#Obviously this is even worse with hs2 posting because the epilogues are so over the top that ANYTHING is believable when isolated

[lemonlimebitcoin]

#I feel like for a long enough franchise the ''you don't need to x the whole thing'' works because #general nature of it means that it expects you to hop on whenever #and some things get outdated or inaccessible so it's like #yeah sure whatever #but homestuck is LITERALLY one comic with a *few* spin-offs #like yes you can survive off of tangential knowledge but #ind going so you have to understand you waive some right when it comes to discussing iti #general fan of the fandom issues i suppose of which i'm not immune to #like fair that you can't finish it for reasons or another but like #maybe that means you should probably jsut get into something else

@dash-n-step I totally agree! There are a lot of valid reasons to not finish homestuck. It's valid enough to just... not like the comic. But the way that half the homestuck community proudly brands itself on not liking or reading the actual thing but also equally (if not moreso) participates in reactionary outrage at poorly paraphrased events in homestuck stuff is such a problem.

The amount of times people will produce analysis or rage about things that just didn't happen because they misremembered someone else's mediocre extrapolation/analysis is too many. In my humble opinion it sucks!

[stormsbourne]

do you think hs is worth reading? for someone who hasnt read it before. bc i kinda wanna get into it but this epilogue stuff seems kinda shitty and confusing af. sry for bothering u abt it but i just genuinely wanna know. xoxo

ADDED AFTER THE FACT: WOW THIS REPLY IS LONG SORRY

honestly, I don’t know. my experience with homestuck at this point is that I try not to think about it because the ending was so deliberately mean and shitty that it ruins the journey. it tells me all the depth and meaning I saw in the original was just me projecting, playing shadow puppets with themes I like and relate to and could get invested in. a friend of mine has a theory that andrew hussie is just the ultimate appeaser who adopts the views of whoever he hanggs around with, and so a lot of the stuff I identified closely with was during the era when he hung out with mostly sjw types (act 5.2 through pre-omegapause act 6). then he started hanging around with edgelords again, and people who sniffed his farts and told him how brilliant they were. whew. love it. love where this has brought us.

if you really do want to read it for the context of knowing what everyone has been talking about, honestly, then you should go for it. the story might not click with you and you might find yourself falling out, because the early comic is infamously difficult to get into. HOWEVER: 

you may feel like you have gotten a complete story after a video/flash segment in late act 6 called “remem8er.” if you want to stop there, you are perfectly within your rights. 

if you don’t stop there, then you SHOULD stop either after a video/flash segment in act 6 titled “collide,” or, at the latest, after “act 7.” don’t bother with the snapchat updates. they were ultimately completely pointless.

PLEASE do not read the epilogues. if, eventually, you feel the need to know what’s in them, there are some good summary posts out there -- I wouldn’t recommend mine, it’s a little too rambly and the original version got some plot points wrong. just use those. don’t read the actual thing. it is a waste of time

and obviously don’t bother with homestuck 2

and, more importantly, if you do get into it, don’t even fucking bother with the dregs of the fandom today. homestuck fandom always sucked shit, but these days it’s worse than ever mainly because the authors of hs2 are very active on twitter and are very loud about what they think of critics. they’re whiny ass babies who are overinvolved with their fandom and then whine about people discussing their shit. don’t bother with current fandom. go read some stuff from before april 2019 on ao3 and enjoy it there. the homestuck fandom as it stands now is basically a ghost town full of shrieking wraiths demanding why you don’t love andrew hussie’s brilliant genius. 

as for the companion games (hiveswap/friendsim/pesterquest), I have no interest in any of them whatsoever at this point especially because pq just seems like another way for the hs2 people to rub one off about their incarnation of “canon.” but if they’re your jam, go for it I guess. 

the thing for me is that my knowledge of what a shitbird andrew hussie is has ruined any depth I once read in these characters. there’s a couple things I may write on commission soon, but outside of commissions I can never see myself seriously engaging with it again because every time I think about it, I feel like andrew hussie is taking a shit in my dinner all over again.

did I meantion 4/13, the big arc number, is my birthday? lol

TLDR: if you want to read it to understand the cultural phenomenon, go for it, but don’t read anything outside the comic’s original ending, act 7. I find it hard to recommend for the same reasons that people who watched game of thrones might find it hard to recommend their show now. the ending so thoroughly stripped the rest of it of any meaning or depth or emotional resonance that the feeling I have when I consider it is just an inner deadness. so if you want the story or the characters or the worldbuidling, you have to be willing to weigh how much you personally can divorce What Happened After from what happened in the comic itself. and I just can’t do it because I was there as it happened, basically.