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homestuckreplay · 4 months ago

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hey so what sort of insane loot did you rake in today: A Conversation Analysis of Pesterlogs in Acts 1 & 2 of Homestuck

This essay contains spoilers for pages 1-386 of Homestuck. Wordcount 6,700. If you prefer, you can read this on google docs.

Love and thanks to @rudebreadrolls for being my very cool editor. They did not reduce the wordcount, but did provide some extremely helpful feedback. <3

Introduction

‘In watching our participants deftly manage multiple messages, and then interweave these messages into the larger storylines of their lives, we became aware that the drama, the story, and, indeed, the enjoyment of [instant messaging] comes from the entire session itself: its flow, its arc, and various aspects of narrative tension across messages.’ - Lewis & Fabos (2005)

In 2009, internet use is approaching universality among American teenagers. Around 93% of teenagers use the internet, compared to around 10% just ten years earlier, and academic research about the effects of internet use is beginning to catch up. There is huge variation in findings, with some studies reporting that internet use, social media use, and instant messaging with friends can decrease depression and social anxiety, while other studies find that online activities are harmful to mental health. Similarly, some papers show that friendships formed or maintained online are more surface level, less honest and less emotionally fulfilling than friendships maintained in person, while other papers suggest that young people are more vulnerable and uninhibited online, leading to deeper friendships.

‘The internet’ and ‘teenagers’ are extremely broad categories, so it’s no surprise that findings are so varied. Two particularly interesting individual findings are that ‘Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth were more likely than non-LGBT youth to have online friends and to appraise these friends as better than their in-person friends at providing emotional support’ (Ybarra et al.), and that ‘online communities illustrate these tenets [belongingness, social connectedness, and political connectedness] of the autistic cultural identity, as well as how these communities, by the basis of being online, enable autistic social connectedness to occur more readily and smoothly then within everyday life in the “real” world’ (Le Vine-Miller).

Two common hypotheses discussed in online friendship research are the rich-get-richer hypothesis, which posits that popular individuals with good offline social skills can use those same skills to achieve similar popularity online, and the social compensation hypothesis, which argues that people who struggle to form social connections offline often find it far easier to form friendships in online spaces. These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, and both are supported by research. When discussing Homestuck, I make the assumption that the main characters are friends exclusively online and have never met in person, due to their geographical distance from one another, and that they are socially isolated with few if any in person friends, due to none of the characters mentioning a social life outside of their families and online messaging group. I also believe that whether or not this is intended by the author, it is easy to read these characters as queer and/or neurodivergent, which further positions them as socially marginalized. Therefore, these characters would best fit within the framework of the social compensation hypothesis.

Research on instant messaging (IM) typically discusses IM as a hybrid communication form, incorporating elements of both spoken and written communication, and further suggests that IM is a third form of communication that cannot fully be analyzed by either or both of these frameworks. Significant variation is seen between participants in their use of language and paralanguage, and there is a strong research focus on the capabilities and constraints of IM platforms. Researchers also discuss the varying prevalence of features unique to IM or other computer mediated communication (CMC), such as emojis, acronyms, gestures, and message spacing and timestamps.

However, this research is often limited by researchers’ needs to compare IM to in person communication and judge which is ‘better’. They typically conclude that IM is a lesser form of communication, and that participants in their studies have a preference for talking face to face. This may be because these studies primarily use participants who began using IM as teenagers or college students once they already have strong real life friendships. General studies on IM are less likely to study those who grew up with IM from a young age and who use the medium more akin to a first or native language - an increasingly common phenomenon - which limits the conclusions these studies can draw.

In instant messaging research, most authors rhetorically distance themselves from the topic, with some explicitly stating that they do not use instant messaging services themselves and none (that I found) discussing their own personal experiences. I personally have been a regular user of instant messaging services since the mid 2000s, including both one-on-one and group chats with both online only and in person friends, using primarily MSN Messenger, Skype, Facebook Messenger and Discord, and these experiences inform my discussion of this topic.

In this essay I will explore how Homestuck’s online teenage social group - John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, and gardenGnostic (GG) - communicate with each other and manage friendship via the in-universe instant messaging service Pesterchum. I will discuss what these friendships mean for the characters within the story itself, as well as what the use of instant messaging does for the author and audience who are reading this story.

I used five Pesterchum conversations to conduct this analysis: John-Rose (p.256 - 332 words), John-Dave (p.386 - 542 words), John-GG (p.293 - 412 words), Rose-Dave (p.333 - 402 words) and Dave-GG (p.382 - 424 words). For each pair of chums, I chose the longest Pesterlog by wordcount between the two characters, with a pesterlog defined as a conversation occurring on a single page of Homestuck. In the end, all these conversations came from the first 140 pages of Act 2.

I selected eight possible characteristics of instant messages to analyze in these conversations, inspired by, but not identical to, those explored in Kelley’s work ‘The Hybrid Structure of Instant Messaging’ (2008). My categories are as follows.

Grammar - includes punctuation, capitalization, and similarities to formal written language

Conversationality - includes exclamations, filler words, and similarities to informal spoken language

Internet Language - includes internet specific features such as emojis, abbreviations, and methods to emphasize words

Structure - includes length of messages and numbers of consecutive messages

Informativity - how effectively information is conveyed and interpreted

Vulnerability - emotional honesty and openness

Agency - control over topics and flow of conversation

Color - cultural associations with chosen text color

I was unable to analyze two additional features. Pesterlogs do not include timestamps, so I could not discuss time between messages. However, overlap between messages and events in the narrative suggest that conversations take place in near-real time and are the primary activity holding characters’ attention. Interjections like ‘EB: um… hello?’ suggest that waiting for a response is the exception between these characters and not the norm. Additionally, errors and repair, where one participant makes a typo and corrects it in a subsequent message, do not appear in Homestuck. I assume that this is artistic license on the part of the author to improve readability of the text.

John Egbert

John’s typing style is the most conversational of the four main characters, with the greatest similarities to spoken dialog. He appears to be fairly unfiltered, and it’s easy to imagine that he would talk very similarly if he were hanging out with his friends in person. Grammatically, John does not capitalize proper nouns or the start of sentences, but he does use correct punctuation including commas, periods, and apostrophes. This is his main concession to written language, as correct punctuation makes his messages very readable even for people who are not familiar with instant messaging dialects, and means his statements are clearly delineated from each other.

John uses contractions such as ‘can’t’ and ‘don’t’ whenever it makes sense to do so. His text contains a lot of filler words, such as ‘well ok,’ ‘like,’ and ‘er…’ which demonstrate his unfiltered, stream of consciousness style. He also uses exclamations such as ‘oh jeez’ and ‘ok ok stop!’ which would also be common to spoken language, but not written.

John occasionally uses Internet-typical acronyms such as ‘brb,’ but they don’t form a major part of his typing, and he doesn’t make use of emojis or special characters that could indicate paralanguage cues. Once in a while, he uses all caps for emphasis, such as ‘haha I WISH.’ and ‘SO LAME.’ As this is the only capitalization he uses, it’s effective when present. John doesn’t elongate letters in words for emphasis, but he regularly uses question marks and exclamation points, and sometimes elongates these to two question marks or three exclamation points when he wants to indicate that something is particularly important.

John’s messages tend to be short and sweet, mostly containing a single clause or sentence, but there are outliers. When he has particularly strong feelings about something, for example his near-death meteor experience or the idea of a white ventriloquist rapper, he can get caught up in a run-on sentence confined to a single message. In instant messaging, it’s common to split a thought across multiple messages and take several conversational ‘turns’ in a row. John does this sometimes, especially when each message contains separate thoughts or when he needs some time to think, indicated by ‘hmm…’ or ‘see…’ as a single message, followed by a longer response. However, when he is having a singular thought, he doesn’t always take the time to hit the enter key, and instead constructs the whole story at once, as in the example below.

EB: but now i'm trapped here and it's weird and dark and i can't find my dad and i just lost the car and my copy of the game in the pit and i think i have to save the world from the apocalypse!!!

He could have chosen to split this message into multiple parts, as demonstrated below, but is either too caught up in the emotions of what he’s typing to do this, or sees this as a singular thought that should be kept together without line and punctuation breaks.

EB: but now i'm trapped here.EB: and it's weird and dark.EB: and i can't find my dad!EB: and i just lost the car and my copy of the game in the pit!EB: and i think i have to save the world from the apocalypse!!!

John can be vague with information, using ‘i think’ and ‘i guess,’ but he seems to be aware of that fact - possibly from communicating with the same people for an extended time. He sometimes self corrects to add more information when he realizes he’s being confusing. In general, he doesn’t seem to have perfect control over language, and can use awkward and clunky phrasing - ‘yeah, more like the opposite of all those things is the thing that is true!’ - which ties back to the social compensation hypothesis of online friendships. John isn’t a smooth talker, but it’s easier for him to talk through IM, because it provides more opportunities to self correct, and his conversation partner can read back over what he’s said and take more time to interpret it than they could in a spoken conversation.

John is honest with his friends about the situations he’s in, and the unfiltered way he talks carries a lot of implicit emotion, but it’s rare for him to outright state how he feels. When he does, it’s always more neutral emotions - ‘ok i don’t really care.’ or ‘but i’m ok!’ - never strong emotions, either positive or negative. However, it’s easy for someone who knows him to interpret how he feels through messages like ‘you never even wished me a happy birthday!’ It seems that John isn’t making an attempt to hide his emotions, but also doesn’t explicitly acknowledge them, whether that’s just to his conversation partners or also to himself.

John’s conversational agency is highly variable. He seems to naturally take the lead in conversations when he has strong opinions about the topic under discussion, like when he tells Dave to stop an extended monologue, or changes the topic away from Dave’s criticism of his sylladex. In his conversations with both Dave and GG, he seems to be guiding the flow of topics, even though Dave is sending far more and longer messages. In contrast, in his conversation with Rose, John is taking a backseat. He recognizes that he has less information than she does, although he sometimes pushes back against her with emotional interjections. He still attempts to exert agency in the conversation by asking questions, but she overall appears in control.

John’s chosen color for his messages is #0715cd, which is described as ‘medium blue’ or ‘strong blue.’ Blue in its entire spectrum is currently seen as a masculine color, and is associated with oceans, sky, open spaces, introspection, sadness, wisdom and serenity. This particular shade of blue is closely linked to computers - the standard HTML code for hyperlinks, including the ‘next page’ links in Homestuck, is #0000ee, ‘blue’ or ‘pure blue.’ John’s text evokes his status as a ‘digital native’ who predominantly spends his time using technology. Blue is also a standard color for ink pens, and a color most people are accustomed to reading in. John may have chosen blue for his text because it is unobtrusive and doesn’t stand out in any particular way.

Rose Lalonde

Rose’s typing style stands out because of the four main characters, she is the only one whose messages reflect formal written writing. Outside of messages she is both a creative writer and an informative writer (via GameFAQs), and unlike some writers, she doesn’t draw a strong distinction between this and her instant messaging. Without exception, her messages are complete sentences with correct punctuation and grammar. She also obeys some stylistic guidelines for writing, such as varying her word choice, mixing complex, multi-clause sentences with shorter ones, and occasionally using metaphor and simile.

Rose does not use filler words, and each word she chooses appears purposefully placed to add something to her message. She does make use of contractions such as ‘I’ve’ and ‘didn’t,’ as her one concession to spoken language, although she uses the full ‘cannot.’ She also makes some use of exclamations, although in the sample studied here this still appear to be carefully considered full sentences, such as ‘Baseless accusation!’

Rose appears to have no interest in tailoring her writing to the Internet. Some users of IM believe that using internet language and paralanguage makes them appear younger and less intelligent, which could motivate Rose to avoid these. The one acronym she uses is ‘PDA,’ which is an accepted acronym outside of IM, and the closest she comes to slang is the phrase ‘skyward asses.’ This phrase is more likely an example of mimicry, where somebody uses a phrase they would not normally use to (whether intentionally or unintentionally) imitate their conversation partner, in this case Dave.

Rose does make use of message spacing and multiple turns, the one clear difference between her instant messages and other forms of writing. She averages around 10 words per message, the highest of the four characters, and sends strings of two to three messages more often than single messages. Each message can be as many as three full sentences, which are always directly related. Her message strings can be due to topic changes, but can be directly related thoughts separated for stylistic effect or to create tension by making her conversation partner wait for the next message.

Rose clearly pays great attention to precision in her writing, conveying all necessary information without shortcuts. She uses a wide vocabulary for her age, with sentences typically readable at a high school level, and expects her conversation partners to be able to understand her. She is also excessively verbose, choosing words to showcase her personality and intelligence, instead of trying to send the quickest messages possible, as in the example below.

TT: Navigating the urban landscape I'm sure is difficult enough without an obstacle course of deferential flesh and skyward asses.TT: Perhaps adapting the art of parkour to your unique environment would help?

Rose could instead write the following, which is significantly quicker to type and easier to read, but she does not.

TT: Being in the city must be hard enough without people falling at your feet.TT: Have you tried parkour?

Many researchers hypothesize that response speed is a big factor in people’s IM word usage, but this is not true for Rose - even when her life is in imminent danger, her typing style does not change. This is probably uncommon, but no ethics board has yet approved a research study investigating this.

Rose’s messages typically stick to the facts, with occasional speculation. She prefers to discuss the specifics of her situation and goals, and avoids obvious cues to her emotions. In both conversations analyzed, she offers one emotion-based statement at the end of the conversation, which could suggest one of two things - either she needs to take some time to warm up to a conversation before she’s comfortable expressing an emotion, or she’s so uncomfortable expressing an emotion that she needs to leave immediately afterwards. In both cases, the emotions remain somewhat buried within intentionally complex language.

Rose naturally takes charge in conversations, and prefers to discuss topics she feels knowledgeable on. When talking to John, she employs subtle topic shifts to focus on what she knows for certain and what is directly actionable. She also explicitly refers to doing outside research to be better informed in this conversation. When talking to Dave, Rose engages in conversational sparring where neither party is in charge of the flow, and is thrown off when Dave is able to take control over the conversation by seeing through her surface words to the motives beneath.

Rose’s message color is #b536da, described as ‘bright magenta’ or ‘dark orchid.’ Purple is broadly associated with royalty, power, magic, night, creativity, and enlightenment. It is also a feminine color, and surveys suggest it is a more popular color for women than the archetypically feminine pink. In Rose’s case I would highlight purple as a spooky and mysterious color, distinct from black (which is most likely the Pesterchum default color), which she may have chosen due to her interest in horror and her desire to appear mysterious. ‘Purple prose’ is also a common term for unnecessarily extravagant and fanciful writing, which on the meta level of the story, could be a good description of Rose’s typing overall.

Dave Strider

Dave’s typing style is extremely minimalist, stripped of most signifiers of spoken, written, and internet language. He very rarely uses capitalization or punctuation - he sometimes uses question marks when relevant, but not always. ‘what do you want with john’ leaves the question mark implied. Dave does however make extensive use of quotation marks, which he uses to roleplay with himself and create hypothetical characters on the fly. He is a writer like Rose, creating blogs and webcomics, and this shows in his extensive instant message monologues. However, as all of his writing intentionally breaks the formal rules of written language, his messages share very few similarities with standard writing and are mostly incomplete sentence fragments.

Dave uses filler words and conversational slang, and contractions without an apostrophe. He regularly uses ‘yeah,’ ‘what,’ ‘look,’ ‘ok,’ ‘damn,’ and ‘shit,’ which are written out even though they don’t add additional meaning to his messages. Despite this, his typing overall reads as less conversational than John, partly because the lack of punctuation means his words don’t have the clear cadence of speech.

Dave does not use emojis or laughter, which connects to the overall lack of emotion in his messages. He occasionally uses acronyms such as ‘FU’ and ‘nm’ which are exclusive to internet language. In his case, this might indicate that he has no interest in the topic under discussion and doesn’t think it’s worth the attention of a full message, as he has no issue writing far longer messages when he has the inspiration. His other hobbies indicate that Dave is familiar with Internet culture overall, so not using internet language is a conscious choice he makes - perhaps he thinks this style of messaging is no longer cool.

According to my editor who is cool for real, being taciturn (untalkative and reserved) is a classic trait of “cool guys,” suggesting that Dave uses acronyms when he is focused on his cool persona, and writes longer messages when he gets swept away in his thoughts and forgets to put on this act.

Dave averages around seven words per message, although the sample taken did not include any of his raps, which could potentially raise this number. In his conversations with Rose and John, he sends significantly more messages than his conversation partner. With GG he sends a similar number of messages, but in all three conversations, Dave has a much higher total wordcount. He clearly has a lot to say and has no qualms about saying it as often as he likes. There are also only two occasions where he includes two separate sentences in the same message, and he regularly splits up a sentence across multiple messages, such as when he sends ‘cal is dope’ ‘puppets are awesome’ ‘john egbert blows’ as three separate entries. Dave’s general lack of punctuation means that the enter key is the closest thing he has to a comma or period, which could explain his greater tendency to split messages. Alternatively, the fact that he is generally extroverted and enjoys talking could mean that he sends one message at a time and then continues to add additional thoughts until his conversation partner responds.

Dave is fairly vague with information as it pertains to his own life, saying that he ‘took [his] awesome katana’ to the living room ‘in case things get too hot to handle’ without elaboration. It is possible that he is working on the assumption that his friends already know about his life. Alternatively, he may not want his friends to know these details, or he may simply want to appear cool and mysterious. When talking about a hypothetical scenario, Dave gets a lot more specific and highly detailed. This shows that he has a strong and active imagination and has no trouble conveying information when he chooses to do so.

Dave is highly defensive when criticized by his friends, even on things that do not particularly matter. He is also extremely opinionated and expresses this often, using a lot of language that is strongly positively or negatively charged. This definitely gives a sense of his personality, and could perhaps be mistaken for emotion, but it’s very hard to get a sense of how he actually feels from his messages. The only emotion he expresses is frustration – despite his desire to talk to his friends often and extensively, he interjects often with ‘oh for fucks sake,’ ‘ok whatever’ or ‘whenever we talk about your goofy modusses i get a migrane [sic]’. It is uncertain if this frustration is how he genuinely feels, or if this is part of an overall affectation crafted to hide more vulnerable feelings.

Dave tries to maintain agency in conversations primarily by holding the floor. In his conversation with John he sends nine consecutive messages, by far the most of any character in the samples taken. When taking these multiple turns, there is less of a chance for his conversation partner to change topics or disrupt the flow. When his friends get a word in edgewise, Dave does accede to topic changes and will stop talking if instructed. He often doesn’t have as much control over his conversations as he’d like, and with both John and Rose, he regularly plays defense against their differing opinions, such as when Rose suggests he might be gay due to refusing to play a game with her, and he tries to assert that he’s just busy.

Interestingly, Dave is just as wrongfooted in his conversation with GG as he is with John and Rose, but he does not act anywhere near as defensive. This may be because John and Rose are intentionally trying to throw him off balance, while GG is simply stating their greater knowledge without a motivation.

Dave’s chosen text color is #e00707, described as ‘vivid red’ or ‘electric red.’ Red is overall associated with heat, fire, passion, danger, blood, anger, love, and courage. It is thought of as a highly emotional color and is eye-catching and difficult to miss on the page. Dave could have chosen to type in red because it gives his messages a sense of urgency, meaning his friends might respond to him more quickly, like when a red flag or exclamation point is added to an email to indicate high priority. A red flag is also a metaphor used to indicate a problem requiring attention – Dave’s red text could mean he either has a problem that isn’t being addressed, or will go on to cause problems for others. Red text is also used in schools to correct errors, and Dave talking in red feels like he is always correcting his friends on their opinions and beliefs.

gardenGnostic

GG has adapted their typing style to the instant messaging medium more than any other character. An online typing style seeks to replicate not only spoken and written dialog, but also paralanguage cues, and adapts itself to the specific medium where the conversation is happening – in this case Pesterchum. In some programs, this could include adding images or external files to a message, or changing font style and size, although we have seen no indication of these being supported on Pesterchum. One of GG’s concessions to the medium is primarily using punctuation for emphasis and effect, not grammar. GG also varies on whether or not they use contractions, sometimes using ‘im’ and ‘dont’ but sometimes using the extended form ‘it is’ – this lack of consistency could again suggest that this is done for effect.

GG s does not always use full sentences, for example using ‘mr cool guy?’ as a sentence when it’s really just a fragment. As such, GG’s messages don’t resemble written language in any meaningful way besides being technically written down.

GG uses filler words such as ‘well,’ ‘anyway,’ ‘so,’ and ‘oh!!!!’ as a way of changing the topic while acknowledging that they are doing so. This is their main concession to spoken language, softening their messages and indicating that they are paying attention to their conversation partner and the overall flow of topics.

GG is the only character to make regular use of emojis, and uses a variety of them. :), :O, :D, ._., O_O and <3 all appear in their text at some point, either as responses in their own right or at the end of another message. They also sometimes use long and drawn out words for emphasis or sarcasm, such as ‘sooooo cooooooool!!!’ As indicated in the same phrase, they are prone to using long strings of exclamation points and ellipses – up to seven exclamation points at once and an eight-period ellipses, both when talking to Dave. They use both ‘lol’ and ‘hehehe’ to indicate laughter.

These adaptations could suggest that GG is accustomed to talking to people on the internet – perhaps they have grown up regularly using chatrooms and have adopted internet communication from here. The opposite could also be true. GG could be accustomed to conversations in real life, and could be making use of these features as they are the only way to convey facial expressions, tone and body language that would come across automatically in person.

GG averages around five words per message, the lowest of the four characters. Their average is brought down by their single-emoji messages (each counted as one word) and their extensive use of message splitting. There are only a few occasions where they include two sentence clauses in a single message, and sometimes they even break up a single clause, seemingly for anticipation – for example ‘it is usually……..’ ‘intense!!!’ as two separate messages. Overall, GG sends fewer words than their conversation partners, but sends a similar number of messages. They don’t appear to be mimicking the number of messages sent, as in their conversation with John, each of them gets a chance to hold the floor and tell a longer story.

GG conveys information clearly, but obscures its source. Their sentences are easy to interpret linguistically, but content wise can appear nonsensical, as they make wild claims that cannot be backed up by available evidence and expect their conversation partners to take this on faith. When questioned how they know these things, GG states ‘i don’t know’ ‘i just know that i know!’ Interestingly, GG does not offer this same faith to their friends, asking John ‘how did you know??’ when he correctly guesses that a meteor explosion happened near her house.

GG’s messages contain almost exclusively positive emotions, and these tend to be exaggerated. Even when discussing restrictions on their own life, they soften more negatively charged messages with a brighter tone and liberal use of exclamation points - ‘i dont think i could if i tried!!!’ GG might be uncomfortable discussing their own negative emotions and any problems in their life, but they’re happy to discuss and even speculate on other people’s feelings. They commiserate with John when he’s upset about losing his neighborhood and potentially his dad to the meteor collision, and they suggest that their pet Bec thinks their own local meteor is dangerous and is trying to protect GG from it. It’s possible that focusing on other people in this way serves to divert attention from GG’s own emotions, allowing them to maintain that positivity whether or not it is true.

GG appears fairly savvy regarding social dynamics and conversational practice, more so than any of the other characters. They seem to maintain agency in conversations whether or not they are actually taking the lead. When talking to Dave, they dispense information slowly and on their own terms, taking advantage of their own superior knowledge. This technique for maintaining tension in a conversation has also been noted in research. GG also utilizes more subtle techniques to manipulate the affect of others, gently poking fun at Dave’s coolness and telling John that all the bad things happening to him might actually be his destiny. This understanding of their friends’ feelings is a unique skill within the friend group.

GG’s text color is #4ac925, also known as ‘strong lime green’ or ‘harlequin green’ - ‘harlequin’ specifically linking them with John, whose house is covered in harlequins. Green in all its variations is associated with nature and plants, growth, life, envy, money, and both health and sickness. Somebody being ‘green’ can mean they are naive or new to something, and GG certainly seems to have a bright and idealistic worldview. Bright green is a fairly gender neutral color and could be used by someone who doesn’t want to associate with either masculinity or femininity. More generally, GG may have selected a bright color to indicate a fun-loving person who doesn’t take themselves too seriously. GG is also the only character whose screen name – gardenGnostic – directly relates to their text color, with the phrase ‘green thumb’ referring to somebody with a talent for gardening. Lime specifically is a type of fruit, potentially one GG could grow if they live in a hot climate.

Analysis (in universe)

When Homestuck begins, John, Rose, Dave and GG already have an established friendship. We don’t see their early interactions or learn how long they’ve been friends, but they know each other well enough to exchange real full names and home addresses, and send each other expensive birthday gifts. As online communities in this era focus on anonymity and internet safety, with many users exclusively going by their screen names, this indicates a close and long term friendship.

Furthermore, these characters have a deep involvement in each other’s day to day lives. One criticism of online friendships in research is that they will always be more surface level than in person friendships, as online friends cannot exist in each other’s space, with their interactions limited to an online setting and sometimes a specific online activity, such as gaming. The rise of smartphones may see this change in the real world, and it’s reflected in Homestuck – John has adopted his dad’s PDA while Dave owns an iPhone, a top of the line technology first released in 2007. Both of them can now talk to their friends from anywhere with internet signal.

Even without portable devices, these characters’ conversations deal with the minutiae of their movements. Dave mentions moving from his bedroom to the living room, John discusses looking for his dad, GG talks about having to go feed a pet, and Dave and GG even consider whether John has checked his mail today. They are about as involved in other people’s lives as geographically distant friends can possibly be, even without accounting for Sburb. They do not exclusively talk about shared interests or focus on the most exciting things happening to them.

In some ways, their relationship is closer to roommates or colleagues – people who spend enough time together every single day that they don’t always enjoy each other’s company, but they continue to navigate how to share space. This is even indicated by the application name ‘Pesterchum,’ with ‘chum’ being a colloquial term for a friend, and ‘pester’ meaning to trouble, disturb, or annoy persistently.

In Homestuck, this shared space is a digital space and all four of them are free to disconnect at any point. Leaving a house or a job is complex, but online there are infinite chatrooms and forums these kids could explore to find new friends, and Pesterchum almost certainly has a ‘blocked users’ function if any of them wanted to cut the others out of their lives. Online friends are friends who continually make the choice to be in each other’s lives without circumstances dictating this, and it is a sign of a strong bond, maturity, and the acceptance of others’ quirks that four thirteen year olds are making this choice despite personality differences and sometimes visible annoyance with each other.

All four characters have strong and well established typing styles that they don’t significantly modify based on their conversation partner. While they might use an individual turn of phrase borrowed from a friend, they keep the same stylistic features, which is not always the case for IM users. Some real world users may be inclined to, for example, use capitalization if their conversation partner does this also, for fear of standing out negatively.

It’s certainly possible that they would change styles when talking to somebody outside their social group, and the biggest limitation of this analysis is that we only have Pesterlogs between these existing close friends. It would be very interesting to see these characters talk with strangers or acquaintances, and compare these with their in-group chats. It would also be interesting, if any of these characters ever meet in person – as John and Rose may if she is able to enter the Sburb universe – to compare their spoken dialog to their Pesterlogs.

One research group noted that young people did not subscribe to ‘an artificial distinction between the corruption of online space and the sanctuary of the home’ (Valentine et al.), as their participants broadly believed that harmful content online could also be found offline. I believe that on both its in-universe and meta levels, Homestuck begins by drawing this boundary in the opposite direction. The work presents Pesterchum as a sanctuary from the troubles of the offline world, and the home as the corrupt space where unpleasant entities invade on the characters’ lives and minds.

Homestuck may go on to interrogate this dichotomy via Sburb, but its early position does reflect a reality. Many young people don’t view the home as a sanctuary, and are forced to find community and collective identity elsewhere. These characters’ geographical isolation is not their only problem; all four have tense relationships with their families due to a disconnect in identities or expectations. And due to their differences in personality and hobbies, there is likely a common factor linking these four kids together.

Queer communities and neurodivergent communities have been found to flourish online, and these communities often more easily understand the communication styles of others within the group, while those outside the group may struggle. I believe that the characters all belonging to one of these groups could explain the strength of their friendship, and the reason they feel most comfortable in online spaces.

Analysis (out of universe)

Zooming out one layer further, I’ll consider the implications that Pesterchum has on Homestuck as a work and its audience.

So far, Homestuck only has one line of spoken dialog – the word “Stop!” used by Dave on page 354. As such, Pesterlogs are not a supplement to spoken conversations, they are a substitute. Pesterlogs are effective in that they can make use of the stylistic features discussed in this essay to add characterization. These features show how the author views their characters, as well as how the characters view themselves, given their control (in universe) over their messages. In a story where the narrator appears to be a character, with their own perspectives filtering the thoughts of John, Rose, Dave and GG, it is valuable to give these characters a chance to make themselves heard directly through their messages.

A webcomic is an exclusively online medium, and while some aspects of the Internet (such as social media) are becoming mainstream, webcomics still attract niche audiences of people who spend a lot of time online. While a few have broken from their confines, such as xkcd, these tend to be single-strip serialized comics like those found in newspapers, not longform stories like Homestuck. As such, it’s a reasonable assumption that Homestuck readers are probably also instant messenger users – and that they likely have online friends and acquaintances, read other webcomics, look at memes, read or maintain blogs, play video games, and may even have a basic knowledge of coding. The average audience member has already experienced the different multimedia formats that Homestuck plays with, and can relate these to their own experiences online.

Instant messaging chatlogs are just one of many formats that slot perfectly into a webcomic, not only because the medium allows for them on a technological level, but because of this assumed familiarity that would not be present in other groups. A Pesterlog could appear in a different form of fiction, such as a novel or even a poem, but novel and poetry readers skew to an older and less online demographic. They may struggle to interpret Dave’s coolguy slang, GG’s emojis, or the significance of Rose’s perfect grammar, while reading messages and gaining an implicit sense of character comes naturally to IM users.

John, Rose, Dave and GG’s typing styles are all different enough that, even without chumhandles or colors, it would be easy to determine who was speaking just from their messages - something much easier for an author to achieve in IM versus spoken dialog. It also reflects the reality that, far from being the homogenous wall of acronyms expected by writers and researchers who don’t use IM, people do type in a wide range of styles that reflect their actual and assumed personalities. IM users exercise a certain amount of control over how to present themselves, but their choices here reveal many clues to their underlying selves.

Finally, Homestuck successfully and sympathetically portrays a different lifestyle to what’s commonly found in fiction about teenagers. Television shows commonly explore the social and popularity dynamics of high schoolers forced into the same building, and while unpopular characters may well be protagonists, giving them friends and love interests at school is necessary to tell the story. Characters who are entirely socially isolated in real life need to have this factor changed before they can be three dimensional and participate in the narrative. This means that a character who lives online is typically a caricature, shown either as an unfortunate and inept loser who needs to be ‘fixed’ (or is beyond help), or a naive and uneducated child who will learn a lesson about internet safety when someone they talk to online turns out to not be who they claim.

In Homestuck, in person social dynamics are nonexistent or irrelevant. Online friendships are allowed to meet characters’ social needs with peers of their own age, and are never shown as lesser than other kids for having these online social lives. While the narrator gently pokes fun at characters for their mishaps, these jabs aren’t based on their popularity or ‘weird’ status. To an online audience, many of whom are or were in the same position as these main characters, Homestuck earnestly validates how fulfilling and meaningful an online, instant messenger based friendship can be. In my opinion, this is one of its greatest strengths as a work.

Here is a list of sources used in this essay

Thanks so much to anyone who read all this! :D

#homestuck #john egbert #rose lalonde #dave strider #gardengnostic #wrote half of this in the emergency room. and to be clear. had an absolute BLAST #really thought itd be like half this length tho....#analysis #chrono

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