#Homestuck Made This World

[betweengenesisfrogs]

RE: previous posts: My own feelings about Homestuck Made This World (a podcast that has been a big part of the Homestuck discussion lately) are complicated and I kind of want to articulate them.

On the one hand, HSMTW allowed me to see Homestuck more clearly. To simplify a lot, the hosts are media studies scholars whose relationship to Homestuck is not based on an emotional attachment so much as just finding the comic interesting. As a result, they often argue and challenge its ideas, particularly the work’s ideas about itself.

What I found helpful about their approach was that it helped me to take a step back and get some perspective, to get outside of Homestuck to understand Homestuck, if you see what I mean. It helped me understand that what Homestuck does, how it affects my view of the world, isn’t some ineffable magic from outside time, but is the result of certain rhetorical and narrative strategies, not all of which are obvious from the way the comic talks about itself. The insights available from this are fascinating and many.

On the other hand, HSMTW doesn’t really do justice to how it felt to be part of  the Homestuck communities I was in. There was a dream - and still is, I think, but it burned brightest a few years ago - of using the conversation Homestuck started to make something that could profoundly change the conversations we were having online, in the world, in ourselves. At times it felt like we were fighting against a heavy tide, but we believed in that world, believed in the importance of that fight. It was a collaboration, it was storytelling, it was building a new world together.

That work is still going on, but one of the biggest hopes was that Homestuck^2 could be a central light of that movement. Unfortunately, those hopes were dashed, and that’s a tragedy.

That’s one of the things that’s disappointing about how Homestuck is often viewed: that that story is rarely told. HSMTW doesn’t really tell it, largely because its hosts are interested in other things.

So if you’re looking for an understanding of the techniques Homestuck uses, the pros and cons of those techniques, the relation of Homestuck to literature, and the debates context around Homestuck in its day, then I recommend the podcast. But I think other angles are needed if you want to understand what Homestuck is to people and what the most active members of its literary movement were and are trying to do. It’s just the start, but I hope that OD and Sarah’s responses go some way to giving more perspective on that.

[haveyouheardthispodcast]

[fortooate]

[citrusandsalt]

So was anyone going to tell me Michael Lutz, Cameron Kunzelman, and Austin Walker have a new pod on genre fiction or was I supposed to find it out doing my semiannual google of the wizard's quarter in an attempt to remember what length of a work it refers to

[whosthegamzee]

is this anything:

homestuck is the gamzee of webcomics

Homestuck is the Gamzee of Webcomics

[mbharestuff]

the number of Homestuck fans who are about to become Book of the New Sun fans because podcasts is not insubstantial. it is going to be a beautiful thing.

[piglii]

honestly Homestuck Made This World is a great little bit of archival media to explain a particular temporary culture that just no longer exists to the same extent. pretty gud so far I can't wait to hear them get to Act fucking Six

[palescat]

NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO! CLICK HERE

[the-worm-that-gnaws-in-the-night]

I don't understand how people are still calling the Homestuck trolls "fully realised 3 dimensional characters" in 2021.

They're literally 2D

[dandyleyen]

Getting into HS for the first time !

As we read through it, I’m also listening along to the “Homestuck Made This World” podcast because it helps me understand the story more and to learn about how the fandom was back then. This is what the groupchat (my sillies) just got from me as I was listening

guys . guys why would that be the method of filling a bucket. I know they’re aliens, but WHY WOULD IT BE THAT ??????????

[relaxxattack]

got to episode eight of homestuck made this world what the fuck do you MEAN there is a secret reveal conversation that due to fabricated time shenanigans i won’t get to see until later!!! i am Angry even if that is really fucking cool.

oh also i forgot to talk about it here but when michael did the summary on cascade i cried. it was really good and really cool and really immersive 👍 highly recommend people who want to experience (or re-experience) what homestuck and it’s fandom were actually like AS it was coming out over the years listen to this podcast it’s just very fun

[antigonewinchester]

Homestuck Made This World, Episode 10, Part 1 [approx 1:21:50-1:23:06]

CAMERON Heat’s leaving fandom. MICHAEL Yep. So this just means that honestly, there’s not a lot of discussion being had. The biggest and most sustained discussion that happens in the Something Awful thread during this reading is whether or not Jake has brain-damage or might be autistic. CAMERON That’s interesting. MICHAEL Yeah. CAMERON I didn’t—I didn’t think about either of those things. Okay. MICHAEL Well, and the thing that people point to regarding brain damage is that there’s a recurring joke that Jake gets hit in the head. CAMERON Uh huh. MICHAEL Things are just constantly hitting him in the head, so people are like, “Hey, Jake seems pretty oblivious to things, do you—” And I think this is very hinky, the logic here I don’t think is great. It’s like, “Maybe one of the reasons Jake is so oblivious to other people and doesn’t seem to know what’s going on is because, that.” And so— CAMERON I mean we all know that the reason Wiley Coyote keeps running into that big fake tunnel is because he’s hit on the head so often. MICHAEL Right! Exactly. CAMERON And he forgets that it’s a big fake tunnel. [MICHAEL sighs.] It has nothing to do with narrative conceit or genre. MICHAEL Right. [MICHAEL laughs.] CAMERON It has everything to do with the materially real and independently existing Wiley Coyote. [MICHAEL: Mhmm.] And his long history of cranial accidents.

I re-listened to Homestuck Made This World and found this brief excerpt very interesting re the fandom divide between Watsonian vs. Doylist / fictional-world vs. real world explanations for narratives.

[screamting]

I did, in fact, listen to some of the homestuck podcast, and I am stuck and bamboozled that upon the introduction of strife words like abjure, aggrieve, and abscond, the word they've been caught on as "possible the reader doesn't recognize and uncommon outside of books" is dote.

[windsoflimbo]

I've been rereading homestuck ((again) for the last time) while listening alongside the Homestuck Made This World podcast from Ranged Touch and I'm reminded how ridiculous both the story and the fandom got during Act 5. Who was out here saying to skip everything and start on that Act? That Act in particular? Who. You can come out, I'm not mad I promise.

[thoughts-and-gayers]

*me minding my business listening to a podcast about the critical analysis and contextualization of the webcomic homestuck*

"...I created a creepypasta monster called Smile Dog."

i screeched "WHAT" so loudly it was so embarrassing

[whosthegamzee]

gamzee is the gamzee of homestuck

You would think so, but actually

Andrew Hussie is the Gamzee of Homestuck