Homestuck

Homestuck is a webcomic by Andrew Hussie that ran from 2009 to 2016 and has continued as an expanded media franchise.

Quotes by Andrew Hussie

Andrew Hussie in 2010

• While the story includes hours of animation, and thousands of relatively static panels, the overarching experience is actually more similar to reading a book. There's a good deal of dialogue between characters, as they chat to each other over the internet during their adventure. The result is an unusual media hybrid. Something that reads like a heavily illustrated novel, frequently interrupted by cinematic Flash sequences, and sometimes even interactive games. It's a story I've tried to make as much a pure expression of its medium as possible.
  • Andrew Hussie, September 7, 2012
• Creating it was a lot like being the Dungeon Master of an RPG involving thousands of people, dealing with a similar balance of planning and improvisation. Readers have had a lot of influence on the way the story unfolded, in more ways than just submitting commands. The story is really a kind of dialogue between the readers and author. There is always a sense that the story is aware of the individual reader, and the readership overall. Much the way an adventure game tends to be cognizant of the player.
  • Andrew Hussie, September 7, 2012
• Homestuck was just: Problem Sleuth plus a little more of a story, try adding a dialog system, try adding Flash animation, see what happens. There was also the different premise; where Problem Sleuth was "detectives in offices," Homestuck was "kids in houses." When people asked me what I was doing next, that's how I would put it: "Something with kids in houses."
  • Andrew Hussie, October 2, 2012
• Today marks exactly seven years from the day Homestuck began. And Act 7’s single-page installment marks the end of the story. Seven acts in seven years, to finish a sprawling “creation myth about kids in houses,” as I would describe it for those who asked what my next project was about before I started it. What is there to say about this ending? The short and funny answer is, Homestuck has finally completed its long journey over the rainbow, and become the anime it was always meant to be. The longer and less funny answer will need some reflection. Maybe some day I will say some things about it. For now, I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.
  • Andrew Hussie, April 13, 2016

Quotes by critics and analysts

Bryan Lee O'Malley told Hussie in an interview how "seeing kids hating on Homestuck and Scott Pilgrim in the same breath was one of the things that first made me decide to hunker down and read all five thousand pages of it."

• It’s something I've never seen before. It’s like a book or a comic, only it's not a book or a comic... it’s something new. It's like an entirely new way of telling a story. I'm reading this story on the internet, learning what's going on through pictures of these characters and their "IM" conversations... There is no other time in history that a story like this could be told and in this way, except for now... That's kind of amazing.
  • Dante Basco, November 14, 2014
• Homestuck ended this April as one of the most wildly successful and passionately loved comics online.
  • Shaenon Garrity, August 12, 2016
• As a grown up this is not something I ever got into or could understand, but its youthful fanbase was clearly enthralled with it, and it will definitely form a part of ‘Teens nostalgia in 20 years. And you know it’s better to burn than to rust.
  • Heidi MacDonald, April 13, 2016
• Homestuck starts with a kid stuck in his house. And for the first couple hundred pages that's all it seems to be -- but then it grows and grows. There's a whole world in there. It gets big and weird and intense. Reading it a second time, I start to see the seams of where stuff was probably made up as you were going along, but on a first read through, the big reveals not only blew me away but seemed to have been in place from the first page. I think this mostly means you're a great writer of serial fiction and you think well on your feet.
  • Bryan Lee O'Malley, August 2, 2012
• The four main characters in Homestuck have the most relatable internet friendships I've ever seen in fiction. It's a new kind of relationship that you capture really accurately. The characters are best friends, but they haven't technically met, and they only ever interact through this chat medium. And this is all presented via communication interfaces that feel much more 1999 than 2009.
  • Bryan Lee O'Malley, August 2, 2012
• In in its own weird way, Homestuck is a lot like James Joyce's Ulysses, where only the strongest, most dedicated readers make it through to the end ... Most people don’t expect such expansive and daunting works to find a home on the internet, but Homestuck has done it, illustrating that its followers' time and effort may actually enhance rather than lessen their devotion.
  • Mike Rugnetta, September 06, 2012