“You don't know why you are wasting time on this website.”
– Narration¹⁾

Homestuck is a lengthy coming-of-age²⁾ webcomic that focuses on a creation myth video game,³⁾ but also had a reputation for toying with readers that any serious deconstruction attempts would admit that most of the plot elements was 'made up' as the story went along.⁴⁾

It was authored by Andrew Hussie with the help of many contributors,⁵⁾ and ran from April 13, 2009 to October 25, 2016. Speaking as a former serial reader⁶⁾ who has reached a healthy ambivalence,⁷⁾ it's an extremely hard sell nowadays, unless you love systems.

The story follows four teenagers that play a computer game, which causes the destruction of Earth, and this forces them to play through with the goal of creating a new universe. An alien society, who almost beat the game, comes into contact with them and eventually tries to help them out. To keep it simple, both parties try to salvage their null sessions by using time travel shenanigans and triggering a pivotal reset.

“When it comes to plot elements, very little planning is done, and practically none at all before page 1.”
– Andrew Hussie⁹⁾

In the beginning, Homestuck was developed with many 'systems' in mind, but most of its plot elements were spontaneous inventions which use 'retroactive foreshadowing' to give the illusion of planning.¹⁰⁾ Back then, Homestuck was expected to be a simple project, more 'compact' than Problem Sleuth,¹¹⁾ and it was once said to end on April 13, 2010,¹²⁾ which was later moved to August 26, 2010.¹³⁾

These estimates were soon derailed by Act 5 turning into this huge troll-focused detour,¹⁴⁾ yet he still thought Act 6 and 7 would be comparatively shorter,¹⁵⁾¹⁶⁾ then the crowdfunding campaign began with estimates claiming that Homestuck would end in 2013 and Hiveswap would release in 2014,¹⁷⁾ but he forgot to write said game,¹⁸⁾ so The Odd Gentlemen were tasked with Act 7 to buy time before the contract expired.^19)20)21)

When all was said and done, Homestuck would eventually publish Act 7 on April 13, 2016 and rolled its credits on October 25, 2016, which leaves us with the notion that the story's spontaneous nature and lack of vision would turn into a massive detriment as the story progressed. This is why most serious criticisms bring attention to loose plot threads and whether anybody was having 'fun' at the end.

“It's also been my observation that the fandom as a whole never had interest in that level of detail.”²²⁾
– Andrew Hussie²³⁾²⁴⁾

After Hiveswap: Act 1 had released on September 24, 2017, the Homestuck franchise was acquired by Viz Media on October 6, 2017,²⁵⁾ moved from “mspaintadventures.com” to “homestuck.com” by April 2, 2018,²⁶⁾ then The Homestuck Epilogues were unveiled on April 13, 2019,²⁷⁾ which turned out to be a grand precursor to Homestuck: Beyond Canon on October 25, 2019²⁸⁾ that also had a Patreon for some reason.²⁹⁾

In 2021, the initial Homestuck: Beyond Canon team saw their project put under indefinite hold,³⁰⁾ then began preemptively attacking a Homestuck retrospective on YouTube,³¹⁾ which turned into a shitshow,^32)33)34) as Hussie attempted to distance himself with Psycholonials.³⁵⁾ Two years later, Homestuck: Beyond Canon ended up resuming on October 8, 2023, under James Roach and the HICU.³⁶⁾

“i rarely say this explicitly, but the gigapause was really when people took a step back and said “wow, the homestuck fandom is kinda [awful]” and it just got worse from there”
– Nameless Rumia

Most of Homestuck's early fans came from Problem Sleuth and had mainly attracted computer science or programming nerds,³⁷⁾ then former Hetalia fans flooded the scene after a certain event on April 5, 2010, during the end of Act 4.³⁸⁾ From there, it was decided that Act 5 would focus on the trolls, so Homestuck ended up skyrocketing to new highs in 2011, but then Hussie attempted to capitalize on this success.

After this, the story suffered, focusing on relationship drama, and dragged on as mismanagement resulted in numerous hiatuses where people could properly reflect on Homestuck and its former hype. By the end, you begin to wonder if anybody, even the author, was having 'fun' as it limped across the finish line. Despite all the dilution, stragglers still exist on 4chan,³⁹⁾ Reddit,⁴⁰⁾ TikTok, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.

For a potentially fertile session, there must be a hero of time, hero of space, and pre-entry prototyping, but if these conditions aren't met or the session is rendered infertile, then you have a 'null session'. These can be further categorized into a 'void session' that forgoes pre-entry prototyping,⁴¹⁾ and a 'dead session' which is an extremely punishing single-player session because the game isn't meant to be played alone.⁴²⁾⁴³⁾

After rolling 2 of the 12 possible aspects,⁴⁴⁾ the players must breed the perfect Genesis Frog, creating a new universe, and claim the Ultimate Reward, but they must act fast since the Kingdom of Light (Prospit) will get attacked by the Kingdom of Darkness (Derse), who intend to prevent the Genesis Frog's creation and will win as “the forces of light are always destined to lose, without exception!”⁴⁵⁾

If the players are 'softlocked' into a 'null session', they must exploit the 'scratch' and avoid the temporal blast, re-rolling their chances of victory. The following chart is an overview of the Sburb and Sgrub sessions that canonically appear in Homestuck, serving as a small sample size of the possible sessions, yet this leaves the audience with plenty of room to speculate on hypothetical Sburb sessions with other factors.

Alchemy is one of the most intriguing components of Sburb, but it stops being important in the long run, since they easily get overshadowed by god tier abilities and fraymotifs. Regardless, it still makes for a fun creative exercise, so the following chart briefly goes over the functions and combinations. As a side note, recipes would appear in the Alchemy Excursus,⁴⁶⁾ but most fan projects exclude this.

As the player explores their respective planet, they might discover that they have a personalized quest where they 'help' the planet in some way as the player grows and develop their abilities, though the quests are not necessarially vital to beat the game. Eventually, the player would meet their denizen and, assuming they didn't just kill them,⁴⁷⁾ may be offered an ultimatum called 'The Choice' which is heavily context-dependent.

The hemospectrum is a vast array of troll blood colors, often sorted into a 12-tier caste system, which also hints at their life expectancy⁴⁸⁾ and psychic abilities.⁴⁹⁾ Early on, it's worth noting that Kanaya and Eridan originally mistook Rose for a highblood,⁵⁰⁾ specifically a royalblood,⁵¹⁾ though Kanaya imagined her without the royalblood fins. In addition, some caste names were 'slurs' on Beforus.⁵²⁾

• Homestuck appears to a young audience because of its character designs, cartoon violence, mature themes, and mildly edgy humor, but never had a formal content rating during its run. It did get 'Teen Plus' under VIZ Media,⁷¹⁾ before going with 'Mature' to retroactively cover their asses.⁷²⁾
  • The community has always had teenagers and young adults, whether Hussie calls them 'children',⁷³⁾ 'kids',⁷⁴⁾⁷⁵⁾ or 'teenagers'.^76)77)78) Several demographic surveys also confirm this fact.⁷⁹⁾⁸⁰⁾
  • MS Paint Adventures used to rely on Project Wonderful, and much of their ad space was bought by Slipshine, an adult comic paysite, thus all the ponography mentions.^81)82)83)84)
  • It shouldn't be understated that hormonal teenagers were rampant, which led to cases of minors in adult spaces and adults being inappropriate with minors. After all, this is the community that came up with Nudestuck,⁸⁵⁾ invented the term 'sexcanon',⁸⁶⁾ and spread the 'tentabulge' headcanon.
  • Ultimately, Homestuck is about a bunch of middle-class, online suburbanite brats, so it's not a huge surprise, and gaming webcomics at the time mostly appealed to said audience anyways.
• The original website, MS Paint Adventures, would extract data from a phpBB forum database, which used to be on Andrew Hussie's personal website.⁸⁷⁾ The forum went private in late 2014.⁸⁸⁾⁸⁹⁾
• From the very beginning, Homestuck was planned as a combination of EarthBound, The Sims, and Spore,⁹⁰⁾ which gave Sburb its namesake and inspired its creation myth direction.⁹¹⁾
• In “[S] WV: Lead your men to victory!”,⁹²⁾ the chessboard is set up wrong and the first 13 moves⁹³⁾ are ripped from the chess match between Bobby Fischer and René Letelier at the 14th Chess Olympiad in East Germany on October 24, 1960.⁹⁴⁾⁹⁵⁾ The last 4 moves show a different match.
• The original Midnight Crew had shadow-based magic in Problem Sleuth's fan-requested pages,⁹⁶⁾ but they never use it in Homestuck.⁹⁷⁾⁹⁸⁾ This is why Toby sings of a 'shadow magic priest'.⁹⁹⁾
• From August 2010 to July 2013, Hussie ran a Twitter account for a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff version of Barack Obama at @BarackObana. A number of sources notably corroborate this.^100)101)102)
  • During early reports on the Killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, the account tweeted out “false alram guys it turns out it was just a tall hobo” and “i backed over the hobob in my car”.
  • For the r/IAmA event in 2012,¹⁰³⁾ the account had tweeted out “woah holy shit reddit blows want was i thinking with this numbnut stunt”. This, too, is 'retroactive foreshadowing'.¹⁰⁴⁾
• It's worth noting that Dave Strider is partially derived from Andrew Hussie's online persona,^105)106)107) putting his stock market knowledge¹⁰⁸⁾ and pro-libertarian jokes about communism¹⁰⁹⁾ aside.
• Doc Scratch's name was inspired by the gunslinger, Doc Holliday, which Hussie memorized because his mother had the surname of Holliday and he would joke about being his descendant.¹¹⁰⁾
• In the comic's history, the race of the protagonists has been a recurring controversial subject.
  • Early on, Hussie stated that the protagonists were 'aracial' and definitely not black, notably replying to a loaded question that slyly brought attention to the racist buckteeth stereotype.¹¹¹⁾
  • The ensuing arguments would push Hussie into temporarily replacing 'white' with 'Íæûë€Å'.¹¹²⁾
  • Lastly, we had the 'Caucasian' joke that was changed to 'Peachy' in a day,¹¹³⁾ which Hussie used to address some particularly toxic reactionary rhetoric that was in the community.¹¹⁴⁾
• The trolls canonically have gray nipples, regardless of blood color,¹¹⁵⁾ and we do know that the female trolls supposedly do not lactate¹¹⁶⁾ as far as we know. This is, truly, a hard-hitting question.
• Regarding the Beforus trolls, their initial silhouettes¹¹⁷⁾ does not match their “[S] Collide.” sprites,^118)119) which you can actually infer from Damara's needles, Mituna and Latula's pants, etc.
• Vriska canonically rendered 'bait' as '88',^{120)121)122)123)} a subtle answer that brings attention to the fact that things like “u wot m8” or “gr8 b8 m8, i r8 8/8” used to be very popular jokes on the internet.
• Caliborn's naming of 'HOMOSUCK'¹²⁴⁾ referenced a derogatory name that would appear in 4chan threads about Homestuck before the 2015 ban, often rendered as a “HOMOSUCK IS SHIT” edit.
• James Roach mentioned that Andrew Hussie's documents on class and aspect were 'very short' and 'specifically vague' for personal interpretation.¹²⁵⁾ He'd later delete this post, but I assumed that this had more to do with redacting promises of an official 'class' test or a revisit in a future update.

“Why don't you just embrace all the boners they are giving you, and stop bothering me about it?”
– Andrew Hussie¹²⁶⁾

• MS Paint Adventures and Homestuck has had shout-outs by other major webcomics:
  • VG Cats featured MS Paint Adventures on the front page¹²⁷⁾ around October 9, 2010,¹²⁸⁾ after Problem Sleuth concluded. This shout-out to MS Paint Adventures still exists.
  • Randall Monroe, the xkcd author, would add Homestuck to the list of comics that he 'enjoyed' on February 18, 2015,¹²⁹⁾ shortly after Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 4 had just ended.
• As the trolls were being named, Rocket Papaya from the Mana series was a recurring suggestion.
• In December 2010, the Homestuck art team released the 2011 Homestuck Calendar^130)131) that became infamous for 'March Eridan', the illustration of a crossdressing Eridan from a now-transgender artist,¹³²⁾ which eventually found its way into canon two years later.¹³³⁾
  • The 'joke' is that Eridan was a serious character that wore an outfit that, literally and fashion-wise, didn't fit him, but carrying the confidence as if it did. Of course, this was before the murders.
• During Act 5, people would shut down irrelevant character discussions with “DAOOTS”, short for “dead and out of the story” and rhymed with 'cahoots', but it fell out of use for obvious reasons.
• In the beginning of Act 6, the fans had to figure out Roxy and Dirk's names from the context clues,¹³⁴⁾ speculating on 'RL',¹³⁵⁾ 'Ro-Lal' ('Rolal'),¹³⁶⁾ and 'Di-Stri' ('Distri').^137)138) Funnily enough, the nicknames are never used past Act 6 Act 2, like, could you imagine if 'Di-Stri' stuck around?
• Funnily enough, Hussie has commented on obtuse 'gender' interpretations before Homestuck,¹³⁹⁾ but later commented on Calmasis's androgyny, gender identity, and pronouns in 2012, even mentioning neopronouns like 'ze', 'ne', and 'thon' as examples,¹⁴⁰⁾ yet overlooked the singular they. Mind you, this was still 2012, before Gamergate, and the uptick in gender and sexuality experimentation.
• Back in 2012, there was a March Madness webcomic tournament¹⁴¹⁾ where MS Paint Adventures had reached the final four,¹⁴²⁾ but lost to Gunnerkrigg Court,¹⁴³⁾ then people lost their minds that the prize money was donated to Child's Play.¹⁴⁴⁾ After this, Homestuck lost to Unsounded in 2013,¹⁴⁵⁾ failed to qualify in 2014, lost to Superbitch in 2015,^146)147) and lost to Blindsprings in 2016.¹⁴⁸⁾
• The progressive themes are fine, but there's a point where it became egregious virtue signalling.¹⁴⁹⁾ Congratulations on hiring people in 'vulnerable social positions'¹⁵⁰⁾ to pay off your debt?¹⁵¹⁾
  • I still recall the posts about Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party¹⁵²⁾ and Bernie Sanders.^{153)154)155)156)}
  • Hussie lamented communism over vague internet drama, proposing a clown movement,¹⁵⁷⁾ but he's fine posing with Mao Zedong^158)159) at FurCon.¹⁶⁰⁾ He *did* live in an apartment.¹⁶¹⁾
• As a side note, Homestuck fans have complained about 'mischaracterization' for years. Some might claim that it started in Act 6, which could possibly be the Gigapause effect,¹⁶²⁾ while others might admit that the 'characterization' was always bad. Why do you think half the cast was killed off?
  • We can deduce that John was born in 1996, but his taste in 90s movies does not exactly match the 'late millennial' description, like, should Homestuck have taken place in 1999 or 2009?

• I caught up to Homestuck at the end of Act 5 Act 1, specifically when Spades Slick resumes the story after the brief 'troll romance' exposition on Sunday, August 22, 2010.¹⁶³⁾ I vividly remember this because I had spent the entire weekend on Problem Sleuth and Homestuck to sate a curiosity.
  • My earliest interactions with Homestuck was some forum user noticed that I would 'Type Like This', then I found a collaborative Sburbventure while sifting and lurking though DeviantArt profiles.
  • Personally, I'm a bit biased towards the Flash files with the old music. With the Unofficial Homestuck Collection, enable both music-related toggles in the Controversial Content section.
• On classpects, I used to consider myself a 'Mage of Void', but after taking several classpect tests and discussing with a classpecting friend of mine: Well, I honestly feel even more confused now.
  • For class: I'd still argue that I would fit into the Mage class, rather than the Seer class, as I feel like I relate to the Mage's journey more. Take this personal wiki into account too.
  • For aspect: I'm probably sticking to Void, but I've also considered Doom, Mind, or Time as well. Of course, take this with a grain of salt, since I'm too fucking cooked to think about classpects.
• Homestuck shipping never really appealed to me, but I do have a soft spot for Katnep (Karkat/Nepeta), so I apologize if this upsets cliquey bastards, fujoshi, and the “eviscerate the straight” types.
• I am not a fan of Dave Strider. I understand the cooldude facade, the journey, and his rejection of the hero role, time travel, and whatever, but I'm just tired of the dude's constant recontextualization.
• To be honest, I did not care for that whole bit where Vriska, Dirk, and Caliborn fights to be the center of attention, an ultimate god, or convey that 'teenagers are stupid' in the most boring way.
  • Honestly, most of the story was about the mysteries behind Sburb, then deviates to paragraphs of bad teenage drama that I honestly forgot that their whole goal was to beat Sburb by Act 7.
  • You could probably guess how I feel about post-canon, as they resume this bit with Dirk and Vriska.
• As the Cherubs exemplified the community's positives and negatives, it feels like the author's own qualms with the community ended up being overlooked. For instance, the story briefly touches on the community's lopsided treatment of female characters,¹⁶⁴⁾ but it's also 84% into the story.
  • The whole point is that this may have led to Psycholonials having a predominately female cast as a more direct response, but again, I don't think anybody cared if they've stuck around this long.
• Genuine question: Was anyone—even the author—having fun at the end of it all?

• Pertaining to Homestuck
  • Bill Romanowski Painting (Painting of a Horse Attacking a Football Player)
  • Classpect Tests - A collection of classpect tests, results, and some classpecting resources.
  • Colours and Mayhem - The official fan collaboration album with many repurposed tracks.
  • The Homestuck Epilogues - A punishment for curious readers who want more from Homestuck, mostly considered a separate work and prequel to Homestuck: Beyond Canon.
  • Homestuck Translation Overview - Self-explanatory tracker. It's updated manually, whenever.
  • Nepeta Leijon - The best character. :33
• Outside of Homestuck
  • Danganronpa and OFF - Tales from Spring 2013, the Megapause.
  • Desiredriven - A short Homestuck and Touhou Project crossover fan game.
  • Psycholonials - The post-Homestuck visual novel that nobody read, which is now free.
  • Undertale and Deltarune - “Andrew? Andrew Hussie? Is that you?”

• The Unofficial Homestuck Collection (4GB) - The fan-made Homestuck preservation project, incidentially the best, least-broken way to read Homestuck and endorsed by Andrew Hussie.¹⁶⁵⁾
  • Third Party Mods - Self-explanatory list of third-party mods. Choose some or don't.
• MS Paint Adventures / Homestuck - The front page of MS Paint Adventures and Homestuck. It's somewhat broken, refer to the Homestuck.com Feedback Document for a list of known issues.
  • @andrewhussie on Twitter - The author. Obviously, he isn't very active under his real name.¹⁶⁶⁾
  • @homestuck and @homestuckteam on Twitter - Semi-official Homestuck accounts.
• Andrew Hussie MSPA Commentary - A public Google spreadsheet laying out the book commentary.
  • Homestuck Companion (Chrome, Firefox) - An extension that injects book commentary.
• The Acts and Pages of Homestuck - Rafe's guide to Homestuck, contains many helpful summaries.
• MS Paint Adventures Wiki on Fandom - The fan wiki for Homestuck and Hussie's other works.
• Homestuck POV Cam (Chrome, Firefox) - An extension for tracking a Homestuck character.
• Read MSPA - An interesting fan website that's filled with MSPA statistics, transcripts, and other stuff.
• Homestuck Flash Image & Audio Extracts - An old archive. Hasn't updated past A6A6A3.
• Homestuck on VNDB

> AH: I didn't read any of that.