SarahZ: A Brief History of Homestuck

[Naijaboy]

SarahZ is now tackling one of the craziest fandoms to have ever exist: the Homestuck universe. Every person who has been to a fan convention has seen at least one person in cosplay. She now is going to do her best to recap on the story that brought it together. As expected it''s her longest video yet, clocking in at over 2 hour.

 

[Mesoian]

clocking in at over 3 hour.

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2:12:32

Anyway, real talk, Homestuck was very good. The fans are what made it annoying to talk about. But I fell off when each chapter stopped being a YA novela chapter and became a bad adventure game.

 

[Gentlemen]

She's been tweeting about this one for a minute

 

[QisTopTier]

This is all I know about homestuck

 

[Jotakori]

Holy hell, two hours?! Oooh man, this gonna be good.

Once upon a time I was neck god damn deep into this fandom, and although it definitely had its bad sides (very bad sides), it also holds some of the absolute best experiences out of any fandom for me. The sheer amount of fan creativity it spawned from art to music to its own freaking "anime" lol to literally anything you could conceive in between was so amazing. I made a ton of long-standing friends through cosplay hangouts/meet-ups for it, too.

While Homestuck is undoubtedly "cringe" nowadays, I still can't help but look back at the whole thing fondly. Shame its ending was pretty meh, though.

 

[BaconHat]

I'm gonna guess this video is the reason why the homestuck kickstarter just posted a update about misinformation and the development timeline of the game, going into details about the dev teams and the work they made specifically over the years?

 

[LProtagonist]

No thanks.

 

[BLEEN]

SarahZ is now tackling one of the craziest fandoms to have ever exist: the Homestruck universe. Every person who has been to a fan convention has seen at least one person in cosplay. She now is going to do her best to recap on the story that brought it together. As expected it''s her longest video yet, clocking in at over 3 hour.

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I like how you keep calling it Homestruck but it's Homestuck lol

 

[take_marsh]

I love me some SarahZ and I've picked up a Homestuck book to preview at a bookstore and the format is absolutely mind boggling. I didn't know what I was looking at. This will no doubt be insightful.

 

[BaconHat]

I love me some SarahZ and I've picked up a Homestuck book to preview at a bookstore and the format is absolutely mind boggling. I didn't know what I was looking at. This will no doubt be insightful.

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Still in the process of watching the video, its quite interesting, but fyi based on the comments saying she ignored the dev team trying to reach out to her during the making of the video for the hiveswap part of the vid and the fact that they posted an entire dev timeline with demos an hour ago, it paints a really weird picture.
Edit : Seems she also received some extra confirmation on the hiveswap part, a few minutes ago based on a comment from a dev.

 

[MDSVeritas]

As someone who bounced off Homestuck when I first tried it but have some close friends who were deeply into it, it's fascinating to go through the whole timeline of it and learn so much of how all of this went.

As a developer I gotta say the Hiveswap stuff doesn't even sound that unusual, especially given it was a first time effort for the folks at the top trying to get it rolling, but it is sad it ran into so many roadblocks. In general it's definitely a bummer to see how things sit now. Homestuck was *the* internet fandom for a while. And for the current state of things to be so diminished and the remaining efforts to be so tarnished with vitriol is saddening for sure.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

Not too familiar with SarahZ, but I have read through Homestuck twice. Bonkers experience, but honestly a really really great read if you're willing to suffer some strange bullshit.

That thing goes PLACES and i love it for that.

 

[Pyccko]

I have never read a single page of Homestuck


but I do own the physical book of sweet bro and hella jeff. it is one of my most prized possessions

 

[Midramble]

I've tried twice to get through homestuck but I always get stuck somewhere around the wall of text portion and the juggalo troll

 

[Birdie]

SarahZ is my portal into weird internet sensations I barely missed because of my age.

Though I do remember Homestuck. It popped up during a time I was super annoyed by Earthbound fans and given that it's name is inspired by Earthbound (sort of an antonym of it?), I ignored it except for reading about the bizarre behavior of fans.

 

[atomsk eater]

Happy Homestuck day y'all. God I actually miss being into it like I was in college, I think it's the last time I've been involved in a fandom to the extent of making art and fic about it. The video is so long but gotta give it a watch later.

 

[bazzi]

edit will watch the vid when i can lol oops

 

[RecLib]

Sarah really has found her specific brand of video essay youtube now.

 

[Pokemaniac]

I've been kind of procrastinating on reading Homestuck^2 for a while now, and after this, I'm starting to wonder if I should even bother.

 

[BaconHat]

I've been kind of procrastinating on reading Homestuck^2 for a while now, and after this, I'm starting to wonder if I should even bother.

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...it has a sequel?

 

[Pokemaniac]

...it has a sequel?

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I'm not sure if "sequel" is really the word I'd use to describe it (it's really more of a continuation of the epilogue), but yeah, something like that. It helps if you understand the context around it, which is explained by the video.

 

[BaconHat]

I'm not sure if "sequel" is really the word I'd use to describe it (it's really more of a continuation of the epilogue), but yeah, something like that. It helps if you understand the context around it, which is explained by the video.

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I still have a fair chunk of the vid to watch, but good to know that wild ride never ends.

 

[Rats]

As a big fan of Problem Sleuth from way back I have complicated feelings about Homestuck.

 

[Jotakori]

Wow, that was a fascinating watch! I would have loved to see her cover more of the fandom experience during its peak cuz those fandom deep dives of hers are always hilariously fantastic, but this timeline overview of the series itself was really interesting. I had bounced out of Homestuck pretty hard maybe a handful of months after the game kickstarter went up and only revisited it a couple times to catch up/finish the story, outside of fandom involvement, so tons of this stuff was totally new info for me.

I always felt Homestuck had kinda lost its magic by the end of the series, and hearing about all the ups and downs it's had with trying to continue makes me think I made the right choice in never pursuing it further.

Had no idea about the Unofficial Homestuck Collection, though, that's super cool! Especially cuz the last time I read the series (which was already several years ago, before the website change) there were already several old links no longer working. It's a shame the official site isn't trying to properly upkeep the web comic, but bless fans for putting in the work in their stead. I just know someday I'll want to reread it, so having that available is awesome.

 

[Punchline]

god what a fascinating timeline of just hussie and his company being complete and utter fuck ups

 

[Pokemaniac]

I still have a fair chunk of the vid to watch, but good to know that wild ride never ends.

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Honestly that's starting to become kind of the problem at this point. Despite ending years ago, the comic has yet to really come to a particularly satisfying conclusion. In spite of not really liking the ending, I'm kind of starting to come around to the opinion that the story just should have been left off there instead of the pivot to officially sanctioned fan fiction because the results seem to be pretty mixed at best.

Something that became clear long ago, though, is that Homestuck as a brand has become way too big for its own good, and Andrew Hussie's skill at managing it doesn't really seem to be improving. It provides an interesting contrast to Undertale, which at least so far (we'll have to see how the rest of Deltarune plays out), seems to be scaling up more conservatively, but also more gracefully.

 

[diakyu]

This is all I know about homestuck

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She mentions this exact video lmao

 

[MayorSquirtle]

Honestly that's starting to become kind of the problem at this point. Despite ending years ago, the comic has yet to really come to a particularly satisfying conclusion. In spite of not really liking the ending, I'm kind of starting to come around to the opinion that the story just should have been left off there instead of the pivot to officially sanctioned fan fiction because the results seem to be pretty mixed at best.

Something that became clear long ago, though, is that Homestuck as a brand has become way too big for its own good, and Andrew Hussie's skill at managing it doesn't really seem to be improving. It provides an interesting contrast to Undertale, which at least so far (we'll have to see how the rest of Deltarune plays out), seems to be scaling up more conservatively, but also more gracefully.

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I can't help but feel that part of why Hussie keeps dragging Homestuck's rotting corpse around and insisting it's still alive is because he's bitter and jealous that Toby Fox one-upped him with a much better and successful story while living in Hussie's basement, after having been associated with the Homestuck brand for so long. Not that there's any real evidence to suggest that, but it wouldn't surprise me considering how far up his own ass Hussie seems to be.

 

[Toxi]

As a Problem Sleuth fan, it's kinda weird how little time this spends on Problem Sleuth and the first 4 chapters of Homestuck. I get that the fandom exploded with chapter 5, but still. I guess it's appropriate with how much the comic changed.

 

[Kasai]

I'll have to watch this soon. I stopped reading during the Gigapause and forgot like all of what happened. I've considered going back into it from the start, but I don't have time for that anymore.

 

[PaulloDEC]

Fascinating video. I was only familiar with Homestuck in passing, so this was an interesting ride.

I bet she regretted that soft-drink gimmick, though. The final video is over two hours; I shudder to think how long she was sipping for overall.

 

[Cuburger]

I'm interested in this since I used to follow Homestuck from the very beginning, having somehow stumbled on MS Paint Adventures/Problem Sleuth and getting really into it to follow along with new comic updates as they released. I eventually fell off of Homestuck, and even though I can't remember why, I think that despite being more bigger, interactive, and more involved in it's production than Problem Sleuth ever was, it just didn't quite capture the same charm and wacky video game text adventure vibe that I liked PS for.

Imagine my surprise when I hear about how massively popular Homestuck is and it's fandom years later, kickstarting projects for millions of dollars when it seemed like a pretty niche and obscure internet thing (while obviously still pretty popular at the time) when I was following it. I've been interested in revisiting it and seeing how things play out specifically because of how massively popular it seemed to become.

 

[ZiZ]

This is one of the few popular fandoms that I know next to nothing about, and have always been interested in. Will definitely check this out.

 

[Capra]

It seems like the thing with Hiveswap and Undertale is that Toby Fox like, understood from the outset that he'd never done this before so he set his ambitions realistically low in terms of the artistic and technical prowess it'd take to make his game. Hiveswap seems like the classic case of kickstarter creators biting off more than they could chew.

 

[skeptem]

I've always wanted to know more about Homestuck but have zero interest in actually reading or experiencing it.

So this is perfect.

 

[N7Commander01]

Sarah released an update that someone has sent an email to her and the studio she works with containing legal threats.

I hope its not too serious

 

[Capra]

Sarah released an update that someone has sent an email to her and the studio she works with containing legal threats.

I hope its not too serious

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She gave about as even-handed a treatment of the whole situation as one could imagine and only recounted what others have said with a million disclaimers so this doesn't really paint Hussie in the greatest of lights if true

 

[RoninChaos]

My son was into Homestuck for a while. I tried to read it so I could talk with him about it and just could not get through it.

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

I've been kind of procrastinating on reading Homestuck^2 for a while now, and after this, I'm starting to wonder if I should even bother.

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I reread it a few years back and enjoyed it still. Some of the humor and style is very rooted in the time period it came out, but the characters and overall adventure are rock solid yet, IMO.

I have no issues with how it ended, and despite all this talks of some kind of epilogue, I don't think it needs one.

Honestly, the biggest barrier to entry is the length. I've wanted to go through it a third time, but oh boy. It takes a long goddamn while to read.

 

[Reym]

Watching now. I was sort of peripherally aware of Homestuck, but couldn't really get into it, so it's nice to have somebody lay it all out.

Where it crosses into my interests is the stuff with Odd Gentleman. For years I heard that they blew off Homestuck which struck me as such a shitty thing to do and made me feel like a bad person for enjoying their King's Quest game. It's good to hear a little more detail on that, and if the newer revelations are true then I don't necessarily think there is actually a "bad guy" here, since it sounds entirely possible - even likely - that Hussie just was coming in to things with out a real understanding of the undertaking. So it sucks - particularly for backers - and deserves criticisms, but there isn't necessarily any malice on anyone's part.

 

[Mirage]

Homestuck is a name I've known for a very long time but I never really knew what it was about before.

 

[Layell]

I dropped out of the video around the 15 min mark, but now I'm seeing this video may be about how much the creator is insane????

Is there a good part of the video I can skip to for that?

 

[Fuu]

I was hyped when I saw this on my feed, but haven't been able to watch it yet. I love Homestuck and Sarah's analysis of everything fandom related, so this will be a treat.

Sarah released an update that someone has sent an email to her and the studio she works with containing legal threats.

I hope its not too serious

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Oh shit. I'll download the video in case it's suddenly gone later.

 

[JustinPancakes]

This was a pretty great watch. I was on Tumblr during the height of Homestuck, and things really were nuts back then. I remember all the Kickstarter shenanigans and even the accusations that the devs helping with the game misused the money and focused more on King's Quest. I feel Sarah covers it all pretty well here. I had no idea there was even other information out there about the dev issues and Hussie's involvement in it all.

I had no idea there was a sequel or visual novels. I didn't even know that more than one episode of the game had come out. Based on what she said about Homestuck 2, though, I can't see myself putting time into it. I never delved into the epilogues because a friend described them to me as "gross."

 

[Deleted member 401]

I dropped out of the video around the 15 min mark, but now I'm seeing this video may be about how much the creator is insane????

Is there a good part of the video I can skip to for that?

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I'm three-quarters of the way through the video and biggest indictments against him presented in the video so far have been mismanaging Hiveswap's development and a few tasteless jokes in the latter half of the comic.

EDIT: Sarah seems to alluding to some alleged leaks painting Hussie in a bad light, but it doesn't sound like she's going to go into them.

 

[Cruxist]

As a big fan of Problem Sleuth from way back I have complicated feelings about Homestuck.

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As a Problem Sleuth fan, it's kinda weird how little time this spends on Problem Sleuth and the first 4 chapters of Homestuck. I get that the fandom exploded with chapter 5, but still. I guess it's appropriate with how much the comic changed.

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Problem Sleuth was the best. I want to say I discovered the MSPaint adventures website as a freshman in college through like, StumbleUpon. I stuck with it through the end and was excited for the interactive fancy new comic he was doing. Followed Homestuck for a few weeks and then just lost track of it, so I was peripherally aware of it and was shocked when it became so huge. Never really revisited it, but I know it became a juggernaut and had a kickstarter and also became the fandom you were allowed to laugh at since so many of the folks that cosplayed it seemed cringe.

Looking forward to this video!

 

[John_Videogames]

Here's her update comment, which contains a few clarifications.

Emails have been sent to me and the agency I make videos with containing explicit legal threats against me for parts of my video. I don't know what more I can say at this time, but will keep you all in the loop as much as I can. For now, feel free to still review the new information I've learned.
Hi everyone! Shortly after release my video, I received a DM from someone with a lot of firsthand knowledge on the game. There's some really important info there. Though they've asked to remain anonymous, suffice it to say I can verify that they have firsthand information and I believe them. To sum up what I was told:
-Although The Odd Gentlemen likely did not receive design documents for a long time, they report that TOG were uncommunicative even after receiving the documents
-TOG were indeed asked to work on parts of the Act 7 animation, but this did not occur concurrently with Hiveswap development. Theoretically, the Act 7 development and Hiveswap development shouldn't have caused conflict. -The source referred to in the second Gio article isn't reliable, and was likely dishonest with Gio. More specifically, the source was let go in 2014, and was only speculating about information that happened after then. Given this information, I've removed the link to the second article in the description.
Based on my conversation with the person who contacted me, I have reason to believe one of the sources may therefore have been dishonest and misrepresented or treated speculation as fact when contacting Gio (though I can't claim to know anyone's internal motivations). In any case, I think this information and the fact that I was contacted is important to share, so please take everything in this comment into account when watching the video.

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If you're a backer of the immensely ill-fated game, you can read What Pumpkin's statements here:

Update 36: Hiveswap · Homestuck Adventure Game

This update is only viewable by backers of this project

www.kickstarter.com

They posted an image from The Odd Gentlemen version of the game in early 2014 which looks really rough:

Really they should just cancel Hiveswap and give us a Problem Sleuth game, because Problem Sleuth is so much better.

 

[Dyle]

It's funny how she talks about most fans not caring much for the stuff that happened before the trolls were introduced but for me that was the best part, where it still had a lot of that Problem Sleuth vibe and was light and comprehensible. Once they introduced the trolls and the giant walls of text that always made up their part of the story things just seemed to fall apart.

 

[Punchline]

I gotta say Big Joel, who voices Hussie for this video, captures that insincere vibe of those statements incredibly well. Master class in acting, up there with Jenny Nicholson as Allison Cain.

 

[Runner]

Just to let everyone know, Sarah didn't try to contact anyone actually involved in homestuck to get their side of anything: