I don’t think I would be able to read the comic without this podcast explaining its context and occasionally giving voice to my frustrations with the more tedious parts of Homestuck. And my goodness, when the podcast gets to Act 6, we really see all the modern social media world coming into being in all its awful contradictions. I’ve developed an intense parasocial relationship with the hosts, and since there are only two of them my shipping chart is very easy to maintain.

Found this podcast series while looking for homestuck podcasts, and I’m glad I did. It’s illuminating for the context of how and where homestuck came to be, it's history, and the fact that, as a live reader, I was not in on the joke at my expense until Long after I stopped reading the webcomic. Thanks Ranged Touch.

Love getting the perspective of someone who was there when it happened and someone who knew what it was but never engaged until he was paid to do so.

I started reading Homestuck in about 2010. I was a kid who grew up on AIM, MSN messenger, flash games, ytmnd, something awful, /x/, etc. I found this series through their youtube recap, and my jaw dropped when I learned Michael was the original creator of smiledog. I was frequenting /x/ and sa at that time and I never knew he was into HS! A very thoughtful podcast, acknowledging both the bad and the good of internet culture of that time. I had so many internet friends at that time for the same reason; being otherwise isolated from people who liked the same things I did. The solution? Forums, chat rooms, places that were sometimes dangerous for me but sometimes forged lasting friendships, 20 years later. Such a great conversation about what is basically a time capsule. One that I wish the internet was mostly still like. At least google still functioned then.

i think i mightve written a review for this show already but i don’t remember what i did with it. im not going to argue for why this podcast is objectively bad because i dont think it is, but i’ll tell you some of the things i personally disliked about it. the analysis of homestuck this podcast offers is primarily plot driven rather than character driven. it’s an analysis of larger story movements and a literary analysis of how the story is presented, while the inner worlds of the characters and the dynamics between them are largely ignored, on the basis of cmrn just not really liking them and of michael taking no interest. fair enough for them to feel that way, but i’d argue homestuck becomes progressively more character driven over time and to ignore that aspect leaves a lot to be desired in any retrospective review of it on a similar note, i found the analytic detachment towards the then and current fans to be grating and mildly condescending? the attitude this podcast takes towards the forum posters is one thats very disparaging without ever really justifying it. i don’t understand the air of superiority that gets picked up towards the old fans. maybe i’m misreading it but it rubs me the wrong way to hear about all the ways the hosts insist old fans were engaging with the story wrong or less productively than they are. not understanding the appeal behind bloodswaps or shipping. the constant hampering on that one teenage dave cosplayer who said this was a bad podcast and taking that as an endorsement. why establish such a hostile relationship with the fans? holding disdain for them while simultaneously using them as a subject in your study is a very creepy combination, actually. it’s not kind. it’s unsettling and uncharitable and you implicitly place yourself in a position of authority over them. why do that? it’s weird. i just don’t think a podcast that’s ostensibly an analysis of homestuck’s fandom history has any real reason to be prissy or to avoid getting their hands dirty, so to speak. its comes across as if you think you’re above it. why think you’re above it? you take issue with the edginess, you take issue with the YA aspects, you take issue with the in-universe and narrative structures Hussie establishes, to the point where i wonder what you’re even getting out of this if nearly every aspect of the story hits the wrong notes for you. at the end of the day it’s perfectly fine to not enjoy homestuck. i especially can’t fault cmrn for not liking something he went into blind and he’s entitled to all the opinions he holds. i just think that as a homestuck fan, this podcast is largely detached from what i personally enjoyed about homestuck and i got very little out of it. having said that, i did listen to every episode. i can’t say if that’s because the show redeems itself in other aspects or because i just really like homestuck and will hear any perspectives on it. i wish i liked this podcast more! ok end review -

i didn’t realize quite how impactful it would be for me to have a context for the cultural dynamics of the last decade of internet history, yet this is a place and time that played a part in nearly all of my adult life. so strange to see these bits and pieces of apocrypha put into a frame of understanding. also, Michael Lutz being the creator of smile.jpg is throwing me for a loop. what a perfect origin story.

My favorite podcast about the social and media dynamics of the 2000s and 2010s internet, especially Homestar Runner

came here from friends at the table’s media club plus and am thoroughly enjoying this! i got into homestuck in 2015 and am too young to have experienced any of the 2000’s era internet culture, so it is incredible to learn about all the historical context and practices that allowed the comic to be created. especially forum culture which i only ever witnessed very briefly in the early 2010s, and the differences between being a serial versus archival reader!!

If someone said “critical analysis and contextualization of the webcomic Homestuck” at my funeral it would resurrect me

honestly i cant recommend this highly enough to homestuck fans. the context provided is illuminating and fascinating (especially to me as an archival reader), the dynamic between the hosts is fun, the analysis is very thoughtful and intelligent. it invites you to consider new ways of seeing homestuck and to challenge the ways you saw it before. i dont agree with the hosts on everything and thats maybe the best part--the show is built to accommodate disagreement. this can be rare in this fandom so i truly appreciate it and think that is much better than if i agreed with everything said. homestuck made this world, but homestuck made this world is making homestuck scholarship (and just maybe a healthier and kinder fandom culture <3). anyway i will definitely be forking over my money to the patreon just for the bonus episodes. thats how much i liked it.

at the end of episode 6.1, michael, you said i shouldn’t read further than the end of what was for the next episode—and i went and did exactly that and finished the comic. im truly sorry. jokes aside, it was cool to then have my understanding of the latter half of the comic be shaped over time as i learned more context about what was going on in the fandom. this podcast rules

Very much enjoyed this deep dive into homestuck as well as that part of my high school life/obsession

nice

It has been interesting hearing them discuss the comic, I don’t always agree with some aspects but it is certainly informative. I debated on adding a review for a while but the Can Town builder game idea is about perfect! Someone should make it happen.

i was recommend i listen to a podcast while driving to help distract myself, and this was the only thing i had heard of recently in a tumblr meme that sounded worth any time. low and behold, it blew my expectations out of the water, and i spent the past two months binging. i enjoy the wit and the constant helpful explanations, even if some of the literary or philosophical stuff goes way over my head. this really helped me have a whole new perspective on what homestuck is and means as a story, and i sincerely appreciate the time and effort put in on the part of both hosts to do this show. it made me think about things. and also it taught me more about what being a serial reader was like, which i have always been bummed about missing out on! in conclusion, 10/10 podcast, i enjoyed the japes, the critical analysis, and the internet history lesson. thanks so much for this! now i’m off to patreon so i can listen to bonus episodes. you just can’t satisfy that need for more homestuck made this world, i guess

i started reading homestuck when i was 14, and stuck with it until the end. i have a lot of memories from its heyday, both fond and not, and i will never forget walking to class the morning after watching the final flash. it was 2016, the hype had died down, and i was in my second year of undergrad. i didnt have many friends on campus at all, let alone any who read the comic. so there i was, moping along, all alone, wearing my time aspect t-shirt and quietly mourning what felt like the end of my childhood, when across the quad i saw him: a total stranger wearing an impromptu heir of breath cosplay. his shirt looked hand painted, and his god tier hood was just a pair of blue sweatpants that he had looped over his head and neck. we saw each other, but we didnt speak, just nodded at each other in solemn acknowledgment and went on with our lives. i think about him often. listening to this podcast feels like that to me. my brain is entirely too full of info about this comic, and sometimes it feels like a burden only i carry (i have had to explain to a few of my unsuspecting friends why my eyes go wide with horror whenever i see the book “have you filled a bucket today?” by carol mcCloud). thanks to HSMTW, i remember that i am not alone. yall just make me feel seen. thanks for making such a great show! sincerely, A Trans Man Who Often Lies About Why His Middle Name Is David Because I Straight Up Do Not Have Time To Get Into It

I have listened to every episode, never looked at a panel of the comic, and have basically no idea what is happening in the homestuck ‘story’, but thanks to Michael and Cameron, I know what is *HaPpEnInG* and what the story is *DoInG*. Historical me and current day me love this show.

started this podcast in october because a tumblr mutual recommended it. i thought it would be interesting to actually learn what homestuck is about. several weeks later i was dressing up as rose lalonde for halloween (at my job!). i cannot tell you how humiliating it is to have thoughts and feelings about dave strider for the first time as a legal adult. 10/10 very good podcast

has anyone else realized that cameron and michael’s interactions are oddly similar to john and dave’s back and forths, especially early on? thats my primary kin assignment for each: Michael with john and Cameron with Dave. also, i feel like Cameron probably kins DD and karkat as well. Michael i think would kin aradia and clover. excellent podcast, very entertaining

I love the people at ranged touch, I should leave reviews for them, I thought. It can't be that hard, I thought. This should only take a minute. And then I had to download itunes and create an account, all to leave a five star review for the most important podcast in the history of podcasts. I had Michael and Cameron appreciate my pain and suffering.

*if your issue with reading Homestuck isn't (REPEAT: IS NOT) the length but rather the purility and lack of in-depth analysis based on game scholarship. Seriously I love the show and highly recommend it over reading Homestuck itself.

One of my best friends was a notable Homestuck voice actress back in the day. In spite of this, I was determined to learn absolutely nothing about Homestuck at any point. When my friends discussed the phenomenon, I would contentedly disassociate. All Homestuck references flew blissfully over my head. I threw that away for this podcast. So far, I think it was worth it.

Because I've listened to this, along with the other Ranged Touch suite of products, I refer to all fiction as "just a bunch of little guys running around." Thanks CMRN.

as a semirecent homestuck convert i love this show and the discussion of the events during its updates. as a clown fan i am disappointed with the lack of honks and the far too few appearances of clown michael and clwn cmrn. edit: I am supremely happy.

was I on tumblr from 201-2016? (yes) am I still on tumblr (irrelevant) but I DESPERATELY wanted to understand this comic back then but found it so densely and thematically unapproachable and visually repugnant that the closeness it would provide me with my fandom circles was simply not worth it. and now, do I finally understand homestuck (no, not really) but do I still enjoy hearing michael [evil] and cameron [just a little guy] talk about homestuck (yes absolutely) and…. do I have opinions about homestuck in the year 2022 and nobody to express them to? (….yes… yes I do….) anyways listen to this show and join me in the cursed land of homestuck knowledge and opinion 5/5 stars

and listen to Michael (Michael) review thousands of posts from the Something Awful forums surrounding the popular webcomic homestuck. Cameron’s there too. In all seriousness, an excellent podcast where the hosts do a fantastic job contextualizing an incredibly impactful internet work, its subsequent fandom and the literary and philosophical building blocks upon which those phenomenons rest.

every episode i think to myself, oh this must be where i stopped reading hs. then the next episode comes out and i think to myself, oh, now This must be where i stopped reading hs. thank u for holding my hand and tenderly walking me down memory lane, like my two grandsons taking care of their elderly grandparent 😌

Now, I don’t necessarily know if the above descriptor is 100% accurate. But I’ve certainly never come across another podcast which meets the criteria.

This podcast helped me understand why people would ‘hatewatch’ something. This series is at once insufferably conservative (in that a-lot-of-elitists-in-academia-are-white-men sort of way, where ‘fandom’ and ‘young people’ are poor unfortunate shoals for not viewing media in the way ‘professionally trained critics’ do) and genuinely enjoyable (I think the segues into fboyisland is absolutely hilarious, which when examined with the fact that I’ve read homestuck, says something depressing about my sense of humor). Apparently fanart is not as interesting as ‘good comics panels’ because characters are Just There? Wildest take on fanart I’ve ever heard. What an overgeneralization. Apparently “the girl who’s only there to be the object of sexual attraction” is a fake concept that Fandom (not specified) has made up, and the examples for this are Harry Potter and The Hunger Games? Of all things? (This is a carbon dating test, isn’t it, and the test came away with ‘you haven’t read anything published in the last twenty years and you don’t want to’. I get it, you don’t like marvel movies, you’re Different From Other Girls.) This isn’t to say that the two academics running this podcast aren’t funny, respectable people who dive into great discussions on the constructive elements of a silly webcomic. This is simply to say that despite their willingness to acknowledge and criticize misogyny, transphobia, ableism, and other discriminatory static that is wedged in the seams of a webcomic produced in the 2010s, they themselves are still the product of a time when literally anything that a teenage girl was involved in was considered laughable. They would fit in better in a classroom than in a fandom discussion. I’ve written a review before on this podcast, and in trying to smooth over whatever criticisms I had (because I hate-like this podcast, and when the creators tell me to leave a five-star review to support the podcast, I follow the instructions like the ‘little-sucker-who-has-read-homestuck-before’ I am), I came off as insufferably passive-aggressive. So this time I’m choosing to be straight-up insufferable. One of the creators of this podcast was an antifan of homestuck, and the other doesn’t enjoy media made for people who were born after 1998. (This is an arbitrary number I’ve chosen because I’m a tyrannical reviewer like that.) The absolutely incredible thing about this podcast is that while they are criticizing Andrew Hussie for being over-sensitive to viewer feedback, these podcasters are also sensitive to their own listener feedback. If you don’t understand that the ‘genuine incredulity at gullible fans who liked homestuck’ is not at all an attempt to belittle fans who enjoyed homestuck, then you just don’t get the joke. If you can’t divine that this specific opinion wasn’t meant to be taken as an offensive jab at how some people can get excited at media and fan-content, then you don’t have the Objectivity required to become an Academic. Whatever, bro. Academia be racist anyway, and most of the tenured professors are nearly as old as congressmen. So yeah, this is a bad-faith review. My pre-existing biases about the people who say these kinds of things about fandoms and fan-creators are heavily influencing my perception of this podcast, much like how the views of the podcasters are influenced by their own personal biases. Someone needs to leave a three-star written review on this podcast, though, because that’s what reviews are for: to leave incredibly personal opinions on a piece of media that no one wants to read. Maybe I will feature (again) in the breaktime-reading-of-reviews as that malicious idiot who keeps reading (sorry, listening) to homestuck (podcast). The Bad Listener, perhaps. The structural organization of the summaries is incredible, by the way. Gotta love that timeline-edit stuff.

now that i feel an overwhelming urge to use this term in my everyday life, how should i explain “the wizard’s corner” to my friends and family

I love homestuck, but i wasnt on the forums in 09, im a gigapause kid. Getting this historical context is really awesome

this is a great way to get my third read through of homestuck done and much better than the last time I did this where I read the entire comic out loud to my younger brother, doing all the voices. It took 2 years and almost all his time at middle school. Highly recommend and you won’t even need a lozenge

Listening to this podcast on my commutes into the city for an internship has made traffic somewhat more bearable and the informative and academic nature makes me feel like I’m listening to NPR like an adult, while also injecting more Homestuck into my life. It has also proved to be quite a good accompaniment to my friends and I reading through Homestuck (without the slurs) as it provides historical context that I, even as a seasoned Homestuck reader was not aware of! Whether you were there during the hiatuses, dove into this webcomic after it ended, or have no clue why these kids are stuck at home, I wholeheartedly recommend this podcast!

i am tantalus, and the fruits of the tree are my friends being receptive to a new and extremely fraught hyperfixation. thanks

I haven’t ever heard a better review of a terrifyingly large webcomic.

in 2015 i almost got into homestuck at a friend’s urging but never read further than john’s room. years later, thanks to HSMTW and the urging of a friend (who i understand more and more with every episode of this podcast), i made it a quarter of the way into act 5 act 2 before giving up on following along. progress!

I have been listening to this podcast while doing dishes. It is fun and informative. I skipped to the part with the trolls of course.

This podcast convinced me to play Horse Master, which I had somehow never heard of. I put the Nier:Automata soundtrack under it, which turned out to be an excellent choice, and had a great time. Five star podcast!

i (never read homestuck) got in trouble with my roommate (ex homestuck fan) for talking incessantly about this podcast with their mom. 12/10

I don’t even know what Homestuck is, I’m just here for the ruthless takedowns of Gnosticism

More weird goblin bird updates please. Long paps and pleasant shoosh.

About 6 months ago, Michael very kindly was an interviewee for a folklore project I was working on in relationship to internet folklore and the study of fandom. My teacher gave the project full approval but also said "I'm not really sure if this is folklore, but after reading your paper I don't want to learn anymore about this homestuck thing, so go ahead and move on to your next project" Thanks again!

I found this podcast through a TikTok and it’s all kickstarted my hyper fixation on re-reading homestuck and learning about the inner workings of its creations and the community it created. Thank you so much for going through the work for us

For a good while, I was doing the reading before every episode of this podcast. Over time, I got further and further behind on the reading and, therefore, further behind on the podcast. Eventually, I decided to give up on reading and binged months’ worth of podcast all at once like some sort of goblin man. This was an excellent decision, since now I get all of the thoughtful discussion and historical context without having to personally subject myself to reading the webcomic Homestuck. Incidentally, this podcast is also how I get all of my knowledge of the reality show F-Boy Island.

For seven years, I’ve been trying to find the guy who got me into Homestuck. His name was Michael. But now, having found the ultimate Homestuck Michael, I think I’ve been freed from a curse. Thank you. 10/10.

My favorite podcast dedicated to reading and critically contextualizing Michael Ende’s “The Neverending Story”

I don't know much about Homestuck, but the FBoy Island talk is 10/10. Now I also know that Vriska did nothing wrong, and that FBoy Island is really just the logical extension of the goofs of some fictitions teenagers and teenaged aliens.

Would not recommend. The podcast, on the other hand, I would highly recommend. It’s a great glimpse into the early 2010’s internet culture and a critical look into the homestuck narrative.

Truly some of the most thoughtful people who talk about media I have encountered. I applaud their dedication to tackling not only a notoriously thorny and dense cultural object, but doing it with such diligence, insight, and care. The context they bring from internet history and their respective academic backgrounds makes Homestuck less impenetrable to non-fans, and easier to grapple with for long-time readers.

Before listening to this podcast, I didn’t know what a Homestuck was. I still don’t but I’ve had a lot of fun listening nonetheless!