In which I say my piece about the Homestuck fandom

In preparation for an upcoming trip with some friends to a convention in San Antonio, one of my friends brought up what I dreaded to hear, but knew was inevitable.
Cosplayers. Not any cosplayers, mind you - Homestuck Cosplayers.
I've had a... history, with Homestuck Cosplayers before.
See, if you're going to cosplay, you damn well better do it good. There's an argument to be made that good cosplay is few and far between, but I can often give credit to a bad cosplayer if they at least tried.
But then we have Homestuck.
I have never seen a good Homestuck cosplay with my own eyes. I've seen a handful on the internet thanks to a "friend" who was trying to prove a point that "OMG THERE ARE GOOD HOMESTUCK COSPLAYERS", but with my own two eyes, in the flesh? No. Never. It's mostly kids with lightly applied gray facepaint and orange tubes tied to their head, or, in one hilarious example, an older man (attempting) to cosplay as the one troll with the sunglasses who looked strikingly like Al Jolson in blackface.
But that's just the trolls. The kids are even worse. Literally, all you need to do is buy one of the shirts from Andrew Hussie's site, maybe buy a wig if you're hair is a different color than whatever character you're doing  (in the case of one intrepid twelve year old, just shear your hair off until you've got the perfect John Eggbert... mullet. It wasn't pleasant), and bam! You're done. Of course, there's other accessories, but they're cheap and take all the effort of going to a CVS to attain. The only exception is Dave in the suit and whatever, and I'll concede that all two of the pictures I've seen of someone pulling that off did it extremely well.

It's worth noting that good kid cosplay is out there, but it's few

and far between. Much like any good cosplay, really.

Still, that doesn't change the fact I saw a good 54 Dave Striders - the un-tux ones, mind you - at A-Kon this year in one day alone. Yeah, I counted. Most of them don't look like the above picture. Most of them look like... We'll, this.

T-Shirt: Twenty-Five Dollars
Haircut: Mom did it for free
Glasses: Got them out of Dad's closet
Being used on a blog as an example? Priceless.

Oh, and this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyFXNMVbO5Q
If this doesn't make you wretch, I don't know what will.
I could probably write a novel about everything wrong with that video, but I won't insult your intelligence and assume you need to be told all that's wrong in this video.

It doesn't stop with the cosplay, though, oh no. It goes much deeper than that.
Back in 08-09, when I was a terribly obnoxious high-school weeaboo (that's whole set of stories for another day), I was a huge DeviantArt hound. I watched my share of talentless garbage, yes, but I think people often forget that there are a lot of people with outstanding talent on DeviantArt, even if all they do is fan-art.
As of late, I went back to look at their pages, just out of curiosity.
And, I'll be damned, almost every single person I remember having some modicum of talent has completely stopped drawing fanart/original works of anything except -
A) My Little Pony
B) Homestuck
I can count the exceptions on one hand. I mean wow. It is so disheartening to see people with such potential throw it away so they can make an "Ask - inset pony here-" tumblr page. I mean, really? You have a great, relatively original comic going on, but you choose to drop that completely so you can make an "Ask a Pony" tumblr? For shame, my friend, for shame... No, I'm not naming names.
But, that's just a guy thing. See, literally every male that I used to follow now does Pony art.
Every girl I used to follow does Homestuck art.
HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM... I WONDER...
To sum it up nicely, many wonderful artist have succumbed to these cancerous fandoms and have tragically abandoned any sort of original aspirations and have completely converted to these cults. I can only hope one day they see the error of their ways.

I'll admit, the over-saturation of Homestuck is more of a personal gripe than an objective critique of the fandom. Did I mention that? That this is me complaining about the fandom? You could be forgiven for thinking this is some stream of concious rant, which it kind of is, but no. I sat down to talk about why I hate the Homestuck fandom, and I just barely brushed the biggest complaint I have in the first paragraph with that video.
I know there are obnoxious fans in any fandom; it's unavoidable. But God DAMN do Homestuck fans go out of their way to make it look like they're the worst. And, I'm not talking about everyone who likes Homestuck. I know there are plenty of level-headed fans out there who like Homestuck and abhor the fandom, as demonstrated in those comments in the video, but these guys make Sonic fans look good... Almost. If I were to list all the incidents at both this year's A-Kon and last year's that involved Homestuck drama/obnoxious screeching/acting like morons in general, we'd be here all day. I mean, authors write about what they know, and literally all I know about the Homestuck fandom is terrible.
If you like Homestuck and are caught in the middle of this absolute mire of a fandom, I am truly sorry. Keep your chin up - I'm sure there's another Hetalia barreling around the corner that will whisk all the obnoxious bandwagon hoppers to another fandom and leave you battered, bruised, covered in regurgitated Dr. Pepper, but finally safe.

Oh, and did I mention that I don't actually hate Homestuck? Because I don't. I think Andrew Hussie, while he has extended Homestuck out so far that I don't know what the Hell is going on and I haven't kept up with it in more than a year, is a talented story teller and extremely clever. Homestuck certainly has it's good parts, and I can see why a good deal of people really enjoy it. HOWEVER, on this final note, I want to quote the ever-eloquent DeviantArt user StapledSlut, who I only vaguely knew existed before I googled "Homestuck Fandom Sucks" in a bout of blind rage after my friend linked me that video last night.
- "It seems like everyone either, 1) Likes the fandom (art) of homestuck, but doesn't actually like homestuck itself, OR 2) Likes homestuck but can't stand the fandom surrounding it."

Yeah, that about sums it up perfectly. And I feel really, really bad for those number twos out there,
While I don't exactly agree with the rest of the post, you can read it here for further reference:
http://stapledslut.deviantart.com/journal/Homestuck-More-like-homeSUCK-An-elaboration-266473267?moodonly=158

Now you maybe wondering about My Little Pony... Odds are you don't care, just like you still probably don't care about my feelings on Homestuck despite reading this whole thing, but if you do...
One day. One day I'll write about it. I'm waiting until the time is right to pick that apple... probably when some brony snaps and kills someone. I'm waiting...