watching X-Men 97--which is, way, way better than I ever expected and kind of refreshingly doing its own thing--I'm struck by the fact Homestuck is just, guys it's just not that much weirder than comic books. I think that's sorta been lost on people whose understanding of superheroes comes entirely from movies and tv shows which by and large are cringingly embarrassed of their origins and the weird soap operatics and out there concepts, but man comics are weird.
like imagine saying to someone "well this character is having conflicts with his wife because he's still in psychic contact with the woman who he had a child with, who is a formerly evil clone of his wife, who was switched for her at some point that neither of them are sure about, because he's grieving the fact that the guy who made the clone infected their newborn son with a techno-virus so they had to send him to the future for treatment"
it's wild, I don't think it's incomprehensible but it's certainly dense... but my feeling is it's not necessarily more dense than explaining that, for example, the central universe-spawning game in Homestuck that the main characters play brings together a bunch of kids with alternate timeline versions of their parental figures, as well as a bunch of aliens who created their world in the first place, to take on a time traveling demon accidentally empowered by random actions the kids took across FOUR different timelines (and change). again, it's weird, but I don't think it's actually... that weird, if you're... actually into big, soap operatic, serial genre fiction.
hell, what is the adult drama in the Epilogues if not a somewhat deliberately more tongue in cheek and offputting version of the X-Men's deep reliance on love triangles and the collision of interpersonal emotion with grandiose, superpowered circumstances? the main difference between the description of just ONE goofball relationship in X-Men 97, and Yiffy Longstocking Harley, is that X-Men 97 plays its comic book storytelling aggressively straight, whereas Homestuck's origins are with internet humor so its first pass at anything is to go for the joke (like naming Jade's secret daughter "Yiffy Longstocking"), to set up for the emotional whiplash when the story turns towards the underlying character drama. they're both basically, in my estimation, perfectly valid approaches to this sort of emotionally heightened storytelling.
idk, I guess it's just highlighting again this way people talk about Homestuck that just sticks in my craw, at the end of the day. oh it's all so weird haha everyone knows homestuck is bad sure my entire internet brand is drawing homestuck fan art but I'm self aware enough to know it's so strange and impossible to understand. shut the fuck up actually lol? get over yourself! I guess it's not so different from how ever single marvel netflix show had a moment where the character like looked at some aspect of their comic book costume and went, "HAH, dress like THAT? Um, I don't think so. 😏 " shut up!! god it's so annoying and insecure!
it's just nice to be reminded that not everything has to constantly be apologizing for what it is and the storytelling mode it's embracing. and it's a reminder that fans of mainstream comics who look down their noses at Homestuck are, flatly, full of it.
hate to break it to you, but you're just as cringe as we are. maybe just, get over yourself and have fun with it instead of worrying what the normies think?
