I'm less interested in, say, formal aspects (like using animation or w/e) or how it Had Impact, but rather why'd you care about the characters, tone and what kind of a story it is.
I've seen Homestuck mentioned 11 million times and I wonder what it's like. For real.
Andrew Hussie started off playing a forum game called MSPaint adventures where he drew something in an unpolished style (not actually in MSPaint lol) and basically played an improvised 90s adventure game where the next action was decided upon by people in the forums. Usually reasonable suggestions to overcome a problem resulted in disasters, and the weirdest suggestions end up being right.
Homestuck started out as a forum game but Hussie eventually stopped taking suggestions and just did his own thing at a point, but it's influential on the style.
The story focuses on long distance friends who get stuck in their houses cause of magic or something and have to find a way out, using adventure game logic. You learn about their lives and families and such. There's a lot of long conversations that read like AIM and jokes about inventory systems. The plot gets increasingly more convoluted, the cast cycles a few times, and characters that started off as simple jokes gain dimension.
I eventually stopped reading because it got too much for me but it's a cool thing. I hope this helps lol
Is there some sort of emotional core and/or themes to this? For example (and to sound pretentious), Adventure Time is about best friends living in a post-apocalyptic, post-human world, but it has themes like cyclicality, creativity, the dangers of obsessions and other of stuff that you wouldn't guess from a description (and which basically betray the branding of the show).
If you do get into Homestuck, let me know, I can find you the mirror that hosts the flash animations.
It's gonna take a bit, but I'll write a literal note about this so I don't forget. Honestly it seems like it was a generational experience among the internet creators I follow so I feel like I'm missing a joke or something and it seems like it's cutting a bit deeper than any mainstream pop culture sensation of my teens did among the wider generation. Well, I guess that's the power of fandom, really.
I have not seen Adventure Time, so I can't make any comparisons.
That said, Homestuck definitely revolves around certain themes, many of them emotional. I don't want to spoil things too much, but a lot of these things are pretty timeless. I recently re-read Homestuck (i.e. in the past year), and it holds up well.
I will admit, there's definitely a value to having had been there to discuss, speculate, and theorize with others. It gives one time to digest and metabolize each update, a forced pacing that one might not get when reading it straight through.
But that's true for any TV show! Game series! Written fiction series (especially penny novels)! Or anything else that has a release cycle.
If you're interested in Homestuck, I wouldn't want "being late to the party" to be the reason you don't read it. I was late to 17776 but it was (and still is) a great read. (BTW, if you like Homestuck, you might like 17776.)
oh you would love adventure time
I have not seen Adventure Time, so I can't make any comparisons.
I hugely recommend it as it's possibly the best TV cartoon series of all time. (It makes me envious that we adults can't have TV animation that compelling.) I think it scratches a bit of the same itch as Undertale does. They're both deceptively simple as their visual style signals (correctly) that they are often comedic and light-hearted, both examples of that being cute and compelling aren't mutually contradictory. Both of them were game changers in their own mediums in that they make you view their mediums in a new light. They both also have genuine themes, which while perhaps aren't unprecedented, are treated in a novel way, like Undertale does with the theme of preconceived notions. There are characters, much like Alphys, who have way more meat to them than you might think at first. There's a ton of lore and basically any detail might turn out to be significant in the end, yet many things are left unexplained, which I as a habitual overthinker find very satisfying. Both have clear queer themes, as well.
One way to describe Adventure Time on its own terms would be as the growing up story of Finn the Human, the last human to live on Earth after apocalyptic events, living in an odd ball world of monsters and candy people. The show matures with him, starting out being a zany and eccentric spin on fairy tale tropes, yet grows up a ton while developing an unique blend of episodic and serial storytelling over the seasons. It still retains its gentle and sympathetic core onto the end, distinguishing it from most adult fare, but it's a lot more sophisticated than children's stuff usually is.
Hayao Miyazaki's works occupy a similar place in film world. There's plenty of empathy to go around, things are rarely black and white and taken as a whole seem to propose an appealing attitude towards life, warts and all. Continuities between the episodes that reward observant viewers, metaphorical treatment of things such as dementia and memory and gradually deepening characters and their relationships hold up to adult standards (IMO), but children kept tuning in for 11 minute episodes thanks to their plots, voice talent, comedy and clear emotional moments.
That said, Homestuck definitely revolves around certain themes, many of them emotional. I don't want to spoil things too much, but a lot of these things are pretty timeless. I recently re-read Homestuck (i.e. in the past year), and it holds up well.
I'm very OK with spoilers, actually. Give me some of that delicious spoiler juice, if you want to, just don't tell me (much) about the latter half of the plot.
I will admit, there's definitely a value to having had been there to discuss, speculate, and theorize with others. It gives one time to digest and metabolize each update, a forced pacing that one might not get when reading it straight through.
Well, on the other hand I can read through it as fast as I want to, thus catching up is pretty fast.
If you're interested in Homestuck, I wouldn't want "being late to the party" to be the reason you don't read it. I was late to 17776 but it was (and still is) a great read. (BTW, if you like Homestuck, you might like 17776.)
When I put effort into consuming media, I'm often doing so in an attempt to understand other people better. Watching or reading something lets me enter conversations I wouldn't otherwise have had, which is cool and rewarding. Besides, Hussie seems to be pals with people I like from different circles (web comics people, indie game developers, cartoonists etc.). In fact Hussie's pal Ryan North has written Adventure Time comics.
I'm actually a huge fan of Jon Bois, though I have yet to read 17776.
twovests wrote
Things I liked about Homestuck:
A problem: The first few acts was a kind of text-based-game deal, with the author literally making updates in response to user submitted commands. This structure is apparent, and it does not age as well as the rest of the comic.
The direction and basis of the comic kind of shifts over its 7 year lifespan. This is pretty apparent even without being super invested in it like I am.
One problem is that the original flash animations are being deprecated, replaced with HTML5 when it can, or YouTube videos when it can't, which sucks because the pixel-crisp animations and YouTube's CBR encoding do not mesh well. Even worse, [S] Cascade, arguably the most important animation in Homestuck, is not properly accessible from the main site.
If you do get into Homestuck, let me know, I can find you the mirror that hosts the flash animations.