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It's still just re-runs, right?
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Feb 1, 2022 15:10
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Antigravitas posted:It's still just re-runs, right? Yeah. Which is what makes people sticking around a bit more wild to me.
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Feb 1, 2022 15:59
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I took last year off due to mega burnout but Doomsday, My Dear is updating twice a week again. 
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Feb 2, 2022 01:20
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I re-read Girls With Slingshots (well, most of it consisted of the chaser, which is the entire comic re-done in colour), and it's as good as I remember it.
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Feb 5, 2022 22:54
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https://twitter.com/DanSchkade/status/1483745491116560386?s=20&t=pK5rEjUKQkvH-nWMltbJ5Q short one-off!
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Feb 6, 2022 07:02
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Synthbuttrange posted:https://twitter.com/DanSchkade/status/1483745491116560386?s=20&t=pK5rEjUKQkvH-nWMltbJ5Q This is great. I love this so loving much.
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Feb 6, 2022 12:27
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Ok, time to find the other stuff this fella does and read it, that was excellent. Fuckin' super detectives! e: After 6 episodes of Lavender Jack, I can say that it bops. Extremely excited for Madame Detective Ferrier and Lavender Jack facing off, I have to imagine that Ferrier ends up siding with our good vigilante. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Feb 6, 2022 |
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Feb 6, 2022 17:59
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If I have a subjective and kind of indirect question about Homestuck, should I ask it here or resurrect the thread that hasn't seen action since November I feel like both are wrong answers but I need it
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Feb 7, 2022 06:57
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I'd say 'don't even bother' but now that you've started you can probably just ask here
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Feb 7, 2022 07:03
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Never Satisfied: Holy poo poo, Rin's going for the throat.
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Feb 7, 2022 11:36
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So John Allison is posting a new Giant Days comic on this website. I'm actually going to be posting it in the newspaper comic strip thread.
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Feb 7, 2022 12:55
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The_Other posted:So John Allison is posting a new Giant Days comic on this website. I'm actually going to be posting it in the newspaper comic strip thread. Giant Days is an extremely good slice of life comic (with only slightly exaggerated elements) and I'm extremely glad to see Daisy, Susan, and Esther again 
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Feb 7, 2022 16:29
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Lunatic Sledge posted:If I have a subjective and kind of indirect question about Homestuck, should I ask it here or resurrect the thread that hasn't seen action since November Asking if you can ask a question is almost never a better idea than just asking the question in the first place, you're not going to get banned or something for asking a webcomic question in a webcomic thread.
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Feb 7, 2022 19:56
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Mafic Rhyolite posted:Asking if you can ask a question is almost never a better idea than just asking the question in the first place, you're not going to get banned or something for asking a webcomic question in a webcomic thread. challenge accepted So, my question is for anybody that got into Homestuck, for any length of time: how did it initially grab your attention? I'm not asking what really held you in (if it ever did), or what you felt was good about it--I mean at the absolute surface, how did it catch your eye? Where did you find it? What convinced you to try it? What was the hook? I know the obvious answers are either going to be "well everybody kept talking about it" or "there was nothing like it at the time," but I have to believe there's more to it than cultural inertia and novelty factor. What did the sign say that convinced you to turn left, how did it get you to read it long enough to start giving a poo poo Lunatic Sledge fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 01:25
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I really liked Problem Sleuth, and when it wrapped up Hussie started this strange, ambitious new project...
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Feb 8, 2022 01:29
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I loved Problem Sleuth, and Homestuck was the next thing by the same author  Then, I stopped reading Homestuck around the end of act 5, I think? If you're reading it and not digging it, it will change what it is completely a couple of times, so just keep at it, I guess. Or stop, it's probably not worth it.
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Feb 8, 2022 01:35
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shirts and skins posted:I really liked Problem Sleuth, and when it wrapped up Hussie started this strange, ambitious new project... Same, but I bounced off during the prologue. It was such a slow burn establishing poo poo I couldn't keep caring.
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Feb 8, 2022 01:41
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If you're interested in lots and lots of context for how and why Homestuck became such a big deal, there's a really interesting podcast from the Ranged Touch guys called Homestuck Made This World. Including historical archive-diving of the thread on this very forum (since the official forums are gone forever).
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Feb 8, 2022 01:43
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Begemot posted:If you're interested in lots and lots of context for how and why Homestuck became such a big deal, there's a really interesting podcast from the Ranged Touch guys called Homestuck Made This World. Including historical archive-diving of the thread on this very forum (since the official forums are gone forever). Without getting into a huge personal spiel, I'm less looking for historical context and more for some esoteric key to selling a thing shaped vaguely like Homestuck--something that lacks the specific appeals of a webcomic, or weblit, or a game, but is also arguably all those things. Like, on an internet where discussion and sharing is increasingly categorized into subreddits, hashtags and genres, how does something that defies attempts to categorize it* build its audience? *I've seen at least one youtuber describe Homestuck as a Homestuck-like, which did not help edit: To be clearer, I am absolutely trying to distill the beginnings of a massive internet phenomenon into some kind of crude "secret sauce," like an idiot Lunatic Sledge fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 01:58
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Lunatic Sledge posted:challenge accepted I dunno that this is going to be the best place to ask, these forums skew older and a lot of the Homestuck readers here got in early before Homestuck exploded. The initial appeal came from the clever use of videogame idioms and general absurdity, which was quickly mixed with a sense of wonder and mystery. But that stopped being the focus like... less than 10% of Homestuck's run. It never really went away, but it's not what most people know Homestuck for in the past 10 years.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:07
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Lunatic Sledge posted:Without getting into a huge personal spiel, I'm less looking for historical context and more for some esoteric secret to selling a thing shaped vaguely like Homestuck--something that lacks the specific appeals of a webcomic, or weblit, or a game, but is also arguably all those things. Like, on an internet where discussion and sharing is increasingly categorized into subreddits, hashtags and genres, how does something that defies attempts to categorize it* build its audience? trolls I read Problem Sleuth while it was going and stuck around for Homestuck. But Homestuck exploded as the trolls became popular.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:07
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My gut says launching when people were shifting from niche forums to things like Twitter and Tumblr probably helped get the snowball rolling with introducing it to new readers, but I have no way to really prove that.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:10
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Lunatic Sledge posted:challenge accepted I clicked a link to Problem Sleuth on xkcdsucks.com, binged that, and then caught up to Homestuck before Act 2 finished. I went in with no expectations, clicked with its sense of humor almost immediately, and was very interested to see what new directions the comic would take. I have no idea if I would have gotten on board if I'd heard about it when it really took off and became a phenomenon, but it's possible if I was clued in to the right spoiler or someone emphasized its experimental nature.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:13
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It was also something of a CYOA right before and then during the peak moments when that was popular, but before everyone and their sister was doing one.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:16
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The Problem Sleuth to Homestuck Pipeline is real. I stuck around and read until the end. I didn't touch the epilogues and looked at 'homestuck 2' exactly one time. It was exciting how experimental it was and i forgave the multiple momentum killing hiatuses because when it wasn't on hiatus the pace of content was insane. The music and animations were cool. It got overtaken by its own absurd complexity pretty quickly and the joke was that it never stopped getting more complex. I don't remember who half the characters are anymore let alone their alternate versions. I like the ending where a lot of people weren't satisfied, thinking back on it i think i was mainly just happy it was over, something so sprawling didn't need a perfect ending it just had to stop at some point was my feeling i guess. A nice animated send off and a joke about finally becoming an anime, it felt right to say goodbye to homestuck, who cares if they never killed Richard Garriott on screen or whatever.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:26
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My brother linked me one of the Homestuck flash videos completely without context (Jade: Retrieve Package) (He has a pretty good track record for knowing what I will or will not vibe with) and I immediately had to start reading to figure out what the gently caress was happening in that video. So that was the hook, and with that it was pretty easy for me to be pulled in by the dialogue, weird meta-story poo poo, music, weird references to text adventure games, the story, the whole package was just 'poo poo YggiDee likes' and then I found the Homestuck thread here on SA and now I have this avatar until I die I guess.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:28
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There's a lot of stuff that went into the sauce but I think a lot of it is just being written by a veteran online troll with his finger on the pulse of internet culture and an insane workaholic schedule. The man lived online and he knew what made his fellow internet dwellers tick, and reveled in pushing their buttons.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:49
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Lunatic Sledge posted:challenge accepted I read part of Problem Sleuth, while it was still going on at some point in the past, and decided to go back and reread it in early April of 2009, and read it all the way to the end, and Hey, something new was starting up. It hit at a point in my life when a slouch into disaster tuned into a slight uptick, and it updated frequently. (Even with the hiatuses, it was still cumulatively averaging more than three updates a day in 2017.) But really, the big thing was the SA forum thread. I can't say what other MSPA online communities were like, I didn't really go looking for any of them. But without the forum thread's discussions and the comic making me decide to learn how to use an RSS reader, I'd probably have fallen off it much earlier than I did. I read live up until the ending, and haven't proceeded to the epilogues. It's kind of like generic weekday afternoon syndicated cartoons to me: I remember more of the feeling of reading it at the time, and some of the theme songs, rather than actually reading it, and going back to read it again will probably only serve to sharpen specific disappointments. Honestly, I think my enjoyment of it was more about enjoying that other people enjoyed it. It certainly would explain why I listen to so many TV show and comic recap podcasts now.
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Feb 8, 2022 02:51
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I actually found Problem Sleuth after it had finished, so it was pretty easy to jump right onto Homestuck. I stuck for a while, but as the pesterlogs grew, I started to just skim instead of wading all the way through, and then I started skipping. I didn't find the chat writing that fun or interesting to make it worth the time investment (and translation effort), and I quit. There's better forms of prose to read if I want that, I don't wanna get into light novels caught between worlds. By the point I dropped off fully, everything had gotten very weird, both with the story wildly jumping focus, troll society (and sex), and just the general style. With all that weirdness, I can sorta see how people could get hooked by the uniqueness, but I sure wasn't. Somebody I knew was even really broken up about the troll deaths.
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Feb 8, 2022 04:18
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I was reading a lot of TVTropes at the time and it ended up hooking me while Act 5 was somewhere underway, I feel like it was after 5.1 stopped but it was definitely before The Big Walkaround Flash where all of the Trolls had clearly defined VN-style pixel profiles, I was around for that dropping live. I ended up reading Problem Sleuth when I caught up with Homestuck at the time and binged a bunch of other stuff and kind of just talked about it a lot with my friends and incorporated a lot of turns of phrase into my lexicon. Like to be real the biggest thing that hooked me was both the quality of writing, the banter and patter and eye/ear for voices between everyone, and the drama and character interactions between everyone in the cast that helped make those words possible. The logs were predominantly why I was there and why I followed along, that and the fan art and flashes and anything that was a dialogue to my brain pipeline. And then the two year hiatus happened and it was originally supposed to be one year. Or however the gently caress that shook out, the Big Pause that happened during Act 6 and the Cherubs had already been introduced, that one. See I could hold a lot of stuff in my head, a lot of character dynamics and ships and pairings and plot beats at least on the grand scale of things. Two years of hiatus does poo poo to one's recollection of things, which is to say muddies the waters heavily. When it picked back up I was happy and followed along, and then followed along missing details and not remembering things, and then basically followed along out of inertia until I realized "I don't know what the gently caress is going on anymore and this thing is too loving big for me to go back to the beginning and refresh things, and the Wiki doesn't even help". That's how it lost me, the fact that it became too big to hold on to for too long without any support and updates and frankly I just didn't care anymore, and then it ended and I know the broad strokes but also don't care. And seconding the recommendation for Homestuck Made This World, I'm enjoying it quite a lot because it helps contextualize and ground the comic in time and criticize Hussie as an author and planner because man there's a lot of stuff that just sucks due to being relics of past culture and I just don't want to put any of that directly into my brain anymore y'know? I sincerely think one should not ever want to have what happened to Homestuck happen to anything they make, nor should one be the one controlling something like Homestuck and being responsible for it. It sounds like an enormous pain in the rear end that people will judge you for forever, especially if you handle things poorly. Success and an audience, sure. To be so big as to shape a chunk of culture forever, gently caress no. If you really want to basically the podcast boils things down to 'ease people into Shipping and Drama while also providing something for free that updates constantly, also be very noncommittal about making anything concrete so the line is unclear whether or not the fans are influencing the work, and also make things easily identifiable and relatable and marketable and replicable', and doing this for the purposes of being successful sounds it would invite incalculable trouble and problems and make you unhappy. Vox Valentine fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 04:42
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the holy poopacy posted:There's a lot of stuff that went into the sauce but I think a lot of it is just being written by a veteran online troll with his finger on the pulse of internet culture and an insane workaholic schedule. The man lived online and he knew what made his fellow internet dwellers tick, and reveled in pushing their buttons. An insane workrate and also genuinely funny, in a very weird and unique way. Everyone remembers the comic bogging down into a giant mess, but there's a reason it was a smash hit. When Homestuck was young there was legitimately nothing like it. Weird, CYOA, mysterious video game stuff, and then you'd see that [s] and the loading screen and...wow. Some moments that I still remember clearly.
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Feb 8, 2022 04:43
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Oh yeah, Homestuck had some really funny bits and good writing early on. And probably later on too, but there was no way I was gonna slog through all those gigantic chat logs, with all the different typing gimmicks. It also had a lot of extremely convoluted things going on that basically required a big community effort to untangle and keep track of. A large part of act 5 is just jumping forward and backward in time to different snapshots of events and it's up to you to figure out to put it together. Time travel and communicating forward and backward in time and characters from doomed timelines and alternate dimensions, all going in the same story. It was a mess, I can't imagine going through it without some sort of reference material, like a wiki.
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Feb 8, 2022 04:56
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Lunatic Sledge posted:challenge accepted I was there like 2 months into Problem Sleuth lol. Homestuck didn't have to catch my attention I was already caught.
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Feb 8, 2022 05:08
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I was yet another Problem Sleuth carryover, and in fact was the second person to post a suggestion for homestuck's main character's name when the first panel of that appeared. I only stuck with it through the first three acts (and since each act was something like double or more the length of the previous, I think I barely scratched the surface) but for a while I really enjoyed it for the same reasons I enjoyed Problem Sleuth: goofy jokes, ad-libbed game mechanics building on one another, being unlike anything else out there. If you're looking to diagnose Homestuck's breakaway success, we're definitely the wrong group to ask. My impression at the time was that the huge wave of immigrants to the mspa forums were coming from deviantart, so I think it really exploded when the troll characters caught on there. If I were you, I'd try to find a group of people who were on deviantart in 2011. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 05:13
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I was on the same forums as Hussie when he started up doing these dumb cyoas
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Feb 8, 2022 05:16
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Back when I was on Tumblr regularly, fanart and text posts and all sorts of things exploded all across my dashboard thanks to being right in the middle of Hivebound. Between that and my brother's recommendation, I decided to see what all the fuss was about, and then stuck through all the way until the epilogues, at which point I was checked out because the ending felt like such a ball drop after the horrendous grind of Act 6 (Act 6 Act 3 etc. etc.) seemingly tying all the threads together and building up to a big grand finale. I'll probably reread Homestuck at some point, but in my heart, [S] Cascade is the real finale, and I may stop there. Edit: My Homestuck hot take is that the story should've ended with the hilarious, ruthless anticlimax of Lord English getting obliterated by an Inappropriate Time for Ham reference. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Feb 8, 2022 |
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Feb 8, 2022 05:30
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I wasn't sure how to feel about the ending after I first read it, and then after I read the unofficial collection, until I found an alternate, fan-made ending and realized it was written in a much more satisfying way. It's also the main reason I'll probably never read the epilogues and Homestuck^2.
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Feb 8, 2022 11:14
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Lunatic Sledge posted:So, my question is for anybody that got into Homestuck, for any length of time: how did it initially grab your attention? I'm not asking what really held you in (if it ever did), or what you felt was good about it--I mean at the absolute surface, how did it catch your eye? Where did you find it? What convinced you to try it? What was the hook? I don't know that there's really a trick to it, honestly. I'm yet another fan who started with Problem Sleuth, but that just kicks the can down the road to "How did Problem Sleuth grab your attention", and the answer is exactly the same way any other webcomic I read did - another webcomic linked to it. But that ecosystem of small bespoke websites with a bunch of links and their own forums is gone, so a modern webcomic can't gain steam the same way. There might be a case that part of Homestuck's success was a result of being in the right place at the right time, starting early enough to build a fanbase on the back of word of mouth but running long enough to take advantage of how social media centralized most online interactions and turned attention into more of a rich get richer, winner take all deal. But I don't know if that actually stands up to scrutiny, it hard to quantify how popularity works.
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Feb 8, 2022 16:48
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SlothfulCobra posted:I actually found Problem Sleuth after it had finished, so it was pretty easy to jump right onto Homestuck. I stuck for a while, but as the pesterlogs grew, I started to just skim instead of wading all the way through, and then I started skipping. I didn't find the chat writing that fun or interesting to make it worth the time investment (and translation effort), and I quit. There's better forms of prose to read if I want that, I don't wanna get into light novels caught between worlds. This pretty much exactly describes my experience with it as well. I got into it because someone linked me to MSPA I found Problem Sleuth entertaining enough to check out his new "Homestuck" thing; I got out of it when it became less of an ambitious multimedia webcomic project about time travel and nested worlds and more about an alternate reality bash.org where everyone has a really irritating gimmick.
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Feb 8, 2022 18:18
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Snake Maze posted:I don't know that there's really a trick to it, honestly. I'm yet another fan who started with Problem Sleuth, but that just kicks the can down the road to "How did Problem Sleuth grab your attention", and the answer is exactly the same way any other webcomic I read did - another webcomic linked to it. But that ecosystem of small bespoke websites with a bunch of links and their own forums is gone, so a modern webcomic can't gain steam the same way. This about sums up my conclusion prior to posing the question, actually. ...And after posing the question, I guess Thank you everyone for your time and thoughtful responses, and consider PMing me if you own a time machine
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Feb 8, 2022 22:17
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