Homestuck is over... what did all of you think?

isaacfriedman 2016-04-14 13:52:27 UTC #1

As the most well known web comic of all time, Homestuck has no doubt come up in a lot of conversations for a lot of people on this site, and I was wondering, now that it's over and done with, what did you think? Even if you didn't read it or didn't like it, what do you think the impact will be of a project and story of this magnitude finally coming to a close?

Strontium 2016-04-14 14:22:27 UTC #2

I've been reading Homestuck since it started. Really. Since 4/13/2009. So needless to say it's a huge part of my life. Even when people abandoned the comic during the long hiatuses I stuck by. I'm either tenacious or really myopic, haha.

The ending didn't have a satisfying ending plot-wise but a satisfying one character-wise. I personally believe that the story itself is a kind of juju; self-perpetuating, never ending. But the comic is over, and I glad that it is rather than it not being over. I think it was time, and I'm sure there will be more stuff from MSPA to keep us entertained in the future.

I can't go into all the ways HS had an influence on my personally, but my comic is very much inspired by the "everything comes back in a meaningful way" trope that Homestuck perfected. But I'll close all the threads, don't worry.

UzukiCheverie 2016-04-14 15:20:15 UTC #3

/sigh I never actually read Homestuck - I read the first few pages of it but then I never continued - but maybe I'll take this opportunity to read it for good. Yes, I know it's long, I love long series, but Homestuck itself is just . . . I dunno. Doesn't really appeal to me. I'll definitely give it another chance for the sake of it though.

It's just . . . the fanbase. Argh. They're the only things really keeping me from wanting to read the series - every interaction I've had with any Homestuck fan has been negative, and I understand that not ALL of them are bad, but the communities I've witnessed and passed by have been toxic beyond belief and it frightens me lol

BUT I WILL PREVAIL. I have a day off work today so I'll try and give it another go :3

AnnaLandin 2016-04-14 15:39:39 UTC #4

I gave Homestuck a go a couple of years ago, starting at the beginning and trying to find out what the heck this whole thing even was - and I, uh... didn't really enjoy it? It was/is different, sure, and I can see why it appeals to people, but it just wasn't my thing.

My only real experience with HS stems from interaction with the fandom - through cons and Tumblr and whatnot - and let's be real; HS fandom is insane. IMHO, it has had a bigger impact on fandom culture than it's had on webcomics as a whole, because of all the stuff the HS fandom got up to.

Very little of it is as unique as Homestuck-fans like to believe - I saw a post on Tumblr earlier that claimed that the use of blank/white eyes on a character to mark that they were dead originated with Homestuck, and that Homestuck single-handedly brought the second person POV into popular use in fanfic when that is very much NOT the truth - but the HS-fandom was bigger, louder and crazier that pretty much any other fandom, so it was inescapable, and it has had consequences.

Cons have certainly changed in the aftermath of Homestuck; there are stricter rules about bodypaint (because guess what; not sealing your bodypaint leaves grey stains on all the things), stricter rules about unofficial photoshoots because Homestucks had those and 700 people showed up, etc. etc.

There have been shipping wars in every fandom there ever was - I remember ducking under a virtual table for a while when the Harry Potter-fandom went to war back in the early 2000s over Harry/Hermione vs Hermione/Ron - but the HS-fandom's shipping wars were far uglier than most other fandoms could manage. There was a tangible sense of cameraderie and super-social subculture surrounding Homestuck, but it can't be denied that the insanity of a lot of the fandom has at least partly contributed to the atmosphere in fandom-culture in general, which has gotten in some ways more unforgiving and vicious.

TL; DR: Homestuck fandom was - and probably still is - a barrel of crazy, and beneath the large amount of good stuff, there was/is a LOT of bad stuff, visible even to those of us sitting on the sidelines.

joannekwan 2016-04-14 16:08:27 UTC #5

looks up how long Homestuck is

HOLY &%$#@$&^%%&!

I knew it was long, but I didn't think it was that long. The most I ever read of it was a fancomic (I think it was one) starring John and Karkat that my friend said was cute. I can respect that it's garnered such a cult following, but I don't think I could ever get into it myself, knowing what I know from tumblr.

gone 2016-04-14 18:36:44 UTC #6

I LOVED IT. lol im a hug fan im gonan catch up and wait for the game to come out and play the hell out of it XD im missing it already but i have an army of tumblr to keep the dream alive. Id love to talk about it with you. Its still my favorite webcomic ever. Sorry tapas. But most of y'all write shit.

Mane 2016-04-14 18:49:04 UTC #7

Gotta be honest, I found out about the fans before I found about the webcomic. Or better said. comments regarding the fans. I've always been interested in it considering the popularity it reached but also kinda wary of it. Might give it a go sometime later.

isaacfriedman 2016-04-14 19:10:57 UTC #8

Somebody did the math. There are more pages in Homestuck than in Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and Lord of the Rings combined.

isaacfriedman 2016-04-14 19:12:13 UTC #9

It's LONG though. It might not be best idea to just... pick it up. You'd probably be better off to just start reading Andrew Hussie's next project when it gets started.

Chopythes 2016-04-14 19:18:35 UTC #10

I was kind of... Full?
Like, it was like recieving two awesome desserts at the end, glorious art and even better animated videos.
I'm kind of sad, I've followed HS since 2010. Gave up. Began reading it again in 2011 when a friend of mine got hooked up and I thought I'd read it so we could discuss it together.

But the fandom... Oh my god it's insane.
It broke me completely when I had some theories and got them shot down pretty quickly which then actually happened.

So yeah... Homestuck.

I still love everything about it, the art, the music, the fan made stuff.
But also: The fandom was pretty helpful, they were the ones who helped other cosplayer seal each others make up, helped with understanding the webcomic because, wow, you really didn't get it at first.
HS has influence so many, even creaters into creating webcomics, evolving within animation and what not!

I'd like to say that HS helped webcomics becoming what they are today, because lets face it: There's so many out there who has read the comic, if they haven't they at least knows what it looks like.

And oh god, I remember the Hetalia/homestuck wars, those were crazy!
I think every fandom has their... Bags of trash, but it kind of went more obvious with the HS fans? I guess it's because it was bigger and some people actually made an effort into making the HS fandom have a bad rumour; there was one person who trashed a hotel (not all of it but pretty much wherever this dude went) and I remember everyone being so mad at this because they tried to keep it at bay.

... I'm still wating on that game to be released ;D

BACK ON TOPIC:
I think the ending was pretty... Meh? I guess, I'm happy with it tho, don't get me wrong, but after such a long hiatius Collide made such an impact on me that the ending didn't quite lived up to it. It was AWESOME tho, especially when the animator began as a fan, making "A lullaby for the Gods" with Detektivbyrån's music into a musicvideo and then making the END OF HOMESTUCK??

AH-MAH-ZING. I love Hussie for this.

I think it's going to be over now, HS had it's glory days but now I don't think it'll be much more of an impact no more.
Maybe when the game comes out, or the epilogue (when this happens, I don't know) but you'll never know.

tomatobird 2016-04-14 19:19:47 UTC #11

I enjoyed it! I'm a pretty new fan so I don't really have the same experiences as a lot of the other fans (missed the big mess that was 2012) but I've loved the story, the characters, and especially the grandness of the mythos. I agree with @Strontium, even if the plot strings aren't quite all tied up (and who knows, we might get more in the upcoming Epilogue) it did feel like the Mythos part of it was concluded very well, and very beautifully. It definitely inspired me to branch out more with my art and introduced me to a lot of extremely talented artists and other creatives in the fandom and out....I tend to think of the fandom as a kind of religion, since overall the source material is pretty darn cool and enjoyable but the fanatics that twist it and use it to kind of bully other fans and be toxic to each other just kind of ruin it (and one of the reasons WHY it took me so long to get into it was exactly because I'd seen how out of hand things could get.

Overall I'm satisfied, I would love to see plot stuff wrapped up but for now I just need a break and so does Hussie I'm sure. It's a feat in of itself to complete any webcomic, let alone a project as grand as Homestuck.

shazzbaa 2016-04-14 19:38:00 UTC #12

I think Homestuck is something like the 4th longest English work, if you count up all the words? It's pretty intense.

I loved Homestuck while I was in it. It's definitely one of those "keep reading, it gets so much better if you can get through this part" stories, but I don't think that's the only thing. When people asked me why it had such a huge following, my answer was always that Homestuck was one of the first stories about the internet. The main characters were internet friends who had never met in real life, and all of their conversations are over instant messaging, and they are still incredibly close friends. Andrew Hussie was incredibly good at creating believable memes within his world, mimicking the way trends degrade and become reused in new and bizarre ways online. It was a story about our culture in a way that's hard to find, and was especially rare while Homestuck was getting big.

Andrew Hussie's weakness is pacing, but his strength is characters. While Homestuck is long, meandering, and weird, it has some incredibly powerful character moments, too.

The reason Homestuck's fandom is important is because it was BIG. It's an enormous following for a webcomic that's primarily by one guy. Every fandom has its most horrible interactions at the edge, and the worst parts are usually the most visible to those outside (see: My Little Pony, Welcome to Nightvale, Steven Universe, etc etc), but many of us who were in it mostly remember the amazing moments we had and the friends we made. I have some friends talking about how cool it would be to have a meetup to reminisce, like a kind of homestuck reunion -- and I mean, we had a prom, so why not a highschool reunion?

As for the ending, I'm very behind on the story. I fell out of it about a year or two ago because it's just hard for me to keep up with longer works, but I feel like.... I have so much respect for Homestuck ending. There's no way a single animation can top 7 years of a comic that updated multiple times a day for most of its run, but the fact that it did its best to go out with the biggest bang it could is awesome. I think, knowing the homestuck fandom, this sort of ambiguous animation is the best way it could've possibly gone out -- people will be finding new significance in each piece for the next month.

elixiadragmire 2016-04-14 19:47:49 UTC #13

I heard a lot of 'after the first 1000 'pages' its gets better and I was NOPE! I just don't have the time! I .... didnt get it. One friend tried to explain it, I felt my brain oozing out my ears (TBF he cant explain anything) I even tried wiking it ... IDK maybe I'm .. I dunno

Mane 2016-04-14 20:19:41 UTC #14

Well, I'm wasn't expecting to finish it in one day (just went to look and yep. LONG)but if it ends up being good, then all the better , more to enjoy. Though I honestly don't think I'll have the time in the near future

AnnaLandin 2016-04-14 20:26:04 UTC #15

Yeah, I got through the first 100 or 150 pages on a boring afternoon, and decided that if I didn\t get it by page 150, I probably never would.

Marton 2016-04-14 20:37:08 UTC #16

I fell out of Homestuck at act 5 or 6, not sure. I never was a huge fan. I did like the animations and "video game" parts , it made me realize how much greater a webcomic can be than just drawings. And the soundtrack is superb, I still listen to some of it.

I saw the ending, didn't understand a thing but was nicely animated.

UzukiCheverie 2016-04-14 23:56:21 UTC #17

You pretty much summed up everything I feel about Homestuck. The style/story isn't my jam, and the fandom is too self-absorbed and terrifying for me to want to be a part of it :/ Yes, they've had some positive impacts (like contributing largely to conventions), but the negative outweighs the positives as far as I'm concerned.

haha it makes me afraid to work on Project Reaper, Time Gate: Reaper is estimated to be 150~ some chapters, and it's the prequel story, being one of the shorter installments (with the longest being 300+ chapters; and there are 10 books in total)

long series are great to come up with and great for those that love them but terrifying to those looking from the outside

I did the same, and that's typically my rule of thumb when reading novels/comics/etc. - give it a chance, read at least 100-200 pages, and if it's still no good, then nothing is probably gonna draw me in.

DeadAccount 2016-04-15 00:39:03 UTC #18

Lots of my friends were into Homestuck, and I reaaally tried to get into it. I've been told to get to act 5 when the trolls show up, so I did. I was 4000 pages in, and the logs were getting progressively longer and more incomprehensible, but i thought I'm close to catching up - then i looked up and realised I'm barely halfway through. And that's when I just gave up. I'm genuinely amazed something this confusing and convoluted gained such a massive fandom. I am happy it achieved so much, though - just the fact that you can have a super niche webcomic that becomes HUGE and can afford to go wrap up with a proper animation kind of gives me hope

...I do hope they're sort out the game now that the series is over. I threw some money at the Homestuck game kickstarter when I thought i could get through it...and it doesn't seem like it's going anywhere at all, last time i checked.

UzukiCheverie 2016-04-15 00:49:33 UTC #19

That still hasn't happened??? I remember it being hyped a while ago but it's been a long time since then o_o That's a real shame.

efdvorsky 2016-04-15 02:37:42 UTC #20

I only got into Homestuck around...2011 or so? Can't remember, it was around Act V and it was because my best friends became obsessed with it all at the same time and I was so confused. I read it aaaand...

it was okay.

I mean I liked some ideas VERY MUCH like the space themes (especially the use of hypotrochoids and epitrochoids as gates) , Midnight Crew intermission, the whole shipping chart being more than just romantic, but aside from some key aspects that really rocked my socks, I never really got into it and I actually quit after getting to Act 6 or a bit afterwards. The constant use of references and how they handle timelines a la DC/Marvel universe wasn't my cup of tea, but I recognize how much it means to people so I usually sit and listen to people talk about it and interact about as far as I can, but never enough. (I got more into Problem Sleuth actually)

Actually, because of said friends, I ended up getting roped into tthe local homestuck fandom a few years back and I have no idea how it happened but I met a couple of fun people through there so...good win? And one of them even bought the Midnight Crew pack of the game JUST to give me the bag, cards, and stickers for Christmas like WOW good friend great friend! In her words: "I know it's the only reason you read it, so thank you for listening to my babbles all the time".

Speaking of the game, they released some screenshots a few months ago, it actually looks pretty decent.

But I've been so dettached from it and gave up on it, that the ending looked like it would be satisfying for long-term fans but I barely understood what was going on hahaha.....ha.