#Roleplay Forums

[maninmauve]

Writing Inspiration: Characters

When creating characters, it can be hard figuring out where to start. When I started writing, I didn’t know how to start with my characters. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I had no experience. That was when I discovered roleplays on forums. I discovered these roleplays in 2007-2009 or so, and the character profiles could be very simple. They’d ask for the very basic…

[mimiyarts]

DamiJon duo kits

Artist fanart : @Hokke

Artist fanart : @eileenwdj

Artist fanart : @lstrikesart

Artist fanart : @lstrikesart

Damian Wayne & Jonathan Kent - Icons duo kit

[webdiggerxxx]

*ೃ༄ੈ✩‧₊˚

[hetrosjistin]

The best way I can think of to describe homestuck, which is a very uniquely late 2000s, early 2010s thing, is the way that a dedicated rp forum with a long lore, running characters, backstory, obtuse mechanics invented by teens, and plot threads that will never ever be resolved for a variety of reasons (sometimes as simple as 'the person playing that character just dropped off the face of the earth and the mods used them as an npc into death to get them off the board) were all elements of how it felt.

I can't describe it better than that, it's very much born from the time period before social media giants consumed everything, when reddit was huge but not all consuming, when individual forums and websites for specific niche interests were still common because reddit wasn't -quite- friendly enough yet to make a community for it and discord had yet to absolutely obliterate the idea of what online communication was supposed to be.

I sometimes, genuinely, wonder if group roleplay like Drowtales and Star Army and Amia's Never Winter Nights server still exist. I go into MMOs and I can't... find it any more, am I not looking in the right places? Is it just that these don't exist anymore in a real sense? That play by post RP feels like it's become more and more insular over time.

Homestuck felt like that. Felt like being someone in the late 2000s coming into a roleplay forum that began in the early 2000s or late 90s and bringing your friends and you shaking up the community as new blood and then finding out that holy shit there's so much more to it than that, and it all spirals out into drama and angst and real life recriminations and explodes at the end because everyone was so focused on one upping one another and at the end there's just one or two toxic fuckers still behind, playing in the ashes, trying to get you back in while you try to shut the communications channel so you can get on with your life with your friends (I dunno if I'm the only one who felt that way about the ending but who knows x-x)

Should I read homestuck

tl;dr: no

actual answer: yes, but with some extremely important caveats.

Firstly, because Adobe shitcanned Flash, you can now no longer experience Homestuck in the form it was intended upon release... unless you download the Unofficial Homestuck Collection. This act of unbelievable, nay, saintly generosity by Homestuck's most dedicated fans allows you to experience Homestuck as it was intended - as close as is humanly possible.

"As close as is humanly possible" is the key phrase here. One indelible part of the original Homestuck experience was UPDATE! Homestuck would sometimes go weeks or even months (and later, years) between updates. I wasn't on Tumblr back in the day, but at the peak of Homestuck, even if you knew nothing else about it, you'd know when an update dropped because Tumblr's net traffic would increase something like three to fourfold. People would go apeshit bananas about whatever new revelations the Huss would drop on us.

You also need to realise that Homestuck is a product of its time and while its takes on sexuality and gender identity was pretty progressive (for its time), Huss did use the r-slur a bunch.

While we're on the subject of the author, Andrew Hussie (of whom my current understanding is that they have not changed name but go by they/them nowadays) is, in the most diplomatic possible terms, a very unique person. They are, at times, a visionary storyteller with genuinely fascinating ideas. At other times, they come off as kinda spiteful towards their readers.

Without meaning to dip into spoilers, some story beats seem (in my opinion) almost intentionally calculated to upset, irritate or mock certain fans. It never rises to the sheer vicious contempt that Steven Moffat had towards Sherlock's fanbase, but it does leave a bad taste in my mouth whenever I go back.

Additionally, and this is where a sort of birds-eye-view spoiler is unavoidable, the story suffers from the Game of Thrones pitfall of repeatedly increasing its own complexity by adding new plot threads without resolving existing ones, eventually leading to fatigue on the part of both the reader and the author. The arcs of a lot of characters just straight up get abandoned, while a couple of characters take an unnecessarily large amount of screen time.

There's one character in particular that the author openly states within the narrative (the author exists within the world of the story. It's... a whole thing) that they favour, and whose behaviour the story is warped to accommodate. You'll know exactly who I'm talking about almost the moment they show up.

Another reason I say that it's not really possible to read Homestuck as it was originally intended is because a lot of the shit that happens in it fits into the zeitgeist of the internet at the time any individual update was written. There's a whole section in the late middle third that is inextricably and very specifically tied to how it was like to use Tumblr in 2012.

Additionally, a lot of things have soured with time. There was the whole Hiveswap debacle (it was first announced in 2012. We got the first act in 2017. We got the second act in 2020. We do not even know if the third act will ever come out.). There were the legal threats. There were the Epilogues and Homestuck 2, which were... how do I put this? Not universally liked. There's been nearly a decade of discourse since Homestuck ended, and a lot of things haven't grown better with age.

All of that being said.

You should read it.

I cannot express to you just how big an impact Homestuck has had on internet culture. Even people who claim to hate Homestuck unconsciously use slang that it invented. Its unique ideas on storytelling, character design and narrative chronology have, in both subtle and unsubtle ways, changed the way millennials and Gen Z tell stories.

A lot of people were inspired to tell stories because of Homestuck - one example I always give to Lancer players is that Kill Six Billion Demons started as a comic on the MSPA forums (before it was homestuck.com, it was MS Paint Adventures), so Homestuck is in an indirect but demonstrable way responsible for the existence of Lancer. The sunglasses that Gideon Nav from the Locked Tomb wears have been explicitly stated by Tamsyn Muir to be Dave Strider's. Toby Fox made music for Homestuck, and worked on large parts of Undertale while living in Andrew Hussie's basement.

We also know someone in the Bluey creative team is a Homestuck, because...

There are subtle but direct references in Bojack Horseman, Hazbin Hotel, Steven Universe, Adventure Time - and those are just the ones that it's easy to prove! In a more general sense, I think there's a lot of cartoon series, movies, games, etc. that would either be very different or wouldn't exist if Homestuck hadn't happened.

It's certainly influenced my work.

I think, being very cautious to manage your expectations, that you should read Homestuck. At the very least, a lot of things people say on Tumblr will start to make, if not sense, a different kind of nonsense.

[moneyhoneyps]

Sydney Sweeney - 400*640 Request avec thème mafia/monde criminel

[suskindkore]

Anna Sawai

credit: suskind

(vide-tiroir 2024)

[letsheresy]

[1960z]

steel samurai WHO???

[memorycardviii]

Milly Alcock ( cr. MEMORY CARD VIII )

[mel-graph]

Jonathan Bailey 400x640 avatars ⸻ GALLERY (more avatars, short links) ⸻ Please like or reblog if you use. Thanks ♥

[swgzl]

[ TXT ] _ beomgyu

[wickedwitches]

jonathan bailey — for @kiddressources

credit atlantis if you use

[gerard-menjoui]

Shalom Harlow (400x640)

(Inspirés de Yael)

Crédit: Gérard Menjoui

[mimiyarts]

Damian Wayne Al'Ghul, Robin - Gremlins Icon kit 300*300 ( more )

[rp-khall]

Sabrina Carpenter ✧ Avatars 400*640

→ credit - ©khall

[moneyhoneyps]

Sabrina Carpenter - 400x640 De retour après presque 11 mois d'absence, oups... il s'en est passé des choses dans ma vie mais j'avais envie de grapher ce soir, alors voilà. <3