Regaining my love for Homestuck (Help Please?)

They call me obsessive focus on depicting lurid sexual abuse because ive been riding the #hashtagcandyfailmairraige since day one, everyone in every relationship deserves to have a bad time forever o7

also i somehow missed the part of your message where you said its played for laughs, when i never really got that impression. to me it always felt like it was very intentionally uncomfortable and that was the point. it being meant to be funny never really crossed my mind at all, and i don't think the story is written that way, so i think putting it like that feels a bit disingenuous imo

I felt very similarly to you at one point. I was never resentful, just depressed. I grew up with these characters and I felt a massive heartbreak seeing things turn to shit in the way they did.

As with any sort of alienation or depression, often the solution is creativity.

The main turning point for me was writing John: Load Previous Save ==>. It was the greatest thing I did in terms of restoring my love of Homestuck. I think turning that heartbreak and hopelessness into creative energy reminded me of the love I had for Homestuck, and made me want to keep being in the fandom. I think a lot of writers do this sort of thing to "stick it to hussie" but I knew that wouldn't help me. Instead, I spent years trying to recapture the tone of the comic, the voice of every character. I spent hours pouring over the pesterlogs, analyzing every character relationship in detail, reading Hussie's commentary, and making my own. In doing so, I fell more in love with homestuck than I had ever been, but I finally had the power to shape the story I loved so much. And in doing that, I built a community of people who wanted to hear what I had to say, who thought my opinions and contributions to homestuck were meaningful. And that community would not exist without the epilogues, so I learned to appreciate them, even if I don't think I'll ever want to read them again.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/56125846/chapters/142565932

If you want to check it out. It's still in progress, and I'll be turning it into a graphic novel soon. If you don't, try doing it on Dreambubble or another roleplaying site. Draw fanart. Find your fandom niche and build a community around what you love doing.

Sorry, this reply is going to sound ultra dry, but I would like to explain why I phrased it that way and why I think it's accurate. It is clear that these story events are meant to be taken as actual instances of abuse in story context, but they are also presented with elements of the extremely absurd and farcical, to the point where it feels like they were trying to make the abusive situations silly and goofy on purpose by invoking various paraphilias that are commonly used as humorous topics online. Which would definitely imply that they were playing it for laughs, right?

@bluebootyraider - This project sounds really cool, I'll be sure to read it. I am also the sort of quixotic person who has embarked on her own postcanon Homestuck narrative project, so I am interested to see other people's approaches. I am glad that your dissatisfaction with the existing narrative sparked creative growth!

Thank you! I have big ambitions in this fandom, and I am always happy when people want to read my work! Also thank you for teaching me a new word. Quixotic. I love it.

Also magicmirror i will also note (not making a value judgement on either work) but homestuck OG does this too. Vriska and Tavros, Equius and Gamzee, even Jake and Dirk/Jane These are both abusive or at least toxic relationships that have paraphilic and comedic elements to them.

I didn't really want this whole thing to derail into me having to explain why I don't enjoy the Epilogues or don't find any meaning in them that's valuable to me.

I wanted to understand how other people can continue and find joy despite what is a massive hurdle for me; I don't think all art has to be comforting or coddle people and I don't think it's fair to say that Homestuck is the Y/A to the Epilogue's "adult fiction". Homestuck was able to grapple with dark themes and child abuse without completely blowing up everything these characters cared about.

That being said though, I personally find joy in cathartic art, the epilogues don't feel that way to me. Each chapter feels darker than the last, when it's not constantly waving comedic sexual overtones in your face to try and distract from abhorent themes. I don't think they're written well and I stand by that, because the actual trigger warnings didn't become a serious thought until actual fan backlash over how much more dark and absurdist the story was compared to its predecessor comic.

To discuss the Calliope things, do I think everyone should stop writing upsetting things? No. I'm talking strictly within the context of the story I'm being given to read. IF (and I specified that before, IF) the story is going down the route of Calliope being culpable, they're writing upsetting things about the friends that are not even a room over. I don't think it's fair to compare this an IRL authorship situation, but the whole idea that they're cool with exploring Roxy's detransition doesn't strike me as an interesting exploration of Calliope's character or offer anything of value to me other than saying they did something weirdly messed up for the sake of doing it; plus Karkat's extrapolation that there is "truth" inside what Calliope has written feels like a double edged knife on top of that.

I don't like all these feelings at all, they weren't feelings I ever really had to contend with during Homestuck as a story and they actively make it hard for me to continue wanting to read it. And I *want* to read it, because I *want* to be able to enjoy this stuff.

Sorry if that came off combative, I just don't think that my opinion on the Epilogues is going to change any time soon. :(

In the interest of also trying not to come across combative: I don't think this has to be a thread where you explain why you don't personally find value in the Epilogues. I think a lot of the things others are suggesting in here would have more value to you if y

*if you simply took them as things to think about rather than opportunities to defend your existing position. I don't t

okay I guess I'm not finishing that thought LOL I said all the important parts anyway

I do not understand what you mean.

I think Jake is talking about how you say you want to know how people enjoy it still, and people have given reasons why they like the Epilogues or think that they're important enough to kind of "get over," but you're kind of mostly here refuting them as if they're arguments. So it seems more like you're trying to convince others that they should ALSO not like it, that their reasons aren't good enough. We can't know the intricacies of what you like in a story or not, and only you can decide whether it's worth it to continue reading. But you don't have to defend yourself to everyone if you don't want to keep reading! You don't have to worry about what the "fandom at large" is doing.

And I can sympathize with disliking the actual style of the Epilogues. Like terrible gruesome things happened in HS but they were little cartoons with rainbow blood and only dialogue of people reacting. Epilogues had actual descriptions. There are things that if were written out in serious detail in HS I think would be a lot harder to stomach there too. I think we all remember Homestuck while skimming over parts we don't like, such as racist/ableist etc details.

Honestly I kind of categorized the Epilogues mentally in a similar way as I do Yorgos Lanthimos movies. They're often black comedies, like The Lobster (my fav of his) that leans into the absurdity of heterosexual social structuring. One of his most recent movies, Poor Things, I really did not enjoy. I just felt like it didn't sell it's statement to me and make it worth validating the more lurid parts of it. But I'm also still excited to see what movie he makes next, because I know he does have it in him to make things I personally like.

The Epilogues are done. HS:BC isn't using the same format and is much more tonally like HS proper. You don't have to decide how you feel about it permanently, and can still read along with an open mind while not liking parts of it. Or you don't have to read along at all if you don't want to! The new cartoon is going to be just base Homestuck (almost certainly) so all the new fans will also be focused on that.

Ah, okay, that makes more sense to me. Yeah, I struggle to parse what is people engaging with the topic at times. I suppose when I'm responding, it's more just because I want people to understand where my mind goes when they bring up these concepts of how they can still enjoy things. I guess I want to reach a point where there is a logic my brain cannot overcome and unlock the joy for me once more.

I just feel like I spent a lot of time before, being on the inside of the fandom, enjoying myself, but now for the past 9 years I'm stuck on the outside, looking in and wanting to enjoy myself and have fun but being unable to.

That's really fair, and it sucks you've been feeling that way! Sometimes when I feel bad I remember that there were pre-Murderstuck Gamzee fans that had their entire worlds destroyed at basically the early-midpoint of Homestuck LOL. It's rough when there's so much time to build up a relationship to the beginning of a story, and then the plot has to happen and knock it all over. The comic (can feel like it) changes as the story progresses and things build, but that happens in life too. I definitely am not the same kind of fan or level of fan I was back in 2019 or before. I can't get it back, and it's okay, because a part of it was also being five years younger than I am now. I can build a new kind of relationship and figure out what I really want to get out of fandom and focus on those parts. Talking to other people that really love the new parts has helped a lot, and then just sitting back and biding my time through parts I'm not sure how I feel about. Find your people!

And also, not taking it too seriously! I initially struggled with parts of the Epilogues for a bit for similar reasons I REALLY used to have a hard time watching shows like Always Sunny or or jackass/black comedies because I kept overthinking it lol. There were parts that made me uncomfortable and it was hard kind of mentally letting loose and not inserting myself into it and stressing myself out. I really don't mean this as a dismissive way but just internalizing that it's not real and the version that I liked of it will always exist, if not more prominently than the parts that stressed me out haha. It's not real but also I AM real and can decide what parts I want to actually focus on and engage with.

I've gotten a lot of the same feeling as when I first read homestuck back recently from the surge of people entering the fandom. I know a lot of people don't like new people entering the fandom and believe they're going to be cringe but I think it's really nice seeing new people experience the thing I love even if they don't do it like I did or like I think is the "right" way.
There's a twitter user who's live tweeting as she reads through it and it's really fun to see. Reminds me why this comic is so good.

SPOILERS FOR BEYOND CANON
I'm gonna say this after even though it seems like OP isn't motivated by beyond canon, it's still true for me. I think seeing the cycle of universal rebirth starting again with original characters and a new species is also huge for a refreshing new start to an era of homestuck community.

It's almost fitting the amount of upheaval and drama in the fandom. I think a lot of big faces in the community will probably either stake their place in the new era or be washed away by the tide of change. I'm really excited to see what shape it takes next, even if it's radically different than what it was before. We've never been neat and tidy as a fandom and I'll be damned if we are start now.

TLDR for my actual answer to the post:
find someone or get someone new to the comic that's reading it and live vicariously through them

I did try to do that, actually. I tried to get one of my friend's to read it and she wound up wanting to quit when she found out about later content via a spoiler. She wasn't particularly happy over Hussie joking about dating Vriska and felt it came off too creepy for her tastes.

So, back to square one.