I love the Epilogues in a funny fucked up way at release but didn’t really care for the thought of them having a continuation- in a sense they *did* kill my love for Homestuck . There was this certain connection to the stakes and setting I had back in the day that I just… don’t have anymore.

When HS2 started full disclosure jeered from the sidelines because I kinda didn’t give a shit anymore and found the thought of Homestuck becoming this long running Marvel/DC foreverstory with the same few lame teenagers and their CW drama nauseating, and when that burned out I stepped back altogether.

I hate to repeat the choir but right now all of my love for Homestuck is either from the fandom or from that distanced “yeah this is well constructed” artistic analysis angle. And it does kinda suck growing into one of those guys all of a sudden. But if I *can* add anything,

I’d recommend original fanwork tbh. OC sburbventures, maybe, or outright original works using the MSPA format. Because despite myself I do agree, canon has such loadbearing influence on how fandom discussion goes that I can’t really bring myself to take even the best fanon take as “realer” than the character themselves. I love Theatre of Coolty and Jaderoute because of how they expand on the characters and themes established in Homestuck and the Postcanon era, and despite the very different turns a work like Burning Down The House Takes I find it too runs off much the same logic. I could never imagine falling in love with an AltKarkat or an AltJade as much as I could with the Karkat and Jade from the Homestuck I read when I was 14, and I just kinda gotta live with that. Le shrug.

But when I hop on Autopraxis or Sburb.EXE or Bilious or Oceanfalls or Suburban Slasher I find myself falling in love with an all new cast with all these new spins and takes on this setting and brave new medium that I love, and that is the love that propels me to still engage with Homestuck to this day.

(That said- I do know from secondhand experience that people in your particular position often DO need to experience some of the secondhand catharsis of seeing Homestuck resolve in a satisfying way before they can lay their feelings down to rest. I think the first stretch of the Meat Epilogue did this for me funnily enough but I know friends who have gotten this from Karkat Goes To A Convention and the Crow Strider AU. No, they aren’t “real”, but they have as far as I can tell some sort of supernatural power over people that breaks whatever spell of disillusionment the intense antinarrative biden blast of A66I5 + A7 + Epilogues does to most readers)