#homestuck explained

[cannoliparty]

quadrants explained!

quadrants are a fun and (compared to homestuck's other elements) simpler element in the comic. personally, i find them intriguing but i dont really make any pairings with them unfortunately :( atleast theyre fun to explain!! so here we are ^_^

overview

the quadrants are the ways trolls experience romantic attraction to eachother, and what their relationships are based off of. these 4 quadrants are as follows:

matespriteship <3

moirallegiance <>

kismessitude <3<

auspiticism c3<

keep in mind ALL these quadrants are a form of dating, whether feelings are of love, hate, pacifism, etc.

(note: i looove the detail of these quadrants having little text symbols like earth's own romance (<3)!! its clever and makes troll romance seem even more realistic)

in a more literal sense, the quadrants obviously take a liking to the 4 suits in a deck of cards. this plays into the theme of "bar games", with the pool motif of the felt/lord english being another example.

quadrants can be sorted into 4 sections:

red romance: <3 and <>

black romance: <3< and c3<

concupiscent: <3 and <3<

conciliatory: <> and c3<

quadrants

matespriteship <3

this is (probably) the easiest to understand between the 4 - because matespriteship is the same to human romantic attraction. trolls will feel deep respect and adoration stemming from attributes of their matesprite, and this is a positive connection.

moirallegiance <>

moirallegience can be closely described as "platonic soulmates" - but keep in mind this is still regarded as a way of romance and dating!

moirails look out for eachother. they are the first person you confide in, as you are to your moirail. they help eachother in pacifying emotions, and keeping the other calm. theyre mostly necessary because of the violent practices in troll society, and moirails help tone down their partner's violent tendencies and general negative emotions.

an example is karkat & gamzee: at first gamzee carried out the duty of pacifying karkat's loud anger, but later the jobs flipped and karkat had to calm gamzee down from his own murder-spree.

all this pacifying is done through "shoosh-papping" which i feel is just homestuck's funny way of communicating how trolls calm eachother down as moirails: through physical comfort. overall, moirails know how to keep eachother in check aswell as always support and be there for eachother, whether its over their rage, their sadness over a quadrant, or their all-out violent thoughts.

kismessitude <3<

kismessitude is a form of romance that perfectly resembles the violent society trolls are in. it is best described as a rivalry, with a deep hatred for your kismesis. but regardless, this hatred and the quadrant in general is rooted in a deep admiration for the qualities and/or feats of the kismesis, and its just that that makes the quadrant a form of romance and not animalistic violence.

but thats why its normal for a kismessitude to be pretty violent. you hate eachother, after all. and with this deep hatred combined with alternia's normalized violence, something's bound to happen, and fights will break out indefinitely.

although, often kismessitude can be too violent for its own good. an example being when the rivalry and hatred for eachother is too strong and you can end up culling eachother is when a 3rd person (and the 4th quadrant!) must step in.

auspisticism c3<

this quadrant is only present in kismessitudes, but not all kismessitudes have/need an austpistice. the auspistice is the mediator of a kismessitude for when it gets too violent, and someone else needs to step in and calm both/either of the parties down. its to make sure the rivalry remains healthy & balanced, aswell as keeping the pair away from culling eachother, because otherwise then its not dating, and just plain hatred.

of course, auspiticism comes in different forms. the most prominent example is kanaya in a (albeit strange) kismessitude between vriska & tavros. kanaya would mediate and talk to vriska, keeping her away from getting too heated/over the top and straight-up culling tavros. this is an example of when an auspistice is needed for only one overly-violent party member of the kismessitude, but austpisticism can be especially taxing when both parties are overheated in hatred & violence.

categories

now that all quadrants have been established, we can go further in-depth with their categories.

red romance

matespriteship & moirallegiance are in this category! this is because of the non-violent elements in both of these quadrants, as one is positively romantic and the other is used to pacify negative thoughts.

black romance

this category contains kismessitude & auspisticism. this is due to the hateful nature in these romances, whether the parties are mutually hating or it's a 3rd party who must step in on the hate.

concupiscent

matespriteship & kismessitude are in this category. theyre here because they are the only 2 required for troll reproduction.

conciliatory

this category has moirallegiance & auspisticism. theyre here because theyre the other 2 that don't have any reproductive activities and are mostly used for pacifying/mediating. sometimes because of the lack of reproduction people dont view these quadrants as equally romantic as the concupiscent ones, but theyre still a form of dating and romantic bonds!

conclusion

overall, quadrants are fun! whether you come up with your own pairings that arent the basic matespriteship or not, i personally find them fun to analyze/look over nonetheless. feel free to comment quadrant-related things such as more in-depth discoveries or your own troll romance pairings in homestuck!! ^3^

#homestuck #cannoliblabbing #homestuck quadrants #hs quadrants #homestuck explained #homestuck analysis

[derseprinceoftbd]

In honor of the new Upd8, here's the updated version of my Personal Homestuck Explainer.

An explainer for Homestuck, typed up on a Google doc for Reddit, and now transplanted onto Tumblr, and too long to fit in a single reddit comment. Most explainers I've seen utterly fail to get the tone of the series across, thus not answering the main question I see: "what is Homestuck *and why is it like this*". Why does it evoke the reactions it does? Why are so many things considered a reference? Who is Vriska? (I can't actually explain that one in under 3000 words, it turns out.) But, here's a briefer briefer (heh) on the subject of "What the actual fuck is Homestuck":

Andrew Hussie, a person (now going by any pronouns) then known for various obscure things around the net, made an interactive reader-driven comic-type-thing called Jailbreak where he would draw panels demonstrating the events of the story as dictated by other posters in the thread, putting his favored suggestions in the narration and responding in kind. The happenings and variables were influenced by his own strange brand of humor and set of fascinations, such as rap, horses, clowns, and H!rry P!tter as a cultural presence. He would eventually compile this, along with the unfinished followup, Bard Quest, on its own website.

The third installment of the so-called MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth, was a massive step up in production value, featuring impressive art and output speed as well as evolutions such as some pages being flashing gifs. This sort of thing was considered to be one of the best demonstrations of the potential of the internet. It ran for 1674 pages over the course of about a year.

Homestuck was the followup to that, running 8123 pages from April 13th 2009-2016 with numerous hiatuses in the latter half of that time. It featured such advancements as videos with sound, small WASD-controlled computer games on various pages, and most significantly, actual conversations between characters, semi-hidden behind clickable boxes at the bottom of some pages, allowing them to become three-dimensional and truly sympathetic. Hussie, it would soon be revealed, was heavily skilled at writing compelling and unique character voices and dialogue writing in general.

Homestuck was definitely the most complex MPSA, with a grand overarching plot being integrated into the results of the actions of the readers. The plot revolved around an in-universe game called SBURB with the power to influence reality, sort of a Jumanji with time-travel mechanics that would soon be revealed to be the centerpiece of reality itself, destroying the home planets of its players to motivate them to enter the world of the game and fulfill an unknown grand purpose, complete with millions of fully sentient NPCs. (Homestuck is, technically, an isekai.)

Homestuck has been described as "a story that's also a puzzle", and this lens has gained authorial approval; events are often told anachronistically, as a kitchen sink of high-concept ideas are explored by a man who sometimes wants to show off his semi-deconstructive version of a classic sci-fi/fantasy trope, sometimes wants to infuriate readers through anticlimaxes and misdirections, and sometimes wants to just go off on a tangent about a random movie from his childhood that somehow soon becomes integral to the plot in an absurdly esoteric fashion.

Eventually the suggestions from readers became so numerous and difficult that the suggestion boxes were closed near the end of the first year, leading to less meandering from Act 4 onwards, but the influence of the audience remained; one easy example is a character only seen from the top half initially being theorized on the official forums as using a wheelchair, a fact which would not only become Canon, but highly relevant.

The early MSPAs curated an audience through programming humor and 80s-90s film references as filtered through the styles of Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, and the Something Awful forums, but the audience for Homestuck, due to the nature of the characters, was markedly different, especially after the Trolls showed up.

You've probably seen them.

The Trolls, initially presented as some extremely odd and bothersome fellows on the internet, were soon shown to be a race of grey-skinned, orange-horned aliens. Trolls possessed multicolored blood in both organized castes and clear deviations, psychic abilities, unique typing styles, insectoid traits as opposed to hominid, near-universal bisexuality with the sole known exception being Sapphic, and a complex romantic system with its own symbols, comically vague-yet-comprehensive reproductive system, and of course, relationship dynamics.

I cannot express how perfect the Trolls were in terms of catching on. Tumblr loved these fuckers and it's not at all hard to see why.

It's also worth noting that this wasn't the only market-perfect part of Homestuck; Classpecting, the equivalent of Hogwarts Houses, featured a 144/168/288/336/384(depending on who you ask and what they count)-strong grid system of human personality traits that not only seemed eerily accurate as a personality mapper, but corresponded to what elemental powers one received in the game of SBURB.

So... yeah. Homestuck was an incredibly complex and engaging work, driven by a single incredibly talented and flawed creative voice, which was perfectly made to attract a massive, unabashedly bizarre/proudly cringe, and notably largely queer fanbase across a younger internet; you may well be aware of incidents such as cosplay failures and inappropriate recreations of Troll culture. The style of presentation, art, and character writing was instantly recognizable and relatively easy to imitate, leading to fanfiction and even fanmade adventures galore, most of the latter hosted on MSPFA.com.

The main site for Homestuck is broken now-it's recommended that new readers download the [Unofficial Homestuck Collection](https://bambosh.dev/unofficial-homestuck-collection/), and starting with Problem Sleuth to ease into the format and writing is a pretty popular choice. The ending is also considered generally quite poor in a number of ways, particularly regarding unfollowed foreshadowing and blatant abandonment of character arcs, with some fans even [making](https://friendlybatteringram.tumblr.com/tagged/altstuck) their own [works](https://mspfa.com/?s=44153&p=1) as [substitutions](http://mspfa.com/?s=12003&p=1). You can find The Homestuck Epilogues (a sequel novel) on the official site, and Homestuck^2 Beyond Canon (a sequel webcomic after the Epilogues) on its own website, but neither of these are very well liked by fans (at all). YouTube also has several dubs of the comic; by far the largest and most popular is [Voxus](https://youtube.com/@Voxus), which has unfortunately slowed to a crawl at around the 65% mark.

Content warnings for Homestuck include: blood, violence including decapitation, clowns, brainwashing/mental possession, dicks-out furry bara art in the background of like ten pages, brief black-and-white nudity, swearing, the R-slur, a joke about an acronym organically forming the F-slur, child abuse, discussed child abuse and homophobia, mocking of the disabled (as an unsympathetic action), cartoonish levels of sexism (as an unsympathetic action), statements that an antagonist is analogous to Hitler, mocking of otherkin, a minor character being a racial stereotype of Japanese people (Damara), a somewhat major character being a stereotype of Black people (Meenah), minor characters being stereotypes of disabled people (Meulin and Mituna), a controversial and prominent depiction of blindness, eye trauma, underage alcoholism, written depections of noncon facilitated by mind control (as an unsympathetic action), sexual assult (an unwanted kiss, as an unsympathetic action), jokes about pedophilia, and child grooming (textually 100% non-sexual, but sexually-coded).

Also: when I said the Trolls type weird, I wasn't kidding. Every character gets at least one color for their speech text, plus a pattern for how they type, generally worse for the Trolls, ranging from "no caps" to "British" to "drunk" to "ebonics" to "aLtErNaTiNg" to WH4T3V3R TH3 FUCK K1ND OF L33TSP34K BS T3R3Z1 1S DO1NG. So that's worth a warning.

And that's as abridged as you can get when summing up Homestuck.

#andrew hussie #Hussie #hs2 #crow strider au #homestuck #altstuck #tlcstuck #csau #cs au #ddota #Double-Death Of The Author #double death of the author #homestuck explained #Homestuck explainer #contains references to priest scribe theory #mspa #mspfa #voxus #unofficial homestuck collection #explainer #fandom explainer

[utopianparadoxist]

Are your new videos going to continue being more literary analysis focused, talking about Homestuck itself, or will they be deviating from that?

Mostly they'll be Homestuck analysis again. I have some ideas for scripts I want to write in a more long term way (mainly I finally have the grist I need to write out Part II to Rose Lalonde at the Heart of the World ; Vriska Serket as the Heart of the Cast).

But mainly I want this next shift to represent moving the Youtube platform into more of a community thing, boosting analyst voices I think are overlooked in the space. The first project that'll be going up on it is actually @arrghus' series of Aspect scripts, each one providing a focused look at a single aspect. Arrghus co-developed the Aspect Zodiac and Active/Passive readings I now use for Aspects so this only feels right to do!

Also immediately on my mind is basically everything @betweengenesisfrogs ever wrote; Ari is one of the best writers in the Homestuck thoughtsphere and I've long wanted to do this! Off the top of my head, her essay on Homestuck as a Sprite Comic is incredible and reflects some of my experience with Homestuck; I came into the internet in the first place through Newgrounds flash videos and in the long run my relationship to Homestuck has very much been a culmination of that legacy.

When I did all the writing and stuff, me and @joyfulldreams would just split the Patreon earnings evenly as she handled audio and video editing. Now it just means those Patreon earnings will be split between the writers of the essays and Joy! I have a day job so I don't need the money, so it kind of represents a win/win/win scenario that I'm very happy with. And so a little bit of money goes into the Homestuck community; yaaay!

In the meantime that frees up my personal Homestuck energy to go the only place I really want to put it; writing a Homestuck sequel as my own personal self-insert, Dirkjake-centric mass war against all the evil and pain Lord English ever inflicted.

#Homestuck Explained #Pumpkin Path #Pumpkin Track #Patreon

[sadpurpleblood]

Alright. I was gonna make this more in-depth, but i really have no idea how to condense a work longer than the bible into a coherent post so. Time for

SPB tries to explain Homestuck somewhat briefly.

(somewhat spoiler warning)

so. homestuck is a web"comic" about 4 kids (also 12 kids. plus 4 other ones. also one really fucked up one.) playing a game. that game is called SBURB. in some instances its actually SGRUB. because yes. that game causes their world to end. but its alright! you can escape into the game world. there you can breed frogs until you have a very special frog thats gonna be a new universe for people to live in. when youve done that, you won the game! this has very little to do with the actual gameplay of that game.

One player can build things at the house of the other. but that player has to kill enemies first so they have enough recourses. you build upwards towards floating gates so you can enter the game world. In the game world, every player gets their own planet! theres a scary boss monter hiding in it. also, somewhere on it is a bed where when you die on it you become a god! What kind of god depends on your personality. Or maybe your personality depends on what kind of god you are? noone knows. also the planets each have sweet little reptiles or amphibians who just live there. theyre cool. later on you can visit the planets of the other players through further gates.

you can make basically everything you want to by combining things with alchemy! actually the alchemy is more like programming. and needlessly complicated. (also people have inventories that function like different types of data storage. but that has nothing to do with SBURB. thats just normal in the world of homestuck)

you also get a little ghostly companion as compensation for the whole rest of your planet dying! A glowing orb absorbs something and it becomes your guide. most of the time, the thing the orb absorbs is someone/something dead, so you get to revive someone basically (neat!). actually two things can be put in the guide. But what you put in there before you go into the game world also affects the enemies youll be facing.

Somewhat related to the game, there are special dream moons. when you go to sleep, theres a dream you there on one of those. One moon is yellow and for :D people and the other one purple and for B) people. Your dream you can die seperately from your awake you, but you need them both you for the magical god-bed to work! Luckily, theres also another place to die on the moons where you just need the dream bodies around. Also, on the moons live chess people. The yellow one has white and the purple has black ones.

The chess people also have a big chessboard battlefield planet in the middle of the game world. They fight a war there. What you put in your guide thingies also affects the board.

Sometimes, the previous players fucked up and made your universe frog have cancer. That makes the game unbeatable for you! Luckily, theres maybe a place on one of your planets where you can basically hard reset your universe. Yay! But that means youd normally die. So if you dont wanna die, you gotta find a way around that to get into that new universe.

Okay, that was the game kinda. Now onto stuff that actually matters!

Those are the four kids it starts with. its the one on the lefts birthday and the sburb beta comes out. so they all play sburb and cause their planet to be destroyed. but uh oh

the trolls who played sburb first fucked up making the human universe so now the previous four gotta reset it! So they do that.

Those are the new four kids that happen there. theyre actually the grandma/grandpa/mother/brother of the original four. actually theyre their mother/father/mother/father. because everyone is either a weird slime clone of themself or a mixture of two clone slimes.

the new four also talk with cherubs

these guys. the red one hires a dream assassin to kill the green one. that one plays sburb alone and thats not allowed so he suffers a totally different session which i will NOT get into but he gets green leprechaun muppet henchmeb because of it and also hes the big bad actually.

Yeah turns out due to time shenanigans he kinda has always been there and *sorta* has been pulling the strings since the beginning?

doesnt matter. they manage to defeat him after they bring a new green cherub from another timeline there.

and uhh thats the end of homestuck then.

🎉...

i left out basically everything that makes homestuck. fun. and enjoyable. But i will NOT get into the characters because everyone interacts with everyone and theyre really complex.

also, fun fact, the birthday "boy" from the beginning is actually a trans girl after someone found one of the authors toblerones. this shows up nowhere in canon material but according to hussie its canon now. its probably fine to picture that fella as whichever gender.

also everyone is hella queer and or neurodivergent. even the homophobic racist characters. especially those actually.

okay ill shut up fr now i might talk about the characters at some point but now definitely not.

(@possiblyatransgirl heres the quest attempt its shitty but homestuck is equally shitty)

#ramble #big post #homestuck #homestuck explained #(kinda)

[beescake]

back in the day we had pantskat

now we have sagg sollux

#homestuck #hs2 #sollux captor #karkat vantas #solkat #sol's still blind but pls suspend disbelief for the sake of cursed pants meta #the contrasting parallels in fan reaction upon each reveal may have amused me more than it deserves #i wasnt there but. i think the general consensus is that pantskat = cute/funny and sagging sol = cool?? hot?? degen????🧍 #lore extended: karkat briefs sollux boxers ????? #vioart #2023 #listen there are very clearly deeply rooted psychological reasonings behind their preferred choice of trouser orientation alright...... #we all see it even if we cant explain it.......

[cringefail-clown]

since im so normal about it i whipped out a poster for the swap au and gave it a name - turnabout au!

in which kids and trolls switch sessions, ie. alpha kids play the sburb first, beta kids enter the void sessions, beta trolls are now dancestors to alpha trolls etc etc

featuring: how to scratch a sburb session: guide written by four (4) thirteen year olds, ray gun shenanigans, quadrant bullshittery, time travel ai pulled out of its ass, swords vs guns debate(s) and much more

also transparent version bc i can

#homestuck #dirk strider #jane crocker #jake english #roxy lalonde #alpha kids #turnabout au #will do a post explaining basics bout this au... later #anyway if u have a questions about it ask!! #if i dont talk about it ill literally spontaneously combust

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

It's the 6 month anniversary of this blog! Check out these cool bugs I found.

Part 2 - Part 3

#poorly drawn mdzs #mdzs #hollow knight #mdzs au #way too many characters to tag #'OP why?' Listen... It was either this or a Homestuck crossover. Which is still on the table btw. I've put thought into it. #Speaking of putting thought into things...I have put two full asses of effort into this. So I'm gonna talk about it in the tags. #I mapped all the major sects to hallownest clans and drew *way* more than just the characters shown here #More pertinently not shown are the Nies - Who are beetles! #The mantis clan has a lot of crossover with the Nies given the lore but I Love Mantis Wangji and you cant take him away from me. #wwx was a moth solely for his ties to Baoshen sanren (nearly forgotten sect & nearly forgotten clan) #but (HOLLOW KNIGHT SPOILERS) the ties to her radiance and the infection made for some very fun parallels #YLLZ moth 100% is puppeting husks around #JGS is a pale king expy becuase...you know....lots of children... #it also gives me a great excuse to explain wwx's soul taking mxy's body. #Still have lots and lots to say but I'm already running late! More funny - less specific to a very small population - comics to morrow! #This was more or less a style study and I learned a lot! #Thank you all for an awesome 6 months B*) You guys have pushed my way more out of my shell (pun intented) than I would- #-have ever gone had I just hidden away like I usually do. Thanks for all the support even with silly things like this <3

[disguisedcheezed]

these take place after john saves him from the game over glitches.

and he's so broken like, damn dude get well soon.

#dirkjohn #dirk strider #john egbert #homestuck #johndirk #mine #brain cant bring itself to explain any of this so take them as you will #maybe ill do it later or something #SOT3R14 4U #500plus #this is soo self indulgent i love it so munh

[potatobugz]

may i have this dance

#homestuck #hs #eriroxy #eridan ampora #roxy lalonde #potatart #actually really proud of this #guess whay beloved followers and mutuals. back on my bs yet again! #i enjoy them #i havent drawn homestuck in a little bit. this must be changed #i have given up on explaining the specific wuadrant every time i tag smth as eriroxy as the eriroxy ceo i think u understand #theyre..neat :) #i love magical girls #ough t4t eridan and roxy qpr yaaay #they would have such a fun dynamic. u know #funny wizards #I LOVE GRADIENTS AUGH THEY MAKE EVERYTHING BETTER. need to use more gradients in ny art

[caligulasarmageddon]

Part 2 of the last post btw

this is basically what happened (read tags btw)

#also id like to mention that cronus is lying about his crush #he just doesnt want to explain to a wriggler that hes tryna smash the celibate guy #homestuck #cronus ampora #eridan ampora #disgrub

[cannoliparty]

mobius double reacharound.. explained!

got the idea to write this from a friends bulletin post on spacehey, asking what mobius double reacharound was, so ty for the inspiration!!

MDR

mobius double reacharound (MDR) is in summary, the stable time loop of the infinite creation of the trolls' and kids' sessions and universes, over and over. specifically, the term is more often used to describe the trolls' session.

when the trolls start out in sgrub, they believe the goal is to be split into 2 teams and compete for who will win/finish their session first. later, its discovered the 2 teams were 1, and they must learn to work together to not die, and create a new universe.

the term "mobius" is coined from a "mobius strip", which is a sheet that at first looks like its made up of 2 sides, but running a finger over it reveals its actually just one! basically, a physical version of what the trolls went through.

the MDR virus

the mobius double reacharound virus is also another really interesting & detailed topic i want to explain, and it really ties the whole mobius theme with the 2 universes together nicely!

sollux, an expert in the programming language ~ATH (used on both alternia & earth) coded the virus for fun.

universe 1 & universe 2 are both imported. the first universe starts a method executing the second universe's method, which both inexplicably overlap. then, the 2 universes die.

basically, the 2 universes are the trolls' and the kids'. the program connects these 2 universes and causes them to forever be cursed yet the most stable time loop, creating and destroying eachother endlessly.

thats all i have, let me know if i have anything wrong or u have anything 2 add!! also taking requests for explaining stuff in homestuck (unless its lil cal/juju lore....)!!! byee (^0^)/*

#homestuck #homestuck explained #mobius double reacharound #~ATH

[derseprinceoftbd]

An explainer for Homestuck, typed up on a Google doc for Reddit, and now transplanted onto Tumblr, with the hope of crossposting it onto Reddit. Most explainers I've seen utterly fail to get the tone of the series across, thus not answering the main question I see: "what is Homestuck *and why is it like this*". Why does it evoke the reactions it does? Why are so many things considered a reference? Who is Vriska? (I can't actually explain that one in under 3000 words, it turns out.) But, here's a briefer briefer (heh) on the subject of "What the actual fuck is Homestuck":

#Homestuck, A History;

Andrew Hussie, a person (now going by any pronouns) then known for various obscure things around the net, made an interactive reader-driven comic-type-thing called Jailbreak where he would draw panels demonstrating the events of the story as dictated by other posters in the thread, putting his favoured suggestions in the narration and responding in kind. The happenings and variables were influenced by his own strange brand of humor and set of fascinations, such as rap, the Starsky and Hutch movie and the cast thereof, horses, clowns, and H!rry P!tter as a cultural presence. He would eventually compile this, along with the unfinished followup, Bard Quest, on its own website.

The third installment of the so-called MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth, was a massive step up in production value, featuring impressive art and output speed as well as evolutions such as some pages being flashing gifs. This sort of thing was considered to be one of the best demonstrations of the potential of the internet. It ran for 1674 pages over the course of about a year.

Homestuck was the followup to that, running 8123 pages from April 13th 2009-2016 with numerous hiatuses in the latter half of that time. It featured such advancements as colored panels as default, videos with sound, small WASD-controlled computer games on various pages, and most importantly, actual conversations between characters, allowing them to become three-dimensional and truly sympathetic. (Hussie, it would soon be revealed, was heavily skilled at writing compelling and unique character voices and dialogue writing in general.)

Homestuck was definitely the most complex MPSA, with a grand overarching plot being integrated into the results of the actions of the readers. The plot revolved around an in-universe game called SBURB with the power to influence reality, sort of a Jumanji with time-travel mechanics that would soon be revealed to be the centerpiece of reality itself, a program that destroys the home planets of its players to motivate them to enter the world of the game and fulfill an unknown grand purpose, complete with millions of fully sentient NPCs. 

Homestuck has been described as "a story that's also a puzzle", and this lens has gained authorial approval. This is the sort of story where the Author appears as a character to explain things to the audience, another character ends up changing the color of the site to his own scheme and narrating in his own voice, and the Author bursts through a literal fourth wall into the world of the story, hunts him down, and beats him with a broom. This is the sort of story where one specific person has killed another three times across multiple iterations of both themselves and the universe, and three of the killee are alive at the end, despite all of them being versions that were killed by the killer, who himself has one alive at the end, and both of those people have four-letter names, the first two letters of which are the same.

Eventually the suggestions from readers became so numerous and difficult that the suggestion boxes were closed near the end of the first year, but their influence carried on; one easy example is a character only seen from the top half initially being theorized on the official forums as using a wheelchair, a fact which would not only become Canon, but highly relevant.

The early MSPAs curated an audience through programming humor and 80s-90s film references as filtered through the styles of Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, and the Something Awful forums, but the audience for Homestuck, due to the nature of the characters, was markedly different, especially after the Trolls showed up.

You've probably seen them.

The Trolls, initially presented as some extremely odd and bothersome fellows on the internet, were soon shown to be a race of grey-skinned, orange-horned aliens that had undergone a SBURB Session that they claimed had been influenced by the lead human characters. Trolls possessed multicolored blood in both organized castes and clear deviations, psychic abilities, unique typing styles, insectoid traits as opposed to hominid, near-universal bisexuality with the sole known exception being Sapphic, and a complex romantic system with its own symbols, comically vague-yet-comprehensive reproductive system, and of course, relationship dynamics.

I cannot express how perfect the Trolls were in terms of catching on. Tumblr loved these fuckers and it's not at all hard to see why.

It's also worth noting that this wasn't the only market-perfect part of Homestuck; Classpecting, the equivalent of Hogwarts Houses, featured a 144/168/288/336/384(depending on who you ask and what they count, I've always thought 192)-strong grid system of human personality traits that not only seemed eerily accurate as a personality mapper, but corresponded to what elemental powers one received in the game of SBURB.

So... yeah. Homestuck was an incredibly complex and engaging work in both plot and presentation, driven by a single incredibly talented and flawed creative voice above all, and which was perfectly made to attract a massive, unabashedly bizarre/proudly cringe, and notably largely queer fanbase across a younger internet. The style of presentation, art, and character writing was instantly recognizable and relatively easy to imitate, leading to fanfiction and even fanmade adventures galore, most of the latter hosted on MSPFA.com.

The main site for Homestuck is broken now-it's recommended that new readers download the [Unofficial Homestuck Collection](https://bambosh.dev/unofficial-homestuck-collection/), and starting with Problem Sleuth to ease into the format and writing is a pretty popular choice. The ending is also considered generally quite poor in a number of ways, particularly regarding unfollowed forshadowing and blatant abandonment of character arcs, with some fans even [making](https://friendlybatteringram.tumblr.com/tagged/altstuck) their own [works](https://mspfa.com/?s=44153&p=1) as [substitutions](http://mspfa.com/?s=12003&p=1). Few speak of the epilogues. Fewer still speak of the sequel.

Content warnings for Homestuck include: blood, clowns, dicks-out furry art in the background of like ten pages, brief black-and-white nudity, swearing, the R-slur, a joke about an acronym organically forming the F-slur, child abuse, discussed child abuse and homophobia, mocking of the disabled (as an unsympathetic action), cartoonish levels of sexism (as an unsympathetic action), mocking of otherkin, minor characters being racial stereotypes of Black (Meenah) and Japanese (Damara) people, minor characters being stereotypes of disabled people (Meulin and Mituna), a controversial and prominent depiction of blindness, underage alcoholism, written depections of noncon (as an unsympathetic action), jokes about pedophilia, and child grooming (textually 100% non-sexual, but sexually-coded). 

Also: when I said the Trolls type weird, I wasn't kidding. Every character gets at least one color for their speech text, plus a pattern for how they type, generally worse for the Trolls, ranging from "no caps" to "British" to "drunk" to "ebonics" to "aLtErNaTiNg" to WH4T3V3R TH3 FUCK K1ND OF L33TSP34K BS T3R3Z1 1S DO1NG. So that's worth a warning.

And that's as abridged as you can get when summing up Homestuck.

#homestuck #andrew hussie #altstuck #tlcstuck #csau #crow strider au #Double-Death Of The Author #Homestuck explained #contains references to Priest-Scribe theory #explainer

[utopianparadoxist]

i have to say i never read the epilogues but i'm always looking forward to seeing good endings for these characters that mean a lot to me, so thank you ♡

you also mentioned going back to making youtube content, will it be a continuation of homestuck explained or something else?

It'll be a mix of more Homestuck explained content and hopefully more personal projects like the Heaven will be Mine video I've wanted to do forever.

The main difference is I won't be too involved in a lot of the Homestuck content. I'm interested in using the patreon/YouTube platform to uplift other theorists or analysts I value in the community, trying to make it something I just have some editorial helpful contribution to now and then but don't have to work on too actively myself.

This is mainly because I work full time and go to grad school and there's no possible human way I could really treat Homestuck as a job, even if it did pay enough, which it hells of does not. But it feels nice to imagine that it'll help my friends pay bills a bit better, get new ideas out there more accessibly, and all I need to do is a little networking and project management.

#Homestuck Explained #Homestuck Youtube #optimisticDuelist

[chessb0r3d]

i cracked the code.

#believing dirk is the worst guy because its what dirk thinks of himself #ignoring daves bisexuality and think hes a gay man in denial even when he explained hes bisexual #believing john 'im not a homosexual' egbert is explicitly straight while he makes out with his mcconahey and cameron posters more #than he kissed women(literally only once) #believing that rose is an edgy psyhcotic little bitch when she was neglected. she speaks elegantly to cover that shes silly and a total ner #and how did people forget that rose also writes gay wizard fanfiction. reads Wikipedia. and her beautiful artstyle as a result of neglect #(and by neglect meaning having SO MUCH TIME to draw) #jake wasnt into dirk. he also told di that he didnt like how brobot getting touchy with him during strifes #but as part of the repression 4(prospit kids). he refused on changing the bot settings #what jane said about roxy being better when she was drunk. it was fucking sarcasm. its the least insane shit you could say to a best friend #all the kids have issues and of course people get mad over a girl being sarcastic. #when KARKAT said THE SAME THING to rose when she was drunk on the meteor nobody bats an eye #trolls are just grey humans that are bugs. he doesnt get an excuse for being an alien. humans were made from KARKATS BLOOD #jade isnt all silly girl and is so FULL OF HATE towards the trolls. she called karkat a fuckass (VERY FUNNY) to do her a favor #“jade would rather have punched karkat in the fact then had a pleasent conversation with him.” #“she viewed the trolls as rude mean and cruel. and even thought that nepeta was just making fun of her. #despite it being that nepeta just wanted to roleplay and have fun." #dred.loki #I HAVE YET TO ADD MORE. THESE ARE JUST NOTES #homestuck #chss

[a-cat-in-toffee]

au where momlonde is a cowboy

#i cant explain this one #mom lalonde #roxy lalonde #homestuck #shes a cowboy now ig

[beescake]

i am in love with your sollux i think

sollux love party :]

if you’re interested heres some of my personal fondness thoughts on him.. big warning for the mega long read ahead aye

as we alr know sollux's rejection of participation somewhat mirrors dave's rejection of heroism, but even without getting cooked to completion i still find sollux's character v compelling beyond the fourth wall

as someone who doesnt get a pinch of that Protagonist Sparkle to begin with, he can openly say he wants to leave anytime…. and unlike dave, he actually Can leave the scene anytime. but he can never be truly Free from the story via permanent character death like the other trolls.

his irrelevancy is indeed relevant - he’s there so u can point him out.

while his image is intended to be a relic of past internet subculture, his role is not only about hehehaha being a Chad or a 2000s cyberforum 2²chan haxxor ragequit gamebro.

his continued existence also happens to add a Bit to the overarching themes of homestuck! a Bit that gives him longer-lasting thematic relevance compared to the trolls who could’ve had more character potential but didnt get to survive beyond the main story.

the Bit in question:

his defiance contributes to the illusion of agency (treating characters = people with autonomy). he’s “aware” of it, and that recognition is worth noting enough to forcibly keep him alive as both reward and punishment.

considering how his personality & classpect is designed its definitely a very haha thing for hussie to do LOL. he’s made to be op asf so he's resigned to doing dirty work, gradually deteriorating along the way but never truly dying. as fans have mentioned before, him openly rejecting involvement after a while of grim tolerance is like if the sim u were controlling suddenly stopped, looked up and gave u the finger while u were step six into the walkthrough for Every Possible Sim Death Animation.

but since he’s just a sim… the more he hates it, the more you keep him around. if ur sim started complaining abt your whimsical household storyline you’d definitely keep that little fuck.

but yeah i like that sollux is just idling. the significance of his presence being that one dude who's always reliably Somewhere, root core Unchanged, no individual ambitions (possibly due to fear of consequence?), and design-wise: a staple representative product of his time.

compared to dirk's character, who has aged phenomenally well into the present (themes of control + AR + artificial intelligence, clearer exploration around navigating relationships/sexuality, infinite possibilities of self-splinterhood and trait inheritance), sollux's potential is really... contained. bitter. defeatist. limiting and frustrating in the way old tech is.

the world continues moving on to shinier, brighter, more advanced automated things - minimalist and metaverse or whatever but sollux is still here 🧍‍♂️ going woohoo redblue 3d. (tho personally i imagine his vibe similar to what the kids call cassette futurism on pinterest mixed w more grimy grunge insectoid influences eheh)

conceptually-speaking,

at the foundation of it all, the rapid pace of modern development was built off the understanding of ppl like sollux in the past, who were There actively at work while the dough was still beginning to rise

thats one of the cool things abt the idea of trolls preceding humans! the idea that trolls like sollux excelled back when lots of basic shit still needed to be discovered, building structures like networks and codes from scratch, and humans will eventually inherit and reinvent that knowledge in ways that become so optimized it makes the old manual effort seem archaic, slow, and labour-intensive.

but despite information/resources/shortcuts being more accessible now, much of the new highly-anticipated stuff released on trend still end up unfinished, inefficient, or expiring quickly due to cutting corners under severe capitalistic pressures

meanwhile, some of the old stuff frm past generations of thorough, exploratory and perfectionistic development still remains working, complete, and ever so sturdy.

those things continue to exist, just outside our periphery with either:

zero purpose left for modern needs (outdated/obsolete)

or

far too important to replace or destroy, bcs of its surprisingly essential and circumstantial usefulness in one niche specific area.

which are honestly? both points that sum up sollux pree well.

dramatic ending sorry. anw are u still on the fence or are u Sick abt him like me </3

#ask #anon #sollux captor #homestuck #hs2 spoilers #2023 #vioart #hs2 sollux explaining girls and bitches to john: 🗣️🗣️🗣️ #mr foods‚ setting up the visuals: LMAO ok pause. cool story bro theyre all gone its just u n ur sandwich bro. #now that i think abt it sol's kind of a toaster? awkwardly takes up countertop space #lacks the versatility and sociability of an air fryer/pressure cooker. unwashed and littered w crumbs! #but sometimes the clear‚ frank simplicity of the toaster is a temporary lifesaver for ppl who struggle w low appetite / decision fatigue #or ppl who just have a habit of eating toast for breakfast LOL #and eh ¯\ _(ツ)_/¯ even if u dont feel like toasting today thats ok he's still gonna be sitting there 👍👍 #a funnyman..... i curse him in my pan but root for him in my biscuit 🫶