nobooks said:
Read the story, got hooked, etc. My first update was John getting stabbed by Bec Noir.
Funny you mentioned that, since that's exactly the page where I
DISCOVERED MSPA ([S] JOHN: RISE UP was not up yet, though). It must have been against the rules of /r/comics to post it, but I discovered a link there to [S] John: Enter village.
I played it, and even though I had no idea what was going on, I thought it was interesting that a comic would incorporate a walkaround Flash game. I don't think I remember reading Vriska's chat at the beginning of the flash, and when I saw the pesterlogs in the pages after, I didn't bother reading them, thinking they were just extras like some other new readers do.
After I reached the page with John's supposed death (and especially when I saw the homepage afterward and had to take in the fact that he's the very first character in the comic), I didn't know what to do afterward: should I abandon this thing because the main character's death has ruined the comic, or should I start from the beginning and figure out how he gets here?
I tried to, but I quickly got bored with the first few pages. It wasn't until mid-March of 2011 (over 3 months after that update, I'm sure) that something (I can't remember what) led me back to Homestuck. Remembering my previous encounter, I decided that the urge to know the story of this kid named John and that cool-looking monstrosity with Kamina glasses who kills him was too overwhelming to simply dismiss the comic for its early acts.
Because of the circumstances of my encounter, it's no surprise that [S] JOHN: RISE UP is one of my personal favorite flashes; in fact, it's my personal favorite update or update sequence other than Cascade, [S] Seer: Descend (with [S] ==>, of course), and Aradia's End-of-Hivebent monologue (which I consider more compelling than any Flash).
I caught up shortly after Seer: Descend, just as AR was attempting to contact Dave. I've never looked back.