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[[Image:Sburb.png|thumb|500px|right|The logo of Sburb, and de-facto logo of Homestuck.]]
[[Image:Sburb.png|thumb|500px|right|The logo of Sburb, and de-facto logo of Homestuck.]]
[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=001901 '''Homestuck'''] (also known as Hamsteak) is a [[webcomic]] written by one Andrew Hussie. It is but one of the comics featured on his website, [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=001901 MS Paint Adventures], which is often abbreviated into MSPA. It is famous for being even more WORDS WORDS WORDS than [[Fail|Ctrl+Alt+Delete]], having a shit-ton of characters and one of the most <s>annoying</s> <s>[[rage|''wonderful'']]</s> prominent fanbases in existence. For this reason it is often referred to on [[/tg/]] as [[skub|Homeskub]].
[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=001901 '''Homestuck'''] (also known as '''Hamsteak''' or '''Homosuck''') is a [[webcomic]] written by one Andrew Hussie. It is but one of the comics featured on his website, [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=001901 MS Paint Adventures], which is often abbreviated into MSPA. It is famous for being even more WORDS WORDS WORDS than [[Fail|Ctrl+Alt+Delete]], having a shit-ton of characters and one of the most <s>annoying</s> <s>[[rage|''wonderful'']]</s> [[Skub|prominent]] fanbases in existence. For this reason it was often referred to on [[4chan]] as [[skub|Homeskub]] during its heyday.
'''Spoilers ahoy, yo.'''
{{stub}}
== What is Homestuck? ==
== What is Homestuck? ==
Homestuck began on April 13th 2009, one month after the creator's previous story, [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=000219 Problem Sleuth], had ended. It started out in the same vein as its predecessors; a [[Quest]]-style comic run soley by user input. The first three stories, [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=1&p=000002 Jailbreak] (wrapped up in a hastily manner), [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=2&p=000136 Bardquest] (unfinished), and Problem Sleuth (actually finished) channeled [[Old School Roleplaying|old-school point-and-click adventure games]] based of a man trying to escape prison, a [[bard]] in his quest to slay a [[dragon]], and a hard-boiled private investigator trying to leave his office respectively. Andrew Hussie went in a different direction with his newest work.Homestuck started with a kid called John Egbert who was trying to talk his friends into playing a hot new game called Sburb with him. This soon escalated into [[Exterminatus|surviving meteors]], [[Primarchs|cloning themselves]], [[Rip and Tear|fighting all sorts of monsters]], [[heresy|dealing with aliens of various degrees of friendliness/bloodthirst]] and an immortal [[Doctor Who|Time Lord]] demon mobster pimp wanting to [[Rage|DESTROY EVERYTHING]]. Notable is that it is more than a regular comic strip; it sometimes includes simple animations, complex Flash animations, entire flash games, and a soundtrack that covers over a dozen albums. You can also buy the printed version of the comic from the website. So you do not only read Homestuck, you watch it, play it, listen to it and buy it.
Homestuck began on April 13th 2009, one month after the creator's previous story, [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=000219 Problem Sleuth], had ended. It started out in the same vein as its predecessors; a [[Quest]]-style comic run solely by user input. The first three stories, [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=1&p=000002 Jailbreak] (left unfinished for ages, then wrapped up hastily partway through Homestuck), [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=2&p=000136 Bardquest] (a multiple choice experiment that was abandoned very early and will likely never be finished), and Problem Sleuth (actually finished, and whose unexpected popularity directly precipitated Homestuck) channeled [[Old School Roleplaying|old-school point-and-click adventure games]] based of a man trying to escape prison, a [[bard]] in his quest to slay a [[dragon]], and a hard-boiled private investigator trying to leave his absurd office respectively.
=== Who are these douchebags? ===
{Template:Spoilers}
Aka, the character primer.Homestuck has over the course of its three and a half years of existence amassed a spectaculary huge cast of characters. There are four kids who each have their own guardian/pet, Consort, Denizen, Exile, Archagent, [[Salamanders|Wise Black Man (from here on referred to as WBM]] and more. This is discounting the Trolls and their associated characters, who increase this total by roughly four dozen. Then there are the
==== Kids ====
The four "main" characters of Homestuck are the Kids. They are the initial players of Sburb and have SHIT GO REAL on them.
{| border=0 cellpadding=5 style="float:right"
|-
{| border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=4
|- valign=top
! Name !! Chat Nem !! Title !! Weapon !! Guardians !! Land !! Exile !! Archagent !! WBM !! Description
|- valign=top
| '''John Egbert''' || ectoBiologist (formerly ghostlyTrickster || Heir of Breath || [[Warhammer|Hammerkind]] || Nanna/Dad || Land of Wind and Shale || Wayward Vagabond || Jack Noir || Bill Cosby || The closest thing the comic has to a main character, John is the guy we know the most about. He's a bit of a [[/tg/|jerk]], loves cheesy movies (Nicolas Cage being his personal hero), is a bit of a [[derp]] but he has good intentions, is a good friend and is quite brave. He is as of writing the msot powerful of the kids; seeing as the others can travel through time on a whim or [[rip and tear|teleport your guts straight out of your body]] this really says something.
|- valign=top
| '''Rose Lalonde''' || [[Illithid|tentacleTherapist]] || Seer of Light || Needlekind || Mom/Jaspers || Land of Light and Rain || Peregrine Mendicant || Draconian Dignitary || Charles Barkley || Rose is intelligent, sarcastic and thinks that everyone but she has issues of some kind. Is a big fan of the works of [[Lovecraft]] and Freud and tries to psychoanalyse anyone she meets. Despite her outward snark she cares for her friends and alcoholic mother and will protect and help them any way she can. Went [[grimdark]] at one point, but it did not stick.
|- valign=top
| '''Dave Strider''' || turntechGodhead || Knight of Time || 1/2swordkind || Bro/Cal || Land of Heat and Clockwork || Aimless Renegade || Hegemonic Brute || Snoop Dogg || The coolkid. Dave knows everything about being cool and ironic, or at least he thinks he does. Actually has an inferiority complex where he thinks he sucks compared to his bro (he doesn't). He is also the author of the tremendously shitty webcomic ''Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff'' which is so bad it curves back on the badness scale it becomes awesome again. Other hobbies of his include mixing music, rap, photography and keeping up with internet pop culture. He also mastered the ability to flash step; how he did this is as of yet unknown.
|- valign=top
| '''Jade Harley''' || gardenGnostic || Witch of Space || [[Dakka|Riflekind]] || Grandpa/[[Chaos Spawn|Becquerel]] || Land of Frost and Frogs || Windswept Questant || Courtyard Droll || Charles Dutton || The resident "strange girl", Jade grew up alone on an island in the Pacific with only her grandfather, her devil-dog Becquerel and her internet friends to keep her company. She is quite skilled in the ways of nuclear science, is a crack shot and has bouts of narcolepsy. Not that she suffers because of this: she has a "dream bot" that allows her to fly around and interact with her home when she's asleep. Though quite friendly and energetic, she will drop the attitude fast when she becomes sassed. She also enjoys gardening, playing the flute and bass (not at the same time) and watching tv shows with [[furry|anthropomorphic animals]], but she would not dream of wearing a fursuit.
|}
|}
== What is Sburb? ==
Sburb is the fictional game that got the plot rolling. It is a combination of The Sims, Spore and [[Minecraft]], with a bit of Earthbound thrown in. The main goal of the game is to defeat the Black King of Derse and claim his scepter to stop The Reckoning, [[Exterminatus|an event that destroys everything in a massive rain of meteors.]] The ultimate goal however is to create a new universe for you and your co-players to live in. Sburb is indended a multiplayer game: you require two players as a base minimal, the highest number of players in a single session is 48. This number needs to be even.
The game itself is described best as a [[LARP]] supplemented by [[Video_games|vidja]] elements. You are the player and as you play you level up, gain special powers, magic items and may even transcend humanity. But more on that later.
=== Getting Started ===
To start the game you need fellow players and one copy of the game's Client and Server disks for each. You install the Client disk while your a fellow player installs the Server disk, making you the "client player" to his/hers "server player". Each player installs their disks so that everyone is both a server for and client of another player.
This does not immediately change anything for the client, but the server will see the following sceen focused on the player. [http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002038 This menu bar is where it all happens.] This grants the player three cursor options and four menus:
* The Select cursor allows the server to pick up and move objects. This expends Build Grist; the heavier/larger the object, the more it costs to pick something up.
Andrew Hussie went in a different direction with his newest work, by making it about a group of early teenagers who chat and play video games online. Homestuck begins with goofy young hero John Egbert getting his hands on beta copies of a hot new game called Sburb for his birthday. What looks like a novel team-based version of the Sims takes a crazy turn when the game reveals powerful reality-warping properties, and matters soon begin to escalate as John and company find themselves [[Exterminatus|surviving meteors]], [[Primarchs|cloning themselves]], [[Rip and Tear|fighting all sorts of monsters]], [[heresy|dealing with aliens of various degrees of friendliness and/or blood thirst]] and ultimately facing an immortal [[Doctor Who|Time Lord]] demonic time-traveling minmaxing crime boss seeking [[Rage|terrible and destructive ends]].
* The Revise cursor lets the server player build: walls, stairs, ladders, roofs and so on. As above: the bigger the construction the more Build Grist it costs. For example, a ladder costs more than a flight of stairs, which costs more than a small-sized floor.
* The Deploy cursor interacts with the Phernalla Registry as listed below; it allows for game objects to be placed within the world.
* The Phernalla Registry is the game's inventory. It can hold objects created by the game itself (more on that later) and objects created with them.
* The Grist Cache is where the Build Grist is stored, alongside many other types of Grist the players will discover. There are several basic shapes for the Grist: one shaped like twelve triangles slapped together to form a not-quite [die]], cubes and droplets.
* The Explore Atheneum is a store of some kind: players can spend Grist to gain access to new game objects and upgrades for the existing ones.
* The Alchemy Excursus is where the crafting recipies discovered during the game are stored.
All the MS Paint Adventures are notable for being more than regular comic strips; Homestuck frequently includes simple animations, occasional Flash animations of escalating complexity, entire flash games, and a soundtrack that covers several dozen albums. You can also buy printed versions of the comic from the website in case you want a hands on experience, but that means missing out on the flash goodness and razing acres of forest. So not only do you read Homestuck, you watch it, play it, listen to it and (maybe) buy it.
At the beginning of the game, the Phernalla Registry will have five items in it that are essential to the progress of the game:
Homestuck has over the course of its seven years of existence amassed a spectacularly huge cast of characters. There are four kids who each have their own guardian/pet, Consort, Denizen, Exile, Archagent, [[Salamanders|Wise Black Man]] and more. Then there are the Trolls and their associated characters, who increase this total by roughly four dozen, and many more beyond. The cast was then further doubled by introducing the kid versions of the Kids' guardians and the Trolls' ancestors via parallel universe shenanigans. This all gets very complicated, and there is good reason to believe that Hussie was duplicating of parts of the cast solely to bait the fandom into shipping (for his own perverse lolz).
* The Cruxtruder needs to be activated in order to start the game and can extrude an endless amount of Cruxite Dowels (footlong cylinders in the color associated with the player, more on this later).
It finally ended on April 13th 2016 after 2 gigantic pauses that disbanded the fandom (a lot of them jumping ship to Toby Fox (a composer for Homestuck)'s equally [[skub]] [[/v/|Undertale]]), including the retconning of several hundred pages with time travel shenanigans, and ''ye gods'' it was about time. For both the fandom and the comic.
* The Totem Lathe is designed to carve Cruxite Dowels into usable shapes, depending on the inserted Punched Card(s) (again, more on this later).
* The Alchemiter can "read" carved Cruxite Dowels and create the object they represent. This can be upgraded with a number of shunts that allow players to insert items to give the Alchemiter properties associated with the inserted item.
* The Punch Designix can turn Captchalogue Cards into Punched Cards to make objects usable for Alchemization (yes, I'm getting to that in a bit). Players enter a code obtained from the back of a Capchalogue card and insert a Capchalogue card which is then punched. It is important to note that the code punched into the card does not need to match the code on the card, meaning you can punch empty cards and save the original object as punching a card locks the item in.
* The Punched Card is vital for starting the game successfully; it contains your Cruxite Artifact and is the first object a player must craft and interact with in order to enter the game.
Real fandoms don't die, they go god tier.
As hinted at above, players are able to create items with the various game objects. To do so they must carry out the following steps:
* Obtain the objects you wish to combine to create an item.
* Obtain a Cruxite Dowel from the Cruxtruder.
* Read the code on the back of the Captchalogue card, enter it into the Punch Designix and punch a card. A code consists of eight digits with letters A-Z (with a difference between capital and lower case), numbers 0-9 and the ? and !, for a total of 64^8=281.474.976.710.656 (281 quadrillion) different combinations. You now have a punched card.
* Take the card and the Dowel to the Totem Lathe. Insert the Dowel and the card in that order to get a Carved Totem.
* Put the Totem on the pedestal of the Alchemiter. If you have enough Grist, the Alchemiter will substract an amount from your Grist Cache and create the item. Totems are infinitely reusable when they are made.
One of the first items a player should make is a Capchalogue Card. When you have a Carved Totem based on one (code 00000000), you can make Capchalogue Cards at the cost of 1 Grist of your choice. This is very useful when crafting a large batch of items in one go.
=== Entering the Medium ===
When you are ready to start playing you need to remove the lid from the Cruxtruder. A heavy blow or something big dropped on it will remove the lid, release a Kernelsprite and start a countdown anywhere in between 3 minutes to 4 hours. During this time you need to do two things: prototype your Kernelsprite and making and doing something with your Cruxite Artifact.
Prototyping you Kernelsprite is simple: you must throw something into it. This is a double-edged sword: the more useful item you throw into it the more useful your Sprite is during the game, but the kernel powers your enemies. So you might not want to throw in your [[Bloodthirster]] or your [[Nicol Bolas]] card, because that will ramp up the difficulty of the game quite a bit. Prototyping needs to be done twice: once before you enter the game and once after, or both before. Doing both prototypings after entering (or not at all) will render the game unwinnable.
Interacting with the Cruxite Artifact is more difficult. They all symbolise departure somehow, be it an apple (the loss of innocence like with original sin), a bottle (christening a ship), an egg (leaving a secluded place) or a dog (symbolises death and renewal in some cultures). Figuring this out needs to be done quickly.
If you fail to do this in time a meteor flattens your house and kills you. If you succeed however, you and your house will be teleported into The Medium. Immediately upon entering your Kernelsprite will lose its Kernel, which splits in half and goes to either side of the Incipisphere. That is where the game truly begins.
It is strongly advised players enter one by one so that Server players can help their Clients if needed.
=== The Incipisphere ===
You will find yourself in a strange new location called the Incipisphere, which will be the location where the game takes place. There are a few places of note here:
* Every Incipisphere has one planet per player. This will be the primary location for their quests, though they can visit each other's planets. They share a naming convention that goes as follows: Land Of (one syllable word) And (one word). Meaning you get names like LOWAS, LOLAR, LOHAC and LOFAF. There is one known exception that overrides the third word in the name so it spelled [[meme|LOLCAT]]. Together they float around in what is called The Medium. Fortunately the transition from Earth to these worlds kept electricity, the internet and possibly plumbing all working despite no longer being connected to anything. It should also be noted that while in the medium itself players are provided with oxygen and atmosphereic pressure while there being no logical source for these things. The exact workings of gravity while in the Medium is unknown, but there seems to be no inertia while floating around in there. Perhaps it is related to the [[Planescape#The_Primary_Elemental_Planes|Elemental Plane of Air]], but there is little known about the nature of the Medium. Every planet has seven Gates positioned above the house of the player; each must be traveled through in order to reach the Battlefield and reach the end of the game.
* Skaia rests at the center of the Incipisphere. It is one of the objectives of the players to reach Skaia and her battlefield near the end of the game. On this battlefield a perpetual war rages between the kingdoms of light and darkness, Prospit and Derse. More on these places later.
* The Veil is a belt of asteroids that circles close to the border of the Incipisphere. They contain numerous labs, facilities and installations needed to continue the war between Prospit and Derse.
Beyond the Incipishere lies the Furthest Ring, a [[Warp|Realm without reason or logic, where time and space mean nothing]] [[Chaos Gods|and is inhabited by a patheon of unspeakable horrors]] [[Call of Cthulhu|whose true forms would drive any mortal insane]].
==== Prospit and Derse ====
Sooner or later you discover you have another body when you fall asleep: your "dream self". You will also discover that this person wakes up in a room that looks just like your bedroom (except in either yellow or purple) on the moon of either Prospit or Derse. These are the two kingdoms that fight the war on the battlefield.
While these dream selves share the same abilities that you have they have no access to your inventory: anything you do you will have to do with your own wit and skills, more espionage and intelligence work than outright warfare. To compensate for this you are given one ability in return: based on what planet you are on you get either prophethic images of the future when you peer into the clouds of Skaia, or you can [[heresy|converse with the members of the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors]] who reside in the Furthest Ring.
There is a difference to how Prospit and Derse treat the players: Prospit sees them as heroes and saviors in a war they are destined to lose, while Derse opposes them. It is difficult for Dersites to harm the players because of a set of rules in place that prevents them from attacking the players before the full-out war begins.
==== The Battlefield ====
At the center of Skaia is the Battlefield, a [[chess]]-like location where the final parts of the game takes place. Its shape depends on the number of prototypings that have taken place. Unprototyped it resembles a 3x chess boards with the only pieces on it are two kings locked in a never-ending game: one black and one white. If you have a basic grasp of chess you will realise this is an eternal stalemate. But as more and more prototypings take place, the battlefield changes. A single prototyping increases its size to a large chess board with multiple pieces on it, a second turns it into a massive cube, a third into a sphere and a fourth adds a series of non-euclidian tentacle-ridges around the sphere.
While being mainly a series of black and white checked hills and plains, there are some features including fertile ground for growing crops, bodies of water, forests and castles.
=== Residents of the Incipisphere ===
The players are not alone in the Incipisphere. A number of beings reside on the players' planets, Prospit, Derse and the Battlefield.
==== Carapaces ====
The peoples referred to as the Carapaces (because of their tough exoskeletons) are the inhabitants of Prospit and Derse. They are on average shorter than an adult human and a slight bit stockier. While not more difficult to directly kill than humans, they are less likely to succumb to wounds to non-critical locations and are less likely to bleed out. The lower-ranking Carapaces have dentures that consist solely of molars, while the higher-ranking Carapaces possess arrays of cutting teeth for eating meat.
The King and Queen are both Carapaces, as are their subjects (commonly referred to as pawns or agents, depending on their activeness in the war). Both kingdoms also employ living constructs that are upsized versions of Carapaces. Derse is known to employ Archagents, Carapaces of more intellect, cunning and skill. They are often sent on more dangerous or difficult missions for the kingdom.
Every player will have a Carapace assigned to him/her to serve as a guide; these are called Exiles for they have been exiled from the Incipisphere to the players' home planet, to a time period several centuries after they lived there.
==== Consorts ====
On every of the player's planets lives a race of intelligent [herp]tiles called Consorts. They live in simple agricultural Iron Age-style communities and worship Billous Slick (more on him later). The consorts are not very smart; while capable of speech and able to follow simple instructions they appear to have limited capabilities of deduction and have difficulty understanding human technology. The Consorts are also non-violent; they have zero combat ability making them easy targets for the various Underlings.
==== Underlings ====
Creations of the Denizens of the various planets, these are the primary enemies within Sburb. They are found on the players' planets and will begin to attack their houses upon their entry into the game. While mainly the servants of the Denizens, they are on friendly terms with the forces of Derse and will cooperate to achieve mutual goals on the planets. They seem to possess an intellect on the level of the Consorts. All Underlings are enhanced by prototyping, so if you were to prototype a [[Magic: The Gathering|Myr]] card and a bird, the Underlings could have Myr-like noses, wings, slender arms and legs, beaks, tails, or any of the above combined. These attributes combine with all those gained from prototyping, so you can expect to see a large variation of Underlings during the game. There exist a number of Underlings, some of which include:
* Imps are the most common enemy. Standing at roughly 1 meter tall they can pose challenges for new, unupgraded players unless they have considerable enhancements from prototyping.
* Ogres are the second-most common enemy. They are roughly 4 meters tall and possess large tusks. While large and physically strong they should prove no challenge for a player of a reasonable level or with moderately powerful equipment.
* [[Basilisk]]s are lizard-like creatures approximately six meters long. They fortunately do not possess a dealy gaze like most of their namesakes do, but they can easily devour a low-level player.
* Giclopses are large (6 meters) enemies with short legs and low-browed heads. They are very strong and can be more than a match for players early in the game, but can be overcome with wits, skill and proper equipment.
* [[Lich]]es are amongst the first mid-level enemies. Approximately as tall as an adult human, they have gaunt bipedal bodies and skull-like heads. They are said to be frighteningly powerful, but the few times they appeared [[FAIL|the protagonists made quick work of them]].
There are other, rarer kinds of Underlings including massive horned or multiple-armed giants, giant octopi, huge skull monsters called Acherons, tick-like things called Titachnids and the enormous faceless things called the [[World of Warcraft|Lich Queens]].
Quite possibly the toughest enemies in the game, the Denizens are the de facto rulers of the players' planets. They have massive serpentine bodies, are incredibly strong and possess amazing intellect. Another notable thing is that they are aware of their status as constructs in a game, but do not take action based on this. They serve as the penultimate final bosses for the players, to be defeated in a 1-on-1 fight between the planet's player and the denizen itself. Aside from serving as a "final exam" of sorts to test if the players are ready they also possesss immense hoards of Grist which is needed for the endgame. Which Denizen a player has is determined by the player's Aspects, which is described on the right.
== So Why's This so Popular? ==
== So Why's This so Popular? ==
[[File:Lemme_tell_you.jpg|300|thumb|right|This is a meme called "Lemmy Telya". It is a picture of a disgruntled security guard at a convention looking at disdain at a group of cosplayers. In any other fandom this would have passed over quietly. Not in Homestuck. They named him Lemmy Telya, a bastardised version of "Let me tell ya/you". There was art of him. There was a cosplay of him. There was art of said cosplay. There was [[Rule 63]] art of him. All [[Salamanders|black people]] pointing/looking at Homestuck cosplays were dubbed as "Lemmy Telya", including a lunch lady and a man who looks like the black [[awesome|Techno]] [[vikings|Viking]]. The reaction of said security guard to all this is as of yet unknown, but someone will try to get it. Poor man.]]
[[File:Lemme_tell_you.jpg|300|thumb|right|This is a meme called "Lemmy Telya". It is a picture of a disgruntled security guard at a convention looking at disdain at a group of cosplayers. In any other fandom this would have passed over quietly. Not in Homestuck. They named him Lemmy Telya, and you can guess why. There was art of him. There was a cosplay of him. There was art of said cosplay. There was [[Rule 63]] of him. Any black people pointing/looking at Homestuck cosplays were dubbed "Lemmy Telya", including a lunch lady and a man who looks like black [[awesome|Techno]] [[vikings|Viking]]. The reaction of said security guard to all this is as of yet unknown, but someone will try to get it. Poor man.]]
For a number of reasons.
=== Length ===
=== Length ===
First off, Homestuck is fucking HUGE, and therefore [[Rip and Tear|has huge guts]]. Said [[Berserk|guts]] include having a page count that hit 5000 on June 1st this year (only two webcomics at that time shared having passed that count, and they started in ''fucking 1995 and 1997''). MSPA as a whole hit the ''7000'' page count on June 21st this year. This is an average of 5 panels per day, every day. Wrap your heads around that one.
It's pretty damn long, so getting engrossed in the story means you'll have a lot of fun to look forward to. This is a blessing and a curse.
It should be noted that what counts as a "page" for MSPA can vastly differ. It can be a simple image with a caption (or none at all), or as complex as a 20-minute flash game or a 13-minute flash movie that [[Wat|''brought down MSPA, Megaupload and Newgrounds when it was released'']].
So to honestly judge its length would be by word count. That, my friends, is where it goes [[Tzeentch|balls-''through''-the-wall insane]]. Around August 30th 2012 (that is 3 years, 4 months and 17 days since the start of the comic) this webcomic is, including all transcribed words in the flashes, walk-around games and static images, are you ready for it?
'' '''Approximately 800,000 words long.''' ''
That is not a typo. That is really an eight followed by ''five'' zeroes. Homestuck has a bigger word count than freaking Ulysses ''times three'', or bigger than one Ulysses combined with either ''War and Peace'', Les Misérables or Atlas Shrugged. It is in fact of comparable length to Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Shit's long yo.
=== Storytelling ===
=== Storytelling ===
Andrew Hussie has an above-average thesaurus and is rather adept at playing with words, creating new ones and giving new meanings to others. He also frequently reuses earlier parts of his story including jokes, chat logs that are to be read a second time now that you know who the character on the other side is, objects that suddenly turn out to be EXTREMELY important some few thousand pages later. For example, this is an 100% accurate quote from last year regarding the then-new developments:
The author likes to play with words. All of Gussie's work is horribly punny, and filled with very creative wordplay. Plays on wording and meaning can sometimes be both figurative and literal within the comic, and this leads to Fun.
''"So a seemingly insignificant item from the beginning of the story is suddenly and literally RAGE'd into existence by a bloodthirsty purple alien juggalo, and the very same item connects randomly and equally insignificant-looking events to explain the cause of pretty much every bad thing in the story. And it was all Betty Crocker's doing, because she tweeted an [[Cegorach|ICP]] video to a time traveling hipster wannabe on a site called Delirious Biznasty. In the past. Also, she's an alien too. For those keeping score at home, this made things ''less'' confusing.''
I would like to repeat that this is 100% accurate.
The good mister Hussie is also fond of adding easter eggs regarding, mentioning, referring to and wholesale copying, his earlier stories. The most jarring one is an event in Act 6 Act 3 that nearly page-by-page copies an earlier of his stories. Some of them like a story called [[AIDS|And It Don't Stop]] (which is about rapping [[Necrons|robots]]) is homaged with a bit more restraint.
He often repeats his own jokes as well with slight twists to them, such as variations of "It keeps hapening bro" (sic) which has been turned into a pair of banners for [[4chan]]. Others include "Succumb to unfathomable x", "Huge bitch bluh bluh", various uses of the word douchebag, fuckass, bulge and nook, and many, MANY more.
The author loves to be self-referential, and make references to earlier points in the plot. And also earlier in the story, in general, turning throwaway footnotes into major plot points for laughs. Homestuck is therefore a massive cluster fuck of "oh yeah that thing." He also loves Easter-eggs.
While on the subject of story telling, there is the absolute clusterfuck of how the story exists in relation to the others. Bardquest and Jailbreak have been shown to exist within Problem Sleuth. Problem Sleuth and these games are all [[video games]] in Homestuck. MSPA itself exists within Homestuck too, except there it is a story about a group of mobsters called the Midnight Crew, who had appeared in the extra material for Problem Sleuth. After Act 3 there was an intermission starring these guys and show that in their universe MSPA exists as well, being about a story very similar to that of Homestuck called Hivebent. It then turns out that that story actually happened, the Midnight Crew had met the characters in Hivebent and helped them in their version of Sburb. It THEN turns out that the events of Hivebent created the universe in which Homestuck takes place.
Further, he does the now-popular thing of using multiple universes, so that everything can be really clusterfucked, bigtime, and the story can continue.
This means that the Midnight Crew is fictional in the Homestuck universe, the Hivebent universe both is and is not fictional in the Midnight Crew setting and the events of the Homestuck MSPA took place in the universe that was indirectly created by the Midnight Crew. It's the biggest brainfuck since that episode of [[Doctor Who]] that revealed that, while Doctor Who and Eastenders (A British series and not relevant to the point at hand) are fictional series in each other's universes they also exist in the same universe. It's like meeting [[Vulkan]] who tells you that his people have been telling stories about you and yours for decades. And this is not even counting the "Alpha" universe.
=== References ===
Homestuck, to a degree beyond any of Hussie's other work, is a mess of references to pop culture. Everything from old-school video RPG tropes (like arbitrary elemental alignments, players ignoring the story, annoying inventory management schemes) to juggalos to jabs at overly-involved shippers (like the kind that Homestuck inevitably attracted). The comic is rooted in 2013, so growing up around that time really helps when reading.
Also this would mean that there are three iterations of Andrew Hussie running around; one in our universe, one in the Homestuck universe and one in the Hivebent universe. Welp.
=== The Story Itself ===
The story roughly resembles [[Avatar: The Last Airbender]] in that there are four kids with different personalities and backgrounds (yes I know Katara and Sokka are siblings and are not that different in that regard, go eat a dick) have supernatural powers and have to deal with problems far, FAR bigger than any 13 year old should handle. Or any adult. Or anyone who's not the [[Emperor]]. The scope set on only a few characters and their struggles, group dynamic and their problems with budding relationships. This, combined with the HUGE cast (there is a joke where [[Pokemon|the original 151 characters are said to the poster's favorites, this is within the realm of possiblity for the story.]]), adds huge potentials for shipping. It should also be noted that the guy who voiced Zuko in The Last Airbender (Dante Basco) also played Rufio in the Robin Williams movie Hook, with Rufio appearing a few times in Homestuck as a fictional/real character that gets killed and has his corpse kissed by Andrew Hussie. Because Homestuck is skull-fuckingly weird like that. Then the real Dante Basco began reading Homestuck. He got a nice warm welcome along with a Saw-esque greeting of "HELLO DANTE" printed in the site's menu bar and the fans loved him for reading it. When he got to the corpse-makeout point he was rather freaked out by it but kept reading anyway, calling himself "a Homestuck". Real trooper that one.
While most fandoms have some shippers, Homestuck goes beyond by introducing four different kinds of love: regular human love, "hatelove" (not to be confused with being [[Shadowsun|tsundere]]), platonic love involving being the better half of someone without there being romance involved and being a relationship councilor for another pair of people. Especially the first two are popular within the shipping community, with hetero, homo, [[heresy|interspecies]] (often combinations) are very common, partially because the race of aliens involved later in the story has no concept of homo/heterosexuality as they reproduce asexually (don't ask, nobody knows how it actually works since the author never divulged on the subject, all we know is that it involves donating "genetic material" out of which a large insect creature can breed young aliens) and as such do not require a partner of the opposite gender to reproduce.
=== The Fandom ===
=== The Fandom ===
Homestuck has a very large, active, vocal and creative fandom with a penchant of [[gets shit done|getting shit done]]. They write music, make games (though not very fast), debate characters, events, objects and individual pages to no end, combine it with other games, series, movies and such, and draw umpteen FUCKTONS of fanart. As always, some of it is genuinly good while other suck bleeding horse cock. Unfortunately, this also means that the ever-present percentage of fuckwad [[that guy|those guys]] is a pretty large number of people. This results in that it looks like all of the fandom are retarded cuntmuffins who kick it into maximum oversperg every time someone disagrees with them. This is not true; as in all fandoms that is the infamous vocal minority.
[[File:Homestuckfags.PNG|thumb|300px|right|The homestuck fandom and how to exploit it.]]
It has a large fandom, so... lots of potential for new friends, I suppose?
Internal arguments are common as well: people hating people for not liking what they like (and vice versa), and shipping wars are rife. Because of the above-mentioned place that romance has in Homestuck everyone is shipped with everyone, to the point where people pair off vaults with pogo rides. It does not really help that [[Awesome|Mark Twain]] (the writer) and [[Wat|Betty Crocker]] (the baking mascot) are an in-story canon pairing.
One component of Homestuck that is lost on readers after 2016 is that Andrew Hussie was very active in his own fandom, weaving memes and in-jokes made by the fans into new Homestuck updates when he was still writing. His actual relationship with the fans was equal parts "haha look at these shitlords" and "you guys are my only friends".
== So why do people hate it so much? ==
== So why do people hate it so much? ==
Again, a number of reasons. Most of them have to do with why people hate it.
#Because it is ''overly'' long. And it starts off slow. It's like trying to get into CSI and being told "you can't understand what's going on unless you watch every season in order."
#The story can really swing between whimsical fun, [[grimdark|grim darkness]] and relationship shenanigans. I.E. it entirely lacks a clear tone. Some people want a story to retain a consistent tone, and if you are one of those people you probably won't like Homestuck very much.
#The fandom: The fandom was ''Newgrounds-destroyingly massive'' in 2014, and no, that is not hyperbole. Any fandom that big inevitably becomes quite vocally retarded, and this was all before the internet watched several other fandoms do the exact same thing. People at the time viewed Homestuck as [[Something Awful|something that makes you stupid]], and they feared it as horribly [[Cancer|cancerous]]. That legacy haunts it to this day.
#And lastly, some people find Homestuck rather pretentious, and don't feel it deserves the popularity it had.
Because it is so extremely long and starts off slow, some people do not have the patience for the comic and call it boring or nothing happens until act 5. The people who skip acts 1 to 4 (and the ones that skip the first Intermission, or all the parts with the exiles) are especially loathed amongst the fandom.
== Links ==
* [http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=6 The big enchilada] Be prepared to spend several days at least going through it.
*[http://mspaintadventures.wikia.com/wiki/Homestuck The Homestuck Wiki]. Enter at your own risk.
* [http://mspabooru.com/ A homestuck *booru image repository]
* [http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/ The soundtrack albums] free to listen streaming.
Second is that the story can really swing between whimsical fun, [[grimdark|grim darkness]] and relationship shenanigans. Some people want a story to be consistent in tone, while others don't mind it switching around.
=== Living Games ===
* [http://skrub-ttrpg.tumblr.com/post/142406040596/hey-its-been-a-while-since-ive-posted-anything SKRUB v 8.1] (still working on it as of may 2016)
* [http://godtierrpg.tumblr.com/ God Tier RPG]
* [http://orngjce223.net/chuubo/A%20User%27s%20Guide%20to%20the%20Apocalypse%20unfinished.pdf A User's Guide to the Apocalypse]. This one uses Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, a tabletop RPG that's about feelings instead of combat and that doesn't use dice, so it only half counts. The game is playable though, if you count "people sitting on an internet chat talking about their feelings" as play.
* [http://reddit.com/r/rpgstuck/ RPGStuck] It's a modified version of DnD with some weird shit added to it. It's pretty active, but is only hosted on reddit so far.
** Nowadays the sub is mostly used for forming groups, while the actual sessions take place on Discord.
A third reason is the fandom: because of it being vocal (especially the muffcunts of the fandom) people think Homestuck to be something that makes you [[derp|stupid]].
=== Dead Games ===
The rest of these were hosted on the MSPAforums and other daoots sites, but who knows, maybe someday they will be back:
== Games ==
''So I'm making a tabletop game version of Sburb/ Sgrub/ Homestuck ...''
About once a week there's a thread on /tg/ about someone new who's going to be a pioneer and make a Homestuck RPG. It's a weird case of /tg/ not getting shit done, probably because the idea is inherently flawed -- the game 'Sburb' as described is a Mongolian clusterfuck of The Sims, [[Minecraft]], [[Chess]], [[Video games|Zork, Final Fight, Street Fighter, Megami Tensen, Earthbound]] and Princess Maker... and maybe a couple others. Attempts usually get as far as player vs. mooks combat and end there because this is the someone's first attempt at game design, or because they give up in the face of trying to write a system for [[Wat|four-axis multiple simultaneous divergent timeline romances between alien/ human/ ghost/ demigod/ chesspiece/ software-construct and another or maybe two aliens/ humans/ ghosts/ demig]]{{BLAM}}.
There's <s>three</s> two published attempts that get referred to as those who've actually completed something playable:
* [http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?33724-The-Homestuck-tabletop-RPG-SYLLADEX-DECK-CREATOR-v-2 the one based on Gamma World v4]
* [http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?33724-The-Homestuck-tabletop-RPG-SYLLADEX-DECK-CREATOR-v-2 the one based on Gamma World v4]
* [http://ajoxer.wikispaces.com/Homestuck+RPG the one that uses poker cards for d4+d13]
* [http://mspaforums.com/showthread.php?60342-Homestuck-RPG-2nd-Edition-%28ADDITIONAL-PROJECTS-IN-PROGRESS%29 Updated from the original Gamma World edit, still active.]
**[Now found on the Omegaupdate forums: http://omegaupdate.freeforums.net/thread/339/homestuck-edition-temporary-omegaupdate-home]
== Links ==
* [http://nepeta.mozai.com/games/pdf/Homestuck_RPG-2.pdf the one that uses poker cards for d4+d13]
* [http://mspaintadventures.com/?s=6 The big enchilada]
* [http://ib.skaia.net/ A homestuck *booru image repository]
* [http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/ the soundtrack albums] free to listen streaming
* [http://mspfanventures.com/ MSPFA fan-adventures] like fanfic but with illustrations; most are started and then abandoned when the author loses interest. Recommended stories that don't need familiarity with Homestuck are:
** A Beginner's Guide to the End of the Universe
** Superego
** Waterworks
== Gallery ==
== Gallery ==
Line 217:
Line 76:
File:Hunk_troll_the_magic_players.gif|Andrew Hussie knows of /tg/. And he finds great pleasure in our gifts.
File:Hunk_troll_the_magic_players.gif|Andrew Hussie knows of /tg/. And he finds great pleasure in our gifts.
File:Problem_Slueth_LABYRINTHINE_SUDOCUBE_DIAMETRIC.gif|Problem Sleuth [[what|never got as complicated as Homestuck]].
File:Problem_Slueth_LABYRINTHINE_SUDOCUBE_DIAMETRIC.gif|Problem Sleuth [[what|never got as complicated as Homestuck]].
File:Kanaya_chainsaw.gif|[[Sisters of Battle|Sister of Battle]] initiate Kanaya Mayram shows you how [[rage]] is done.
File:Kanaya_chainsaw.gif|[[Sisters of Battle|Sister of Battle]] initiate Kanaya Maryam shows you how [[rage]] is done.
File:John_plays_Eldar.png| John Egbert and his Fanciful Harlequins.
File:Boreale_sprite.png| Not even [[Indrick Boreale|Boreale]] himself could withstand their crossover addiction...
File:THIS.gif|It
File:THIS.gif|It
File:IS.gif|really
File:IS.gif|really
File:STUPID.gif|is.
File:STUPID.gif|is.
</gallery>
</gallery>
[[Category:Not related]]
[[Category:Not related]]
Latest revision as of 10:04, 21 June 2023
This is a /co/ related article, which we allow because we find it interesting or we can't be bothered to delete it.
The logo of Sburb, and de-facto logo of Homestuck.
Homestuck (also known as Hamsteak or Homosuck) is a webcomic written by one Andrew Hussie. It is but one of the comics featured on his website, MS Paint Adventures, which is often abbreviated into MSPA. It is famous for being even more WORDS WORDS WORDS than Ctrl+Alt+Delete, having a shit-ton of characters and one of the most annoyingwonderfulprominent fanbases in existence. For this reason it was often referred to on 4chan as Homeskub during its heyday.
Homestuck began on April 13th 2009, one month after the creator's previous story, Problem Sleuth, had ended. It started out in the same vein as its predecessors; a Quest-style comic run solely by user input. The first three stories, Jailbreak (left unfinished for ages, then wrapped up hastily partway through Homestuck), Bardquest (a multiple choice experiment that was abandoned very early and will likely never be finished), and Problem Sleuth (actually finished, and whose unexpected popularity directly precipitated Homestuck) channeled old-school point-and-click adventure games based of a man trying to escape prison, a bard in his quest to slay a dragon, and a hard-boiled private investigator trying to leave his absurd office respectively.
Andrew Hussie went in a different direction with his newest work, by making it about a group of early teenagers who chat and play video games online. Homestuck begins with goofy young hero John Egbert getting his hands on beta copies of a hot new game called Sburb for his birthday. What looks like a novel team-based version of the Sims takes a crazy turn when the game reveals powerful reality-warping properties, and matters soon begin to escalate as John and company find themselves surviving meteors, cloning themselves, fighting all sorts of monsters, dealing with aliens of various degrees of friendliness and/or blood thirst and ultimately facing an immortal Time Lord demonic time-traveling minmaxing crime boss seeking terrible and destructive ends.
All the MS Paint Adventures are notable for being more than regular comic strips; Homestuck frequently includes simple animations, occasional Flash animations of escalating complexity, entire flash games, and a soundtrack that covers several dozen albums. You can also buy printed versions of the comic from the website in case you want a hands on experience, but that means missing out on the flash goodness and razing acres of forest. So not only do you read Homestuck, you watch it, play it, listen to it and (maybe) buy it.
Homestuck has over the course of its seven years of existence amassed a spectacularly huge cast of characters. There are four kids who each have their own guardian/pet, Consort, Denizen, Exile, Archagent, Wise Black Man and more. Then there are the Trolls and their associated characters, who increase this total by roughly four dozen, and many more beyond. The cast was then further doubled by introducing the kid versions of the Kids' guardians and the Trolls' ancestors via parallel universe shenanigans. This all gets very complicated, and there is good reason to believe that Hussie was duplicating of parts of the cast solely to bait the fandom into shipping (for his own perverse lolz).
It finally ended on April 13th 2016 after 2 gigantic pauses that disbanded the fandom (a lot of them jumping ship to Toby Fox (a composer for Homestuck)'s equally skubUndertale), including the retconning of several hundred pages with time travel shenanigans, and ye gods it was about time. For both the fandom and the comic.
This is a meme called "Lemmy Telya". It is a picture of a disgruntled security guard at a convention looking at disdain at a group of cosplayers. In any other fandom this would have passed over quietly. Not in Homestuck. They named him Lemmy Telya, and you can guess why. There was art of him. There was a cosplay of him. There was art of said cosplay. There was Rule 63 of him. Any black people pointing/looking at Homestuck cosplays were dubbed "Lemmy Telya", including a lunch lady and a man who looks like black TechnoViking. The reaction of said security guard to all this is as of yet unknown, but someone will try to get it. Poor man.
The author likes to play with words. All of Gussie's work is horribly punny, and filled with very creative wordplay. Plays on wording and meaning can sometimes be both figurative and literal within the comic, and this leads to Fun.
The author loves to be self-referential, and make references to earlier points in the plot. And also earlier in the story, in general, turning throwaway footnotes into major plot points for laughs. Homestuck is therefore a massive cluster fuck of "oh yeah that thing." He also loves Easter-eggs.
Further, he does the now-popular thing of using multiple universes, so that everything can be really clusterfucked, bigtime, and the story can continue.
Homestuck, to a degree beyond any of Hussie's other work, is a mess of references to pop culture. Everything from old-school video RPG tropes (like arbitrary elemental alignments, players ignoring the story, annoying inventory management schemes) to juggalos to jabs at overly-involved shippers (like the kind that Homestuck inevitably attracted). The comic is rooted in 2013, so growing up around that time really helps when reading.
It has a large fandom, so... lots of potential for new friends, I suppose?
One component of Homestuck that is lost on readers after 2016 is that Andrew Hussie was very active in his own fandom, weaving memes and in-jokes made by the fans into new Homestuck updates when he was still writing. His actual relationship with the fans was equal parts "haha look at these shitlords" and "you guys are my only friends".
Because it is overly long. And it starts off slow. It's like trying to get into CSI and being told "you can't understand what's going on unless you watch every season in order."
The story can really swing between whimsical fun, grim darkness and relationship shenanigans. I.E. it entirely lacks a clear tone. Some people want a story to retain a consistent tone, and if you are one of those people you probably won't like Homestuck very much.
The fandom: The fandom was Newgrounds-destroyingly massive in 2014, and no, that is not hyperbole. Any fandom that big inevitably becomes quite vocally retarded, and this was all before the internet watched several other fandoms do the exact same thing. People at the time viewed Homestuck as something that makes you stupid, and they feared it as horribly cancerous. That legacy haunts it to this day.
And lastly, some people find Homestuck rather pretentious, and don't feel it deserves the popularity it had.
A User's Guide to the Apocalypse. This one uses Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, a tabletop RPG that's about feelings instead of combat and that doesn't use dice, so it only half counts. The game is playable though, if you count "people sitting on an internet chat talking about their feelings" as play.
RPGStuck It's a modified version of DnD with some weird shit added to it. It's pretty active, but is only hosted on reddit so far.
Nowadays the sub is mostly used for forming groups, while the actual sessions take place on Discord.
