The Fandom of Glory

1. jojo

2. its the ambulance

3. one of them got the job done

4. 

Here’s a wonderful and accurate representation of that night.

And when the progress bar reached 100%, and when the page FINALLY loaded on 10/25/11, it was chaos. This was 2011, a primetime peak point and growth period of Homestuck fan density, meaning hiatus memes were popping up faster than furious fanfictions and fanarts theorizing about what was going to happen next. On tumblr, you couldn’t avoid Homestuck even if you tried, which meant a lot of curious people were constantly starting to read HS to see what the fuss was about, and was a direct precursor to the huge amount of liveblogs that started up after EOA5. MSPA crashed, as it had started to during the last few big [S] updates. Hussie had already bought new servers in advance, but even when allegedly thousands of dollars were spent it couldn’t handle the accidental DDOS attack of Homestuck fans. People were up all night waiting for this upd8, the curiosity was killing me. I know at some point he was receiving at least 1 million unique visitors per day to his site, and even though Hussie had foreseen such traffic and thusly hosted [S] Cascade on Newgrounds, a dedicated video streaming site, Newgrounds was similarly unprepared for the sheer amount of people frantically mashing the play and refresh buttons, and also crashed.

MSPA and Newgrounds crashed definitively for at least two nights in a row, I remember not being able to see the entire update until three days later, even though I kept checking back and refreshing. For a lucky few, the loading bar would stop at 23-30%, where they would then frantically troubleshoot on the MSPA forums and of course, tumblr. For an even luckier few, they could see a tiny bit of the upd8 (spoiler: Jade died) before the whole thing froze, and then when they refreshed and refreshed just like a million other people the whole site disappeared.

Andrew Hussie has gone on record to say this was one of the few times he thought Homestuck wasn’t worth it, because the sheer unbelievable cost (was it $10,000?) of servers and the chaos of no one able to see the upd8 and crashing nearly every site after.

He was tweeting during the whole debacle, stating he was reluctant to put it up on Youtube because of all the moving elements of the flash, and style, and how youtube degraded the quality of the file size, and how he tried to scratch out buffer time and pauses by putting periods of silence between each section of the 15 minute upd8, the longest upd8 yet. It was also a legendarily good EOA, which didn’t help the hype in the least. 

So after Newgrounds patooted, he didn’t put it on youtube and instead put up the entire flash file on Megaupload, where it could be downloaded in it’s entirety to be watched. UNFORTUNATELY, Megaupload also crashed. But before that happened I managed to get the file!

At this point a meme was born. Tumblr also crashed for a few hours in this time period, which I think was in part due to the amount of frantic posting going on, and at least two other sites I can’t remember crashed as well, even definitely Twitter and Youtube briefly? I am positive at least one streaming site crashed when people who tried to livestream the upd8. I went from one video to another trying to get at it, but each one fell into a loading buffer and then subsequently became unwatchable. Many people who were not Homestuck were confused on why all the major sites were suddenly crashing, which was kind of really hilarious because though everyone expected at least two sites to crash, the internet coincidentally went down on that day in the exact order of the HS fandom moving from site to site trying to watch the upd8. 

Spoilers were flying everywhere, people didn’t understand everything that had happened, and by the time the timeline of events was all straightened out, people became even MORE hype. Like this whole thing lasted at least four days, and on top of that, the upd8 was good. Fandom exploded. Almost every super popular homestuck youtube video kind of was born of the excitement right after this upd8, leading into the weirdly ubiquitous 2012-2013 Homestuck fandom phase. But the rest is another story, and [S] Cascade was a humbling and hilarious experience. 

[S] Collide and Act 7 were hosted on youtube (shortly after an official Homestuck youtube was made), after huge hiatuses, so fandom was a lot tinier and Youtube could handle what strain that was left. 

The worst part about this, is that these tags are talking about the show Oshiete Galko-chan.

What annoys me about that extreme stereotyping is that the whole moral of Galko chan is to not judge a book by it’s cover. Over and over again you have characters in the show making assumptions about things that they believe are either pervy or what have you and they always turn out to be wrong. Most of the time it has to do with Galko herself and how everyone assumes she’s a slutty gyaru who sleeps with her teachers just to find out she’s a virgin who dreams of being a mother one day.

Aries:

Taurus:

Gemini:

Cancer:

Leo:

Virgo:

Libra:

Scorpio:

Sagittarius:

Capricorn:

Aquarius:

Pisces:

So I’m sure 99% of everyone who hates this thing thinks it will be Fire/Fighting just because it’s clearly a wrestler. While it IS a wrestler, it’s based on a very specific wrestler:

Looks familiar, huh?

Anyone familiar with Tiger Mask might notice how I used an image of Black Tiger, Tiger Mask’s nemesis. Let’s go back to the “HEEL” part mentioned above. First, what is a heel?

So basically, they’re villains in wrestling. Why do I think Litten is a heel and not a face? Check out the now-confirmed-real concept art:

He’s spitting and hitting Pikachu with a table.

That’s not very sportsmanlike, is it? It’s exactly what a heel would do. In fact, it literally is, because the image of him spitting is something called “Asian mist”, a classic heel move where they store a nasty liquid in their mouths before the fight starts so they can spit it in their opponents’ faces to blind them.

So since heels are evil, and faces are heroes, this fits the Dark typing perfectly. In Japan, Fighting type is equal to “Hero Type”, and Dark type is directly translated as “Evil type”. Think about Dark type moves: they’re all dirty and underhanded in nature.

In closing, he’s not only NOT Fire/Fighting, he’s a direct opposition to Fire/Fighting. GameFreak gave us a starter who combats this typing because they know we dislike it. Instead of giving us a boring quadrupedal tiger with zero deeper design or cultural significance, they gave us a story and a tribute to real life and fictional characters all wrapped up in a nod to our disdain for the idea of ANOTHER Fire/Fighting type. Which is, to say, FAR more interesting than “just a big cat on fire”.

this is not in any way a complaint. the program was completely unrealistic, but not because anyone involved with the show neglected to do their research. it was clear they actually put a ton of research & work in, and then intentionally designed something that was the skating equivalent of your power level being over 9000. viktor (and yuri) went out there and threw down the skating version of a level 100 mewtwo. it was DELIGHTFUL.

so first of all:

four quads is… not technically IMPOSSIBLE, but right at the very edge of what is currently possible in men’s figure skating. a quad (jump with four revolutions) is REALLY DIFFICULT. as recently as 2010, the olympic champion in men’s skating didn’t even have ONE quad in his program; i remember as recently as five years ago scott hamilton saying TWO quads was “superhuman.” the highest score EVER received in men’s skating was yuzuru hanyu at the grand prix final in 2015, where he performed three quads. the second highest score ever received was javier fernandez at worlds last year, where he also performed three quads. skating fans can correct me if i’m wrong but the only skater i can think of who has EVER performed four quads in one program is boyang jin, who is tiny and has made jump rotation his whole life. to have a seasoned 27-year-old skater performing four quads is completely delightful nonsense.

his first jump is a quad lutz. for some context, the rough ranking of skating jumps from easiest to most difficult is something like: toe loop, salchow, loop, flip, lutz, axel. you might notice a lutz is the SECOND MOST DIFFICULT JUMP POSSIBLE, and actually more difficult than the axel for some skaters. accordingly, MOST quads are toe loops or salchows. since a quad axel has literally never been performed, a quad lutz is the SINGLE MOST DIFFICULT jump ever landed in skating competition, EVER. although people have been trying to do quad lutz since the early 2000s, you can probably count the number of skaters who have landed it successfully on one hand. this jump is nearly ALWAYS underrotated or even downgraded to a triple. in my lifetime as a skating fan i can only think of a couple times i’ve seen this jump landed as cleanly as viktor does it here.

if that wasn’t enough, the lutz usually has a very specific set-up where the skater glides backward on one foot for a couple seconds before turning their skate blade onto the outside edge. that’s how the technique for the lutz jump is TAUGHT. it’s extremely impressive for someone to be able to throw a lutz out there without this setup. viktor does it and gets four full rotations.

then he follows it up with:

the first quad flip IN HISTORY was landed for the first time LAST APRIL. APRIL 2016. i also remember people trying this one back in 2010-2011, but it wasn’t successfully landed until THIS YEAR. and it’s viktor’s SIGNATURE MOVE!!! and he does it immediately after landing the other most difficult jump in skating!!!!!! he just pulled out two jumps most skaters can only dream of ever landing maybe once in their entire careers, BACK TO BACK.

again, the HIGHEST SCORE EVER AWARDED IN MEN’S FIGURE SKATING, EVER, was given to a program with one quad salchow and two quad toe loops. jumps SIGNIFICANTLY easier (but still extremely difficult) than viktor’s two opening jumps. and he’s just fucking getting started.

he does a flawless triple axel and then some footwork and spins. then he throws out something maybe a touch less superhuman:

for any real life skater, this would already be one of the greatest performances of their career. but viktor isn’t done yet.

he does a long (gorgeous) footwork sequence, triple lutz, triple flip, and:

i already mentioned how ridiculous four quads is, but this is even better. skaters will typically put their most difficult jumps near the beginning of the program, because they’re easier to land before your legs get tired. recognizing this, the scoring system gives you an extra 10% bonus on the jump’s value if it’s in the second half of the program. viktor pulls out a quad-triple combo, still one of the most difficult jumps in figure skating, as his LAST JUMP. HIS LAST JUMP. a free skate program lasts four and a half minutes. after four and a half minutes of grueling, exhausting activity, viktor soars into a quad-triple so beautiful it could be used to teach the combination to other skaters.

AND YURI KEEPS UP WITH ALL OF THIS. YURI, WHO CAME IN LAST AT THE GPF. YURI CAN DO THIS TOO. this program is significantly more difficult than anything that has ever been competed irl, and this show has TWO SKATERS DOING IT SIMULTANEOUSLY. WHAT A GREAT SHOW???

for any skating nerds out there, here is my breakdown of the jumps in viktor’s program:

4Lz - 13.60 4F - 12.30 3A - 8.50 4S - 10.50 3A+3Lo+2Lo - 15.40 3Lz x - 6.60 3F x - 5.83 4T+3T x - 16.06

to explain what this means. the world record score in men’s figure skating was given to yuzuru hanyu in 2015. for that program, the base value for the jumps alone (so not even taking execution into consideration, just the sheer value yuzuru got for completing the jumps he did) was 79.87 points. 

the total base value of the jumps viktor (and yuri) performed in this program was 88.79.

2. Crashing all the Cons

3. Hussie Destroyed Newgrounds

4. Shit and the Handle’s Troubled Relationships

‘au’ just indicates something about the fanfic is different from canon, and it could be anything from a minor plot deviation to a genderswap to a wild west retelling to a crossover. so you have to actually use a couple words or even a whole phrase. ‘everyone’s at hogwarts AU’, ‘biker gang AU’, ‘abducted by aliens AU’, ‘AU from this canon event where that character made another decision’. it’s clumsy.