9 ms·

Homestuck in review

73 points by networked 10y ago

cousin_it 10y ago
As a longtime Homestuck fan, I approve of this review. > So, do I recommend Homestuck? Should you drop everything and start reading it? > You can’t. Homestuck is over, and I mean over, not just that it isn’t updating. “Homestuck,” the masterpiece, was the event, the community, the shifting pace of updates, the constant chatter between fandom and author. Homestuck is done. If you missed it, you missed it. It may still be worth reading the comic, but it won’t be Homestuck. Yeah. You'll never watch Cascade on release day along with a million other people. I did, and it was insane. (Though that problem is not unique to Homestuck. If you want to become a Beatles fan today, you're just as out of luck.) IMO the best Homestuck-inspired works are Undertale (game), The Northern Caves (prose, finished) and Prequel (webcomic, ongoing). Check them out, you won't regret it.
- rincebrain 10y ago
  It's such a fascinating thing, how many people were part of that wave and yet collectively don't acknowledge it publicly any more. It's one of the first times I've seen people en masse avoid mentioning a shared thing from the past, not unlike the stereotypical "playing with dolls" of being very young. (Mandatory reference to people huddling around metaphorical campfires as various livestreaming services had people who had managed to load that 80MB monstrosity before it went down sharing it, and people sometimes streaming those streams as the per-stream viewer caps got hit, and various free filesharing sites went down as AH uploaded it there...)
  - cousin_it 10y ago
    I guess many fans of Homestuck today feel that it went downhill at some point. That's not unique, it happens with fandoms all the time. Have you seen the latest update BTW? It goes a long way to rescuing the ending, I didn't know that was possible.
    - rincebrain 10y ago
      Not even recommending it, just acknowledging that you were ever acquainted with it. A good number of the people I met in that community who still keep in contact with one another avoid the question when asked how they met, by someone who isn't from that set. I suspect, indeed, that the reputation backlash as it hit critical mass is why people don't want to be associated with it any more. (I've not; I ended up too busy to keep following it around when the largest of the pauses transpired, and haven't gone back to finish it or the added epilogue yet.) e: drat, this comment makes less sense with your edit.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  As a person who liked Homestuck and read it entirely on his own time and wasn't aware of any of the community stuff: Saying things like this is narrow-minded as hell and i don't understand why you would even say something like that. All it seems to do is prop yourself up to be higher than someone who comes in later. Will a person who didn't read it in realtime get a different experience? Sure. Does it mean it's pointless to do so? No. Why would it? In some aspects it may even be a better experience. Trying to claim "you can't become a beatles fan anymore" is just nonsensical. It sounds like something an _ebooks twitter account would generate and less like a coherent human thought. It feels like you wear the "be a fan" thing as a badge of honor, instead of just meaning "i like something".
  - jdonaldson 10y ago
    Some folks best enjoy things in a group, and it sounds like this short story... thing... was completely designed to cater to those folks. The post does come off as narrow minded, but I got the point after reading into it a bit more.
    - Mithaldu 10y ago
      That's the thing really, it's not a short story at all. It's a web comic with over 10000 pages, a good amount of which are even flash and youtube animations and even flash games. It's totally worth delving in. :)
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
bbctol 10y ago
Oh hey, I wrote this. I mean to update the last section at some point, as it gets a lot less coherent; I wanted to publish it right at the 6 month mark or I'd put it off forever.
- soneca 10y ago
  Congrats on the text. As I put on my other comment above, I loved the insight about the internet era being a forest where you pick up knowledge anywhere, contrasting with the past where cultivating knowledge was hard and insufficient. Another interest take is that this be an original piece of genuine internet art. I didn't bought all the aurea you put at it, but I do believe that it is something special and might lead the way to what is art in this century
soneca 10y ago
Well, I never heard of Homestuck before. I think the author tries a lot (maybe too hard) to create an aurea around it while defining what it is for so many words. Well I guess it is simply "Something that reads like a heavily illustrated novel.". Not much more. It is delivered in small pieces and have a community interaction with the story. Well that's not that exciting or even new. I don't know of other countries, but some of brazilian literature classics from the XIX century were originally published in small pieces at daily newspapers. With intense debate around the paths of the story. "Manipulating" communities is nothing new either. Art is not that vanguard when it is doing something that companies have even a career path for people who "manage communities". It is so obviously a fan review. But that's ok, it was an interesting reading. Where I think it gets right after reading the review and a few searches. It is a piece of art that embody what the internet is, not what was predicted to be. No small feat, as there were a lot of hype about what art in the internet would be and no one seemed to get right until now. Apart from Homestuck, I found incredible the insight that in the past we had to plant, cultivate and harvest knowledge, usually conforming to not get any. Nowadays we are in abundant forest of knowledge where we can just pick up anything from the trees anywhere. Not sure of the consequences of this shift, but an awesome insight about the internet era that I never saw before. Really worth reading it all if just for it.
- jtedward 10y ago
  > Well that's not that exciting or even new. I don't know of other countries, but some of brazilian literature classics from the XIX century were originally published in small pieces at daily newspapers. With intense debate around the paths of the story. Two questions: 1. What specifically are you referring to? 2. Why did you feel the neeed to express it in Roman numeral?
  - jrz53 10y ago
    I don’t know what story the poster was referring to, but the use of Roman numerals for centuries is the standard in Spanish and I assume in Portuguese too. If the poster is Brazilian, then his use of Roman numerals is of no surprise.
Mathnerd314 10y ago
tl;dr: Homestuck is 1) 800,000 words plus pictures & videos 2) an internet-induced psychosis spanning 2007-2015
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  What do you mean 2015? He's still releasing new stuff and forums are still exploding over it. :D Most recently he posted a part of the epilogue on snapchat and archived it here: http://mspfanventures.com/?s=17075&p=1 http://mspfanventures.com/?s=17075&p=1
  - drdeca 10y ago
    the things on snapchat (after the part on the website?) are mostly by "Cohen Edenfield" rather than by the author of homestuck (Andrew Hussie), but there are continuing to be some things posted there. But not by Andrew.
  - SirBenet 10y ago
    That was the "credits" rather than the epilogue, but you can see it in full on the official site if you haven't already: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=010029 http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=010029 "2007-2015" is weird because it started in 2009 and it's looking like the epilogue will come in 2017. We had [S] Collide and [S] Act 7 in 2016 so the webcomic itself definitely didn't end in 2015. It may be that they're referring to the famdom, as Jailbreak started in 2007 and the famdom died down significantly from all the pausing before the webcomic itself finished.
Figs 10y ago
Is anyone backing up Homestuck? Once webcomics end they tend to vanish from the internet after a few years...
k__ 10y ago
Never got it. I tried to get into it but it completely eluded me. Also I like with Doctor Who, I didn't like the fan-base. But I found DW on my own and later the fan-base so it was a bit different. But it took away a bit of the fun to see what kind of people they were :/
vanderZwan 10y ago
Congratulations, internet, you have reached Stage 4 of Michael Parson's model of aesthetic appreciation! :D > “[An awareness of the social context of a painting reflects] the realisation that the interpretation of a painting is a social creation and can exist only in a community of viewers, just as words can have meaning only in a linguistic community. [...] The meaning of a work, therefore, is no longer equivalent to what an individual experiences, but to what can be said about it in a discursive way by a number of people. [...] It is a public meaning, part of a complex historical web of meanings that constitutes an art tradition.” Source: Talk about a Painting: A Cognitive Developmental Analysis, Michael J. Parsons, 1987 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3332812 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3332812

73 points by networked 10y ago

As a longtime Homestuck fan, I approve of this review. > So, do I recommend Homestuck? Should you drop everything and start reading it? > You can’t. Homestuck is over, and I mean over, not just that it isn’t updating. “Homestuck,” the masterpiece, was the event, the community, the shifting pace of updates, the constant chatter between fandom and author. Homestuck is done. If you missed it, you missed it. It may still be worth reading the comic, but it won’t be Homestuck. Yeah. You'll never watch Cascade on release day along with a million other people. I did, and it was insane. (Though that problem is not unique to Homestuck. If you want to become a Beatles fan today, you're just as out of luck.) IMO the best Homestuck-inspired works are Undertale (game), The Northern Caves (prose, finished) and Prequel (webcomic, ongoing). Check them out, you won't regret it.

rincebrain 10y ago
It's such a fascinating thing, how many people were part of that wave and yet collectively don't acknowledge it publicly any more. It's one of the first times I've seen people en masse avoid mentioning a shared thing from the past, not unlike the stereotypical "playing with dolls" of being very young. (Mandatory reference to people huddling around metaphorical campfires as various livestreaming services had people who had managed to load that 80MB monstrosity before it went down sharing it, and people sometimes streaming those streams as the per-stream viewer caps got hit, and various free filesharing sites went down as AH uploaded it there...)
- cousin_it 10y ago
  I guess many fans of Homestuck today feel that it went downhill at some point. That's not unique, it happens with fandoms all the time. Have you seen the latest update BTW? It goes a long way to rescuing the ending, I didn't know that was possible.
  - rincebrain 10y ago
    Not even recommending it, just acknowledging that you were ever acquainted with it. A good number of the people I met in that community who still keep in contact with one another avoid the question when asked how they met, by someone who isn't from that set. I suspect, indeed, that the reputation backlash as it hit critical mass is why people don't want to be associated with it any more. (I've not; I ended up too busy to keep following it around when the largest of the pauses transpired, and haven't gone back to finish it or the added epilogue yet.) e: drat, this comment makes less sense with your edit.
Mithaldu 10y ago
As a person who liked Homestuck and read it entirely on his own time and wasn't aware of any of the community stuff: Saying things like this is narrow-minded as hell and i don't understand why you would even say something like that. All it seems to do is prop yourself up to be higher than someone who comes in later. Will a person who didn't read it in realtime get a different experience? Sure. Does it mean it's pointless to do so? No. Why would it? In some aspects it may even be a better experience. Trying to claim "you can't become a beatles fan anymore" is just nonsensical. It sounds like something an _ebooks twitter account would generate and less like a coherent human thought. It feels like you wear the "be a fan" thing as a badge of honor, instead of just meaning "i like something".
- jdonaldson 10y ago
  Some folks best enjoy things in a group, and it sounds like this short story... thing... was completely designed to cater to those folks. The post does come off as narrow minded, but I got the point after reading into it a bit more.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    That's the thing really, it's not a short story at all. It's a web comic with over 10000 pages, a good amount of which are even flash and youtube animations and even flash games. It's totally worth delving in. :)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

bbctol 10y ago

Oh hey, I wrote this. I mean to update the last section at some point, as it gets a lot less coherent; I wanted to publish it right at the 6 month mark or I'd put it off forever.

soneca 10y ago
Congrats on the text. As I put on my other comment above, I loved the insight about the internet era being a forest where you pick up knowledge anywhere, contrasting with the past where cultivating knowledge was hard and insufficient. Another interest take is that this be an original piece of genuine internet art. I didn't bought all the aurea you put at it, but I do believe that it is something special and might lead the way to what is art in this century

soneca 10y ago

Well, I never heard of Homestuck before. I think the author tries a lot (maybe too hard) to create an aurea around it while defining what it is for so many words. Well I guess it is simply "Something that reads like a heavily illustrated novel.". Not much more. It is delivered in small pieces and have a community interaction with the story. Well that's not that exciting or even new. I don't know of other countries, but some of brazilian literature classics from the XIX century were originally published in small pieces at daily newspapers. With intense debate around the paths of the story. "Manipulating" communities is nothing new either. Art is not that vanguard when it is doing something that companies have even a career path for people who "manage communities". It is so obviously a fan review. But that's ok, it was an interesting reading. Where I think it gets right after reading the review and a few searches. It is a piece of art that embody what the internet is, not what was predicted to be. No small feat, as there were a lot of hype about what art in the internet would be and no one seemed to get right until now. Apart from Homestuck, I found incredible the insight that in the past we had to plant, cultivate and harvest knowledge, usually conforming to not get any. Nowadays we are in abundant forest of knowledge where we can just pick up anything from the trees anywhere. Not sure of the consequences of this shift, but an awesome insight about the internet era that I never saw before. Really worth reading it all if just for it.

jtedward 10y ago
> Well that's not that exciting or even new. I don't know of other countries, but some of brazilian literature classics from the XIX century were originally published in small pieces at daily newspapers. With intense debate around the paths of the story. Two questions: 1. What specifically are you referring to? 2. Why did you feel the neeed to express it in Roman numeral?
- jrz53 10y ago
  I don’t know what story the poster was referring to, but the use of Roman numerals for centuries is the standard in Spanish and I assume in Portuguese too. If the poster is Brazilian, then his use of Roman numerals is of no surprise.

Mathnerd314 10y ago

tl;dr: Homestuck is 1) 800,000 words plus pictures & videos 2) an internet-induced psychosis spanning 2007-2015

Mithaldu 10y ago
What do you mean 2015? He's still releasing new stuff and forums are still exploding over it. :D Most recently he posted a part of the epilogue on snapchat and archived it here: http://mspfanventures.com/?s=17075&p=1 http://mspfanventures.com/?s=17075&p=1
- drdeca 10y ago
  the things on snapchat (after the part on the website?) are mostly by "Cohen Edenfield" rather than by the author of homestuck (Andrew Hussie), but there are continuing to be some things posted there. But not by Andrew.
- SirBenet 10y ago
  That was the "credits" rather than the epilogue, but you can see it in full on the official site if you haven't already: http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=010029 http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=010029 "2007-2015" is weird because it started in 2009 and it's looking like the epilogue will come in 2017. We had [S] Collide and [S] Act 7 in 2016 so the webcomic itself definitely didn't end in 2015. It may be that they're referring to the famdom, as Jailbreak started in 2007 and the famdom died down significantly from all the pausing before the webcomic itself finished.

Figs 10y ago

Is anyone backing up Homestuck? Once webcomics end they tend to vanish from the internet after a few years...

k__ 10y ago

Never got it. I tried to get into it but it completely eluded me. Also I like with Doctor Who, I didn't like the fan-base. But I found DW on my own and later the fan-base so it was a bit different. But it took away a bit of the fun to see what kind of people they were :/

vanderZwan 10y ago

Congratulations, internet, you have reached Stage 4 of Michael Parson's model of aesthetic appreciation! :D > “[An awareness of the social context of a painting reflects] the realisation that the interpretation of a painting is a social creation and can exist only in a community of viewers, just as words can have meaning only in a linguistic community. [...] The meaning of a work, therefore, is no longer equivalent to what an individual experiences, but to what can be said about it in a discursive way by a number of people. [...] It is a public meaning, part of a complex historical web of meanings that constitutes an art tradition.” Source: Talk about a Painting: A Cognitive Developmental Analysis, Michael J. Parsons, 1987 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3332812 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3332812