Listen. The first time I heard about Homestuck, it was 2 weeks before my 17th birthday. I was pretty big into roleplaying on Livejournal and one of my friends decided to pick up Karkat, about a week after his introduction to the comic. We didn’t know anything about his arc, or what this would become. He yelled, messed with John, and that was all that mattered. She begged me to read Homestuck, and I delayed 6 months while whining about the length. (“It’s been going on for more than a year?? That’s soooo loooong!” Hah.) Finally, in January of 2011, she called me in tears because one of her favorite characters had died- it was the beginning of The Murder Arc and I agreed to read it. I was caught up one month later, playing [S] Seek The Highblood at 2:30 in the morning on a high school night, crying with headphones in as the honks echoed throughout the game. I still tell this story, to people who are just catching up, about how exhausted I looked after 3 hours sleep and how my teachers almost sent me home because I was up half the night.
Listen. The first time I told a friend about Homestuck, it was a convention, two weeks after I was caught up. I was planning a panel- an IC Q&A, like I did in Hetalia once, and I had everyone but Vriska. The girl I was telling I knew pretty well- we went to the same high school, though she had graduated a year before. I thought she would like it. I showed her Rose’s Enter flash and a pesterlog of Vriska and Terezi. She accepted. We’re roommates now. She’s my best friend; my Scourge Sister. We tell this story when people ask how we became so close. Funny thing, we’ll say. It started with this fuckin webcomic.
Listen. The first time I cosplayed from Homestuck, I didn’t know how to sew. I followed an online tutorial to put buttons on a pre-made skirt. I painted lines on shoes and had a friend made Jade’s atom out of puff paint. All my costumes before this were pre-bought. This was the first thing I made, and I was proud of it. Less than 2 months later, I made my first pair of armsocks. I wrote a tutorial. Now, 5 years later, I looked at a costume from Dragon Age, and went “yeah, I can make that” and it took less than a month. People ask how I know how to sew, and this is the story I tell, about pricking my finger on a stray needle as I tried to get a button on, and cutting a fake belt out of felt.
Listen. The first time I moved out of the house, to college, 10 states away, just after my 18th birthday, I got my roommate to read Homestuck so we’d have something to talk about. When Cascade dropped that fall, we huddled by my computer, after an hour of trying to load Newgrounds, watching the flash on a livestream from an MSPA Forums moderator. We clutched each other and cried as our kids went God Tier. We started working on costumes the following day. Our apartment was littered with printouts of fanart, and once to scare me she coated the room in Gamzee. The following April Fools, it was Nic Cage. We had faces drawn on our tissue boxes in corresponding colors to the Beta Kids. People will ask, what was your college experience? I will tell them these stories. I will tell them how the RA couldn’t get the picture of Jake English off the ceiling.
Listen. The first time I met people I knew were going to be close to me, I knew would stand by me, it was Homestuck. The first time I made an expansive group of friends that stayed close. The first time I planned events, panels, that evolved into bigger and better things, that became 4/13 meets, that became themed meets, that became Promstuck, that became a 700 person shoot in the back of a convention center. It has been five years and about a month since I read Homestuck. It has been nearly 6 years since I first heard about it. I am 2 and a half months shy of my 23rd birthday. I am wearing a home-made Terezi hoodie, as I clock out from my job to go pick up a prescription. There are two rubber ducks, customized by a friend to be Vriska and Terezi, sitting on my figurine shelf to my right. In my bed there are 9 scalemates- none I’ve made myself, but almost all gifts, some from friends and some from strangers. The wall above my bed is dedicated to pictures people have given me- a sweet doodle from a girl at a con who drew pictures for everyone, and gave me mine special for making her first convention and her first fandom an amazing experience. A cardboard Prospit hangs on the ceiling from the first Promstuck, a gift from the craft team to me for the event. A card is tacked to the wall behind my desk, from 3 events later, signed by the whole team. I still have the plastic crown that never fit my head hanging off my bedpost, most of it’s gems missing, from when I was voted Homestuck Prom Queen at the first Promstuck. If there was a fire, it’d be one of the things I would think to save.
Homestuck has always been a story about growing up. About realizing yourself. About the bonds you make and the friends you carry with you and the ones you don’t even know are waiting right around the corner. Homestuck came to me the summer before senior year of high school. I have now been out of college for almost a year. I am living with my Scourge Sister, lay on a red couch I picked out as a joke of our trope. The only photo of us in the apartment is the picture we took after our first Homestuck panel, in full grey. Everyone I know, including me, has other interests- has held other things close to their heart- but when I think of Homestuck, it’s going to be these stories. Stories of being stopped on the street and given a thumbs up for a hoodie with a Homestuck symbol on it, stories of listening to the Colours and Mayhem album on it’s release date as I went to pick up a friend for a 4/13 meetup, stories of singing karaoke in closed quarters with Homestuck lyrics pasted over in a cacophony of sound, stories of strangers approaching me at conventions with little gifts of appreciation, stories of internet roleplaying late into the night, stories of crying and laughing and some people you see once and some people you hope you see for the rest of your life. Stories of growing up. Snapshots of my life, influenced by a comic I read on the internet in high school.
I know Homestuck means a lot to a lot of people. But to me it will always be the thing that brought me into adulthood. That made a hard transition of life not so hard. That made me feel safe in knowing no matter where I went, someone would share my passions. That a Homestuck shirt was an invitation, a smear of grey a friendship, a late night text chat a promise. And in the end I think it’s perspective I appreciate the most, because I’m sad the comic’s ending, hard to think of what i’ll do without it. But it gave me the strength to go on.
And it’s always going to leave me wondering, “Okay, so, what’s next?”
wow its really weird seeing the planet i painted for promstuck on my dash
i cant believe how many years ago that was
ugh 