Homestuck

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6760667

Welcome back. Today I’m reading

04/14/09 - "John: Examine calendar.” (/homestuck/22) to 04/16/09 - "John: Examine games on CD rack. (/homestuck/31)"

Select this thingy to read my commentary

We’re back with John examining stuff on his own bedroom walls. We are now looking at a calendar. We learn it's the 13th of April (year not mentioned) John's birthday as previously mentioned and a few days after the release of SBURB Beta.

Neatly, there’s a link to actually play SBURB it’s… familiar. It’s Homestuck? But with some minor differences. The linked version of the game looks essentially the same, slightly different, more freehand art style but is more animated and interactive with sounds.

Now for those not from the olden days, Flash had a unique vector graphic editor. The flash editor worked pretty decently with a stylus so this art style was pretty common. The SBURB version of John’s room has the magic chest at the foot of John's bed, the hammer and nails are on the desk, there is now a poster for the movie Contact, is where the Deep impact poster was and the deep impact poster was moved next to a now smaller Con Air Poster. Also weirdly the view outside the “SBURB John” window is just blank. But, John has a view of a tree branch in front of a blue sky.

The beta ends with John receiving his “arms” page 7 of Homestuck. Now I point this out because I believe this was my initial reaction as well. I was wondering if SUBURB was the “endgame” of this Homestuck thing. Was Andrew Hussie building a point and click game based on the audience generated content being generated from Homestuck the webcomic? I was really curious on what changes were being made and what assuming the flash game would grow into a huge thing.

Off of this Beta tangent, let's look at John computer.

He has some .^cake files. Possibly some kind of in-story language. I kinda wish I could actually see his “terrible” attempts to code, as my own code was probably about as bad in those days.

Anyway, someone is trying to pester John. Page 26 “John: Open message.” is the first example of a “pesterlog”. A prettier significant chunk of Homestuck is written through these. You can actually download it though it does not provide friends for you so good luck with that.

Pesterchum has some weird rules, these will be very annoying but also help us identify characters as we go through these. I’ll break this down as briefly as possible as these rules are explained organically. Other than the rules though Pesterchum is pretty similar to AOL messenger.

• usernames consist of 2 words
• users have a unique assigned colour
• all character in Homestuck have a unique typing quirk

Johns handle is EctoBiologist [EB] and He’s chatting with a TurntechGodhand [TG]. It’s revealed in this conversation that John has not actually received his copy of the SBURB beta yet. TG suggests that John go check his mailbox. Resulting in John looking out his window. Finally we acknowledge there is in fact a world beyond John’s Bedroom and since the “Arm-swingy-dealy thing” of his mailbox is up, he indeed has mail (It’s called a “flag” by the way). But John’s father has just pulled into the driveway in his car, and John doesn't want to have his dad chat him up.

That’s a bit sad, the man probably just got home from work, maybe he just wanted to chat with his son after a long day. Also, as this is a re-read I can never look at that car the same again.

John takes a moment to perform his favourite hobby of examining stuff in his room (it’s like its his first time in there). He has a fun video game collection. 3 games being links to other MSPA projects, one is a Ghostbusters MMORPG (yes this will come up later), A little monsters video game by Konimi, which definitely did not exist but if it had I could only assume it was made by Hideo Kojima and it was his worst game of all time. Also something called Harry Anderson’s Call my Bluff.

I guess I need to research who that is and why he’s relevant… According to wiki he was a comedian/actor/magician who frequently appeared on SNL and “Call my Bluff” is a british TV show. I can't be certain this is what the reference is about. But given the guy is a magician/comedian I can see why John may have liked them.

Till tomorrow, Keep riding the pumpkin tide.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6724568

Small change in that after some advice and research I’ve edited my previous log regarding how to access Homestuck. The sort answer is do not use the old website, use this instead tutorial on mspfa. If you used the website last time, no worries we haven't reached any pages that will be affected yet.

Today I’m reading

04/14/09 - "John: Read note on drawer.” (/homestuck/12) to 04/14/09 - "John: Examine Deep Impact poster.. (homestuck/21)"

Select this thingy to read my commentary

John observes a note from his father, stating he is proud of John and wishing him a happy birthday. Damn that's just an injection of wholesome into the soul. It also mentions the card itself smells of “fatherly aftershave”. Mr. Pooplord seems like a classy guy.

The next few pages are just a challenge of picking up a hammer and some nails like 3 feet away. It seems Andrew was showing the audience how John stack SYLLADEX will cause stuff to violently fly out of his inventory when too many items are collected. Though I did enjoy poor John getting slapped out by a pair of fake arms. It also demonstrates the item merging ability.

Finally we hang the poster gift from Johns father for the 1989 film little monsters. I would have been about 2 years old when that one came out so I have no idea what this is about.

So let’s take a quick peek at that. I won’t actually be watching this movie, I don't know how to do piracy. But let's just look at the plot on wiki for relevant parawells.

Brian Stevenson, an 11-year-old boy, and his family has just moved to suburban Boston, and he feels isolated in his new neighborhood.

Brian sets booby traps, and leaves cheese Doritos as bait to attract the alleged "monster."

Maurice and Brian have fun making mischief in other people's homes (you might say he’s a “prankster”)

Some interesting parawells If anyone has bothered to actually watch this please share anything I am missing here?

Then we look at the Con Air Poster. Now this one I know, it’s a masterpiece. Is it related to the plot of Homestuck? Well It DAMN WELL WILL BE! At least the bunny in the box scene. Fortunately, this newer system links the relevant scene from the movie for us. And that is probably the only part of the move you actually need to know.

(Though I still recommend watching Con Air, it beautiful)

Ok last page for today John: Examine Deep Impact poster. Clearly John is a man of amazing taste. I think I've only seen this one once as it came out too close to Armageddon which had a similar plot and was just better. But John provides us with some FOREBODING message about “Films about impending apocalypse fascinate you” real subtle.

So again we leave off with John looking at posters in his room.

Till tomorrow, Keep riding the pumpkin tide.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/1208239

In order to breathe some life into this place I figure we can try one of the basics. Maybe a few threads will get us noticed.

I was in college for interactive multimedia development and was very into web comics as an emerging media. I had been following about 20 of them and even had my own short lived attempt at one. One day during a class I noticed one of my classmates reading Problem Sleuth. The idea of having a forum driven story was certainly interesting, and the first time I'd seen that done.

I was still checking MSPA after Problem Sleuth had ended and Homestuck pretty much blew me away at the haunting piano refrain. Being a complete sucker for soundtracks, the idea of a webcomic having one just.. well I'm here now 15 years or so later. I don't think I'm the most die hard fan but I was probably deeper into it then I am proud of.

This community has, by request, migrated from https://lemmy.world/c/homestuck. Hopefully this is a better fit.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6675152

Here’s how this will work. I’ll be going slow, only about 10 pages a day (at least for now). Leaving some commentary as I go. Meaning these posts are going to be short. The intention is for folks to read along and of course add their own commentary. If you’re new to Homestuck this might be a fun opportunity to get into it. And if you're not new to it, this re-visit might be an interesting trip down memory lane.

I will warn those who are new. This is over 8000 pages of content, many of them are in the format of chat logs and there is a bulky amount of reading. But if you really want the best experience, or to gain deep insight into this whole.. thing. Don't even start with Homestuck, go back even further to Problem Sleuth, or even Jail Break. These older adventures are referenced frequently in Homestuck. Better yet there’s a newbie guide right here..

Edit ignore my previous advice for newbies and lets follow nebua42's advice from the comments

DO NOT USE HOMESTUCK COM!

If you want to read homestuck the way it was intended, pick up the unofficial homestuck collection here. With the death of flash, a lot of the adobe flash animations and games died, and were replaced with (very) low quality >recordings posted to YouTube. There's a tutorial on mspfa if you can't figure it >out, but don't look at any of the other adventures until you finish homestuck.

end of edit

Today I’m reading

04/13/09 - "Homestuck” (/homestuck/1) to 04/14/09 - "John: Examine Problem Sleuth Poster.” (/homestuck/11)"

Select this thingy to read my commentary

We meet a young man named ~~ZooSmell PoopLord~~ John Eggbert. I found it smart to immediately set us in his bedroom. I never considered just how much our bedrooms are just visual profiles of who we are. We learn a tonne about John just in this image.

This was also sadly relatable, I grew up near a novelty shop, I was learning coding in college when this came out, I had fond memories of watching terrible movies with my dad, and of course I enjoy games. Damn Pooplord is a relatable loser.

“Remove CAKE from MAGIC CHEST”. Does an interesting thing. It shows that we as the reader have direct control over John’s world. I weirdly don't remember this being used frequently.

The Items management thing though, the CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS and _SYLLADEX _ stuff was a bit of a headache. Johns Stack method is easy enough I had just learned about in college around the time I was reading this so it was actually educational.

The last page I’m looking at is “John: Examine Problem Sleuth Poster.” which is an ad to go buy the poster to Problem Sleuth. Which is still available! If only I had walls, or money.

I guess I’ll do this again tomorrow. Till then, Keep riding the pumpkin tide.