I like how the homestuck pilot stuff is just giving everyone a rude awakening that a lot of indie creators know each other and respect each others work and that your individual cringe does not exist in a vacuum. And that at the end of the day we’re* all clowns.
*was originally ‘you’re’ until someone in the comments correctly identified me as a clown. 🤡
I sometimes feel like homestuck acts like it’s “too smart” for its readers especially the epilogues. It was like, if you feel this way that’s because you didn’t understand blah blah blah. A lot of fans dropped homestuck because that was such a shitty attitude.
YEAH I got that feeling reading some of Hussie's convos with fans while the original comic was ongoing. Made me go mmm... I'll enjoy the comic, but I've sure got no interest in meeting its writer at a con.
I'm of the opinion that, generally, readers owe a writer extremely little. They certainly don't owe it to the writer to interpret their work the precise way the writer wants it to be interpreted. If the writer wants their readers to read something a certain way? Then it's on the writer to present their work so well and so compellingly that the readers cannot help but to interpret it that way. (If they're really good: so compellingly that the readers want to interpret it that way.)
Some readers, ya just can't win. Someone is always going to get the ass-backwards wrong message out of a story. Human brains are too multitudinous for that not to happen.
But when a vast majority of a work's audience do not interpret it the way the creator wanted—or, further, if they can see the way the author intended it, but nevertheless do not want it to be like that—then it's not the readers' fault for not conforming to the writer's vision. It's the writer's failure to present their vision well enough that the readers find it self-evident in the work and compellingly enough that they accept & embrace it once they see it.
And even if a writer does successfully demonstrate their vision: if the majority of the audience dislikes it? It's not because the audience is too stupid to get it. Maybe it's just because the vision is broadly dislikable.
i'm reading homestuck for the first time (pg 1590 atm) and am curious as to what the reaction to the trolls first appearances was like
i've heard from a friend that homestuck forums were a big thing back then and was hoping to find some links to them, the same friend referred me to you to ask you about aforementioned forums
unfortunately I came to the forums a few years too late to see the reactions to any of these characters first-hand 😭 there are certainly other forums still active today that will have old homestuck threads somewhere, but it'd take some digging of your own to find the specific kind of posts you're looking for.
as far as eyewitness accounts of the comic's history go I've heard the Homestuck Made This World podcast is basically all about this, though I've only listened to a few episodes and couldn't tell you if they touch on this particular topic, either... any followers know anything that might help anon out? ^_^
Was not wildly active on the forums however I can provide a few pieces of info
Initially there was some degree of push back due the pacing of the comic essentially resetting back to act 1 temporarily. The end of act flash for act 4 was wildly popular so there were lots of people remiss to not continue following the main cast. (Bonus info, the intermission was the same but much more. Lots of people assumed it was completely irrelevant material to the comic and posted their complaints)
There was however, a lot of excitement over naming. The audience had grown and many hadn't been there to try to name the beta kids so now was their chance. (Just before name reveals a suggestion box would be opened on the forums and every one would rush to put in suggestions based on the info we had up to that point) forumgoers prepared lists of name suggestions and by the time we got the last intros the suggestion box would only be open for a very short window
Lots of speculation occurred on the upcoming trolls, some tried to calculate what their personalities would be based on perceived patterns of things like, x character had 1/2 Dave personality 1/4th rose etc etc
In one of the troll intros (I think it's Karkat) there's reference to a movie that uses the words blue bloods which is slang for noble or aristocrat families. Fans speculated that in troll society blue blood was a literal thing, and Hussie created the entire blood cast system as a result
act 5 was actually the point that Andrew Hussie stopped posting on the forums and pulled back from the fandom and it was because of Troll Eyes.
Bet you thought I was just going to move on from that point, basically there were pages where the trolls were drawn dramatically and fans started commenting on the eye size. Which meant that in other normal pages they continued to start commenting things like 'ah yes troll eyes are normal on this page' or 'this is now 25% of normal'. Hussie got frustrated in a few comments and soon stopped posting altogether
Spoiler shield for Anon that's reading Homestuck for the first time, I discuss late act 5 stuff here
It was not immediately obvious at the time, but troll romance is what exploded the fandom. It didn't take long for every one to get really attached to the trolls that shared their zodiac and shipping discussion surged in the forum. Horrorstuck aka the meteor murderfest and consequent irrelevancimation of most of the troll cast hadn't happened yet, so there were tons of dedicated fans to every troll not just the stand outs we focus on today. I had a ton of friends who got into Homestuck for one specific troll, and a lot of them lost interest when they were killed off
Feferi breaking up with eridan was really funny in retrospect because we only had the signs that eridan was a loser and not as much concrete data. The forums split on Who Was The Asshole and there was a ton of sympathy for Eridan which evaporated once he started killing off characters
There was a perpetual Vriska Quarantine Discussion Thread to which all Vriska discussion had to be contained because every update discussion would inevitably devolve into how it affected the Vriska Situation even if she wasn't relevant to it at all
People got really fucking pissed when Vriska flew off to fight Jack and Jack just left to kill all the remaining trolls, posting things like 'why the hell did we spend 8 months on these guys'. Then we got the next update and saw that that was just a seer of mind vision. That sort of thing happened a lot, big controversy which then defused with later pages
[S]: Cascade had the biggest update pause to date and the forums were NOT used to that. We went totally wild waiting for the update, and when it finally happened there was a huge spoiler lock down so all discussion had to be contained to a single thread. Now, the update crashed the site (and Newgate I think) and so people rushed into that thread to see what to do... And a single reader who was a known contrarian posted every single spoiler in a quick easy to read list just to mess with people (things like all the kids going god tier, the green sun explosion / creation etc). Readers wanted their blood for this but the purpose of that thread was for spoilers so they weren't punished in any way
i’ve said my piece on the quality of the homestuck pilot. but if this HAS to be a thing, which i really don’t think it should, it DOES have the obligation to do something extremely funny. get through acts 1-5 in however many seasons it takes (please don’t make all that a single season), and then start the next season with act 6, making absolutely no reference to the rest of the show even existing. fuck you, new viewer. all the characters you care about are gone, and now you’re stuck with three assholes and also roxy. have fun for the next couple episodes
Know what i am gonna scream abt this because i feel like I'm losing my mind reading some of these takes
Like coming from someone who fucking hated haida last season i really feel like he did not deserve the shit that happens to him this season
Like yeah he starts out as sad and pathetic as last season but it honestly feels like through the season he's genuinely trying to better himself and find passion in what he's doing. He's not always in the right obviously but it really does not seem like the punishment fits the crime here.
(Which yes he is committing an actual crime, but from what i can tell it's actually not tax fraud. From what i can tell if they trying to commit tax fraud they would lower the numbers in order to receive more tax breaks, with them raising the numbers it was to trick investors. Which, boohoo poor billionaire investors i guess)
I dunno i just feel like this season spent way too long tryin to make me feel bad for ton, who abused his position of power over retsuko for all of season 1 and a good chunk of the other seasons. And trying to make haida out to be the bad guy when, after they get together, retsuko's kind of a really shitty girlfriend
Like after they get together and he becomes office manager it feels like she’s holding him to this really weird standard while also constantly blowing him off and lying abt where she actually was. Like the scene w tadano is really fucked because haida has every reason to be upset here, look at it from his perspective. Retsuko keeps turning down his offers to hang out, he doesn't know what she’s doing in that time, qnd then he finds her being driven home by an ex she was in a very serious relationship with, like he should have talked to retsuko and not tadano but that's still really suspicious and i genuinely don't blame him for being upset.
I dunno my thoughts are very scattered rn but this season really made me hate retsuko. I feel like this entire season was her just acting morally high and mighty both with her babyin ton (who, again, just reapt what he sowed by abusing his position of power) and trying to belittle haida as this terrible person when really what he did was probably the least scummy thing we've seen come out of the company, period
Again, might ne different if it was like tax fraud or something but we see no damage done from what haida's doing and if it is just to impress investors, it's billionaires throwing money at each other, i just don't care, show actual consequences if you want me to care
I know the writers can't very well just write off him commiting a crime, but i feel like the way the cast (especially retsuko) treats him even before he starts window dressing, just isn't reasonable
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