I saw a bunch of Homestuck cosplayers doing something at my local park once. Braver than the troops
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
SarahZ: A Brief History of Homestuck
- Thread starter Naijaboy
- Start date
Pretty fascinating video. Although she doesn't really touch on why everything went off the rails once the OG comic ended and it's pretty clear why. Money. After a certain point it's no longer "the comic" it becomes, "the franchise."
And LOL at the dog penis thing. Like, holy hell wtf.
And LOL at the dog penis thing. Like, holy hell wtf.
Kinda understand why this video might only be done by someone who was a homestuck fan, but also would have been far more interesting if it had been a more objective video. Very drama focused and largely ignores any actual examination of how the anemic popularity came about in favor of 'boy homestuck was great and I loved it of course it became popular'.
I haven't watched the video yet, though I plan to over the next couple of days or so. Generally I am able to separate an annoying or toxic fanbase from the material they are fans of, but considering how Homestuck was created I can't help but think of it as a series essentially ruined by its fanbase. I was a big fan of Problem Sleuth and early Homestuck. I did end up sticking with Homestuck all the way to the end, though I admit the Gigapause sucked most of my remaining interest in the project, so my response to the ending was more of a, 'oh, I guess that finally ended, huh.'
My impression of Andrew Hussie in the parts of his comics I enjoyed was that he is an author that liked screwing with his audience/players. Parts of the 'games' were made intentionally obtuse or convoluted as a joke to have the 'players' have a hard time trying to deal with this bullshit, but you know, in a funny way. Like the whole gun/key thing in Problem Sleuth or the kids' annoying inventory systems in Homestuck. These things hung around to mess with the readers until the joke wasn't funny anymore in which case they got dropped, like when the kids all suddenly got normal inventory systems. The joke ran its course and now it was time to move on.
I felt like the troll romance system was supposed to be this kind of overly complicated parody of shippers. You thought pairing up one character with another was your thing? Well now every character can pair up with FOUR other characters with varying types of pairings, only a crazy person would want to make sense of this! Then it turned out that the Homestuck fanbase was full of crazy people who absolutely wanted to make sense of this. Whoops. And all these fans were willing to pour a ton of money into the merch, so why wouldn't Hussie just give them more of what they wanted? So it felt like a shift where all the overly complicated parts were totally un-ironic now, where this silly comic had a super serious lore and a billion characters now and it just wasn't for me anymore.
My impression of Andrew Hussie in the parts of his comics I enjoyed was that he is an author that liked screwing with his audience/players. Parts of the 'games' were made intentionally obtuse or convoluted as a joke to have the 'players' have a hard time trying to deal with this bullshit, but you know, in a funny way. Like the whole gun/key thing in Problem Sleuth or the kids' annoying inventory systems in Homestuck. These things hung around to mess with the readers until the joke wasn't funny anymore in which case they got dropped, like when the kids all suddenly got normal inventory systems. The joke ran its course and now it was time to move on.
I felt like the troll romance system was supposed to be this kind of overly complicated parody of shippers. You thought pairing up one character with another was your thing? Well now every character can pair up with FOUR other characters with varying types of pairings, only a crazy person would want to make sense of this! Then it turned out that the Homestuck fanbase was full of crazy people who absolutely wanted to make sense of this. Whoops. And all these fans were willing to pour a ton of money into the merch, so why wouldn't Hussie just give them more of what they wanted? So it felt like a shift where all the overly complicated parts were totally un-ironic now, where this silly comic had a super serious lore and a billion characters now and it just wasn't for me anymore.
I'm watching this now as someone with basically no background or knowledge in Homestuck whatsoever and what I'm finding fascinating is the degree to which Hussie just...continues to seemingly be bad at leading this operation? I'm saying this very specifically as someone who also has experience working on a Kickstarter that raised significantly more money than expected and turned into an entire operation with a real staff: the mistakes early on are mistakes that I made. The mistakes later on are...uh, the same type of mistakes? Eight years later?
The Odd Gentlemen bit immediately stood out to me as "Oh this guy doesn't actually understand project management especially managing a third party" which yeah, been there before
Most interesting part of this so far is the kickstarter stuff, like hearing about things like that and how/why they went wrong
any good vid/docs on stuff like that?
any good vid/docs on stuff like that?
That might be part of it. I agree that these videos are summaries more than analyses, but that's great for me as someone who's only peripherally heard of these things.
This sounds about right. Stuff that started as an ironic/jokey take ended up as beloved by a set of eager fans who were willing to dump money into it. Why wouldn't you take it more seriously then?
This video also made me revisit Problem Sleuth. Still holds up. I love Ace Dick.
Maybe. The thing I find most special about Homestuck is it's ability to capture what the internet felt like as a kid. If you ever used a chat client like AIM then the text dumps will work better when they start happening, as it all takes place through chat logs. And it does have Toby Fox's incredible music, along with a lot from other artists. I like the trolls, but so much of what works with Act 5 builds off of what came before. And the shifting of the story as it expands into something unwieldy is a lot of fun.
It doesn't have the best start, but once things pick up around the end of Act 1 and music starts being introduced, it becomes a lot more fun. Based on other posts of yours, I think you'd enjoy it. Mind you, I got a majority of the way through and didn't enjoy waiting to read a panel when it was posted after having caught up from the beginning.
Here's her update comment, which contains a few clarifications.
If you're a backer of the immensely ill-fated game, you can read What Pumpkin's statements here:
They posted an image from The Odd Gentlemen version of the game in early 2014 which looks really rough:
Update 36: Hiveswap · Homestuck Adventure Game
This update is only viewable by backers of this projectwww.kickstarter.com
Really they should just cancel Hiveswap and give us a Problem Sleuth game, because Problem Sleuth is so much better.
Thanks for the heads up. I read this section and couldn't help but laugh:
Yes, it would be embarrassing only for GC and definitely not everyone. How kind of them to withhold that.
Started reading Problem Sleuth since I kept seeing advice to read that first. Apparently has some future relevance to Homestuck.
About nine chapters in. Its the kind of dumb shit I can get behind even if the point and click adventure game gimmick does nothing for me.
Whole thing kind of seems like an interesting writing challenge. He's throwing so much weird shit together and bundle it over and over like a russian nesting doll situation with multiple versions of each character that he's following at one time along with whatever bizarre twist he decides to add next. Its entertainingly convoluted.
I haven't actually read problem sleuth, but entertainingly convoluted is absolutely correct. I'm probably going to read it soon just to cover bases. I'll say one thing since I'm revisiting homestuck for the first time in years:
It uses retarded a fair amount early on. It works okayish in a 2009 context when it's 13 year olds saying it, but every once in a while the narrator does and it's always awkward. I know that mostly goes away later and it's definitely lessened, but that sticks out.
On the other hand, it's also a lot funnier and charming than I remember. And a lot of the convolution makes much more sense this go about. It really seems like there was a general plan.
Problem Sleuth is great, but Homestuck, at least the original comic, has like zero direct connections to Problem Sleuth. The closest is the characters of the Midnight Crew, who were originally used in a non-canon Problem Sleuth side comic.
Problem Sleuth is basically a Rube Goldberg machine in narrative form. It's incredible.
The "legal" document read over about 15 minute in is incredible. And then the author himself wades into the shit. And then you'll still have over an hour of video!
This a spicy meatball.
edit: Jesus Christ, Hussie took fucking weeks to watch her video, the entire reason this second video (and her conversation with Sarah) exists. Absolutely amazing.
Last edited:
Made the time to watch this.
This video is much more interesting to me than the original Homestuck one. Also fuck What Pumpkin and Hussie. Even just the shit that Andrew Hussie willingly admits to in their emails to Sarah is fucking wild and terrible.
The complete refusal, over all these several contacts, from anyone to actually point to a single inaccuracy in Sarah's video has had the opposite effect I think. In the original video Sarah says "Take all this with a grain of salt", but now I can't help but assume it was all completely true.
This video is much more interesting to me than the original Homestuck one. Also fuck What Pumpkin and Hussie. Even just the shit that Andrew Hussie willingly admits to in their emails to Sarah is fucking wild and terrible.
The complete refusal, over all these several contacts, from anyone to actually point to a single inaccuracy in Sarah's video has had the opposite effect I think. In the original video Sarah says "Take all this with a grain of salt", but now I can't help but assume it was all completely true.
Last edited:
Both the Homestuck creator and What Pumpkin came out looking far worse after sending those ill-thought emails. Actively admitting to omitting a developer from receiving credit out of spite is callous and immature.
I was right. That was a delicious, spicy meatball. MarySueWriter keeps winning.
I was right. That was a delicious, spicy meatball. MarySueWriter keeps winning.
God damn it I did NOT want to watch the Homestuck video and now I'm going to have to to fully understand the follow up aren't I?
It's so crazy. There wasn't anything in her original video that was even that bad. Basically, yes, the kickstarter was mishandled, but:
1. That was just one part of her very long video
2. It was public knowledge that it was mishandled
They should have just left it all alone, but couldn't help themselves.
Honestly, no, but I'd recommend it anyway. It's a great video in its own right.
Well, about a third of the way in and the email back and forth is already making me feel second-hand tired. And it gets WORSE?
Edit: Okay yeah telling that source to not look for another job right before they fired them and a bunch of people is a HUGE dick move. And credit people FFS, creatives need portfolios and proper crediting to prove they did what they did and help with future job opportunities.
Edit: Okay yeah telling that source to not look for another job right before they fired them and a bunch of people is a HUGE dick move. And credit people FFS, creatives need portfolios and proper crediting to prove they did what they did and help with future job opportunities.
Last edited:
Man, Andrew Hussie and What Pumpkin just come out looking infinitely worse by deciding to involve themselves in this.
The first video discussed a few unverified rumors and hearsay, presenting multiple contradictory sides of the story to demonstrate what a mess everything was.
By trying to defend themselves, Hussie and WP had to admit that the bad rumors about them were all true, and it was even worse than we thought (like the issue of people being denied credit for professional work was confirmed to be malice and not incompetence).
The first video discussed a few unverified rumors and hearsay, presenting multiple contradictory sides of the story to demonstrate what a mess everything was.
By trying to defend themselves, Hussie and WP had to admit that the bad rumors about them were all true, and it was even worse than we thought (like the issue of people being denied credit for professional work was confirmed to be malice and not incompetence).
The weird "follow the process" thing Hussie kept on pushing just made me think they were trying to have a set narrative without giving Sarah the chance to make any follow up questions. One big info dump to confuse the audience.
I get her aggravation, she asked what was wrong in the video and instead was told "this person am bad". There was no good faith rebuttal at all from WP and Hussie.
I get her aggravation, she asked what was wrong in the video and instead was told "this person am bad". There was no good faith rebuttal at all from WP and Hussie.
You know, I'm normally a fan of in-depth analysis, but these ultra-long form videos are just too much to keep up with what is essentially internet drama.
I clearly didn't watch the video, so I don't know where it goes, just what it looks like on the surface.
In general I sort of lose interest in these sorts of things when the Youtuber themselves gets dragged into the drama - like, "don't become the story" is a truism for a reason. And I'm not super comfortable seeing some random corporate lady's apology email get read out to a huge audience in a funny voice, even if she and the company she works for are pretty scummy.
But that being said... there's some incredible "why are you doing this!?" energy to so many of those emails. Like, when the dude starts to wade in as a mediator and immediately starts saying a bunch of incriminating shit? Beautiful. You couldn't write that. This is why you need, like, actual lawyers and HR and stuff.
But that being said... there's some incredible "why are you doing this!?" energy to so many of those emails. Like, when the dude starts to wade in as a mediator and immediately starts saying a bunch of incriminating shit? Beautiful. You couldn't write that. This is why you need, like, actual lawyers and HR and stuff.
I made a gaming side thread about the issue
www.resetera.com
The legally threatening a former employee for asking to be credited for their work is just mind blowing.
Homestuck developer What Pumpkin tries to legally threaten Youtuber and then WP's dirty laundry of awful management/lack of crediting gets revealed
This is a long watch but it's a great one as you see What Pumpkin and Homestuck creator Andrew Hussie confirms some of the crappy things the company did. TL;DW What Pumpkin sends a legal threat to Sarah Z, the youtuber, telling her to remove a video over a video talking about Homestuck as a...
www.resetera.com
The legally threatening a former employee for asking to be credited for their work is just mind blowing.
Random corporate lady is the CEO of a company that threatened legal action to get mildly critical video removed from YouTube. Getting her email read in a funny voice by Maggie Mae Fish is better than she deserved.
I don't think being repeatedly legally threatened by a company is in the same ballpark as the vast majority of YouTube "drama." Especially since, as Sarah points out in the video, the threats likely would've worked on someone who didn't have the same resources she did.
Last edited:
Eh, not really. The follow up is basically entirely about the situation with Hiveswap, so at most you'd need to watch that section.
I don't recall ever seeing any of this or any of her videos when it was suggested for me earlier. These Homestruck/WP people seem continue the tradition of shooting themselves in the face of similar instances.