April 13th, 2023, I begin rereading Homestuck, to honor it's 14th birthday, and to add to some of the nostalgia I've been reliving over the past few months.
May 16th, 2023. I had made it just past "[S] GAME OVER." the previous day, and I was fucking ready to go. I would spend the next several hours (albeit with a bit of a break midway through) reading over 1,200 pages, finishing up the webcomic just over a month after I started.
After Homestuck ended in 2016, I spent the next several years sort of forgetting about it, only looking back on it through unfortunate events that made it's way outside of the fandom and into my vision. This would eventually lead me to believe that I hated Homestuck, for some strange influence. I would hear these terrible stories, watch the similar reactions of others, the disgust from all of them, and I wanted to make sure I was nowhere near it. Any sight of the story or characters I came across over the years made me believe it was all a bunch of "terrible memories" or something that I would never look back on, pushing away something I had loved so much, I didn't want to be associated with any of it.
But this year was different. I gave up on that heavy belligerence toward the series, and I gave it another try, despite my assumed hatred, and by God I loved it just as much as younger me did.
Homestuck provides such a high fantasy world, dragons, aliens, supernatural death powers, so much miraculous bullshit, and pulls it off magically, with a cast of characters that I find amazingly enjoyable to read and voice. I started the first 2 acts through the website, before learning of the Unofficial Homestuck Collection, an archive made to preserve some of the other features and side pages that the original mspaintadventures website held, as well as keep some of the fucking awesome Flash Player tricks that the old webcomic had that just can't be replicated through the site's YouTube redirects. So many chilling moments, seeing the animations interact both within and out of the panel that was supposed to be surrounding them.
That's the first thing I love Homestuck for, it's innovative use of the Adobe Flash Player. So much of the story loses its magic without it, including interactive pages, the aforementioned sort of "boundary breaking" animations for the real big moments, even a few flash games allowing the reader to take control of certain characters. I believe this is one of the things that makes Homestuck so special, in a format that you wouldn't really expect so much from.
Accompanying all of the [S] pages signifying each flash animation is some amazing music as well. Cascade, Carne Vale, all of the tracks in [S] Collide, and obviously the works of the big name, Toby Fox, every song, somehow with so many different genres present, fits in with every situation they're used in, and can really add so much more to the feeling of the page.
But out of everything I love Homestuck for, I think my favorite is just the sentimental value I hold towards it. About 8 or 9 years ago, I had moved to a new place, new school, didn't know anybody. I would soon start talking to somebody, I wanna say maybe a year later, and they would introduce me to Homestuck. That was, I believe, one of the first interactions I had with one of my now best friends of nearly a decade. I don't want to associate this comic with such bad memories anymore, I want to associate it with the things, and especially the people, that I love now. Homestuck brought me into a group that I was proud to be a part of for so long, I enjoyed being there for the long waits between pages, getting so excited with every new batch dropped, and being there on the day of the end, seeing it all culminate in its highest quality of animation yet, and one of the coolest and most satisfying motherfucking endings I have still ever seen to this day. I enjoyed watching it grow while it was still ongoing, the fan content created by other talented people so passionate about the story.
I still enjoy the company that Homestuck has allowed me to be around for so many years, and I feel things would be so unbelievably different had I never once found out about it all that time ago. I fucking love this series, and while I regret being so spiteful towards it for so long, I'm also somewhat glad that allowed me to re-experience it all for what felt like the first time again, 7 long years after I had abandoned it.
...but damn I do kinda wish my zodiac troll got a bit more screen time, preferably outside of that weird little fusion near the end.
May 16th, 2023. I had made it just past "[S] GAME OVER." the previous day, and I was fucking ready to go. I would spend the next several hours (albeit with a bit of a break midway through) reading over 1,200 pages, finishing up the webcomic just over a month after I started.
After Homestuck ended in 2016, I spent the next several years sort of forgetting about it, only looking back on it through unfortunate events that made it's way outside of the fandom and into my vision. This would eventually lead me to believe that I hated Homestuck, for some strange influence. I would hear these terrible stories, watch the similar reactions of others, the disgust from all of them, and I wanted to make sure I was nowhere near it. Any sight of the story or characters I came across over the years made me believe it was all a bunch of "terrible memories" or something that I would never look back on, pushing away something I had loved so much, I didn't want to be associated with any of it.
But this year was different. I gave up on that heavy belligerence toward the series, and I gave it another try, despite my assumed hatred, and by God I loved it just as much as younger me did.
Homestuck provides such a high fantasy world, dragons, aliens, supernatural death powers, so much miraculous bullshit, and pulls it off magically, with a cast of characters that I find amazingly enjoyable to read and voice. I started the first 2 acts through the website, before learning of the Unofficial Homestuck Collection, an archive made to preserve some of the other features and side pages that the original mspaintadventures website held, as well as keep some of the fucking awesome Flash Player tricks that the old webcomic had that just can't be replicated through the site's YouTube redirects. So many chilling moments, seeing the animations interact both within and out of the panel that was supposed to be surrounding them.
That's the first thing I love Homestuck for, it's innovative use of the Adobe Flash Player. So much of the story loses its magic without it, including interactive pages, the aforementioned sort of "boundary breaking" animations for the real big moments, even a few flash games allowing the reader to take control of certain characters. I believe this is one of the things that makes Homestuck so special, in a format that you wouldn't really expect so much from.
Accompanying all of the [S] pages signifying each flash animation is some amazing music as well. Cascade, Carne Vale, all of the tracks in [S] Collide, and obviously the works of the big name, Toby Fox, every song, somehow with so many different genres present, fits in with every situation they're used in, and can really add so much more to the feeling of the page.
But out of everything I love Homestuck for, I think my favorite is just the sentimental value I hold towards it. About 8 or 9 years ago, I had moved to a new place, new school, didn't know anybody. I would soon start talking to somebody, I wanna say maybe a year later, and they would introduce me to Homestuck. That was, I believe, one of the first interactions I had with one of my now best friends of nearly a decade. I don't want to associate this comic with such bad memories anymore, I want to associate it with the things, and especially the people, that I love now. Homestuck brought me into a group that I was proud to be a part of for so long, I enjoyed being there for the long waits between pages, getting so excited with every new batch dropped, and being there on the day of the end, seeing it all culminate in its highest quality of animation yet, and one of the coolest and most satisfying motherfucking endings I have still ever seen to this day. I enjoyed watching it grow while it was still ongoing, the fan content created by other talented people so passionate about the story.
I still enjoy the company that Homestuck has allowed me to be around for so many years, and I feel things would be so unbelievably different had I never once found out about it all that time ago. I fucking love this series, and while I regret being so spiteful towards it for so long, I'm also somewhat glad that allowed me to re-experience it all for what felt like the first time again, 7 long years after I had abandoned it.
...but damn I do kinda wish my zodiac troll got a bit more screen time, preferably outside of that weird little fusion near the end.
hopeascendchaos
8 months ago