Regaining my love for Homestuck (Help Please?)

okay, this might sound a bit crazy, and maybe even a little rude, but have you ever just thought about... leaving? just saying fuck it, packing your bags, and heading off to new horizons?

because a lot of what you're saying here sounds like something i've experienced myself with a different fandom. i'm not gonna name that fandom, because honestly i'd just rather not think about it right now, but at first i loved what they were doing and wanted more from them, but over time, they shifted to a new direction i didn't like. now, i WANTED to like it, and i WANTED to stay invested in even the older parts of that thing, but i just couldn't get myself to like it.

it didn't really help that the places where the community was active, like reddit and (at the time) twitter, was VERY toxic, sometimes in it's positivity, and sometimes in it's negativity, usually the latter.

the straw that broke the camel's back for me though, was a prevalent community member getting exposed for bad things, again, not going to name who or what they did, because i don't want to think about it right now, but the point is, it made me want to leave, potentially for good. it didn't bring me joy, or intrigue, and the community wasn't helping either. so i just did what i thought was logical. i left. and i feel like i was better for it.

what i'm trying to say is that maybe you should just leave the homestuck fandom, even for a little bit. get your mind off of it and try to think of something else for a while.

of course, if you don't think you need to, then that's ok, too. i just thought that maybe you should take your mind off of homestuck for a while.

For me, the main enjoyment is the aspects of the game in general. I think exploring the world of SBURB is quite fun in the earlier acts, less so in the later acts. It's quite an ever-evolving sense of scale of it all. For about Act 6 (Especially later on in the act when it Gets Good), I do enjoy all of the weird meta-fuckery going on, like with the Stardust Glitches.

But that's mainly in the main comic, I have barely touched the epilogues or Beyond Canon.

i’m sorry to say, dandy, but you kind of missed the entire point i was making and didn’t really engage with what i was talking about.

a big part of my point is that discussion of the epilogues‘ contents is completely irrelevant and unproductive, and you should at this point probably accept: you will, most likely, never like the epilogues. discussing them with epilogue likers seems to only make you more upset, so you should probably stop. you really liked something, and then it got a sequel you really dislike. this is not a world tragedy, this happens to a lot of people, and all of them are fine. you should try to accept this and move on.

it seems you have this… “entitlement” may be too harsh of a word but i struggle to find a different one, to a community. communities aren’t just found, they’re built. if you don’t like the communities that exist, build your own. the best way to find like-minded people is to just start expressing your opinions, befriending those that agree with you, building either an audience or something like a “group” (like a discord or something if you want it to be more personal). “fitting in” a community isn’t something that will just happen. it’s something you gotta make happen.

this is a genuine question: what do you want to happen? what kind of help do you want from this thread? do you want other people to find communities you’d like for you, direct you to a place you might enjoy? do you want them to write something that might completely change your mind and make you like the current state of affairs? because, realistically, this just won’t happen. you’re shooting yourself in the foot by making a thread specifically aimed for people who like something you dislike to respond and engage with it. why not, instead, do something more productive like make a thread aimed at people who might share your opinions, like a thread about some of the og homestuck elements you like, or even a thread for those who disliked the epilogues, etc?

the most important question i find myself most confused about is: why do you even want to be in the “homestuck fandom”? from my perspective you walk into a community, you dislike it, and you… just stay there? why? why not leave? why not just have/make a couple of friends who generally agree with you and just have that be your little community? why do you need a pre-existing community for you to just join, why not make it?

i’m just really confused at this point about what you even want.

Fitting into a community does "just happen". It happened to me before, I live with the belief and the hope it will happen for me once again, even if I have to do legwork to make it so. I aspire to be optimistic and choose hope over wallowing in despair.

My end goal, as stated with the many replies so far, is to find someone who can provide me some kind of deeper understanding that might help me get over these issues I have with the state of things, or elucidate ways in which I am mistaken and clear my mind. I choose to believe that there is someone out there, with that knowledge or piece of information that I've been missing, that will allow me to feel connected again, excited even.

I've already made some degree of progress with a lot of these responses, at least with regards to inwards introspection, it's been very eye opening to be able to talk here and pinpoint where my loss and confusion and sadness lies.

As for why I don't make a thread aimed at people who mutually dislike something, I don't feel like that would be a good idea. Last time I shared my critique of the story, I found myself faced by a witch hunt on one side, by fans who extremely loved the new content and would not hear ANY critique on the matter and then left only surrounded by people of the Homestuck Reddit/Discord, because my critique was being lumped in with the worst faith actors of those communities, I felt like nothing I had to say on the matter was being given any objective lense and just tarred as "angry Homestuck is progressive", when the crux of my issues has nothing to do with the progressive themes of the story and more to do with the miserable execution and plot holes.

I'm not inclined to do so again, I don't even think this place would be the appropriate space for it; that's another reason I find discussing the content of the post Homestuck story difficult. I don't want to ruffle feathers and I don't want to contribute to more misery.

I want to be in the Homestuck fandom because for the longest time, it was an enjoyable space for me, and integral for a lot of self discovery with regard to my own identity, and it's where I had some of my most long standing friendships. I use to produce a lot of art and fanfic for the community and felt very driven and inspired by those around me, but since the Epilogues onwards, I've felt hollow. And yes, that's in part to the Fandom shrinking in such a dramatic degree and a lot of my own friends abandoning ship, but it's also just because of my own issues with everything going forth. But I refuse to believe that my time spent in it should all be meaningless or thrown to the wind because of a weird turn.

I just want to see the end. I want the finality that the Epilogues should have been. I feel like I need closure. So, for better of for worse, I am here. Without anybody by my side to really talk to or engage with.

I miss the joy and I want it back; and I have to hope in my heart that there is someone out there who will find me and tell me that thing I haven't considered and it'll all become okay again. My only other choice is to grit my teeth and knuckle down until the conclusion. So, rather than doing nothing, I'm looking for that someone or something.

That sounds like an understandable desire and a reasonable enough approach to me. As you've already got firsthand experience with, Homestuck is something extremely special, and if you're able to click with it it can be downright life changing. That said, I imagine it's going to be rather difficult, so I wish you (and anyone else in your shoes) the best of luck in finding the thing that helps you "get" it.

For me at least, seeing the beloved cast and the connections they made change and drift apart largely for the worse, is a bitter pill that's nonetheless worth swallowing. It reflects the sad fact that growing up and going through life as an adult rarely actually means the kind of "happily ever after" one envisioned when one was younger. And I do find the conceit of questioning what it even means for a story to "end" and whether narrative closure is even something desirable, either for a character or a reader, to be highly compelling. Exploring the idea that the price of the story carrying on is the continuation of the endless cycle of change and grief these characters are subjected to by nature of being characters in an ongoing narrative has so far been at least as interesting as it's been heartbreaking.

Plus, the humor and charm of the writing and art for characters both old and new remains delightful, which I'd find worth coming back for no matter how much I may dislike the direction something in particular was taken. But I'm also just easy to please when it comes to the prospect of More Homestuck.

OP there is no non-painful path for you. If there was a single easy explanation for the epilogues that would neatly explain away your discomforts you would have gotten it by now. People like the Epilogues because they can either tolerate the difficult points or because they genuinely enjoy them. No amount of circular conversation about plot holes and character consistency will solve this for you.

To repeat what has been said many many times already, you are caught in an unhealthy relationship with this work and its community. At some point you will have to cut your losses and accept pain- either the pain of the Epilogues, the pain of drifting from Homestuck for good, or the pain of only liking alternate takes on Homestuck. You can choose where you go, but you can’t stay here, and you are the only one capable of setting yourself free.

Sitting around and waiting for someone to hand you the key out of your mental birdcage is less than productive, it is time and energy that serves only to keep you in this state of unrest.

It seems to me you’re stuck in a really bad mental trap that is hurting you a lot, and I really hope you can recognize that before this topic swerves into another debate over fiddly semantics that don’t matter

@sword my comment was poorly phrased. obviously people still have fun with homestuck! i mean, i am. what i was trying to say was that a section of the fandom took what hussie and co wrote very personally and adopted a mindset that isn't conducive to actual discussion. "hussie hates me" is not engaging with media. there were years where the vast majority of what was happening in hs fan communities was vitriol towards hussie. it was genuinely exhausting. this isn't the fault of hussie. it was just a thing that sucked. it's much better now.

"Even the idea of a "fix-it" fic for the Epilogues doesn't make sense because if it gets "fixed" then it's a completely different story that ends instead of starting something else." i don't think we disagree here.

i know i already said this was a "fix it parody" but thinking about it, that's not totally true. i think you're right when you say it's a "happy ending" parody, but i think that it's a little more specific. when i saw the epilgogues, my first instinct was that it was a dig at the hp epilogues and the cursed child. i think this was very clever. that being said, i think part of what was worth satirzing about the cursed child is that it was ooc (if you could call the hp characters consistent), poorly structured, and all and all straight up bad.

hussie and company did a really good job deconstructing it and other epilogues, but by doing that, they had to derail the paths these characters were on to tell that story. dandy is right. they were deliberately changing these characters. jane being a fascist doesn't make sense, but neither did cedric lmfao. Its awkward tone is a result of it being a parody.

the critique that it's ooc is straight up true; they're being ooc intentionally. that's not bad writing, it's good satire. what HSBC did was try and move forward with those characterizations and see what could be made out of the ashes. not everyone wants that, though, and that's reasonable.

that's where the "dubiously canon" thing comes from. there's a reason it's separated from homestuck proper. there is a noticable difference from hs and dub canon works. in tone, in characterization. it is seperated, to some degree, from og homestuck.

"There are so many people that just wanted their favorite fanfics to get some Hussie Sauce added as the finale and to be able to have canon wrapped up so they can play dolls with the way they solidified their characterizations of the kids in their heads pre-2018 and still feel like they're "canon-compliant.""

This feels unnecessarily harsh. I strongly believe that "dub-canon" left the option to engage with the characters only as they exist in canon open on purpose. I agree that more people are taking inspiration from dub canon, and I agree that dub canon is homestuck, and is good.

I disagree that there is a "right way" to do that and that that "right way" means taking the events and character changes of HSE and HS2/BC as gospel. People who decide not to do that and that prefer canon aren't failing to engage with the text.

As someone who aspires to add her work to FARF (barring any complications like the work currently being on AO3 and having to make my own site for it, as well as some of the site needing to have verification so that minors can't read any graphic nsfw scenes) I can tell you that even some of the FARF writers were critical of the HSE. Part of the conversation is criticism. The point was that it was constructive criticism. Where the conversation broke down was, again, people in fan spaces taking it personally.

@dandy if it would make you feel better, feel free to DM me on discord (same username) i was pretty upset when the homestuck epilogues came out too and if you want to vent to me i'm open to it.

@bluebootyraider You're very kind and that's a very sweet offer, but I already talk my therapist's ear off about these things and I don't think it's fun to just receive endless messages about things people do not enjoy.

@dandy well, the offer to be discord friends is still on the table if you want to talk about the parts you do like