i can almost guarantee you the epilogues are not as bad as what you've heard. a lot of bad faith criticism towards the epilogues relies on describing plot points out of context as facetiously as possible. i can do the same to the original homestuck too, look:

"in homestuck, there is a plot point in which a guy designs a robot body that caters to his fetish for a girl he's sexually attracted to, makes her participate in his fetish in the conversation prior to her transferring to said body (this is treated as a joke), and when she discovers that a feature of this body is coercing her into being attracted to him she reacts by beating him up, but kissing him at the last moment anyway"

all that is said in that sentence is technically true, all of it does happen between equius and aradia, but it phrases everything in the worst way possible and ignores the larger context of this plot point. if i said this to a person who never read homestuck, they would probably have a very bad impression of the story just based on that. my point being that people who tell others that the epilogues are bad by way of describing plot points like this are probably not doing so maliciously, but are still heavily misrepresenting the actual text.

the epilogues are very introspective on the characters and the original homestuck, as well as the nature of stories and characters. it's a piece of work that wants you to think about it, wants you to reflect on the original homestuck too! reading them with another person and discussing as you go, thinking about it and swapping perspectives is probably one of the best way to experience them, even if you end up not liking them i think you'll definitely come out of the experience with new insight on the characters, and having someone gain new insight on the original text is a great way to get someone back into the work.