#mspfa 200

Woken Void is the closest of these “future-200 favourites” fanadventures to the big hundo-deluxe (a thing people say I am sure), with 198 favourites. I guess technically they might never actually make it over that 200-favourite threshold, which also goes for literally any other Fanadventures that I’ve talked about in this strange mini-series of mine. But whatever, I’ve committed to this, and so I’m going to do it. I posted about it on an update that got people liking and commenting “Let’s Go!!!!!!!!” I can’t quit now. So I guess, existential crisis about what I’m even doing here even though I’ve pretty much exhausted the 200 Favourites Gravy Train I was riding for a while aside, it’s time to read WOKEN VOID.

Actually, hang on, let’s examine that existential crisis I was just having. What exactly was I trying to do with that original post? I think a lot of reactions were PROBABLY because I was going to, like, review the NEW hits, the most recent hits that everybody is abuzz about. And, like…

Well, a lot of my reviews have come from the assumption that a lot of these fanadventures were, by and large, popular, if not now, then probably back in their day. And I reached that conclusion by going, huh, the site emphasizes this threshold that most fanadventures will never ever come close to clearing, so any Fanadventures that do clear it must have had a significant impact or word of mouth, or enough people clicking on it and seeing something that they like. But I think…I think that’s not quite easy to quantify when you go below that threshold? Like, can I really assume this MSPFA, WOKEN VOID, was popular in it’s heyday? Can I really assume ANY of the MSPFAs beyond the MSPFAs we’re still talking about NOW were popular in their heyday? I guess it doesn’t have to be in their heyday, it’s just has to be at least crossing that threshold where atleast 200 people click on the webcomic, looked at it, and thought “yeah I want to get updated on this.” That’s all this threshold really means.

Okay I’m stalling a bit on this but I want to say, like…I’m wrestling with the possibility that…I don’t know. Something about reviewing things that I’m not personally into, that haven’t crossed that threshold of popularity, that I don’t think the authors would like, want me to talk about being lukewarm when literally the entire basis of this mini-series is literally just “these are SO CLOSE to the finish line of being labeled popular.” Because, like I said, I only started this mini-series because it was, like…me trying to get ahead of those comments on the original post when I said I ended the fanadventure! And I am very grateful to everybody who said well-wishes on those posts and suggested new fanadventures for me to review. I am very grateful that the response from the MSPFA community has been a positive one to this blog. That’s such a relief to me, personally. But like, now I’m starting to question what I set out to do, but I don’t want to delete the blogposts I’ve already made on those MSPFAs…AUGH!!!!!!!!

“If SBURB is so good, why isn’t there a SBURB 2,” outcried the community during 2019. Okay nobody actually was saying that except as a joke, but that’s what this Fanadventure proports to be. A Sequel to SBURB. Wow. Just imagine it. Okay you probably know the deal by now, it’s on the brink of crossing that all important 200 favourites threshold by now, that’s why I’m covering it, 194 favourites, yada-yada-yada. You also know the drill pertaining to something called “SBURB 2” that came out in 2019, after the Epilogues. Yes, that’s right, it’s time for another HOMESTUCK CONTINUATION! But this time…this time…it’s dealing with the next generation of HEROES!!!!!!!!

YOURS, MINE, and OURS is another MSPFA that’s just on the verge of having 200 favourites (it has 194 favourites as of writing this review) and honestly that’s so surprising to me. Wait, let me back up here. YOURS, MINE and OURS is yet another response to the epilogues, as we are in 2019 yet again. It is specifically the “Halloween Special” and technical sequel to the EXTREMELY EXCELLENT HIGHLY RECOMMENDED original response to the Epilogues, “JADE ROUTE.” If you haven’t read that, go read that. It’s, very well done and so good. Unfortunately, it does not quite qualify for this readthrough journey, as it is on another site than MSPFA and has no official mirror on MSPFA. Okay now you know why I am so surprised this thing hasn’t crossed that threshold, because it’s SO high quality and I saw a lot of people talking about in 2019? I just. Thought it was apart of everybody’s consciousness around that time, but maybe people weren’t interested in like, yet another Davekat spinoff or something.

But listen. Throw out all expectations, except for the expectation that you will get jumpscared. Again, it’s a Halloween special, and again, I don’t really like Jumpscares, but I understand why the jumpscares are there. Just. Don’t have audio and you’ll basically do FINE with the Jumpscares, they’re the same level of jumpscare as like. Sburb.exe. So, yeah, if you read that and did okay with those Jumpscares, you’ll do fine with the jumpscares in this comic as well.

I am now officially done with all the Fanadventures that have recently gotten 200 favourites, or that I just didn’t get to in my initial readthrough. BUT! The problem with this journey is that there’s always going to be MSPFAs that cross that 200 favourites threshold. So, I’ll cover those Fanadventures that are, “On the Edge” as it were, to crossing that aforementioned threshold, as all of them have at least 190 favourites and are below that crucial number. So, by covering them *now*, if and when they later become valid for this journey, I’ll have already done them! Simple as, as Easy does. Or whatever that expression is.

The first of these is a Fanadventure from 2018, known as “STUCK IN THE PAST.” Apparently, this one is about a boy who can remember another timeline which has people in it that don’t exist in the current timeline? Which sounds really interesting as a premise to a Fanadventure. Also, this fanadventure recently upd8ed, which is probably why it’s so close to the threshold! Neat.

You know, I’m actually kind of surprised it took all the way until basically the end of the year to get around to like, a Sonic-Based Fanadventure. You would’ve thought that, with the kind of cultural impact that Sonic has had on the internet and gaming and internet-discourse about gaming, there would be more of a Prescence of Sonic-based Fanadventures on MSPFA. But nope, this is the only one of it’s kind (that I can remember reading, at least).

I guess…did I talk about any Fanadventures that was based off of like, other properties playing SBURB? Because it’s one of those again. Except, it’s not really, because it’s not like, how you would think it is. No, instead, all the main Sonic the Hedgehog cast have been transformed into KIDS, to better fit the strict adherence to structure that must have been all the rage back in 2013. Like, why can’t it be Sonic the Hedgehog looking into this new “SBURB” thing that every mobian is talking about?

So I have no idea how to actually start to introduce this webcomic so I’ll just say what I believe the premise is, which is “what if a blood cell played SBURB?” I…think that’s the premise. This is a fanadventure that only recently *just* crossed the threshold of favourites to be on the “main” list, with 200 favourites on the dot. It’s also from 2013. I think all the previous facts are just neat.

Like. The premise is just, so out there. “What if a bunch of like, organic…organisms…like Estrogen and Red Blood Cells and stuff played SBURB” is like, kind of a weird premise? Which makes me all the more interested that this was in 2013. This feels like the kind of stuff you could see TODAY, when people are trying to figure out the limits of the structure of the SBURBventure and testing out different permutations of it.

Now, for the big reason why I wanted to do this “going back and recollecting all the fanadventures that I hadn’t yet covered in my original journey.” The year is 2013, the big hits of the fandom are still GuideStuck and Heinoustuck, and the juggernaut that Vast Error would become is still a tiny little sapling, wandering around playing with Darts. HACKBENT is the one glaring ominious at my original journey, so glaring I made a small post about it back in the halcyon days when nobody really cared because I had only just started getting to the real heavy-hitters of MSPFA. So, let’s do it. Let’s fix this glaring hole. Let’s read HACKBENT. Which apparently was created by a person who now works at DREAMWORKS???????? Crazy.

Alright, already I’m noticing a couple of tropes that gained traction afterwards, but I guess started here (or was added to the Homestuck Formula by this comic). Mainly, mysterious narrator intro that tells us that, hey, hold on to your hats. We’re not just going to do Act 1 of Homestuck. It’s gonna be a totally different thing. Then immediately after that, the comic THROWS you into a Pesterlog without any warning. “You’re here to see Trolls, Let’s get you straight to the trolls” the comic seems to be saying. Okay so the comic’s like, paced weirdly so far, but I’m kind of getting into it? Mainly because like, wow, there’s so many favourites here and it’s so early in MSPFA’s career as a website that there must be SOMETHING here worth remembering and capturing. But the weird pacing is like, all over the place. Obviously shadowy, mysterious narrator, then immediately pesterlog with two characters that you don’t anything about, then an introduction, check the computer, and suddenly we’re the other character from the initial conversation. It’s…a bit all-over the place, in a way that even Homestuck’s early acts weren’t like (trust me, I checked) and even, like, the other contemporary (relative to this comic’s initial posting, at least) comics aren’t like. Like, Guidestuck mainly stuck to one character at a time. That’s the main formula for most MSPFAs, you stick with one character until you get far enough into their introduction that you introduce another character, and so on and so forth. I guess this is a different way of doing it, and you know what, now that I type this out, this kind of pace of like “introducing characters rapid-fire” is EXACTLY the pace of Homestuck Act 5 Act 1, without the framing around that act of course. So I mean, who am I to complain. If you want to get your audience to meet all your characters and get to the “good stuff” of your comic, this is a pretty nice way of doing things.

You know, I wouldn’t be shocked if HACKBENT was like, around when Vast Error started conceptualizing it’s characters. I’m seeing so many character concepts that would later show up in Vast Error, and reading Hackbent is like the missing piece of the puzzle. “Aha!” I’m saying to myself. “So this must be what all the fanadventures were like back then, before Vast Error rose to prominence.” I mean, I know what they were like back then, I’ve read them. But you know what I mean. Like I said, it’s the missing puzzle piece.

Or maybe it’s just a correlated variable that I’m picking up. Maybe this is just what webcomics in general were like back in 2013. Back before MSPFA really had it’s own vernacular and language, and thus whatever MSPFAs were there were either borrowing from Homestuck’s vernacular or from other works. Whatever. Maybe I’m overthinking this too hard. It doesn’t matter, what matters is that this is very evocative to me and I’m struggling to I guess get a clear picture of where this fits in on the “impacting MSPFA” timeline. Because, like, to sort of quote a cliché, “they don’t make MSPFAs like these anymore.” Because, like, I feel like recently there’s this, almost obessive fascination with OG Homestuck, as people are rediscovering that, hey, Homestuck isn’t all that bad. But back in 2013, people weren’t quite in the “Homestuck sucks” phase that the fandom would later find itself mired in, but people weren’t like, obbessed over the structure and trying to recreate it. It’s more like, “how can we make Homestuck into a model that’s more traditional, more accessible to the general public, more like the other webcomics one might read on the internet?” HACKBENT is very accessible, and wears its heart on its sleeve. You don’t have to guess what archetype each character is, because it’s easy to tell-the pompous one, the conjoined one, the one that’s a ticking time bomb, the dirty one, etc. idk. It’s interesting to see how a niche community grows, is I guess my ultimate point here in this paragraph. I feel like I’m not quite communicating that point as effectively as I might like, but…I’ll stop now.

We’re back in 2019 with this one, and you know what that means—wish fulfillment! Catharsis! Everything a healthy, growing fanbase indulges in every once and a while. Also, I’ve noticed a lot of that wish fulfillment and catharsis is centered around two characters, namely Jade and Nepeta. I guess these two are just the ones that get the short end of the stick within Homestuck, and therefore have the most “I wish…” statements about them. I wish she didn’t die, I wish she wasn’t asleep for most of the story, etc. you get it. Just, something I’ve noticed.