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I actually just finished the sequels and epilogues (and a lot of the thread) for the first time after coming to the original series in the hilarious year of 2021. I’m disappointed to have waited so long to catch up because of the bad reputation—I honestly liked all of it, with the exception of some HS^2 choices that, frankly, I would’ve just kept reading past if more had existed. It’s wild that in all this reading, I’ve rarely seen anyone talk about the experience of Homestuck as a complete object, because it works very well as one. It’s also a bizarrely complete record of coming of age in the Obama administration/the death of the open internet, like a comic time capsule. And, honestly, a lot of those themes and ideas are harder to crack open when most Homestuck analyses get so focused on the 2009-2016 reader experience. Probably because I’m one of the only people still reading the thing. Arsenic Lupin posted:Hussie has point-blank said he will not be involved in further Homestuck, which is a curse and a blessing. Didn’t they say that like, immediately before or while participating in WP’s act of PR self-immolation in front of a snarky youtuber? As far as I can tell, we can read that as another piece of PR idiocy/wishful thinking. Even if it was true, Hussie hired all of those people, many of whom sound like personal friends or longtime fan/colleagues, and I bet still has tons of sway, informal or not. I don’t think you can get rid of that curse.
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Jul 24, 2023 16:40
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GunnerJ posted:Geez, I just thought to myself, "Would new readers even get puns like 'Trollian'?" I mean, to me, that’s the really interesting thing; on Discord, I’ve run into younger people who are into the comic now when they were probably still chugging through baby books when HS ended in 2016. Being stuck at home became a much more universalized experience than it was in 2009, though, so while the references sail over their heads, it’s really obvious they still have a strong connection to the core story. Being a lonely kid online hasn’t changed much, I guess. This doesn’t apply to me though, I’m pretty sure I still have Trillian logs in my saved documents. Arsenic Lupin posted:It's just that most of the active posters caught Homestuck in-flight. Sure, most posters here, but I mean everywhere I’ve looked for Homestuck discussion with actual adults who haven’t dismissed it as internet nonsense, which is rare! I feel like Homestuck Made This World was a frustrating listen, but it was the first attempt I saw to take it seriously as a thing we’re going to be talking about for as long as we keep talking about media and literature. Also I basically prefer the arms and oil being present from the beginning, now. Much like Terezi’s passwords, I thought that element of foreshadowing helped make the retcon feel less like a “welp I hosed up my story and I have to reset it” and more like an inevitable function of the big paradox loop that is Homestuck. It’s nice the archive tries to recreate the cool trick, though.
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Jul 24, 2023 20:58
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I honestly just found it to be a very frustrating video. Some pretty hosed up things clearly happened, and Sarah Z was too busy trying to own these small business losers for the horrifying crime of “sent a youtuber a vague legal threat” to actually get more of the story. Instead, she gives Hussie a clown voiceover and ignores 90% of the emails’ contents, since they don’t have anything to do with the important “people I was rude about online weren’t nice to me” story.
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Jul 29, 2023 21:55
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Ytlaya posted:(This is solely about "mainline" Homestuck; I haven't read most of the side stuff, like the games or anything beyond the beginning of ^2) It’s pretty interesting stuff, imo, as is Psycholonials, but it’s very easy to see why none of it is popular, as it’s entirely moody post-Obama leftist angst/bitter self-criticism. HS^2 seemed like it had stuff to say (and at some point had to actually redeem the characters who had heel turns), so I think it’s annoying it got shut down as it was really taking off, but so it goes. cptn_dr posted:Everything Hussie has ever said about the creative process makes me realise that he doesn't actually understand how art works, but he's still accidentally just kind of a genius. I think it’s probably more that they’re bad at communicating the process—have you read those blogposts or emails? It also doesn’t help that a ton of what they say about writing Homestuck is wrapped up in layers of irony even when they’re not doing orange-faced Andrew Hussie The Character bits. On the other hand, they’re all just neat writing tricks. Hussie’s right that 95% of characterization is voice/diction, that readers love filling in the gaps of a half-shown pattern, that serialization is always a process of retconing the story into place, that if you keep repeating the joke it gets funny again, etc. Lot to learn from Homestuck, honestly!
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Aug 29, 2023 01:31
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Psycholonials came out in 2021, and if you don’t get suckered into reading the whole thing as an extended autobiography about writing Homestuck (it’s an autobiography about voting for Bernie Sanders lol), I think it makes Hussie’s deal clear—though it was just as clear with Dirk, Caliborn, Vriska, etc., as it is with Psycholonial’s Z. Which is all to say that Hussie understands The Power Of Committing To The Bit, of taking the ironypilled cartoon character that used to be yourself and careening about in a reality show you build around your life. And I think their conclusion is basically correct: you can’t really build anything sincerely good on a foundation of bullshit. (It’s funny, because the Detective Pony fanfic actually goes into some depth on this, particularly all the Greek-language bits I can’t remember clearly enough to namedrop. Good read!) Now, the fact that Hussie still can’t communicate any of that straightforwardly is the part that even they agree is tragically funny. Part of why I’d like to read the end of HS^2 is to know how they would redeem Dirk—none of Hussie’s other author-avatar figures have ever been given that opportunity, as Zhen’s retreat in Psycholonial’s ending feels like blackpilled self-critique to me. I wouldn’t be surprised for Hussie to pop back up sometime in the next year, in any case. Pretty clear they’re done with public-facing social media, but I don’t think they’re the type of person to stop working or shut up. But who can say!
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Aug 29, 2023 03:18
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I don't think (and I am usually wrong about predicting Homestuck) Dirk is intended to be redeemed. I think he's not going to get the big destroyed-by-the-mighty-sword-of-Dave ending he dreams of. Maybe not redeemed, but saved from the megalomaniacal transdimensional suicidal villain thing he’s got going on, certainly. Like you said, given that he’s the self-appointed bad guy and wants to be beheaded for it, pretty easy to bet his goal will be denied. And if he’s not dead, I don’t think he’ll just get stuffed in the fridge like Gamzee, so you basically have to at least show him getting started on some manner of redemption. (Plus, HS^2 already previewed this with the somewhat amusing Jane-and-Jasprose interlude bits, which might have previously been backer-only.) Plus, just from a Doylist perspective, nobody involved in the epilogues or sequel projects really strike me as the sort of people who’d cheerfully join Hussie in burying Homestuck and its cast. I’ve read their fanfics and talked to a few of them, and like, there’s no world where Hussie convinced all these sincere Homestuck fans to turn half the cast into monsters without some indication that it would head towards a new ending that was at least as happy as the old one. Sadly, the entire thing disappeared up its own rear end. So it goes. But I don’t think “HS^2 would’ve had a happy ending for the main protagonists of Homestuck” is a wild theory. E: I wrote a whole post “yes, and”-ing Scrree using 500 words, but I’ve already said enough in this old dead thread probably rko fucked around with this message at 06:06 on Sep 1, 2023 |
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Aug 31, 2023 06:35
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Psycholonials spends a healthy chunk of time doing gender jokes that vibe with Hussie’s presentation, including a chart: To me, it seemed kind of obvious that Homestuck read like something written while the author was doing a Personal Identity Journey of some fashion, though it feels wrapped up in how that was happening to lots of people in the 2009-2016 window. Certainly, I feel like Davepeta’s exuberance read to present-day me the same way some people talk about gender/identity euphoria, and a bunch of people forget that Davepeta’s speech about all that is nearly the last substantial pesterlog. The epilogues go way further, of course—a line that sticks with me is Dirk shittily narrating that Jade probably wishes “they/them” pronouns existed when she was a teenager, and then there’s all the complexity of Roxy’s identity, etc. It’s a testament to Hussie’s commitment to the bit that anybody would think their genderfuckery is all irony.
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Sep 3, 2023 23:28
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Aw, I’m finally getting to enjoy the classic experience of not being able to read an update because of the site crashing. Neat.
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Oct 8, 2023 18:25
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They’ve got a really difficult job here, which is winning back all the people who dismissed or never really engaged with the epilogue/sequel content, so it’s surprising that it’s being presented as just starting back up, though with a definite shift in tone. They could’ve rebooted back to the beginning of the epilogues, for example, so even if the new panels seem snarky, I’m charmed by the commitment to the existing post-canon content. There were a lot of cool ideas there, and all the flaws are easy to fix, really. The Terezi panels were all quite good. Sollux was fine, I’m used to More Advanced Solluxes in fandom, but it’s notable that they’re following up the John Is An Egg vibes from the previous update, even if Sollux is being a gamer about it. June Is Real 2024, folks. I think it’s cool they’re going for it. Good luck!
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Oct 8, 2023 21:15
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I read TLCstuck during a really long fanfic binge, and it solidified my opinion that most explicit “fix fics” for OG Homestuck’s last act just end up reaching the same conclusions as the original without as much elegance or humor. If you were into it, on the other hand, the “Crow Strider AU” on MSPFA is another attempt I know lots of people liked, though with rough ESL diction. It is interesting how many of these kinds of stories are focused on Davesprite and/or Hal; I thought their trans-adjacent canon stories were pretty neat, myself, but while I almost never see sincere attempts at more satisfying endings with Jake and Jane, there’s a new one about the Other Striders showing up all the time. The one I usually recommend is “the run and go” by deserts, if you are still in your Strider feelings. There are honestly a ton of great Homestuck fics out there, though they’re hard to find under the massive pile of stories about Karkat Vantas getting laid. I’ll have to dig up a list at some point.
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Oct 26, 2023 19:39
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Ytlaya posted:edit: It could maybe be described as a sort of indulgence...like the audience is constantly being fed appealing interactions in a way that doesn't feel entirely "organic." It’s a very weird decision to focus on delivering these interactions instead of moving the story forward. I would’ve forgiven the iffy zoomer-ish dialogue if it came with ambitions to tell a cool story again instead of getting bogged down in the same half-dozen plot threads the original writing crew got tangled up in. Why have all these Homestuck fans forgotten all the tools Hussie left behind? Skip around in time, shift to a new perspective, invent a whole new thing. They could’ve just done a hard cut to the first “intermission” or whatever—it was a fine place in the story to cut away to a new point in the timeline and then go back, for example. Instead, you’re right that it just feels like indulging. Sollux is back! Aradia and Davebot talk about time! John and Vriska are reunited! Etc. I have my complaints about HS^2, but at least it felt like its authors had an ambitious story in mind with interesting things to say. The HSBC era hasn’t given me that vibe at all yet, though I’ll probably keep reading to see if it ever develops an ideology beyond “we want these characters to keep existing.”
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Jan 31, 2024 07:13
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Android Blues posted:They are trying their damnedest to make a silk purse from this sow's ear, but it still looks awfully hoggy. Introducing us to Yiffy(‘s perspective, she’s still not allowed to say things out loud) only to cut back to an uncomfortable argument where characters we used to like have to try and justify a bizarre fanfic plotline is a decision that baffles me. Why would you tell the story by literally giving us round two of the worst scene from the first attempt to tell this story? And then it ends with Kanaya and Rose agreeing they’re not even done arguing, after Jade gives the saddest possible reason to have a baby as the motivation for all this. I get that they probably felt like they had to Address The Controversy or whatever, but that is definitely not how I would’ve gone for sewing up that purse, dang. Also is Jade carrying around Dave’s corpse he left behind after becoming Davebot? It’s not clear to me who else that’d be in the card we see.
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Feb 11, 2024 10:48
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New update, with more quite good art/visual gags and some interesting exposition. Also, as an aside, Psycholonials is now free on all platforms. I can’t imagine anyone reading this thread hasn’t already checked it out, but I found it to be a bizarre and absorbing VN. Good music! My hot take is that I think it’s less about Homestuck than people make it out to be. Fender Anarchist posted:Like, at some point the issue isn't "bad writing" or "author hostility", it's just you not liking where the story went. That's not the creative team's fault. I feel like some of the mistakes the new team have made are classic “bad writing” pitfalls—not moving the story forward quickly enough after the already slow first act, spending too much time on exposition and piece maneuvering, etc. They seem to be doing a bit of a mid-season reset, though, so it’s all pretty understandable. My main substantive critique is that Homestuck, up through the HS2 hiatus, was always creatively ambitious to a fault. Pivoting to prose for the Epilogues and then the HS2 format (including a bunch of cool bonus page concepts) felt like big swings to me, all built on Homestuck’s original record of restlessly changing up the storytelling for every new section of the story. So far, I haven’t seen that level of ambition from the new squad. I find it hard to believe they don’t have something interesting planned, though, and I also find what they’ve done charming enough to be happy to wait and see where they’re going with it all.
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Mar 16, 2024 02:05
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