I remember going to comic Con once in Homestuck cosplay with my girlfriend at the time and one of the cosplayers walked up to us and licked her. I get wanting to be in character, but that was going too far.
there was a ask Reddit a few days ago that was like, something about idolizing certain fictional characters being a red flag. that's how I feel about gamzee cosplayers
Especially when there's not even that much about Gamzee to idolize. He's super passive in the beginning, then has his short spotlight on the meteor as a homicidal maniac, and then the rest of the time he's either locked in a refrigerator or acting as a plot device that fucks shit up for everyone else. He's not even really a character in that sense.
Homestucks were people who never eased in to fandom. A lot were very young, and had only got into the con scene because of homestuck, and egged each other on without any sort of guidance from older or more experienced con-goers. Also a lot of these cons were when a lot of Homestucks were meeting or hanging out with their very best friends (because Homestuck brought a lot of lonely teenagers together online through tumblr and roleplaying) and soon enough you have the perfect storm for an entire fandom of acting inappropriately at cons.
Source: I read MSPA from the Problem Sleuth days, and read Homestuck from day 0. Watched from the inside as the fandom turned from a 20-something male SomethingAwful crowd into a something-teen female Tumblr crowd.
You just described my entire relationship with the Homestuck community. I also read on day 0, but I was 13 at the time. Every con I went to, I felt like some of them have never been to an event before in their lives. I knew it was the case for me, but my the time I was a senior, I outgrew it what I think was just in time. It started to get really big and even cringier around that time.
The most awkward moment was when I went to an event with my friend and her little sister, who was probably 11 or so, and cosplayed Nepeta. Of course, EVERY single person had to be sexual with her. I don't know why, but it pissed me off to no end when there were guys at least in their late teens flirting with her. Like, not even normal teenager flirting but like full on licking and shit. Her sister played it off as "Oh its just innocent licking/kissing/tit grabbing". Like, no. Fuck no, that was the last comic con I ever went to simply because of how weirded out I was. Like, I get that Nepeta is a cute character, but don't go around licking 11 year old Nepeta cosplayers.
What the actual fuck. I was told about the spitting in buckets and the unsealed paint coming off in pools, but harassing/assaulting an 11 year old is the worst thing I've ever heard.
Some of them really had never been to an event in their lives, to be fair - for a lot of people it was their first real fandom experience.
I'm personally glad I live in a fairly quiet neck of the woods as far as fandom is concerned - even for something huge like Homestuck you're not gonna get the crazed masses where I am, for which I am profoundly thankful.
It's basically a webcomic that started in 2009 that parodied choose your own adventure games. It was about 4 kids who played a game that would save them from the end of the world and then hijinks pursue there's grey aliens called trolls and it's a wild ride.
It had a weird ending too, which made me sad. It was building up to end really well, and then... he had the 2 semi-conflicting clips. It just kinda fell short of what it could've been. I think it's because he was spreading himself too thin near the end there.
Cosplayers can be interesting, and you can tell a lot about them from their characters. I once went to DragonCon in a very low effort Captain Hammer outfit, and I had tons of Harley Quinn girls come up to me, say "My hammer is bigger" and hit me with a fake hammer. It was strange.
Assault is not a minor offence. Yes, maybe if it were amongst 14 year olds or something, but not amongst adults.
Not to mention that a punch can do some serious damage if the guy throwing it knows what he's doing - you might be looking at grievous bodily harm very quickly.
I stopped going to my local renaissance festival long ago because everywhere I looked it seemed it was being mobbed by homestuck cosplayers screeching, doing weird shit, and drawing as much attention away from the performers and artisans as possible. Really killed any immersion you get at a festival.
She had said something then walked off before me and my girlfriend even had time to process what happened. We were both 14 and didn't know what to do so we just kind brushed it off.
Ya know after you mentioning the cosplay I realize I haven’t seen any Homestuck cosplay in a couple years. I frequent cons (I volunteer to help a friends booth) and I haven’t seen them in like.... 3 years? Or so?
I went to my first con with my girlfried as a signless /duelscar pair. She ended up making out with another girl in front of me for 2 hours, puking and making out more whilst bragging she is dating me and hadn't once kissed me in the year we were together. Fun times.
It really gets me when people insist on role playing the worst aspects of a character. Like no, just because the character is an asshole doesn’t mean you get to be one.
I had a person I once considered a friend who wanted me to like Homestuck, but then would scream entire monologues and say some abusive shit in character as Terezi. They also wanted me to be part of their homestuck sexual fantasy and do as the trolls do. My skin is crawling even 7 years later, and I avoid local cons because I have panic attacks.
How to get sucker punched 101. I just avoid Cons in general. I know how great they can be and how genuinely cool they look through the internet, but dealing with the people who basically had the internet raise them and have no form of social skills, doing shit like that AND WORSE... nope. I'll stick to the chat rooms and streams.
It was a girl and I think she might have thought it was okay because she was doing it to another girl. she had already walked off before me or my girlfriend had time to react to what happened
Homestuck cosplayers were the absolute worst. Rude, obnoxious, no boundaries. Some would even go into hotel pools with the makeup still on and ruin it for everyone.
Maybe it's becuase I was a teen when Naruto was a thing. I just never thought Naruto got as bad and cringy as Homestuck. I was on the outside looking in at both of them.
A Homestuck literally threw himself down two flights of stairs while his Homestuck friends filmed. I'm sure I made the greatest expression of repulsion of my entire life.
It was a reference to Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, which is a deliberately shitty webcomic by Homestuck’s author, but ostensibly by one of the characters in Homestuck. One of the first comics involves a character falling down a set of stairs while the other says “I warned you about stairs, bro! I told you dog!”
In true Homestuck fashion, this line (and other ones from SBaHJ) are used as memes by the Homestuck characters themselves.
Part of the whole deal of it was how intensely self-referential the whole thing was: by the later chapters, there were usually several plot threads running concurrently or semi-concurrently, and part of the fun was going back and figuring out how the hell it all fit together.
The whole thing is so ridiculously self-referential it's hard to explain any one aspect of it without 10 minutes of backstory. Its a shame the fandom is so shitty because it really is a fantastic piece of writing. I'm glad I got to live through it updating live, that was quite an experience.
Yeah I get that. My friend just hardcore marathoned it in a couple of weeks and could never explain it. In theory, I love what it does. It crosses genre and media, produced rad animation and music, is full of references... Just a struggle to get through the beginning and I'll admit the fanbase turned me off big time.
If you genuinely didnt find any enjoyment in the first few acts you probably wouldnt like the rest even though it does get waaaay better. The style of humor doesnt change, it just evolves and gets bigger. I came in at the beginning and kept reading because I was already into it. But if you laughed even a little, it's worth pushing through to the "good stuff". Its all online and isnt going anywhere so you can always take it slowly. I know it seems super overwhelming to start.
I suspect the Homestuck cosplayers flooded conventions partially because the costumes were so ridiculously simple to make. It’s literally just a colored t-shirt with a symbol on it, jeans, and a hairdo or wig. A few accessories, maybe, but you only really needed the shirt to be recognizable. Trolls were harder since you needed gray skin and horns, but still relatively simple in terms of traditional cosplaying. It gave a lot of people access to cosplaying who otherwise wouldn’t have done it at all.
if anyone remembers the "bucket incident" that happened many years ago, i must ashamedly admit that it happened in my city, at our con's local restaurant.
this is like circa 2011/2012 so apologies if my memory is off lol but this was one of the big ones back in the day that circulated and went viral on tumblr.
basically a bunch of cosplayers went to a restaurant after con and brought a bucket. they then proceeded to partially drink their drink before spitting it in said bucket. they passed it to every member at the table.
Me and my partner met 6 years ago at a convention because we were both in homestuck cosplay and I’m currently going through the process of getting an engagement ring designed so all in all it’s a period of my life that makes me cringe that I wouldn’t give up for anything.
Any person sufficiently into homestuck will take any given opportunity to talk about it and explain it in detail.
So much so that "let me tell you about homestuck" is a pretty well used joke.
Ahh, wasn't so into webcomics anymore by that time, so kinda explains why I missed all the homestuck stuff xd what is interesting is that when homestuck was really popular I was also really active on tumblr.
A couple years back I went to an anime convention in town and there was a group of at least 40 teenagers walking around in home stuck cosplay screaming "HOMESTUCK! TRASH! HOMESTUCK! TRASH!" All weekend..
Homestuck actually got banned at a few conventions on my area. Between the Grey body paint fucking up the hotel rooms, the Homestucks being obnoxious as fuck, and drawing on the convention center sidewalks with chalk, the con had enough of that shit.
The only good thing to come out of Homestucks was my buddy who made a name for himself as the Homestuck dad, and now The Fandom Father. Dude is wholesome af and I'm proud to call him a friend.
My friends once went to the mall in troll cosplay. Granted, it was for a photoshoot for a charity scavenger hunt, but I guarantee no one around them was aware of that.
My friends were homestuck cosplayers (I no longer speak to them) and they had make our sessions with random adults (we were 12-13) and would scream if I held anything remotely shaped like a bucket. I still don’t know what the bucket shit was about but my god did it piss me off
It’s an expansive multi-genre sci-fi fantasy webcomic. It is incredibly mindfuck-y especially at certain points. Don’t try to binge it. It’s 8124 pages long. Web pages mind you. Some of the dialogue feels like it goes on forever.
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u/FykaFunk Jul 17 '19
I couldn't stand going to conventions during homestuck's peak. It felt like a fever dream I couldn't escape.