Regaining my love for Homestuck (Help Please?)

Really, something that keeps me loving the comic is the fanbase. It sounds kind of cliche, I'm aware, but engaging with and creating fanworks has really helped me out. Even if that's not something that interests you, I think it's worth talking to other people about hypotheticals stuff like this - even if it never comes to fruition, it's incredibly fun.

In addition, it helps to be able to take the ebbs and flows of the franchise, its highs and lows. Take the new comics, the pilot, the forums, etc etc with a stride in your step. You can choose to ignore what you will, but don't let anyone else tell you how to enjoy Homestuck. Something else I like to do is to take a look at fan creations from the older days of the fandom, which is how I was introduced to the comic as a whole. Comic dubs, fansongs, lyricstucks, etc etc.

The most important thing, really, is to just have fun and enjoy yourself. Find a niche corner of the community you enjoy and enjoy your time there.

Hopefully this helps you out <3

I want to express that I understand your feelings to a high degree. I first read the comic in 2024 and immediately read the epilogues and BC, and it messed me up emotionally for a few months. While you can’t unread them, the only advice I can give is to read homestuck again so that it’s more entrenched in your mind. I understand not being able to ignore the continuations, but in truth disregarding them as much as possible helped me forget about them to the most part. basically, find joy in the arcs and relationships built in the comic and try to think of act 7 as the real end. it’s impossible to fully forget, but by thinking and talking about HS by itself you can start to move past it. that said, I have only been in the fandom for a relatively short time so I understand if this doesn’t help and I wish you luck in rejoining the fandom.

first of all, i think it's understandable to be taken aback by the epilogues and be sour about the continuation of homestuck: it's kind of the point! a big thematic throughline is how clinging onto continuation and "more content" is a bad impulse. "the narrative" has always been a somewhat sinister force within homestuck proper, and post canon is just way more harsh with that notion.

idk if you're caught up on beyond canon, but personally i think it's pretty good, especially the newer stuff, so for me that was a big part of what "got me back" into homestuck. yes, these characters have changed, a lot, but i also think a big part of what made me go into HSBC with an open mind is getting into it after re-reading homestuck proper, instead of just going off my memories/impressions of my first read. changing things up, especially in terms of character relationships and progression, has always been something homestuck did fairly often, and often without much fanfare (there are so many romantic relationships that get built up, and then get together and break up off screen, in retrospect), so this helped me being open to character dynamics shifting in post canon stuff. seeing new, interesting character progression is honestly what i like seeing from HSBC, even if those plot points are stuff i would've hated when i first finished homestuck.

also a big thing is, i guess, getting into fan stuff! there's plenty of fan continuations, hell this forum links to some of them. out of the stuff i personally read there's two main "fan continuations" i actively keep up with, burning down the house (a FRAF work, also heavily jane focused if that helps sweeten the deal) and john ruins a wedding (this one is just really funny and there are several bits from it that live in my head rent free because of how hilarious they are). it helps getting multiple takes on the characters and seeing them explored in several different directions, i feel, to get back into homestuck as a concept, and also helps accept different versions of these characters without feeling like something was lost about them because they're different from how they were like in homestuck proper.

here some things i like from the current comic in no particular order:

- aradia and sollux! both separately and their relationship. one of my favorite things about them in homestuck proper has been how their relationship is weird, undefined, and nonetheless stable and consistent, and this stays true as aradia abandons him to go on an inter-planetary quest and they're both completely chill with it. they're both great side characters to just have around, and HSBC understands that by not trying to jam in any unnecessary character development or focus for them. sollux is literally just there to be funny and not give a shit about what's going on, and aradia is in a similar boat, and i feel like that's where they shine best post their act 5 arcs of homestuck proper!

- the implication of meenah extending karkat's lifespan with her thief of life powers without telling anyone. that's just plain funny

- the whole candy timeline relationship drama between rose, kanaya and jade is actually pretty interesting when actually given time to be explored, and doesn't seem as out of character and plain strange as it did when it was first introduced. the whole point of candy is that growing up takes a lot more than just settling down and having kids like in a fanfic, and that a bunch of sixteen year olds becoming gods and being allowed to stagnate are likely to grow into very dysfunctional adults. i think a lot of the disconnect comes from the fact that homestuck proper uses godtier as just an extra power up, and post canon stuff grapples with how it actually affects the characters. if you look at it from this perspective, it totally makes sense for rose to get caught up in her seer powers and fall into nihilism and questionable morality. it makes sense for jade's loneliness to come back as she doesn't find the perfect person to settle down and have a nuclear family with from the group of friends she had since she was literally thirteen, so she uses the idea of motherhood as a crutch for the fact that she was promised a "standard" adult human life that she just couldn't achieve. the basic premise is that sburb didn't actually prepare any of these characters for adulthood, didn't actually make them properly deconstruct their flaws and worldviews and so when they get to the part where they're supposed to actually know how to live their lives, they're stuck in this weird limbo where sburb took away their ability to grow up along the lines of the cultural norms of their upbringing, but also didn't adequately offer up any alternative. they're a bunch of kids trying to reconstruct what adulthood, and subsequently society is supposed to look like when their world ended when they were 13! of course they'd be a mess

- along the same lines i feel like john's depression/clinging onto the past is an interesting re-examination of his upbringing, too. he grew up with a guardian who literally had celebratory notes set up for all his milestones, which is a great thing to have until you suddenly have that taken away from you. and then he becomes the defacto protagonist of their sburb sessions, being the key to defeating caliborn, so when all that ends he just becomes aimless, no real goal or idea of a goal to strive towards. he has a child just because that's what you're supposed to do, and then is an absent figure because nothing actually prepared him for parenthood. on a meta level, i also think this is an interesting exploration of "what happens to the protagonist when the story of which he is the main character ends".

- vriska's whole deal is pretty good. it's nice to see a character like her actually grapple with her past, she's normally a character that moves fast, always doing new shit, so it's nice to have her sit down and actually think on things. it's a nice exploration of her character and all the main points from her lengthy past.

overall i think what helps being less sour about the continuations of homestuck is to go into it with an open mind and try not to get too defensive over these characters or think of these stories as an attack on them - think of it as an extension of their characters, things to relate to homestuck proper and how these characters change, stay the same, or elaborate on their previously established themes, motifs, etc. yes, the continuations are more focused on the meta narrative, but it's important to remember that these characters still exist in relation to said meta narrative - as much as these characters serve to explore the meta, the meta also serves to explore these characters. i think it really does help not to think of HSBC as "the true continuation", but rather one of the explorations of homestuck, its characters and themes, among many (which you should check out!). reading more fanworks, character analyses, and overall engaging with these characters on multiple levels really helps perceiving HSBC as examinations rather than bastardizations, in my experience.

I have found myself on trips down nostalgia lane more often than I'd like to admit; I've re-read some of my favorite fanfics and rewatched some of my favorite youtube content surrounding Homestuck, particularly retreading the memeish hell of Sugoi Quest for Kokoro. I've found that it temporarily brings joy back, but that feeling winds up to be rather fleeting. @shelbybunny.

I've re-read Homestuck a total of 13 times as of just two months ago; I feel like I have a rather fresh recollection of the story within my mind for most of the canon and I suppose that creates a disonance to me with the current path of the story itself. As much as I would love to be able to ignore the direction of it now, a lot of my favorite characters feel warped beyond recognition within fan spaces. A lot of art of Jane feels very difficult to enjoy now. @deleriousbiznasty.

Yeah, I totally get what you mean. I do think you should try giving HSBC a chance in that case. Even if you don't end up liking it, it's good to form your own opinion rather than letting others tell you how to feel about it. And if you wind up disliking it, there are plenty of other fan-continuations of the comic for you to sink your teeth into, like Homeslice, Burning Down the House, and Act 8 (or was it Act Omega?). Hopefully you find something that you enjoy.

I'm very caught up on Beyond Canon, despite the fact that each update seems to either leave me tired or frustrated, I always crawl back in the hopes that the next one will magically make everything okay.

I think that Jane's turn into a fascist dictator kind of cheapens the ending of Homestuck, where Nannasprite (x2) both offered to be her guides into adulthood, seeing as they lived a more subdued and down to earth existence. Except, as of the Epilogues, the sprites were all just gone, with 0 explanation. Only to come back for Vriska's quest into once again re-doing her character arc that she experienced as (Vriska).

Dave and Karkat seemed rather solidly confirmed as a couple by the petal platform discussions; the epilogues walked that back to them just dancing around it (which I understand was to more confidently explore their relationship ON screen, but the culmination of their confession came at the hands of coercion by Dirk's narrative power, which left the whole ordeal feeling tainted.)

Jade and Rose's decision to name their real child a nsfw furry joke felt rather *insane* to both of their characters. A consequence of which the story doesn't really seem to grapple with in any serious degree; none of the other adults present think it's fucked up that Rose and Jade did that to a child, only Dirk calls it out in a side story to which he is mocked for it. (I know it's addressed by Karkat, but even he just glazes over the fact Jade has engaged in an insane act of child abuse for the sake of instead zeroing in on Jade wanting Dave.) Jade's whole character arc seems to be focused around relationships as a whole.

Each time I want to engage with the complex nature of the story and find the joy in the narrative, I always get reminded of these facts that loom over it and can't find a way to de-tangle the context.

In the end, John's arc surrounding being depressed that their life as a protagonist has left them adrift without purpose in this new world; in particular because they lost their very close father figure (and had the healthiest relationship with their onscreen guardian) feels the most poignant and is the one that I'm most interested in exploring, but even that story feels like its not certain where it's supposed to go. John is simultaneously correct in their assertions about Candy's integrity, but also wrong for wanting to abandon it wholesale, even by the likes of Roxy, who was alright with ditching the Game Over timeline if it meant saving *a* version of her friends.

I want to be able to just see this as *a* continuation of the characters and not *the* continuation of the characters, but the fandom doesn't really treat it in such a way as a whole and I don't really see much fanart or fan discussion about any *other* versions of the story. Ultimately, BC and its preceding works are (even though touted otherwise) *the* continuation that everyone fixates on, because it was the one that got the big endorsement at its beginning, with a loose outline by the original author. How do you rectify that perspective? I'd love to divorce the importance of this version from my mind. @lizardanya

I don't have a long paragraph to say i just think what keeps me into homestuck is the animations and the music and the fan projects I like

re: about divorcing the idea of BC/epilogues being *the* official continuation of homestuck:

i like to think about BC as just any other fanfic, a possible path taken for these characters. candy and meat were just one of a billion ways the comic could have continued, these ones just so happened to be the one a lot of people are most familiar with and talk about. so practically no different from any other ao3 fic. i read the epilogues and didnt care much for them and have a pretty vast memory so thats how i think of it.
the name also helps with this idea, seeing as "beyond canon" implies well, this is past official canon so take the events that happen during and after epilogues with a grain of salt.

Rereading Homestuck helped a lot. It's an extremely layered story; most important items or events wind up running parallel to something much earlier. Going through a second time got me to appreciate the way Homestuck grows around itself. It also made me reevaluate characters and how they change (or refuse to) throughout.

For the record, I think you're dead wrong about the Epilogues ignoring the characterization in the comic preceding it. "What happens to these people when the story ends and they no longer have roles to play?" It's being an adult after growing up in a wildly abusive environment and having to piece together a new existence. It's incredibly uncomfortable for sure, but it begs the question: More uncomfortable than what was in Homestuck? The trigger warning wall is a beautiful setpiece that warns the reader about things Homestuck wasn't afraid to just drop on your head.

The original version of the trigger warnings was not as comprehensive or as serious as content which DEFINITELY was not present in Homestuck in any morose capacity. I don't really want to go too much into detail because I think it's depressing to consider, but none of the topics handled in the epilogue that I would say are "grim" were ever presented in Homestuck with the same light or same thoroughness. Especially what Dirk does in Candy and what Jane does to Jake in Candy.

Addendum: I don't want this thread to turn into a debate around the Epilogues. I do still want to keep this thread focused on people sharing their perspective on how they still find enjoyment with the story. Ultimately, I want to feel that way again too.

I recommend rereading homestuck and rereading the epilogues immediately after. Even so, just reading homestuck itself is enough, the epilogues I think are an exploration of the edges of canonicity and what a story after a happy ending would be like.

I have read homestuck 9 times total and each time I came at it trying to focus on a specific character (or set of characters) perspectives and journeys. I think that's a really good way to really figure out the deeper layers of the story (Vriska and Rose are a good place to start, as while they seem like they don't have much in common, they have many parallels between arcs)

Well, I think what keeps me coming back to Homestuck is Skaia. By which I mean, not just the entity itself, although I do so adore my big blue sentient benevolent and silent marble-chan. But the concepts that it represents. The idea that, no matter how messed up things seem to be sometimes, the creative forces underlying all existence contain benevolent possibilities, if we can only take hold of them. This symbolic narrative at the heart of early Homestuck is why I was captivated before I ever knew what a troll was, and it's the biggest why I still care about Homestuck.

(Not that I am immune to the typical and embarrassing sentimental attachment to its characters, settings, and motifs that defines this wonderful disease known as fandom, but, like, if I just wanted a bunch of "scrunklies", I could go get my senses baffled and my digital wallet plundered by a "gacha game" full of "anime women". Homestuck: it's more than just scrunklies.)

It's just... true? You know? The central Skaian concept that ideas have a power to them that can be used to shape the world the way you want it. So that's why the story of Homestuck is compelling to me, and that is why I keep coming back to acts 1-7, over and over again, however imperfect, however incomplete. Because I still feel that pale blue shining promise at the heart of it all.

I got into Homestuck just as Cascade dropped. I made a lot of really meaningful friendships through my local community and it's responsible for a lot of my growth and the person I've become - which I'm really proud of. So I 100% understand the nostalgia aspect, I still listen to the old albums regularly and have incredibly fond memories of old fan meetups.

What keeps me coming back is that - when I first read it, the characters were very relatable to me. Homestuck is a story about growing up (among other things) but in HSBC, now it feels more about asking what we do now that we are grown up. People in real life don't hit adulthood and become complete. We continue to grow and evolve, to be shaped by the environment around us, to drift apart and sometimes to backslide and make more mistakes. HSBC is, to me, a really interesting exploration of that, and the whole argument between the characters we know at the end of Act 1 I found to be absolutely riveting.

So I keep reading because I'm keen to see where these characters go. The new kids are less relatable to me now but I still find them interesting to read about because they present a fresh perspective on the now-adults from the original cast and help me to reflect on my own life.

It's also easy to see the amount of dedication and love the current team has for what they're making. It's super cool to see them all doing something they're so passionate about and to be able to support them. I have a lot of faith that they will treat the characters and the property with respect, and I'm excited to hear what they have to say.

On the topic of Rose's divorce arc, I really enjoy the Omega kids and in particular Yiffy, and I'm excited to see more done with them as we move into Act 2.

Maybe skip to Beyond Canon Act 2? They basically spent most of the first act dealing with unfinished business from the Epilogues, but now we're at the start of a whole new game. Act 1 had a LOT of earthbound Candy-timeline stuff, which is the "normal life turns everyone into assholes" timeline. It looks like those versions of the characters are finaly going to break out of their claustrophobic existance.

I second the idea of thinking of the Epilogues as just one pssible continuation.

"Homeslice" might be worth a look - it's like an AU of the Epilogues era, but a much nicer timeline where they actually get to enjoy their new world. Bit of a palatte cleanser.

i think the way it helps to think of these guys as not the "full definitive versions" is to read more about different versions of these characters (in fanworks, mainly), and think of these as complimentary: under some circumstances, some of them become one way, under others, they change. after all, even HSBC has two separate timelines, and candy is explicitly framed as a bad fanfic!

we're now pretty firmly out of the whole mess of candy, it's surely going to come up but in a very different light, and maybe the focus on the new session/meat timeline will help you move away from the candy versions as the definitive ones. homestuck has always been interested in different versions of the same character, like, for example homestuck proper also deals with this: how can one enjoy dirk strider as a character knowing that in the beta timeline he was an abuser to dave? dirk's explicit answer to this question is that bro is literally just him, is an extension of him, and in order to be better he should be aware of this, and in a similar vein, in order to enjoy dirk strider as a character, we as the audience should be aware of what he becomes in other versions of him. this isn't all negative: HSBC recently retconned a seemingly nice and non-fascist jane, and i'd imagine we'll see that further explored as the other side of the coin to jane's character: two versions of her, one where she became a fascist dictator like she was raised to be, and one where she unlearnt that harm and became better. we need to understand that all characters in all versions of them are still those characters, e.g. evil jane from homestuck proper is still a jane, an extension of what she actually is and could become, these dichotomies are just a lot more harshly pronounced in post canon stuff.

it's understandable to be upset when a character you like turns into a horrible person and the story focuses on that, but also i think you should try to go into post canon stuff, especially going forward, with a little more faith, and i definitely think the answer for what could restore that faith is engaging with fanworks of alternate endings for these characters. it helps to think of these characters as not just having one path they follow, but multiple branching conclusions all of which still reflect on and ultimately are that same character, if that makes sense?

I definitely appreciate the context of viewing characters as "parts of a whole" that are able to be different based on their surroundings, but when it comes to Jane that feels like it becomes 10x harder to achieve. Her and Jake have a real, canon and living and breathing child together now and the process in which she got pregnant with that child is *very* harrowing.

I can't exactly see how the context of that story will ever be grappled with in a satisfying way, especially for Jane from Meat.

I want to be wrong so bad, because I *loved* that Homestuck presented alternative versions of characters and gave them "Second chances" so to speak, but I think one of the fundamental differences between how it handles this now and how it handled it then was that a character like Bro, while abusive towards Dave and definitely a version of Dirk, was never shown in any similar way to Dirk, he was a faceless guardian and had almost no dialogue to ascribe to him. Instead, Dirk is given to us as an introspection behind that faceless persona, not the other way around.

In Jane's case, we're given two versions of Jane that both have very equal parts of dialogue now and the only reason one hasn't done the horrendous things the other version did is because of what seems to be a retcon by some third party. (I assume so, at least. We're not entirely clear on what exactly happened.)

Candy Jane doesn't feel like a faceless woman who gets extrapolated on by Meat Jane; Candy Jane feels like a continuation of *the* Jane we grew to love in Homestuck; taken down a very dark path. I don't really understand why she was placed in that position for the story. I can only assume it was because of an external commentary around growing fascist complacency in America and the rest of the world, hence her emulation of Conservative groups; but this felt like an unfair hammer to swing in her direction when the story ended wholesale on her being given 2 Nanna's to help her prosper.

In this sense, I guess I'm sad that Jane's character was sacrificed in service of a meta narrative.

Does that make sense?

i think a lot of what's sustained my interest in homestuck is looking at it with a more academic lens? like, i can sit around thinking about characters i like and classpecting or whatever forever, but the honest thing is that going back and looking through it as like... text to be analyzed? figuring out all the tricks, and narrative techniques, and little hidden character moments/arcs that are hidden behind the format? it makes you feel like you understand everything, forever.

to that end, i really, highly recommend reading the commentaries. i think being reminded that homestuck was an intelligently written work that was done on purpose is really helpful. it also made me a way, way better writer to see the actual behind-the-scenes on techniques used.

and even more, i think the thing that made me "get" homestuck was writing some of my own stories about the characters and such. so, honestly, it's as good a place as any to start dabbling in making your own versions of character arcs that you vibe with more. this is the Fanwork Website, i recommend hitting the paper hard.