homestuck was uniquely animated because andrew hussie made animations around a song, rather than the other way around. the janky and disorienting style matched the music well.

now, the thing is that these musicians were young, in highschool and early 20s. toby fox was graduating highschool when he made his first homestuck song. and so a lot of the cool parts of homestuck are the crude, unrefined, punchy tastes of what a 20 year old thinks is cool, refined by what a 30 year old thinks is cool.

now, as i've approached and then eclipsed 30 (the age andrew hussie hit while he started homestuck) the mystique of the imagination behind homestuck started to slip. i started to be able to hold similarly-complex stories in my mind. i started to see the influences, and the story patterns. homestuck wasn't the first piece of media to explore a multiverse as a performant tool of characterization! homestuck wasn't the first narrative about narratives! etc

the ripest age for thinking homestuck is cool is between 13 and 20, which is coincidentally the ages the main kids spanned from the start of homestuck to the release

and that has been reflected in the parts of the music team, as newer (usually younger) members came on board

eventually, the homestuck music team disbanded and the next generation of homestuck fan musicians found an outlet in fanworks, such as the fancomic "cool and new music team", or the vast error music team, or in siivagunner, or in the official homestuck games (and some upcoming unannounced media

and a lot of these people were literal children. i recently learned cryptanark did spacetime starstriker while in highschool!

and now, a third generation of kids are entering the homestuck fanmusic scene. a lot of it is bad. the fourth generation will probably have been born after homestuck was released!

i think everyone meditates on aging by how aging makes them interact with something special they grew up with. everyone has a homestuck. it's probably a cherished loved one for most people? such as grandparents and parents? but for me it's the homestuck music scene. i'm one of what might not even be a thousand listeners who don't make music.

and as you age, the time-horizon you think about grows and eventually catches up to and eclipses when you're likely to die. soon you start to live life making every day decisions conscious about the fact that you will eventually die. and then you start to live life making every day decisions thinking about the further future.

but it's not existential! some homestuck musicians have already died. there will come a day when all the original homestuck musicians are dead, but there will still be real, living homestuck influence in musical culture. especially when homestuck musicians hit it big and make a song that's performed live in front of the pope.

i have the fantastic realization that i'm seeing the birth of a New Thing in culture. (i know homestuck was influenced by other things. elements of culture shift and flow over time, and when these streams converge, they get a new name... homestuckian ... is the name.) there might be performers in 2000 years who have Homestuckian influence. playing a Homestuckian song with an instrumental range including chiptunes, baby laughter, an accordian, and glass bottles and a few Tobyfoxian "melody riffs".

(please pretend this post has been a video essay)