any one hear of "homestuck"?

[SquareWheel]

Excellent, good luck!

[Nijuu]

how well would you say homestuck's holding up overall reading it all at once? the experience seems pretty different from reading it as it updated, for better or worse

[🐰 goodies 🐰]

If you really want to be like the kids you could add a bunch of gifs and say "literally" for every second word.

[haipa]

liddrully

[SquareWheel]

Oh god the semantic satiation.

[aimaina]

how well would you say homestuck's holding up overall reading it all at once? the experience seems pretty different from reading it as it updated, for better or worse

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

it is pretty enjoyable sometimes but i dont feel that enthused about it i guess? like its ok but im not "a homestuck" now and i probably wouldnt recommend it to other people. but i think thats just because the style of storytelling doesnt fully click with me, rather than because im reading it in large chunks

it feels kind of tiring to read, i guess maybe because of how complicated it is and how it jumps back and forth between different plot threads and timelines constantly and how slowly the plot(s?) seem(s?) to advance. i think the parts that drag the most are when new characters are being introduced & the old characters get basically abandoned for a while

there are certain parts of the comic where a lot of cool stuff happens pretty quickly & i think those would be really fun to read as they updated (if the update schedule was reasonable) 4 example in act 5 act 2 when a few of the trolls go bonkers and start doing a lot of murders, that was good. but im pretty sure if i tried to read it back in the day i wouldve lost interest during one of the parts thats just slow worldbuilding/character dev as setup for later cool stuff

one thing thats bad about reading it now is there are a lot of parts that seem to be deliberately confusing or vague to fuel speculation, like for ex4ample, i mentioned earlier i dont really get whats happening in the big epic flash animations a lot of the time. it would be fun if i could read fan theories about those but thats impossible now, ill just get spoilers

also the parts where u play a little flash game were probably a lot more fun for update-readers since the whole fanbase would have time to play it and look for cool secrets and stuff. for me they were kinda annoying because i wanted to move on with the story but i didnt want to miss anything important so i felt like i had to spend a lot of time exploring them thoroughly. it seems like the last few ive encountered had definite endings though, whereas some of the early ones didnt (i think?) so i wasnt sure when to stop playing them & that made things worse

ive still got 3000+ pages to read but overall....... i think kid radd is better

[aimaina]

how well would you say homestuck's holding up overall reading it all at once? the experience seems pretty different from reading it as it updated, for better or worse

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

it is pretty enjoyable sometimes but i dont feel that enthused about it i guess? like its ok but im not "a homestuck" now and i probably wouldnt recommend it to other people. but i think thats just because the style of storytelling doesnt fully click with me, rather than because im reading it in large chunks

it feels kind of tiring to read, i guess maybe because of how complicated it is and how it jumps back and forth between different plot threads and timelines constantly and how slowly the plot(s?) seem(s?) to advance. i think the parts that drag the most are when new characters are being introduced & the old characters get basically abandoned for a while

there are certain parts of the comic where a lot of cool stuff happens pretty quickly & i think those would be really fun to read as they updated (if the update schedule was reasonable) 4 example in act 5 act 2 when a few of the trolls go bonkers and start doing a lot of murders, that was good. but im pretty sure if i tried to read it back in the day i wouldve lost interest during one of the parts thats just slow worldbuilding/character dev as setup for later cool stuff

one thing thats bad about reading it now is there are a lot of parts that seem to be deliberately confusing or vague to fuel speculation, like for ex4ample, i mentioned earlier i dont really get whats happening in the big epic flash animations a lot of the time. it would be fun if i could read fan theories about those but thats impossible now, ill just get spoilers

also the parts where u play a little flash game were probably a lot more fun for update-readers since the whole fanbase would have time to play it and look for cool secrets and stuff. for me they were kinda annoying because i wanted to move on with the story but i didnt want to miss anything important so i felt like i had to spend a lot of time exploring them thoroughly. it seems like the last few ive encountered had definite endings though, whereas some of the early ones didnt (i think?) so i wasnt sure when to stop playing them & that made things worse

ive still got 3000+ pages to read but overall....... i think kid radd is better

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

to add to this, i think the way character development is done is kinda both the best and worst part of this comic.... like im on act 6 act 5 now and im starting to really like the new kids & im actually getting into the whole romance drama thing going on between them, even though when they were introduced i was like "ugh time for 500 pages of conversations between ppl i dont care about" but also i dont know if i would like them as much if there wasnt so much time and effort spent on building up their personalities......

like when its focusing on characters i dont care about its a huge slog to read (obviously....) but it seems i usually start to care about em eventually & then it gets pretty good. i guess participating in a super enthusiastic fandom helps u get more into the characters so thats probably another big disadvantage to reading it after its over

[aimaina]

i finished it i thought everything from act 6 act 5 onwards was pretty solid & i feel better about the comic overall than when i was reading the earlier parts of act 6......

ending thoughts

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

i felt like it didnt really tie everything up that well but the animation was really pretty and it was cute. it was very nice 2 see everyone who survived being happy in the new universe!!!

those were my immediate feelings after watching it but now im reading fan reactions & i guess its tru that the ending kinda sucks. but i think i dont mind because i usually didnt get that invested in the mysteries of the story. i was too busy reading to think about them that much so i would usually just go "oh i guess this is either unimportant or will make sense later" and forget about em. so i cant even think of many things that i care about the answers to which werent addressed by the ending (the main one is "what exactly happened to lord english" but w/e im just going to assume he was perma killed by house magic)

oh i guess another thing i didnt think of until reading fanthoughts is its sad that it seems like they didnt manage to stop the whole life cycle of sburb sessions and universe creations and stuff (i dont know how to describe it??). they just won their session and went to a new universe but its not rly clear that theres anything special about the new universe that would prevent ppl from playing the meteor death video game and ruining everything :((

i really liked the characters a lot in the end even though their introductions were the most tedious parts of the comic for me. near the end before all the actiony shit goes down theres a fairly long section thats just nothing but all the characters having personal conversations with each other & i loved it..... i have mixed feelings about the home stuck experience over all but i am glad i met all these new fictional friends!! (i wish nepeta had a bigger role tho.....)

[hubol]

cute...... looks like i should read it again..... i think i maybe got up to the point where caliborn is talking directly to the reader or something like that..... but there was so much stuff that preceded that that i think i would have to just read the whole thing

[aimaina]

good luck if u decide to reread all of it its very long....... the ending is very controversial so u may be disappointed by it

[aimaina]

ive been reading more fan reactions and reminisces and wow this comic really had a huge impact on a lot of ppls lives.... it feels weird that i just powered thru it in a week and thought it was basically ok

[Nijuu]

i think a lot of the impact for people was a combination of the suspense between updates, and finding it while a developing kid with similar online friendships, which made it easy to get invested in

i liked the personal conversations too, hussie excels in that area of writing. personally i wasn't so invested in the story by the end but still just really enjoyed reading the characters chat. and yeah nepeta was really cute. leo got the best two trolls overall i think. (karkat is my actual favorite troll, but kankri is whatever.)

what's your favorite homestuck song? mine is mayor maynot
https://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/mayor-maynot

[aimaina]

i liked karkat a lot, hes my favourite of the boy trolls and maybe my fave boy character? idk i liked john and dave a lot too (and the mayor) most of my fave characters were girls though

i thought the ancestor trolls were mostly boring or annoying (intentionally it seems) and i was glad they didnt become a major part of the story..... nepetas ancestor had really cute faces tho

hmm did mayor maynot actually play somewhere in the story? i dont remember it...... i never really looked @ the bandcamp page because i clicked on it once when it came up in the text & closed it as soon as i saw "act 7"

probably the song that sticks out in my mind the most is sburban jungle..... i remember being a bit underwhelmed by the music at first since i had really high expectations for it, but that song just felt perfect to me. i like a lot of the other early music now but it took time to grow on me

[aimaina]

this was the best part of the whole ancestor troll thing http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/track/gamegrl-original-1993-mix

[Nijuu]

yeah john/dave/karkat are the big 3 really good boy characters, i can't really decide between them. which were your fav girls?

i don't think mayor maynot ever played in the actual comic. most of the songs on bandcamp didn't - the quality there is pretty inconsistent imo but there are some great songs here and there (vol 6 is probably the best album). going by comic-included songs my favorite is probably Showtime, or Hate You (plays during one of the meenah walkabouts). most of the early songs were really good. sburban jungle was cool because it was like a tone-setting song, i liked the short remix from when john enters the medium for the same reason

the ancestor trolls were mostly boring or annoying yeah. i liked meenah though. i actually enjoyed the troll meteor and ancestor walkabouts quite a bit because i like hussie's dialogue and i'm a sucker for games where you can just see the characters casually talk to each other between story, especially when they have those talksprite things (is there even a proper term for these? Phoenix Wright Animations basically). i'm gonna go replay those flashes right now in fact. they are totally more time-consuming than necessary though.