How and when did you start reading Homestuck?

Jesus. BZpower? That's a name I haven't heard in ages. I used to love bionicle back in the day, and while I never joined the forums, I frequently lurked there and also messed around with spritesheets (it's how I learned to sprite in the first place, probably my biggest hobby)

It was in 2014 (probably June), during gigapause.
I've encountered on DeviantArt a bunch of photos of some people with gray-painted skin. In titles and comments there was information, that they'd cosplayed trolls (whithout mentioning Homestuck).
Out of curiosity I've started to search what is it all about. I've found a wiki article about trolls and MSPA.
After that I started reading comic (just to give it a shot)... and here I am.

I saw it everywhere all over the internet in 2011 and probably 2010. I was part of one particular forum for quite a few years and I saw a lot of homestuck on there as well as basically any forum I go to. It was mainly the trolls appearing in avatars and banners and they really stood out to me. I find it funny though because I saw mostly images of Gamzee and Eridan so I thought those two were the main characters. xD
When I found out what it was I looked it up and heard about how it was apparently 'bad at the beginning but gets really good at Act 5', so I started reading it around 2010-2011. Can't remember what year. But I gave up because I found it two boring. I didn't try again until early 2012 since the amount of fame it had was really bothering me and I really wanted to know what was with this comic full of weird grey people, and I stuck through the first few acts. I actually started liking the comic at act 3, but I didn't get hooked until act 5. I can't remember when I caught up. I swear it was Caliborn: Enter, but I think I've gotten the dates mixed up since I thought Openbound took place in 2013 and Cascade started late 2010. I caught up at around June 2012, so whatever updates where going on around that time I guess. I did a reread of the comic recently and I now find acts 1-4 really funny and a fun experience. Acts 1-5 are honestly now my favourite works of fiction and I doubt anything can top it. Not even Undertale could top it (although Undertale tops act 6). I did enjoy the first few act 6 intermissions (the pen scene comes to mind), and homostuck though, plus all the animations before game over. Karkat, Dave, Terezi and Act 5 Vriska are also on my faovurite fictional characters list. Only Izaya tops them.

I've always wished that I didn't give up on the comic on my first try though, since I joined the fandom rather late due to taking awhile of trying to get into it. I mean I know it could have been worse and I could have joined the fandom later when it died, but I didn't really get to enjoy the comic with a full fledged fandom for that long. I only got about a years worth of fun before I noticed a lot of people leaving in 2013.

I WAS ALREADY HERE.

Because I was reading Problem Sleuth as it was coming out so I stuck around for Homestuck.

from 2010-2011 a good friend of mine would make homestuck references at random and sometimes link me random images from the comic (i distinctly remember him sending me the flash where jade has a squiddle nightmare and asking me to give my thoughts on it) and eventually i got briefly interested and started reading. about five or six pages in i couldnt tell what the hell it even was, if it was a video game, or a comic, i had no idea, and just gave up. i didnt try it again up until summer of 2011. i was at my grandmother's place and both her computer and internet were absolutely horrible and i couldnt go on youtube or anything intensive. so eventually i got bored and remembered about homestuck and decided to say fuck it and see what went on past those first few pages. as my story goes i read it with some interest up until the jack ascend flash or whatever had "Black" in it and it enthralled me. from that point forward i started to really enjoy it and that was the night i became a fan of homestuck. i remember catching up to somewhere in the [o]termission

Famous last words.

hussie trolled us all lol

A friend mentioned MS Paint Adventures to me (don't remember how it came up) and I looked it up and started reading Jailbreak. It was sometime during the gigapause I think.

The day was July 16th 2013. I had heard about homestuck but wasn't that interested. I found this quiz on quotev 'wich homestuck character are you?' Intrested i took the quiz and got karkat the only answer. Then i looked up homestuck and went straight to the image section. I thought 'Hmm this is weird i should read it' So i went to the site. But i didn't feel like doing all that reading. I watched lets read homestuck by VATroupe on youtube and fell in love.

I first heard about people cosplaying as some "trolls" from some webcomic called "Homestuck" several years ago, but I didn't think much of it at the time. Then a youtuber I watched (Yogscast Nilesy) started mentioning it and changing his Steam username to what were apparently Homestuck related things such as "Terezi Pyrope" or "The Mayor of Cantown", which started to catch my interest, but not enough for me to try reading it. The thing that finally got me to read it was when another webcomic site called Shifty Look which I had visiting often released their game Namco High, which I learned was written by the guy behind Homestuck thanks to Nilesy's videos on it.

In early January of the gigapause I started reading and I've been hooked ever since. I joined the MSPA Forums about a year or two later.

Also, fun fact: the first day I read Homestuck I made it to the end of Act 1 and decided "Hmm, that only took about two hours. Maybe I'll just read to the end of the second act today" assuming that it would take the same amount of time. I quickly discovered that it was in fact much longer and, with seemingly no end to that act in sight, stopped on this page.

I first found about it through Newgrounds, back in the days of the first Brostrife. Then I forgot about it, then was reminded when a TV Tropes link sent me to Jack Noir flipping the fuck out. I found it too dense to bother with at the time, so I spent a couple years reading the pages out of order from TV Tropes and Wiki links. I finally caught up with everything at... some page close to Cascade, and since then started reading the comic linearly as the pages came out.

Facebook, Summer of 2012.
I was friends with some RP profiles, most of which being characters from fandoms I didn't know. This was before Tumblr, before even Deviantart. This was the beginning of it all.
Then one day, a Gamzee Makara comes and says "give me your zodiac sign and I'll tell you which chara from Homestuck you are!". Replies were accompanied with fanart of said characters.
Days later, I came back to that guy's fanarts. Interested by the trolls, I googled "Homestuck" and found Mspa.com.
I came in for the trolls. But I didn't skip the first parts, even not the Intermission. However I ended speed reading most of it, and didn't understand anything when Cascade came up. Green Sun? Scratch? The Tumor? Alpha Kids? I was ditched.

This was the beginning of a great adventure.

Was playing a forum game series revolving around Minecraft and interdimensional antics when Doc Scratch and the Condesce invaded Minecraft with a giant army of Crockercorp ships. I had a friend in real life who read the comic, and after the piecemeal answers I kept getting from them and me not getting everything first kept making me look like a jack*** against Scratch, I finally bit the bullet and read the comic so that I'd actually know what was found on.

Blowing LE's brains out was a far more satisfying end to the universe eating demon than Andrew delivered I'm sorry to say.