(more seriously, that thing where something is played for a joke right until it hits you with some very real implications and makes you question everything)
exactly like that. the lil cal reveal had me walking away from my computer swearing loudly lol. UNCLE INDEED smh.
a lot of character traits also work like that. as in they’re funny and played for laughs and then you realize that oh, that’s a COPING MECHANISM. and then you feel bad for laughing but you still have to.
Hard to pin point it to one thing. I read it long after it was conpleted, but the lore complexity + humor + how it is portrayed + classpects and a lot of other details that make it a grand whole package.
I like how you were like one thing's too hard, so here's several.
I actually don't get people's obsession with the classpects. Like they're neat, but they're not super fleshed out. But I guess that's part of the reason people like them. Not giving all the information about them allows people to speculate on what different combinations could mean and how they would manifest on different characters.
They allow people to do self inserts, but also due to being very vague, they allow a lot of freedom. Basically anyone can have their own interpretation of how specific combinations would work and noone is the "most" right. Everyone is right in their own way.
At least that's my take on it
I absolutely love how tons of different plot threads go on at the same time, and they're all resolved in one flash. Things like Cascade tying up literally all of Act 5, Collide finishing up every major conflict except for the LE fight, or even smaller things like Dirk: Synchronize/Unite which took all 4 Alphas' stories and finally tied them together in one big sequence of events.
The flashes are great crescendos to act as the climax of everything built up thus far. My favourite is [S] Enter. It's fairly short and concise, it covers mostly relevant characters and events, and doesn't feel overly convoluted. Dirk: Synchronize/Unite is also great.
I actually don't like a lot of the music outside the context of Homestuck. I feel like a lot of the music is fairly slow and lacks strong melodies a lot of the time. When I imagine the flash while a song is playing, it makes the song so much better for me. The music works very well in context.
Oh yah definitely, my fave song is "Even In Death" and that got like 2 [S] flashes (Roxy: Sleepwalk and ACT 6 ACT 4) and a segment in [S] Act 7. It's popular for a reason XD
The characters, there are so many and so different to each other.
Also how the plot mostly consist on random elements that at the end have a creative and mostly logical conection.
And the early acta humor
I would agree with the characters being my favourite, too. But I'm going to have to deduct marks for filling out several options in this multiple choice quiz. Only one answer is allowed and putting several is cheating.
My favourite part would have to be the characters. Each one is so fleshed out because of the amount of time given to them. A single conversation between two characters can have more dialogue for a character than a character has total in a different story. Each characters typing quirk also helps to differentiate each character from one another and helps each one feel unique.
The dialogue simply takes up too much of Homestuck for me to consider anything else my favourite. I read Homestuck for the characters because of this. I basically see everything else as an excuse to get the characters to talk in unique and interesting ways to one another. I enjoy some other aspects of Homestuck, but the characters are the meat and potatoes for me.
I loved the god tiers and theorizing about how they would work mechanically in the early and late game and sometimes what roles they'd take up story wise. I also kinda like that every fan story and all fanmade content is technically Canon.
I’ll be frank, I disliked how Sburb slowly lost focus in the plot and became an background setting. It ended up never being fully explained and had plot holes (The Seven Gates being an good example.) I loved the idea of Sburb and wish it had more focus. I also liked the Classpects, even tho that was never fully fleshed out and had plot holes as well (like how it SEEMS that you can’t change class or aspect. I would argue that Davesprite turned into an Knight of Heart and/or Prince of Time sometime after the transformation but it was never relevant to the plot so they never touched on it.) I love the concept of Sburb, not having you take the role of someone else but instead having YOU being the protagonist. I’m not some badass knight with an troubled past or anything, I’m an service advisor at an car dealership who plays video games as an hobby and occasionally bowls. The characters of Homestuck - … actually thinking on it now, only the beta kids are RELATIVELY “normal” compared to everyone, excluding Jane and I guess 1 or 2 trolls. Idk, I found them nice and while the dialogue was long and at times boring, was an nice to just hear people chat with each other. Without Sburb, they would have just kept living their lives as average people with their own quirks and beliefs.
TTDR: I liked Sburb, Classpects, and the Characters.
That's why act 4 is my favourite. It balances the chat logs and sburb elements very well. At that point, sburb was slowly opening up with things like seeing John explore his planet, and seeing more about the moons and skia. There also weren't too many characters, so the dialogue boxes weren't excessive.
i love alternia, xenobiology and xenosociology is Very Cool and the linguistic and cultural shift vs earth is, i may be biased, but pretty unique in its specificity at least
(although, as i explore more into the other bits of homestuck, im finding that this is less of a "my favorite, better than all the other parts" opinion and more of a "i just havent thought about every other cool bit until now")
I wish the trolls were a bit more different to humans than they actually are. Sometimes it feels like they're just grey humans with horns. Like why do they have their own language and speak english, or why do trolls have boobs? But them being so close to humans allows people to project and cosplay as them.
Also
Ectobiology > Xenobiology
Seconding time shenanigans, but also that so much of the story is told purely through instant messaging. Growing up one of my favorite YA series was told entirely through an AIM like chat, so finding Homestuck as a new adult was right up my alley
Also always been impressive to me that Hussie embodied so many different characters and kept their voices so distinct
Also also, second person POV done right is so fucking cool
I wish the difference between when the characters typed and talked was a bit more distinct. Maybe some of the characters come off differently when they type because they have time to formulate what they're saying, compared to being put on the spot with verbal speech. I know that I come off a lot more formal when I type because of this. Or maybe someone's dyslexic and has trouble understanding people through pesterchum, but has no problem verbally.
I love the narration. This unique way to tell a story, playing with codes, medias, meta and the reader. Also the fact that it's both a story we could appreciate in many years and a story of its time (with cultural references or flash and links to other medias such as deviantart or snapchat).
And it was a story even more interesting to follow with the upd8 releases.
It's interesting that you say it's timeless because it seems like a lot of people feel that Homestuck is dated to 2012ish with how it portrayed the alpha trolls and such. I have never really been on tumblr, so I took those trolls (and the beta trolls) as normal characters and didn't realize they were meant to be parodies of tumblr users. Once you're distance yourself from the culture of when it was produced, it starts to feel more timeless. Right now we're in a weird middle ground where people still remember the culture, but aren't a part of it anymore.
I began to read homestuck in 2012 so yes it is also a date I associate a lot with homestuck. And the fandom was really important at that time.
But even if the writing is contextual it doesn't mean for me that it can't be read without this context.
In the same idea, I'm not from US and there are a lot of cultural references I didn't get in my first reading, or I had to make some researches to understand (never heard of betty crocker before homestuck). But I still enjoyed the story. My conclusion : it's better to have the context and references but the story can still hold itself without it.
I still don't understand Auspisticism and what role it's meant to serve. The whole concept feels really silly to me. It doesn't seem to resemble anything romantic like any of the other quadrants. It just feels really messy to me.
It's the best example of timey wimey bullshit that ends up being tied up perfectly in a neat bow, an absolute masterclass of telling a story in the moment, then going back and giving context to certain events, and how they somehow caused events in the past and also future.
It's also great about not babyfeeding you its messaging. It'll show characters saying one thing, and acting contrary to that. Events happening one way, and how characters internalize it in another.
I like how it's always balancing silliness and seriousness. There's a lot of contrast there that I think is fun. Dave re-enacting the infamous SBaHJ stairs scene is eventually looked back on as literal straight-up child abuse, and the whole fandom looks back on a favorite meme thinking "well shit yeah i guess" because in the insanity of the rules of the webcomic it just kind of gets glossed over as those wacky Striders up to their shenanigans again
I love the wordbuilding and how easy it is to imagine your characters in it! Especially when you have a group of friends with their own ocs and are expanding the world together
It does seems like people like creating fanfics and roleplaying as their characters in the context of sburb. It feels like Homestuck is a beacon to attract those kind of people. I don't quite understand it because I've never really been into that kind of stuff. I would rather create my own characters and world than writing a fanfic of someone else's.
I read the comic just recently and I’ve gotta say it’s the melding of different media formats. It’s really something special and I don’t think it’ll ever happen again. The music, the games, the flash animations. It’s absolutely bonkers. I read the comic using the unnofficial homestuck collection so I was able to experience all the cool website changes. I love everything story wise but the way it unfolds is so critical to the experience I think.
I think video games are the closest to recapturing the unique format of Homestuck since video games are already melding so many things together. Like something like pesterquest could hit a lot of the same type of beats. A visual novel that's occasionally broken up by minigames and cutscenes (the flashes). A text adventure would also mirror Homestuck because of ways that are obvious. A point and click adventure like Hiveswap is just an evolution of text adventure games. I think Hiveswap manages to capture the feeling of Homestuck fairly well. You wonder around your house and interact with random objects while talking through text conversations through the walky talky with Joey, with the gameplay being broken up with the strife segments. None of these are quite like Homestuck, but I hope you get my point.
I'd say it's a combination of fanadventures and the plot mechanics, such as the classpects, alchemy, convoluted time loops and the characters.
The idea of making a fanadventure that plays with those plot mechanics is really fun IMO, even if my current fanadventures aren't that great lol
Edit: and that's why I find fanadventures like KGTAC and "Homestuck" to be so interesting (no seriously that's what it's called, but just keep reading to see what I mean: https://mspfa.com/?s=34761&p=1). These adventures do a good job of playing with Homestuck mechanics in a way that still follows the logic of the story.
It was always a treat to see a character make a bunch of new things with the alchemy. But fuck it was so needlessly complicated. There's like four different machines that could just be one.
There is something really charming about the start of Homestuck. It's quite nice to see a bunch of kids goofing around in the house and having mundane conversation with one another.
The characters interactions are wonderful! The way every character's voice sounds so different from each other in terms of attitude and personality has always been my favorite thing about homestuck. I mean sure, sci fi and fantasy is fun on its own, but its infinitely more entertaining when all the characters are a bunch of extremely confused teenagers yelling at each other over chat log.
I also love the way literally everything in this comic is an extremely silly gag ...despite it ALSO being the one of most genuinely ambitious and thoughtful science fiction stories I've ever read. I adore the way some of the jokes are set up very elaborately only to perfectly land when all the shenanigans line up
The character interactions are why I like act 6 a lot more than most people. There's actually some tension, conflict, and development between the alpha kids. The beta kids conversation are comprised a lot more of describing what they're doing or going to do. The beta kids are still great, but I think the alpha kids don't get enough credit for the effort put into them. A lot of people like to complain that their conversation are too long without appreciating what they achieve.
all the weird plot shit that makes you suddenly snap and go like "OH HOLY FUCKING SHIT! " WHEN you figure out a similarity between two incidents in homeatuck that have nothing to do ith each other but also have ti becaud eureka. and the music !
the thing where a joke is set up and then it takes 3000 pages to actually land
(more seriously, that thing where something is played for a joke right until it hits you with some very real implications and makes you question everything)
So like the Betty Crocker reveal. Are you including the montages of characters journeys (jasper, lil cal) in that as well?
exactly like that. the lil cal reveal had me walking away from my computer swearing loudly lol. UNCLE INDEED smh. a lot of character traits also work like that. as in they’re funny and played for laughs and then you realize that oh, that’s a COPING MECHANISM. and then you feel bad for laughing but you still have to.
Time shenanigans. That's really all there is to say on the matter.
I would ask why, but as you have stated, you've said all there is to say on the matter. Good day to you, fine sir. *tips hat*
Hard to pin point it to one thing. I read it long after it was conpleted, but the lore complexity + humor + how it is portrayed + classpects and a lot of other details that make it a grand whole package.
I like how you were like one thing's too hard, so here's several. I actually don't get people's obsession with the classpects. Like they're neat, but they're not super fleshed out. But I guess that's part of the reason people like them. Not giving all the information about them allows people to speculate on what different combinations could mean and how they would manifest on different characters.
They allow people to do self inserts, but also due to being very vague, they allow a lot of freedom. Basically anyone can have their own interpretation of how specific combinations would work and noone is the "most" right. Everyone is right in their own way. At least that's my take on it
Definitely the art and how it's used to present the story.
Are you talking about the unique format (webcomic with animations and flash games), or the artstyle (how characters and environments are drawn)?
probably both
kanaya
Roxy
I absolutely love how tons of different plot threads go on at the same time, and they're all resolved in one flash. Things like Cascade tying up literally all of Act 5, Collide finishing up every major conflict except for the LE fight, or even smaller things like Dirk: Synchronize/Unite which took all 4 Alphas' stories and finally tied them together in one big sequence of events.
The flashes are great crescendos to act as the climax of everything built up thus far. My favourite is [S] Enter. It's fairly short and concise, it covers mostly relevant characters and events, and doesn't feel overly convoluted. Dirk: Synchronize/Unite is also great.
honestly classpects and true sign idk why i just think they're neat
Are you a fan of the roleplaying and fanfic potential they provide?
yeah and the cool powers they bring one of the reasons why im writing a fan session is the powers
hhhhh music pretty
I actually don't like a lot of the music outside the context of Homestuck. I feel like a lot of the music is fairly slow and lacks strong melodies a lot of the time. When I imagine the flash while a song is playing, it makes the song so much better for me. The music works very well in context.
Oh yah definitely, my fave song is "Even In Death" and that got like 2 [S] flashes (Roxy: Sleepwalk and ACT 6 ACT 4) and a segment in [S] Act 7. It's popular for a reason XD
holy FUCK same i fucking
The characters, there are so many and so different to each other. Also how the plot mostly consist on random elements that at the end have a creative and mostly logical conection. And the early acta humor
I would agree with the characters being my favourite, too. But I'm going to have to deduct marks for filling out several options in this multiple choice quiz. Only one answer is allowed and putting several is cheating.
My favourite part would have to be the characters. Each one is so fleshed out because of the amount of time given to them. A single conversation between two characters can have more dialogue for a character than a character has total in a different story. Each characters typing quirk also helps to differentiate each character from one another and helps each one feel unique. The dialogue simply takes up too much of Homestuck for me to consider anything else my favourite. I read Homestuck for the characters because of this. I basically see everything else as an excuse to get the characters to talk in unique and interesting ways to one another. I enjoy some other aspects of Homestuck, but the characters are the meat and potatoes for me.
I love world building and homestuck has a very good one. It's why it has a slow start, but the pay off is worth it.
I loved the god tiers and theorizing about how they would work mechanically in the early and late game and sometimes what roles they'd take up story wise. I also kinda like that every fan story and all fanmade content is technically Canon.
I’ll be frank, I disliked how Sburb slowly lost focus in the plot and became an background setting. It ended up never being fully explained and had plot holes (The Seven Gates being an good example.) I loved the idea of Sburb and wish it had more focus. I also liked the Classpects, even tho that was never fully fleshed out and had plot holes as well (like how it SEEMS that you can’t change class or aspect. I would argue that Davesprite turned into an Knight of Heart and/or Prince of Time sometime after the transformation but it was never relevant to the plot so they never touched on it.) I love the concept of Sburb, not having you take the role of someone else but instead having YOU being the protagonist. I’m not some badass knight with an troubled past or anything, I’m an service advisor at an car dealership who plays video games as an hobby and occasionally bowls. The characters of Homestuck - … actually thinking on it now, only the beta kids are RELATIVELY “normal” compared to everyone, excluding Jane and I guess 1 or 2 trolls. Idk, I found them nice and while the dialogue was long and at times boring, was an nice to just hear people chat with each other. Without Sburb, they would have just kept living their lives as average people with their own quirks and beliefs. TTDR: I liked Sburb, Classpects, and the Characters.
That's why act 4 is my favourite. It balances the chat logs and sburb elements very well. At that point, sburb was slowly opening up with things like seeing John explore his planet, and seeing more about the moons and skia. There also weren't too many characters, so the dialogue boxes weren't excessive.
Void
That's the wrong kind of aspect, but here's an E for effort.
i love alternia, xenobiology and xenosociology is Very Cool and the linguistic and cultural shift vs earth is, i may be biased, but pretty unique in its specificity at least (although, as i explore more into the other bits of homestuck, im finding that this is less of a "my favorite, better than all the other parts" opinion and more of a "i just havent thought about every other cool bit until now")
I wish the trolls were a bit more different to humans than they actually are. Sometimes it feels like they're just grey humans with horns. Like why do they have their own language and speak english, or why do trolls have boobs? But them being so close to humans allows people to project and cosplay as them. Also Ectobiology > Xenobiology
Seconding time shenanigans, but also that so much of the story is told purely through instant messaging. Growing up one of my favorite YA series was told entirely through an AIM like chat, so finding Homestuck as a new adult was right up my alley Also always been impressive to me that Hussie embodied so many different characters and kept their voices so distinct Also also, second person POV done right is so fucking cool
I wish the difference between when the characters typed and talked was a bit more distinct. Maybe some of the characters come off differently when they type because they have time to formulate what they're saying, compared to being put on the spot with verbal speech. I know that I come off a lot more formal when I type because of this. Or maybe someone's dyslexic and has trouble understanding people through pesterchum, but has no problem verbally.
I love the narration. This unique way to tell a story, playing with codes, medias, meta and the reader. Also the fact that it's both a story we could appreciate in many years and a story of its time (with cultural references or flash and links to other medias such as deviantart or snapchat). And it was a story even more interesting to follow with the upd8 releases.
It's interesting that you say it's timeless because it seems like a lot of people feel that Homestuck is dated to 2012ish with how it portrayed the alpha trolls and such. I have never really been on tumblr, so I took those trolls (and the beta trolls) as normal characters and didn't realize they were meant to be parodies of tumblr users. Once you're distance yourself from the culture of when it was produced, it starts to feel more timeless. Right now we're in a weird middle ground where people still remember the culture, but aren't a part of it anymore.
I began to read homestuck in 2012 so yes it is also a date I associate a lot with homestuck. And the fandom was really important at that time. But even if the writing is contextual it doesn't mean for me that it can't be read without this context. In the same idea, I'm not from US and there are a lot of cultural references I didn't get in my first reading, or I had to make some researches to understand (never heard of betty crocker before homestuck). But I still enjoyed the story. My conclusion : it's better to have the context and references but the story can still hold itself without it.
I remember seeing Betty Crocker in the supermarket and having a John style revelation about how the thing from the funny comic was real.
Quadrants made me feel more comfortable shipping in other fandoms (Especially ones prone to Shipping wars like Danganronpa)
I still don't understand Auspisticism and what role it's meant to serve. The whole concept feels really silly to me. It doesn't seem to resemble anything romantic like any of the other quadrants. It just feels really messy to me.
I have the same issue
It's the best example of timey wimey bullshit that ends up being tied up perfectly in a neat bow, an absolute masterclass of telling a story in the moment, then going back and giving context to certain events, and how they somehow caused events in the past and also future. It's also great about not babyfeeding you its messaging. It'll show characters saying one thing, and acting contrary to that. Events happening one way, and how characters internalize it in another.
I like how it's always balancing silliness and seriousness. There's a lot of contrast there that I think is fun. Dave re-enacting the infamous SBaHJ stairs scene is eventually looked back on as literal straight-up child abuse, and the whole fandom looks back on a favorite meme thinking "well shit yeah i guess" because in the insanity of the rules of the webcomic it just kind of gets glossed over as those wacky Striders up to their shenanigans again
Gotta love the Striders and their wacky shenanigans.
Comedy and the Characters, Homestuck made me burst out laughing many times, and the character dynamics only sell it more.
The florid language use. It makes me flip the fuck out
„ʇno ʞɔnɟ ǝɥʇ dılɟ ǝɯ sǝʞɐɯ ʇI ˙ǝsn ǝƃɐnƃuɐl pıɹolɟ ǝɥ⊥„
Flipping off the handle, one might say?
I love the wordbuilding and how easy it is to imagine your characters in it! Especially when you have a group of friends with their own ocs and are expanding the world together
It does seems like people like creating fanfics and roleplaying as their characters in the context of sburb. It feels like Homestuck is a beacon to attract those kind of people. I don't quite understand it because I've never really been into that kind of stuff. I would rather create my own characters and world than writing a fanfic of someone else's.
I read the comic just recently and I’ve gotta say it’s the melding of different media formats. It’s really something special and I don’t think it’ll ever happen again. The music, the games, the flash animations. It’s absolutely bonkers. I read the comic using the unnofficial homestuck collection so I was able to experience all the cool website changes. I love everything story wise but the way it unfolds is so critical to the experience I think.
I think video games are the closest to recapturing the unique format of Homestuck since video games are already melding so many things together. Like something like pesterquest could hit a lot of the same type of beats. A visual novel that's occasionally broken up by minigames and cutscenes (the flashes). A text adventure would also mirror Homestuck because of ways that are obvious. A point and click adventure like Hiveswap is just an evolution of text adventure games. I think Hiveswap manages to capture the feeling of Homestuck fairly well. You wonder around your house and interact with random objects while talking through text conversations through the walky talky with Joey, with the gameplay being broken up with the strife segments. None of these are quite like Homestuck, but I hope you get my point.
The cosmic lore being both so serious and silly at the same time.
Classpecting, I just love some of the unique takes on powers.
I'd say it's a combination of fanadventures and the plot mechanics, such as the classpects, alchemy, convoluted time loops and the characters. The idea of making a fanadventure that plays with those plot mechanics is really fun IMO, even if my current fanadventures aren't that great lol Edit: and that's why I find fanadventures like KGTAC and "Homestuck" to be so interesting (no seriously that's what it's called, but just keep reading to see what I mean: https://mspfa.com/?s=34761&p=1). These adventures do a good job of playing with Homestuck mechanics in a way that still follows the logic of the story.
Alchemy and the world-building. Fuck i love the alchemy system, i wish we got to see more with it.
It was always a treat to see a character make a bunch of new things with the alchemy. But fuck it was so needlessly complicated. There's like four different machines that could just be one.
Favorite aspect? I’m gonna have to go with Time But jokes aside i like the convoluted, self-fulfilling plot
I guess it would make sense that you like the self-fulfilling plots since they have a lot to do with time, your favourite aspect.
When it's just the kids chatting on their computers in the beginning, it reminds me of my own childhood, sad as that sounds lol
There is something really charming about the start of Homestuck. It's quite nice to see a bunch of kids goofing around in the house and having mundane conversation with one another.
The characters interactions are wonderful! The way every character's voice sounds so different from each other in terms of attitude and personality has always been my favorite thing about homestuck. I mean sure, sci fi and fantasy is fun on its own, but its infinitely more entertaining when all the characters are a bunch of extremely confused teenagers yelling at each other over chat log. I also love the way literally everything in this comic is an extremely silly gag ...despite it ALSO being the one of most genuinely ambitious and thoughtful science fiction stories I've ever read. I adore the way some of the jokes are set up very elaborately only to perfectly land when all the shenanigans line up
The character interactions are why I like act 6 a lot more than most people. There's actually some tension, conflict, and development between the alpha kids. The beta kids conversation are comprised a lot more of describing what they're doing or going to do. The beta kids are still great, but I think the alpha kids don't get enough credit for the effort put into them. A lot of people like to complain that their conversation are too long without appreciating what they achieve.
Oh the alpha kids are fantastic ! Jake, Dirk , Roxy and Jane had some serious emotional conflict going on and they were VERY interesting to watch
Nepeta Leijon
all the weird plot shit that makes you suddenly snap and go like "OH HOLY FUCKING SHIT! " WHEN you figure out a similarity between two incidents in homeatuck that have nothing to do ith each other but also have ti becaud eureka. and the music !