Homestuck? In 2025? More likely than you think

[schneefink]

A few weeks ago I was looking for another podcast to listen to and saw a rec for Homestuck made this world: "a show where two cultural critics, one an old Homestuck fan and the other a new reader, work through the landmark multimedia webcomic and discuss it with the intent to critically analyze and contextualize it and its effects on the world with a blend of media theory, game studies, and internet history." I just finished episode 7 part 3 and I've been enjoying it a lot. Interesting, and lots of nostalgia too. I look forward to them getting to the parts where I stopped reading, I don't exactly remember where that was.
As a bonus, I really enjoyed my friends' reaction when finding out about it: Homestuck? In 2025??! xD

So the timing of finding out about the planned animated pilot was especially funny. The trailer is... fine, I guess? I feel fairly neutral about the trailer itself. I think you could probably make a perfectly average, decent, maybe even good pilot (or even season 1, maybe.) But so much of what made Homestuck special relied on its medium and I think any adaption to another medium will inevitably fall short. And that's not even mentioning the scale problem.
It'll be made by the creators of Hellaverse, which I haven't seen but I have friends who are big fans, I'll have to find out if they were Homestuck fans too and either way it'll be funny.

(The announcement coming shortly after the Unofficial Homestuck Collection was taken down because of legal issues and people including Hussie being dicks might have been a coincidence or not, but I'm curious if there'll be an actual good way to reread the webcomic in (close to) its original form by the time the pilot comes out. Not that I want to, thankfully, the podcast helps with that.)

Comments

[javert]

I found this post through my Network page and I wanted to thank you for the (incidental) rec re: the Homestuck podcast! I've enjoyed this type of podcast (where people read something and discuss it as they go) in the past so I'm very intrigued by this one.

[schneefink]

You're very welcome, I hope you enjoy it! I really like the combination of talking about the narrative & characters, talking about the story on a meta level, and its fandom history.

Also, hello fellow person in Austria :)

[javert]

Hahaha, hellooo!! o/

[shadaras]

Homestuck Made This World is a very good podcast! :D

And yeah, I'm very "huh!" about the animated pilot. It's... fine? Mostly it reminded me of how much I enjoyed homestuck music (both official and fanalbums).

[schneefink]

I'm having a lot of fun! I might even check out the bonus episodes afterwards.

Yeah, mostly it made me want to go back and watch some animatics (and I found out I have far fewer of them saved than I thought), and maybe [S] Cascade. When Homestuck was good, it was very good.

[shadaras]

I haven't looked at the bonusodes, but I have thought about it. I really enjoy their analysis!

Yeah! It was a LOT in every direction, and the highs were so high!

[dancesontrains]

Love that podcast :)

[schneefink]

It's entertaining and informative and I enjoy it a lot :)

[bluapapilio]

I didn't know the Unofficial Archive had been taken down, I downloaded the offline version a while back.

Thanks for bringing that podcast to my attention, I stopped just before the epilogue stuff started.

I like the Hellaverse, we'll just have to see about the Homestuck adaptation, like you said, what made it special was the medium, a mix of chat, animation, art styles, music, games!

[schneefink]

I don't actually want to reread the whole thing but sometimes the podcast mentions a specific page and then it's a shame I can't just go look it up. Maybe one day there'll even be an official version again that works? Who knows.

I'm pretty sure the podcast is now at the parts I didn't read (but not entirely sure because maybe I just forgot) and it's... interesting for sure. I'm looking forward to hearing about the epilogues, I've heard wild things.

I hope the adaption will be very much its own thing, but that's hard to do, so we'll see :)

[nonesensed]

Everything old is new, and so forth 😆 Homestuck holds a lot of nostalgia for me, so I am now prompted to go rewatch/re-read old fanworks. Some fandoms get an impressive amount of animatics, and Homestuck sure was/is one of them 🧡

[schneefink]

I remember that Homestuck had very cool fan animatics! Sadly it looks like I saved very few of them, so if you happen to have any recs... :)

[nonesensed]

Absolutely! I have a Youtube playlist of neat Homestuck stuff I've stumbled across over the years. The list has sadly shrunk as some creators (or outside influences) have taken the videos down, but there is still plenty of cool stuff to watch 😊