Homestuck: [S] Collide - Oppa Toby Style | Reacting To Video Game Music!

[@undeadMonk]

The name of the track (Oppa Toby Style) was chosen by Toby Fox's followers on twitter - he was very disappointed in everyone but kept his word and submitted the track with that name

[@JessesAuditorium]

legend

[@misterbin00]

Probably a parody of Oppa Gangnam Style

[@shadowangelj]

@misterbin00 yes that was the intention

[@hemoglobinExploiter]

you got it partially correct! homestuck is a webcomic, with music that plays during certain moments (usually animated), the comic is free to read though. this song basically plays in the big climax at the end of this goliath, over 8000 page long comic where they have to fight all the main bad guys that were all accumulated over the series, so this is basically a song for like 5 or 6 different bosses happening at once, so that's why it's so chaotic and all over the place! just like.. animated instead of played.

[@RealityMasterRogue]

I'd like to note that the official archived version of homestuck is awful- bad quality, missing pages, etc. The Unofficial Homestuck Collection is much better on that front, and was recognized by Andrew Hussie (the creator of homestuck).

[@CountForte]

While this song may be indicative of the chaotic nature of Homestuck, I personally believe it's an off impression to newcomers as far as music style. The narrative is chaotic, but most of the time, Homestuck music snapshots a moment in time and tells a story of the emotional landscape of that one moment in a more cohesive way. You're right about this one being designed more as a backing track than a "song", and it's a late-game one and probably designed to be the most chaotic and purposefully-disjointed moment in the narrative. A lot of people probably have fond memories of hearing it because they waited so long to see that action payoff.

[@pumpkinpartysystem]

Yeah, it works great in context of the animation and story, but as a purely standalone song with no context in your mind to go off of, it's not exactly the most listenable.

[@Petulant_Petrichor]

Especially with all the returning motifs not carrying any weight without the context of their original appearance.

[@renzalwyvern9976]

I do so hope some folks also requested Heir Of Grief somewhere alongside this. It's a really pretty track and a bit less chaotic.

[@JessieIsRawr]

the one im really hoping for is Symphony Impossible to Play's "Overture", absolutely amazing song and one of my favorites

[@rotciv557]

It ended that way because the flash animation that this song played during, [S] Collide, was the animation showing "the final fight" of the webcomic, with Oppa Toby Style being the first of 3 songs that played during the entirety of it. The two songs that played after, in order, were "Eternity, Served Cold" and "Heir of Grief".

[@seandun7083]

A lot of music in the "webcomic" uses leitmotifs to reference previous pieces. This one starts off by mixing the theme from English and Rex Duodem Angelus (both great songs), which were themes for 2 of the big bads. Collide is the name of the animation in which this plays and [S] signifies that the page will have sound (meaning it is either an animation or some sort of playable game)

[@tabbottinator]

Yeah, this Song is basically the 'Final Boss' theme of Homestuck. It's absolute FIRE, and references a lot of other themes from throughout the comic series.

[@jureigeeksoutoccasionally]

5:36 funny you say that. Touhou is one of Toby’s biggest inspirations creatively

[@BUGFlower413]

Something worth noting about Homestuck's OST is that almost _every_ track from the literal thousands there is reference some others' leitmotives. _Oppa Toby Style_ particularly, due to playing at the very climax of the story it incorporates dozens of leitmotives into it. Also feeling confused about the sheer chaotic energy of HS is part of the experience. One main rcognizable thing about the webcomic is it's ridiculously complex and chaotic story

[@diggory4ii385]

I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE!!! Also it's less a visual novel and more like a webcomic that happens to have flash games and flash movies in it. This particular song is part of a score for one of those flash movies. The reason it ends like that is because there is still 7 minutes or so of score after that.

[@heartlesshealer]

I think Undertale had just come out around the time the climax of the comic happened, so there was a portion animated as if in homage to Toby's newly released game. Everyone was excited for him (he was one of the long-time providers of music for Homestuck animations and albums).

[@dancingCactus]

What's really cool about this song is that it uses leitmotifs built up through out the comic to help tell the story. Each character has their own instrument that they are attached to and then the melodies are also the characters themes.

[@spacelullaby]

I have some context for this track; the theme isn't "random", it may feel a bit out of nowhere but each specific tune (the flute bit) for example, are lemotifs timed to play at specific moments in the animation (flash) that occurred during this song. With the animation played next to it, you understand what emotion the song is meant to attune to. Please do Doctor and watch its animation for example, it's about exploring an alien landscape for the first time and the wonder accomping that first flight after being in a lightless capsule cell for decades.

[@spacelullaby]

This is also one of the better flashes/animations to watch if you don't want to be spoiled on major events, since it's one of the first in the entire comic.

[@ByrneBaby]

Collide was basically the finale of Homestuck, where all the different narrative threads of the story collided at a single point and turned into a huge battle. The flash itself had 4 different songs that played over different major events, and this one played during the most chaotic part where EVERYONE was fighting some sort of battle with someone. The songs that followed were Eternity Served Cold (Canon Cut) and Heir of Grief, so hopefully those show up at some point. I'd love to see a reaction to Cascade as a whole, too, that was the first mega flash animation that had a similar 4 songs spanning the entire thing, but the impact of the music is sort of lost without the visual of the comic's events coinciding with them. Oh, and nearly all the melodies of this song were ripped from past songs used in the series, Toby loves his leitmotifs. ALSOalso, part of the narrative of Homestuck is the story of kids trying to find stability in the overly chaotic and dangerous situation they found themselves in, so chaos and fighting back against it is kind of the main theme of the series.

[@miiexx]

homestuck does a lot of motif work and throughout many of the songs you will hear the same melodies over and over again in some cases

[@lunarlunatic274]

Oh this is lovely. Always great to see someone appreciate Homestuck's track.

[@AMTRAX]

Homestuck is a webcomic, with cartoons and mini games that help to further the story. There are visual novel spin offs, but that’s not what this is. This is from one of the cartoons that was meant to cap off the main story.

[@dirk6764]

A quick fun fact about homestuck, toby fox made undertale in andrew hussies (homestucks creator) basement and made tons and tons of tracks for the ost, even havin a version of megalovania play in comic. Besides toby though there are plenty of very talented and unique artists on the ost spanning many different genres from slow and somber introspective songs to fun silly tracks to huge emotionally charged masterpieces. Cant wait for more homestuck reactions.

[@HaaruteLIVE]

This track plays basically at the end of the webcomic, in the middle of a very frantic sequence of battle scenes. The song is mostly made to fit to that, while also dropping a lot of recurrent leitmotifs from previous Homestuck songs in it that a reader might have an emotional attachment to. Dropping you in here blind and expecting you to kind of follow is a bit of a tall order lmao.

[@NateTheTailor]

Wow 5 days ago, finished homestuck recently so its fun seeings stuff like this

[@olivia7782]

Wrt your question abt visual novels (even tho HS isn't really one, and tbh I'm not really an expert) the level of involvement and gameplay varies between games. The Ace Attorney games, for instance, are considered visual novels, but they have win/lose conditions and involve deduction and puzzle solving to get through the story. Others are more based around exploring branching paths in a narrative based on what choices a player makes, primarily through dialogue options (if you've ever heard of a 'dating sim', those are usually like this). The central characteristics are generally being story+character-centric, and consisting in large part of dialogue and direct interactions with or between characters. They may or may not be voiced to various degrees, but are primarily told through on-screen text accompanied by visuals and music

[@therealshrinemaiden6898]

holy fuck the timing could not be more perfect, I've been trying to find more homestuck music reactions

[@enmakozato8894]

Honestly 'random' and 'chaotic' are two excellent words to describe Homestuck. There is a great level of cohesion to it at times and it tells an interesting plot. But 70% of the time, things devolve into pure, enjoyable chaos in a multitude of ways. Which fits what Homestuck 'is' as media too. What IS Homestuck? It's literally a little bit of every media, but heavily videogame inspired in both execution, story, characters, theme, etc. The main plot of the game is that the characters within it are, quite literally, playing a videogame. But one with very high stakes.

[@pumpkinpartysystem]

Homestuck's soundtrack is one of the most varied collections of music for a single piece of media I have ever heard, and while it definitely has bad songs, there are surprisingly few. Homestuck's soundtrack may not be the most coherent, but you can always find something interesting in it if you try; there's always something more to discover. The side projects tend to have more similar musical styles, because things like Pesterquest, Hiveswap, and Hiveswap Friendsim, while they use a selection of songs from the vast library of Homestuck's music, have most of the gaps filled by James Roach, who has a very recognisable style once you get used to it. You heard one of James's songs when you listened to Aradia's theme, "yeah it is", which uses a lot of James's signature instrumentation, especially noticeable with the horns in the back half, but with a melody by Toby Fox (Megalovania) as the base.

[@xX_Thaddeus_Xx]

So, something interesting about this--it's actually sped up. Not by the uploader, but by late game design--in essence, the animation it was for was getting so long and taking so long to actually finish, chunks of it got cut, making the original length of the track too long. So, for the final version, it was sped up some to alleviate this. It sounds a bit better, imo, slowed down to roughly what people have guestimated was the original speed.

[@raye-raphaelsashay8521]

Yeah, this is a bit of a weird one to react to outside of context, because it draws so heavily on the listener being familiar with previous songs and motifs. Homestuck has such an eclectic discography that it almost builds its own language of music. Most of the times when you heard a cool melody or when a moment stood out, it was because you were hearing an old motif. This is a "boss fight" theme, trying to tell a cohesive story of several different fights at once. The chaos is very much intentional but is (imo) MUCH more parseable when paired with the visuals. Homestuck has some incredibly beautiful tracks, and some incredibly badass ones. I hope you end up hearing more in the future!

[@ElevatorIsStuck]

Wow didnt expect another homestuck track, a welcome suprise!

[@szkraft220]

As others have said, Homestuck is a webcomic with various elements along the way that ARENT a comic, like short games and animations. Homestuck itself actually has a very unique format because instead of comic panels and speech bubbles there is a piece of art and text underneath, sometimes extending to large conversations Pesterquest is a visual novel where you play from the perspective of a reader-avatar of sorts and you get to befriend the various HS characters! While the Hiveswap series are point and click adventure games set in the Homestuck universe (well... universES, plural) but dont have much to do with the proper characters of HS. Theres also Hiveswap Friendsim which is basically a visual novel like pesterquest but for hiveswap characters Just sayin in case you ever get a hiveswap song, so that you know exactly HOW theyre connected :D if anyone reading this comment is interested in homestuck you should check out the Homestuck Unofficial Collection, instead of reading it all on the main site, it archivws the comic way better in all its Flash glory anyway, cheers!

[@NightmareKnight25807]

You have windmill peak in the background before the reaction has even started. I can tell you have taste

[@gardenagnostic4138]

Oh my God i can't wait to watch this later

[@menosay1912]

Visual novels are mostly read the story and make dialogue or destination choices that can alter the outcome. Think of it like a Choose Your Own Adventure novel but with less choices and more visuals. Some have mini games or even battle systems in them too.

[@bensmith6518]

i think even avid homestuck enjoyers had trouble keeping up with this one hahaha

[@johnray73]

well if you listen to Oppa Toby Style, You GOTTA listen to Heir of Grief, its superior in my opinion, but its a very good piece of music

[@blightLight]

never expected to see homestuck on here

[@nekorion]

Do you really not know oppa ____ style as a meme. Now that's surprising, gangnam style was one of the most popular videos on the planet ever. Homestuck is great but random doesn't even come close to describing it. A major event is a man not wanting to wear a hat. Like it's a catalyst for so much of the story you wouldn't believe. Giving birth to yourself is pretty mundane and happens a couple of times

[@JessesAuditorium]

Oh, is that what's referencing? I don't even know what original song was about.

[@Mrinsecure]

@@JessesAuditorium The title of the song is a complete meme, chosen by fans, and has nothing to do with the context of the song itself. But Gangnam Style was a tongue-in-cheek comedic take on people who live in the Gangnam District of South Korea, which you can think of as their equivalent of, say, Beverly Hills. It's full of wealthy people who spend all their money on designer clothes and overpriced coffee, as well as substantially less wealthy people who go broke trying to emulate that lifestyle. That's what the "Gangnam Style" is referring to: people who starve and torment themselves to try to live like the rich and famous, usually only making themselves look stupid in the process.