So–yesterday was Homestuck Day, and by that I mean it was the nine-year anniversary of the first posted page of Homestuck. You may have noticed your entire dashboard going into a maddened, dismaying frenzy. People you thought were your coworkers, your neighbors, your friends, your family, all of them infected by a virus that transmits through gray facepaint and Vriska memes.
Well, okay, I kinda got a little weird there. My purpose in making this post is actually to advise you to read Homestuck–hell, read Jail Break and Problem Sleuth first, if you want, they help you to understand what the hell is going through the author’s head. But read it, especially if you want to be a content creator, because reading Homestuck is a transformative experience–in that it will transform how you understand, process, and create fiction. It pushes…boundaries. It pushes the boundaries of storytelling, of character interaction, of audience participation, of the medium itself–of several mediums themselves. The actual story has some severe execution problems late in the game, but I am firmly of the opinion that Homestuck is gonna be taught in college in fifty years alongside other great works of fiction throughout the history of mankind.
Moreover, it’s helpful to understand the people making content that are Filthy Homestucks. Your favorite artist is a Homestuck. Your favorite cartoon is made by Homestucks. Your favorite indie game was made by Homestucks. You’d be surprised how large a percentage of you this is true for. Homestuck, for better or for worse, is important, and I highly recommend the experience of reading it.
If you wind up buying gray facepaint and pointy anime shades as a joke, all the better.
I cannot stress how strongly and emphatically I agree with every word in this post.
Homestuck is also an excellent excercise in character voice
writing pesterlogs in particular gave me a very big “aha” in understanding how voice creates character nearly as much (if not more!) than character creates voice.
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