What Was Your First Upd8, and How Do You Feel Your Point of Entry Has Influenced Your View on the Comic?

[JakeMorph]

my first updates were aroooound the time dirk first started going all palpatine on aranea. i wanna say it was this page exactly that was either my first update or the last page i read before i caught up. this felt like a really big moment to me at the time, like it was the payoff for a load of buildup regarding calliope's description of the prince of heart's powers. i know we had already seen all of the beta kids' powers in action before then, but this definitely seemed to be new territory at the time, like it was the first time sburb powers stopped being flashy bashy superhero shit and started to be an esoteric thing of their own. which i think i still kind of believe now.

this was also a really short amount of time before we got hit with the gigapause, which i guess mostly just meant i wasnt affected by it all that much? by the time the pauses were really over i had spent most of my life waiting for homestuck to update rather than actively reading it, so homestuck was just "the comic you waited to update" to me.

that's also why i was pretty incredulous about the game over retcon when it happened. people who were in the comic discussion threads on the old forums would know i flat out refused to believe that game over would be retconned with the house power. i was pretty much advocating that they just pass the ring around from dead person to dead person like the blunt until everyone was back. since i was basically caught up to the comic AS the pause came into effect that was essentially "the way homestuck was" to me and the idea that andrew would just do it all over basically seemed to me like he was undoing the entire comic i knew.

i don't mind it so much anymore. i understand what it did for the narrative. my main gripe became and remains the way vriska was shoved back into the story of the living when i was really starting to enjoy the character she was becoming as a ghost.

this is like the third time since ive joined that my post has been the start of a new page! how embarassing

[Placeholder4abn]

Man I started reading mid-Gigapause, like almost exactly 6 months in. Which meant my first upd8 was Caliborns' Gift to the Yaois. And my second was GAME OVER. It was sort of insane reading the entire backlog in 3 1/2 months, waiting 2 more months, then having everyone up and DIE.

But I was honestly just fistpumping my way through it excited to see whatever was coming next as it happened. I think that's part of why I have the outlook I do about Homestuck. I know its gonna work out. Like bad shit will happen to my characters. They may not all make it. But I don't really mind that because I trust that the story always has and always will EARN whatever outcome it ushers in. I just put some faith in the Hussman and his team and don't even hope for the best. I let myself know itll come out amazing.

Anybody else I might be pissed at for killing off the whole cast in a single day then retconning it, but Hussie found a way to do it with style and grace and befitting the characters without completely writing off the sacrifice they had made losing the versions of their friends they had spent the last few years with.

[KnightOfRage413]

I fully read the comic and caught up and then 3 days later [S] Game Over came out. Boy was my 14 year old self shook. But yeah no, I've definitely noticed that when you read Homestuck, along with how old you were when you first read it, really influences your feelings on things. For example, I've noticed it tends to be older Homestucks like myself that have much more distaste for the Epilogues and what they did to the characters, while the newer/younger ones tend to like the Epilogues a lot. It's absolutely wild. You also get a lot more divides in headcanons about characters and ships, and just general opinions about certain characters can be radically different.

[RoyalFiddle]

Dunno about that bud I was in high school when I got into Homestuck, got in around the same time as you and I love the epilogues

[BrobyDDark]

I began reading Homestuck in middle school due to peer-pressure. I think my first update came after months of waiting? Maybe during one of many pauses, possibly the first or second pause.

It was still in Act 6. I was loving it at that point 'cause I was a middle schooler.

Then the rest of Act 6 came.

[pfeffer-29]

I am an archival reader.

I remember vividly that while reading Hivebent for the first time, I was frustrated with the lack of downtime between introduction of new characters. I didn't learn all their names until the around the Beforus flash. The format probably worked when Homestuck was still updating and each new troll's name would be impressed into one's brain by the fandom. But I read it in the summer of 2018.

I hate the retcon with a burning passion. I was indifferent to it on the first reading (perhaps disappointed, but not angry), but the more I thought about it and the more I read it, the worse it became. The people we see having feelings jams on the frog portal are not the characters we've spent 7500 pages with. Hussie substituted in-story and IRL years of character development with a two-minute flash. Couldn't John have zapped to the characters seconds before they died and brought them to a new timeline, or stolen the ring from Aranea before she had a chance to do anything stupid? The retcon powers are a plot device anyway; why not use them in a way that doesn't erase the characters we know and love? Hussie could have done anything with them, and he chose the Retcon.

I feel like I can't talk about the Epilogues as a whole because the quality so wildly varies from Candy to Meat. Candy is at least tolerable to read, and I found some its relationships sweet. I had to force myself to keep reading Meat. When I finished it, I seriously considered leaving Homestuck for a while.

I think Homestuck^2 is mediocre in terms of writing so far. However, it has blatantly belittled fans like me who didn't like Act 6/the Epilogues (I made a post analyzing it: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=331&p=6603#p6603), and its updates have been piddling for a monthly series. At least the art's good!

[therealdjpocky]

When I joined the Homestuck fandom in 2012, Openbound had just begun. The newest characters everyone was talking about were Porrim and Kankri. I feel like that influenced me regarding how much I still care about the dancestors and Beforus to this day. I didn't catch up fully until the comic was almost over, if I recall correctly.

Personally I didn't like the retcon. It happened for a reason, I understand, but there were many positive things that happened pre-retcon that got essentially erased when the timeline was fixed. I will admit, a lot of my bias came from the disappearance of Erisolsprite at the time. He was proof that if Eridan had a second chance, he wanted to redeem himself.

I have not finished the epilogues, nor have I been reading HS^2, but I'm aware of the controversy of their intertwinement and its effect on the narrative, as well as how people have cited that the epilogues were introduced as "optional" reading. But when you think about it, so is HS^2. Some others in this thread have noted Cascade and Game Over as good ending points for the comic. As readers, we can curate our own experiences if the current content is not what we were expecting, nor what we wanted. But personally I'm pretty neutral in that regard.

[Crpal]

Like right before Collide. I remember catching up and just as the comic was ending getting to see it update as opposed to archivally. In a lot of ways reading through most of HS archivally led me to two things: Holy shit Act 6 has so much unneccessary padding at points and A6A6I5 is just so obnoxious to read altogether because it loads you down with SO MANY CONVERSATIONS that honestly could've been dispersed earlier throughout HS. I think I have a much more positive opinion on the Alpha kids than a lot of other readers due to the fact that wading through drama was way quicker.

[Bahinchut]

My first update was the caliborn shit just before Game Over. It taught me never to expect what I wanted, since I thought that big graph showing where all the characters were would expand to Union Jack and Slick but instead caliborn monologues for a while (admittedly in one of his funniest segments) and then a load of kids die. I expected some grand shift in the story after game over, but i was sorely disappointed

[Joyfulldreams]

My first update was, hilariously, Davepeta being created. Like, a few weeks before the start of the Omegapause, summer of 2015. People were real mad about Davesprite being merged with a cat girl and I hadn't had time to grow overly attached to Davesprite as a character, so I didn't really care?

I started reading, though, because my little sister had started reading Homestuck before me (I'm not entirely sure why she did) and she practically begged me for months to read it too so she could have somebody to talk about it with. I refused on principle, because during Homestuck's height of popularity in 2012-2013 I was deep in a different fandom and had many friends who were Homestucks. At their urging, I tried to read it once or twice, but got very confused in the first 10 pages because of how all my Homestuck friends were very very bad at actually explaining what it was. Would you fucking believe one of my friends thought they could just shove [S] Jade: Wake Up in my face with zero context, followed by [S] Karkat: Have A Mental Breakdown, and then expected me to be like "WOW, HOMESTUCK SEEMS SO COOL AND INTERESTING, I WANT TO READ IT NOW"? I swore off the whole thing for the majority of 2013-2014 and pretty much forgot about it save for the occassional freak out the fandom would have on Tumblr, which would somehow trip down into my dashboard and I'd not have a clue or care what anyone was freaking out over.

BUT....I love my little sister, and as such I suffered through Acts 1-3 while still acclimating to it's particular brand of storytelling and humor, JUST for her. It wasn't until Act 4 that I actually found anything that made me feel a real Emotion other than utter confusion. Of course, I love Acts 1-3 now, because I can actually understand it, but boy was it a slog to read through the first time, hahaha.

The hilarious thing is, despite the fact that my sister only started and finished reading maybe a month before me, SHE WAS really attached to Davesprite as a character and was really, really pissed off by Davepeta existing.

As for everything else, though....

I find myself mostly indifferent to the Retcon. On the one hand, it might have actually been the part of the comic that most felt like an actual mind-blowing and emotional revelation. I actually cry every time I watch the Pipeorgankind flash? My feelings on the impact for the story aside, the pacing and at the very least the REVEAL of the Retcon is, in my opinion, a masterfully crafted bit of storytelling. However, I could totally get how if it was drip-fed to you in bits and pieces, it wouldn't feel like that as much. My feelings toward the retcon end up net neutral though, because just like I despise the epilogues for using some bullshit timeskip as an excuse to throw character consistency out the window and do whatever the fuck they want without having to actually show it, using Vriskagram in the place of actually going into any detail about how these characters are the same or different from the ones in the previous timeline is kind of bullshit. It's not near as bad as the epilogues, though, and for the most part the characters didn't change so fundamentally that it was that hard to swallow. And I actually really appreciated how seeing these slightly different, but mostly similar, versions of the characters opened up some of my favorite emotional moments in the damn comic, namely the Dirk/Dave convo at the end. But everything that happened to Jade was bullshit, oh my god, Jade deserved so much better. Also Jane deserved so much better.

I didn't like that Vriska was there, and just steamrolled over everyone with her presence, acting just as bullshit as she did before and having all the consequences for her actions pretty much stripped away. And not because I hate her, but because it's just...not great for the story, god. Or her. I also can appreciate how the specific way in which the epilogues happened were directly a part of Terezi's own character arc, which worked out pretty well IMHO. Also after thinking about Homestuck more deeply for a long time, I can now appreciate the fact that it wasn't like the retcon actually completely erased the pre-retcon versions of those characters to the point that they were never important. It allowed us to see the potential of those characters when put in horrible circumstances, and we learned things about them we could have never known if things hadn't gone irreparably to shit. Not good however that many of those things are never actually addressed seriously, or in any meaningful way!

I fucking despise the epilogues and haven't been quiet about it.

I am also an intense DirkJake shipper, and have not been quiet about that either. In fact, during the omegapause DirkJake was what kept me friggin invested in Homestuck, for the most part. Dirk and Jake are pretty much my favorite characters.....

[Brandibee]

I have perspectives from both update and archival reading.

My first brush with Homestuck was right after Jack: Ascend. I don't remember exactly when I caught up because I stopped and started a few times before reaching concurrency (also this was a full decade ago so give me a break). My thoughts during the time were: Acts 1-3 are hilarious, fantastic and set up the pieces to culminate in Act 4. Act 4 blew me away and Descend still ranks as one of the top moments in the series to me. Even still, Act 5 barely eked it's way out to being my favorite of them all. Then after the insane high point that was Cascade, Act 6 seemed to sputter and slow the action to a crawl.

The beginning of Act 6 was posited as, 'Hey lets do this aside to look at the Alphas real quick.' but "quick" was... over a real-life year. Maybe longer? At first it was fine, but as time stretched on, every new development in the Alpha story just reminded me of how long it had been and how much I missed the Betas. It felt like I was on the meteor journey myself! Unable to see the people I really care about for so long, knowing that they must be developing as people and growing up, but separated by a narrative wall.

So like many, when they finally arrived in the Alpha session, I fell right back into that update fervor. Finally! We could get back to building up toward the end. No more intermissions, no more asides. Here we GO. And then.... Game Over happened. It felt like a slap to the face. 'PYSCHE! More asides, we're not done with 'em yet! Also lets watch all of the characters you've been dying to see, die themselves!' I remained disillusioned during the whole retcon sequence and it's aftermath due to this, not due to the concept itself. I was, and remain fine with the idea of intranarrative retcons. From that flash on, bits and pieces of the ensuing story piqued my interest, but I had essentially checked out from caring like I had before. I would never get that invested again. Sure, I'd finish the series because shit, it'd been six goddamn years by that point, and it was a huge part of my life- but even Collide couldn't make me feel much. All of that being said... I'm not saying Game Over is a horrible, terrible flash. It's just the combination of waiting for so many hundreds of days just to be slapped out of left field with such a downer twist that really did me in.

Now, after coming back and rereading, my opinion 180ed on quite a few of the above points.

I had been disconnected from the fandom for around 4/5 or so years. Long enough to feel like I could give it another go. I remembered that Andrew had once said that he was writing Homestuck for the archival reader, so I wanted to put that to the test. I finished rereading THE DAY before HS^2 was announced (and felt like I was losing my mind like, what the fuck are the chances????).

I was pleased to find, that's exactly the case. All my feelings for Acts 1-5 remained the same. But Act 6 and it's many intermissions don't seem near as long when they're not coming out piece by piece, day by day. The Alphas story has a lot to cover, but felt just the opposite of a slog to me this time around. Like a movie on fast forward, playing just the most crucial scenes before jumping right back into the fray. It's kind of insane how much my opinion changed. Game Over still has a punch to it, but it's not devastating like it was back then, because the next pages are right there. The build up to the REAL final fight/Collide feels more natural and deserved. I'd say a good half of the complaints I had from my first time around were quashed with the second.

As much as I wouldn't trade being part of the hype real-time for so many years, I think that as a whole, Homestuck holds up better as an archivally read story.

[LudicrousFalcon]

I started reading Homestuck exactly 1 year after it ended, although I've had brushes with it in 2012. The first time I read it, I remember being really excited for [s] cascade, and all of the stuff that went down in it. As much as I like to shit on act 6, there are actually quite a few good points in it, such as the end of A6I1 flash (which has kickass music btw), I also liked the whole sub arc of the Condesce's water apocalypse, and even openbound was fun despite it having little relevance to the main story. On the flip side, I remember being unhappy when the retcon happened, and even though I appreciate the art & effort that went into Vriskagram, I still think it's one of the worst flashes in the comic. Late act 6 was also kind of boring IMO, because the pesterlogs were super long and I wasn't as invested at this point. At one point you could even choose the order of who's conversation to read through, and I remember being like "uuuugggh" lol. Finally, we reach the end of the comic, and I have mixed feelings of it. [S] Collide was a kickass flash, that while not as good as collide, still had some great music, art and action. My first time viewing [s] act 7, I remember at the end thinking "that's it?" and I even felt a bit sad not knowing what happens to some of the characters. The credits snapchats helped tie up a few things, but overall, I was still left thinking Homestuck was incomplete.

Fast forward 2 years, and I've reread Homestuck, and I am now currently watching the Voxus let's read, and Revscarecrow's reading of Homestuck when those release. I've grown more fond of acts 1-4, to the point now that I'd consider Act 3, The Intermission, Act 4 and A5A2 my favorite parts of the comic. The epilogues dropped, and they wrapped up a lot of the questions I had after Act 7, but at the price of making a bunch of new problems (as well as corrupting characters like Jade). I like the interactive choice between meat and candy, and they were still entertaining to read despite it (IMO) tearing down all that Homestuck stood for. Candy had me going "Y I K E S" a few times, that's for sure. Now we also have Homestuck^2, and I'm interested to see where it goes, but as of now it feels like a spinoff that's gonna be something new entirely.

I've grown fond of fanworks (including my own lol), as they hold the potential to build different outcomes for our characters (fancomics like Act Omega, Act 8 and TLCstuck: double death of the author). MSPFA is my main "hangout spot" in the HS community, and I love seeing all the creative ideas that come about there (not to mention all the original, non-HS comics that are there too!).

I think if I read it earlier, I'd dislike Act 7 and the retcon even more. There's a chance I would've been an act 1 purist :P

[thorondraco]

As a major late comer, my first one was literally t he first Homestuck^2 update. Was pretty exciting to see this shit come back to life like a year or two after i got into it.

[PilotBlackSmith]

I first tried to read Homestuck before around the time act 6 was coming out but I don't remember the exact page or point in the story, I only remember that I tried to read it but I gave up when I got to the first page with Karkat.

Then recently, around midway through this year someone from /v/(the 4chan video game board) made a thread for people to play overseer 2 together and I decided to give it a second try and at that point the whole comic was arealdy over and Pesterquest was about to get an announcement.
I read the whole thing in like 5 days and I tought it was alright, I didn't hate act 6 at all until I REALLY looked at it. And then a day later I read the entire epilogues in a single take and proceeded to hate Homestuck forever.

[Guy-Rocketram]

None. I finished the comic this april.

Im kind of similar to that.
my first time reading HS was in 2016, and i was technically around when the credits dropped, but i stopped reading halfway through. the exact page was the one where karkat says 'YOUVE CREATED AN UNBEATABLE BOSS!" i found the failure of the creation of bec noir so painful i couldn't read it anymore.
i read it again in the summer of 2018

[calamityCons]

I totally get what you mean about the pain of finding out how big of a shit got dumped in the bed when Vriska made John fall asleep and caused Bec Noir to happen. That was a really horrible thing and it made me lose all sympathy for Vriska going forward.

I wonder what encouraged you to read it again at 2018?

[hailvera]

So I actually read through the entire comic this summer, after my boyfriend goaded me into reading it after years of protest.

I think being able to read it all together as a finished thing probably helped my enjoyment, especially during Act 6. I know general opinion of Act 6 is a bit wishy-washy compared to 1-5, but I think being able to experience it all connected without having to deal with stuff like the gigapause made me appreciate it more.

[Alt-Universe Wash]

I'm probably in the minority here, but my first exposure to actually reading Homestuck (as opposed to just kinda hearing about it - the years where it was first being released were weird and awful for me, so I have a weird kind of cultural blip where stuff is "new to me" from about 2011-2015) was a few months ago. Interestingly, what got me into it was seeing an MEP video on YouTube and thinking "oh, who are these neat looking characters?" and that's just how things start for me! I read through all the main comic, skimmed bits of the epilogue, and spent an unhealthy amount of time reading through the Wiki. Then I went and read a bunch of fanfic because that's just what you do!

So Homestuck^2 is the first bit where I'm actually waiting on updates.

I don't know if it's my perspective from where I came in or just my personality, but I felt like Homestuck got progressively stronger as it progressed. I really engaged with a few of the characters, so seeing them develop and evolve was really fulfilling to me.