what a daring dream

NOW PLAYING: SKIES OF SKAIA

ARTIST NAME: MARK J. HADLEY.

ALBUM NAME: HOMESTUCK VOL. 1-4

WOW!!!!!!!!

WHAT IS "HOMESTUCK"

Ok, so if you're the kind of person to be scrolling through a neocities page in 2025 you're at probably least aware that Homestuck exists, but I'd still like to present a few words about it regardless.

Homestuck was written by Andrew Hussie, who over the course of 7 years produced 8000-ish pages of art and writing for the webcomic. It has garnered a specific kind of reputation due to the influence it had over the internet in the early-2010s (and beyond), which has shaped the way people interact with it even now. While it is a product of its time in a few unfortunate ways, I do wholeheartedly believe that it is a piece of fiction unlike anything made before it, which aimed to challenge the way we think about storytelling and the structures that define it altogether.

Tumblr user @plaidos gave a summary that I think does it justice:

"it's a deconstruction & meta commentary on the american coming-of-age narrative through the lens of bat-tling/overcoming sexual & gendered repression, told as a multimedia webcomic hypertext in the form of an epistolary space opera"

MY INITIAL READ

While I knew vaguely of Homestuck from my time on the internet in the early 2010s, I was never in a place where I felt compelled to actively seek it out. This meant that when I decided to read it in 2022, I got to do so without interacting with any fan communities, and with the perspective of an adult.

I do really think this was key to me understanding the webcomic in the way that I did - even 3 years on, I'm incredibly impressed with the way that Hussie decided to format and present the story. While the MSPA artstyle itself might not click with some people, I adore the simplicity of the style, as well as any offshoots of it that reguarly pop up due to the freeform, loose compliance that the characters and world require to be properly represented.

And while I'm fond of the art and animation present in the story, I'm enamoured most with Hussie's deconstruction of Narrative itself, and how they choose to explore their understanding of it in their work here. This is present throughout the whole text, from the way she treats the structure of the story, the characters in it, and especially the ever-expanding scope it struggles to contain.

There's also a lot about gender and 4chan redditors being infected by the woke transgender mind virus but that's a discussion I can have in another textbox.

NARRATIVE GROWTH, NONLINEARITY, AND SCOPE

Homestuck is a work that is constantly growing and evolving - and the way that it does this is integral to the way it tells its story. As a story that focuses on growing up as a parallel to the typical "hero's journey" in the most simple of ways, Hussie elects to show the progression of the narrative not via travelling down a linear line, but with the expansion of the story itself; we don't watch the story travel from A to B, we witness it grow in size until what once was A, now resembles B.

And even that description doesn't really do the structure justice, with all the in-story timetravel, the out-of-story back-and-forth jumping between different times, places, and even universes sometimes even just for a punchline.

One of the reasons I feel this works so well with the themes of the story is, at a ground level, how that ever-growing scope ties into the coming-of-age narrative. A character is introduced at the start of the story with various interests: the shows they like, the instrument they play; they are defined by what they choose to interact with and surround themselves with.

Your name is ROSE. As was previously mentioned you are without ELECTRICITY, although your LAPTOP COMPUTER still functions on BATTERY POWER. You have a variety of INTERESTS. You have a passion for RATHER OBSCURE LITERATURE. You enjoy creative writing and are SOMEWHAT SECRETIVE ABOUT IT. You have a fondness for the BESTIALLY STRANGE AND FICTITIOUS, and sometimes dabble in PSYCHOANALYSIS. You also like to KNIT, and your room is a BIT OF A MESS. And on occasion, if just the right one strikes your fancy, you like to play VIDEO GAMES with your friends.

In a more typical story, these elements would be used as concrete ways of establishing the personality and goals of each person, explaining to the reader who they are - and maybe a writer would keep a few of these beats as setup for dramatic emotional moments later in the story.

While Hussie does keep note of a few specific items, much of the "personality" that is established from these kinds of character panels is left behind as the story grows. While I'm not sure how intended this was (due to Homestuck's nature of constant evolution and refusal to follow a normative structure), it feeds into that aformentioned theme of growing up in a mildly subtle way that I'm very fond of. Rose does not play the violin later in the story to complete a story beat, she doesn't have to use the skills she's built up in knitting for any relevant moments, etc. The characters themselves, regardless of any "arcs", don't have the chance to hold onto these ideas of themselves anymore; the stakes of the "game" are changing, and they must shift their priorities in order to keep playing it.

ROSE: Should I...
ROSE: Should I really work on completing my personal planetary quest?
ROSE: That whole thing where I learn to "play the rain?"
ROSE: I guess I should feel exhilarated to have the chance again after all these years.
ROSE: Of course I should.
ROSE: But then,
ROSE: Why does it sound like such a drag?
ROSE: I haven't played the violin in a long time.
ROSE: I wonder if I even remember how.
ROSE: Honestly I can't recall ever feeling less motivated to satisfy a looming obligation.
ROSE: I think my quest was fundamentally bound to the nature of this land, which was customized to the profile, needs, and potential for growth of a thirteen year-old girl.
ROSE: But I'm not that person anymore.
ROSE: What if I
ROSE: What if I just
ROSE: Didn't bother doing it?
ROSE: Like, ever?
ROSE: Would anyone notice my dereliction?

- pg.6408

PUZZLE PIECES, REPETITION, AND ARCHETYPES

Repetition is one of Homestuck's core tools. It works with this concept in a very simple way: establish a situation, setup a joke, or introduce a concept. Then, bring it back. Then, bring it back again. Maybe twist one of those revisions very slightly. Maybe mix up two of them? Or three?

This is one of the things that ties a lot of elements (both big and small) in the story together. Hussie uses this to establish characters - maybe take 50% of this person, and 50% of another, and see what kind of outcome we get from that? Things such as real Mark Twain quotes, staircases, and other bits are often set up, and then face continued repetition throughout the story. Sometimes their initial appearance is even recontextualised in the face of whatever direction the narrative itself has taken.

"Maybe I'll come back to the issue of why Sollux is reminiscent of Dave later. I feel like there's more to say there. It touches on a broader issue of personality construction in Homestuck overall, which utilizes certain traits as almost elemental, platonic psychological and behavioral forms to build more extensive and widely varied profile composites. It's an approach that resonates with the rest of Homestuck's governing principles involving simple platonic concepts giving rise to greater complexity and chaos."

- Andrew Hussie, Homestuck Author Commentary pg.2081

HOMESTUCK AND (GENDER) ROLES

I could start this off with a long paragraph about how Homestuck is an autobiography about gender and transitioning but that's been done enough times by many people who are more verbose than I. And while analysing Hussie's use of destined roles in fiction has Also been done to death, it's still a topic I want to touch on briefly.

There's a lot of "quests", or potential outcomes that Homestuck presents to its audience, wherein a character is supposedly "destined" to complete a certain task; to fufill their "designated role". Rose is told that to fully realize her own potential, she must "play the rain". Dave is meant to be the hero with the power to defeat the Big Bad at the end of the story.

Dave responds to this by (accidentally or on purpose) breaking every sword he gets his hands on, and dies when attempting to embrace this narrative purpose and "Be A Hero". Rose responds to this by blowing up a planet. These are good things.

"The real conflict in her arc comes not from the fact that she refuses to take it seriously, by destroying it and taking shortcuts. It's the opposite. It's that, upon trashing her planet, she continues to have this nagging sense that she should be taking this quest seriously, much like how a young adult may have a nagging sense of guilt that they aren't "being an adult right" by the time they approach adulthood. And this nagging, unanswerable guilt arises from the truth that the regimentation of adulthood is completely fake. It was always a mirage. Learning this, making peace with it, is part of the growing process for many, and it is for her too."

- Andrew Hussie, Homestuck Author Commentary pg.2690

FICTION ON FICTION ON FICTION

One of the things you'll pick up on very quickly when reading Homestuck is how referential it is. A considerable amount of information is conveyed to the reader through fiction-in-fiction: we learn about characters through what kinds of stories, games, or books they gravitate to (or, which they don't). Even without the hobbies of these characters, the world itself is so deeply entrenched in the culture of the early 2010's internet that it is impossible to separate Homestuck from its influences.

"Almost as if the world of Homestuck represents the dry, bleached bones of a skeleton, and the animating flesh is composed of references to real world media, and character arcs heavily grounded in the human relationship with fiction."

- Andrew Hussie, from this Q&A

By bringing in these concepts and ideas and using them as building blocks for both her character writing and worldbuilding, she created a work of fiction that some may say reads as a love letter to storytelling itself. While this referential style isn't one that stuck around with as much prevalence later in the comic's run, the way Hussie used it to establish various beats and ideas stayed strong. She built a story that refused to engage with more typical narrative structures; by drawing on the ideas that her audience had gathered from their own experiences with storytelling, she was able to really effectively play with their ideas of what a story should do, and should be.

This is something that I still admire to this day. If a narrative didn't sit well with you, why is that? Is it because it didn't adhere to the outline you invisioned for it? Is a story only "good" when it follows a specific set of beats that every other tale has done before it? If challenging these norms would lead to an "unsatisfying" end, why do you think the author still chose to do so?

There's a lot to be said about creative decisions that don't gel well with audiences. I believe it's important to view these ideas as an intented part of the work no matter what. Whether in stories themselves or in other creative works such as video games - the way the UI functions, how you move around in the world - every single variable can have an effect on the way the audience feels. Instead of disregarding these things when they don't fit your idealised version of what that work should be (reviews that assign numbered values to things are inherently flawed LOL), view their implementation as part of a whole.

THE VRISKA OF IT ALL

Ok so everyone knows Vriska. Or at least everyone has at least seen Vriska somewhere. One million locked threads of #vriscourse over a decade long and yet people are still weird abt this freako til this day. Vriska is probably going to outlive most things in history. But regardless, there's a reason why she can still evoke such a visceral reaction in so many people even years after the original run of Homestuck ended.

Vriska Serket is a character intended to divide audiences, built from Hussie's own time spent observing forums and other online spaces. What if someone consistently hurt people, did "bad" things, and never apologised for it? If they insisted they were in the right, despite all the damage they did? But, also, what if all of these actions could be blamed on some other, more malicious influence? Would this person be truly evil, or are there other forces to blame? And, redditors beware, what if she was a GIRL? We can see Hussie's intentions - albeit cloaked in many layers of dicking around - by having another peek at the commentary.

"Who is the most trollish troll in this group, what are the traits that someone fitting that description has, and what form will they take in terms of personality and role in the story? Vriska is the result of this effort, and one way of looking at her arc in the story is as a simple exploration of what it means to draft a character designed to have the ultimate troll profile. Being the ultimate troll doesn't necessarily mean being the biggest asshole (though there are times when she gets that award too). It means being the most controversial. One designed to incite, to maximize drama and division, inside the story and out."

"Since serving as the ultimate troll, fandom wedge, and escalator of drama is an inseparable part of her profile, by extension the narrative has a way of constantly dragging her back into the spotlight to keep stirring the pot, ratchet up controversy, and continue forcing the plot forward by dint of her overbearing personality and need to be important. Whether she's the one forcing her way back into the spotlight all the time due to ego, or it's actually the narrative always pulling her back in as a preferred tool of effective melodrama, thus giving her a reputation as someone favored by the author as a vehicle for mayhem and controversy, is left for readers to decide."

- Author's Commentary, pg.2196 & pg. 2197

"All this talk about insidious malefactors whispering in Vriska's ear and warping her thoughts, and Word of God admissions that this is exactly what's happening to her from multiple fronts at once, should help stoke the fires of Vriskourse and give a lot more ammunition to her apologists, who like to point out that nothing Vriska does is ever really quite her fault. There's a word for these people: heroes. They are absolutely right, and if you take one lesson from these notes, let it be this. Vriska has done nothing wrong. Not even once in her life, and she never will."

- Author's Commentary, pg.2246

The ironic thing is that the narrative itself insists on the importance of Vriska. The story frames her as someone akin to a key item, one that the Homestuck itself literally cannot be finished without (You could chalk this up to Classpect theory if that's your cup of tea, with how her design revolves around stealing relevancy and forcing her way into the forefront of the story, but that's for another time).

But regardless of all the more meta aspects of her character, she still has a very compelling "arc" that she goes through. There's a lot to be said about how Hussie designed the structure of the trolls, and the caste system - and that works with the gendered roots that consistently rear their head in Vriska's story. As I mentioned in an earlier textbox, Homestuck uses roles - and the audience's expectations surrounding them - to build up many characters and beats within the story. Vriska is a great example of this. The people she interacts with, the game they all play, and even the Narrator tend to reduce her to a role on a chess board. She's an alien, a cerulean blood, she's the Thief of Light, and so on. Vriska's motivations always revolve around either playing into or discarding these assigned roles.

Homestuck pg. 2379 & Homestuck: Beyond Canon pg. 727

These struggles show up particularly often in Hivebent, and now have even reappeared in post-canon (though in a different form); she's indecisive and insecure, torn between adhering to what she's told she should be, versus what she wants to be. While she isn't the only one in the story to be given this dysphoric relationship to her supposed "function", she has some of the most consistent vacillation with it by a long shot. Also probably helps that she's literally transgender, but considering how textual that is I don't feel lke I need to explain how it fits in with what we've been talking about here.

Anyway, I don't have much else to say about Vriska. Or at least right now I don't. I'm gonna go reread the Vrisual Novel. Bye

BEYOND CANON?

The Homestuck Epilogues and HS^2/Homestuck: Beyond Canon are works that many people view as divisive, and for many reasons. These stories pick up where the original webcomic's run ended, and Hussie's influence on each of them lessens with each new entry - to the point where the current authorial team of Beyond Canon are working on their own continuation of Hussie's original outline (while still hitting a few required beats).

Discussing the Epilogues themselves is difficult. The two separate timelines/narratives/outcomes/whatevers that make up the story both take the conclusion of Homestuck, and push it in 2 completely different directions in pursuit of pushing the limits of what "canon" really means, and how an audience engages with works that play with that term. It plays with the medium it builds - by establishing a baseline ground that May Or May Not be a direct continuation (even though it is, textually speaking), the writers ask many questions about the characters and the medium they were constructed for.

What would people do if they were given an entirely new world? If they were worshipped and revered as Gods? Do they live up to these titles? Do they fully embody the ideals that they supposedly encompass? Or do they just hold on as tight as they can to whatever ideals they can drag from their adolesence in an attempt to continue the planet they left behind? Or do they just get up to wacky (and occasionally transmisogynistic) sitcom shenigans?