My thoughts pretty much on Homestuck too. Love the creative ways Hussie did with the story telling and a lot of the characters I love (ARADIA AND JADE ARE MY FOREVER GIRLS XD; ). Most of the movie references I get as LOL my dad watches those and I had watched some of them with him. I'm with you though that the beginning is a bit on the stale side and I tend to be tl;dr on the chat logs. I thought Act 6 was cute but yeah wished Hussie would have dealt with the first leg of the plot with the new kids faster. I'm assuming you have read the Act 6 Intermission 1 at least?

In terms of catching up, I started reading it December last year when Act 5 was midway to the end and I wasn't able to catch up with updates until February of this year, LOL. Then again I was busy job hunting and then was getting used to my volunteer work position, so it took a bit for me to power through.

One thing I want to warn you though is the Homestuck fandom tends to get crazy. If they ever read this post of yours they're gonna flame you for it. >.>;