turboshitnerd asked: i nominate you for "let's talk about homestuck part 2" of euro talk simulator aka "let's talk about how homestuck sucks so much now" (but seriously i liked the episode on Henry Darger and itd be cool if you were on again, also i need to watch more of these)

Thanks, but I think (and given your use of “seriously” I get the sense you agree) that my opinions about how Homestuck sucks now are so well-represented in text that it would be kind of redundant to bring me on to voice them again

Maybe I can be on trucks again once I get a new obsession — alas, the current ones have been working for me for quite a while

Anonymous asked: imo you should read problem sleuth first, i found it easier to get into.

queenshulamit-deactivated201602:

nostalgebraist (and any other homestuck-loving followers) do you concur with this advice?

It really depends on what you want.  Problem Sleuth is from an earlier “era” of MS Paint Adventures, and the style of that era is prominent in early Homestuck and gets less and less prominent as Homestuck goes on.

So PS is probably easier to get into than HS for a new reader because HS initially assumes you’re familiar with the kind of stuff PS does.  On the other hand, a lot of what people love about HS is stuff it only did when it broke away from the PS mold, so reading PS to prepare for HS could be kind of misleading.  Also, PS has its moments, but HS is a lot better (IMO).

So my recommendation would be to try HS first, and then if the early parts seem too unfamiliar or otherwise hard to get into, go back and try PS.  Or just soldier on in HS; it becomes very readable (and, for some, addictive) pretty quickly.

skepticalexcitement-deactivated asked: At what point does Homestuck "break from its Problem Sleuth mold"? I've tried to get into it several times and never get very far because the beginning doesn't capture me.

I usually break it down into two transition points:

1. The first 100 pages are very rambling, whimsical, and Problem Sleuth-esque.  At around the page 100 mark (roughly, when John begins playing the Beta), things get much more plot-driven and there starts to be a lot more characterization via dialogue.  If you’d never read to this point, definitely give it a try.
2. There’s a second, subtler transition at the start of Act 3.  Act 2 ends with a flash animation that is more impressive than the earlier ones, which many people cite as the first point when HS really captivated them.  And Act 3 sees HS fully coming into its own as a story with characters who behave consistently rather than bouncing around at the whim of reader commands, and whose personalities provide a lot of the entertainment (as opposed to “look at this zany reader command and its zany consequences”).

There is another big transition at the start of Act 5, but it’s not really relevant to your question, since by that much HS is very much its own thing.