Regaining my love for Homestuck (Help Please?)

it seems like you're putting a ton of pressure on yourself to stay in the fandom, which seems like it's a huge part of your problem. maybe take a break from homestuck and stop trying to convince yourself to like every aspect about it. you don't have to be in this fandom 24/7 or even at all if it's making you upset, and you can always come back if you miss it. it seems like you're burnt out. i notice a lot of resentful fans are very caught up in the fact that homestuck, a big part of their identity, did something that made them upset. in 2019 i took a yearish long break from the homestuck fandom because i was upset about the epilogues. when i came back, i was feeling refreshed and i didn't feel so hurt. i went clubbing and traveled and focused on studying and making friends who weren't into fandom. it was very very good for me. don't read the epilogues again. don't check in with beyond canon. don't keep arguing with people about how you have the right to be upset. just like, go have fun. homestuck isn't going to go away. it's not like homestuck is your girlfriend, you're not breaking up with homestuck. it's a comic. you've got to let go a little, otherwise you will not have a healthy relationship with the story. find hobbies outside of fandom. come back when you miss it.

That's my problem though. I'm always missing it. I did take a huge break after the Epilogues dropped and I came back in hopes it would all be better. And now I just drift back and forth, stuck on the outside.

Is there nobody you know who shares similar in-Homestuck likes and interests? Because curating your own golden land like a previous commenter said seems to be your best bet.

There is no such thing as consensus in this fandom. Opinions on post-canon content are so thoroughly nuanced and divided that you’re sure to find likeminded folks to congregate with if you seek them out for long enough.

then try doing what i said earlier and write fanfiction. also i recc john load previous save i mentioned earlier that it was my fic, so it came from a very similar place. i promise it's good. i pinky promise...

if this summary looks appealing to you, take a look! it's pretty dark, but i try to balance the tone with jokes and happy moments. It's not all misery.

i agree with bluebootyraider that you seem to put a lot of pressure on yourself to stay in the fandom, but i also notice that you seem to put specific pressure on yourself to engage with the current fandom and how you feel at odds with the fact that a lot of fans engage with/talk about the epilogues and HSBC, even though you don’t like them. i get that there can be a feeling that you’re being “left behind” by not finding post canon stuff engaging, but honestly, i think it’s perfectly fine to just, not engage with that?

you say that the current fandom is majorly focused on epilogues/HSBC but i honestly don’t find that to be fully true? obviously people talk about it and accept it as a continuation of these characters’ stories, but there’s plenty of people who dislike post canon stuff, or even without that, engage with homestuck proper still. most fanart i see is really not about post canon stuff, or only acknowledge it in the abstract. there’s plenty of people still doing analysis of homestuck proper. there’s plenty of people still writing their own versions of what happens post canon, hell, there’s even plenty of rewrites of the homestuck ending itself.

if it upsets you to see post canon stuff, i honestly recommend minimizing your engagement with that.

a lot of people said or alluded to stuff along the lines of it being helpful to engage with homestuck more analytically/academically to regain your love for the work, and in that sense there’s a LOT to discuss and think about in homestuck proper, without touching any post-canon. i understand the fact that stuff that comes out even outside the proper work (the paratext, so to speak) can spoil some of your engagement with the original, but i also think that trying to engage with the story analytically also helps distance yourself from those feelings: it helps to see the post canon stuff as yet another attempt to deconstruct/analyze these characters, rather than a definitive, singular conclusion to their character arcs.

I really do appreciate what you're all saying here and I'm going to make a concentrated effort to put it into effect, I just miss being able to discuss my favorite characters or their arcs without having to go through agrandizing hoops to qualify that I don't mean "epilogues" onwards, which is by and large taken as the "official" continuation, given it was an outline penned by Hussie.

It doesn't help that even a website like this, which is meant to just be a fan thing, features "teasers" from the Epilogues compliant events. Putting Dirk's name into the website has meta discussions about him, same for everyone else. It's just inescapable.

I've tried writing fanfic before, but I wind up sad because it doesn't feel like it'll ever hold a candle to what everyone considers the "true" continuation. As much as you might say it's not a majority of the fan space that likes or engages with Epilogues onwards, I find that the only place that doesn't is the HS Reddit Discord and that place is just depressing to be in for other reasons.

As much as I think it's nice people are trying to share their love for the post-canon content in the topic, I feel like it only really proves Dandy's point about how the Epilogues and HSBC are basically inescapable.

I'm not really a massive fan of a lot of the things the Epilogues attempt, but it feels impossible to ignore them because basically everything in the fandom surrounds them; being a Homestuck fan feels synonymous with being a fan of the post-canon stuff now.

Even trying to meaningfully critique the Epilogues feels impossible at times, you basically always get hit with "hmm... I don't think you understood the themes. You should try reading them again." Even if you have already read them multiple times over...

I'm sorry if this comes off as super rude or antagonistic, I really don't want to sound that way, and I wanna reinstate that its completely fine for people to enjoy the Epilogues or HSBC. Its just frustrating how it feels like everything orbits around this stuff now, you can't really tune them out at all without basically tuning out the whole fandom.

I share your sentiment about the epilogues. I think what you're witnessing is survivorship bias, as they call it. People who were disappointed by the post-canon material jumped ship a long time ago. A lot of them probably stopped paying attention once the comic ended, but I think the epilogues in particular felt like, spiteful? Mean spirited? I'm not sure how to put it, but so much of their contents feel like an effort to make fans of certain characters as uncomfortable as possible, and I think that probably alienated a lot of people.

I personally don't find the themes of the epilogues very profound, I always thought Homestuck's metanarrative was one of its weakest elements and was better off just being a sort of running gag. In every other respect... It's barely Homestuck to me.

So I understand what you all mean. I get that the fandom has pretty much accepted post canon as being official continuations. I will say that it is not my experience that post canon is beyond reproach. I see people criticizing the epilogues constantly. Maybe not here, but in most fandom spaces.

If it makes you feel less alone, here are my critques:

1) I don't think they are a realistic portrayal of the average human experience. It is far too dour. There is a heavy focus on emptiness, betrayal, emotional decay, and alienation. There is very little joy. The reasoning put forward for this is that these characters have severe trauma. As something of a PTSD haver myself, I do not think this is accurate, or at least, it's not a complete picture. I would buy the epilogues a lot more if it was only John, or only a handful of characters who ended up completely miserable. Most people experience joy in their lives. In reality, life with trauma is more complicated than the "all misery and ceaseless emptiness", it's a lot of ups and downs. Yes, some people fall into despair and it destroys them. However, most people are actually able to reach some level of happiness and fufillment, even if their lives aren't perfect. People have survived wars, they've survived abuse, they've survived opression, and they've still been happy. In an attempt to make everyone miserable, for example, they set davekat back to square one. I don't think this is bad in theory, but it feels kind of forced to do an obligatory dave comphet arc when they could just...have him be bisexual? As much as I like dave's mall rant I do think it's revealing that dave is like "yeah i know bisexuality exists but it's funnier for me to think of it like this" like on the one hand, yes. Yes it is. On the other hand, I wish that the story did not constantly try and fit these bisexual characters into the "closeted, unhappy" when there doesn't really seem to be any external pressure for them to be in heterosexual relationships period. i could buy jake as closeted and unhappy, but why make them ALL miserable? just have dave and karkat be well adjusted and you can make a joke about how it's funny that these guys are the ones who ended up doing great.

2) Sensitive topics are not handled well. I feel like OG Homestuck was able to keep a good balance of keeping the cartoon violence and other such transgressions cartoonish and then managing the serious stuff when it wants to make a message. The epilogues treat everything with the same half-serious brush, and it is very awkward. I honestly think act 6 had this problem too. Is the abuse jake is suffering serious? is it funny? is it fetishistic and that's the joke? It's very unclear. Unlike tavros, who takes everything on the chin and doesn't seem bothered by vriska (giving her actions a softer landing), unlike Terezi, whose victimization is played 100% straight, and unlike Dave whose abuse is initially framed as a "joke" but is later deconstructed, Jake is put in increasingly toxic situations that traumatize him, but those situations are almost always framed for laughs. In the epilogues, he is violated by both Jane and Dirk, driving him to drink and leaving him a hollow version of his former self. However, (with the exception of one convo in candy, the revelations of which don't last) the epilogues can't bring themselves to pause and take this seriously for even a moment. It is very frustrating and as a result, Jake isn't allowed to have the development he needs to get even get back to square one. He's just a constant butt monkey and I hate it. I need it either to be comedy and have him not give a fuck, or i need to have it be taken seriously.

2) HIGHLY RELATED: all the characters (with the exception of karkat and kanaya) are assholes or pathetic and not like, in a funny way. Vriska is funny. Equius is funny and I adore him. Rose cheating? not funny. John as a deadbeat dad? Not funny. I understand this is the point, but it made me depressed.

3) A lot of the adult topics (Sex, drugs, alcohol, cheating) feel like they're added to the story to say WOW HEY THIS EXISTS NOW except it always existed? And were treated as a normal part of the universe? I feel like they shouldn't be treated as WOW SHOCKING so much as like, a normal part of the character's lives.

4) gamzee should have eaten shit after falling down a flight of stairs. his death should have been an accident and fodder for a sbahj meme. not...whatever the fuck that was.

Now, that isn't to say I think they're bad. I actually don't. I fully get them and I think they're interesting. I admre hussie and co for being ambitious enough to make something that's as meta and interesting as the HSE and HS^2. But these critiques are really common, and not just in the HSD.

However. Most people who i am friends with who like homestuck either haven't read dub canon, don't like it, or like it less than canon. I barely even talk about it with my homestuck friends. I mean, being a rose, a dirk, or a terezi fan is going to sort of screw you over more than average. I like the meowrails, who were not featured.

Again, I will say re "not feeling good enough" to create a HS ending. I mean, you just have to work hard at it. Most of the works in FR are from fans who have spent years honing their skills. I spent a decade learning how to write these characters. Nothing is stopping you from practicing. Nothing is stopping you from improving. You also

@sabhait i don't think they're "mean spirited", i think hussie and co genuinely did not expect the readers to take the epilogues as personally as they did. which is maybe an oversight, but i don't think either party is in the wrong here. based on their commentary, hussie very much views their ocs as fictional characters, not people, and as a result they dgaf how much they suffer. couldn't be me. i have historically been deeply parasocial with fictional characters, especially hussie's, lmfao. it took a concerted effort on my part to even consider hurting them. getting over that made me a better writer, but i don't think it's inherently wrong to have that mindset. It's just, when you've got a writer that loves throwing their ocs around like pebbles in a rock tumblr, and a fandom that considers those ocs their precious babies who are also extensions of themselves, it's a recipe for disaster. if i were them i would be very confused by this reaction, even if as a fan, i understand it completely.

I'm not gonna lie, I found your critique on the Epilogues very comforting to read. I think this just unlocked another thought in my head; I've almost felt gaslit by the current fan space that the Epilogues are profound work beyond any type of critique and your discussion of what you didn't like felt like a small breath of fresh air.

I'm not trying to say that it's an intentional behavior by fans, but something about reading all of what you just said brought me some sense of relief. Thank you. <3

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)

I personally do not care about anything beyond the comic itself. I do not engage with fan adventures nor the comic's continuation besides reading the epilogues fully once and giving up on a second reread because I did not enjoy it. I think it's pretty normal to have grown disinterested in Homestuck, even if it's still "ongoing". From my experience I completely lost interest in the series after the epilogues was released, but my spark returned when I reread the comic in 2024. Being constantly invested in Homestuck honestly sounds like a curse.

re: corbinisking

I feel sort of the opposite, hating the epilogues is an extremely prevalent and mainstream opinion, largely spread by people haven't read them, but who heard second hand that they're bad by people who also did not read them (combined with accusing the authors of them of being irl sex criminals over nothing). liking the epilogues is a position that will make you treated like a pariah in most modern homestuck spaces. genuinely no one gives them a shot, and so everyone here, myself included, are trying to make a case for them because they're so universally despised.

The "logic [your] brain can't overcome" which will "unlock the joy" for you, Dandy, is called an epiphany. A magical bolt of realisation from the sky that involves no effort on your part. It's a foolish thing to expect! If you want to like something, you really have to WANT to like it: there has to be a compromise, a place where you're willing to meet the thing in the middle instead of always expecting IT to come to YOU. When people give their reasons for continuing to enjoy Homestuck and you take the time to respond to each one with "BUT i disagree for X, Y and Z reasons", you're making an active choice to reinforce your own pre-existing viewpoint rather than allowing yourself to have your horizons expanded. THAT'S what I'm saying.

Does that mean you HAVE to like the Epilogues, or anything else? Of course not! It just means that if you WANT to have your mind changed or your feelings turned around, you need to be open to it; and if you DON'T want that, you just need to realise that continuing to engage with this thread is nothing but a waste of your own and everybody else's time.

I don't know if that was the intent but that remark came off incredibly harsh. I don't think I *have* to work to enjoy Homestuck, I didn't have to work to enjoy it before, I just enjoyed it.

My responses of x y and z are because when I read the ways people find that joy, I have to express what part of my brain comes into the fore and prevents me from agreeing. I'm looking for a logic that can't be "countered" by my own brain. I want a perspective or advice that I cannot find fault in.

And I have found some in this very thread; please don't accuse me of wasting people's time. Nobody here is forced to engage with this thread. :(

Just because you enjoyed something easily in the past does not mean you should go about forever expecting everything else to work exactly the same. This is not a phenomenon specific to Homestuck and the Epilogues. I would say it's an integral part of the process of growing up.

There will never be a logic that cannot be countered by your own brain. There is no perspective on earth that a person cannot find fault in. This is exactly what I'm saying. It's not a personal flaw, it's just the nature of human cognitive bias: if someone wants to disagree with something, then they will always be able to find a reason to disagree with it, and the conversation will end up going around in the same circles forever. That's certainly what feels like is happening to me, here, since your response to the last two things I've said has been pretty much reiterating the same position.

I haven't felt forced to engage with the thread; I wanted to take this as a genuine opportunity to relate to your problem and offer some truly heartfelt advice. If that feels to you like a personal harshness or an accusation on my part, that's unfortunate. But it is clear to me at least now that my own involvement in this thread is pointless, so I'll just leave you with what I've already said. I really do hope you can find a solution for you that makes you feel less joyless about the whole thing. Godspeed and good luck 🫡

@stagelights In any other thread I would agree with you but both OP and venomouscarrion have been pretty on the line about reading through the epilogues multiple times and not enjoying them even once. I think it's kinda weaksauce to act like the Epilogues were not a deliberate curveball written knowing they'd turn some people off from Homestuck altogether. When you step outside of the clickbait and lack of images you're still left with a piece that is tonally and structurally a departure from the base comic, one whose ultimate conclusions move further away from that Homestuck. And while Homestuck is always changing, it'd be wrong to say that it is always changing in the direction that will maintain its audience (just ask the people who hopped on for Problem Sleuth!)

@pearls but seriously though, check out Crow Strider and Karkat Goes To A Convention- I have heard a ton of testimony of people who felt at odds with Homestuck, got really into these comics, and left just that much more at peace with Homestuck in its entirety. It's possible you literally might just need a good "catharsis" after Homestuck's endless anticlimaxes, either to open you back up to engaging with Homestuck in its entirety or to make you feel okay with walking away from Homestuck for good.

@pearls, what fandom spaces are you in? I'm genuinely curious because I am really not getting this sense. We might just be in different places. However @stagelights, I don't think your comment is fair. This is fiction, and people are entitled to their opinions. There are reasonable criticisms of the Epilogues, even James Roach said that he disagreed with some of the decisions made. There is a major difference between criticizing something and spewing vitriol. A lot of spaces spew vitriol, but I actually think well-thought-out criticisms of the epilogues are rare in comparison. Pretty much everything I see is people taking hussie and co's fix it satire as if it's some sort of deep personal attack. People who don't want to seem like assholes who hate the authors, including myself, feel a lot of pressure not to be associated with bad actors. However, I don't think Dandy is a bad actor, and I don't think they're saying anything unreasonable. They've read the epilogues. They just don't like them. It's fair, The epilogues are pretty upsetting.

Reading back through this thread, I feel like we are not making a great case for how Dandy is supposed to regain their love of homestuck. Sword's comment especially rings out to me "You can read them as something that Hussie did to shake fans out of a stupor of being addicted to Canon and reading Hussie's writing as the only thing that matters (which ties into a lot of wanting to know the minutiae of how X or Y thing happened). Basically if they were expecting a Happy Ending from Homestuck of all things it would wake fans up and destabilize the "happily ever after" vibes the fandom and fanon was basking in. Because let's be real, we're seeing a lot of compelling reasons why that was never going to happen either way. Homestuck is a meta story about stories, but also video games. What happens when you win the game, but it doesn't feel like winning? What happens when you die as a child, and don't know how to live normally after your world ended then?" But is it really so wrong to want a happy ending?

I think there's something to this, but it's missing a lot, and if what sword said was the goal of the epilogues, I think it's far too cynical of a motivation for me to be compelling at all. Lots of people continue to survive and be happy after unspeakable tragedies.

The most compelling read of the homestuck epilogues is of a satire of fix it AUs and post sburb AUs. The idea that fans wanted either a "meat" (fix it retcon) or a "candy" (post sburb happiness) is a really good observation. People either wanted to see the characters move on from the game and live idyllic lives, or they wanted to fix every problem and correct every tragety. Now, the idea that hussie was mocking this is a little bit short-sighted. It's not mocking. I think the point they were trying to communicate was that those two options are not really consistent with the tone of homestuck. What the team was trying to do was explore the question "what if trying to make everything perfect in a universe that functions on tragedy actually made things worse"?

The homestuck epilogues are really depressing but they are also sort of "the only valid" ending to homestuck. They are the worst case scenario for a story that remains more true to canon than anything trying to replace it.

Does that mean there's no way for homestuck charcters to be happy? No. But I think it explains why most fix it fics don't really fill the void people have when they are searching for emotional relief from the epilogues. Every fix it fanfics are only able to achieve a happy ending because they break with the tone of homestuck. While there are tons of compelling alternate version of the "Candy" route, that explore the earth-c versions of the character, I was very much unable to find a good "meat-alternative". Not that I've read everything (i haven't read Jade Route yet, for example). It's just.... I want my pre-retcon babies back, and I wrote John load previous save because I was deeply unhappy with the alternatives I have been presented so far. I still think the epilogues are too dour, but I also find most fix it fics to be overly saccharine to the point of being even less true to life and even more out of character. I do not think it is realistic that every character would somehow escape paradox space unschathed. I think that it's even less realistic that every conflict is chalked up to a misunderstanding, good intentions gone wrong, or outside forces beyond anyone's control. Some things can't be solved with an apology. Sometimes people are just fucking awful.

Ideally, the epilogues, the surrounding fan works, and beyond canon, would all be in conversation with one another. I think hussie was trying to start a diologue and spur people's creativity, hence the archive format, I just think that the relationship between the fans and hussie spiraled really quickly and it never ended up going how they wanted it to. I think that's really tragic, and a missed oppourtunity. Especially because we lost the ability to have fun with homestuck. Homestuck is tragic, yes, but what made it work as a story was that it was also genuinely enjoyable. I've read all the classic trageties; sometimes I need a little light in my life. Damn.