It’s been just over a week since I made the first post on this blog, inviting people interested in Homestuck from an academic perspective to get in touch and share their ideas with like-minded individuals across the web.

Since I made that post this blog has almost 100 followers and my colleagues and I have received over two dozen responses from enthusiastic people in all areas and levels of academic interest, who all just as excited about the prospect of examining Homestuck through academic lenses as we are.

So the question is, where do we go from here?

The answer, thankfully, is not difficult. In the next week or so, anyone who has expressed an interest and shared an email with me will receive an email inviting them to an online space to discuss their ideas in this first step of AcademicStuck. While this space will not be Exclusive, it will be invite only. If you want an invitation, all you have to do is message me here and share an email where I can contact you.

Again, the only qualifications we’re looking for right now are enthusiasm and a love of Homestuck. You can have a PhD, be in high school, be a self-taught scholar, you can be in any field, as long as you’re passionate and dedicated to creating high-quality content.

Okay, so that’s where we’ll begin. An academic collective that discusses ideas, fosters collaboration, and encourages research and analysis. What next?

What I personally am aiming for is a formal online space that deals primarily in middle-state publishing: that is, written works and research that are shorter, peer-reviewed by other members of the community, and are posted with a higher frequency than standard academic journals. This kind of scholarship has proven successful in the world of Game Studies and plays strongly to the ideas of AcademicStuck as a whole, especially for cross-discipline and multi-leveled experiences.

That’s what we’re going for here: an academic community that encourages collaboration and discussion across different lenses, schools of thought, and disciplines. A community that welcomes ideas from scholars whether they’re professors or high schoolers, that learns and grows together and shares ideas. A community that begins with Homestuck and has the potential to expand its view to study other experimental narrative works.

Academic interest in Homestuck (and other works in popular culture) is not limited to the academy, and we’re interested in creating a space that emphasizes the interest of the fans first.

So, if you’re interested in joining us and you haven’t messaged us with your email address yet, drop us a line! We’d love to hear from you.

We’re doing this man.

We’re making this happen.

– Hex