December Meme: How I discovered Homestuck

[krait]

Looping back today to cover my prompt for the 1st, which I forgot about. (It's oddly appropriate, considering the topic! This is a fandom that delights in screwing with the temporal dimensions of any number of realities!)


Any of you who were around last December may remember the prompt where I rhapsodised about xeno. The short answer is: I was browsing the xeno tag on AO3 and stumbled onto a fic by cypher that sounded promising. I didn't know the fandom, but I certainly know the quality of fic (and xeno) that cypher writes, so I just went for it.

All of you who are here because I sometimes blather about Homestuck (which is, like, maybe three of you) can thank Doomed Dave: take this one for the team for my discovery of this fandom! :D I had no idea who these characters were, of course, or any kind of notion of what I was getting myself into, but that might be a good thing.

Like many of my fandoms, Homestuck I came to backwards - fic first, then canon. I've often said that this is one of, and possibly the worst, fandoms to take this approach to! Canon makes it easy to pick up that Dave = Dave Strider = turntechGodhead (tG) = Knight of Time = Land of Heat and Clockwork and Tavros = Tavros Nitram = adiosToreador (aT) = Taurus|brownblood = Page of Breath = Land of Sand and Zephyr (repeat this formula of titles for 16 characters. Then for 48. Then for ...) But doing it via fic? HA HA HA HA. Talk about challenging! I spent some reading time being very, very confused as to really basic concepts like who is even talking right now.

The worldbuilding and xeno must have been good enough to make me persevere, though - have you noticed how many of my prompt answers boil down to either worldbuilding, xeno, or both? Because I have! - and now, thousands of pages of canon and millions of pages of fic later, here I am!

Tell me how you got into Homestuck, if you are! Or talk to me about backwards fandoms: have you ever entered a fandom backwards? How long did it take, and how hard was it?

Comments

[edenfalling]

I come to most of my fandoms backward -- I figure it's the logical extension of coming to series via a middle book, which I have done repeatedly throughout my life. There's a fun puzzle-solving aspect to trying to reverse-engineer canon out of fanfiction. It's particularly cool when you pick up enough to realize the parts of canon you're not seeing because fandom isn't interested, but which logically must exist for the 'interesting' parts to make any sense.

Also, there are some tropes I like to read but which I can't stomach if I know too much about canon, because then I'd know how OOC and unrealistic the fics using those tropes are, so there are lots and lots of fandoms for which I've never read/watched the source canon and have no intention of ever doing so.

(I got into Homestuck because Asuka started writing for it. I trust her taste and wanted some context before I read her fic. Then I just wanted more Homestuck...)

[azurelunatic]

Also usually backwards, through the hedge. Video is not my medium.

[dancing_serpent]

Not into Homestuck, and usually I don't get into a fandom backwards. At least not in the "first fanworks, then canon" kind of way - but I do fall for lots of my fandoms in the "stumbled upon an episode on tv, liked it and wanted more, found out it was actually something around season four, went back and watched everything from the start" kind of way. *g*

There's one exception to every rule, so have Alex Rider. I followed a glowing rec + longer review from someone whose taste I trusted, and read a fic first before I ever watched the movie or read the books. I don't do that normally, but in this case the review was informative enough for me to feel I already knew the characters and the universe well enough to give it a try - and the story didn't disappoint. I went and bought the first book right after I finished reading.

Otherwise, I don't know if I had given the whole series a chance. "Orphaned teenager turns spy" is not a thing of interest to me, but damn it, it works.

[tropicsbear]

When I finally start watching Supernatural, then that'll be my 'backwards entry' fandom hahaha

[krait]

Haha!

My term for those sorts of fandoms is "Read-Only Fandom" - anything where I discovered the fanworks, but never followed through on any of the other steps, e.g. picking up canon, interacting with the fans who do follow canon, etc.

I have a bunch of Read-Only Fandoms, too; probably even more than I have Entered-Backwards Fandoms!

[novembermond]

I got backwards into most anime fandoms, many of which had better worldbuilding in fic than in canon. XD

homestuck on the other hand I didn't understand how you would write fic about it a all - until finally the trolls were fleshed out enough.
my funny homestuck story is that I started reading it on April, 13th and for the longest time I thought it was made so that the date matched the date you read it!

[krait]

I didn't understand how you would write fic about it [Homestuck] at all - until finally the trolls were fleshed out enough.

I, uh, yeah. It's pretty telling that it was a xeno fic that sucked me in; if I hadn't known the trolls were a feature, my interest would probably not have lasted long enough to discover them. I am ALL ABOUT the idea of "and then ALIENS and ALIEN CULTURE!" and not much about "tweens play a game online" - so Homestuck probably wouldn't be my fandom if I'd tried to read it earlier, or without as much foreknowledge as I had.

my funny Homestuck story is that I started reading it on April, 13

Hee! That worked out quite well for you, didn't it. :D I don't think I remember what the date was when I first started reading, but then, I don't remember seeing the dates on the pages (are they just in the address bar, perhaps?) so I guess I'm just not very observant when it comes to dates!

I got backwards into most anime fandoms

Me, too! I had anime nerds for friends, but didn't watch a lot of it on my own initiative, and they mostly showed me movies rather than series; as a result, most of my anime fandoms were discovered in backwards fashion through fanfic writers I knew from other fandoms. I did get into Gundam Wing the traditional way (it was showing on TV, I watched it, I went looking for the fanworks). Pretty sure Fullmetal Alchemist was at least partly a backwards intro, though; cypher strikes again, along with ciceqi and I think white_aster!

[novembermond]

me too, the xeno got me so hard it's embarrassing.

the dates aren't on the pages but the very first page of homestuck says: "A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, 2009, is this young man's birthday." I simply missed or ignored that the year didn't match and honestly thought the text would change every day XD

Oh god, gundam wing is my worst offender so to speak. I read hundreds of fics and watched maybe three episodes -_-

[krait]

Hahahaha, sometimes I think my icon should just be a stamp-font with "IT'S ALL ABOUT THE XENO" in some alarmingly bright colour. :D

Ahhhh, that's right! How could I forget that?! (I guess it's just so much a part of the background...)

gundam wing is my worst offender

Heh, it's funny how that works, isn't it? There's always one. Mine is White Collar. I actually got into GW the "normal" way; I still have every episode, taped from television, in my closet. (Yes, taped - as in, VHS.) Plus Endless Waltz.

Speaking of "read hundreds of fics" - GW was my gateway fandom for slash, so it's arguably THE most influential fandom I can point to in all of my fannish history! :D I started off squicked, and then I'd read the PG-rated fics, and then PG-13, and then... well, now here I am, reading and writing not just slash but graphic xeno kinky smut. :D

[novembermond]

Homestuck has so much data, there's no way to remember it all.

I know I taped my first anime on VHS, too. oh, the times! XD

Oh dear I discovered both fanfic* and slash with Weiß Kreuz which was a pretty kinky fandom as far as I remember and from then it was turtles all the way down. Kinky, lemon-rated turtles. -_-

*I was aware it was a thing that existed before, but I only discovered it was a thing for me, then.

[isis]

I got into Stargate Atlantis and due South backwards, but all my other fandoms were canon first. However, Eagle fandom was a bit of a special case; I saw the movie and didn't actually like it much, but then I read fic for it at Yuletide and boom, I fell into the fandom. So I did get into the fandom via the fic, but I had already experienced the canon ant that point.

[krait]

Wow, a double-reverse fandom entry! That's pretty Homestuck-esque, really. :D

Fun fact: SG:A is what I term a Read-Only Fandom, because I have never seen the canon and don't plan to see it, and I don't do any kind of fannish interaction* based on it, but sometimes I go on fic binges anyway!



*Except sometimes comments on fic, naturally.