#(and no it's not Homestuck I would never be so crass)

[bonebabbles]

re: the tags on the post you just reblogged; would genuinely Love to hear your take on the themes of homestuck. because so many of its themes are at odds with each other and the reader that it truly does become an ouroboros by the end. and that’s fascinating and heartbreaking at the same time

I really can't phrase it better than "eats itself alive by the end," honestly. Once the Beta Kids scratch their session, you can feel how tired and frustrated the author is. It's like he starts hating his own work and how massively it blew up, when he never planned for it to be a project that lasted so long.

And thus it feels like he starts turning on his work's own themes.

Sburb (the game) was abusive and traumatic, but seemed to be trying to make the kids ""grow"" by some unknown philosophy. Figuring out what Sburb (or its creators) were trying to accomplish was a theme.

Only for the author to get frustrated at the idea of there BEING such a motive, seeming to suddenly pivot to Sburb just being a universe-generating mechanism

The theme about motives, being "pawns" in a greater game and uncovering the mystery, thinking critically about authority figures including the GAME ITSELF is unceremoniously discarded for a "Nothing matters actually" conclusion

Another theme was change and growing up, dealing with your mistakes as you make them. How even in a world with time travel, trying to use metaphysical shennanigans to avoid your fuckups just backfires. Eventually you have to face the music, and you'll be better off for it.

But then the author becomes brutishly cynical. The main casts' worst traits eat them alive on the trip to the new session, we learn the Beta trolls ruined their own playthrough and now painfully slog through their afterlives, the Alpha kids are aimless and trapped in a doomed session.

The theme about growth and facing your own mistakes becomes about stagnation and inevitability.

But honestly I think the most telling change in the author's mindset comes from looking at the Alpha Trolls vs the Beta Trolls.

Like, the way that the Alpha Trolls ALL got a full personality, several interactions with the main cast, and through fan input started evolving into characters that had little traits of the fandom at the time

Homestuck was always a story with a crass tone (and it's kind of incredible how quickly the lingo changed, making early HS look a lot edgier in hindsight than it was at the time) but it felt like there was a lot of love for how these characters had kinda been forged together.

Then you get to the Beta Trolls in a dream bubble, basically all tossed into a high-production walkaround minigame. Several of them just direct, joyless jabs at the audience, less of them relevant.

For me it's really the turning point on the themes, the later acts have always felt super dissonant from the early acts because of that

So in my mind I see it as two big "parts" and examine them together as what I feel was a weak synthesis.

[zawazawanightmares]

Fanfic Writer Questions

Was tagged by @jasminethetransvampire so I'll do this because I'm always passive-aggressively trying to get people to ask me about my fics on other sites.

Oh and what she said goes double for @kikicandoit and @vmunroe and @cubistemoji: you three can participate or not, I don't want to pressure you.

How many works do you have on AO3?

841, not counting individual chapters.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

1,046,451

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Anything...though, according to my dashboard, I specialize in Homestuck, Chainsaw Man, Marvel Comics, Attack On Titan and Bleach. The most recent one I did outside of those categories was for an anime called Dai-Guard so...there you go.

4. What are your top 5 fics by Kudos?

Be patient with me, I don't know how to hyperlink:

For a while, the one-shot I was most proud of. With all its anachronisms and unapologetic crassness, I love this fic for being the first Kobeni/Quanxi fic I ever wrote and for fitting Chainsaw Man's aesthetic the most. I still maintain that this ship is the most likely to work in canon and their dynamic would work exactly like I showed it here. If there's one disappointment I have, it's that this isn't my most famous fic.

My longest chapter fic, the longest thing I actually wrote (counting my own goddamn novel) and probably the longest labor of love in the entire catalogue...and it's about a ship between a dead auxillary character and a supporting character. There goes my moral high ground to Ships That Pass In The Night...I worked on this fic every day, missing one for my birthday, and used a site called Mythica as a template for what to put in there. The concept is stupid, the plot is uneven, it doesn't really conclude so much as stop...and I love it more than anything. If I'm remembered for any piece of work, I want to be this. It's all my love for these interpretations of the characters put into one story. I will never regret uploading this.

Number 3 in the rankings. She's not my favorite but I'll give her this: she's earned it. Probably one of the darkest things I've written (counting Mamba Ugly) and one of my meaner depictions of Makima but either standalone or in my bizarro Chainsaw Man canon, this story shows exactly why everyone should fear the Control Devil. Talking myself up is weird; just read the fic if you haven't and tell me if you're creeped out or not.

...You know, I'm the one who wrote a mid M/M pairing for the yucks one day. I got what I deserved.

I don't really hate this fic so much I despise how it's my second most popular one. I pour sweat and tears into hundreds of F/F fics and this takes off? Really? Not Duty To The Party? I got literal death threats over that one!

Before anyone feels too sorry for me, my line of logic for this one was: "Pieck's pretty hot. It's a shame that there's not more yuri of her...how about I ship her with every named female character in the series?"

Yeah, all of them. The little girls crush on her or grow up to pursue her and everybody else...the tone shifts so I don't want to make anyone vomit but it gets pretty intense. This is kind of me at my worst, even compared to the above examples, so proceed with caution. I'm pretty sure this fic is only doing well because of all of the tags. It's definitely not the quality.

5. Do you respond to comments?

Constantly. Unless it's just "nice" or "emojis", I'll take the time to answer questions, say thank you or even just participate in good-natured dunking on me. I like questions about my headcanons and clarifying what happened in fics because I like to leave things ambiguous. If you're not just being an ass and or trying to get people riled up, leave me a note and I'll get back to you!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

If not Bonus With No Pay Raise, it's probably Starved. The meanest I got to Kobeni and the most twisted I wrote Fami. Par for the course in how I write Makima though...pretty sure I killed Kobeni at the end but at that point, it was a mercy.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

The last part of Kobeni Has A Good Life, a collection of my Chainsaw Man Divergence series, has the one below called:

This gives me the fuzzies whenever I read it because I gay and it's a happy ending for Kobeni. Whatever happens next for her in this universe, I want to make sure she's content while doing it. And if you don't want to comb through THE ENDLESS DESERT that is KTQ, you're perfectly justified in stopping here.

8. Do you hate on fics?

I don't like the tags in a fic, I don't read it. Simple. I don't leave angry comments and I don't go and hate-read for the sake of it. When I see a fic that has a pairing or a situation that ticks me off, I just get inspired to write several more with my own tastes. That's my version of pettiness.

9. Do write smut? If so, what kind?

Yeah.

I like intense stuff or, sparring that, weird stuff. Stuff that's fun to write and imagine, anything that gets me motor running or is entertaining to show through text. Smut is much easier for me to write so I write a lot of it, although I kind of want to more G rated stuff.

10. Do you write crossovers? If so, what's the craziest one you've written?

Yeah.

Probably not the wildest crossover I wrote but this should fill you in on the fact that 1.) if I write a crossover, I probably put Homestuck in it and 2.) I like putting them in anime and Marvel. Speaking of:

Did you guys know there's a grown up version of Molly Hayes?

This is the version I put with Homestuck characters in this non-continuity series. It's weird! Super weird!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don't think I have...but I get Spanish and Chinese comments on my fics sometimes so...maybe?

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nah but if I know the person, I'd be happy to.

14. What's your all-time-favorite ship?

For Chainsaw Man, I love my stupid made-up crack ship of Kobeni Higashiyama/Quanxi/Michiko Tendo. I'm also very partial to Powerbeni and AsaYuko. For Homestuck, I'm a basic Rosemary bitch who also loves the crossover ship (that only I am powerful enough to be privy to) of Feferi Peixes/Molly Hayes. I enjoy writing Mikasa/Historia more than I should and for Bleach...Sui-Feng/Happiness (re: any woman in the Soul Society...and Kanaya (see Crossover above...or just search for the fic. It's not hard to find.))

15. What's a WIP that you want to finish but probably never will?

Either the above mentioned Spice Rack or this one story about Terezi Pyrope and Molly Hayes traveling around and going on martial arts adventures. I had fun writing it but it wasn't getting attention and there was other stuff I wanted to do so I've just left it behind.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, being "normal" about queers and portraying happy couples. I like F/F and M/M and while I get weird with it, I also want to show that weird can be happy. KTQ is mainly written for that purpose alone.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I rely on beige prose and can be too clinical when I'm trying to get through a scene. My smut scenes, ironically, tend to go by quickly because I rush through the actions to focus on the feelings. I honestly just like to show the characters hanging out through sex instead of putting it to paper, if that makes sense.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in a fic?

I use Google Translate and try to keep it simple. I dread the day someone in the comments tell me that I wrote complete gibberish...it's coming soon, I can feel it.

19. First Fandom you wrote for?

No More Heroes!

I wrote a couple of fics for No More Heroes, actually. It was my Chainsaw Man back in the day. I still love it now, especially for its music.

20. Favorite Fic you've ever written?

Three way tie between Alphabet, Closet Space and:

My first Homestuck/Runaways crossover, written when I was saner. It has typos, it's cringy, it's rushed at the end and YOU WILL LOVE IT OR I'LL DESTROY YOU.

[the-golden-ghost]

The Signs as Seemingly Mundane Things that Have a Presence™

Aries: Laughing with friends around a campfire. The smell of woodsmoke, fresh-baked bread, and your grandmother’s favorite perfume. Coming home after a long journey. The kind, knowing eyes of your elderly neighbor. Autumn leaves crackling in the breeze. 

Taurus: Marble arches and granite pillars. The crunch of steady footsteps on gravel. Ancient causeways with many stories to tell. Gloves weathered from long use. Statues with crumbling faces and worn limbs. A noble old bull stamping his foot as you get too close to his herd; letting you know he is not malicious, but will defend them. 

Gemini: A pair of unusual birds that seem to watch you as you go by. The sound of the wind whistling through the trees on a dark and rainy night. Smiles passed between two students sitting in the back of a classroom. A freak electrical storm that knocks out the power in three cities. The sound of muffled voices and laughter from another room. A book with the dedication scribbled out in black pen.

Cancer: Mysterious lights flickering across the marsh. The scuttling and crawling of unseen creatures of the mud. Sunken treasure. An abandoned house with a single light on. A child crying over a lost pet. The place where the river holds hands with the sea. The stillness of lonely prayers whispered in the dark of night when no one seems to be listening. 

Leo: Fireworks. The warmest day of summer. Foggy mornings turning into blazing afternoons. Golden jewelry. The roar of spectators at a sporting event. The blinding of spotlights on opening night. Being lifted into the air and spun around by someone you love and trust. The smell of cinnamon and cloves. Driving a car with the windows down under a sky so bright and clear you could almost reach up and touch it. 

Virgo: Kittens with surprisingly sharp teeth. Newborn trees with their bark just starting to harden. Crawling ivy. Letters written in the dirt and washed away during the next rainstorm. Beaded anklets. Old, well-loved books covered with notes. The quest for truth. The feeling of earth under your feet as you run barefoot through the woods, not caring who or what is watching.

Libra: The quiet spots between words. A near-death experience. The space between sleep and waking when everything feels unreal. The color that plays on the back of your eyelids when you squeeze them tightly shut and look up at the sky. A gut instinct. The unknown voice that always whispers at the back of your mind. 

Scorpio: Bandaged hands. The smell of fresh-cut grass. A spiderweb glistening with morning dew. The knowledge that there is always some small living creature hiding nearby. The humility and strength that comes from standing in a large crowd, and being part of many, but still only one. Old scars that have healed into stories. A good night’s sleep. 

Sagittarius: Clenched fists. A retired war-horse. A dormant volcano. The sting of driving hail against your skin as you walk home after a hard day’s work. Sitting out at night on a stone still warm from the heat of day. Tears of anger. Standing among strangers, united for a common goal. 

Capricorn: A two-headed snake. And old urban legend that just might be true. The feeling of seeing a public space, usually full of people, empty and abandoned. Driving down a dark country road at night and seeing a deer with its eyes glowing in the dark. Hearing a noise like laughter coming from the woods and realizing it wasn’t laughter after all. The parts of yourself that you keep hidden from others. 

Aquarius: Seeing the stars on a cold winter night. Well-kept promises. Dipping your feet into a quiet stream and feeling the water tickling your feet. The solemn glow of moonlight on a frozen pond. An owl hooting nearby, just out of sight. The safety of anonymity. Wishing on a star for good luck and expecting none. 

Pisces: The smell of the ocean. Sea shanties. Waves so strong that they knock you off your feet. Feeling the wind in your hair as you stand on the bow of a boat. The ringing of bells that chime the hour. The love of the night sky. The feeling of anticipation just before a holiday arrives. Singing along with the radio as you drive to some new and exciting adventure. 

[crusty]

god i just went through all through my dammek tag/ art... such good times back then but also i felt like i should say something!!

2017-2018 was a very confusing and difficult time for me, not having the adequate tools to deal with my trauma even now, it took so long for me to catch up with growing up like the rest of my peers. I think it showed in my art, and it showed in how i talked to others and interacted with the world around me.

i realized this before, but seeing some of my art and posts from years ago just really solidified to me the idea that... some things i drew back then were really not the greatest! Not talking about memes, I’ve always been a very blunt/crass artist. But im talking mostly about the times i was into hiveswap. I dont want to be dismissive to the people who brought up legitimate concerns, some even going to the extent to make an unsourced callout accusing me of pedophilia because of some of my art content.

fictional characters in media have always been something my brain loves to latch on to, and especially during 2017/2018 i really didnt have any boundries with the shit i wanted to draw with certain characters, regardless of their ages or not. ive never been attracted to kids and i certainly am not now or ever will be LMAO but it was really hard for me to make the distinction with these fictional characters when i would make art of xefros and dammek. i latched on REAL hard to them and wanted to make art of them that was relatable to me!

even now i still adore them, but i understand more that its up to me as an adult to keep those boundaries in place (with ANYTHING i draw really). keeping in mind that , yes they are fictional characters, and it really isnt a big deal in the grand scheme of things that i like them so much, but theres a point where it stops becoming “im attracted to these characters so much i wanna draw them all the time bc i relate to them and their stories/i love their designs” and turns into “im sexually and romantically attracted to these characters specifically BECAUSE theyre underage”

i have gone back and deleted shit that weirded me out from 2017/2018 but. i really just wanted to say something about it. i do sincerely apologize if i ever came across as creepy with my interest in these characters, but it was never meant to be so. my fucked up sense of humor is usually the best with adult characters and adult stories, and most of it was really supposed to be ironic. the irony of that however, is that because of how ironic i was shooting for with my art, most people didnt quite get it! which in turn makes it a bad joke and a failure on my part.

I didnt want to get into any of the actual reasons why i was the way i was a few years ago, because i never latched onto underage characters so hard before this??? but i think part of it had to do with my own personal trauma i was working through and just . homestucks weird thing about writing their kids like adults lmao. big circle heads and small bodies just always confused me, especially when theyd draw adult characters like that. at 17/18/19 i really did not feel like a 17/18/19 year old due to how .... fucked up i was mentally. I dont think I officially matured mentally until I turned 21. Thats mostly because of the deep psychological trauma i dealt with at very early ages and for most of my childhood, but thats a story for another time. to anyone whos actually reading this, thanks? and thats about it.

[eternaldipshit]

alright i’m fuckin PISSED

i just made this blog yesterday to maybe possibly post a homestuck fic i’m working on but now i’m going to use it to scream into the utter fucking gaping void of the homestuck fandom bc none of my friends are actively in it right now and god dammit i am UPSET

fact: i got a lotta feelings for the striders. they are my shit. i adore them. ok? so that’s an established fact now ok good cool moving on 

fact: when game over was released, i quit the homestuck fandom. that shit broke me. even if it wasn’t the “alpha” timeline or w/e it still fucking happened and it upset my delicate fucking sensibilities and hearing carne vale STILL triggers some sort of visceral feeling of panic and straight-up fuckin MISERY in me and i wish i was fucking kidding but i just put it on now to test it and ugh ugh gughgsh

fact: i started rereading homestuck this month from the beginning and reigniting my love for it. game over still fucked me up, but i powered through it and 5 years fuckin late i finished a harrowing emotional rollercoaster that i’d started like 7 years ago and was just... DEEPLY fucking unsatisfied with the ending which is why i started writing aforementioned fic in the first place but that is not relevant rn this is a whole different rant ok

fact: i wrote like 20k words for this fic in the span of like 3 days it was sick as fuck

fact: the epilogues are dumb as fuck and i despise them 

and that’s the meat of it really. fuck the epilogues. 

i haven’t finished them yet, but i just. ugh. UGH. words escape me. partially bc im a shit wordsmith but also bc *SPOILERS* i just got to dirk’s funeral scene and just fuckin. gave the fuck up. 

i never liked the original homestuck ending to begin with, but i never expected that the epilogues would be so fucking... bleak. it’s like reading a shitty fanfic except all the fun is sucked out of it bc technically all the shit you’re reading is canon and that makes it all seem drab and unfunny and just kinda depressing 

especially in the i guess ‘doomed’ timeline where dirk kills himself 

idk if it hit me hard bc of the flippant treatment of suicide or if it’s just bc i love dirk so much as a character but it just hurt in so many different fucking ways

it doesn’t help that the epilogues paint dirk as a straight up fucking sociopath

and i can see why that would make sense, really. his expanding godhood powers played into his pre-existing sociopathic tendencies in the worst way possible but

it’s just

not what i want to imagine from a fucking epilogue

call me soft and an idealist but i like my happy endings god dammit and fuck FUCK FUCK the epilogues. i want to try to finish them but it’s just. fucking difficult. 

i think the suicide was the last straw for me and now that i think about it it’s definitely bc of my own suicidal ideation and this is exactly why i avoided that stupid fucking show about the girl killing herself no matter how many times it was recommended to me bc i consume media to distract myself from my problems not have them blared in my face in neon lights 

i also fucking hate how dirk’s character morphed from a manipulative as hell genius who constantly struggled with his own morality to this kind of puppeteer who is flagrantly detached from his peers and seems to hold no real attachment to any of them it’s just

it’s shitty

and i was so excited for it bc i thought it would grant me more insight into dirk’s and dave’s characters, considering the fic i’m writing is strider-centric and it just completely took the wind out of my sails instead bc this is not what i pictured for dirk at all 

i mean i’m not a fucking idiot. i know he’s an asshole and an ‘ends justify the means’ guy and definitely manipulative and controlling but this is also the guy that cut off his own head to save all of his friends and tried his best to comfort dave when he was having a breakdown despite his own supposed lack of empathy

and i want so badly to continue my fic like i never read this but i can’t ignore it bc it’s fucking CANON. and i know my biffle would be like ‘fuck canon’ but i can’t fuck canon ok it’s the reason these characters exist in the first place. i might rewrite the whole ending but i wanted to stay as true to canon characterization as poss and now i just. can’t. 

the real kicker is that i was willing to look past the reveal that he was the narrator the whole time, controlling the lives of all the characters even if it literally gave me goosebumps bc it put that whole ‘jake keeps thinking about dirk while jane kisses him’ thing into a new disturbingly unromantic light but i ignored that too. i switched to the other path for a bit and i knew from the minute it switched to the scene where dirk’s hands are shaking and he calls jane i KNEW he would kill himself but i convinced myself otherwise and surprise surprise got my ass handed to me on a silver platter for it

but i cannot i CANNOT believe he would do that to dave. i flat-out refuse. i flat-out fucking refuse to believe that dirk could be so cruel as to leave them all behind in such a crass fashion and how DARE he do that to dave how fucking dare he doomed timeline or not that dude’s been through enough shit like come the fuck ON and decapitating himself??? that’s not poetic fucking justice that is just straight up cruel af and i know these are all fictional chars and this whole scenario is fictional but it is SO UPSETTING TO ME bc that is the EXACT thing you think about before a suicide attempt you think about what it would do to your loved ones and i absolutely irrefutably fucking REJECT the idea that dirk is so far-gone in his godhood puppet game that it wouldn’t even cross his fucking mind and it is just so much worse to me that dave is the one who found the body and i know dirk isn’t a ‘good’ guy but ugh UGH it’s like they just threw out his whole fucking conversation with dave where it’s obvious that he tries to be a better person even tho he knows he’s an asshole and it’s just.

fucking upsetting. 

i hate hate hate what they’ve done to dirk’s character in this it’s like they took all the struggle and all the growth from the adventure and all the nuances and just boiled it down to make a caricature of the person he used to be, emphasizing the negatives so that the epilogues could have this weird fucking quasi-villain dictating everyone’s lives 

why do these epilogues even exist

no one is going to read this but i am just so full of righteous indignation that i needed to get it off my chest. i was so hyped to be back into homestuck again, so excited to see what more it had to offer and this just. ruined all that joy for me. and now i’m afraid i’m just going to fall right back out of it again. 

what the fuck is the opposite of a redemption arc bc that is exactly what the fuck happened here. 

anyway tl;dr i love returning to a fandom i haven’t touched in 5 years and finding out one of my fav chars just got narratively butchered yeah i’m fine it’s cool 

[galaxa-13]

Person here who's barely been on tumblr for a year, asking what the fuck home stuck is and what it did and why it invokes a strange alien fear in me even though I don't know what it is

‘Hoooooooo boy am I glad you asked me. Not because I think I’ll give the best answer, but because I just love talking about Homestuck and how it applies to the internet (and fandom) at large.

O.K., so, first off the simplest explanation of Homestuck is:Homestuck is a webcomic found at mspainadventures.com made by one Andrew Hussie.

Simplest explanation of what it did:Garner a huge fanbase and changed how a lot of people viewed/interacted with fandom.

Simplest explanation of why you’re filled with fear:The fandom has been asleep for a long while, you may have heard whispers of the infamous “homestucks”, suddenly they are everywhere again and those who were around during it’s heyday are worried of things to come (including those that were a part of it).

Now I’m just going to ramble at length. First I’m going to go on about the fandom and then I’ll move on to describing the comic itself. LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HOMESTUCK.

So as I mentioned earlier the fandom, known as homestucks, is quite infamous. Due to it’s sheer size there were a lot of issues. Some of it being that since there were just so many of us it was hard to go anywhere without running into one. This wasn’t just on the internet either, conventions became so packed with Homestuck cosplayers that convention rules literally changed because of them. Some convention locations no longer allow body paint because too many Homestuck cosplayers didn’t properly (or straight out didn’t) seal their paint and left smudges all over the venue (and people). Photo shoots also became more structured. Before conventions didn’t really get involved with them, people attending set them up and ran them themselves, but there were just too many people dressed as Homestuck characters. They blocked pathways, crowded areas, convention staff needed to start regulating photo shoots even if they were still ran by attendees themselves.

With the size there was also the problem of negative behavior being in more abundance. It’s not that people who like Homestuck are more likely to make bad decisions or be nasty people, there were just more people in general so more of a sample size of events to take note of. Like the afore mentioned body paint. There was also buckets and bike horns. The buckets were a problem because some thought it would be funny to just yell the word or repeat it over and over, which was quite annoying. There was also an incident of people spitting into a bucket and then giving said bucket to Hussie. The horns were noisy, as you can imagine.

There was a lot of porn drawn of Homestuck characters (often known as “homesmut”). Some people are turned off by this since most of the characters in the comic are underage. The argument about porn being drawn of these character is a discussion I’d rather not be having since it is something argued about at quite a length and has often led to really nasty things like doxxing and smear campaigns. The age of the characters wasn’t the only thing people were weirded out by. Tentacles also became a very popular thing within the homesmut community. Gore porn was also pretty common (compared to other fandoms, in my experience), though it wasn’t nearly as big as the “tentabulge”.

Homestucks were ravenously creating fandom content back at its peak. AUs of all kinds were created, just think of a word and add “stuck” on the end and there’s probably a fic for that. Petstuck, Regancystuck, Humanstuck (lots of characters in the comic aren’t human), Zeldastuck, StarTrekStuck, you name it. Homestuck was the AU community. Then there was the cosplay. First, many of the characters had simple designs so it was ridiculously easy to cosplay them, then there was the hoards of characters from which to choose, then there were all the AU variants, and then there were the upd8 cosplays.

Whenever a new page or set of pages was added to the site it was known as an upd8 (or for a really injoke, a papaya) and if a new character or outfit was revealed in such an update then it was a mad race to see who could be the one to cosplay it first. Sometimes you’d find pictures of people in completed cosplays (including styled wigs) within the hour. This even happened at conventions.

Homestucks were everywhere, and they were loud. Many people began to resent them simply for being a thing. Even people who liked the webcomic itself could be cited as fearing/hating the Homestuck fanbase. It became accepted that no one likes homestucks. Then something happened. Homestuck embraced how they were hated. Now I’m not saying they were trying to stick it to the man or anything, homestucks were able to look at all the things they were hated for and go, “yeah, that’s all pretty trash, but I’m still having fun”. It became a thing where you’d see a post bashing Homestuck or the community and you wouldn’t be able to tell if it was a homestuck who wrote it themself or not. “Homestuck trash” is a popular phrase. We’re trash and we’re proud of it. No one hates Homestuck more than homestucks. No one hates homestucks more than homestucks. Yet we’re still one big family.

A couple of years ago 4chan ran a campaign. They were going to inavde tumblr and make all the tumblrites cry and run to their SJW princess mommies. They flooded tags of popular fandoms with horrific images and bashing of their fandoms. People were scared to leave their dashes. Then, 4chan tried to go after the homestucks.

They bashed the comic. They found the most disgusting porn and death art of the characters. Homestucks took one look at that and shrugged. “Yeah, seems about right.” 4chan lost its mind. Why couldn’t they bother this fandom? Nothing they did seemed to work. Other fandoms began to rally behind Homestuck. Maybe they had bashed it themselves before, or they had simply stayed away from it, but now homestucks were the heroes, the wall against this cruelty. Homestucks laughed at 4chan’s pitiful attempts. Eventually 4chan had to throw in the towel, their troll campaign had failed, they just couldn’t outmatch the homestucks.

Along with the horror stories about the fandom in general there was now this. Homestuck couldn’t be taken down by 4chan. The most vile trolls on the internet had no power over them. That in itself was a terrifying thing.

Yet homestucks began to be regarded highly. Partly it was from this event where they were able to stand up to the bullies, partly because the fandom had matured over the years. Many people had grown up. They weren’t the immature children they once were. They set up charity funds, such as the Can Town Project, an organization that donates canned foods to the hungry.

Of course we can’t talk about Homestuck without talking about its creator, Andrew Hussie. Hussie is a strange man, to say the least. He’s been doing webcomics and other online endeavors for years before even starting Homestuck. Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff (SBAHJ), a comic written and drawn to be as terrible as possible while making fun of the “two guys on a couch play video games” style of comic; Problem Sleuth, a noir detective comic full of whacky shenanigans and done like text-based adventure games of old; Whistles: The Starlight Calliope, an unfinished comic about a clown in a dark circus (I really couldn’t begin to properly describe this story without talking about it by itself, but this is about Homestuck and already will be way too long); fancy Santa reviews, sadly I have been unable to find a copy of such reviews; Wizardology graffiti, he simply defaced a copy of a Wizardology book to hilarious effect as a gift to his friend; Olive Garden money, humorous blog posts about how he set out to spend $150 at Olive Garden; I could go on with his zany creations and adventures, but I won’t.

Hussie is a troll. He does things just to mess with people. He has a dark sense of humor and he isn’t above crass humor either. All that and he can weave fantastic tales you could never dream of. He is fairly private and is known to do odd things, which has led the fandom to calling him a real life cryptid. The Hussie experience isn’t really something that can be properly explained, so I’ll just leave you with this gif of the man himself.

Hiveswap is to be a video game tie-in to Homestuck. It was put up on Kickstarter known only as the Homestuck Adventure Game. 700k was asked for. It raised nearly 2.5 million. Hiveswap is currently why the fandom’s seen a resurgence. It’s being released episodically and the first episode was released September 14, 2017 and the second episode is to release Spring, 2018. In the meantime the studio has been releasing previews and extra bits of lore, which has been making the fandom go wild.

*DEEP BREATH*

Homestuck, at its simplest, is about a group of teens playing a video game. It follows the format of the other previous webcomics hosted on mspaintadventures (all written and drawn by Hussie, of course) of looking like it was drawn on MS Paint and acting like a text-based adventure game. Readers would submit actions and Hussie would draw the results, continuing the story. Over time this method proved unwieldy and Hussie did away with the command box, but the comic still acted like it was in such a format. Even without direct reader input Hussie still managed to incorporate a lot of input from the fans. Injokes mostly, but sometimes things fans had done would come back as major plot points.

In the beginning the art style was simple, using sprites and limited colors. One of the more well known things about Homestuck is its characters’ lack of arms in this style. As the comic progresses different art styles are used as well as different artists. Many people have bashed the comic for its simple visuals, but even aside from some of the more complicated visuals used later even the “simple” ones can be breath taking. Here’s some examples of the art.

Yes, these are all images from the same comic. As you can see gifs are used quite a lot in this comic. There are also sound pages, animations, and interactive games. Homestuck uses the fact that it’s on the internet to the fullest degree. It has inspired many other webcomics to experiment in similar manners.

Homestuck goes beyond that, however. Homestuck would not exist without the internet. In a way, Homestuck is about the internet. All the characters communicate over the internet to each other for a majority of the story. Internet subgroups and cultures are referenced, satirized, and incorporated. Real life websites are used and you can find characters’ personal accounts yourself in the real world such a one character’s DeviantArt account.

O.K., back to the story itself. I said it was about some teens playing a game, but obviously it’s more complicated than that. First off the game destroys Earth and sends our first four protagonists (yes, you heard that right, the first four, Homestuck has a lot of characters and a lot of them are protagonists) into a realm known as The Medium which is where the game itself (known as SBURB) will be played.

Part of the draw of Homestuck is SBURB itself. We know a lot of the mechanics involved in the game and if it weren’t for the destruction of our planet loads of people would pay good money to be able to play it. Unfortunately, for some, the story doesn’t really focus on the game, despite spending quite a lot of time in the confines of it. If you’ve ever heard of god tiers, classpects (Class and Aspects), Propsit, or Derse these are all SBURB things that the fandom loves to pour over. This stuff is like Hogwarts houses, you get sorted into them.

Throughout the story you get introduced to a new band of characters that troll our original four. Turns out these guys are all aliens who had previously played the game (their version known as SGRUB). Their race are literally called Trolls and they are another commonly known thing about Homestuck. These are the grey-skinned, black-haired, horned people. Their race has a rainbow of different blood colors they can be born with, which is another thing for readers to sort themselves into (are you a greenblood or an orangeblood?). They also have quite a fascinating romance system known as the quadrants (guess how many different types of love they have) and a society based on violence and no adults on homeworld. If SBURB doesn’t scratch your lore itch then Alternia and the trolls will probably do it for you.

The comic also has time travel and alternate universes. No, not AUs like what fandoms make, actual alternate universes where there are multiples of a single character that led different lives. Homestuck coined the phrase “double mobious reach around” to explain some of its convoluted nature. There are literal graphs and spreadsheets people have made to help keep themselves on track with what is going on in the story.

I could go on to explain the actual plot of Homestuck in more detail buuuuut this is already a grotesquely long answer to your message aaaand I don’t really want to spoil it too much if there’s even a chance you feel like giving it a read for yourself (other than what I’ve already told you and what you will see on the internet in general). Instead I’ll mention one event that happened in comic that affected the real life internet.

There is one flash animation in the comic known as Cascade. The comic had been building up to it for a while and I would say it’s one of the first climaxes of the story (yes, there’s more than one in my opinion). Hussie took a break to work on creating it. I forgot to mention earlier that Hussie updated the comic on a daily basis for years, often multiple times in a day. The insane update schedule was part of the reason the fanbase grew so immense. With this break the fanbase became tense and ravenous.

Cascade dropped and people flooded the site. The flash refused to load because so many people were trying to access it at once. Hussie put the flash on Newgrounds as well, because he knew his website wouldn’t be able to handle the traffic. We crashed Newgrounds. Homestucks. Crashed. Newgrounds. The website designed to host flashes and had loads of people on it daily was crashed by one fandom just to see one flash. It didn’t stop there, though. Livestream crashed as people who were able to get access to the flash streamed it so others who couldn’t get mspa or newgrounds to load could watch it. Megaupload crashed as people ripped the file and tried to share it so others could watch it on their computers without a website. It’s known as the day Homestuck broke the internet. It was absolute chaos. There’s a great image that summarizes this chaos with a collage of #notes that were used at the time and ending with a tweet that Hussie had issued at the time which was “well that didn’t work”. I would link it, but I can’t for the life of me find it right now.

There’s so much more I could talk about, all the different characters, the various hiatuses, shipping, all the wonderful people I’ve been able to meet thanks to Homestuck, my love for this comic and the community surrounding it. If you’ve actually made it all the way through my word vomit then I commend you. Feel free to ask me about anything Homestuck related. As you can see, I do so love to talk about it. Thank you sincerely for asking me about it and giving me a chance to write this huge wall of text.

OH GOD I DIDN’T EVEN TALK ABOUT LYRICSTUCKS AND FANDOMSTUCK.

I’M POSTING THIS NOW BEFORE I THINK OF ANY OTHER THINGS I DIDN’T MENTION BECAUSE BY GOD I’M SURE THERE’S LOADS.

[landofquartzandmelody]

ok i finished hiveswap act 1 lmao. i actually liked most of it a lot i think? and there’s a lot to talk about and there’s also a few things which were like.. Incredibly annoying. my overall impression was good tho! i’m going to dump my thoughts under a readmore though so no one accidentally gets spoiled

obvious warning for that !!

the setting is actually incredibly detailed and i occupied myself for a long time clicking on everything in the background? the art was really pretty and the actual gameplay itself was really smooth and not glitchy at all.

the video cutscenes didn’t play for me at all lmao. I had a few tabs of text-only websites open, and join.me, and that was it. i couldn’t easily lower the settings to make it run smoother either? which was really annoying, and i don’t see why the cutscenes were sooo much harder for my computer to get through than the actual gameplay.

the only other glitch i had was a framing glitch in jude’s treehouse i think

i liked most of the puzzles a lot and it all seemed very organic and fun. using items on other items was pretty cool, and i only got stuck like once or twice.

i really did not like the snake game mainly because i had to swap to using my keyboard for that and that alone lmao.

the monster fights were REALLY fun, i thought. they had a really classic homestuck feel.

it was kind of hard to walk up and down the stairs, actually. there wasn’t enough room to click where you needed to go and that was a bit irritating

i really really really loved the harleyclaire mansion!! everything about the first part of the game was REALLY good!!!

there’s so much to get into with jake and joey and jude and anna claire that it’s nuts tbh. but i really liked everything about that. imo it dealt with parental issues in a lot more depth than hs ever did, and surprisingly nuanced parental issues is definitely an hs thing. but joey’s problems with jake are a lot more fleshed out and realistic.

definitely one of the themes is that the adults in joey’s life have never been there for her. her mom isn’t there because she’s dead, roxy isn’t ‘there’ because she’s irresponsible and is already developing drinking problems, and jake isn’t there because he’s always been somewhere else. so there’s something interesting when xefros talks about parents there

i think i was expecting jake to be a decent father so i was definitely really sad when it became obvious that he was kind of.. not? and it’s evident that he’s really screwed joey up, but i think that it’s also very in line with how canon portrays jake. like his biggest flaw was being unwilling to put in the emotional work and commitment that his friends needed.

sometimes he was definitely scared of those, so i can easily conceive of jake taking the easy way out and heading out to trawl the pacific for a meteor baby.

the line about how ‘having a second thing which is sort of like the first thing but somewhere else is exactly the same as having the first thing’

it’s interesting that jade and joey both do the same thing by projecting on their dead guardians. jade’s thinking is a lot more magical than joey’s, but it really shines a light on how everything we assumed about grandpa harley was through the eyes of a girl who never really got to know him.

and like he died well before he could disappoint her, so.

it was REALLY really sad but i don’t think i actually have a problem with it.

part of the reason i don’t have a problem with it is bc it made joey claire’s characterization SO much more compelling

because she’s very angry at her father for doing the things he did, and is openly disparaging about him, and even chooses to use her mother’s last name instead of his? but she’s not angry or hard or bitter

i love my hard trauma girls but it’s really nice that joey just gets kinder and better in the face of a childhood full of neglect- without being pushed to forgive or minimize the damage that was done to her

the detail about joey absolutely refusing to use guns because she doesn’t want to be like her dad, and choosing to love animals and heal them was so good. and how that’s framed as an act of rebellion?

like the idea that kindness can be radical but that =/= forgiveness.

we didn’t see a lot of jude but i loved everything about him so much

like it was pretty subtle so i don’t know if y’all would consider it ‘canon’ but the bit where joey says that ‘when things got bad with my brother, our babysitter took him to see a doctor, and he was better for a while’ seems like it’s saying joey is being treated for a mental illness of some sort?

which seems completely in line with his character! he almost falls into the trap where it’s like ‘we all called this person crazy for seeing all these conspiracies but he was right all along’ but he doesn’t and that’s nice. it’s very subtle and pretty respectful imo. (also, fox mulder)

he and joey are the cutest siblings in the entire universe, and he was so sweet to her. he seems very earnest about wanting to protect her and caring about her.

the part where his birds left him made me SOOOO SAD. it was so sad. i felt so bad for him. I named dammek’s catdeer Frohike to pay my respects even though frohike was the worst gunman.

i’m really worried about him tho. i hope he’ll be okay without joey around

joey claire is such an obvious lesbian

honestly i know a lot of people were nervous because it seemed like it was setting her up to have a relationship with xefros but i absolutely don’t think that’s the case, just because she’s definitely gay.

every time she looked at a picture of a girl in the harleyclaire mansion she had one gay thought or another, and her entire room was plastered completely in images of pretty girls. not ONE guy.

there was also a lot of dialogue which implied she felt guilty or ashamed of how she felt when looking at girls, or like she wasn’t sure if she was allowed to, or if people would judge her for having pretty pictures of girls on her walls.

also her password being the name of a boy she has certainly never met or talked to, and who we never saw an image of (despite said guy being an actor? i think) or heard mentioned before

the scene where xefros mentions he is a boy who likes boys and joey is like ‘oh. huh’ seems to me like it’s very obviously from the pov of a lesbian who had absolutely no idea what a lesbian is, or that she is allowed to be one. 

i think joey is definitely going to realize she is gay at some point in the future acts

i didn’t expect to like or care about xefros as much as i did?

he was obnoxious at first but basically as soon as we figured out what was up with dammek and that xefros thought he’d been speaking to dammek he became 100% less annoying and i started liking him a lot lmao.

he and joey had a really sweet friendship, actually.

homestuck breezed over a lot of the more horrible things about troll civilization, but hiveswap did a very good job of making it patently obvious how horrible troll civilization is for xefros and other lowbloods, and i think it has a redeeming effect on the Other Stuff.

i like that they made it obvious what’s happening is horrible and needs to like, stop or whatever, and don’t like... condemn the revolutionaries.

his situation isn’t really played for laughs or mocked.

that being said a lot of the writing for dammek was really really annoying and dumb.

people like dammek definitely exist and i think hiveswap does a faaairly decent of not conflating dammek being a shithead with the rest of the movement? the joke about personal property was very very annoying lmao but the movement itself is portrayed as legitimate and necessary. it’s a dumb reactionary type of joke but it doesn’t ruin the game for me

i do think he’s going to Learn To Be A Better Person while he’s hanging out with jude. i don’t think he’s going to get a vriska type arc at all but i do think he’ll learn the error of his ways.

i wish that we’d gotten to see a bit more of his personal motivation for being so intense about revolution.

i ALSO wish they hadn’t used like actual symbols of movements in the bg that was really annoying and crass imo. and if they had to, i wish xefros had had an anarchist flag or whatever.

abuse / neglect are big themes in hs so i’m not really surprised at all that they came back? they definitely shouldn’t have advertised dammek and xefros as being cute moirails though because it’s kind of scummy to do a bait and switch like that.

i don’t think the game’s going to be hetero though. xefros and joey would be incredibly ugly and i doubt it’ll happen

i also think homestuck the original thing is actually pretty on the nose about class stuff, even if it does feel the need to like couch that in Fake Alien Racism? at the very least i’d be surprised if hiveswap tried to pull the You’re The Same As Your Oppressors thing

i’m still annoyed that there was so much promo art of xefros and dammek being cute together when the actual game condemned every interaction they had. i think that it would have been possible to say the same things as they wanted to while also not making dammek a crazy leftist stereotype and grounding him in reality like a real person.

to be fair, we are going to get a sequel game with him, so he’ll probably be fleshed out a LOT better then.

trizza is somehow so much more evil than expected? how evil she is feels a lot more real than like, the condesce, tbh. she feels like a real person

i’m SUPER curious about cridea now and i can’t wait to see what she’ll be like

[utopianparadoxist]

[3. Earthbound - The two Yaldabaoths, Dramatic Tension & The Diegetic Reader (That’s You!)]

[Spoilers for Earthbound:Beginnings, Earthbound, & Mother 3]

Most know by now that Earthbound is referenced every time we say the word “Homestuck”. It’s built into the name: To be Stuck at Home. To be Bound to Earth. 

And fittingly for a reference which such pervasive impact on our understanding of the comic, Homestuck styles itself as a spiritual successor to Earthbound in a number of ways. 

Both Earthbound and Homestuck begin with a set of four kids who go on an adventure together. Both feature kids with psychic powers, friendship, and the meaning of growing up. 

But there are three particular similarities to Homestuck that I want to present you with here. In these three areas, Homestuck and Earthbound/Mother are notably alike:

The Characters:

1) Both feature a unique execution of dramatic tension and narrative stakes for the characters.   The Player:

2) Engage in heavily metatextual, diegetic relationships between the World/Story and The Player/Reader. 

The Antagonists:

3) Are God-Like, Authoritarian powers that cannot engage with ideas. In other words, they operate as Yaldabaoths.

These antagonists are who I want to talk about first. We will proceed from number 3 up to number 1, talking about the context of the games and tying it into the comic further as we go. I’ll ask you to be patient with me if you don’t see much about Homestuck at first--there’s a lot of setup work to do. 

Without further ado, let’s begin.

3) The Antagonists.

Side A) Earthbound - The War on Giygas.

Earthbound is the story of a boy named Ness, and his neighbor, Pokey Minch. One day, a meteor lands in their town, a time-traveler called Buzz Buzz appears from within. Buzz Buzz tells Ness he has come from a bad future, where an alien overlord named Giygas has cast the world into eternal darkness. Only Ness and his prophecized friends can stop Giygas.

From then on Earthbound is mostly a fun, sweet adventure romp for our Protagonists. Pokey goes on an adventure of his own, acting like a cruel child whilst striking deals with agents of Giygas and steadily gaining more and more power, both in business and through the dark forces Giygas employs.

Then we skip ahead to the very end of Earthbound. Where we get one of the most horrific and memorable boss sequences in gaming. 

Giygas is explicitly unfathomable, indescribable: Giygas is Eldritch in the true “Man was never meant to see this” sort of way. Giygas isn’t explicitly A God, but rather an alien. But he certainly acts like a God. His influence makes inanimate objects animate, makes animals aggressive, lures people into cults and evil deeds. 

He’s tapped into the centers of power and wealth in society. Giygas is nowhere, and yet everywhere. He is, in short, the God of the material world Earthbound’s kids wander through. Their Yaldabaoth.

And interestingly,  as with Yaldabaoth, Pokey describes Giygas as being “an all-mighty Idiot”--unaware of himself or what’s happening around him. 

Giygas shares similarities with Bastian and Caliborn, too--in Earthbound: Beginnings, he’s driven insane by a song that reminds him of his mother.  Like Bastian, Giygas has connotations of warped, eternal childhood.  But unlike Bastian, Giygas does not escape his damnation until he dies. 

And there are fates even worse than death. Such as the fate reserved for Pokey Minch, who against all odds, is the more interesting of the two--and the more relevant for Homestuck.

Let’s talk about Mother 3.

Side B) Mother 3 - No crying until the end. 

Mother 3 is not as happy a game as Earthbound. Where Earthbound concentrated it’s gloom and despair into intense climaxes while being generally upbeat, Mother 3 is bittersweet and tragic throughout--though still plenty beautiful and joyful when it wants to be.

Like Homestuck, it has an unusual structure of Acts--8 instead of 7, but also of variable lengths, including a chapter that takes up almost half the game. Playable characters vary with each section, but the bulk of the game features Lucas, his dog Boney, and their friends Duster and Kumatora. So again: Four protagonists.

Set in the post-apocalyptic Nowhere Islands, Mother 3 tells the story of the fascist, totalitarian Pig Mask Army’s encroachment onto the idyllic, peaceful lives of the Nowhere Island natives. 

As it turns out, the Pig Mask Army is led by the megalomaniacal dictator Pokey (Japanese name “Porky”) Minch, who discovers the ability to travel spacetime and escapes the final battle against Giygas. 

Since then, he’s traveled countless worlds and lived through millennia, conquering and exploiting all unfortunate enough to be caught in his way. 

All the while, never truly growing up. 

Sound familiar?

Now, one interesting parallel about Pokey is what he does to the world he rules over. Just Lord English does to the Troll’s universe--and more indirectly, to both Human universes--Pokey manipulates and exploits The Nowhere Islands through a number of tools. 

He’s got the authoritarian power regime also in place on Alternia, of course. But Pokey dabbles in genetic modification and playing with the nature of life as well, just as both trolls and humans were genetically exploited by Lord English’s agents. Most of the enemies in Mother 3 are chimeras: amalgams of animals and machines, cruelly spliced together. 

And Pokey also attempts to shape culture on the Islands to his liking, distributing “Happy Boxes” that look like televisions and seem to encourage a sort of shift towards crass materialism and an acceptance of the Pig Masks’ fascist dominance.

I note these similarities mostly because through Pokey we get a direct linking between the idea of a God-Like Yaldabaoth figure and the idea of a tyrannical, authoritarian dictator. 

This is an area of Lord English’s insidious evil mostly delivered to the audience through implication and background information, so I think it’s worth the time to draw it into focus. 

And the similarities between their atrocities might give us some context between the similarities at the end of their stories. Because, again like Lord English...

Master Pokey can’t die. 

But he is defeated, as his machine runs out of power.  And so, lacking other options, Pokey plays his trump card. 

One that proves to be the end of his influence in the story. 

"Oh, my! As evil as old Porky here is, I feel bad for him now. It's true that the "Absolutely Safe Capsule" that the Mr. Saturns and I developed together can protect one from every manner of danger. It IS an absolutely safe capsule, but once you enter it, you can never exit it... Even what's outside of the Absolutely Safe Capsule is absolutely safe. I did tell Porky in a hushed voice that he shouldn't use it yet... But all he can do now is live for eternity inside the capsule, in absolute safety. Who knows, in a way, he may've gotten exactly what he wanted. What do you think? Is it wrong of me to think this way?" — Dr. Andonuts

Once Pokey seals his life into the capsule, there’s no longer an out for him. Not ever again. In a way, Pokey’s fate may indeed be one worse than death. And it’s one that seems to be echoed by Lord English, since after all...

Lord English cannot die, but he is defeated.

Specifically, Act 7′s visual language suggests he’s pocketed in the Black Hole that Alt!Calliope created. As a Black Hole is a gravitational singularity, once there, Lord English would be trapped--no amount of Time powers would let him come out, and First Guardian powers would no longer work either, since they rely on the Green Sun’s power.

An immortal, tyrannical kid--denied his playground for eternity. Pretty fitting, I think.

But Lord English is only one part of the story, and I think the relationship between the protagonists and the Player/Reader is the more interesting area of Earthbound to explore. Because...didn’t I mention?

In the Mother series, there is another God. 

It’s you.

2) The Player

Both Earthbound and Mother 3 explicitly address your existence in the context of their worlds. Both games, in fact, pause entirely just to ask you your name. In Earthbound, this role is taken by Tony, Jeff’s canonically gay friend. He calls Jeff, and in the process brings up a prompt for the Player to input their name. This can seem like a bit of cheeky fourth-wall breaking, but consider: 

You are the unseen hand behind the characters’ every action. You lead them through their world just as Giygas does for Pokey. You’re never viewed, but always present, witness and privy to all things. 

And in the final boss battle (you did watch that, didn’t you?), when all else fails, Paula’s prayers reach the people of Earthbound who care about the four chosen children...including you. Your name is the final name given, praying for the protection of Ness and his friend. Your prayers are the power that end Giygas.

Mother 3 makes it even more explicit. In this game, you’re asked your name by an unseen voice, while Flint prays at an altar in the only Church in the game. Depicted on the front of it are the Light and Dark Dragons of Nowhere Island, the latter of which is the subject of an apocalyptic prophecy we’ll talk about soon. 

A good question to ask at this point is: Why does this matter? And the answer is that because we’re given the God’s-eye view of these games, the context of our engagement with them is diegetic: explained by the narrative itself.

Like Bastian reading The Neverending Story, we’re not just observers consuming the content of these games. At least as far as the stories within are concerned, we are active participants. We are part of the story.

And this is true of Homestuck, too. Doc Scratch is a smarmy asshole, but he directly acknowledges the reader. He even credits us with more of an impact on the story than our protagonists.  And on some level, this is true. 

We HAVE had a direct impact on the story, through command prompts and fandom memes and all sorts of other engagements that ended up shaping the way Homestuck has been told. We’ve always been part of the narrative. 

Hell, we’ve always been depicted in it. The MSPA Reader is a template, a schematic stand-in for all of us, just as the Human characters we love are blank templates for a multitude of more specific body headcanons.

And this has important implications for how we, the readers, might best engage with Homestuck. 

Because the fact that our window into its world is diegetic means that it is presented through us through an explicit frame, a frame that is narratively constructed. 

And frames have limits. 

1) The Characters

Whenever I hear people say Homestuck is a tragedy, or that it’s headed for a sadstuck ending with the Beta kids stuck in the Juju in the Masterpiece, I honestly can’t help but laugh. You don’t need alternate timelines and sacrificial lamb versions of our protagonists to secure a happy ending in Homestuck. 

Homestuck itself is practically a loop of impossible-seemingly, absolute-dooming circumstances...

met by perseverance and good cheer.

And when all’s said and done, the story pretty much always breaks in favor of the latter. Remember that one of the fundamental rules of Homestuck’s universe is the “Do As You Will” principle--everyone always gets what they want. 

Caliborn gets to be LE, as does Gamzee. Arquis gets to fulfill the out-of-nowhere heroic destiny he wanted, and finally proves himself to the Alphas in an act of atonement. Lord English gets his eternity of destruction, and Vriska gets to be the great Hero she always wanted to be.

But our protagonists? The Alphas and Betas? They just want to live in peace. Their desires are compatible with the wills of all the other characters. 

Lord English’s will is not, and he’s trampled the agency of every other character a million times over to get where he is. That’s what makes him a tyrant, and that’s what dooms him to his Absolutely Safe Capsule. Karma is an established force in Homestuck, and LE will pay his due.

And in this extremely-dire-until-the-very-last-second approach, too, Homestuck seems to be standing on the shoulders of giants.

Because this big buildup to a Big Dramatic Tragedy of an ending is pretty much exactly Earthbound’s M.O. 

Earthbound’s final boss isn’t just one of the most horrifically well-executed eldritch monsters in gaming history. It’s also set-up as what amounts to a suicide mission.

Earthbound’s protagonists time travel to a monochrome greyscape (in robot bodies) fully knowing there’s no way back from their battle with Giygas. And the battle with Giygas does indeed kill them--here you see the wreck of their robot selves. It’s pretty much deus ex machina when their souls wander back into their bodies shortly afterwards.

Even more interesting to me, however, are the parallels we find to Mother 3′s ending.

I’m going to take a time out from Homestuck for a second and talk about Mother 3 for a second, because this moment is too important to me to waste frivolously, or subject to my overwrought explanatory dialogue with without giving you the option to watch a scene that’s Undertale-level good. 

Unless I’ve already succeeded in getting you to stop reading, drop everything, and go find a translated version of Mother 3 now (you can’t play it in english without emulating, since it was never released in the US), I would really appreciate it if you took the time and sucked up the spoilers and watched this ending cutscene.

It’s a work of art. A heartrending, heartfelt symphony to the pain of loss and the fear of something changing forever. Mother 3 is a game about the Apocalypse. A game about CAUSING the apocalypse, to be precise. 

Your final moments with the game are spent watching Lucas pull the final needle that binds a dragon bigger than the world, and the only hope is that Lucas’ good heart will pass on to the Dragon and make a good new world to come.  Nothing else is certain. 

And the shots we see aren’t encouraging: Immediately after pulling the needle, the world begins to fall apart. Earthquakes rise and wreak havoc. Twisters of water dominate the sky and ocean. Meteors fall from the sky, and as if rising from an enormous egg, a vast, black back archs out from under the world we came to love.

And then we cut to black, and the End screen pops up. We never see these characters again. Only...

Only we do get to talk to them. Once this question mark pops up, you can move around in this black screen-with ‘You’ represented by the END? depicted- and occasionally, you’ll bump into...words. Words that say things like:

And

You get glimpses of things you can’t talk to, like...

And best of all, this is where the game brings out its ace.

Because this is where the name you gave in the church comes into play. At the end of it all, all of the characters in the cast not only tell you they’re ok, but recognize you. Thank you. Love you. Treat you like a friend, say goodbye, invite you back over, and wish you well in life.

In Mother 3, you play as the God of the old world, the world bound by the rules the cast had to play by. By playing through to the end, you set them free. 

And by treating you as a real part of its world, Mother 3 invites you to consider its characters a real part of yours. Invites you to think of them not as characters, but as friends. As people.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because Undertale built a whole damn game out of the concept.

But the same approach has always been in Homestuck’s DNA. These characters were always people first and characters second, and we were always privy to a limited frame.

That frame is Homestuck, which until The Masterpiece and Lord English’s defeat, has belonged to Caliborn. This has always been the story of his circle--the Alpha Timeline--and the context it crafts out is his childish empire.

Next time, we’ll talk more about Homestuck’s Gnostic themes, and just what it is *exactly* that our protagonists are escaping from. 

For now, I’ll leave you with this song. 

If this piece interested you in Mother 3, I suggest checking out Tom Ato’s legendary fan translation for the game. Mother 3 is a masterpiece, and I owe both it and Tom Ato my life in some ways. It’d make me really happy to know even one more person has been touched by their work because of me. 

[Master Post]

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Keep rising.