Homestuck is apparently in its final stretch, and, if I pace myself by liveblogging, I’ll supposedly reach the end at about the same time the story does, meaning I won’t have to wait forever to finish. So, I figure I may as well do that and see what all the fuss is about.
It’s not like I’ve lived the past couple of years in a cave in the woods, subsisting entirely on whatever birds I can bash to death with rocks, calling their eggs “nest candy” when I find them because I’ve gone insane from living in a cave in the woods for the past couple of years. I’ve already picked up a bunch of stuff via cultural osmosis and trying to get into it before:
I know that it takes place inside a magic video game. It’s also heavily influenced by Earthbound.
I know it used to be an interactive thing, where users would submit characters’ actions to decide what happened next. Then, at some point, it got so popular that the author had to stop and began writing the whole thing himself.
I know that there’s a bunch of troll aliens who are all parodies of terrible internet stereotypes. Later, he introduces even more, including one that’s based on Homestuck fans themselves, since they’ve become their own terrible internet stereotype. I’ve seen the bucket spitting video and a lot of other cosplay, but don’t really remember any of the characters. It all just melded into one amorphous, mostly gray blob of vicarious shame. I know one of the trolls is named Karkat, and I think there’s one who wears cat ears who’s named Nepeta.
I know that the author, Andrew Hussie, is infamous for screwing with his own fanbase. A year or two ago I looked over the Homestuck wiki to figure out what the comic was about. Some of the art was pretty cool, (I remember this one spy lady who looked like a hole in the universe) but it was mostly walls of incomprehensible jargon. I remember seeing that one of the characters had a super powered “grimdark” mode and just sort of threw up my hands and assumed that Homestuck was a giant joke at the expense of its readers, giving them tons of bullshit to obsess over just so that Hussie could laugh at them.
I know there was a multimillion dollar Kickstarter to fund a game based on it. Two of the backers paid $10,000 apiece to get their OCs put in the comic, only to have them immediately killed before they could do or say anything. Which is hilarious, but sort of reinforces the whole “Homestuck is just an extremely elaborate troll” idea.
I started reading it at some point, but it was just a kid faffing about in his house looking for a video game. It was boring as hell, and I gave up on it, but I promise that I might not abandon it this time.
Also, I just opened the first page and there’s a banner ad selling Homestuck crap right under the comic panel. So if those slug, skull, cat face, and hat badges mean anything, I’m spoiled on those too. Fuck.
Beginning
Well, we’re starting off with the video game theme, including a nameable protagonist.
Build Grist for making things/revising rooms, and presumably other kinds for fueling other actions.
I’ve really got to complain here. We’ve had enough dialogue about the game now that we should have gotten some kind of reaction about this, even if it’s just a reference to let the reader know that this is considered normal in this world or that the game is brainwashing them or something. When you read a story, you assume everything works like if does in the real world unless otherwise noted. In the real world, video games can’t do this kind of stuff, so Hussie should be doing something to communicate what’s going on. Even if it’s just an unexplained little aside that clues you in that this is considered normal to them. Then, 3,000 pages later when we find out they’re in the Matrix and all video games effect the coding of the virtual reality they live in, we can look back and see that that’s consistent with everything that happened before. Now I don’t know what parts of the story to trust. Is Dad literally faceless? I’d say “no, because then the text would let us know that somehow,” but it hasn’t done that with SBURB. So now I’m stuck wondering whether or not Dad is some kind of cake baking robot who’s kidnapped and raised a small child, and I’ve got no way to tell whether the evidence for it is just the art style that the characters don’t comment on because it’s not really part of their world or foreshadowing that’s just very poorly explained.
This was my longest reactions so far, by a pretty wide margin. The next page is going to be them freaking out about the game, making that a giant waste of time, isn’t it?
There’s an arm reaching through the wall there, but apparently I’m supposed to ignore it for the True Homestuck Experience because it wasn’t there originally and is part of some kind of retroactive time travel thing. Righto then.
Anyway, the meteor is a part of the game. Considering that life on this planet doesn’t seem to have been driven to the brink of extinction by shitty gamers, we’ve finally got (circumstantial) evidence about how this is supposed to be interpreted. I’m tentatively coming down in the “the game is abnormal but brainwashing its players into not noticing.” It fits with Godhead not believing him (he’s not a player) and Dad being surprised by the moved bathroom fixtures, though that also fits with Dad simply not knowing John is playing a new game. Then again, it could be that, after the meteor kills everybody, the game resets and everyone comes back to life and this all is normal. Hopefully, we’ll get a better reaction out of Godhead when he finds out it’s not one of John’s pranks
Oh, hey, Tumblr has finally decided I’m not a spambot and is letting my posts show up in tag searches. From now on, I’m getting a friend to just sit at my computer and check my inbox for spoilers before I read it, as per suggestions I got. Anyway, Homestuck.
The blue cube is the item that restored John’s health vial, so Gel Viscosity is probably HP. Cache Limit increases how much Grist he can hold. That seems a little sparse for level up benefits, so I’m assuming those Boondollars are customization points. (ie +1 Strength for $100, new attack skill for $2000, etc.)
Also, this must be his Sburb level, since it references Grist. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a second level system for the outer game of Homestuck, or even an entirely different advancement system. Though that brings up the question of how the two interact. Does he start losing his real HP when his Health Vial is emptied?
The following pictures of cartoon children (w/commentary) have been submitted in a frank and forthright manner for your judicious appraisal. Homestuck liveblog? Nonsense, these are important business matters which must be dealt with if we are to meet the deadline for the big contract.
Nevermind, looks like it’s his grandma instead. Guess John comes from a broken home, then. 
