[webcomics - ISTKOOM] Explain 'Homestuck' to me

[Yo! Master]

As in this comic.

I know it's very popular, having a dedicated fanbase both here & in general. I know it has some excellent looking characters i keep running online (& in cosplay photos) but that may not exactly be their depiction in the comic itself. I know it apparently starts like an adventure game of old.

I've tried to get started on it, like, 4 times & each one i got stalled not that many strips in (a dozen or so).

So, what's the appeal? what's the nominal idea of the comic? when do i start seeing all those cool characters? why's there such a fandom on it? what other info on it can you give me?

 

[Rand Brittain]

It does start out a bit slow, but by the end of Act 1 people are generally hooked. Be sure you're reading the pesterlogs when they appear—people occasionally miss them because they have Javascript disabled or some similar thing.

The appeal is partly in the humor, and partly in the enormous cast of incredibly useful characters that spawned a pony-grade mass of fanwork. Andrew Hussie helped in this with the genius creation of four types of troll romance, thus quadrupling the possibilities for shipping and driving his fandom into a romance-planning furor.

Also there's Davesprite.

 

[David J Prokopetz]

The comic starts out as a straight parody of old-school text adventures, and strong elements of that remain throughout. If you're not familiar with text adventures or interactive fiction, a lot of the jokes are going to go straight over your head, which is one of the big reasons that some folks have trouble getting into it. The later chapters lean on IF humour much less heavily, though, so a lot of folks who find Act 1 to be a real slog find subsequent Acts much more accessible.

As for why the fandom, there are several factors:

• There are loads and loads of characters, most of whom are fairly well-realised, so there's something to appeal to just about everybody. It doesn't hurt that most of their designs are amazingly cosplay-friendly, and were probably deliberately designed to be so.
• There are strong multimedia aspects, including playable JRPG-like sections and lengthy Flash videos, the latter of which have frankly amazing soundtracks. There are nearly a dozen albums worth of soundtrack material that you can listen to at http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/. Fair warning, though - the track art and even the titles of some pieces contain spoilers. (Oh, and I'd give volumes 1-4 a miss; they consist of tracks from the comic's early days, before any really talented musicians came on board, and are of primarily historical interest.)
• The shipping. Oh gods, the shipping. There's an alien species that shows up later on that has a complicated system of relationships in which romantic hate is actually a thing. The fans kind of go nuts with this.

 

[Wolfwood2]

So what is the actual high concept behind the comic? What is it about? Can someone give the thumbnail version?

EDIT: Or is this like trying to explain Sluggy Freelance?

 

[Yo! Master]

the pesterlogs

The what now?

The comic starts out as a straight parody of old-school text adventures, and strong elements of that remain throughout. If you're not familiar with text adventures or interactive fiction, a lot of the jokes are going to go straight over your head, which is one of the big reasons that some folks have trouble getting into it.

No problem with that! (okay, text adventures were before my time but i grew-up in the Golden Age of PC Adventure Games; heck, i remember the FMV period fondly - in the same way i do '90s comics)


So, with all the multipage, multimedia element to the whole thing how would one go approach it? I.e. can i just start reading & i will be be pointed to all those stuff in the proper time through the comic? Is there other supplementary material to go looking for that enhances the main path? Is this one of those things that a lot of its draw comes from being embroiled in its accompanying community (because i sure don't do that)?

 

[JMobius]

On a very different note, it contains a complicated and intriguing story about epic creation and destruction myths, and time travel. If you have any interest in very high power sort of RPGs and the like, there's some interesting material there.

Or so I'm told, at least. I was following the comic pretty heavily until the trolls/'shipping' stuff, and it kind of lost me after that.

 

[JMobius]

The what now?

There are many online conversations that the characters have together, dubbed 'pesterlogs'.

So, with all the multipage, multimedia element to the whole thing how would one go approach it? I.e. can i just start reading & i will be be pointed to all those stuff in the proper time through the comic? Is there other supplementary material to go looking for that enhances the main path? Is this one of those things that a lot of its draw comes from being embroiled in its accompanying community (because i sure don't do that)?

Yeah, IIRC it should all be self contained within the comic pages themselves.

 

[David J Prokopetz]

So what is the actual high concept behind the comic? What is it about? Can someone give the thumbnail version?

EDIT: Or is this like trying to explain Sluggy Freelance?

Four thirteen-year-old kids join the closed beta for Sburb, a multiplayer computer game where gameplay influences reality. It quickly becomes apparent that Sburb's mysterious developers have a secret agenda to which the beta testers have not been made privy. The story is presented through the lens of a framing device in which the kids themselves are semi-autonomous playable characters in a computer game being "played" by the reader, making the game they're playing a game within a game.

The what now?

The expandible chat logs that appear below the comic whenever two characters converse. Sometimes readers don't notice that they're there, or gloss over them as irrelevant fluff; this makes it impossible to understand later events.

So, with all the multipage, multimedia element to the whole thing how would one go approach it? I.e. can i just start reading & i will be be pointed to all those stuff in the proper time through the comic? Is there other supplementary material to go looking for that enhances the main path? Is this one of those things that a lot of its draw comes from being embroiled in its accompanying community (because i sure don't do that)?

The comic should give you everything you need if you follow it in order. My only advice is to watch out "infinite canvas" goofiness. The pesterlogs have already been mentioned; portions of the comic employ other devices, like having characters running around in the header banner or lurking amid the site interface while the action continues in the main frame, effectively running two or three narratives in parallel.

 

[Iny]

I.e. can i just start reading & i will be be pointed to all those stuff in the proper time through the comic? Is there other supplementary material to go looking for that enhances the main path? Is this one of those things that a lot of its draw comes from being embroiled in its accompanying community (because i sure don't do that)?

Indeed, it is all in the comic. (With the exception of SBaHJ, which is tiny and tangential and you'll be linked there when it comes up.)

Some of the references and running jokes are references to previous projects authored by the author--boy oh boy, does Homestuck ever love its callbacks. But in basically all cases, you either won't even notice the callback unless you're familiar with the other project, or it will stand up perfectly well on its own merits.

 

[Mostlyjoe]

You can even download a custom IM client. Pesterchum! I think I'm DungeonDelver on there.

Then there is the swag:

http://whatpumpkin.com/

Which is in it a brick joke from Problem Sleuth.