Today I read
an interview of Andrew Hussie (performed by Brian O'Malley, no less!) that has reawoken my desire to share my favourite fandom with all the rest of you. So!
Let me tell you about
Homestuck.
Homestuck is loosely referred to as a (web)comic, but it is better thought of as what media can accomplish when you have all the power of the internet to work with. It is a story told mostly in single panel images (some still, some animated) with an associated caption or blurb or chatlog, but some of the story is told in flash cartoons. Some of it is told in playable video games. Some of it is told in images drawn by an assortment of talented artists. Some of it comes across in the fifteen albums of music designed to enhance and support the story.
Completely separate from the story, I really like this method of storytelling --the internet is changing the way we view media, and I cannot wait to see what happens next. The web still has limits, but they're much fewer, and Hussie is seeing what he can do to blow past as many as he can.
The story of Homestuck is initially very simple: Four (human) kids, who are online friends, accidentally start playing a video game that destroys the world. It...grows from there, substantially. More kids are introduced, 12 trolls from another universe who were playing the same game. These two groups find themselves linked and having to work together to defeat a common enemy, despite culture shock and other ridiculosity. Then it turns out that those 16 were just the beta session, and they have to join 16 alpha players (4 human kids, 12 troll kids) to defeat an even *bigger* bad. Lots and lots of characters die. Also frogs are really important for some reason.
Sorry, does all that sound a little clinical to you? Fine, let me slip into my HELLA FANGIRL MODE for a second, because it is not that hard to do that with Homestuck.
So ohmygod, Homestuck is totally fucking rad for bunches of reasons, here are some of them.
The trolls have this ridiculously useful four-quadrant relationship system (including a form of friendship called moirailegance which is basically me/Ria or Sherlock/Jawn or DubDub/Lacey and is my favourite kind of ship ever).
The story is a good time-travel story, with lots of parallel dimensions and multiple selves, and getting into arguments by accidentally chatting with people in the wrong order. I cannot express how much I love time-travel stories, especially ones that are more absurd than logical (so Back to the Future over Primer).
Speaking of chatting with people, much of the characterbuilding and plot and stuff come across in chatlogs, and that's actually a really awesome thing to read, because these people are very silly and fun and loud and get into arguments and faff at each other and talk about movies and otherwise behave in a manner that is real. Also in a manner that encourages shipping.
The whole thing is a giant videogame pastische, basically made out of old adventure game tropes, and there's lots of clever and interesting things about the worldbuilding that are quite fun, like the Strife Specibuses, which is the kinds of weapons you can use, or Sylladexes, which are inventory. Sometime when I get talented, I will make myself a Sylladex purse.
The fandom is SO ENTHUSIASTIC ALL THE TIME, and so intense, and there's so much fanart, and cosplay, and plush toys, and props, and food, and fic, and headcanons, and forget just being about the characters as presented, there's also SO MANY alternate universes, and different versions (like this truly beautiful Steampunk AU) and everyone is really chill about cosplayers doing any different variation.
THE COSPLAYERS/FANS ARE AWESOME PEOPLE! Okay, so heaps of them are very young (like, high school young), but in general, they are enthusiastic and friendly and enjoy taking lots of photographs and goofing off with each other and bringing copious amounts of Faygo to meetups and sharing it around. And at Dragon*Con there was a 21+ meetup hosted in a bar, and everyone agreed that we do considerable tipping and we could drink and swear and talk about kink and _god bless adult fans_ .
And and and and and!
So that's quite enough of that. But you see, Homestuck is a media property that contains the ability to reduce me to a giggling twelve year old otaku more than a year after I entered the fandom (which is rare), and I find this genuinely awesome. It's a complete brick to read (somewhere along the lines of 5k pages and well over an hour of flash cartoons), but the story is complex, and well paced, and has enough pre-planning that there really are things foreshadowed a year in advance. Hussie writes it as a serial, but he's always seemed very mindful of the fact that much (most?) of his audience will approach it as an archive as a whole.
So why should you read Homestuck? Because it's a new form of storytelling, and you should at least try that because the full potential of the internet is neat. Because the world-building is thorough enough to come across as a comprehensive universe, yet paced well enough that you never feel inundated with information. Because the characters are about as compelling as any I've read. Because the art is JUST BEAUTIFUL, and if you don't believe me, go
watch the video associated with the Kickstarter page to see a bunch of examples.
And because mostly I just heard this amazing headcanon about Equius and Nepeta, and I really want someone to squee with.
~Sor
MOOP!
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