I also recently re-read Homestuck, and was very surprised at How Good It Was. Disclaimer being that I read it originally in 2016, because I heard DaveKat was canon, and after listening to my friend go onnnnn and onnnnnnn about Homestuck and how much she /didn't/ like that ship and how dumb it was anyway back in 2011 I kind of got confusion whiplash and went to go check it out myself. I think as far as I'm concerned, Act 6 is where it all falls apart for me. Act 6 has some of my favourite characters - Dirk being one of my favourite in anything ever back then and has reclaimed that spot now - but it... is an exceptionally long Act in which a lot of words are said but very little actually happens. It is /incredibly/ wordy, and a lot of that comes with introducing not just the Alphas but a whole cast of new characters as well, but the problems start for me when it starts feeling like the Alphas character arcs and resolutions just kinda... breeze past you. The Alphas have one day of romantic drama and PLOT SHIT, a 6 month timeskip, another day of romantic drama and TRICKSTER MODE, and then either game over or collide. I was left feeling like... most problems the Alphas have were either established or resolved off-screen. Jake's arc was... confusing is either completely unfinished or we're legitimately supposed to accept him recovering sometime between Act 7 and the Credits, Dirk... had the ending, but it felt like he was missing the middle (I'm particularly reminded of Dirk saying he felt like his splinters haunted him, but AR was the only one we'd ever seen him interact with - feels like there were some Events Missing There, to say nothing of us not really seeing how the alpha session played out to determine how accurate Dirk's self-assessment of himself was), Roxy fixed her issues off-screen and Jane.... dear god, Jane. To say nothing of Rose "not having a character arc" or the Ultimate Copout re; Jade. Fuck Davepeta and ARqius, also. I was quite invested in Davesprite' and AR's arcs, and uh. Lol. Yeah, those sure were resolutions. It got to the point where it seemed like Hussie lost interest in telling parts of his story, and it really shows in moments like those. Regarding the retcon - in concept I have no issue with it, but the execution bugs me. Given, again, how little seems to happen in Act 6, game over > retcon > collide > act 7 \o/ felt very much like the comic coming to a quick and messy close. From a meta perspective I understand Vriska's role in the retcon, but resent her from a characterisation one because it feels like she cut down a lot of very interesting character arcs that I would have much rather have seen resolved. I'm much less interested in meta storytelling than I am solid characterisation/arcs - my sheer frustration when the Dirk/AR conversation (an INCREDIBLY powerful one) ended with ARqius, dear god, I was LIVID. I think in the end I like Act 6 for the building blocks it laid out, not necessarily what it actually did with them. And dear god can the epilogues go screw themselves. HS2 is... tedious. I'm finally playing Hiveswap, though. It's cute.
i'm fascinated by how you draw the line at AR and ARquius. i found his addition to Equiusprite very charming, both characters compliment each other well and it suits hal's search for a body. Hal wanted to be a real boy. what didn't you like about it? you're definitely right about the retcon though. great idea poor execution
@@FunkMcLovin Tbh, as a reader it matters less to me if a character is happy than if a character is interesting - and AR was VERY interesting. His relationship with Dirk brought up a lot of very difficult questions about identity, agency and morality, and was a great springboard into the... kind of underbaked storyline about Dirk's splinters and the ways in which they do and don't inform his character. ARquius meanwhile... is basically a joke character that brings none of that to the table. My beef with him is equal parts bitterness about AR's arc abruptly ending, as well as the end of AR's role in DIRK'S. AR functionally died as soon as he became ARquiussprite, and pretty much all discussion of Dirk's splinters died along with him. It already wasn't great that we got Dirk talking about how much he hates/feels trapped by his splinters when he only ever interacted with AR, but then WE got to learn about Dirk's connections to Doc Scratch and Lord English while DIRK didn't! Maybe he put it together post-Masterpiece, but as far as we're concerned it's not like those revelations really mattered to anyone except us readers - which kinda sucks, because can you IMAGINE Dirk's response to learning about that??? We still get BGD, but BGD says more about Jake than he does Dirk. And Dirk's conversation with Dave about Bro was GREAT, but... come on, Bro's kind of the smallest fish in the ocean as far as dangerous Dirksplinters go, and the the most distantly connected besides. Instead of an storyline about Dirk and AR's complicated relationships with each other/the rest of the Alphas and how they change if AR becomes a real boy or if Dirk doesn't let him and what AR does with/if denied that agency, we basically got handed a different character that... I guess just kind of "fixed the AR problem"? Rather suddenly, at that? No more identity crises, AR isn't a threat anymore, drama just kind of ends. Sure it's a happy ending for awhile, but it's a boring one and a poor tradeoff for what was shaping up to be a really gripping, difficult storyline. It's just... so random... Honestly kinda just feels like Hussie was washing his hands of the entire storyline because he didn't want to deal with it - same deal with Davesprite/Davepeta, honestly. It doesn't even read as character development, it just reads as... I don't know if killing off difficult characters and replacing them with new ones that are more convenient to work with is the way to put it, but it sure feels like that's what happened, because we sure don't have to deal with AR or Davesprite's problems anymore except to marvel at how getting slapped into a troll fixed them. I'm also very bitter because I LOVE questions of identity and morality and what makes you You, so Dirk is conceptually absolutely my jam. Just. The execution. :'< they still get off better than jake tho. ha......
@@tyriancross agree to disagree i guess. for me hal's journey wasn't about dirk, it was about hal. hal wanted to be a real guy and he got what he wanted in a funny way. i think we consider hal/AR as a different thing. have you seen the video "homestuck and the self?" i think you'd get a kick out of it
@@FunkMcLovin Agree to disagree! But I do think that as much as AR is his own character with his own goals, he is also a critical factor in understanding Dirk and the impact the two have on each other really can't be downplayed. IMO it... barely feels like he got a journey, he got prototyped pretty much immediately after the conversation when he even expressed wanting to be prototyped at all and then he... just wasn't AR anymore. Consequence of an unfortunate 6 month timeskip in the Alpha session and then immediately crashing into the endgame, I guess. Character arcs cut off right when they were getting good!!! ARquius is very funny, though. I haven't really dipped my toes into Homestuck meta since I got back - I'm still digging into all this shiny new extended universe stuff, jeez there's a lot of it suddenly - but I'll put it on my to-watch list :)
I would say give people Hiveswap/maybe Friendsim as the gateway drug, and if they like it, go on and read it from there, after planning some time ahead of it. (that's not an exaggeration)
Reread Homestuck about a year ago. It's mostly good. It suffers from what I've been calling "web serial syndrome" - that is, every part is incrementally published as soon as it's written, so there's no way to go back and edit stuff that came before to clean up the plot, trim dangling threads, and unify themes - like you would do with literally any other long-form work. Except! This is exactly what John does in Act 6. I always perceived John's retcons as an expression of Hussy's desire to go back and edit parts of the story so that they create a more cohesive narrative .
So glad hussie themself brought attention to the collection on twit but ig it's not still enough to help readers that have fallen out the fandom for a number of years...
honestly, yeah. i read act 1, 2 and half of 3 on the official website and it was awful, and then started reading on the unofficial reader and it was such a better experience
I just finished homestuck recently and about 2000 pages through I switched to collection. My mind was blown to see parts of the screen actually change during some of the more important flashes
Well Cringe culture isn't still technically "dead" yeah Homestuck ain't anymore like that, but still the cringey-ness is still there somewhere especially TikTok and Twitter.
@@doodlehobbo8697 "Cringe culture" from what I've gathered is people calling something cringe because they see it as beneath them in certain aspects. That kind of mindset is unhealthy for anyone to have, as it's a predecessor to needless judgement and bullying. Being able to tell yourself "maybe it doesn't matter that it seems a bit "cringey" and I should just enjoy the piece of media for what it is instead of trying to categorise it as something incredibly vague but generally negative so as to appear "cool" on the internet" Is honestly... well, it's made me stop hating myself and others for menial worthless petty reasons, and I think encouraging THAT mindset is actually a million times healthier than the previous alternative. So, what I got from OPs comment was that the general idea of that is becoming more common, and that people being needlessly judgmental over things that don't effect them in any way is less common in turn. And in that sense, yes, cringe culture is dying, because more people are working on being less shitty people now instead of revelling in their self hate and misplaced anger. (Y'know, the reason people made fun of things for being cringe in the first place)
@@doodlehobbo8697 Also, don't take my comment as aggressive pls, I just realised that there's a misconception here as to what "cringe culture" is and felt an explanation would do some good. inb4 someone replies to my last comment calling it "cringe" because they think that defeats any of my points when really it'd just make them look stupid for disregarding a possible debate on the topic.
@@moosecannibal8224 I disagree of Cringe Culture is dying, there's still something exist that are painful to watch. It's good that other people like you are starting to changes some mindset and being less judgment but that's still nonetheless won't necessarily kills the cringe.
I want to relive the moment when I first experienced Cascade. The way the screen grew and expanded. It blew my mind. So sad it’s now stuck in a UA-cam video.
I started reading just before Cascade dropped, and when I heard that hiatus was over I RACED to get to that point to avoid spoilers. It. Was. INCREDIBLE. I have never had an experience with media like that before, or since. I loved it so so much and was 100% hooked since then.
I also never finished, but felt that same 'I dont feel the drive to finish it, but I'm still a huge fan' vibe back in the day hahahaha, as an adult I moved on but find this video nice for catching me up :) Thankyouuu!! I feel homestuck is also still awesome. Cringe culture is resting in peace
Word. I thing it was during some sort of “mega giga pause” that I just dropped off and didn’t come back to see it through. I was just given the cliff-notes by a friend that did and I’ll say I was rather disappointed in the ending, however, I never really had any sort of idea as to how it was supposed to end anyway.
I totally understand finding Davepeta annoying but as someone who just, desperately wanted SOME kind of happy ending for Davesprite I always appreciated them
I always interpreted davepeta as a happy ending for both dave and nepeta, as their squared form allows them toe xperience the lives of other daves and Nepetas, such as the one who ends up with karkat, so Nepeta gts to experience the thing she wanted and davesprite gets to feel the happiness Dave has found as well being able to experience life through his eyes after going through life being told he's "not a real Dave" Plus together they became a gloriously happy creature that defies societal and gender norms and get to fuck around being rad, so that's fun too.
I feel compelled to comment to boost this video because it’s the first video that isn’t just HoMeStUcK FaNdOm WhAcKy. I’m so excited to see a take about the actual comic. for me i read it at such a formative time in my life that i simply cannot judge it unbiased or even accurately. I’m so glad it seems to hold up so far !!!!!!!!!!
Honestly super validating to hear someone else had the experience of revisiting homestuck as an adult with a cynical mindset and a degree and being horrified to find out it's still pretty good actually. I won't lie, I do also appreciate how you just reviewed/critiqued the work itself without really getting into the whole ass messes that are the fandom and the creative team.
+1 to the suggestion for the "Unofficial" Collection, I'd consider it to be the definitive post-flash version of not just Homestuck, but MSPA as a whole (including Problem Sleuth and all the auxillary material). The fact that Hussie gave it a "I legally can't officially sanction this, but in my capacity as a random person and not as the creator of the series, I approve" five out of five hats rating for it, certainly helps.
im reading homestuck for the first time as an adult (im currently a little bit into part 5 as of writing this!) after somehow skirting around the fandom during its peak in 2013 ish. i went in totally blind. i knew nothing about the series and was incredibly surprised by how much i enjoyed it. i remember seeing so many folks who “hated” it and that i was considered “lucky” for not ever reading it, but thats what intense fan culture does to a piece of media. i mean i liked homestucks cousin, hetalia around that time and i would say that anyone who DIDNT experience hetalia was lucky lol. even though i missed homestuck at its “prime” im experiencing something that im sure many other wish they could again. being able to read it without the influence of fan culture (although my girlfriend is walking me through the homestuckmania museum as im clearing each part), has created such a pleasant and inspiring experience. it makes me reminisce about my young days on the internet, messaging people on skype and arguing in deviantart forum posts. it makes me think of my old online friends and the hours i put into playing animal jam. ive grown past a lot of this now and it makes reading a little bittersweet, thinking about all the fun i had on the internet when i was 13. but ive accepted it as my past. idk this is probably grossly poetic, i suppose my point is that homestuck continues to be a very influential and beloved piece of media way after its prime. im so lucky for the fan archive hehe
Hetalia was one of those fandoms where the fan content was more interesting than the real show. I was in it at the time and it only became so popular because it had so many characters that had really stereotyped personalities that were easy to emulate in fan work. I still love Hetalia because it's so nostalgic for me, but God it was a mess lmao
Honestly, I rewatched Hetalia fairly recently and it was still pretty fun. Maybe it's cause i never interacted that much with the fandom, or because I didn't go into it expecting it to be anything more than a gag show with historical references, but it's still pretty alright. It's still funny, though you can tell the animation had no budget on the first 2 seasons lol.
I do think you missed some thematic elements. Homestuck is about the characters escaping the story which is a metaphor for Hussie giving the story over to the fandom. That's why the ending is so ambiguous, because once the characters exit the medium into a new universe, they've escaped from the control of the "author" of the story, Lord English. And because English dies at the same time, we don't actually get to see that ending play out. But as I interpret it, the house juju is the cue ball, which knocks the eight ball (Lord English) into the pocket (Calliope's black hole), ending the "game." How it does this is also ambiguous, but I'm pretty sure it just releases the beta kids from the juju, and they finish English off themselves. Maybe Dave even gets the final blow to fulfil that prophecy. But us not knowing for sure is the point. There's also the whole thing with Caliborn/Lord English in which he is a stand in for toxic fandom, but also a toxic author. Hussie made their main antagonist a webcomic artist with the biological inability to properly grow and mature. I think that says quite a lot. Hell, you can even extend this metaphor to Lord English, the author of Homestuck's timeline, being made of a misogynistic psychopath, a clown, a racist and a vaguely sociopathic AI.
i think the "Homestuck is about the characters escaping the story which is a metaphor for Hussie giving the story over to the fandom" is being very generous to Hussie. he's always been fandom-ambivalent, his attitude seems to be more like "i don't want this any more, you take it, for the love of god, let me do something else" instead of some benevolent changing of hands. also they never really escape the story, that theme is largely read into homestuck- though it IS a very good and interesting theme. in a simpler way- "lord english as author" doesn't feel intentional
@@FunkMcLovin I think reading motives into Andrew Hussie is a fruitless endeavour. They deliberately created a persona that is never sincere. But in the only candid interview I'm aware of them ever doing they were pretty positive, or at least neutral about the fandom. As for Lord English as author not being intentional, I disagree there. Caliborn becoming the author was a central conflict through the back half of Act 6.
@@bookswithike3256 I don't think it's fruitless at all. We have his author's commentary that were included in the viz-published print books. Those are available pretty readily online and they're much more reader-hostile. Hussie often expresses bafflement that people like characters he doesn't, often mentions how he included some plot points out of spite, mostly reacting to things he saw on the old MSPFA forums. There's also his formspring which was pretty notorious. There's a wealth of huss content out there. I think you're right, it's impossible to read motives into his work, but I'll put it this way- Reading Homestuck and trying to take it seriously often feels like a punishment. The more you try to appreciate a character or piece of lore, the more that thing is shit on. ARquius might be a good example of this. Thanks for replying btw
this is too meta for me to care It doesn't have any emotional weight, it's just some "cool homestuck facts you never knew about explained" kind of thing
@@FunkMcLovin The last thing I heard about the Huss is when they send Sarah Z those wordy ass emails to convince her to rectify and edit her retrospective and then admitting again and again "oh btw, I haven't really watched your video yet, as I'm a very busy man, but I'm sure you understand how you can't really win against my legal team and what we're asking you to do, right?" And that kinda just ended killing the image of "benevolent friendly author" for me.
as weird as it is to say, homestuck as a whole feels like more of an experience than an actual, traditionally-styled plot. the animations, the flash games, the wild array of insane concepts being thrown left and right, the meta stuff with names and zodiacs and chemistry, even the fandom; it's really bigger than the sum of its parts. it's not really about what's on the page, but the whole insanity and creativity it had what made it stand out. the small details and minutiae are kinda lost when compared to the general feel of it all. it's kinda like a memory in that way; what happened itself isn't really important, it's more about what sticks with the reader i haven't touched the actual comic in like half a decade, so many things are hazy and blurry in my mind. hearing an actual literary review of such a non-standard piece of media is honestly amazing, makes me look back to all those weird 7th grade afternoons spent reading this nutty comic in a different light. it's far from my favorite story, but i doubt i'll ever truly forget it. it always was the journey, never the destination
i think the real theme of homestuck--and this is corroborated by hussie's notes--is a statement on narrative structure as a whole. Even the shit that I absolutely hate (i.e. most of act 6 except Game Over and the retcons) is about the different ways a narrative can go. Gamzee is seen as a huge fuck you to the concept of normal narrative structure, as are Vriska and Caliborn. Even the premise of "kids play a game to create a universe" is completely turned on it's head over and over and over again. They never *actually* play the game. They fuck everything up all the time. Rose and Dave's arcs are entirely counter to the arcs that the narrative _wants_ them to fulfill. The only character who you could say has a traditional arc is John, and he's meant as a foil to the rest of the cast. The ultimate "straight man", the designated protagonist.
It's very cool to have somebody with a proper writing degree giving a personal review of homestuck in it's main entirety! I personally find it really interesting that many of the story hiccups or shortcomings of the webcomic are often excused as or attributed to being a narrative device; the alpha kids section is a *lot* of basic interpersonal drama cause it's a void session, so especially in relation to the "noble gases" theme, they all struggle with socially connecting and and *only* really have drama, since there's not exactly much of a game until the beta kids get there; there's likely multiple ways to look at the excessively meta sections from hussie and calibron; so, so much of the classpecting perspective of the webcomic; I also saw one interpretation of the ending where it's *intentionally* abrupt, that the t h e m e of the webcomic is about being stuck in this huge, gigantic, seemingly inescapable system, and that you could say, sometimes... how to win, is to simply leave. They simply left before Caliborn is allowed to have his moment, and before they're able to get even more stu- trapped in the system they're trying to escape; and lastly (out of what I'll list) that stuff like- off-screen character conflict resolution was simply because of the whole "relevant" thing. I personally find stuff like that interesting cause of the implication that Hussie was some Narrative god, where on top of managing to make something that is *conventionally* really , really good, nearly everything else that could be criticized was carefully added with intention and purpose, with very few accidental mistakes. Anyways, I did enjoy this video and your unique and informed opinion on it, the vibe of the video honestly felt really, really refreshing, and I'm honestly surprised this hasn't gotten more attention and support.
@@momomomocensoredbyyoutube9085 That is true, I just suppose what I mean (or, assume to be true) is an education to that degree can help teach some pretty helpful tools when it comes to coherently executing the creativity for that art, that you might not otherwise intuitively gain. But otherwise yeah!! I 100% agree with that last sentiment.
I feel waaay out of the loop because i only started reading homestuck recently, and everyone already finished reading the comic years ago. It feels so weird to think about it. Anyways, i'm currently on Act 5 Act 2 :>
there's still plenty of people getting into it and reading it nowadays, you're hardly alone! i see many different live reaction threads and new fans making art all the time. actually, the thing i see the most is comments like this. i'm very happy to see people like you still getting into it -- have fun finishing and welcome to the community!
No matter the fandom, no matter the other projects that weren't as good, no matter the drop in quality in the second half, I will forever think Homestuck is some of the best fiction writing that exists today, and definitely some of the best released in the 21st century.
Not reading anything post ending is a good call. I’m not a huge fans of Homestuck’s ending, but it’s a lot better than the slog that came after. To spoil it a a bit, the main theme of the epilogue is that the epilogue shouldn’t exist. It’s written to be deliberately jarring and off putting to people who loved the comic. The sequel is just flat out bad. Its written by people who didn’t have the same level of experience that Hussie did and is showed. It was ultimately rejected by the fans and was quietly abandoned without a proper ending after a couple months of regular updates.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that HS^2 was still being made. Under the condition that there will be no more regular updates and that the comic will be released all at once when it’s finished.
@@heroicwolves I am sure that the artists and writers would love to finish the comic... for money. Without a Patreon to pay the bills, the question of the competence, credibility, and cost of the staff comes right to the forefront.
Half of the epilogues are about how they shouldn't exist- specifically about how fanservice wouldn't actually be a good thing for the characters or the story. The other half is about stories necessitating things you might not like at the surface level to continue, including ultimately the fact that at some point they have to end
Personally, I kind of liked how Lord English was "finished" off screen, though this is only after plenty of thinking on it and the characters. Caliborn, the one who parodies stories and forces the narrative to follow his path, always wanted to be "The Main Character", with everyone paying attention to him, praising him for the "hero" he was. During his drawing bits, he had his self insert character be super "amazing" and loved by everyone, and every story he made had himself as the center. As LE, he tried to get reality to follow that, make himself into the ultimate being of power, and force everyone else to love him, or else. Calliope on the other hand...she was a bit of the opposite. She added herself into the stories, but as a side to it, she wanted to exist as a character, a friend, a helper, willing to guide rather than force. This culminates with Alt-Calli seemingly being the one behind much of the story, guiding everything and allowing things to happen with the smallest of nudges. Each part of the story is an "Act" that literally opens with curtains, and her weapon in a neutral state is a conductor's baton. Caliborn tries to take over, he has his jpg curtains open to start the acts, he writes a story that he has full control over, and even takes her wand and uses it in his own actions as if to say "I am the narrator now, you will follow my lead!" But then, people keep breaking out of his hold, more and more people gain a small upper hand on him, being able to find or do things in just the right time and under his nose, almost as if a guiding hand is making sure everything was happening perfectly. Alt-Calli simply uses his "control" of the narrative to orchestrate his own end, and then as the final blow, does the worst thing to him that he can imagine. She takes the attention hog, the one who loves the lime-light, the "hero" who must be seen by all, and removes him from view, killing him away from anyone to see. She takes his crafted role that he wished for so dearly, and turns it on its head, shoving him away from the attention of everyone else. She pushed him to the side to let the story be itself, and for the kids to be the true heroes of the story. TL;DR Lack of on-screen death of LE is nice due to headcanon that Alt-Calli was the narrator/conductor of the entire story, subverted his attention seeking ways to be the main character, and removed him from the lime-light in the end as the final show of how he isn't that special or important enough for that role.
i definetly started reading homestuck because of megalovania, because i remember knowing undertale first then going "what? there's other megalovania??" and i went down the rabbit hole. sure i read it like a few weeks before it ends, but at least all the flash contents was still playable back then. and ngl, it ranked 1st on the best media experience i've had, later on joined by one piece, i guess a bunch of ppl going on a wacky adventure is really appealing to me. recently a friend asked me about what a homestuck really is because she only know about fan content of dirk/jake pairing and she was really surprised by my explanation because the fan content she reads are all AUs. by explaining what homestuck is to her, i got a flashback and it feels like i was on 2016 again, it feels nice back when time was simple. so i tried to re-read homestuck, but i paused at the start of hivebent because i know its gonna sucked me in hard as it did back then and i still wanna be productive instead of spending days reading all 8000+ of a webcomic. i really wanna go back and read it, but im scared. also another thing. NOBODY KNOWS HOMESTUCK AROUND ME!! so i was gracefully unaware of its existence until around it was about to end. on the other hand it was frustating because i have so much to talk about it but no one to talk to. also also, yeah, cringe culture is dead, im gonna enjoy what i enjoy. and i do not enjoy the dubiously canon stuff so i will not read it
if you go back to re-read it, i'd really recommend downloading the unofficial reader, it's so easy to use and ik loads of people have been banging on about it in the comments but it's super good
@@difeth_ o yeah, i did download it, but after reading until the end of act 4. So yeah, missed a lot of flash, especially john adventure on lowas flash game. I remember being sad about a lot of the flashes turned into a still gif image and or a very low quality youtube videos. Thanks heaven for the unofficial collection
Im not against the retcon in of itself, but I have one major thing I’d change about it. Originally, John goes back in time to before Vriska dies and has her fix a LOT of the shit that went down. Imo, that should have been Gamzee. After death, Vriska goes through SO MUCH character development. I just cannot be convinced that the same 13 year old troll who physically disabled someone, then proceeded to make fun of them for the disability they caused, would go along perfectly willing to fix everything. Gamzee, however, would have. Before shit went down, he was fairly chill and actually wanted to help those he viewed as friends, who in turn saw him little more than an idiotic annoyance. What first caused his downward spiral was him being possessed by lil cal, and from there he had been possessed so many times that it’s very hard to tell what his actual actions were. But after this downward spiral began, Gamzee went on a murderous rampage and basically became Lord English’s dad. He is responsible for Lord English becoming the main antagonist. And I find it more fitting that the character, who initially was a very kind troll who loved his friends that ended up causing the main antagonist to end up the way he did, to be the one to fix things rather than the troll whose entire character development from downright horrid to a decent person was eradicated. OG, pre-possession Gamzee would be SO down to help, pre-death Vriska wouldn’t have given a shit.
it would also make the bit where hussie called him "the most important character in homestuck" make more sense. bc after raising lil cal, he just.. doesnt do much? aside from making the whole trickster arc happen, and being awful to terezi. but after game over, he just doesnt do anything until he's locked in the fridge. if he had been the one to not only raise lil cal, but then be the main one to take him down after the retcon, it would tie that arc together really nicely instead of just being put in fridge prison. plus, equius and nepeta would survive and we could avoid those really,,, just out of place and odd fusion sprites later down the line. bc the ONLY good thing about those sprites was davesprite was happier fused with nepeta, but other than that it was just... odd. and there are other ways davesprite could have been happy. davesprite was my FAVORITE hs character but then the whole fusion thing happened and it really didnt work. it honestly would have fixed so much, bc gamzee's possession is when that major shift happens and shit really goes off the rails. had that been retconned, then all of the dominoes would have fallen into place imo. plus, i just really miss gamzee, and i think it would have been interesting to see his actual sobriety journey. we only got to see the very start of the withdrawals before he got possessed. i think rose and roxy could have helped him a LOT post-retcon.
for some reason, reading this comment dredged up memories of a fanfiction that had... basically that ending. or was it like, fandom discussions about it? the whole 'gamzee is lord english's dad ish' came up a lot in general iirc
Honestly this was very reassurring to watch. As a fan when I was a teenager, and as an English teacher now, I love being able to appreciate how unique and whacky and beautiful the story is, and especially, as you said, the unique experience of reading it. It broke my heart when I saw what they'd had to do to the flash clips/games. I hope there's an easy way to circumvent that eventually and we get a more authentic experience again.
I think if Hussie managed to finish Act 6 quicker and keep the meta stuff straight and cohere it into the concrete message I think he was going for, it would've left a much better taste in peoples mouth.
The unofficial homestuck collection is definitely worth it. It preserves all of the uniquely flash aspects of the original with new options for quality of life, like toggles to change the site skins and turn off the more controversial aspects (see the liberal use of slurs lol). I swear I'm not sponsored by anyone it's just genuinely the best way to read it nowadays
Damn, this is an underappreciated video. I'll share it around, I know a lot of homestuck fanatics, even in the year 2022. Yeah, Homestuck is fantastic, i'm glad you decided to finish it.
I read Homestuck as an early teen from somewhere around 2012 until its end in 2016, and was a fan for probably about a year afterwards. It was a huge interest for me for the longest time and I clung to every upd8 when my friends and I would all talk about it in school the next day. I enjoyed the dream bubbles, I enjoyed the character development, I was That Fan who recited off "let me tell you about Homestuck" whenever anyone asked me to explain the niche references I made in daily conversation. One of my fondest memories was dressing up as Eridan and going to a convention/meetup--everyone sat in a big circle and sang You Can't Fight The Homestuck and laughed and chatted together. There was so much camaraderie there and even though the fandom was Very Toxic, it still had this feeling of community, this feeling that you were all in this together. I did not come out of the fandom untraumatized and I envy everyone who did. For a long time after I left the fandom there was this big block in my mind where I couldn't read Homestuck, I couldn't look at art in the style, I couldn't even think about it. Hell, even when the epilogues came out I had a panic attack trying to read it--that's how big of an effect the comic and the fandom had on me, how much of a toll it took on my mental health as a kid. But going back to it now as an adult I'm able to appreciate everything I didn't pick up on before and I'm able to take a step back and see the characters for more than my young teenaged mind could all those years ago. I can empathize more easily with these characters whose arcs flew right over my head, I can better keep track of the timelines and everything going on simultaneously, and honestly? I can have some closure. This sounds pretentious, and I know it does, but I don't think people reading Homestuck for the first time now will ever truly know what it was like in its prime. And to be honest, I think that is a good thing.
I started through "lets read homestuck" Im not much of a reader, but this helped me get into it, but lets read stopped at the meena game because of its size, so i had to read and i caught up right before it ended. I basically experienced all of homestuck in like, 2 weeks. I love the world and ideas. Im a bit upset the gamified elements took a backseat (they are what drew me in), but after a while I'd imagine they would have slowed the comic down alot. God teir is both a mechanic I love and a way to write away most of the game stuff. and I even enjoy the main premise of the epilogue (The choice to either go back and finish the story proper or ignore it and send everything off the rails), even If I didnt care enough to read that long mess. Overall I enjoy homestuck, I just wish it was something I could talk about with people, Its too hard to sell to get anyone into.
Homestuck is... one of those things, yknow? I only finally bit the bullet and read the comic pretty recently, I was busy in the 2014-2016 era (when the most people I knew were in the fandom) being into Danganronpa (something that earns me zero bragging rights). I share in a lot of this, to be honest. The dynamic of the alpha kids was something that felt pretty recycled and made me a little frustrated at times. I like the characters individually, but the group dynamic leaves something to be desired at times. Maybe it's just because I kinda hate love triangles/squares/shapes. Also I really disliked how often characters like Jake and Tavros were made the butt of the joke. Sometimes when a writer doesn't like a character it becomes pretty obvious, and I feel like that was the hole those two fell into (which is exactly opposite to how I feel Vriska was treated). Overall, I think the webcomic is fun! It gets stuck the same trap as I see content getting stuck in more and more often, though. The whole fan worship thing was definitely something that became infamous because of Homestuck. Something something con nonsense. This was a great video! Very well put together!!
Apparently, according to Hussie in the book commentary, Tavros and Vriska were explicitly meant to metatextually represent characters that the author hated and loved, if that helps?
I fucking love the way homestuck was written. I was never really part of the fandom but I absolutely devoured the comics. People say it's far too long and a lot of it could be trimmed, but it's written in such a fun way that I never really cared. I guess the fact that I wasn't waiting for weeks to get a couple of paragraphs of Hussie self introducing himself to the story helps. I mean, homestuck definitely spoiled me in the way that they set up foreshadowing, like they'd allude to something in story that wouldn't become relevant until like, 3 years later. It was insane. It always felt like the story was structured and planned ahead of time, as oppose to most long running stories. I always make the comparsion with Kingdom Hearts' writing, Kingdom Hearts writing wants to be homestuck SO BAD but fails at every step. Both stories have common themes of identity and the replication of that identity through alternate selves and even a lot of similar concepts like time travels, different worlds, dream planes, universal resets, et cetera. but while homestuck took its time to explain and ground these themes and concepts to make them work, KH ran through them like a truck on fire that retcons everything that came before it.
god that part at 7:28 resonated with me so badly lmao. for the longest time i’ve thought about how strange it was that honestuck changed my worldview on gender and sexuality, but the way you described it was pretty much perfect
15:53 if we're being specific here, the retcon is not an alternate future, its the same future, that's the whole point of them having to do a retcon instead of normal time travel, which would create an alternate timeline instead of editing the alpha timeline.
it's an alternate timeline that *becomes* the new alpha timeline due to the retcon powers, instead of being a doomed offshoot, which the old GAME OVER timeline becomes.
My case is particular: I read Homestuck as a kid (14-15 years old) but did so during the pandemic, when it had been over for like 4 years. Reading it all at once without any kind of fandom interaction made me appreciate the story a lot more than I would have otherwise. Homestuck was a mixed bag for sure, but the highs were so high that I forgot about most of the lows.
i read homestuck when i was like, 13 or 12, but i'm 17 now and it still feels recent. i went in pretty much blind, read the whole thing in it's entirety and loved it so much it has probably inspired my growth as an artist a lot. i may be lucky to have joined after the 'prime' days?? there was nothing in the way to ruin the experience or taint it, it was just an incredibly cool multimedia experience, that i still share with a group of friends who liked it too. i'm still making characters on alternia and i couldn't be more thankful that it introduced me to my best friends
no way, we literally read it at the exact same time and exact same age! i’m also 17 now and though my memory of the comic itself has faded quite a bit (i’m due for a reread), i couldn’t be happier that the only people active in the fandom by that point were the non-toxic people
same age too and i read it when i was 13/14- it ate up my brain for like a year and i'm not ready to return to that yet tho,, i'm glad you found friends that liked it too- i never managed to get someone else into it :)
hi, as someone who was in the fandom the Entire Duration of Homestuck, i would love to have a long fuckin talk about it all. like.. vriska having all these revelations about doing Horrible Things and Making it All About Her, and then the story just.. makes the entire plot hinge AROUND her and also the author/artist proposes to her. like... it feels very... AGAINST what the story was building up her character arc. like.. how dead vriska ended up with dead terezi and they just lived a lil meaningless afterlife and were irrelevant to the story adn happy about it? it felt like that's where vriska's character was supposed to go, but the whole death thing feels like it was like.. actively scrapping it and forcing her to stay Worse. hell, people even started theorizing that part of the fixation on vriska was because of hussie's Then GF (idk/idc current status) loving vriska, hence part of the joke of hussie proposing to her (making it less a Creepazoid thing and more of a "author shows affection for smth that relates to a significant other" sorta thing. not GREAT but Better than without context). also part of the whole concept of the "ending bad" wasn't so much that the endign itself WAS bad, but it was because after like. 4 years of Hiatus on and off and after the endless AU-stucks that the tumblr community kept nonstop pumping out, and after theorizing every panel and every word and every turn of phrase... there was ZERO outcome that could've been received well. both because people wanted to theorize and come up with ideas and they CAN'T when it's wrapped up, but just because that long ass wait made people have the highest, unreachable expectations. in other fandoms, when a story has a Bad Ending Nobody's Happy With, you end up seeing an uptick in Fix-it Fiction, where the fandom is like "fine, we'll do it ourselves" and just tries to make a better story.. i haven't seen that with homestuck, because it feels like there WASN'T a way to wrap it all up nicely without either going WAY too in depth in an uncharacteristic type of story (like you said, homestuck is a comedy! going hardcore into video game tactics and strategy analysis and every move of everyone would ruin a LOT of shit going for it, including the momentum), or, well, what we got. people would've grown to be Okay with it, but the After-Canon stuff like that weird AO3 fanfic epilogue. it was fucking palpable how fast it made a shitload of people drop homestuck as a hyperfixation, purged their good will of the series and it's author, and never looked back. if my own mother stabbed me in the back tonight while i was sleeping, it still wouldn't have hurt as bad as the homestuck epilogue did upon reading it. like, sure, yes, people were bored and dropping it BEFORE then, like you did during one of the hiatuses, but people tend to be more forgiving of series they just Grew Out Of as opposed to how... almost MEAN SPIRITED the epilogues felt. so no, don't read them. but as for homestuck itself, i was an adult (18 or so?) when i started it, so i'm very much an adult now, and analyzing what impact it's had on ourselves and our culture (as internet dwellers who use social media, i mean), and etc is... so important. for nothing else, i'm so thankful homestuck normalized the concept of online friendship or even online dating as being non-hurtful and even healthy. it feels like homestuck is one of the biggest landmarks in showing that sorta thing, where Act 1's friend group did not live near each other or ever expect to see each other, but they loved each other (platonically) nonetheless and sent each other birthday gifts and etc. i wish we had more content like that.
To be fair, as someone who was in the tumblr fandom for a while before the dancestors were introduced… When they came around I loved them, and the vast majority of the fans did, too. The ones that didn’t like them were the ones being made fun of who couldn’t handle being criticized for their over-the-top behaviour. Quite a few other fans took it, rolled with it, and learned to laugh at themselves and realize how irritating they were being. Both outcomes were the minority and the rest of us loved playing with the dancestor characters, whether it was to AU them or delve further into what their exposition on Beforus’ culture meant for Signless’ group and why they did what they did, or why Alternia was what it was. It’s one part of the comic that really did not age well because it’s a genuinely dated and obscure reference to some really toxic corners of the fandom. I’m still endeared to them, but if I were to point to any one thing in Homestuck being dated, it would be them. There were criticisms of other websites in their characters, but it was MOSTLY tumblr.
With Homestuck, I love seeing how they interact and tell about themselves in a personal, emotional level AND their relationships with eachother. I never got the chance to finish it and I will finish it someday. Homestuck sticks with me like vocaloid does years later. (I already knew the spoiler when it was announced it ended so don't worry)
I'm still in active in Homestuck to this day, and the fandom on tumblr is... actually much more focused on talking about the webcomic itself now. There's much less aus and non-canon based stuff? It's so weird to see now lol. All the old stuff from the hey day still sticks around and can be reread and whatever. Anyway, Acts 1-5 are still fantastic writing wise and were amazing to watch fall together and play into expectations. I don't like act 6, it lost all the mystery and fun of what made HS's villains so scary and intimidating, and while I like Caliborn, LE in act 6 is... a pretty huge downgrade from Bec Noir and Doc Scratch... in terms of "Actually Being A Worthwhile Villain." I like Davepeta as an arc finisher for Davesprite, I wish there was more build up, but I liked Davepeta. Mostly Act 6 just has so much I think is useless. We didn't need the romance, I absolutely hated reading every Hal dialogue because he was just so uninteresting due to the fact so many more medias have done everything he was but better. If the retjohn had just resurrected every troll instead of *JUST* Vriska, it wouldn't feel so useless and like everything I read in Act 6 up to that point was completely useless. Sue me I think Feferi and Tavros could have had more to do if they were alive. It sucks how Hussie's parts in act 6 got overdone because they were so fun in acts 1-5, admittedly watching Voxus's Let's Read made his character weirdly charming in delivery, lol. Anyway yeah 👍 Homestuck good. Also wish the Carapacians weren't so sidelined after Cascade.
It feels strange, seeing anyone talk about this now. I stopped reading it around the time of Act 6 and over time ran into less and less people talking about it, most completely fading out once it ended. It feels nice to know that this, even with the death of flash, might still live on and new people will still come across and hopefully read it independent of its insane peak. I remember vividly being frustrated and displeased years ago with how it was going, but if you were to ask me why now, I wouldn't remotely be able to tell you. I haven't even THOUGHT about this in any remotely serious manner for six years of my life and for the first time in six years, I genuinely feel compelled to go back and read this leviathan sized mess all over again just so I can rediscover what made me stop. This is your fault and I hate you for doing this to me. But also, thank you. There's a part of me that's oddly pleased to do this all again. Good job with the video.
To me, one of the core themes of Homestuck is early 2000s chatroom internet culture, and how growing up with the internet actually affects you. I would say it's probably the only theme for a long while, it's what ties everything together. Until Act 6 of course, when Homestuck becomes a story about Homestuck. I get that we're in 2022 so it's almost culturally mandatory to denounce slurs and -isms where we see them, but beyond Homestuck being a product of its time, I feel like you can't nail that teenager internet friend group without including some of the very real things that were being said in there. I really don't think that having characters that say problematic things is a problematic thing in and of itself. Nor do I think that they need absolutely terrible things to happen to them to make an "example" out of them, the truth is that most people will say some egregious shit when they're young, and I don't think trying to shy away from that does anything justice.
I always wondered about Homestuck, and so when The Algorithm threw this on my dash I idly clicked... and loved your review & analysis so much I went on to binge the rest of your videos. Great works! Keep writing, you're great at this!
I read up to act five when I was 13. All my friends were getting into it and I was the last one who needed to read it. I absolutely loved it. The art style and the blending of comic and video game was so amazing to me. I think the saddest thing about it being so cringe culture is that I don't see anyone else taking these sorts of concepts and making their own "Homestuck". I'd happily jump to read something that tried to break the mold as much as Homestuck did at the time. That's my biggest praise for the piece. Is that it was really revolutionary and underappreciated by people who were mature enough to expand on it
I still haven't gotten over the fact that Spades Slick died. That kinda ruined my experience watching the ending for the first time lol. Now I just pretend that it didnt happen.
My hot take is that he should have died in Cascade. Sure, it's a little sad. But I think it's an actually narratively satisfying death. He has nothing left to live for, so he goes out to settle things one last time with Snowman, a character very important to him. I think this would have been better than the narrative kind of meandering around him then him accomplishing nothing by fighting the wrong villain.
I was into the homestuck fandom from 2014-2016. I've reread fully it two more times since then (once in 2018, and once in 2019), and I'm wanting to reread it again. It was such a pivotal part of my life and arguably kept me sane in the time before I was diagnosed and treated for depression. I obsessed over it on tumblr, AO3, and believe it or not, iFunny. I contributed to the fanart, the fanfics, the iconic tumblr posts, I was there for it all! It's a very special comic for me, and while I acknowledge its flaws (especially during act 6), it will always stay in my heart. As an older fan who remembers its heyday, Homestuck is hard to get back into in 2022. My last readthrough was in 2019, right before flash died. I introduced a friend to it later in 2020 where I got a glimpse of what they had done to the comic. The youtube videos, the broken flash games, it was all so disheartening that I have put off rereading it again. Its a shell of its former self. So much of the comic revolves around the chaos of the fandom - something that becomes very clear during Act 5. Experiencing Homestuck post-2020 is like walking through an abandoned graveyard. While reading it, you can see the passion which used to be behind it. But it's all dissolved, the passion is gone. Ironically, reading Homestuck feels like walking through a dreambubble where everything is alive and thriving, but in reality it's all dead to the outside world. It's not relevant anymore. I mention it to my friends, and they groan and lecture me on how problematic it is in 2022. It's really, really hard to see as someone who helped break tumblr when a new update came out. I just think the series deserves better. I do dislike the ending. I think its a lazy ending to a fantastic, ground-breaking series. You mention that people complain that there should have been a twist, that everything went perfectly to plan. I agree with this criticism because a plan that doesn't go wrong is just a spoiler. Homestuck is renouned for its twists - having just a "fine" ending was the most disappointing thing of all. Beyond the ending, all of the post-ending content is just bad. The state of the website is depressing. I just feel like there could have been more of an effort to preserve the passion behind the series instead of letting it fall off. It overstayed its welcome, and it SHOWS by the end. It really did deserve better. All things considered, I will still always love this comic. I will remember it for its brilliant use of every medium that the internet has to offer. I will remember its clever humor, and each unreliable narrator. It challenges your perceptions of right and wrong and forces you to live in the gray areas. It is such an accurate depiction of internet culture in the early 2010's, and I can see myself in every character. I will miss the experience of reading this comic at its peak, but I'm thankful I was there to experience it in the first place. I really do feel for the new fans who have to walk through the graveyard of the comic that once was. But then again... they get to read it for the first time. That is something I can never do again.
I read as an adult in college and was pretty well separated from the fandom. Probably because I started reading it during one of the big hiatus moments when most people dropped off. But yeah, fully agree with this take. It's a very fun experience to read and I do genuinely love how much it was pushing different media for webcomics at the time. Sad that the experimentation came with the drawback of flash being gutted, taking a lot of the experience with it.
I largely agree with you, the villain thing especially. Like, Caliborn and Lord English are fine, but having a fine main villain in a series of fantastic ones is something of a let down. As for the first 5 acts being 10/10, I definitely agree there. They're so good. I do wince at some of the outdated language here and there, but it holds up other than that. I'll elucidate why I didn't like the ending as someone who was there for it when it came out. One of the strong points of the story proper is how fantastic the dialogue is. The dialogue after collide was.... nonexistent. And before that it's just an avalanche of wrap-ups that could have happened in a more organic way. The writing becomes almost pure utilitarian in such an underwhelming way for a comic like Homestuck. To be frank, the real problems of the ending are not even with the final flash, but more that Act 6 really just doesn't set it up properly. Oh well. I did like Collide at least. Where we diverge most, I'm happy to say Homestuck Good. Maybe it's because I got into it as an adult, but I've always felt it's okay to just like things that are enjoyable even if there's a bunch of kids leaving grey paint on a convention wall somewhere.
The end of homestuck was absolutely affected by many aspects of what was going on with Hussie. Its no secret the changes happened around when he decided to make a game. Regardless of what actually went down with that, it interfered with finishing homestuck. That and it really felt like he wasn't sure where to take things with Homestuck at some point and there was a lot of wavering before the ending was nailed down. I mean shit, the doomed timeline thing honestly might have been synonymous with him not liking where he had taken things and trying to redo it. The whole thing was always about his narrative I wouldn't be shocked if it was an in universe reset of his own story writing.
@@nickfarace9339 Maybe Act 6 could have held together stronger if Hussie didn't overload and spread too thin. An explanation I've heard is that Hussie felt that the comic needed to stall while the final flashes and the game were cobbled together, and then had to stall for longer after all the restructuring that had to happen after the financial stuff happened
read homestuck when it was about halfway through and then was reading until the last gigapause... then caught up later when it ended. for all it's problems, there is one thing that homestuck is, and has always stood out to me, was it's various, creative and unique ways of dealing with time travel, time loops, and everything time related. Like, anyone who ever considers doing a story based on or around time stuff should absolutely read it, because there was a LOT of creative uses of it.
this the perfect homestuck review for my 'was on tumblr post peak but pre end of homestuck and never actually read it and didnt even know what it was for a while but now it seems like such a big part of the first internet ecosystem i saw develop in real time and is now kinda curious about it but not curious enough to actually sit thru a 1hr video yet' self. Thanks for making it!
16:30 - i like the retcon because the story it erases still happened because they need to so they could've retconned it... so even if it's not true anymore it doesn't say it was never true.
I re-read it three times, and it's honestly just really good. Yeah it's full of super cringy shit, it's full of dated jokes, weird references and humor that is no longer funny. But it's also full of heartfelt character moments, and a sense of what growing up with the internet is like that nothing else really seems to catch. Unironically the favourite story I ever read.
Homestuck was such a big part of my preteens and formative years. It genuinely was such an integral part of who I am today, and honestly I’ve been indulging myself in rereading it and just healing my inner child- and I genuinely truly think it’s really good, as someone who’s an adult now and not blindsided and biased by the fandom as opposed to the comic itself. Really good video, and happy to see other adults who grew up on it like me also rediscovering it.
So I was recommended this video by the algorithm and I thought that you should get the engagement for bringing suck a wonderfully weird part of my life back into my consciousness! Homestuck was fun and I kinda miss the amount of fan music it created!
I remember watching a video essay somewhere about the ending but it is actually really interesting in that thematically it draws in meanings to conclude story points that a lot of people just didn't pick up on. The only one I can remember off the top of my head for example is his eyes landing on 8-balls was supposed to be confirmation that he was defeated. I should try to find it again it was useful for understanding the ending. Edit: dis was it ua-cam.com/video/GPyKab8cpMY/v-deo.html
Just because homestuck nerds r the best optimisticDuelist or LaureledEvees go deep on homestuck lore and themes :D Like oDs videos on gamzee or lil cal 🤯
i love how the longest part is "the stuff i didn't like" is the longest part but the overall impression is that it's still pretty ok. that's the best explanation of homestuck imo. also glad to see others making homestuck content on YT :D
I haven't seen homestuck and my only knowledge was about it's fandom and people hating the introduction of the trolls. I am currently downloading the unofficial collection.
I've been thinking of re-reading it as of late. Read it at a younger age in 2016 and figured I should do it justice and read it again (since I skimmed a lot of act 6 (I was young and impatient)) 7:34 Also completely true. I remember being confused since I'd never met a non-straight person before and was always confused whenever I saw queer relationships since "the guy gets the girl or vice versa" was pretty much my only exposures to romance
ok this is a little unrelated but near the end of the video when Jack had his arm cut off, and losing the ring restored his other arm...... he turned it, flip-ways
i will say as someone who was super into homestuck during the time it ended, most people were just upset that the ending wasn’t super clear + didn’t have more? i think it was just a combination of most people kind of expecting more than what was presented + people being confused by the ending. i remember being slightly dissatisfied back then too, but in hindsight, i think the endings pretty cool! i still don’t totally understand how they defeated lord english though. like you said, the ending could’ve been stronger.
Really enjoyed this video and felt myself agreeing with most of it as someone who also reread Homestuck in its entirety for the first time as an adult! I like your point on the happy ending a lot and your discussion of the "it was all a dream" retcon. I know you said you won't, but I will be that guy and seriously recommend reading at least the Epilogues. They explore a lot of ideas about how we as readers interact with the story and offer some really interesting meta-examination of Homestuck. Plus it's a hilarious book in its own right.
I just finished it today and it was SO GOOD. I got to page 8129 about 2 hours ago and was confused because it seemed like there was supposed to be something else and this video is how I found out there was a page 8130. Homestuck took me about a year and a half to read (but that's because I wasn't reading it often enough) and I can safely say that it was truly fantastic. I liked the ending, and was thoroughly impressed by how good the animation was in [S] collide. I know getting into it in 2021-2022 is VERY late and I really wish I had gotten into it sooner, because younger me would have loved it. I got into Undertale before I got into Homestuck and Toby Fox did an over the top excellent job on the soundtrack as always, and I really liked the Undertale reference in collide. overall fantastic, no regrets reading it, and you should all read it too.
I read through 7/8ths of homestuck before having a sort of panic episode over what the fuck I was doing with my life and why I decided to undertake such a monumental read on a whim, prioritizing it over the rest of my life... So yeah I dropped and and haven't gone back since
I read it for the first time a few months ago as a 20 year old and I liked it a lot, but the things I didn't like I REALLY REALLY hated. I really wish Jane was actually drawn as a chubby character. It makes perfect sense for her to be plus size but I was actively shocked when Caliborn made fun of her for it, because she's always drawn to be skinny. I wish we could have gotten to see a chubby sprite for her. Also I didn't like Vriska at all. Her best moments are when she explains how her upbringing and Alternia's society affected her, but I loathed the way she treated Tavros, it just hit way too close to home. It's especially irritating that she's the one who paralized his legs and most of her insults are about his disability. Plus the fact that she gets usually rewarded for her actions, and that Tavros' character arc revolves around him, a disabled boy appeasing his able-bodied bully. Also really wish Tavros' gentleness and "head-in-the-clouds" attitude wasn't used as a way to mock him instead of having him be accepted for who he is, and showing the trolls (who would normally be more than justified in killing a disabled and idealistic kid) develop a perspective on "weak" trolls also being inherently worthy of respect. And Kankri's character being a parody of "SJWs"...rubbed me the wrong way. I really felt like Hussie had no authority to make fun of that type of person because it sounded like he was mad at them for calling him out...when his comic actively features the r-slur, constant ableism, racism and more. Another create making this joke I could accept, but Hussie needed to stay in his line on that topic IMO. The thing that saved that interaction, as usual, was Karkat's reaction to his dancestor.
I'm 16 at the time of writing this and made the (supposedly) arduous underaking of reading all of Homestuck during my summer break. When i was much younger, my older sister was quite active on the internet during the whole "cringe culture" stuff, so when i told her about my plan, it wasnt completely unreasonable for her to react with a "really? Are you sure you want to read that? I heard its kinda cringe" , so i went in expecting the worst. I was expecting to meet insufferable characters, dated and unfunny jokes, and weird self-insertion. What i actually got was insufferable characters, dated and unfunny jokes, and weird self-insertion, but my god was it amazing. Such great dialogue, such loveable personalities, such interesting and thought provoking themes. This series so easily became my new, borderline unhealthy obsession (I would often wake up from a nap after reading the epilogues and wonder which universe im currently residing in, before realizing that im just being homestuck-delusional again and Earth C isnt a real place). For me, enjoying something needs to take root pretty quickly if i want to continue it, and for Homestuck the roots were practically already there, perfectly shaped for the recession in my mind that i did not know i had. And the best part? Homestuck made me realize that it's not that I dont enjoy reading, its just that I need to find things i actually enjoy. Heck, for all my personal sentiments about how "i read things slowly because i need the info to recede into my skull", i practically blazed through homestuck. Just completely left burning tire marks like its back to the future or something. It was straight up like christmas in my think pan. I ended up finishing the entire series, click after click, in about a month (including the epilogues and catching up with HSBC). I genuinely think homestuck allowed me to look for more books i think i would enjoy. I often see comments that talk about how great the Flashs were, and how exciting it was to finally see a new [S] page after waiting and waiting for the website to update, and often i find myself feeling melancholic and hiraeth-y over such things, but it still didnt stop me from getting out of bed, turning off all my light and watching "Collide" and "The Rapture" on my computer rather than on my phone (which is where i read/watched most of the webcomic), jumping up and down in my seat as I watched the animations scene to scene. (Also, a huge big fat massive thank you to the Voice Over Nexus channel. They made so much of Homestuck's Flash games and animations bareable and fun to watch). All in all, homestuck is great. So amazing. So funny. Complete awesomesauce. Trust me, im 16.
i read homestuck when i saw the og of harshwhimsy gamzee, the character that looked the coolest to me, in the meteorstuck part. GAMZEE REMAINED MY ABSOLUTE FAVE, I EVEN COSPLAYED AS HIM. and yet in the end, instead of finally gaining his own mental independence and having a character arc conconclusion....he was literally fridged :o(
This video was super interesting! I'm doing a re-read of the comic as well and I related to a lot of stuff you said about surprisingly enjoying Homestuck as an adult. My first experience with the comic was actually watching the Let's Read Homestuck series when I was 12-13. It was my first experience with a large, sprawling, interconnected plot that I had to actively work to figure out how everything fit. It was also the first piece of media I ever consumed that included LGBTQ characters, and as a writer it really did set my own expectations on how to write queer characters. Homestuck influenced my writing in a lot of other ways too but that would get too long to list lol. I'm really glad my friend introduced me to it, because in the long run it was a stepping stone in dramatically expanding my media consumption.
yeah i think that's what it comes down to. after act 5, i was frustrated that the story constantly bounced from batshit insane multiversal metanarrative madness and zooming in on character drama that NEVER got solved
I discovered Homestuck after Flash died, during one of my Undertale fandom dives. I was using a flip phone to navigate the comic because I was dealing with my addiction to the internet (poorly) and fell in love with this silly, cool, dumb, and brilliant webcomic that way. I wish I had discovered Homestuck earlier and interacted with the Flash animations. As it stands now, I am content watching others experience it with older UA-cam videos
I have never read Homestuck, just saw the occasional AMV in the animation community on youtube back in the day. Why did I watch this video, and why did I enjoy it XD
I got into Homestuck in university, probably around 2011 or so? And followed and got invested in it for ages, though dropped out of the fandom during the hiatus. I remember having a fantastic time with it and instantly taking the official Aspect quiz when it first came out; that's actually a really proud/fond memory for me, because I did it as accurately as I could and actually wound up with the aspect I'd been self-ascribing myself as for years. I still have a pin for it on one of my shirt collars! Because cringe culture is dead and my good memories of the comic way outweigh the bad.
I also got into it in 2011, but I was a high-school freshman. I have fond memories of the aspect quizz too! I made the first drawing of me and my friend as us wearing God tier pajamas. I gave that drawing to her when she moved away. It's such a cute memory
Tbh this video is the tipping point, and I plan to go read Homestuck literally right now. Plus, the Ruffle emulator solves most of the issues with the reformatting unless the flash parts were fully removed.
coming from someone who read the comic two years ago, i still love it a lot. i read it because i needed something to do during lockdown. it was, honest to god, one of the best two month periods of my life. i enjoyed the hell out of it, and it gave me something to look forward to doing everyday. i remember crying when i finished it, cause like, there was no more of it left to read. im not sure what that says about me, but i dont really care. its got a very special, special place in my heart. its gonna be one of my favorite things forever, probably
I need some other perspectives on this, one of the things that irked me the most story wise was the build up that Feferi needed to fight Her Imperious Condescension? From the moment Feferi was introduced it felt like that was going to be a climactic fight(like apart of the final battle type of moments) and then to watch Hussie throw Feferi to the side just made the final battle against HIC feel less intense
I read Homestuck for the first time in college after it had finished. I do think starting it after its conclusion helped since I didn't have to wait for weeks to months for updates, and could just listen to in audio book style here on UA-cam (for the most part). It took me about 2 months to get through, but I'm sure if I really wanted to, I could have taken less. But as an adult reading the comic with no nostalgic ties to my childhood...Like, this shit kinda slaps? Time travel and fourth wall breaks are old cliches, but HS managed to use the time mechanics it set up in pretty much every interesting way I can think of. Some of the flashes that involve showing off how a time loop is executed linearly are some of the most exciting moments I had during my read-through. It's a little annoying that we aren't totally past the "Homestuck is cringe" phase on the internet, because there's a lot that I love and love to talk about with friends. But I should give an obligatory mention that a lot of the early parts of HS are....rough. For a lot of reasons.
Not gonna lie, I’m here just because of the algorithm: I know nothing about Homestuck beyond being that comic thing tumblr was obsessed with years ago. Heard the fandom was cringy, tumblr was cringy, opened one of the physical books myself, and didn’t like the art style, so it was whatever to me. That said, I watched the whole video because what I heard here was actually really interesting and I hadn’t heard any of it before. Didn’t know it was essentially a multimedia project, which is pretty sick actually. Can’t say I’ll ever experience it myself, but it does sound interesting
As a huge Homestuck fan and Homestuck 2 disliker, I would really suggest not reading Psycholonials unless you have a morbid curiosity. It has a very similar presentation to Homestuck but is not very similar other than the aesthetics and I personally found the actual story contents to be pretty offensive.
@@eden6159 I honestly agree with you. TBOI is an EXTREMELY offensive game. I've barely seen anything be able to top it, and this is coming from a player with almost 300hrs.
I got into homestuck whenever hiveswap came out. So, just slightly before the end. I pretty much binge watched the entire thing with the Let's Read Homestuck Collection. I still trying to piece together my thoughts on the work and its impact on my life. I can say with confidence I enjoyed everything up to act 6 6 and I would 100% read the story again.
This is a good reminder that just because you enjoyed something in your youth doesn't mean its cringe or inherit bad. Hating your past so much you refuse to see the good is a flawed vision.
This was recommended to me because I recently got back into Homestuck. I watched the voice over for it up to the most recent video and switched over to the comic. (I enjoy the voices they give, it allows me to draw while they go through the dialogue and look up for the visuals when they get to that. It also helps with the game sections that no longer work imo) I didn’t expect it to still be as great as I remember it. There are moments that still get me emotionally. Some of the humor and words are kiiiiinda outdated but for the most part, I enjoy it. The characters still have such fun dialogue and I really do enjoy it. Except now I’m in the position of not having many people to talk to about it since I’m one of two people I know who’s rereading.
Dang it's been six years since the ending already? I was 14 then. I love Homestuck but everytime it's brought up my brain makes me remember this one embarrassing moment I had before the epilogue came out. I tried to find the not yet existing epilogue by googling it and didn't realize that the epilogue I did find was for a different Hussie comic. I was confused why this epilogue didn't show the main characters, but didn't question it. My dumb@$$ then told people I had seen the Homestuck epilogue WHILE I was at a Homestuck panel at ONE OF THE LARGEST CONVENTIONS IN MY STATE! The panelists then pull it up on the projector and it doesn't take long for someone to recognize the comic and my mistake is made obvious to everyone in the room and I felt extra bad since I had gotten their hopes up. I have been haunted by this memory for SIX years and I will probably continue to be haunted until I get severe memory loss in old age.
I also recently re-read Homestuck, and was very surprised at How Good It Was. Disclaimer being that I read it originally in 2016, because I heard DaveKat was canon, and after listening to my friend go onnnnn and onnnnnnn about Homestuck and how much she /didn't/ like that ship and how dumb it was anyway back in 2011 I kind of got confusion whiplash and went to go check it out myself.
I think as far as I'm concerned, Act 6 is where it all falls apart for me. Act 6 has some of my favourite characters - Dirk being one of my favourite in anything ever back then and has reclaimed that spot now - but it... is an exceptionally long Act in which a lot of words are said but very little actually happens. It is /incredibly/ wordy, and a lot of that comes with introducing not just the Alphas but a whole cast of new characters as well, but the problems start for me when it starts feeling like the Alphas character arcs and resolutions just kinda... breeze past you. The Alphas have one day of romantic drama and PLOT SHIT, a 6 month timeskip, another day of romantic drama and TRICKSTER MODE, and then either game over or collide.
I was left feeling like... most problems the Alphas have were either established or resolved off-screen. Jake's arc was... confusing is either completely unfinished or we're legitimately supposed to accept him recovering sometime between Act 7 and the Credits, Dirk... had the ending, but it felt like he was missing the middle (I'm particularly reminded of Dirk saying he felt like his splinters haunted him, but AR was the only one we'd ever seen him interact with - feels like there were some Events Missing There, to say nothing of us not really seeing how the alpha session played out to determine how accurate Dirk's self-assessment of himself was), Roxy fixed her issues off-screen and Jane.... dear god, Jane. To say nothing of Rose "not having a character arc" or the Ultimate Copout re; Jade. Fuck Davepeta and ARqius, also. I was quite invested in Davesprite' and AR's arcs, and uh. Lol. Yeah, those sure were resolutions. It got to the point where it seemed like Hussie lost interest in telling parts of his story, and it really shows in moments like those.
Regarding the retcon - in concept I have no issue with it, but the execution bugs me. Given, again, how little seems to happen in Act 6, game over > retcon > collide > act 7 \o/ felt very much like the comic coming to a quick and messy close. From a meta perspective I understand Vriska's role in the retcon, but resent her from a characterisation one because it feels like she cut down a lot of very interesting character arcs that I would have much rather have seen resolved. I'm much less interested in meta storytelling than I am solid characterisation/arcs - my sheer frustration when the Dirk/AR conversation (an INCREDIBLY powerful one) ended with ARqius, dear god, I was LIVID.
I think in the end I like Act 6 for the building blocks it laid out, not necessarily what it actually did with them. And dear god can the epilogues go screw themselves. HS2 is... tedious. I'm finally playing Hiveswap, though. It's cute.
i'm fascinated by how you draw the line at AR and ARquius. i found his addition to Equiusprite very charming, both characters compliment each other well and it suits hal's search for a body. Hal wanted to be a real boy. what didn't you like about it?
you're definitely right about the retcon though. great idea poor execution
@@FunkMcLovin Tbh, as a reader it matters less to me if a character is happy than if a character is interesting - and AR was VERY interesting. His relationship with Dirk brought up a lot of very difficult questions about identity, agency and morality, and was a great springboard into the... kind of underbaked storyline about Dirk's splinters and the ways in which they do and don't inform his character. ARquius meanwhile... is basically a joke character that brings none of that to the table. My beef with him is equal parts bitterness about AR's arc abruptly ending, as well as the end of AR's role in DIRK'S.
AR functionally died as soon as he became ARquiussprite, and pretty much all discussion of Dirk's splinters died along with him. It already wasn't great that we got Dirk talking about how much he hates/feels trapped by his splinters when he only ever interacted with AR, but then WE got to learn about Dirk's connections to Doc Scratch and Lord English while DIRK didn't! Maybe he put it together post-Masterpiece, but as far as we're concerned it's not like those revelations really mattered to anyone except us readers - which kinda sucks, because can you IMAGINE Dirk's response to learning about that??? We still get BGD, but BGD says more about Jake than he does Dirk. And Dirk's conversation with Dave about Bro was GREAT, but... come on, Bro's kind of the smallest fish in the ocean as far as dangerous Dirksplinters go, and the the most distantly connected besides.
Instead of an storyline about Dirk and AR's complicated relationships with each other/the rest of the Alphas and how they change if AR becomes a real boy or if Dirk doesn't let him and what AR does with/if denied that agency, we basically got handed a different character that... I guess just kind of "fixed the AR problem"? Rather suddenly, at that? No more identity crises, AR isn't a threat anymore, drama just kind of ends. Sure it's a happy ending for awhile, but it's a boring one and a poor tradeoff for what was shaping up to be a really gripping, difficult storyline. It's just... so random... Honestly kinda just feels like Hussie was washing his hands of the entire storyline because he didn't want to deal with it - same deal with Davesprite/Davepeta, honestly. It doesn't even read as character development, it just reads as... I don't know if killing off difficult characters and replacing them with new ones that are more convenient to work with is the way to put it, but it sure feels like that's what happened, because we sure don't have to deal with AR or Davesprite's problems anymore except to marvel at how getting slapped into a troll fixed them.
I'm also very bitter because I LOVE questions of identity and morality and what makes you You, so Dirk is conceptually absolutely my jam. Just. The execution. :'<
they still get off better than jake tho. ha......
@@tyriancross agree to disagree i guess. for me hal's journey wasn't about dirk, it was about hal. hal wanted to be a real guy and he got what he wanted in a funny way. i think we consider hal/AR as a different thing.
have you seen the video "homestuck and the self?" i think you'd get a kick out of it
@@FunkMcLovin Agree to disagree! But I do think that as much as AR is his own character with his own goals, he is also a critical factor in understanding Dirk and the impact the two have on each other really can't be downplayed. IMO it... barely feels like he got a journey, he got prototyped pretty much immediately after the conversation when he even expressed wanting to be prototyped at all and then he... just wasn't AR anymore. Consequence of an unfortunate 6 month timeskip in the Alpha session and then immediately crashing into the endgame, I guess. Character arcs cut off right when they were getting good!!! ARquius is very funny, though.
I haven't really dipped my toes into Homestuck meta since I got back - I'm still digging into all this shiny new extended universe stuff, jeez there's a lot of it suddenly - but I'll put it on my to-watch list :)
NO I AGREE i remeber act 6 is where i fell off bc theyre was wayy to much talking and i wasnt invested in the human characters at all
I often describe Homestuck as "the best thing I've experienced that I don't actively recommend".
THATS SO REAL OMG
I would say give people Hiveswap/maybe Friendsim as the gateway drug, and if they like it, go on and read it from there, after planning some time ahead of it. (that's not an exaggeration)
nice balrog pfp
@@thc_freebaser Ain't no way we have the same profile pic
Accurate as hell tbh 😂
Reread Homestuck about a year ago. It's mostly good.
It suffers from what I've been calling "web serial syndrome" - that is, every part is incrementally published as soon as it's written, so there's no way to go back and edit stuff that came before to clean up the plot, trim dangling threads, and unify themes - like you would do with literally any other long-form work.
Except! This is exactly what John does in Act 6.
I always perceived John's retcons as an expression of Hussy's desire to go back and edit parts of the story so that they create a more cohesive narrative
.
Except even after all of that character development, I still hate Vriska lol
That's...
Actually a really good idea. Huh. Thanks
@@alrineusaldore6764 nuh uh vriska did nothing wrong
Thank god the whole "Press F for Flash" thing can be avoided by using the Unofficial Homestuck Collection.
VIZ Media, what the hell are you doing?
thank god someone mentioned UHC, i cant imagine reading it without it lmfao
So glad hussie themself brought attention to the collection on twit but ig it's not still enough to help readers that have fallen out the fandom for a number of years...
honestly, yeah. i read act 1, 2 and half of 3 on the official website and it was awful, and then started reading on the unofficial reader and it was such a better experience
I just finished homestuck recently and about 2000 pages through I switched to collection. My mind was blown to see parts of the screen actually change during some of the more important flashes
VIZ Media isn't doing anything anymore lol
"it's 2022 cringe culture is dead we should say that homestuck is good" is exactly what i needed thank you
Well Cringe culture isn't still technically "dead" yeah Homestuck ain't anymore like that, but still the cringey-ness is still there somewhere especially TikTok and Twitter.
same
@@doodlehobbo8697 "Cringe culture" from what I've gathered is people calling something cringe because they see it as beneath them in certain aspects.
That kind of mindset is unhealthy for anyone to have, as it's a predecessor to needless judgement and bullying.
Being able to tell yourself "maybe it doesn't matter that it seems a bit "cringey" and I should just enjoy the piece of media for what it is instead of trying to categorise it as something incredibly vague but generally negative so as to appear "cool" on the internet"
Is honestly... well, it's made me stop hating myself and others for menial worthless petty reasons, and I think encouraging THAT mindset is actually a million times healthier than the previous alternative.
So, what I got from OPs comment was that the general idea of that is becoming more common, and that people being needlessly judgmental over things that don't effect them in any way is less common in turn.
And in that sense, yes, cringe culture is dying, because more people are working on being less shitty people now instead of revelling in their self hate and misplaced anger. (Y'know, the reason people made fun of things for being cringe in the first place)
@@doodlehobbo8697 Also, don't take my comment as aggressive pls, I just realised that there's a misconception here as to what "cringe culture" is and felt an explanation would do some good.
inb4 someone replies to my last comment calling it "cringe" because they think that defeats any of my points when really it'd just make them look stupid for disregarding a possible debate on the topic.
@@moosecannibal8224
I disagree of Cringe Culture is dying, there's still something exist that are painful to watch. It's good that other people like you are starting to changes some mindset and being less judgment but that's still nonetheless won't necessarily kills the cringe.
I want to relive the moment when I first experienced Cascade. The way the screen grew and expanded. It blew my mind. So sad it’s now stuck in a UA-cam video.
i about shit my pants. i shed tears for sure
I started reading just before Cascade dropped, and when I heard that hiatus was over I RACED to get to that point to avoid spoilers. It. Was. INCREDIBLE. I have never had an experience with media like that before, or since. I loved it so so much and was 100% hooked since then.
Experienced it for the first in the Unofficial Homestuck Collection recently, it was incredible :)
“I haven’t read post-canon and I never will.”
You are a very smart lady.
I also never finished, but felt that same 'I dont feel the drive to finish it, but I'm still a huge fan' vibe back in the day hahahaha, as an adult I moved on but find this video nice for catching me up :) Thankyouuu!! I feel homestuck is also still awesome. Cringe culture is resting in peace
Word. I thing it was during some sort of “mega giga pause” that I just dropped off and didn’t come back to see it through. I was just given the cliff-notes by a friend that did and I’ll say I was rather disappointed in the ending, however, I never really had any sort of idea as to how it was supposed to end anyway.
"... Let's get to the stuff I didn't like" *casually shows the trickster mode part*
I totally understand finding Davepeta annoying but as someone who just, desperately wanted SOME kind of happy ending for Davesprite I always appreciated them
I always interpreted davepeta as a happy ending for both dave and nepeta, as their squared form allows them toe xperience the lives of other daves and Nepetas, such as the one who ends up with karkat, so Nepeta gts to experience the thing she wanted and davesprite gets to feel the happiness Dave has found as well being able to experience life through his eyes after going through life being told he's "not a real Dave"
Plus together they became a gloriously happy creature that defies societal and gender norms and get to fuck around being rad, so that's fun too.
You want a different but satisfying ending for Davesprite, go read Crow Strider.
I feel compelled to comment to boost this video because it’s the first video that isn’t just HoMeStUcK FaNdOm WhAcKy. I’m so excited to see a take about the actual comic. for me i read it at such a formative time in my life that i simply cannot judge it unbiased or even accurately. I’m so glad it seems to hold up so far !!!!!!!!!!
jan misali made a really good video about the comic itself rather than the fandom
Honestly super validating to hear someone else had the experience of revisiting homestuck as an adult with a cynical mindset and a degree and being horrified to find out it's still pretty good actually. I won't lie, I do also appreciate how you just reviewed/critiqued the work itself without really getting into the whole ass messes that are the fandom and the creative team.
The best way to read homestuck since the death of flash is by using the unofficial homestuck collection
+1 to the suggestion for the "Unofficial" Collection, I'd consider it to be the definitive post-flash version of not just Homestuck, but MSPA as a whole (including Problem Sleuth and all the auxillary material). The fact that Hussie gave it a "I legally can't officially sanction this, but in my capacity as a random person and not as the creator of the series, I approve" five out of five hats rating for it, certainly helps.
im reading homestuck for the first time as an adult (im currently a little bit into part 5 as of writing this!) after somehow skirting around the fandom during its peak in 2013 ish. i went in totally blind. i knew nothing about the series and was incredibly surprised by how much i enjoyed it. i remember seeing so many folks who “hated” it and that i was considered “lucky” for not ever reading it, but thats what intense fan culture does to a piece of media. i mean i liked homestucks cousin, hetalia around that time and i would say that anyone who DIDNT experience hetalia was lucky lol. even though i missed homestuck at its “prime” im experiencing something that im sure many other wish they could again. being able to read it without the influence of fan culture (although my girlfriend is walking me through the homestuckmania museum as im clearing each part), has created such a pleasant and inspiring experience. it makes me reminisce about my young days on the internet, messaging people on skype and arguing in deviantart forum posts. it makes me think of my old online friends and the hours i put into playing animal jam. ive grown past a lot of this now and it makes reading a little bittersweet, thinking about all the fun i had on the internet when i was 13. but ive accepted it as my past. idk this is probably grossly poetic, i suppose my point is that homestuck continues to be a very influential and beloved piece of media way after its prime. im so lucky for the fan archive hehe
there's still a good amount of fan culture around homestuck online! it's a lot calmer, but it's still really fun if you can find the good parts of it
love this comment ❤️ can i ask where your gf is finding the museum? id love to look through it
Hetalia was one of those fandoms where the fan content was more interesting than the real show. I was in it at the time and it only became so popular because it had so many characters that had really stereotyped personalities that were easy to emulate in fan work. I still love Hetalia because it's so nostalgic for me, but God it was a mess lmao
Honestly, I rewatched Hetalia fairly recently and it was still pretty fun. Maybe it's cause i never interacted that much with the fandom, or because I didn't go into it expecting it to be anything more than a gag show with historical references, but it's still pretty alright. It's still funny, though you can tell the animation had no budget on the first 2 seasons lol.
I do think you missed some thematic elements. Homestuck is about the characters escaping the story which is a metaphor for Hussie giving the story over to the fandom. That's why the ending is so ambiguous, because once the characters exit the medium into a new universe, they've escaped from the control of the "author" of the story, Lord English. And because English dies at the same time, we don't actually get to see that ending play out. But as I interpret it, the house juju is the cue ball, which knocks the eight ball (Lord English) into the pocket (Calliope's black hole), ending the "game." How it does this is also ambiguous, but I'm pretty sure it just releases the beta kids from the juju, and they finish English off themselves. Maybe Dave even gets the final blow to fulfil that prophecy. But us not knowing for sure is the point.
There's also the whole thing with Caliborn/Lord English in which he is a stand in for toxic fandom, but also a toxic author. Hussie made their main antagonist a webcomic artist with the biological inability to properly grow and mature. I think that says quite a lot. Hell, you can even extend this metaphor to Lord English, the author of Homestuck's timeline, being made of a misogynistic psychopath, a clown, a racist and a vaguely sociopathic AI.
i think the "Homestuck is about the characters escaping the story which is a metaphor for Hussie giving the story over to the fandom" is being very generous to Hussie. he's always been fandom-ambivalent, his attitude seems to be more like "i don't want this any more, you take it, for the love of god, let me do something else" instead of some benevolent changing of hands. also they never really escape the story, that theme is largely read into homestuck- though it IS a very good and interesting theme. in a simpler way- "lord english as author" doesn't feel intentional
@@FunkMcLovin I think reading motives into Andrew Hussie is a fruitless endeavour. They deliberately created a persona that is never sincere. But in the only candid interview I'm aware of them ever doing they were pretty positive, or at least neutral about the fandom. As for Lord English as author not being intentional, I disagree there. Caliborn becoming the author was a central conflict through the back half of Act 6.
@@bookswithike3256 I don't think it's fruitless at all. We have his author's commentary that were included in the viz-published print books. Those are available pretty readily online and they're much more reader-hostile. Hussie often expresses bafflement that people like characters he doesn't, often mentions how he included some plot points out of spite, mostly reacting to things he saw on the old MSPFA forums. There's also his formspring which was pretty notorious. There's a wealth of huss content out there. I think you're right, it's impossible to read motives into his work, but I'll put it this way- Reading Homestuck and trying to take it seriously often feels like a punishment. The more you try to appreciate a character or piece of lore, the more that thing is shit on. ARquius might be a good example of this.
Thanks for replying btw
this is too meta for me to care
It doesn't have any emotional weight, it's just some "cool homestuck facts you never knew about explained" kind of thing
@@FunkMcLovin The last thing I heard about the Huss is when they send Sarah Z those wordy ass emails to convince her to rectify and edit her retrospective and then admitting again and again "oh btw, I haven't really watched your video yet, as I'm a very busy man, but I'm sure you understand how you can't really win against my legal team and what we're asking you to do, right?"
And that kinda just ended killing the image of "benevolent friendly author" for me.
as weird as it is to say, homestuck as a whole feels like more of an experience than an actual, traditionally-styled plot. the animations, the flash games, the wild array of insane concepts being thrown left and right, the meta stuff with names and zodiacs and chemistry, even the fandom; it's really bigger than the sum of its parts. it's not really about what's on the page, but the whole insanity and creativity it had what made it stand out. the small details and minutiae are kinda lost when compared to the general feel of it all. it's kinda like a memory in that way; what happened itself isn't really important, it's more about what sticks with the reader
i haven't touched the actual comic in like half a decade, so many things are hazy and blurry in my mind. hearing an actual literary review of such a non-standard piece of media is honestly amazing, makes me look back to all those weird 7th grade afternoons spent reading this nutty comic in a different light. it's far from my favorite story, but i doubt i'll ever truly forget it. it always was the journey, never the destination
i think the real theme of homestuck--and this is corroborated by hussie's notes--is a statement on narrative structure as a whole. Even the shit that I absolutely hate (i.e. most of act 6 except Game Over and the retcons) is about the different ways a narrative can go. Gamzee is seen as a huge fuck you to the concept of normal narrative structure, as are Vriska and Caliborn. Even the premise of "kids play a game to create a universe" is completely turned on it's head over and over and over again. They never *actually* play the game. They fuck everything up all the time. Rose and Dave's arcs are entirely counter to the arcs that the narrative _wants_ them to fulfill. The only character who you could say has a traditional arc is John, and he's meant as a foil to the rest of the cast. The ultimate "straight man", the designated protagonist.
the fact that you still keep and eridan pfp means it stuck with you hahah
It's very cool to have somebody with a proper writing degree giving a personal review of homestuck in it's main entirety! I personally find it really interesting that many of the story hiccups or shortcomings of the webcomic are often excused as or attributed to being a narrative device; the alpha kids section is a *lot* of basic interpersonal drama cause it's a void session, so especially in relation to the "noble gases" theme, they all struggle with socially connecting and and *only* really have drama, since there's not exactly much of a game until the beta kids get there; there's likely multiple ways to look at the excessively meta sections from hussie and calibron; so, so much of the classpecting perspective of the webcomic; I also saw one interpretation of the ending where it's *intentionally* abrupt, that the t h e m e of the webcomic is about being stuck in this huge, gigantic, seemingly inescapable system, and that you could say, sometimes... how to win, is to simply leave. They simply left before Caliborn is allowed to have his moment, and before they're able to get even more stu- trapped in the system they're trying to escape; and lastly (out of what I'll list) that stuff like- off-screen character conflict resolution was simply because of the whole "relevant" thing. I personally find stuff like that interesting cause of the implication that Hussie was some Narrative god, where on top of managing to make something that is *conventionally* really , really good, nearly everything else that could be criticized was carefully added with intention and purpose, with very few accidental mistakes.
Anyways, I did enjoy this video and your unique and informed opinion on it, the vibe of the video honestly felt really, really refreshing, and I'm honestly surprised this hasn't gotten more attention and support.
A writing degree is useless. Don't get caught up in believing a degree can make a person creative. Art comes from the soul, not from the head.
@@momomomocensoredbyyoutube9085 There's more to writing than just drive and ideas. Enough to fill a degree with, actually.
@@psychopompous489 I'll fight you on that till my dying breath. That thinking is so corporate, it disgusts me.
@@momomomocensoredbyyoutube9085 That is true, I just suppose what I mean (or, assume to be true) is an education to that degree can help teach some pretty helpful tools when it comes to coherently executing the creativity for that art, that you might not otherwise intuitively gain.
But otherwise yeah!! I 100% agree with that last sentiment.
@@momomomocensoredbyyoutube9085 Huh, I always thought of "corporate" as being money focused, instead of just bettering yourself.
I feel waaay out of the loop because i only started reading homestuck recently, and everyone already finished reading the comic years ago. It feels so weird to think about it.
Anyways, i'm currently on Act 5 Act 2 :>
homestuck never dies, so enjoy your read
it took me like 6 months to finish the comic in like 2017 and my brain retained nothing of it
there's still plenty of people getting into it and reading it nowadays, you're hardly alone! i see many different live reaction threads and new fans making art all the time. actually, the thing i see the most is comments like this. i'm very happy to see people like you still getting into it -- have fun finishing and welcome to the community!
don't worry, i'm recent too, i think i started in february
I totally feel this, I started reading in March 2020 and I still haven't finished lol. I'm on act 6 intermission 5
No matter the fandom, no matter the other projects that weren't as good, no matter the drop in quality in the second half, I will forever think Homestuck is some of the best fiction writing that exists today, and definitely some of the best released in the 21st century.
Not reading anything post ending is a good call. I’m not a huge fans of Homestuck’s ending, but it’s a lot better than the slog that came after. To spoil it a a bit, the main theme of the epilogue is that the epilogue shouldn’t exist. It’s written to be deliberately jarring and off putting to people who loved the comic. The sequel is just flat out bad. Its written by people who didn’t have the same level of experience that Hussie did and is showed. It was ultimately rejected by the fans and was quietly abandoned without a proper ending after a couple months of regular updates.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that HS^2 was still being made. Under the condition that there will be no more regular updates and that the comic will be released all at once when it’s finished.
@@heroicwolves That’s the official story but who knows if that’s actually happening?
@@heroicwolves I am sure that the artists and writers would love to finish the comic... for money. Without a Patreon to pay the bills, the question of the competence, credibility, and cost of the staff comes right to the forefront.
@@heroicwolves yeah I really do not believe it until I see it lol
Half of the epilogues are about how they shouldn't exist- specifically about how fanservice wouldn't actually be a good thing for the characters or the story.
The other half is about stories necessitating things you might not like at the surface level to continue, including ultimately the fact that at some point they have to end
Personally, I kind of liked how Lord English was "finished" off screen, though this is only after plenty of thinking on it and the characters. Caliborn, the one who parodies stories and forces the narrative to follow his path, always wanted to be "The Main Character", with everyone paying attention to him, praising him for the "hero" he was. During his drawing bits, he had his self insert character be super "amazing" and loved by everyone, and every story he made had himself as the center. As LE, he tried to get reality to follow that, make himself into the ultimate being of power, and force everyone else to love him, or else.
Calliope on the other hand...she was a bit of the opposite. She added herself into the stories, but as a side to it, she wanted to exist as a character, a friend, a helper, willing to guide rather than force. This culminates with Alt-Calli seemingly being the one behind much of the story, guiding everything and allowing things to happen with the smallest of nudges. Each part of the story is an "Act" that literally opens with curtains, and her weapon in a neutral state is a conductor's baton. Caliborn tries to take over, he has his jpg curtains open to start the acts, he writes a story that he has full control over, and even takes her wand and uses it in his own actions as if to say "I am the narrator now, you will follow my lead!"
But then, people keep breaking out of his hold, more and more people gain a small upper hand on him, being able to find or do things in just the right time and under his nose, almost as if a guiding hand is making sure everything was happening perfectly. Alt-Calli simply uses his "control" of the narrative to orchestrate his own end, and then as the final blow, does the worst thing to him that he can imagine.
She takes the attention hog, the one who loves the lime-light, the "hero" who must be seen by all, and removes him from view, killing him away from anyone to see. She takes his crafted role that he wished for so dearly, and turns it on its head, shoving him away from the attention of everyone else. She pushed him to the side to let the story be itself, and for the kids to be the true heroes of the story.
TL;DR Lack of on-screen death of LE is nice due to headcanon that Alt-Calli was the narrator/conductor of the entire story, subverted his attention seeking ways to be the main character, and removed him from the lime-light in the end as the final show of how he isn't that special or important enough for that role.
i definetly started reading homestuck because of megalovania, because i remember knowing undertale first then going "what? there's other megalovania??" and i went down the rabbit hole. sure i read it like a few weeks before it ends, but at least all the flash contents was still playable back then. and ngl, it ranked 1st on the best media experience i've had, later on joined by one piece, i guess a bunch of ppl going on a wacky adventure is really appealing to me.
recently a friend asked me about what a homestuck really is because she only know about fan content of dirk/jake pairing and she was really surprised by my explanation because the fan content she reads are all AUs. by explaining what homestuck is to her, i got a flashback and it feels like i was on 2016 again, it feels nice back when time was simple. so i tried to re-read homestuck, but i paused at the start of hivebent because i know its gonna sucked me in hard as it did back then and i still wanna be productive instead of spending days reading all 8000+ of a webcomic.
i really wanna go back and read it, but im scared.
also another thing. NOBODY KNOWS HOMESTUCK AROUND ME!! so i was gracefully unaware of its existence until around it was about to end. on the other hand it was frustating because i have so much to talk about it but no one to talk to.
also also, yeah, cringe culture is dead, im gonna enjoy what i enjoy. and i do not enjoy the dubiously canon stuff so i will not read it
if you go back to re-read it, i'd really recommend downloading the unofficial reader, it's so easy to use and ik loads of people have been banging on about it in the comments but it's super good
@@difeth_ o yeah, i did download it, but after reading until the end of act 4. So yeah, missed a lot of flash, especially john adventure on lowas flash game. I remember being sad about a lot of the flashes turned into a still gif image and or a very low quality youtube videos. Thanks heaven for the unofficial collection
the "Hearing Megalovania to Reading Homestuck" pipeline continues to thrive
Im not against the retcon in of itself, but I have one major thing I’d change about it. Originally, John goes back in time to before Vriska dies and has her fix a LOT of the shit that went down. Imo, that should have been Gamzee.
After death, Vriska goes through SO MUCH character development. I just cannot be convinced that the same 13 year old troll who physically disabled someone, then proceeded to make fun of them for the disability they caused, would go along perfectly willing to fix everything.
Gamzee, however, would have. Before shit went down, he was fairly chill and actually wanted to help those he viewed as friends, who in turn saw him little more than an idiotic annoyance. What first caused his downward spiral was him being possessed by lil cal, and from there he had been possessed so many times that it’s very hard to tell what his actual actions were. But after this downward spiral began, Gamzee went on a murderous rampage and basically became Lord English’s dad. He is responsible for Lord English becoming the main antagonist. And I find it more fitting that the character, who initially was a very kind troll who loved his friends that ended up causing the main antagonist to end up the way he did, to be the one to fix things rather than the troll whose entire character development from downright horrid to a decent person was eradicated. OG, pre-possession Gamzee would be SO down to help, pre-death Vriska wouldn’t have given a shit.
This ^ Absolutely, it would have made much more sense than the direction they took
it would also make the bit where hussie called him "the most important character in homestuck" make more sense. bc after raising lil cal, he just.. doesnt do much? aside from making the whole trickster arc happen, and being awful to terezi. but after game over, he just doesnt do anything until he's locked in the fridge. if he had been the one to not only raise lil cal, but then be the main one to take him down after the retcon, it would tie that arc together really nicely instead of just being put in fridge prison.
plus, equius and nepeta would survive and we could avoid those really,,, just out of place and odd fusion sprites later down the line. bc the ONLY good thing about those sprites was davesprite was happier fused with nepeta, but other than that it was just... odd. and there are other ways davesprite could have been happy. davesprite was my FAVORITE hs character but then the whole fusion thing happened and it really didnt work.
it honestly would have fixed so much, bc gamzee's possession is when that major shift happens and shit really goes off the rails. had that been retconned, then all of the dominoes would have fallen into place imo. plus, i just really miss gamzee, and i think it would have been interesting to see his actual sobriety journey. we only got to see the very start of the withdrawals before he got possessed. i think rose and roxy could have helped him a LOT post-retcon.
@@Rose-ef2cm gamzee was rlly done dirty :(
@@Rose-ef2cm it's really Lil Cal who's the "most important character in homestuck"
for some reason, reading this comment dredged up memories of a fanfiction that had... basically that ending. or was it like, fandom discussions about it? the whole 'gamzee is lord english's dad ish' came up a lot in general iirc
Honestly this was very reassurring to watch. As a fan when I was a teenager, and as an English teacher now, I love being able to appreciate how unique and whacky and beautiful the story is, and especially, as you said, the unique experience of reading it. It broke my heart when I saw what they'd had to do to the flash clips/games. I hope there's an easy way to circumvent that eventually and we get a more authentic experience again.
I think if Hussie managed to finish Act 6 quicker and keep the meta stuff straight and cohere it into the concrete message I think he was going for, it would've left a much better taste in peoples mouth.
The unofficial homestuck collection is definitely worth it. It preserves all of the uniquely flash aspects of the original with new options for quality of life, like toggles to change the site skins and turn off the more controversial aspects (see the liberal use of slurs lol). I swear I'm not sponsored by anyone it's just genuinely the best way to read it nowadays
random person asking random question, does it save your spot when you leave the app? never got into HS because I could never remember were I left off
@@beauvillamor621 Oh, yes, even the official website had that feature. It's usually right below the content of the page. Save, load, etc.
@@hunterfunnyguy oh really? I must have missed it
@@beauvillamor621 Lol that's alright. So yeah, you won't lose your place if you use the unofficial collection.
@@beauvillamor621 I always just bookmarked the place in which I was done for the day when catching up on the site while the thing was still on-going.
Damn, this is an underappreciated video. I'll share it around, I know a lot of homestuck fanatics, even in the year 2022. Yeah, Homestuck is fantastic, i'm glad you decided to finish it.
I read Homestuck as an early teen from somewhere around 2012 until its end in 2016, and was a fan for probably about a year afterwards. It was a huge interest for me for the longest time and I clung to every upd8 when my friends and I would all talk about it in school the next day.
I enjoyed the dream bubbles, I enjoyed the character development, I was That Fan who recited off "let me tell you about Homestuck" whenever anyone asked me to explain the niche references I made in daily conversation. One of my fondest memories was dressing up as Eridan and going to a convention/meetup--everyone sat in a big circle and sang You Can't Fight The Homestuck and laughed and chatted together. There was so much camaraderie there and even though the fandom was Very Toxic, it still had this feeling of community, this feeling that you were all in this together.
I did not come out of the fandom untraumatized and I envy everyone who did. For a long time after I left the fandom there was this big block in my mind where I couldn't read Homestuck, I couldn't look at art in the style, I couldn't even think about it. Hell, even when the epilogues came out I had a panic attack trying to read it--that's how big of an effect the comic and the fandom had on me, how much of a toll it took on my mental health as a kid.
But going back to it now as an adult I'm able to appreciate everything I didn't pick up on before and I'm able to take a step back and see the characters for more than my young teenaged mind could all those years ago. I can empathize more easily with these characters whose arcs flew right over my head, I can better keep track of the timelines and everything going on simultaneously, and honestly? I can have some closure.
This sounds pretentious, and I know it does, but I don't think people reading Homestuck for the first time now will ever truly know what it was like in its prime. And to be honest, I think that is a good thing.
I started through "lets read homestuck" Im not much of a reader, but this helped me get into it, but lets read stopped at the meena game because of its size, so i had to read and i caught up right before it ended. I basically experienced all of homestuck in like, 2 weeks.
I love the world and ideas. Im a bit upset the gamified elements took a backseat (they are what drew me in), but after a while I'd imagine they would have slowed the comic down alot. God teir is both a mechanic I love and a way to write away most of the game stuff.
and I even enjoy the main premise of the epilogue (The choice to either go back and finish the story proper or ignore it and send everything off the rails), even If I didnt care enough to read that long mess.
Overall I enjoy homestuck, I just wish it was something I could talk about with people, Its too hard to sell to get anyone into.
Homestuck is... one of those things, yknow? I only finally bit the bullet and read the comic pretty recently, I was busy in the 2014-2016 era (when the most people I knew were in the fandom) being into Danganronpa (something that earns me zero bragging rights).
I share in a lot of this, to be honest. The dynamic of the alpha kids was something that felt pretty recycled and made me a little frustrated at times. I like the characters individually, but the group dynamic leaves something to be desired at times. Maybe it's just because I kinda hate love triangles/squares/shapes. Also I really disliked how often characters like Jake and Tavros were made the butt of the joke. Sometimes when a writer doesn't like a character it becomes pretty obvious, and I feel like that was the hole those two fell into (which is exactly opposite to how I feel Vriska was treated).
Overall, I think the webcomic is fun! It gets stuck the same trap as I see content getting stuck in more and more often, though. The whole fan worship thing was definitely something that became infamous because of Homestuck. Something something con nonsense.
This was a great video! Very well put together!!
vriska best girl
Vriska blows
Apparently, according to Hussie in the book commentary, Tavros and Vriska were explicitly meant to metatextually represent characters that the author hated and loved, if that helps?
@@NZsaltz Yeah it does help: helps further cement that his blue Mary Sue blows
I fucking love the way homestuck was written. I was never really part of the fandom but I absolutely devoured the comics. People say it's far too long and a lot of it could be trimmed, but it's written in such a fun way that I never really cared. I guess the fact that I wasn't waiting for weeks to get a couple of paragraphs of Hussie self introducing himself to the story helps. I mean, homestuck definitely spoiled me in the way that they set up foreshadowing, like they'd allude to something in story that wouldn't become relevant until like, 3 years later. It was insane. It always felt like the story was structured and planned ahead of time, as oppose to most long running stories.
I always make the comparsion with Kingdom Hearts' writing, Kingdom Hearts writing wants to be homestuck SO BAD but fails at every step. Both stories have common themes of identity and the replication of that identity through alternate selves and even a lot of similar concepts like time travels, different worlds, dream planes, universal resets, et cetera. but while homestuck took its time to explain and ground these themes and concepts to make them work, KH ran through them like a truck on fire that retcons everything that came before it.
Omg yeah kingdom hearts story is a train wreck.... completely nonsensical
god that part at 7:28 resonated with me so badly lmao. for the longest time i’ve thought about how strange it was that honestuck changed my worldview on gender and sexuality, but the way you described it was pretty much perfect
15:53 if we're being specific here, the retcon is not an alternate future, its the same future, that's the whole point of them having to do a retcon instead of normal time travel, which would create an alternate timeline instead of editing the alpha timeline.
Except ghosts from pre-retcon timeline still exist
it's an alternate timeline that *becomes* the new alpha timeline due to the retcon powers, instead of being a doomed offshoot, which the old GAME OVER timeline becomes.
My case is particular: I read Homestuck as a kid (14-15 years old) but did so during the pandemic, when it had been over for like 4 years. Reading it all at once without any kind of fandom interaction made me appreciate the story a lot more than I would have otherwise. Homestuck was a mixed bag for sure, but the highs were so high that I forgot about most of the lows.
The unofficial restoration is literally perfect and also has some features that it really didn't need, but are definitely welcomed.
i read homestuck when i was like, 13 or 12, but i'm 17 now and it still feels recent. i went in pretty much blind, read the whole thing in it's entirety and loved it so much it has probably inspired my growth as an artist a lot. i may be lucky to have joined after the 'prime' days?? there was nothing in the way to ruin the experience or taint it, it was just an incredibly cool multimedia experience, that i still share with a group of friends who liked it too. i'm still making characters on alternia and i couldn't be more thankful that it introduced me to my best friends
no way, we literally read it at the exact same time and exact same age! i’m also 17 now and though my memory of the comic itself has faded quite a bit (i’m due for a reread), i couldn’t be happier that the only people active in the fandom by that point were the non-toxic people
@@malagrug4326 thats so cool :D i guess even in its old age theres plenty of new readers
@Hypothermic Dysrhythmia oh i didn’t miss out on that don’t worry! it’s downloaded on my computer now
@Hypothermic Dysrhythmia that sounds fun!! i used the pesterchum client a bit but it was pretty dead unfortunately!
same age too and i read it when i was 13/14- it ate up my brain for like a year and i'm not ready to return to that yet tho,, i'm glad you found friends that liked it too- i never managed to get someone else into it :)
hi, as someone who was in the fandom the Entire Duration of Homestuck, i would love to have a long fuckin talk about it all. like.. vriska having all these revelations about doing Horrible Things and Making it All About Her, and then the story just.. makes the entire plot hinge AROUND her and also the author/artist proposes to her. like... it feels very... AGAINST what the story was building up her character arc. like.. how dead vriska ended up with dead terezi and they just lived a lil meaningless afterlife and were irrelevant to the story adn happy about it? it felt like that's where vriska's character was supposed to go, but the whole death thing feels like it was like.. actively scrapping it and forcing her to stay Worse. hell, people even started theorizing that part of the fixation on vriska was because of hussie's Then GF (idk/idc current status) loving vriska, hence part of the joke of hussie proposing to her (making it less a Creepazoid thing and more of a "author shows affection for smth that relates to a significant other" sorta thing. not GREAT but Better than without context).
also part of the whole concept of the "ending bad" wasn't so much that the endign itself WAS bad, but it was because after like. 4 years of Hiatus on and off and after the endless AU-stucks that the tumblr community kept nonstop pumping out, and after theorizing every panel and every word and every turn of phrase... there was ZERO outcome that could've been received well. both because people wanted to theorize and come up with ideas and they CAN'T when it's wrapped up, but just because that long ass wait made people have the highest, unreachable expectations. in other fandoms, when a story has a Bad Ending Nobody's Happy With, you end up seeing an uptick in Fix-it Fiction, where the fandom is like "fine, we'll do it ourselves" and just tries to make a better story..
i haven't seen that with homestuck, because it feels like there WASN'T a way to wrap it all up nicely without either going WAY too in depth in an uncharacteristic type of story (like you said, homestuck is a comedy! going hardcore into video game tactics and strategy analysis and every move of everyone would ruin a LOT of shit going for it, including the momentum), or, well, what we got.
people would've grown to be Okay with it, but the After-Canon stuff like that weird AO3 fanfic epilogue. it was fucking palpable how fast it made a shitload of people drop homestuck as a hyperfixation, purged their good will of the series and it's author, and never looked back. if my own mother stabbed me in the back tonight while i was sleeping, it still wouldn't have hurt as bad as the homestuck epilogue did upon reading it. like, sure, yes, people were bored and dropping it BEFORE then, like you did during one of the hiatuses, but people tend to be more forgiving of series they just Grew Out Of as opposed to how... almost MEAN SPIRITED the epilogues felt.
so no, don't read them. but as for homestuck itself, i was an adult (18 or so?) when i started it, so i'm very much an adult now, and analyzing what impact it's had on ourselves and our culture (as internet dwellers who use social media, i mean), and etc is... so important. for nothing else, i'm so thankful homestuck normalized the concept of online friendship or even online dating as being non-hurtful and even healthy. it feels like homestuck is one of the biggest landmarks in showing that sorta thing, where Act 1's friend group did not live near each other or ever expect to see each other, but they loved each other (platonically) nonetheless and sent each other birthday gifts and etc. i wish we had more content like that.
Reflecting on it more recently, I definitely got the feeling that the jabs at the audience were often laughing at the audience instead of with them.
To be fair, as someone who was in the tumblr fandom for a while before the dancestors were introduced… When they came around I loved them, and the vast majority of the fans did, too. The ones that didn’t like them were the ones being made fun of who couldn’t handle being criticized for their over-the-top behaviour. Quite a few other fans took it, rolled with it, and learned to laugh at themselves and realize how irritating they were being. Both outcomes were the minority and the rest of us loved playing with the dancestor characters, whether it was to AU them or delve further into what their exposition on Beforus’ culture meant for Signless’ group and why they did what they did, or why Alternia was what it was. It’s one part of the comic that really did not age well because it’s a genuinely dated and obscure reference to some really toxic corners of the fandom. I’m still endeared to them, but if I were to point to any one thing in Homestuck being dated, it would be them. There were criticisms of other websites in their characters, but it was MOSTLY tumblr.
With Homestuck, I love seeing how they interact and tell about themselves in a personal, emotional level AND their relationships with eachother. I never got the chance to finish it and I will finish it someday. Homestuck sticks with me like vocaloid does years later. (I already knew the spoiler when it was announced it ended so don't worry)
I'm still in active in Homestuck to this day, and the fandom on tumblr is... actually much more focused on talking about the webcomic itself now. There's much less aus and non-canon based stuff? It's so weird to see now lol. All the old stuff from the hey day still sticks around and can be reread and whatever.
Anyway, Acts 1-5 are still fantastic writing wise and were amazing to watch fall together and play into expectations. I don't like act 6, it lost all the mystery and fun of what made HS's villains so scary and intimidating, and while I like Caliborn, LE in act 6 is... a pretty huge downgrade from Bec Noir and Doc Scratch... in terms of "Actually Being A Worthwhile Villain."
I like Davepeta as an arc finisher for Davesprite, I wish there was more build up, but I liked Davepeta.
Mostly Act 6 just has so much I think is useless. We didn't need the romance, I absolutely hated reading every Hal dialogue because he was just so uninteresting due to the fact so many more medias have done everything he was but better. If the retjohn had just resurrected every troll instead of *JUST* Vriska, it wouldn't feel so useless and like everything I read in Act 6 up to that point was completely useless. Sue me I think Feferi and Tavros could have had more to do if they were alive. It sucks how Hussie's parts in act 6 got overdone because they were so fun in acts 1-5, admittedly watching Voxus's Let's Read made his character weirdly charming in delivery, lol.
Anyway yeah 👍 Homestuck good. Also wish the Carapacians weren't so sidelined after Cascade.
It feels strange, seeing anyone talk about this now. I stopped reading it around the time of Act 6 and over time ran into less and less people talking about it, most completely fading out once it ended. It feels nice to know that this, even with the death of flash, might still live on and new people will still come across and hopefully read it independent of its insane peak.
I remember vividly being frustrated and displeased years ago with how it was going, but if you were to ask me why now, I wouldn't remotely be able to tell you. I haven't even THOUGHT about this in any remotely serious manner for six years of my life and for the first time in six years, I genuinely feel compelled to go back and read this leviathan sized mess all over again just so I can rediscover what made me stop.
This is your fault and I hate you for doing this to me. But also, thank you. There's a part of me that's oddly pleased to do this all again. Good job with the video.
To me, one of the core themes of Homestuck is early 2000s chatroom internet culture, and how growing up with the internet actually affects you. I would say it's probably the only theme for a long while, it's what ties everything together. Until Act 6 of course, when Homestuck becomes a story about Homestuck.
I get that we're in 2022 so it's almost culturally mandatory to denounce slurs and -isms where we see them, but beyond Homestuck being a product of its time, I feel like you can't nail that teenager internet friend group without including some of the very real things that were being said in there. I really don't think that having characters that say problematic things is a problematic thing in and of itself. Nor do I think that they need absolutely terrible things to happen to them to make an "example" out of them, the truth is that most people will say some egregious shit when they're young, and I don't think trying to shy away from that does anything justice.
I always wondered about Homestuck, and so when The Algorithm threw this on my dash I idly clicked... and loved your review & analysis so much I went on to binge the rest of your videos. Great works! Keep writing, you're great at this!
I read up to act five when I was 13. All my friends were getting into it and I was the last one who needed to read it. I absolutely loved it. The art style and the blending of comic and video game was so amazing to me. I think the saddest thing about it being so cringe culture is that I don't see anyone else taking these sorts of concepts and making their own "Homestuck". I'd happily jump to read something that tried to break the mold as much as Homestuck did at the time. That's my biggest praise for the piece. Is that it was really revolutionary and underappreciated by people who were mature enough to expand on it
I still haven't gotten over the fact that Spades Slick died. That kinda ruined my experience watching the ending for the first time lol. Now I just pretend that it didnt happen.
My hot take is that he should have died in Cascade. Sure, it's a little sad. But I think it's an actually narratively satisfying death. He has nothing left to live for, so he goes out to settle things one last time with Snowman, a character very important to him. I think this would have been better than the narrative kind of meandering around him then him accomplishing nothing by fighting the wrong villain.
I was into the homestuck fandom from 2014-2016. I've reread fully it two more times since then (once in 2018, and once in 2019), and I'm wanting to reread it again. It was such a pivotal part of my life and arguably kept me sane in the time before I was diagnosed and treated for depression. I obsessed over it on tumblr, AO3, and believe it or not, iFunny. I contributed to the fanart, the fanfics, the iconic tumblr posts, I was there for it all! It's a very special comic for me, and while I acknowledge its flaws (especially during act 6), it will always stay in my heart.
As an older fan who remembers its heyday, Homestuck is hard to get back into in 2022. My last readthrough was in 2019, right before flash died. I introduced a friend to it later in 2020 where I got a glimpse of what they had done to the comic. The youtube videos, the broken flash games, it was all so disheartening that I have put off rereading it again. Its a shell of its former self. So much of the comic revolves around the chaos of the fandom - something that becomes very clear during Act 5. Experiencing Homestuck post-2020 is like walking through an abandoned graveyard. While reading it, you can see the passion which used to be behind it. But it's all dissolved, the passion is gone. Ironically, reading Homestuck feels like walking through a dreambubble where everything is alive and thriving, but in reality it's all dead to the outside world. It's not relevant anymore. I mention it to my friends, and they groan and lecture me on how problematic it is in 2022. It's really, really hard to see as someone who helped break tumblr when a new update came out.
I just think the series deserves better. I do dislike the ending. I think its a lazy ending to a fantastic, ground-breaking series. You mention that people complain that there should have been a twist, that everything went perfectly to plan. I agree with this criticism because a plan that doesn't go wrong is just a spoiler. Homestuck is renouned for its twists - having just a "fine" ending was the most disappointing thing of all. Beyond the ending, all of the post-ending content is just bad. The state of the website is depressing. I just feel like there could have been more of an effort to preserve the passion behind the series instead of letting it fall off. It overstayed its welcome, and it SHOWS by the end. It really did deserve better.
All things considered, I will still always love this comic. I will remember it for its brilliant use of every medium that the internet has to offer. I will remember its clever humor, and each unreliable narrator. It challenges your perceptions of right and wrong and forces you to live in the gray areas. It is such an accurate depiction of internet culture in the early 2010's, and I can see myself in every character. I will miss the experience of reading this comic at its peak, but I'm thankful I was there to experience it in the first place. I really do feel for the new fans who have to walk through the graveyard of the comic that once was. But then again... they get to read it for the first time. That is something I can never do again.
I love you. I was smiling through the entire video! MY CHEEKS HURT!
I read as an adult in college and was pretty well separated from the fandom. Probably because I started reading it during one of the big hiatus moments when most people dropped off. But yeah, fully agree with this take. It's a very fun experience to read and I do genuinely love how much it was pushing different media for webcomics at the time. Sad that the experimentation came with the drawback of flash being gutted, taking a lot of the experience with it.
I largely agree with you, the villain thing especially. Like, Caliborn and Lord English are fine, but having a fine main villain in a series of fantastic ones is something of a let down.
As for the first 5 acts being 10/10, I definitely agree there. They're so good. I do wince at some of the outdated language here and there, but it holds up other than that.
I'll elucidate why I didn't like the ending as someone who was there for it when it came out. One of the strong points of the story proper is how fantastic the dialogue is. The dialogue after collide was.... nonexistent. And before that it's just an avalanche of wrap-ups that could have happened in a more organic way. The writing becomes almost pure utilitarian in such an underwhelming way for a comic like Homestuck. To be frank, the real problems of the ending are not even with the final flash, but more that Act 6 really just doesn't set it up properly. Oh well. I did like Collide at least.
Where we diverge most, I'm happy to say Homestuck Good. Maybe it's because I got into it as an adult, but I've always felt it's okay to just like things that are enjoyable even if there's a bunch of kids leaving grey paint on a convention wall somewhere.
The end of homestuck was absolutely affected by many aspects of what was going on with Hussie. Its no secret the changes happened around when he decided to make a game. Regardless of what actually went down with that, it interfered with finishing homestuck. That and it really felt like he wasn't sure where to take things with Homestuck at some point and there was a lot of wavering before the ending was nailed down.
I mean shit, the doomed timeline thing honestly might have been synonymous with him not liking where he had taken things and trying to redo it. The whole thing was always about his narrative I wouldn't be shocked if it was an in universe reset of his own story writing.
@@nickfarace9339 Maybe Act 6 could have held together stronger if Hussie didn't overload and spread too thin. An explanation I've heard is that Hussie felt that the comic needed to stall while the final flashes and the game were cobbled together, and then had to stall for longer after all the restructuring that had to happen after the financial stuff happened
read homestuck when it was about halfway through and then was reading until the last gigapause... then caught up later when it ended.
for all it's problems, there is one thing that homestuck is, and has always stood out to me, was it's various, creative and unique ways of dealing with time travel, time loops, and everything time related. Like, anyone who ever considers doing a story based on or around time stuff should absolutely read it, because there was a LOT of creative uses of it.
I'm glad to have found a homestuck videoessay thats actually ABOUT homestuck and not about the fandom or hiveswap or any of that other stuff
this the perfect homestuck review for my 'was on tumblr post peak but pre end of homestuck and never actually read it and didnt even know what it was for a while but now it seems like such a big part of the first internet ecosystem i saw develop in real time and is now kinda curious about it but not curious enough to actually sit thru a 1hr video yet' self. Thanks for making it!
16:30 - i like the retcon because the story it erases still happened because they need to so they could've retconned it... so even if it's not true anymore it doesn't say it was never true.
"i had a fondness for it but i never felt compelled to finish it"
Me when i pick up any game or anime
Homestuck is certainly a webcomic that exists
I re-read it three times, and it's honestly just really good. Yeah it's full of super cringy shit, it's full of dated jokes, weird references and humor that is no longer funny. But it's also full of heartfelt character moments, and a sense of what growing up with the internet is like that nothing else really seems to catch. Unironically the favourite story I ever read.
Homestuck was such a big part of my preteens and formative years. It genuinely was such an integral part of who I am today, and honestly I’ve been indulging myself in rereading it and just healing my inner child- and I genuinely truly think it’s really good, as someone who’s an adult now and not blindsided and biased by the fandom as opposed to the comic itself. Really good video, and happy to see other adults who grew up on it like me also rediscovering it.
So I was recommended this video by the algorithm and I thought that you should get the engagement for bringing suck a wonderfully weird part of my life back into my consciousness! Homestuck was fun and I kinda miss the amount of fan music it created!
I remember watching a video essay somewhere about the ending but it is actually really interesting in that thematically it draws in meanings to conclude story points that a lot of people just didn't pick up on. The only one I can remember off the top of my head for example is his eyes landing on 8-balls was supposed to be confirmation that he was defeated. I should try to find it again it was useful for understanding the ending.
Edit: dis was it ua-cam.com/video/GPyKab8cpMY/v-deo.html
Just because homestuck nerds r the best optimisticDuelist or LaureledEvees go deep on homestuck lore and themes :D
Like oDs videos on gamzee or lil cal 🤯
i love how the longest part is "the stuff i didn't like" is the longest part but the overall impression is that it's still pretty ok. that's the best explanation of homestuck imo.
also glad to see others making homestuck content on YT :D
I haven't seen homestuck and my only knowledge was about it's fandom and people hating the introduction of the trolls.
I am currently downloading the unofficial collection.
"I haven't read them (post canon) and I never will"
WHoly based
I've been thinking of re-reading it as of late. Read it at a younger age in 2016 and figured I should do it justice and read it again (since I skimmed a lot of act 6 (I was young and impatient))
7:34 Also completely true. I remember being confused since I'd never met a non-straight person before and was always confused whenever I saw queer relationships since "the guy gets the girl or vice versa" was pretty much my only exposures to romance
ok this is a little unrelated but near the end of the video when Jack had his arm cut off, and losing the ring restored his other arm......
he turned it, flip-ways
i will say as someone who was super into homestuck during the time it ended, most people were just upset that the ending wasn’t super clear + didn’t have more?
i think it was just a combination of most people kind of expecting more than what was presented + people being confused by the ending.
i remember being slightly dissatisfied back then too, but in hindsight, i think the endings pretty cool! i still don’t totally understand how they defeated lord english though. like you said, the ending could’ve been stronger.
Really enjoyed this video and felt myself agreeing with most of it as someone who also reread Homestuck in its entirety for the first time as an adult! I like your point on the happy ending a lot and your discussion of the "it was all a dream" retcon. I know you said you won't, but I will be that guy and seriously recommend reading at least the Epilogues. They explore a lot of ideas about how we as readers interact with the story and offer some really interesting meta-examination of Homestuck. Plus it's a hilarious book in its own right.
I just finished it today and it was SO GOOD. I got to page 8129 about 2 hours ago and was confused because it seemed like there was supposed to be something else and this video is how I found out there was a page 8130. Homestuck took me about a year and a half to read (but that's because I wasn't reading it often enough) and I can safely say that it was truly fantastic. I liked the ending, and was thoroughly impressed by how good the animation was in [S] collide. I know getting into it in 2021-2022 is VERY late and I really wish I had gotten into it sooner, because younger me would have loved it. I got into Undertale before I got into Homestuck and Toby Fox did an over the top excellent job on the soundtrack as always, and I really liked the Undertale reference in collide. overall fantastic, no regrets reading it, and you should all read it too.
always super happy to see people still making good homestuck content, subscription earned!
homestuck
@@spongeybunny im happy to report that your brain's pattern recognition function is working as intended
@@morpheusfishborne hell yeah
I have never once stopped believing homestuck was good. I never called it cringe. My profile picture is terezi fanart. I'm simply loyal.
I read through 7/8ths of homestuck before having a sort of panic episode over what the fuck I was doing with my life and why I decided to undertake such a monumental read on a whim, prioritizing it over the rest of my life... So yeah I dropped and and haven't gone back since
The autocorrect that turned “undertake” into “undertale” made this comment initially a bit confusing
@@drdca8263 fixed
I read it for the first time a few months ago as a 20 year old and I liked it a lot, but the things I didn't like I REALLY REALLY hated.
I really wish Jane was actually drawn as a chubby character. It makes perfect sense for her to be plus size but I was actively shocked when Caliborn made fun of her for it, because she's always drawn to be skinny. I wish we could have gotten to see a chubby sprite for her.
Also I didn't like Vriska at all. Her best moments are when she explains how her upbringing and Alternia's society affected her, but I loathed the way she treated Tavros, it just hit way too close to home. It's especially irritating that she's the one who paralized his legs and most of her insults are about his disability.
Plus the fact that she gets usually rewarded for her actions, and that Tavros' character arc revolves around him, a disabled boy appeasing his able-bodied bully.
Also really wish Tavros' gentleness and "head-in-the-clouds" attitude wasn't used as a way to mock him instead of having him be accepted for who he is, and showing the trolls (who would normally be more than justified in killing a disabled and idealistic kid) develop a perspective on "weak" trolls also being inherently worthy of respect.
And Kankri's character being a parody of "SJWs"...rubbed me the wrong way. I really felt like Hussie had no authority to make fun of that type of person because it sounded like he was mad at them for calling him out...when his comic actively features the r-slur, constant ableism, racism and more. Another create making this joke I could accept, but Hussie needed to stay in his line on that topic IMO. The thing that saved that interaction, as usual, was Karkat's reaction to his dancestor.
I'm 16 at the time of writing this and made the (supposedly) arduous underaking of reading all of Homestuck during my summer break. When i was much younger, my older sister was quite active on the internet during the whole "cringe culture" stuff, so when i told her about my plan, it wasnt completely unreasonable for her to react with a "really? Are you sure you want to read that? I heard its kinda cringe" , so i went in expecting the worst. I was expecting to meet insufferable characters, dated and unfunny jokes, and weird self-insertion.
What i actually got was insufferable characters, dated and unfunny jokes, and weird self-insertion, but my god was it amazing. Such great dialogue, such loveable personalities, such interesting and thought provoking themes. This series so easily became my new, borderline unhealthy obsession (I would often wake up from a nap after reading the epilogues and wonder which universe im currently residing in, before realizing that im just being homestuck-delusional again and Earth C isnt a real place). For me, enjoying something needs to take root pretty quickly if i want to continue it, and for Homestuck the roots were practically already there, perfectly shaped for the recession in my mind that i did not know i had.
And the best part? Homestuck made me realize that it's not that I dont enjoy reading, its just that I need to find things i actually enjoy. Heck, for all my personal sentiments about how "i read things slowly because i need the info to recede into my skull", i practically blazed through homestuck. Just completely left burning tire marks like its back to the future or something. It was straight up like christmas in my think pan. I ended up finishing the entire series, click after click, in about a month (including the epilogues and catching up with HSBC). I genuinely think homestuck allowed me to look for more books i think i would enjoy.
I often see comments that talk about how great the Flashs were, and how exciting it was to finally see a new [S] page after waiting and waiting for the website to update, and often i find myself feeling melancholic and hiraeth-y over such things, but it still didnt stop me from getting out of bed, turning off all my light and watching "Collide" and "The Rapture" on my computer rather than on my phone (which is where i read/watched most of the webcomic), jumping up and down in my seat as I watched the animations scene to scene.
(Also, a huge big fat massive thank you to the Voice Over Nexus channel. They made so much of Homestuck's Flash games and animations bareable and fun to watch).
All in all, homestuck is great. So amazing. So funny. Complete awesomesauce. Trust me, im 16.
Can't wait to find this comment ten years from now and make a video called "I re-read my comment under 'I re-read Homestuck as an adult' as an adult"
This is the only time i've heard a good argument to read Homestuck. I think i will now.
i literally just finished homestuck THIS MORNING. and i couldn’t agree more
The Unofficial Homestuck Collection runs really well and it keeps all the flash native. Highly recommend as a 2013-End Homestuck fan
i read homestuck when i saw the og of harshwhimsy gamzee, the character that looked the coolest to me, in the meteorstuck part. GAMZEE REMAINED MY ABSOLUTE FAVE, I EVEN COSPLAYED AS HIM. and yet in the end, instead of finally gaining his own mental independence and having a character arc conconclusion....he was literally fridged :o(
This video was super interesting! I'm doing a re-read of the comic as well and I related to a lot of stuff you said about surprisingly enjoying Homestuck as an adult. My first experience with the comic was actually watching the Let's Read Homestuck series when I was 12-13. It was my first experience with a large, sprawling, interconnected plot that I had to actively work to figure out how everything fit. It was also the first piece of media I ever consumed that included LGBTQ characters, and as a writer it really did set my own expectations on how to write queer characters. Homestuck influenced my writing in a lot of other ways too but that would get too long to list lol. I'm really glad my friend introduced me to it, because in the long run it was a stepping stone in dramatically expanding my media consumption.
Glad to see you again! Can't wait to watch this!
yeah i think that's what it comes down to. after act 5, i was frustrated that the story constantly bounced from batshit insane multiversal metanarrative madness and zooming in on character drama that NEVER got solved
I discovered Homestuck after Flash died, during one of my Undertale fandom dives. I was using a flip phone to navigate the comic because I was dealing with my addiction to the internet (poorly) and fell in love with this silly, cool, dumb, and brilliant webcomic that way. I wish I had discovered Homestuck earlier and interacted with the Flash animations. As it stands now, I am content watching others experience it with older UA-cam videos
I have never read Homestuck, just saw the occasional AMV in the animation community on youtube back in the day. Why did I watch this video, and why did I enjoy it XD
I got into Homestuck in university, probably around 2011 or so? And followed and got invested in it for ages, though dropped out of the fandom during the hiatus. I remember having a fantastic time with it and instantly taking the official Aspect quiz when it first came out; that's actually a really proud/fond memory for me, because I did it as accurately as I could and actually wound up with the aspect I'd been self-ascribing myself as for years. I still have a pin for it on one of my shirt collars! Because cringe culture is dead and my good memories of the comic way outweigh the bad.
I also got into it in 2011, but I was a high-school freshman. I have fond memories of the aspect quizz too! I made the first drawing of me and my friend as us wearing God tier pajamas. I gave that drawing to her when she moved away. It's such a cute memory
@@ChibiChidorii Aw~ that is cute!
It’s stupid, it’s ships, it’s godtier, and it’s gay. What more can you ask for.
Tbh this video is the tipping point, and I plan to go read Homestuck literally right now.
Plus, the Ruffle emulator solves most of the issues with the reformatting unless the flash parts were fully removed.
dave the realest character of homestuck
I have the EXACT birthday of homestuck. Down to the year. it hAUNTS me
coming from someone who read the comic two years ago, i still love it a lot. i read it because i needed something to do during lockdown. it was, honest to god, one of the best two month periods of my life. i enjoyed the hell out of it, and it gave me something to look forward to doing everyday. i remember crying when i finished it, cause like, there was no more of it left to read.
im not sure what that says about me, but i dont really care. its got a very special, special place in my heart. its gonna be one of my favorite things forever, probably
I need some other perspectives on this, one of the things that irked me the most story wise was the build up that Feferi needed to fight Her Imperious Condescension? From the moment Feferi was introduced it felt like that was going to be a climactic fight(like apart of the final battle type of moments) and then to watch Hussie throw Feferi to the side just made the final battle against HIC feel less intense
I read Homestuck for the first time in college after it had finished. I do think starting it after its conclusion helped since I didn't have to wait for weeks to months for updates, and could just listen to in audio book style here on UA-cam (for the most part). It took me about 2 months to get through, but I'm sure if I really wanted to, I could have taken less.
But as an adult reading the comic with no nostalgic ties to my childhood...Like, this shit kinda slaps? Time travel and fourth wall breaks are old cliches, but HS managed to use the time mechanics it set up in pretty much every interesting way I can think of. Some of the flashes that involve showing off how a time loop is executed linearly are some of the most exciting moments I had during my read-through.
It's a little annoying that we aren't totally past the "Homestuck is cringe" phase on the internet, because there's a lot that I love and love to talk about with friends.
But I should give an obligatory mention that a lot of the early parts of HS are....rough. For a lot of reasons.
glad to know people still love it , it was a big part of my life ill never forget forever
I will never forget how dirty gamzee got done.
Good video :o)
Not gonna lie, I’m here just because of the algorithm: I know nothing about Homestuck beyond being that comic thing tumblr was obsessed with years ago. Heard the fandom was cringy, tumblr was cringy, opened one of the physical books myself, and didn’t like the art style, so it was whatever to me.
That said, I watched the whole video because what I heard here was actually really interesting and I hadn’t heard any of it before. Didn’t know it was essentially a multimedia project, which is pretty sick actually.
Can’t say I’ll ever experience it myself, but it does sound interesting
If you haven't yet...Try iiiiiiit! Trust me, its a trip and a half.
I get skipping the Homestuck dubious canon stuff, but Andrew Hussie's new visual novel Psycholonials is really worth checking out.
As a huge Homestuck fan and Homestuck 2 disliker, I would really suggest not reading Psycholonials unless you have a morbid curiosity. It has a very similar presentation to Homestuck but is not very similar other than the aesthetics and I personally found the actual story contents to be pretty offensive.
@@Kirbyster you literally have a channel about TBOI and do you really think Psycholonials is offensive? Lmfao
@@Kirbyster Who cares if it's offensive? In my opinion Psycholonials is a good story
@@eden6159 I honestly agree with you. TBOI is an EXTREMELY offensive game. I've barely seen anything be able to top it, and this is coming from a player with almost 300hrs.
@@Kirbyster Offensive how?
I got into homestuck whenever hiveswap came out. So, just slightly before the end. I pretty much binge watched the entire thing with the Let's Read Homestuck Collection. I still trying to piece together my thoughts on the work and its impact on my life. I can say with confidence I enjoyed everything up to act 6 6 and I would 100% read the story again.
man, this made me wanna reread homestuck for the first time in years. good to know it holds up!
This is a good reminder that just because you enjoyed something in your youth doesn't mean its cringe or inherit bad. Hating your past so much you refuse to see the good is a flawed vision.
ableism in the first parts aside, it's really really good
This was recommended to me because I recently got back into Homestuck. I watched the voice over for it up to the most recent video and switched over to the comic. (I enjoy the voices they give, it allows me to draw while they go through the dialogue and look up for the visuals when they get to that. It also helps with the game sections that no longer work imo) I didn’t expect it to still be as great as I remember it. There are moments that still get me emotionally. Some of the humor and words are kiiiiinda outdated but for the most part, I enjoy it. The characters still have such fun dialogue and I really do enjoy it. Except now I’m in the position of not having many people to talk to about it since I’m one of two people I know who’s rereading.
Dang it's been six years since the ending already? I was 14 then. I love Homestuck but everytime it's brought up my brain makes me remember this one embarrassing moment I had before the epilogue came out. I tried to find the not yet existing epilogue by googling it and didn't realize that the epilogue I did find was for a different Hussie comic. I was confused why this epilogue didn't show the main characters, but didn't question it. My dumb@$$ then told people I had seen the Homestuck epilogue WHILE I was at a Homestuck panel at ONE OF THE LARGEST CONVENTIONS IN MY STATE! The panelists then pull it up on the projector and it doesn't take long for someone to recognize the comic and my mistake is made obvious to everyone in the room and I felt extra bad since I had gotten their hopes up. I have been haunted by this memory for SIX years and I will probably continue to be haunted until I get severe memory loss in old age.