Homestuck

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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 ~~annoying~~ ~~wonderful~~ prominent fanbases in existence. For this reason it is often referred to on /tg/ as Homeskub. Unfortunately, many of the nerds in the Homestuck fandom are waist-deep in internet political bullshit, so fa/tg/uys should tread lightly (or eagerly if you're looking to mine lulz).

Spoilers ahoy.

What is Homestuck?

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 soley 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 co 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-travelling 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. So not only do you read Homestuck, you watch it, play it, listen to it and (maybe) buy it. It finally ended on April 13th 2016 after 2 gigantic pauses that disbanded the fandom, and god it was about time. For both the fandom and the comic.

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

Who are these douchebags?

Aka, the character primer. 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. This is discounting 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.

Kids

The four "main" characters of Homestuck are the Kids. They are the initial players of Sburb and have SHIT GO REAL on them. Also their parents except in kid form because of parallel universe shenanigans.

Kids
Name Chat Name	Mythological Role	Weapon	Guardians	Description
John Egbert ectoBiologist (formerly ghostyTrickster)	Heir of Breath	Hammerkind	Nanna(Jane)/Dad	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 jerk but is good and genuine to his friends , loves cheesy movies (Nicolas Cage being his personal hero), has some serious derp moments but is smart, has solid intentions and is quite brave. He started off the weakest of the bunch of kids and has developed the slowest, but has steadily caught by present day and is seen one-shotting endgame critters in droves; seeing as his equals can travel through time on a whim or teleport your guts straight out of your body this really says something. He is now phased out of the universe in a rather weird way, being capable of time traveling and actually altering the alpha timeline without creating a doomed timeline (which time players explicitly cannot do), teleporting to wherever the fuck he wants even if its across universes (superior to even first guardian teleportation), phasing through attacks, blowing away cosmic glitches, and is even said to be capable of hurting lord English. Heavily, heavily implied to have ultimately ended up in a relationship with Roxy by the end; effectively pairing the two most normal and probably the two nicest characters in the most down to earth relationship you'd be able to get in this crazy comic. On the other hand, he is dating the biological mom of two of his friends; though she isn't any older than her "children" so there's that bit of weirdness (and fodder for endless dad jokes).
Rose Lalonde tentacleTherapist	Seer of Light	Needlekind	Mom(Roxy)/Jaspers	Rose is intelligent, sarcastic and thinks that everyone but she has issues of some kind. A big fan of the works of Lovecraft and Freud, she derives no small pleasure from psychoanalysing others and seeing what skeletons pop out. In spite of 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. Gay as fuck.
Dave Strider turntechGodhead	Knight of Time	1/2swordkind	Bro(Dirk)/Cal	The coolkid. Dave knows everything about being smooth, hip and ironic, or at least he thinks he does. Actually has an inferiority complex where he thinks he sucks compared to his impossibly badass 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 and becomes solidly awesome again. Other hobbies of his include mixing music, rap, photography and keeping up with internet pop culture (again, mostly ironically). He also mastered the ability to flash step; how his older brother taught him this is unknown.
Jade Harley gardenGnostic	Witch of Space	Riflekind	Grandpa(Jake)/Becquerel	The resident "strange genki 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 feels threatened. She also enjoys gardening, playing the flute and bass (not at the same time) and watching tv shows with anthropomorphic animals, but she would not dream of wearing a fursuit. Ironically becomes part dog later on in the story via "shenanigans".
Jane Crocker gutsyGumshoe	Maid of Life	Spoon/Fork kind	Poppop (John)	Heiress to the Betty Crocker Baking corporation. Trapped in a nightmare love quadrangle. Her ultimate irrelevance to the story is something of a meme.
Jake English golgothasTerror	Page of Hope	x2Pistolkind	Grandma (Jade)	Pistol wielding adventure obsessed shucks fillibustering kid with even worse taste in films than John. The focus of the attraction of his entire team due to being the only heterosexual male on the team. As a Page of Hope his baseline power seems kind of crappy (he's the single worst combatant out of any of the humans) but if he's allowed to unleash his true potential he's basically the most powerful individual in fiction. That's right, more powerful than every single fictional character ever. He manages to take on the entirety of the Felt (minus Cans, Snowman, English, and Scratch) at once and win with only some help from Jane and Nannasprite though; amazing Crowbar as he bears witness to his entire gang getting beat up by some kid who isn't even wearing pants. He's kind of notoriously self centered; not in the nacisstic braggart way but more in the way that he has a lot of trouble seeing things from other people's perspectives, leading a lot of people to realize that he's not all that great a person and prompted Dirk to break up with him, Roxy to stop pursuing him, and Jane realizing he's incredibly immature. He's definitely earnest and enthusiastic though. Whether or not his accent is British is the subject of rather enthusiastic debate (it's not, it's just old timey American, in absolute fairness though; the accents spoken by upper class Americans and Britons in the Vaudeville era were much closer than they are now).
Roxy Lalonde tipsyGnostalgic	Rogue of Void	Fistkind/Riflekind	Mom (Rose)	Drunk retrogaming hacker. Just short of outright stated to have ended up being John's (or Calliope's if you want to read it that way) Girlfriend. Her god tier abilities can do quite a few things; much like everyone else's, but her primary one lets her "steal the nonexistence" of things, which is a fancy way of saying she can will items into reality. Which is obviously an insanely useful ability and perhaps among if not outright the best god tier power period. She's also probably the second most competent alphakid in combat short of Dirk (though even that's kind of debatable) and among the most competent fighters out of the cast period. For example; she was able to hold her own against the Condesce longer than John (who's not just empowered by god tier abilities and the super strength giving mangrit but is now also capable of teleporting around time at space at will), Rose (who on top of her god tier powers telling her the most path to the most optimal outcomes also has very powerful magic), or Kanaya (who's also a vampire) could and ultimately ended up killing the Condesce by ramming her through the back with Bro's sword. Personality wise she's a fun, bubbly party girl who may seem kind of ditzy at first but is actually a much smarter and more thoughtful person than you'd think given the rather stereotypically teenaged way she types. She's probably also the alphakid with the fewest moral failings as a person, and is arguably the actual main Alphakid given that her development gets the most focus.
Dirk Strider timaeusTestified	Prince of Heart	Swordkind	Bro (Dave)	Katana wielding (gay) coolkid with a mancrush one googol in size for Jake. His god tier ability as Prince of Heart basically allows him to destroy souls. Ironically Dirk never actually successfully pulls this off save for an alternate timeline version of him who shoved Caliborn's soul into his own Juju. Beyond that; he shares Yaldaboath as a Denizen with Caliborn/Calliope, which is significant as Yaldaboath is the only denizen not tied to a player's aspect, instead being the denizen of exceptionally powerful players.

Trolls

Then there are these 12... people:

Trolls
Name Chat Name	Mythological Role	Weapon	Lusus	Description
Karkat Vantas carcinoGeneticist	Knight of Blood	Sicklekind	Crabdad	The team leader. While he may fly off the handle at times, he genuinely cares for his friends and will risk his life to protect them. Possessed of a truly glorious level of rage.
Aradia Medigo apocalypseArisen	Maid of Time	Whipkind	A goat-kangaroo	Spends her time as an Indiana jones wannabe/Dominatrix
Tavros Nitram adiosToreador	Page of Breath	Lancekind	Tinkerbull	Stereotypical punching bag, would use the term wonderbread if not for the skin colour of the trolls, believes in fairies and magical FUN.
Sollux Captor twinArmageddons	Mage of Doom	As a powerful psionic, he has no need for weapons.	A two-headed cyclops	Multi-personality disorder due to being a Gemini, could be Alpharius and Omegon, one or neither, really just whines for the sake of it.
Nepeta Leijon arsenicalCatnip	Rogue of Heart	Clawkind	A two-mouthed panther	Takes Cat-girl to the next level, 'nuff said.
Kanaya Maryam grimAuxiliatrix	Sylph of Space	Makeupkind (Code for: A Fricken Chainsaw)	A virgin Mother Grub (don't ask)	Alien equivalent of a vampire lesbian (theres a vampire human relationship, ring any bells?)
Terezi Pyrope gallowsCalibrator	Seer of Mind	Canekind	A dragon	Blind dragon furry/space bug lawyer, likes to lick things, led to many PROMOTIONS.
Vriska Serket arachnidsGrip	Thief of Light	Dicekind (She rolls 8d8 to determine a random effect, I kid you not)	Spidermom	The main character of Homestuck. This Skublord (Skublady? Sister of Skub?) is a roleplaying game fanatic and a brutal GM (on a world where RPGs are deadly in real life). Sburb grants her the power to become a walking infinite improbability drive.
Equius Zahhak centaursTesticle	Heir of Void	Fistkind	Aurthor (a male, mustachioed centaur ... thing ... with an udder ... don't ask)	See also /d/
Gamzee Makara terminallyCapricious	Bard of Rage	Jokerkind (Code for: can use any weapon)	A sea-goat	Andrew Hussies way of inserting ISP into this train wreck of a comic.
Eridan Ampora caligulasAquarium	Prince of Hope	Riflekind	Seahorsedad	Lonely /b/tard who wants nothing more to "pail" anyone and everything (alien equivalent of a horny Labrador).
Feferi Peixes cuttlefishCuller	Witch of Life	2x3dentkind (a double-ended trident)	Gl'bgolyb (Cthulhu)	AKA: Disney's Copyright Violation lawsuit waiting to happen, essentially the little mermaid.

What is Sburb?

Sburb is the 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 (much ignored and treat as the excuse plot that it is by the protagonists) is to defeat the Black King of Derse and claim his scepter to stop The Reckoning, an event that unleashes massive desturctio via a rain of meteors. The real goal underlining all this is, via cooperation with the White Kingdom of Prospit, a series of shaky political dealings with powerful god/demon entities called The Denizens (one is assigned to each player upon entering the game) and a extensive and convoluted sidequest about frog breeding, to create a whole new universe for you and your co-players to live in. Sburb is by nature a multiplayer game, with two players as a base minimal, and the highest known number of players in a single session being 48. This number needs to be more than one, lest there be dire consequences.

The game itself is described best as an intricate LARP supplemented by vidja elements. You are the player and as you play you personally level up, gain special powers, magic items and may even transcend humanity.

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.

Entering the Medium

The first act to playing a game of Sburb is the removal of the lid from the Cruxtruder. A heavy blow or dropping something large on it will work (this is where the server player comes in handy), releasing a powerful source of energy called the Kernelsprite and "starting" a countdown anywhere between 1 minute and 25 hours. Two things must be achieved in this time: prototyping the Kernelsprite; and creating and interacting with the Cruxite Artifact. This is a rather typical example of the "Oh look it's cool and uses weird made-up words, so it must be deep!" stuff that goes on.

The Incipisphere

Players will find themselves within the heart of the Medium, a strange place called the Incipisphere, where the meat of gameplay occurs. Each Incipisphere is comprised by a number of planets, orbiting a larger body in the centre.

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.

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 realize 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-euclidean 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.

Carapacians

The peoples referred to as the Carapacians (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 Carapacians, 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 Carapacians. Derse is known to employ Archagents, Carapacians of more intellect, cunning and skill. They are often sent on more dangerous or difficult missions for the kingdom.

Every player will have one of five Carapacians assigned to him/her to serve as a guide (though not one per player in the case of the trolls); 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 Bilious Slick (more on him later). The consorts are not very smart; most famously falling for Dave Strider pulling a rather basic stock market scam on them with timeclones of himself and promptly pissing away literally quadrillions of grist; 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 and the best possible candidates for "damsels in distress". They can be thought of as a parody of the NPC villagers you meet in most computer RPGs who mill about doing the same inscrutable daily routines and spout the same lines until the plot says somethiong happens to them.

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 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.
Basilisks 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.
Liches 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 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 Lich Queens.

Denizens

Breath	Light	Time	Space	Life	Hope	Void	Naturally Powerful players
Typheus	Cetus	Hephaestus	Echidna	Hemera	Abraxas	Nyx	Yaldabaoth

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. However, players who do not engage them may discover there are alternate routes to victory that do not require actually fighting the Denizen, which may even result in the Denizen providing aid instead. Aside from serving as a "final exam" of sorts to test if the players are ready they also possess immense hoards of Grist which are needed for the endgame. Which Denizen a player has is determined by the player's Aspects, which is described on the right.

Classes and Aspects

Like the majority of RPGs; whether video game or pen and paper based, SBURB has a class system. At first the twelve classes; Heir, Witch, Mage, Seer, Bard, Prince, Rogue, Thief, Sylph, Maid, Page, Knight and the two master classes of Muse and Lord all seem self explanatory enough, as do the twelve aspects that when combined with a class; denote a player's role in a game; these aspects being Breath, Blood, Light, Void, Time, Space, Rage, Hope, Doom, Life, Mind, and Heart. Then you do a bit of digging and find that no, it's not at all as simple as it seems. To make a long story short, your aspect is what you govern and what governs you the most and your class is how you make use of it and how your aspect affects you. Players do not get to choose a class, they are quite literally born into it by the mechanics of ectobiology; with the class and aspect combination being a reflection of the kind of person you are and the kind of challenge you will face in your quest to grow into the role assigned to you by Skaia as you play your part in the creation myth of the universe to come. This is perhaps the single most analysed aspect of SBURB on the internet and there are hundreds if not thousands of people who have given this a lot of thought and come to a general consensus on what each class and aspect mean. We're certainly not going to pretend like we have that kind of deep knowledge of symbology or mythology so we're just going to regurgitate the general consensus below.

The other half of your classpect, Aspects determine what aspects of the reality you control. Note that while the classes are already a bit more than what their name entails, aspects are all so very much more than that their name would imply and together the twelve of them cover every facet of the universe. While some are more self-explanatory than others, even the most obvious ones also have secondary meanings and portfolios that link back to the most obvious one. Some aspects have somewhat overlapping portfolios with each other, but in the case of overlap they cover different kinds of that concept, such as Doom's sudden and untimely death versus Time's slow erosion towards inevitable oblivion. Each aspect has an opposite; Breath with Blood, Time with Space, Doom with Life, Hope with Rage, Light with Void, and Mind with Heart. Like classes, aspects are matched to personality and when you combine the class and the aspect, you get the rough outline of the expected challenges for that player.

So Why's This so Popular?

Length

It's pretty damn long, so getting engrossed in the story means you'll have a lot of fun to look forward to.

Storytelling

The author likes to play with words, and make references to earlier points in the plot, intertwining it all - same goes for humour.

He also likes to add a lot of Easter-eggs.

Further, he does the by now popular thing of using multiple universes, so that everything can be really clusterfucked, bigtime.

The Story Itself

The story roughly resembles Avatar: The Last Airbender in that there are four kids with different personalities and backgrounds that 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. Also, the fanbase apparently loves "shipping"

The Fandom

The homestuck fandom and how to exploit it.

It has a large fandom, so... Lots of potential for new friends, I suppose?

So why do people hate it so much?

Again, a number of reasons.

Because it is overtly long and starts off slow.
Second is that 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 be consistent in tone, while others don't mind it switching around.
A third reason is the fandom: Due to its tendency to be quite vocally retarded people view Homestuck as something that makes you stupid, and they fear it as horribly cancerous.
And still more people hate Homestuck because they feel it is rather pretentious, and doesn't deserve the popularity it receives.

Games

Here are the ones that still exist for some reason

SKRUB v 8.1 (still working on it as of may 2016)
God Tier RPG
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. Seems somewhat active, but it is only hosted on reddit so far.

the rest of these were hosted on mspaforums and other daoots sites, but who knows, maybe someday they will be back.

the one based on Gamma World v4
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]
the one that uses poker cards for d4+d13

Be aware that we're still learning about the rules of SBURB so updates to these RPGs are fairly frequent. Just whenever we think Hussie's finally told us everything about the game, he pulls a Billy Mays and shouts "but wait, there's more!"

Links

The big enchilada Be prepared to spend several days at least going through it.
A homestuck *booru image repository
The soundtrack albums free to listen streaming.

Gallery

Post this on a Homestuck forum. The shitstorm will be legendary.
The average Homestuck reader.
Andrew Hussie, Creator of Homestuck, doing the dance of his people.
No, seriously, what is with this comic?
The comic makes a joke about grimdark for a while.
Yes, it has gotten this bad.
Problem Sleuth gave us this glorious, monolithic, porcelain edifice of a bust, known as the Bowen Stilson Dogg.
Andrew Hussie knows of /tg/. And he finds great pleasure in our gifts.
Problem Sleuth never got as complicated as Homestuck.
Sister of Battle initiate Kanaya Maryam shows you how rage is done.
It
really
is.
John Egbert and his Fanciful Harlequins.
Not even Boreale himself could withstand their crossover addiction...

Homestuck

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