but I can't say I'm a huuuugs fan of her style because she seems to repeat herself a LOT, sometime even just a few sentences apart, to the point of a annoyance. Real ScottTheWoz in that sense.

Still a decent watch!

Its so long. I dont know about any pause s but I tried to read it straight through once after hearing about it so long and I think the world rebooted sixth times and I couldnt even remember stufff that happened at the beginning despite reading it in one sitting and I just kinda got bored of it.

The video is a worthwhile watch but its not perfect. It mostly skips over Acts 1-4 which is kind of a mistake because Homestuck was already starting to bubble up into the mainstream even before the Trolls, and its recollection of the Kickstarter debacle is coming from one flawed source and not representing the other side of that (not remotely worth the Hussie overreaction though, WOW!). It also kind of in my view presents a slightly revisionist take of the response to Collide and Act 7 that is more coloured by how people think of them now. At the time people lost their minds (in a good way) over Collide but Act 7 was deeply controversial. This presents something of the opposite which is from what I saw an opinion that emerged later. Its a good video on the whole though! Just wanted to get my nitpicks out there haha.

ah yes the homestuck

i remember waiting around for a league of legends tournament match of some sort to start and one of you fuckers had made a topic about how great this 'homestuck' was so decided to check it out. and then i was in. got caught up the day cascade came out

definitely one of the best and worst things ive followed

LightningStrikes posted...

It also kind of in my view presents a slightly revisionist take of the response to Collide and Act 7 that is more coloured by how people think of them now. At the time people lost their minds (in a good way) over Collide but Act 7 was deeply controversial. This presents something of the opposite which is from what I saw an opinion that emerged later.

Weirdly I do remember the kind of reaction she's talking about here (or am projecting my own lol) of a kind of muted response to Collide. As in, people LIKED it on a technical level, but it didn't have the same sense of climax or resolution as Cascade and was compared unfavorably. People looked towards Act 7 for those and then got wrapped up in all that. It didn't divide so neatly along the lines of liking Collide vs not though, for that reason. But also the Homestuck fanbase is massive and you can find all types of people. Honestly if there's revisionist history I tend to see about the endings it's their divisiveness getting downplayed in the face of the post-canon.

Agreed about the bit about the Kickstarter though, it gets too much focus for how little we really concretely know about it. It's ok as a video about the fandom reaction but I think the fan perspective is where a lot of its blind spots come from, especially with regards to the post-canon which she's not interested in diving into in detail. Which, it was literally too soon to do so and it would be hard to explain anyways, but there was a lot of context smoothed over.

Props for attempting to explain Vriska, though. I've seen some retrospectives that just omit talking about her entirely because she's too controversial and it's like...Vriska IS Homestuck, you can't fully understand how it works without the controversy. That's like trying to explain Game of Thrones without bringing up Cersei Lannister or some shit. Wild.

Just saw a post on my timeline that Rose and Jade only directly interacted on their own TWICE in ALL OF HOMESTUCK??

Makes the whole HS2 "thing" even fucking weirder!

people complain when rose and jade don't interact

people complain when rose and jade do interact

smh you just can't win