hanari502:

You want to hear how gross of an exaggeration it was? Because my post didn’t even do it justice.

It was March 2011 when the first semblances of Homestuck began to seep through the wood and metal of the convention circuit. The unsuspecting convention goers had absolutely no idea what they were in for as little groups of kids with grey makeup and orange candy corn horns started around the con halls. People were curious, hell I was curious, but that’s all it was. Morbid curiosity.

It was around the time [S] ==> Kanaya Return To The Core was released that people finally hitched on and started getting into it.

And dear god was it hell.

Homestuck completely invaded the convention circuit, bringing in crowds of people ages 11 to 31, and a majority of them were kids. There were meetups every month for every occasion at every place you could imagine. Homestucks started to completely take over convention halls to the point where the dealers room all but emptied out whenever a photoshoot started. Promstuck was established and became a cemented part of convention going. Gamzee’s flooded the con halls at one point after he went crazy and people tried to recreate sopor pies.

People were sitting in bathtubs trying to sharpie dye their skin grey. Karkat cosplayers were having actual literal buckets thrown at their heads. Nicki Minaj’s ‘Turn Me On’ was a national anthem that sparked a music video. Children screaming ‘Fuckass’ in the hallways as they got their unsealed paint all over the walls and floors. There was at least one hundred Dave cosplayers at every photoshoot, and Photoshoots looked like this:

You see that Squarewave in the middle of the group? That’s me controlling the crowd around me. You want another example? Here:

That Kanaya with the cape in the middle is also me. Not good enough for you? How about this:

This was convention Homestuck. This was true nightmare. If you saw a horde of Homestucks coming at you, you fucking ran. There were literally hundreds of Homestucks back in 2011.

A video of a group of cosplayers sitting in a restaraunt, passing around a bucket and spitting in it caused outrage for everyone.

And then there was the tumblr side of it.

AU’s popped up for every conceivable thing. Broadwaystuck, Circusstuck, Dormstuck, Sadstuck, Any fucking thing you could think of, you slapped -stuck onto the end of it and it immediately became a reality. There were countless ask blogs for every character imaginable and the Homestuck Hype was real.

When the Cascade flash aired it crashed Newgrounds for two days.

‘FIRST!’ cosplays were a thing, and if you managed to make one you were heralded as a god. The Alpha Kids came into existence and everyone raced to cosplay them and to see who could name them, who could be them first. Canon urls became sacred and if you had one you were god.

There was a literal fight for the jadeharley url

Updates were daily, multiple times daily. It was the start of Octopimp’s Eridan and Tavros voices, it was how he got popular. Broadwaystuck sweeped tumblr like a plague and the words ‘Let me tell you about Homestuck’ became a threat. It was around the time I formed The Rose Lalonde Homestuck Thesis. Everywhere you looked, there was Homestuck. Hussie’s girlfriend was sending cease and desist’s to fanartists, Whatpumpkin didn’t even have Tshirts on it’s website yet. People kept skipping the Intermission to get to the trolls. And then Cascade happened.

Then the fandom went on Hiatus. A Megapause, if you will.

And then things started calming down. Once 2013 started, it was as if nothing had ever happened. Homestuck was still there, sure, but it was muted. Controlled. Expectant. As if anything that could happen now wasn’t anywhere near as bad as what had already transpired. Now we are but a shadow of the chaos that once was.

2011 Homestuck is not a gross exaggeration my friend. I lived through it. I survived.

It was exactly as bad as it sounds.