the story based on my personal observation is that it has a lot to do with Homestuck fandom being intrinsically tied up in Tumblr and the culture of Tumblr - or rather, the fact that the fandom used to be tied up in Tumblr culture and isn't, anymore.

there was a stretch of some years not so long ago where Homestuck was "irredeemable media", and though it may be hard for some to believe it now there was also a stretch of time where quite a lot of people took the concept of "irredeemable media" quite a bit seriously. I don't think it's an embellishment to say this did a number on a large swathe of Homestuck's legacy audience, and this mass exodus of ""Woke Homestucks"" (to phrase things clumsily) left a huge cultural vacuum to be filled when Homestuck started being relevant to people's lives again. unfortunately for everyone, I think, the culture that filled this vacuum came from basically the one other remaining bastion of Homestuck appreciators, and that last bastion happened to be Reddit.

I don't believe I'm being unfair to say Reddit is the kind of place where it's a commonly held opinion that Homestuck started sucking during Act 6 because the author lost track of what Really Matters to the Real Fans, which is Sburb nonsense and jokes about the disabled, and started caring about Bullshit For Gaylords, like character development and commentary on the nature of storytelling (this obviously sounds and IS interesting as hell, but if you want to make it sound boring you can always call it "meta stuff" instead. works every time). now, I'm not saying everyone who holds Homestuck at arm's length when they talk about it, today, shares this exact philosophy or these exact opinions; I'm just saying they're part of a certain culture. when the people who are influencing you think that if they don't like part of a story it must be because during the process of writing it the author made some identifiable Fatal Mistake, it's easy to start seeing EVERYTHING as a matter of Fatal Mistakes and Fatal Flaws, and to lose sight of the fact that in the real world these are just regular fucking nuances that different people are going to have different opinions on. when turning the story or its author into the targets of ridicule becomes a necessary part of your critique, it starts to colour the way you see the whole thing. you didn't just personally dislike the Epilogues because they weren't to your taste: they were Bad, because the Author made an Active Choice For Them To Be Bad. you didn't merely disagree with some of the plot developments in hs2: they were Bad Developments resulting from the decisions made by Less-Than-Ideal Creatives.

and when the quality of something falls outside of the domain of your personal opinion, then your personal opinion stops being enough to justify your own enjoyment of it. you can't just Like Homestuck; your regard for Homestuck has to be a discursive presentation, balanced on both sides, complete with annotations and citations and footnotes. I Like Homestuck But - or worse: I Don't Like Homestuck But. you gotta maintain detachment because the alternative is attachment and if you're attached to something that's Objectively Flawed then you will be escorted roughly but quietly and punctually from the garden of eden by surly angels in sunglasses and dark suits