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callmearcturus · 3 years

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How to Read Whomstve in 2021

Hey Arc, what are you doing?

I'm getting into this thing called Whomstve—

You mean you're back into Homest—

SSSSSSHHHHH don't say its name!

It's Complicated.

So if you don't know, here is the abbreviated version: I started reading Whomstve on the day it ended, the day of the final [S] Act 7 animation, because I watched it on a whim and said "man this music is fucking rad, I should finally try to read this," and then I did.

Then, a few years later, after the completion of the story, Hussie and their compatriots released The Home/stuck Epilogues, which were bad. They were very, very bad and in a specifically very hateful, vindictive way, and they essentially decimated the fandom. Many people left within a month. Most were gone in a year. And they were right to, in my opinion.

(You know how Game of Thrones was the cash cow Cultural Moment and then the finale happened and it fucking vanished from popular consciousness? It was like that, except imagine GOT had a decent ending and people kept enjoying it and then three years later they released a new ending that ruined the show. That's the Epilogues.)

Fast forward to about…. the end of September, 2021. A full 900 days after the Epilogues Happened, I was struck with a thought:

Man. I miss Jake English.

And now, three or four weeks later, I'm into Whomstve.

Okay why "whomstve" tho?

I think my friend Asherinn started this, it was our little way to bitch about the epilogues without winding up on the Tumblr search. Now, to me, Whomstve very specifically means "Home//stuck, before the (Not Actually) Post-Canon content." It's the story I loved.

What I found surprising is that… and this shocked me a lot, trust me: Whomstve is still good. I've done the relisten and it's good, actually. I'm stunned, actually.

When the Epilogues happened, one of the predominate emotions myself and others had was a sense of "were we wrong? was it always bad and we just didn't see it?"

Hi. I'm here. And no, it was good once. And that part still is.

Now you're gonna tell me how to get into """Whomstve"""" right?

Yeah, p much.

I have a few thoughts on this. I'll try to be concise—

Actually I'm impatient, just tell me what to do.

Fine, the short version:

Read Acts 1 through 3, either on the Home//stuck website or using the Unofficial Home//stuck Collection.

Switch to Lets Read Home//stuck starting with Act 4, and continue on from there.

Switch back to the website or UHSC when you run out of LRHS. It'll get you most of the way to the end.

Stop at [S] Act 7 or [S] Credits. Do not read the Epilogues.

Hit me up for fic recs.

Now, the long version.

ONE: Whomstve is best read and understood in archival format, and anyone who tells you differently is incorrect.

For clarity: the "live read" is having read the comic as it was updating. The "archive read" is having read it as a complete, finished story.

I am 1000% certain that being in the fandom during the live update cycle of the story was very cool and very specific and frankly an experience that will never be repeated. I know and respect that.

However, if you have heard shit about how HS is difficult to understand or even impossible or that it doesn't make sense— this is because the Live Read is vastly inferior to the Archive Read when it comes to your reading comprehension. Many of the complaints people have about the story are solved by experiencing it as a complete story, when you set the pace of your read, and you don't have literally months of downtime between updates in which people spin so much conjecture and theorycraft that their actual understanding of canon is hampered.

So. To appreciate the story, forget all the memes and shit, all the fandom history around it, and just read the fucking story, and it will be great. I promise.

TWO: Okay but should I skip to the trolls.

Act One and Two are not very interesting, compared to the rest of the story.

There, said it.

Unless you imprint on the first hero of the story, John Egbert, you can feel free to just fucking speedread the first two acts of the story. Here, I'll summarize what happens:

It's John Egbert's birthday. He has three best friends, Dave Strider, Rose Lalonde (you'll love her), and Jade Harley. They are destined to play a video game named SBURB that unbeknownst to them will end the world. (Kinda, don't worry about it.) By playing the game, they ascend into the game's world. Each of them have to join the game, and the circumstances around them doing so become increasingly complicated. Through Acts One and Two, John enters the game, then Rose enters the game, whilst we learn about each of the kids and start to learn hints about the greater mythology of SBURB.

It's reading through Acts 1 to 3, but like. Briskly. Act 4 is where shit pops tf off.

(Hell there is an in-canon recap I can link you if you REALLY wanna go fast.)

Wait wait you want me to read THREE FUCKING ACTS before it gets good?

No. It's good. It just doesn't get great until Act 4, imo. You know how The Magnus Archives was never a bad show but that fucker took tf off in season three and four? Yeah, that.

Oh and this is important to understand.

Yeah. Trust me, it'll go quick.

(oh and important to note: this isn't even accurate because pages have varying amounts of words. a page can be a 500 word conversation between characters, or it can be a two sentence joke, or it could be an animation. i looked for a word count chart and failed to find one. I strongly suspect Acts 1-3 are even smaller than this chart conveys. anyway.)

THREE: You mentioned that you "listen" to HS above.

I feel like this is extremely and useful, especially because I know a lot of my followers are into audio-media like podcasts.

I have properly read HS three times. I have listened to Lets Read Home//stuck probably about 7 times. It is my preferred way to experience the comic. I think starting with Act 4, you can and possibly should just put on LRHS and experience the story that way.

Why not Acts 1 thru 3? The production values and voice acting from Act 4 and onward are extremely fucking listenable, and occasionally they are even better than just reading the comic. There are no truly Bad performances, only about two I would call mediocre, and more than 15 I would call really goddamn fucking good, and about three I think deserve fucking acting accolades. Also the Hivebent Narrator's voice is hot, I'm sorry.

Isn't it a different experience than reading the comic on the site? Yes, but in a good way. A few years ago, HS as a property was acquired by Viz Media, and a lot of little things in the comic have been altered and lost due to this. Most of the comic was coded in specific languages, and to preserve them, Viz has uploaded a lot of shit to Youtube, which…. loses something very real to the story. So if you are gonna lose something, why not also gain something by listening to Lets Read Home//stuck?

(Hilarious aside: I just tried to run [S] Cascade on the official site to grab a screencap and the fucking embed crashed. GOOD JOB VIZ. God.)

Also if you have not experienced LRHS's Rose Lalonde from Act 4 onward, you are missing the fuck out bc that is an oscar-worthy performance of one of the best characters in the story. I'm not kidding.

But it's not complete! I would say LRHS has covered…… over 80% of the story. And they are still actively updating, actually. They fully plan on finishing the comic and I really believe they will do it someday.

Do you have another reason to use LRHS? Yes. The biggest reason:

The trolls.

The trolls are recurring characters. Several are major cast members. They all have Typing Quirks. Some are readable, like Karkat's:

CG: SO I GUESS TODAY IS FINALLY THE DAY YOU FUCK EVERYTHING UP.

Some are...

GC: R34LLY TH3R3S L1K3 TH1S WHOL3 CONSP1R4CY 4BOUT TH1S

I cannot read this shit. When I read HS for the first time, I installed browser extensions to literally remove the quirks. But with LRHS, it's fucking read to you, and by people who know what they're doing.

I cannot recommend LRHS enough. I even have ripped MP3s of the whole thing and its in an audiobook on my phone. Yeah. Yep. That's sure a thing I just admitted to. (If you want 'em lemme know.)

FOUR: I don't want to listen to Whomstve, I want to read it, and I'm upset it's not well preserved.

Someone has Done The Fucking Work of archiving the entirety of Home//stuck.

Two downloads, and you will have a self-contained browser on your computer that will let you read all of it. It's very neat and clean, it has helpful configs to change how the font looks if you have issues reading it (however nothing to remove quirks, sorry) and it maintains the multiple games and special animations in the story.

To use it, you DL the main file, then you DL the asset file. It's easy, it's safe, I have a copy on my computer.

FIVE: Stop with either [S] Act 7 or [S] Credits.

This is a matter of opinion, which ending you prefer. Just, whatever you do, do not:

Read the Epilogues

Play the visual novels

Touch literally anything that says "meat" or "candy"

And that's Whomstve! Hit me up for fic recs when you're done.

SIX: Things to know going in.

Like with all media that was made over a decade ago, some shit has not aged well. There is frequent use of the r-slur, until very suddenly it vanishes from the entire comic because presumably Hussie realized it wasn't a funny word. There are a few characters with uncomfortable racial coding, and one that is literally just an fucking Moonspeak Asian joke. She's a minor character really deep in Act 6, I can tell you how to fully avoid her, just hmu. There is one unfunny use of the term "f*g", but the context is a mitigating factor imo. There is also the trouble of Home//stuck trying hard to be "aracial" as in none of the kids have a canon ethnicity. It's as much of a cop-out as you expect, but its something that imo is heavily explored in the fandom. That doesn't excuse it in the canon though, obviously.

The Ultimate Riddle: Why do you care about Whomstve?

That's difficult to answer.

Let me explain one of my favorite things about it. Maybe that'll help.

In Act 5 Act 2 (yep) there is an animation called [S] Jade: Enter. It comes pretty deep in the story, and if you watched it without any context, it's impenetrable. What the fuck is that dog? What's that door? Why is there a meteor? What is fucking happening?

But if you have read Whomstve up to that point, you reach [S] Jade: Enter, and you are given a fucking clusterfuck of a story beat. There is a moment I fucking shrieked to myself because at that point, I understood the language of HS enough that the Thing that happened was simple, fast, thoughtless, but in that single instant explained everything that had gone wrong up to that point in the story. Suddenly I understood jack everything.

This is Whomstve's midterm exam. It's a story that slowly, lovingly, patiently teaches you an entire language of symbology and mythology and mechanics, all so it can show you a dog and a glowy thing, and it can make you shriek in terror because the ramifications are that. fucking. exquisite.

And then Act 5 ends with [S] Cascade, which is simultaneously your final exam and reward. You have been again slowly, patiently taught what feels like an entire language, and for your time and attention, the story gives you a spectacle that

I literally cannot even put into words for you. If I sat you down and showed you, the uninitiated, [S] Cascade, it would be just visual noise. (Honestly, wanna watch it? Go for it. You will not understand what is happening but the music fucks. Enjoy the spectacle.) But if you reached that point organically, it's a fucking present that genuinely, truly wants to reward you for your effort.

So my point is this: the time put into reading this fucking monstrosity of a story is rewarded in a way that no other piece of media has ever rewarded me. I have never so thoroughly felt like I was being given something by a story as thanks for my time.

Also its funny. Also the art can be incredible. Also the music is NOTHING BUT THE FUCKING HITS. Also the gay delight of Rose and Kanaya's conversations in Act 5 Act 2 is unprecedented. Also when you find out why Karkat is talking to John backwards you're going to die. Also Almost Everyone Is Queer and they are all really complex, deep characters, even many of the ones they tried to just make a joke. Also if you're a good person you deserve to experience [S] Synchronize/Unite. Also the slow slow slow slow fucking burn of the story of Dave Strider will fuck you up. Also Jake English is one of the greatest, most complicated, incredible characters ever rendered in fiction. Also you will want to know what your classpect is.

Also there's a lesbian vampire alien who uses a chainsaw that turns into lipstick when not in use. She hooks up with a snooty, hilarious know it all witch girl who's handle is literally tentacleTherapist. Come on.

Whomstve is good. Give it a shot. I'll have fic for you after you're done.

Wait wait a minute wait, wtf does [S] mean?

Oh. Sound. It means the page has sound. Usually it means there's an animation.

#whomstve #i'm going to bed now #if you try to talk to me about how i just Didn't Get The Epilogues i will block you

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