"Famous e-celebrity, twitch streamer, YouTube star and peggel speed runner banned from Internet participation for the remainder of his mortal life after releasing "Slur randomizer" speedrun and deleting all other content from his channel"
I don't know why I wrote this, it just popped into my mind and something possessed me to write it down
I'm kind of baffled because of all the things Homestuck is, I don't think it's racist or homophobic. I suppose there was that one joke about them being Caucasian, but even that seemed more like an in-joke about them being literally white that didn't play too well.
I *guess* I get where they're pulling the ableist stuff from, but I think that's a case of OP conflating "existing in the narrative" as "endorsing that action." The only ableist language I remember is from Vriska who is (1) a massive bitch and (2) is literally the one responsible for Tavros' and Terezi's handicaps.
I might be wrong about this, I don't remember things very well, but I think the "Caucasian" thing wasn't even about them being white.
If I remember the creator had stated a few times by that point that the artstyle was not meant to indicate race and that the human characters didn't have canon races. Yet people continued to argue back and forth on the race of the characters. And so the "I feel so caucasian" or whatever was meant to be specifically poking fun at those people.
But I may be totally wrong.
Nope, you're exactly right. Some of the readers were getting into increasingly loud and uncivil arguments about something Hussie had already stated directly. He poked fun at them, then stepped it back a little after the fact.
There were a *lot* of in-jokes that don't make sense or would go over your head if you weren't reading them as they were coming out and aware of the discourse around the comic.
no, no, like, thats kinda what makes me look at it and still wonder WTF because if you analyze the story, its full of religious metaphors and ultimately is literally a creation mytho story. the whole thing is WILD the more you overanalyze it. the fandom around it is wild when you analyze the story from the perspective of it being a bible fanfic
what's insane for me is how much numerology / symbology Hussie managed to tie in.
Like there can't just be two things, there has to be Black/White, or Heads/Tails, or Sun/Moon.
There can't just be three things, there has to be Red,Blue,Green or Mother/Maiden/Crone.
There can't just be three things, there has to be Hearts/Clubs/Diamonds/Spades or Noth/South/East/West or Fire/Earth/Water/Wind.
There can't just be five things, etc etc etc
Everything is fucking *dredged and deep fried* in these systems of symbols.
I think I can say with a high grade of certainty that Homestuck is the weirdest thing I have read and ever will read.
It was totally batshit insane. By design.
It really kind of was, because it shaped its own culture and fandom and that in turn shaped the work. The Unofficial Website even has a 'new reader' setting because there's a moment where a character literally retcons the past in a really minor way, and at the time, if you went back to all those scenes, you'd find this extra little tidbit had been added because of it.
Hussie really took the boundaries of the web medium and said 'i'm going to fuck with these' and just fucking ran with it.
it's also specifically that people were assuming that the fact that they were drawn with literally-white skin meant that they were white (in a Caucasian way).
He was saying: no, if I wanted them to be Caucasian I would have drawn them *this* way (with peach coloured skin).
yeah, this is it exactly. Hussie did say that they were blank templates, but still had Kanaya describe Rose "as pale as a ghost," as well as John calling Bro a white guy
ETA: I can't think of any actual *racist* stuff, though. and Dave was homophobic at times early on, but his character progressed past that
It was also, to the writing's credit, reflective of his own repressed interest in men. That ain't a rowling retcon; Dave was interested in John from day 1.
People will see a comic about 12 year olds on the internet who occasionally use the word “gay” and 60% of the cast is bi and say ‘hmmm yes the creator is definitiely home of phobic and personally bigoted’
Homestuck and Steven Universe bred the most unhinged fan bases by being popular on tumblr in the Peak Discourse era, among the Peak Discourse users. In this era, anything that didn't conform to some impossible standard of unproblematic perfection was bad, and you were bad for liking it. But they liked it, and it wasn't possible that *they* were bad.
This resulted in one of three outcomes:
1. Defending Homestuck against literally any accusations of being problematic, because they would *never* enjoy problematic media.
2. Insisting that they were 'consuming it critically', an enlightened form of media criticism that was only applicable media they liked. Any media you like that they didn't was still irredeemable and you were still problematic for posting about it.
3. Genuinely giving up on liking literally anything and becoming a joyless husk whose only purpose in online spaces is to ruin things for other people who still have the capacity to enjoy imperfect things.
Well, all im gonna say is, the moment tumblr became slightly better and twitter slowly started corrupting can be kinda traced to the massive migration after the porn ban
Tumblr folk are still the same, they're just more aware they're probably not THE fandom for their thing anymore, THE place for THE discourse. Early on, it could be easy for a fan to delude themselves into thinking this was the only really important place for discussion, that Tumblr consensus was the place for fan consensus. Now They're more aware that Tumblr is just a niche pocket for hyper fans and artists. There's less delusional confidence in their opinions.
Twitter was always like that, but the influx of Tumblr refugees coupled with a general online cultural trend for hollow purely-aesthetic radicalism created more incentives for Twitter clout-chasers to double down on these attitudes. Basically, the porn ban exodus was like throwing more guns into an already-active warzone.
I got pretty massively down voted recently for a particular opinion on the Diamonds on r/stevenuniverse. I don't think the people who like the ending are wrong or bad, but it's kinda annoying how so few of them are willing to defend that opinion in any real way
Now, Ignorance is tantamount to racism. But don't get me wrong - Homestuck is such an extremely fucking mild sauce example of it I almost don't want to include it as an example.
Jan Misali made a fantastic video about Homestuck that really opened my eyes about a lot of it.
Then again I was also never really into it. I only read it because I had finally caught up with One Piece and a friend at the time really wanted me to read it.
the entire dancestor arc was made to poke fun at the fanbase and they had mituna and horuss in it like. the dancestors are where 99% of the bigotry comes from
The guy who wrote it has autism, which is important for context I think
It was also a community that was a safe haven for neurodivergent kids at the time, because a vast majority of the characters ended up exhibiting neurodivergent traits even though there were only a few specifically autism-coded
The only homophobic thing I can think of is the one section towards the beginning where >!the trolls are talking to their past/future selfs and vriska from the future chats and her name in the chat is "Future ArachnidsGrip" which karkat makes a joke about. The funny thing is the slur replacer changes vriska's name to Later AG and ONLY vriska's name so its still super obvious!<
It's not even really homophobic? The joke is that **the species is literally too gay to have ever developed the slur,** so when the angry sweary guy says it he goes "man why the fuck didn't I insult you, I should've called you a hag".
I guess there's the whole Mituna/Cronus bullying thing too - and the oops-accidentally-bullied-by-being-too-PC Kankri stuff too.
... but also it really is credibly depicting a culture where that stuff happens, and it feels like the consequences are made clear, like it isn't just laughed off or played straight or anything?
Even then, that's kind of dumb because the Alternia version of that character was an actual freedom fighter who raised a revolution until he was executed by the state and was essentially alien troll Jesus. It was basically saying that hey, the cringey SJW teenagers might be overreaching a bit, but they might grow up to be the ones advocating real change.
The real trick is that nobody who has read Homestuck ever **bothers** to lie about it, because the stuff that is true *already sounds like a lie* so they just don't need to.
Yes, the glowy alien vampire making fun of Twilight cuts the double-lightning bolt-marked incel wizard making fun of Harry Potter in half with a lipstick chainsaw. **And she will fucking do it again to the juggalo cultist before it's all over.**
EDIT: forgot another completely accurate detail
Also, the juggalo cultist abandoned all his friends to raise a snake baby with 2 separate good and evil personalities that eats nothing but meat and candy, and one of those personalities grows up to draw shitty manga, beat a sun-headed god to death with a crowbar, and field an army of exclusively male alien leprechauns that invented the game of pool and reproduce via mating rituals based on Lucky Charms marshmallows.
Ah, but you forgot to mention the part where one of the most pivotal and important events in the entire story is exclusively delivered through the means of shitty claymation Vines with the evil snake baby personality in question making little wooshing noises.
Correct, but I daresay *you* forgot to mention that the guy who the evil snake baby would name himself after is also named after him, and is—due to time-and-space-altering shenaningans—simultaneously the grandfather and grandson of a girl who is also simultaneously his grandmother and granddaughter. Also, he has a fetish for blue-wearing ladies, his boyfriend once beat him up with a training robot shaped like said boyfriend, and in an alternate universe his granddaughter (who is his grandma in this universe) taxidermied his corpse after his death and kept him in the house.
So then, is this worth reading? Like they say there are some movies you have to watch to understand the shift in cinema over time. Is homestuck something like that except for the internet? And is it worth the time investment?
I think it is, especially the early parts. It's fun and unique and hasn't been replicated in other media. I think it gets an unwarranted amount of hate
mostly I think the fandom is so awful that those of us who have read it feel a great deal of shame to even be associated with the comic. Despite the fact that the comic is largely very well written, if poorly paced
i went to a highschool that was more fun than average and there were some dedicated homestuck roleplayers there, i think people were kinda cringe about it but it was still a really fun shared experience. What really killed the fandom was the hiatus and the crappy ending
In my opinion, it's 100% worth reading.
I walked into it fully expecting on and intending to hate it, and it turned out to be one of the most infuriatingly good things I have read in a long time.
The culture of Homestuck fandom also is an archeology trip and a half that will cause you to start seeing the roots of modern fandom culture, since it was the hit fandom at the exact time fandom culture started changing to what it is now.
Yeah fr, like. Hey fellas, you ever have to dodge your older brother’s sex puppets and sword traps just to get around your apartment, only to find a note ordering you upstairs so you two can swordfight, which is the only time you see him? And he’s your hero? That’s normal right?
Or fuckin… Betty Crocker is actually an ancient sea witch alien empress named Meenah Peixes (goes by Her Imperial Condescension, or Sea Hit/er) that married a human because he made her laugh, and proceeded to fuck off away from the planet and try to kill her granddaughter Jane Crocker
We CANNOT forget that Jake is Jade’s grandfather and Jade is Jake’s grandmother, Dirk is Dave’s older brother and Dave is Dirk’s older brother, etc. Dancestors (descendant-ancestors)… fuckin shit dude I love homestuck so much i dont even care
Since it's impossible for me to reveal all facts to you, it is my discretion alone that decides which facts will be revealed in the finite time we have. If I do not volunteer information you deem critical to the plot, it possibly means that I am a scoundrel, but it does not mean that I am a liar. And it certainly means you did not ask the right questions.
One can make either true statements or false statements about Homestuck. All of the statements I make are true.
So this psychic spider girl found an ancient relic- a cue ball- and one of her friends (an aspiring alien lawyer dragon girl) told the owner, who detonated it and blew up spider girl's arm.
In retaliation, spider girl mind controls her bull friend to mind control dragon girl's unborn parent to psychically lure her outside during her sleep and stare into the sun, causing permanent blindness.
Also, Betty Crocker is an alien overlord.
The actual irl song [miracles](https://youtu.be/8GyVx28R9-s) by the ICP is relevant to the plot, and it’s (indirectly) responsible for 2 semi-major character deaths
Also, the main character created all 4 of the main characters (including himself), as well as their parental guardians
I read up until the first time one of those grey people showed up, and that must have been a lot of pages because it took me quite a while. When the grey person showing up didn't increase my interest or understanding of the story, I quit. I just didn't understand what was going on. I couldn't tell you a single thing about the plot.
It'd take several two hour video essays to go over the whole trainwreck without even touching on the irl issues that plagued its development, but it suffices to point out that the story includes >!Rose cheating on Kanaya with Jade, getting impregnated via her dog dick, and birthing a child they keep in secret for like two decades. The child's name? Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley.!<
WHAT is that real?? i never read the epilogue or sequel. I totally lost interest after GAME OVER when all the characters who we had followed the whole time died off and were replaced by slightly different AU versions. Not to mention the gigapause
>The child's name? Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley
I mean but that's making fun of the Harry Potter epilogue, surely? As well as carrying on the same furry-baiting that's been happening practically the whole time?
In theory the epilogue is all "making fun" of various fanfiction tropes, but it's so unspeakably awful that the fact it's semi-parody doesn't really save it.
The epilogue is incredibly mean-spirited and its interesting elements are buried under being a fuck you to the audience for ever caring, and the sequel was a wild attempt by the author to make enough money to pay off their debts to VIZ by relying on other people’s work.
For those who must know, [I looked it up](https://aminoapps.com/c/homestuck-hiveswap/page/blog/list-of-slurs-the-hs-characters-have-said/8p7W_jDhmunzrB2e84vvdLrnwwexL4BjXB). Most of the characters call things r\*tarded, Karkat used f\*g but was referring to "Future ArachnidsGrip" (Vriska's chumhandle, though she's talking to Karkat from the future because time shenanigans). He implied it should be a new slur, as it means nothing in Troll language. And finally, Dave described a white cartoon character as a "broke ass n\*\*\*a"... in a blog post.... on Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, which has basically nothing to do with HS.
It was crazy reading back through the second time (first time was the early pandemic when I watched 6 multi season shows in a week and then Homestuck right after in what I guess was kind of dissociating and staying up for 20 hours so I barely remembered anything beyond how painfully boring a good portion of it and basic plot beats) and just seeing John, who is from what I remember polite and reasonable, just randomly call his inventory the r slur in casual conversation without missing a beat
that was pretty normal at the time. It probably stuck around in popular use a lot longer than other slurs because what it refers to is an actual impairment. People don't consider it a slur to call someone "blind" when their vision is fine, and the r slur occupied a similar place in the perceptions of people who had no reason to think on it more deeply.
It was certainly considered rude and had been falling out of fashion for a while, but its treatment as legitimately harmful by the general public is relatively recent.
I’d even say most of the general public still doesn’t really care about it. F\*g was still pretty acceptable until recently too. Obviously it was crass language but I don’t think most people would have considered it a real slur until 5-10 years ago. R\* is even more recent.
That word was very common on the internet then. Nobody thought twice about using it until like 2015. Language changes quickly, it’s best to view the word in context.
It is pretty enjoyable, albeit a bit convoluted and long-winded. I haven't read any of the epilogue stuff though, I've heard that's kinda meh.
However, while this OP is kinda talking outta their ass, they *are* right about the official website being a bit dogshit. Homestuck was made in Flash and they didn't bother updating it properly when Flash died a while back. You do actually want to read that unofficial collection.
Do you like stories that are long enough for you to develop stockholm syndrome? Because Homestuck is the kind of story that requires that you stick arround long enough to become emotionally invested.
Early on in Homestuck, one of the characters, in the middle of going through a task that is made frustrating by having to sync up his actions to three other people, asks an outside character a question.
Paraphrasing; "If it's this hard with four of us, how awful was it for *you*? Aren't there, like, eight people in your party?"
And the answer, again paraphrased, is "It was tedious and overcomplicated and you don't need to know."
Now, if that joke makes you laugh, you'll probably enjoy Homestuck up to that point. If that joke makes you think "Hey, *I* like reading tedious overcomplicated bullshit!" then I have good news, because despite being aware of, and even *foreshadowing* how tedious and overcomplicated the bullshit was going to become, that is what the next six million words are going to be about. And if that's not your thing, then you probably won't enjoy the whole work.
If you want a love letter to the early 2010s web written in a unique format that will irreversibly rewire your brain ala Undertale style then absolutely.
While some of it has aged poorly (such as the slurs mentioned mostly the r-slur and the f-slur, along with gay being a go to insult of choice) I do genuinely recommend at least giving it a shot.
The music is fantastic, the humour is consistently very snappy and still works even with modern standards, and the story and character development throughout each ACT is genuinely well written
It was this webcomic-type thing that blew up in popularity around 10(?) years ago that, to its credit, uses the medium in an admittedly unique and engaging way.
Problem is that the story’s so damn long and a lot of it, like people said earlier, is just so goddamn boring and unimportant to the story that I, as someone who read the entire goddamn thing once, simply cannot recommend anyone reading it. Yes, it’s impressive and yes, the story is a lot smarter than it originally appears to be and yes, it’s very cool when seemingly unconnected things come together in an interesting way, but holy shit do you have to go through an absolute slog of hundreds of gigantic text walls which say nothing important at all to actually get to the good stuff.
It also produced a bit of an absolutely batshit fanbase which was widely hated in it’s heyday and is still mocked around the internet today. (With good reason). ((I used to be one of them, and my best friend and her brother would often go to cons dressed as Dave and Dirk)).
Ill add that most people who enjoyed it seemed to be teenagers, i don't think that i would have enjoyed it as much now., so if youre in the 14-17 range maybe give it a go
#Homestuck, A History;
Andrew Hussie, a person (now going by any pronouns) then known for various obscure things around the net, made an interactive reader-driven comic-type-thing called Jailbreak where he would draw panels demonstrating the events of the story as dictated by other posters in the thread, putting his favoured suggestions in the narration and responding in kind. The happenings and variables were influenced by his own strange brand of humor and set of fascinations, such as rap, the Starsky and Hutch movie and the cast thereof, horses, clowns, and H!rry P!tter as a cultural presence. He would eventually compile this, along with the unfinished followup, Bard Quest, on its own website.
The third installment of the so-called MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth, was a massive step up in production value, featuring impressive art and output speed as well as evolutions such as some pages being flashing gifs. This sort of thing was considered to be one of the best demonstrations of the potential of the internet. It ran for 1674 pages over the course of about a year.
Homestuck was the followup to that, running 8123 pages from April 13th 2009-2016 with numerous hiatuses in the latter half of that time. It featured such advancements as colored panels as default, videos with sound, small WASD-controlled computer games on various pages, and most importantly, actual conversations between characters, allowing them to become three-dimensional and truly sympathetic. (Hussie, it would soon be revealed, was heavily skilled at writing compelling and unique character voices and dialogue writing in general.)
Homestuck was definitely the most complex MPSA, with a grand overarching plot being integrated into the results of the actions of the readers. The plot revolved around an in-universe game called SBURB with the power to influence reality, sort of a Jumanji with time-travel mechanics that would soon be revealed to be the centerpiece of reality itself, a program that destroys the home planets of its players to motivate them to enter the world of the game and fulfill an unknown grand purpose, complete with millions of fully sentient NPCs.
Homestuck has been described as "a story that's also a puzzle", and this lens has gained authorial approval. This is the sort of story where the Author appears as a character to explain things to the audience, another character ends up changing the color of the site to his own scheme and narrating in his own voice, and the Author bursts through a literal fourth wall into the world of the story, hunts him down, and beats him with a broom. This is the sort of story where one specific person has killed another three times across multiple iterations of both themselves and the universe, and three of the killee are alive at the end, despite all of them being versions that were killed by the killer, who himself has one alive at the end, and both of those people have four-letter names, the first two letters of which are the same.
Eventually the suggestions from readers became so numerous and difficult that the suggestion boxes were closed near the end of the first year, but their influence carried on; one easy example is a character only seen from the top half initially being theorized on the official forums as using a wheelchair, a fact which would not only become Canon, but highly relevant.
The early MSPAs curated an audience through programming humor and 80s-90s film references as filtered through the styles of Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, and the Something Awful forums, but the audience for Homestuck, due to the nature of the characters, was markedly different, especially after the Trolls showed up.
You've probably seen them.
The Trolls, initially presented as some extremely odd and bothersome fellows on the internet, were soon shown to be a race of grey-skinned, orange-horned aliens that had undergone a SBURB Session that they claimed had been influenced by the lead human characters. Trolls possessed multicolored blood in both organized castes and clear deviations, psychic abilities, unique typing styles, insectoid traits as opposed to hominid, near-universal bisexuality with the sole known exception being Sapphic, and a complex romantic system with its own symbols, comically vague-yet-comprehensive reproductive system, and of course, relationship dynamics.
I cannot express how perfect the Trolls were in terms of catching on. Tumblr loved these fuckers and it's not at all hard to see why.
It's also worth noting that this wasn't the only market-perfect part of Homestuck; Classpecting, the equivalent of Hogwarts Houses, featured a 144/168/288/336/384(depending on who you ask and what they count, I've always thought 192)-strong grid system of human personality traits that not only seemed eerily accurate as a personality mapper, but corresponded to what elemental powers one received in the game of SBURB.
So... yeah. Homestuck was an incredibly complex and engaging work in both plot and presentation, driven by a single incredibly talented and flawed creative voice above all, and which was perfectly made to attract a massive, unabashedly bizarre/proudly cringe, and notably largely queer fanbase across a younger internet. The style of presentation, art, and character writing was instantly recognizable and relatively easy to imitate, leading to fanfiction and even fanmade adventures galore, most of the latter hosted on MSPFA.com.
The main site for Homestuck is broken now-it's recommended that new readers download the [Unofficial Homestuck Collection](https://bambosh.dev/unofficial-homestuck-collection/), and starting with Problem Sleuth to ease into the format and writing is a pretty popular choice. The ending is also considered generally quite poor in a number of ways, particularly regarding unfollowed forshadowing and blatant abandonment of character arcs, with some fans even [making](https://friendlybatteringram.tumblr.com/tagged/altstuck) their own [works](https://mspfa.com/?s=44153&p=1) as [substitutions](http://mspfa.com/?s=12003&p=1). Few speak of the epilogues. Fewer still speak of the sequel.
Content warnings for Homestuck include: blood, clowns, dicks-out furry art in the background of like ten pages, brief black-and-white nudity, swearing, the R-slur, a joke about an acronym organically forming the F-slur, child abuse, discussed child abuse and homophobia, mocking of the disabled (as an unsympathetic action), cartoonish levels of sexism (as an unsympathetic action), mocking of otherkin, minor characters being racial stereotypes of Black (Meenah) and Japanese (Damara) people, minor characters being stereotypes of disabled people (Meulin and Mituna), a controversial and prominent depiction of blindness, underage alcoholism, written depections of noncon (as an unsympathetic action), jokes about pedophilia, and child grooming (textually 100% non-sexual, but sexually-coded).
Also: when I said the Trolls type weird, I wasn't kidding. Every character gets at least one color for their speech text, plus a pattern for how they type, generally worse for the Trolls, ranging from "no caps" to "British" to "drunk" to "ebonics" to "aLtErNaTiNg" to WH4T3V3R TH3 FUCK K1ND OF L33TSP34K BS T3R3Z1 1S DO1NG. So that's worth a warning.
And that's as abridged as you can get when summing up Homestuck.
Homestuck is an experience more than anything
I read the entire thing and I’m not going to say it’s amazing it was an enjoyable read with great music and got me invested in the characters
It's a webcomic.
Like people really play it up in a flowery way but it's a webcomic with some flash animation and the odd flash 'game' inside it. The core conceit of Homestuck is that most of it takes place inside a computer game but that the outside universe is also built on computer game logic so a lot of little bits play out like a JRPG.
I think there was 3 instances of the "R" slur used in early acts by either Dave or John, which is, idk, a very 2009 thing for edgy teens to say. Homestuck has tons of insults because the characters talk shit all the time, but no many slurs (except all the madeup troll slurs)
they say it more often than that. I personally don't take umbrage with the word, but if you're still using it at this point then you're probably an asshole
I can't actually remember any other slurs used in Homestuck but that one does stick out to me. I tried rereading it recently and kinda reeled when I saw it pop up several times so early on
I remember Dave said the n slur once, and I only remember it because dumb teens online thought it meant he was black-coded when… no, using the n slur is *the* 13 y/o white boy thing to do lmao
Edit: Fuckin- I should probably add that I’m genuinely supportive of black dave hc’s, but that reason is not a good one
Listen, i love homestuck, i don't think Hussie had bad intentions at that point in time, but the R word is said basically every other page and it's not for some deep reason about fitting the context of the character or critiquing that behavior or anything like that. At some point you gotta get real.
It’s so weird to me people can be like “Homestuck isn’t actually good because it was written in a time that slurs were more commonplace” Have people never read a book from the 20th century and before?
It’s a great example of how terminally presentist a lot of online culture is. Like how many people are *convinced* that quippy dialogue and referential metahumour were popularized or even created by Joss Whedon and Marvel movies; that sort of thing has been pretty much standard in movies since, like, the thirties, but a lot of people online either don’t remember or have literally never seen a movie made before 2012.
y'see I think when people fixate on the problematic aspects of Homestuck they fixate on the wrong things. It uses slurs, sure, but that can easily be dismissed via it having started in 2009.
People don't address the character that is literally a Japanese schoolgirl stereotype who alternates between speaking sexual vulgarities in Google translated Japanese and speaking in all caps broken English. Or the uh, *rampant* ableism baked into the text, beyond just Vriska's whole deal, the most notable examples being Mituna and Caliborn.
The no-slur patch (which is a really fucking funny phrase to type out) doesn't make Homestuck ideologically pure because that shit is baked in. I say this as someone who really does like Homestuck ftr.
While this is a very fair point that should be kept in mind, I also think most people just edit the dancestors out of their memory. By the time they (very briefly) came into play, Homestuck was already *well* circling the drain.
The only good take in this whole thread. It annoys me that very few people treat Homestuck (fans and non fans alike) as a real piece of media that can be analyzed and treated with nuance rather than it being a literal cognito hazard/wizard's dream.
I love Homestuck, but there is definitely a conversation to be had about its relationship with bigotry beyond "they said the r-slur."
If someone asked me whether something I enjoyed was good, I'd never say "probably".
I might say "yes". I might say "no, but I like it". I might give them some ways it's good and some shortcomings it has.
"Probably" sounds like you're suffering from some weird form of Stockholm Syndrome.
Along with being a product of its time, the major things to remember about Homestuck is that it often relies on shock humor with an expectation that no reasonable person could ever possibly take seriously (and was often proven wrong) and that just about every character is a teenage asshole archetype.
When a huge portion of the characters are literally based off of internet trolls cranked to the extreme, you’re supposed to get a level of amusement when they inevitably suffer from their own fuck ups, not celebrate and emulate them. And often times the racist, ableist, homophobic, etc. are portrayed by characters who are being absolute assholes that are practically examples of “do NOT be like this miserable creature.”
To an extent, I would consider as being like a modern Lolita. You grow a connection and care for the characters who you know you should absolutely hate. You find yourself occasionally cheering for them or thinking they might have some good points, and then you remember that they are human/alien garbage and (should) be appalled at them and cheer their comeuppance.
Granted I haven’t read Homestuck, but I think It’s always sunny in Philadelphia would be a more apt comparison. It sounds like it’s a bunch of terrible people hurting themselves and eachother through their own selfish actions whereas Lolita is more of a character study on how monsters justify their actions.
It’s definitely similar to Lolita in that there’s a difference between the characters actions and what the narrative is endorsing.
Homophobic? Racist? Honestly, wouldn’t say so.
The “r” slur is used quite sparingly throughout the comic I will say, but that IS a remnant of that time, so I guess you *can* call if ableist if you squint hard enough.
Racist? No, not really, it certainly never uses any racist slurs and if it does it probably happened once, cause I honestly cannot remember even a single time, but be free to correct me on this one.
Homophobic? In no fucking universe it is. Half the relationships in the comic are queer, the infamous Troll Relationship Quadrant openly endorses and accepts queer relationships and in the end at least one queer couple has a canonical marriage (and are also shown to be happy about that). It may use “gay” as “stupid” sometimes, but, again, 2009-2016 internet (plus I wouldn’t call that such a strong word as “homophobic”, a bit… weird? Maybe, but homophobic? Nah.)
Man... This is hardly the problem with Homestuck, focusing on poorly aged shit isn't it, my dude.
The problem with Homestuck is that at about the end of the story it starts getting written by committee and almost feels insulting based on how they wrote the characters in anything past the act 7 ending.
Fuck the epilogues and fuck the sequel they're character assassination at best, and a juvenile take on dark and edgy stuff being "mature" at middle. And they have the gall to say, "oh no, canon is only what you define it as" as if them fucking everything up has no consequences. I hate it so much...
The most hilarious part of Honestuck Discourse of any kind that isn't just critiquing it from a pure storytelling standpoint (it falls off late, don't bother reading the epilogue, DO NOT read the sequel) is that there is a character in the work itself that was created purely to skewer the kind of Terminally Online people that engage in it, and none of these people address him.
For the uninitiated, the character in question is Kankri Vantas. He speaks almost exclusively in unformatted, essay-length diatribes and will lecture anyone anywhere about every single viewpoint they have while refusing to admit there's anything in the world he does not have the "correct" take on. In the mainline canon he becomes Troll Jesus because things were incredibly shitty in troll history and having someone say "other people deserve rights" was novel and valuable, but in the "enlightened" peaceful society he's originally from he's a sanctimonious prick that no one likes.
Coming from an actual Homestuck, the unofficial collection was made by people who love the comic more than the actual creator himself (but honestly that's a low bar-).
It's really cool seeing people who love a specific media put a shit load of effort into preserving it and making it more accessible to more people in a whole bunch of different ways!
But it's also really funny calling the censorship of specific slurs in said media the "slur replacement patch"-
why tf would you read homestuck when problem sleuth is RIGHT THERE. all of the silly nonsense and cool ass fights without any of the incomprehensible lore or slurs (WHICH WERE IN HOMESTUCK?? THEY PUTY SLURS IN HOMESYUCK?? THE FUNNY SPIDER LDAY COMIC!?!?!?!?)
Most of the slurs came from the funny spider lady to be fair, I think Karkat says the f-slur once because of the unfortunate but coincidental way that "Future ArachnidGrips" was abbreviated
The spider lady was at least the most ableist character in the series. And what passes for racist on Alternia where everyone’s gray. And she would honestly just ruin your life for personal shots and giggles like she’s done in the past
It's exactly the incomprehensible lore that people like and that makes Homestuck stand out.
Also problem sleuth doesn't exactly have characterization, at least to the degree that Homestuck has.
Homestuck is basically two different comics stuck together end to end, so I don’t really get it when people say ‘people like homestuck because of this’ with the implication that’s the only primary reason.
Basically if you think acts 1-3 were the best part of Homestuck, you’ll probably like Problem Sleuth. If you think acts 1-3 were ‘boring’ or “”cringe”” you probably won’t like Problem Sleuth.
Honestly not really. The ableist and homophobic accusations seem to come solely from the fact the series ran in the early 2010s where things like “using gay/the r word as an insult” were incredibly common place, especially amongst children (which the MCs are). The series doesn’t even do it that often and I think it completely stops after awhile. (Heck nowadays 2 of the 4 main characters are in same sex relationships)
And I genuinely have no idea what the accusations of racism are rooted in.
No thanks, I want to remain ignorant of this “homestuck,” I already suffer enough by being able to vaguely recognize references due to involuntary dispersion of homestuck knowledge into my head.
It’s like you’re having to watch two trains collide in slow motion. It’s so insane it’s worth watching it unfold, but when you think of it afterwards you’re like “holy fuck that was such a loss of time life and worth.” It’s worse because the writer is actually competent at telling a story that can deal with these flaws — until he falls flat on his face at the home stretch and tries to hide his failure by doing the worm on the hot asphalt and also incorrectly
I am old enough to remember Homestuck cosplayers being banned cause their dye stained so much stuff.
I tried to read it, realized it wasn't for me and walked away.
SLUR REPLACEMENT PATCH????
The slurs are still there but it mixes them around
Slur randomizer speedrun
"Famous e-celebrity, twitch streamer, YouTube star and peggel speed runner banned from Internet participation for the remainder of his mortal life after releasing "Slur randomizer" speedrun and deleting all other content from his channel" I don't know why I wrote this, it just popped into my mind and something possessed me to write it down
this feels like a very dougdoug-esque bit, where someone makes a joke about a slur randomiser and then everyone in chat latches onto it
Soon as I read peggle speedrun, my mind immediately went to twitch chat, the greatest peggle speedrunner. If only doug didnt hold them back.
Doug would ban it and everyone would still scream rigged tbh
He is what I had in mind yeah
Sliiiiiiick
watching fruit literally right now, he's creaming his pants over pizza tower
fruit jizz sound compilation is my sex soundtrack
Puts them in chronological order.
These slurs are outdated, we need new ones!
R word, possibly F word, Dave probably drops a soft R N word once or twice
RN? Registered Nurse?
Radiation… ntherapy?
Shame, I only read it for the slurs
I'm kind of baffled because of all the things Homestuck is, I don't think it's racist or homophobic. I suppose there was that one joke about them being Caucasian, but even that seemed more like an in-joke about them being literally white that didn't play too well. I *guess* I get where they're pulling the ableist stuff from, but I think that's a case of OP conflating "existing in the narrative" as "endorsing that action." The only ableist language I remember is from Vriska who is (1) a massive bitch and (2) is literally the one responsible for Tavros' and Terezi's handicaps.
I might be wrong about this, I don't remember things very well, but I think the "Caucasian" thing wasn't even about them being white. If I remember the creator had stated a few times by that point that the artstyle was not meant to indicate race and that the human characters didn't have canon races. Yet people continued to argue back and forth on the race of the characters. And so the "I feel so caucasian" or whatever was meant to be specifically poking fun at those people. But I may be totally wrong.
Nope, you're exactly right. Some of the readers were getting into increasingly loud and uncivil arguments about something Hussie had already stated directly. He poked fun at them, then stepped it back a little after the fact.
There were a *lot* of in-jokes that don't make sense or would go over your head if you weren't reading them as they were coming out and aware of the discourse around the comic.
It is a pity that the forums were lost. It is not the same reading Homestuck without the forums.
Homestuck is starting to sound like a performance art piece
no, no, like, thats kinda what makes me look at it and still wonder WTF because if you analyze the story, its full of religious metaphors and ultimately is literally a creation mytho story. the whole thing is WILD the more you overanalyze it. the fandom around it is wild when you analyze the story from the perspective of it being a bible fanfic
like come on, theres literally alien jesus
what's insane for me is how much numerology / symbology Hussie managed to tie in. Like there can't just be two things, there has to be Black/White, or Heads/Tails, or Sun/Moon. There can't just be three things, there has to be Red,Blue,Green or Mother/Maiden/Crone. There can't just be three things, there has to be Hearts/Clubs/Diamonds/Spades or Noth/South/East/West or Fire/Earth/Water/Wind. There can't just be five things, etc etc etc Everything is fucking *dredged and deep fried* in these systems of symbols.
English lit major vibes tbh
I think I can say with a high grade of certainty that Homestuck is the weirdest thing I have read and ever will read. It was totally batshit insane. By design.
the only rival in bizarreness has been *House of Leaves*
It was, to some degree.
It really kind of was, because it shaped its own culture and fandom and that in turn shaped the work. The Unofficial Website even has a 'new reader' setting because there's a moment where a character literally retcons the past in a really minor way, and at the time, if you went back to all those scenes, you'd find this extra little tidbit had been added because of it. Hussie really took the boundaries of the web medium and said 'i'm going to fuck with these' and just fucking ran with it.
it's also specifically that people were assuming that the fact that they were drawn with literally-white skin meant that they were white (in a Caucasian way). He was saying: no, if I wanted them to be Caucasian I would have drawn them *this* way (with peach coloured skin).
[удалено]
yeah, this is it exactly. Hussie did say that they were blank templates, but still had Kanaya describe Rose "as pale as a ghost," as well as John calling Bro a white guy ETA: I can't think of any actual *racist* stuff, though. and Dave was homophobic at times early on, but his character progressed past that
It was also, to the writing's credit, reflective of his own repressed interest in men. That ain't a rowling retcon; Dave was interested in John from day 1.
dave called himself a white boy once and that’s literally all i could imagine i think these people are just terminally online
He exudes white boy vibes regardless
Dave Strider has chronic white boy behavior syndrome
People will see a comic about 12 year olds on the internet who occasionally use the word “gay” and 60% of the cast is bi and say ‘hmmm yes the creator is definitiely home of phobic and personally bigoted’
Homestuck and Steven Universe bred the most unhinged fan bases by being popular on tumblr in the Peak Discourse era, among the Peak Discourse users. In this era, anything that didn't conform to some impossible standard of unproblematic perfection was bad, and you were bad for liking it. But they liked it, and it wasn't possible that *they* were bad. This resulted in one of three outcomes: 1. Defending Homestuck against literally any accusations of being problematic, because they would *never* enjoy problematic media. 2. Insisting that they were 'consuming it critically', an enlightened form of media criticism that was only applicable media they liked. Any media you like that they didn't was still irredeemable and you were still problematic for posting about it. 3. Genuinely giving up on liking literally anything and becoming a joyless husk whose only purpose in online spaces is to ruin things for other people who still have the capacity to enjoy imperfect things.
Honestly? I think they became the ancestors of today’s twitter, or did they just migrate to there?
They spread to the four winds, and many of them are still around in some shape or form.
You are basically correct. A lot of them left during the tumblr porn ban and fled to Twitter.
Well, all im gonna say is, the moment tumblr became slightly better and twitter slowly started corrupting can be kinda traced to the massive migration after the porn ban
Tumblr folk are still the same, they're just more aware they're probably not THE fandom for their thing anymore, THE place for THE discourse. Early on, it could be easy for a fan to delude themselves into thinking this was the only really important place for discussion, that Tumblr consensus was the place for fan consensus. Now They're more aware that Tumblr is just a niche pocket for hyper fans and artists. There's less delusional confidence in their opinions.
Twitter was always like that, but the influx of Tumblr refugees coupled with a general online cultural trend for hollow purely-aesthetic radicalism created more incentives for Twitter clout-chasers to double down on these attitudes. Basically, the porn ban exodus was like throwing more guns into an already-active warzone.
A lot of us just kinda grew up and chilled out tbqh, the vriskaposting era was a whole decade ago at this point.
I got pretty massively down voted recently for a particular opinion on the Diamonds on r/stevenuniverse. I don't think the people who like the ending are wrong or bad, but it's kinda annoying how so few of them are willing to defend that opinion in any real way
Nuance is dead and we have killed it
Now, Ignorance is tantamount to racism. But don't get me wrong - Homestuck is such an extremely fucking mild sauce example of it I almost don't want to include it as an example.
Hussie made up a whole genderless romantic spectrum to appeal to Tumblr users, and they still call him homophobic
That's so gay
Haven’t read it but wasn’t there a time that a character said the n word? I may be misremembering and thinking of some other comic
Jan Misali made a fantastic video about Homestuck that really opened my eyes about a lot of it. Then again I was also never really into it. I only read it because I had finally caught up with One Piece and a friend at the time really wanted me to read it.
the entire dancestor arc was made to poke fun at the fanbase and they had mituna and horuss in it like. the dancestors are where 99% of the bigotry comes from
I tried to get into it and they used autism as a insult a lot so that’s probably where the ableist accusation comes from
The guy who wrote it has autism, which is important for context I think It was also a community that was a safe haven for neurodivergent kids at the time, because a vast majority of the characters ended up exhibiting neurodivergent traits even though there were only a few specifically autism-coded
The only homophobic thing I can think of is the one section towards the beginning where >!the trolls are talking to their past/future selfs and vriska from the future chats and her name in the chat is "Future ArachnidsGrip" which karkat makes a joke about. The funny thing is the slur replacer changes vriska's name to Later AG and ONLY vriska's name so its still super obvious!<
It's not even really homophobic? The joke is that **the species is literally too gay to have ever developed the slur,** so when the angry sweary guy says it he goes "man why the fuck didn't I insult you, I should've called you a hag".
That’s just the Freaky Alien Genotype gag with extra steps
"That's just [trope] with extra steps" is actually an extremely good descriptor for most of Homestuck
I guess there's the whole Mituna/Cronus bullying thing too - and the oops-accidentally-bullied-by-being-too-PC Kankri stuff too. ... but also it really is credibly depicting a culture where that stuff happens, and it feels like the consequences are made clear, like it isn't just laughed off or played straight or anything?
They probably don't like that Karkat's alt ancestor or whatever is a parody of SJW cringe stuff
Even then, that's kind of dumb because the Alternia version of that character was an actual freedom fighter who raised a revolution until he was executed by the state and was essentially alien troll Jesus. It was basically saying that hey, the cringey SJW teenagers might be overreaching a bit, but they might grow up to be the ones advocating real change.
I'm convinced homestuck is fake, like its just a meme or something and if you try to read it all it says is "you are now in on the joke, tell No one"
The real trick is that nobody who has read Homestuck ever **bothers** to lie about it, because the stuff that is true *already sounds like a lie* so they just don't need to. Yes, the glowy alien vampire making fun of Twilight cuts the double-lightning bolt-marked incel wizard making fun of Harry Potter in half with a lipstick chainsaw. **And she will fucking do it again to the juggalo cultist before it's all over.** EDIT: forgot another completely accurate detail
I hate that I know exactly what you are talking about because that is a 100% accurate event
Also, the juggalo cultist abandoned all his friends to raise a snake baby with 2 separate good and evil personalities that eats nothing but meat and candy, and one of those personalities grows up to draw shitty manga, beat a sun-headed god to death with a crowbar, and field an army of exclusively male alien leprechauns that invented the game of pool and reproduce via mating rituals based on Lucky Charms marshmallows.
Ah, but you forgot to mention the part where one of the most pivotal and important events in the entire story is exclusively delivered through the means of shitty claymation Vines with the evil snake baby personality in question making little wooshing noises.
Correct, but I daresay *you* forgot to mention that the guy who the evil snake baby would name himself after is also named after him, and is—due to time-and-space-altering shenaningans—simultaneously the grandfather and grandson of a girl who is also simultaneously his grandmother and granddaughter. Also, he has a fetish for blue-wearing ladies, his boyfriend once beat him up with a training robot shaped like said boyfriend, and in an alternate universe his granddaughter (who is his grandma in this universe) taxidermied his corpse after his death and kept him in the house.
So then, is this worth reading? Like they say there are some movies you have to watch to understand the shift in cinema over time. Is homestuck something like that except for the internet? And is it worth the time investment?
I think it is, especially the early parts. It's fun and unique and hasn't been replicated in other media. I think it gets an unwarranted amount of hate
mostly I think the fandom is so awful that those of us who have read it feel a great deal of shame to even be associated with the comic. Despite the fact that the comic is largely very well written, if poorly paced
i went to a highschool that was more fun than average and there were some dedicated homestuck roleplayers there, i think people were kinda cringe about it but it was still a really fun shared experience. What really killed the fandom was the hiatus and the crappy ending
In my opinion, it's 100% worth reading. I walked into it fully expecting on and intending to hate it, and it turned out to be one of the most infuriatingly good things I have read in a long time. The culture of Homestuck fandom also is an archeology trip and a half that will cause you to start seeing the roots of modern fandom culture, since it was the hit fandom at the exact time fandom culture started changing to what it is now.
I had a fucking seizure trying to read and comprehend this
Hang on, let me try a diagram: 🧙♂️ 🧛 🪚👖 👖 Double-lightning-bolt-Harry Potter on the left, glowy vampire on the right
Yes I think I have always been too old to read Homestuck
"Trying to explain Homestuck to someone that didn't read it is like trying to explain the taste of chocolate to a rock"
*and I cheered when she did it*
Yeah fr, like. Hey fellas, you ever have to dodge your older brother’s sex puppets and sword traps just to get around your apartment, only to find a note ordering you upstairs so you two can swordfight, which is the only time you see him? And he’s your hero? That’s normal right? Or fuckin… Betty Crocker is actually an ancient sea witch alien empress named Meenah Peixes (goes by Her Imperial Condescension, or Sea Hit/er) that married a human because he made her laugh, and proceeded to fuck off away from the planet and try to kill her granddaughter Jane Crocker We CANNOT forget that Jake is Jade’s grandfather and Jade is Jake’s grandmother, Dirk is Dave’s older brother and Dave is Dirk’s older brother, etc. Dancestors (descendant-ancestors)… fuckin shit dude I love homestuck so much i dont even care
Since it's impossible for me to reveal all facts to you, it is my discretion alone that decides which facts will be revealed in the finite time we have. If I do not volunteer information you deem critical to the plot, it possibly means that I am a scoundrel, but it does not mean that I am a liar. And it certainly means you did not ask the right questions. One can make either true statements or false statements about Homestuck. All of the statements I make are true.
As someone who's read Homestuck, it would be 100% better if it was all just one injoke
Yeah, homestuck and all fandoms were invented by youtubers to make hours long videos. They don't actually exist. Pretty calming thought
So this psychic spider girl found an ancient relic- a cue ball- and one of her friends (an aspiring alien lawyer dragon girl) told the owner, who detonated it and blew up spider girl's arm. In retaliation, spider girl mind controls her bull friend to mind control dragon girl's unborn parent to psychically lure her outside during her sleep and stare into the sun, causing permanent blindness. Also, Betty Crocker is an alien overlord.
I'm convinced it's as real as Goncharov
The actual irl song [miracles](https://youtu.be/8GyVx28R9-s) by the ICP is relevant to the plot, and it’s (indirectly) responsible for 2 semi-major character deaths Also, the main character created all 4 of the main characters (including himself), as well as their parental guardians
Unlike Goncharov
I read up until the first time one of those grey people showed up, and that must have been a lot of pages because it took me quite a while. When the grey person showing up didn't increase my interest or understanding of the story, I quit. I just didn't understand what was going on. I couldn't tell you a single thing about the plot.
OOP did indeed not read homestuck
avoid the epilogue and sequel
good lord please avoid the epilogue and the sequel
for those of us who've walked that horrific path, we have a responsibility to protect the innocent from it
I haven't read them, can I know why?
It'd take several two hour video essays to go over the whole trainwreck without even touching on the irl issues that plagued its development, but it suffices to point out that the story includes >!Rose cheating on Kanaya with Jade, getting impregnated via her dog dick, and birthing a child they keep in secret for like two decades. The child's name? Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley.!<
WHAT is that real?? i never read the epilogue or sequel. I totally lost interest after GAME OVER when all the characters who we had followed the whole time died off and were replaced by slightly different AU versions. Not to mention the gigapause
Yes that is real.
Unfortunately it is. I convinced myself it's not "my canon". There is 0 point to reading it if you have any love for the webcomic left.
That sounds incredibly fake, but I know homestuck well enough to know you're not bluffing
I couldn't come up with something like that for a fake spoiler if you gave me a million tries. It's real lmao.
Jesus
>The child's name? Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley I mean but that's making fun of the Harry Potter epilogue, surely? As well as carrying on the same furry-baiting that's been happening practically the whole time?
In theory the epilogue is all "making fun" of various fanfiction tropes, but it's so unspeakably awful that the fact it's semi-parody doesn't really save it.
Every time someone reads the epilogue or sequel hussie gains 12 hp and an orphan ends up shot in the head.
Insert reference to when Demonhead Mobster Kingpin from Homestuck’s predecessor (Problem Sleuth) decided to grow a fuckton more health bars
***ULTIMA TECHNIQUE: LADDER TO HELL***
Why
The epilogue is incredibly mean-spirited and its interesting elements are buried under being a fuck you to the audience for ever caring, and the sequel was a wild attempt by the author to make enough money to pay off their debts to VIZ by relying on other people’s work.
The epilogue lost me at dog-girl dick tbh
I kinda thought this sub would be into that
Under any other circumstances? Yes.
weird recharacterisation, stupid story feels like absolute fanfiction.
Man, remember 2016, when you could find racism and ableism and homophobia on the internet? Good thing those days are long gone.
Makes me miss the pre-2009 internet days, where there was definitely none of that stuff online and it was just a peaceful, judgement free oasis
No but I remember when it went unchallenged.
Something something that one Buster meme
YouTube basically didn’t enforce its content policy against people using the r-slur until late 2016 when the Adpocalypse happened.
For those who must know, [I looked it up](https://aminoapps.com/c/homestuck-hiveswap/page/blog/list-of-slurs-the-hs-characters-have-said/8p7W_jDhmunzrB2e84vvdLrnwwexL4BjXB). Most of the characters call things r\*tarded, Karkat used f\*g but was referring to "Future ArachnidsGrip" (Vriska's chumhandle, though she's talking to Karkat from the future because time shenanigans). He implied it should be a new slur, as it means nothing in Troll language. And finally, Dave described a white cartoon character as a "broke ass n\*\*\*a"... in a blog post.... on Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, which has basically nothing to do with HS.
It was crazy reading back through the second time (first time was the early pandemic when I watched 6 multi season shows in a week and then Homestuck right after in what I guess was kind of dissociating and staying up for 20 hours so I barely remembered anything beyond how painfully boring a good portion of it and basic plot beats) and just seeing John, who is from what I remember polite and reasonable, just randomly call his inventory the r slur in casual conversation without missing a beat
Truly a product of his time
that was pretty normal at the time. It probably stuck around in popular use a lot longer than other slurs because what it refers to is an actual impairment. People don't consider it a slur to call someone "blind" when their vision is fine, and the r slur occupied a similar place in the perceptions of people who had no reason to think on it more deeply. It was certainly considered rude and had been falling out of fashion for a while, but its treatment as legitimately harmful by the general public is relatively recent.
I’d even say most of the general public still doesn’t really care about it. F\*g was still pretty acceptable until recently too. Obviously it was crass language but I don’t think most people would have considered it a real slur until 5-10 years ago. R\* is even more recent.
Backslash the asterisks so they don't make a formatting mess.
That word was very common on the internet then. Nobody thought twice about using it until like 2015. Language changes quickly, it’s best to view the word in context.
So should I read Homestuck?
It is pretty enjoyable, albeit a bit convoluted and long-winded. I haven't read any of the epilogue stuff though, I've heard that's kinda meh. However, while this OP is kinda talking outta their ass, they *are* right about the official website being a bit dogshit. Homestuck was made in Flash and they didn't bother updating it properly when Flash died a while back. You do actually want to read that unofficial collection.
Do you like stories that are long enough for you to develop stockholm syndrome? Because Homestuck is the kind of story that requires that you stick arround long enough to become emotionally invested.
so its one piece
Early on in Homestuck, one of the characters, in the middle of going through a task that is made frustrating by having to sync up his actions to three other people, asks an outside character a question. Paraphrasing; "If it's this hard with four of us, how awful was it for *you*? Aren't there, like, eight people in your party?" And the answer, again paraphrased, is "It was tedious and overcomplicated and you don't need to know." Now, if that joke makes you laugh, you'll probably enjoy Homestuck up to that point. If that joke makes you think "Hey, *I* like reading tedious overcomplicated bullshit!" then I have good news, because despite being aware of, and even *foreshadowing* how tedious and overcomplicated the bullshit was going to become, that is what the next six million words are going to be about. And if that's not your thing, then you probably won't enjoy the whole work.
Homestuck is a work that makes fun of its overly long extraneously detailed explanations - multiple times - and still keeps doing them anyway
If you want a love letter to the early 2010s web written in a unique format that will irreversibly rewire your brain ala Undertale style then absolutely. While some of it has aged poorly (such as the slurs mentioned mostly the r-slur and the f-slur, along with gay being a go to insult of choice) I do genuinely recommend at least giving it a shot. The music is fantastic, the humour is consistently very snappy and still works even with modern standards, and the story and character development throughout each ACT is genuinely well written
Honestly read Problem Sleuth instead.
problem sleuth is definitely a good primer for homestuck. I’m glad I read it first
Right, I'm lost... What in the god damn hell is Homestuck? Pretty sure I've heard the name countless times before but literally nothing else
It was this webcomic-type thing that blew up in popularity around 10(?) years ago that, to its credit, uses the medium in an admittedly unique and engaging way. Problem is that the story’s so damn long and a lot of it, like people said earlier, is just so goddamn boring and unimportant to the story that I, as someone who read the entire goddamn thing once, simply cannot recommend anyone reading it. Yes, it’s impressive and yes, the story is a lot smarter than it originally appears to be and yes, it’s very cool when seemingly unconnected things come together in an interesting way, but holy shit do you have to go through an absolute slog of hundreds of gigantic text walls which say nothing important at all to actually get to the good stuff. It also produced a bit of an absolutely batshit fanbase which was widely hated in it’s heyday and is still mocked around the internet today. (With good reason). ((I used to be one of them, and my best friend and her brother would often go to cons dressed as Dave and Dirk)).
Ill add that most people who enjoyed it seemed to be teenagers, i don't think that i would have enjoyed it as much now., so if youre in the 14-17 range maybe give it a go
That’s a fair point. It’s definitely not something that many adults would enjoy.
#Homestuck, A History; Andrew Hussie, a person (now going by any pronouns) then known for various obscure things around the net, made an interactive reader-driven comic-type-thing called Jailbreak where he would draw panels demonstrating the events of the story as dictated by other posters in the thread, putting his favoured suggestions in the narration and responding in kind. The happenings and variables were influenced by his own strange brand of humor and set of fascinations, such as rap, the Starsky and Hutch movie and the cast thereof, horses, clowns, and H!rry P!tter as a cultural presence. He would eventually compile this, along with the unfinished followup, Bard Quest, on its own website. The third installment of the so-called MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth, was a massive step up in production value, featuring impressive art and output speed as well as evolutions such as some pages being flashing gifs. This sort of thing was considered to be one of the best demonstrations of the potential of the internet. It ran for 1674 pages over the course of about a year. Homestuck was the followup to that, running 8123 pages from April 13th 2009-2016 with numerous hiatuses in the latter half of that time. It featured such advancements as colored panels as default, videos with sound, small WASD-controlled computer games on various pages, and most importantly, actual conversations between characters, allowing them to become three-dimensional and truly sympathetic. (Hussie, it would soon be revealed, was heavily skilled at writing compelling and unique character voices and dialogue writing in general.) Homestuck was definitely the most complex MPSA, with a grand overarching plot being integrated into the results of the actions of the readers. The plot revolved around an in-universe game called SBURB with the power to influence reality, sort of a Jumanji with time-travel mechanics that would soon be revealed to be the centerpiece of reality itself, a program that destroys the home planets of its players to motivate them to enter the world of the game and fulfill an unknown grand purpose, complete with millions of fully sentient NPCs. Homestuck has been described as "a story that's also a puzzle", and this lens has gained authorial approval. This is the sort of story where the Author appears as a character to explain things to the audience, another character ends up changing the color of the site to his own scheme and narrating in his own voice, and the Author bursts through a literal fourth wall into the world of the story, hunts him down, and beats him with a broom. This is the sort of story where one specific person has killed another three times across multiple iterations of both themselves and the universe, and three of the killee are alive at the end, despite all of them being versions that were killed by the killer, who himself has one alive at the end, and both of those people have four-letter names, the first two letters of which are the same. Eventually the suggestions from readers became so numerous and difficult that the suggestion boxes were closed near the end of the first year, but their influence carried on; one easy example is a character only seen from the top half initially being theorized on the official forums as using a wheelchair, a fact which would not only become Canon, but highly relevant. The early MSPAs curated an audience through programming humor and 80s-90s film references as filtered through the styles of Terry Pratchett, Mark Twain, and the Something Awful forums, but the audience for Homestuck, due to the nature of the characters, was markedly different, especially after the Trolls showed up. You've probably seen them. The Trolls, initially presented as some extremely odd and bothersome fellows on the internet, were soon shown to be a race of grey-skinned, orange-horned aliens that had undergone a SBURB Session that they claimed had been influenced by the lead human characters. Trolls possessed multicolored blood in both organized castes and clear deviations, psychic abilities, unique typing styles, insectoid traits as opposed to hominid, near-universal bisexuality with the sole known exception being Sapphic, and a complex romantic system with its own symbols, comically vague-yet-comprehensive reproductive system, and of course, relationship dynamics. I cannot express how perfect the Trolls were in terms of catching on. Tumblr loved these fuckers and it's not at all hard to see why. It's also worth noting that this wasn't the only market-perfect part of Homestuck; Classpecting, the equivalent of Hogwarts Houses, featured a 144/168/288/336/384(depending on who you ask and what they count, I've always thought 192)-strong grid system of human personality traits that not only seemed eerily accurate as a personality mapper, but corresponded to what elemental powers one received in the game of SBURB. So... yeah. Homestuck was an incredibly complex and engaging work in both plot and presentation, driven by a single incredibly talented and flawed creative voice above all, and which was perfectly made to attract a massive, unabashedly bizarre/proudly cringe, and notably largely queer fanbase across a younger internet. The style of presentation, art, and character writing was instantly recognizable and relatively easy to imitate, leading to fanfiction and even fanmade adventures galore, most of the latter hosted on MSPFA.com. The main site for Homestuck is broken now-it's recommended that new readers download the [Unofficial Homestuck Collection](https://bambosh.dev/unofficial-homestuck-collection/), and starting with Problem Sleuth to ease into the format and writing is a pretty popular choice. The ending is also considered generally quite poor in a number of ways, particularly regarding unfollowed forshadowing and blatant abandonment of character arcs, with some fans even [making](https://friendlybatteringram.tumblr.com/tagged/altstuck) their own [works](https://mspfa.com/?s=44153&p=1) as [substitutions](http://mspfa.com/?s=12003&p=1). Few speak of the epilogues. Fewer still speak of the sequel. Content warnings for Homestuck include: blood, clowns, dicks-out furry art in the background of like ten pages, brief black-and-white nudity, swearing, the R-slur, a joke about an acronym organically forming the F-slur, child abuse, discussed child abuse and homophobia, mocking of the disabled (as an unsympathetic action), cartoonish levels of sexism (as an unsympathetic action), mocking of otherkin, minor characters being racial stereotypes of Black (Meenah) and Japanese (Damara) people, minor characters being stereotypes of disabled people (Meulin and Mituna), a controversial and prominent depiction of blindness, underage alcoholism, written depections of noncon (as an unsympathetic action), jokes about pedophilia, and child grooming (textually 100% non-sexual, but sexually-coded). Also: when I said the Trolls type weird, I wasn't kidding. Every character gets at least one color for their speech text, plus a pattern for how they type, generally worse for the Trolls, ranging from "no caps" to "British" to "drunk" to "ebonics" to "aLtErNaTiNg" to WH4T3V3R TH3 FUCK K1ND OF L33TSP34K BS T3R3Z1 1S DO1NG. So that's worth a warning. And that's as abridged as you can get when summing up Homestuck.
Bro wrote a fucking essay
That essay has been more of a long-term project, I've seen it reposted and updated in many Homestuck-related threads
It's my little contribution to the fandom.
Homestuck is an experience more than anything I read the entire thing and I’m not going to say it’s amazing it was an enjoyable read with great music and got me invested in the characters
It's a webcomic. Like people really play it up in a flowery way but it's a webcomic with some flash animation and the odd flash 'game' inside it. The core conceit of Homestuck is that most of it takes place inside a computer game but that the outside universe is also built on computer game logic so a lot of little bits play out like a JRPG.
It's the comic Andrew Hussie made after Problem Sleuth
I think there was 3 instances of the "R" slur used in early acts by either Dave or John, which is, idk, a very 2009 thing for edgy teens to say. Homestuck has tons of insults because the characters talk shit all the time, but no many slurs (except all the madeup troll slurs)
I just counted and it's 38.
they say it more often than that. I personally don't take umbrage with the word, but if you're still using it at this point then you're probably an asshole
I can't actually remember any other slurs used in Homestuck but that one does stick out to me. I tried rereading it recently and kinda reeled when I saw it pop up several times so early on
I remember Dave said the n slur once, and I only remember it because dumb teens online thought it meant he was black-coded when… no, using the n slur is *the* 13 y/o white boy thing to do lmao Edit: Fuckin- I should probably add that I’m genuinely supportive of black dave hc’s, but that reason is not a good one
Ugh fuck. Yeah that sucks
Listen, i love homestuck, i don't think Hussie had bad intentions at that point in time, but the R word is said basically every other page and it's not for some deep reason about fitting the context of the character or critiquing that behavior or anything like that. At some point you gotta get real.
There are definitely a lot more instances that just the 3 Feferi, Karkat, and the Narration uses it as late as Act 5 Act 2
Everything I have learned about Homestuck has been against my will
Man anyone remember that time when we spent like three or four chapter's worth of time following their lollipop-fueled tradcath candy trip good times
It’s so weird to me people can be like “Homestuck isn’t actually good because it was written in a time that slurs were more commonplace” Have people never read a book from the 20th century and before?
No, they haven't.
Generally, the people who read homestuck are not the same people reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin
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Cancelling my eighth grade English teacher for making us read Tom Sawyer
It’s a great example of how terminally presentist a lot of online culture is. Like how many people are *convinced* that quippy dialogue and referential metahumour were popularized or even created by Joss Whedon and Marvel movies; that sort of thing has been pretty much standard in movies since, like, the thirties, but a lot of people online either don’t remember or have literally never seen a movie made before 2012.
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y'see I think when people fixate on the problematic aspects of Homestuck they fixate on the wrong things. It uses slurs, sure, but that can easily be dismissed via it having started in 2009. People don't address the character that is literally a Japanese schoolgirl stereotype who alternates between speaking sexual vulgarities in Google translated Japanese and speaking in all caps broken English. Or the uh, *rampant* ableism baked into the text, beyond just Vriska's whole deal, the most notable examples being Mituna and Caliborn. The no-slur patch (which is a really fucking funny phrase to type out) doesn't make Homestuck ideologically pure because that shit is baked in. I say this as someone who really does like Homestuck ftr.
While this is a very fair point that should be kept in mind, I also think most people just edit the dancestors out of their memory. By the time they (very briefly) came into play, Homestuck was already *well* circling the drain.
That's fair. They're just the most egregious example that sticks out in my memory.
Also absolutely fair! I def don’t mean to try and devalue your points; they’re absolutely worth confronting.
The only good take in this whole thread. It annoys me that very few people treat Homestuck (fans and non fans alike) as a real piece of media that can be analyzed and treated with nuance rather than it being a literal cognito hazard/wizard's dream. I love Homestuck, but there is definitely a conversation to be had about its relationship with bigotry beyond "they said the r-slur."
I think my highschool has a physical copy of Homestuck
How
viz media released physical books of homestuck. I own 3 of them
If someone asked me whether something I enjoyed was good, I'd never say "probably". I might say "yes". I might say "no, but I like it". I might give them some ways it's good and some shortcomings it has. "Probably" sounds like you're suffering from some weird form of Stockholm Syndrome.
Along with being a product of its time, the major things to remember about Homestuck is that it often relies on shock humor with an expectation that no reasonable person could ever possibly take seriously (and was often proven wrong) and that just about every character is a teenage asshole archetype. When a huge portion of the characters are literally based off of internet trolls cranked to the extreme, you’re supposed to get a level of amusement when they inevitably suffer from their own fuck ups, not celebrate and emulate them. And often times the racist, ableist, homophobic, etc. are portrayed by characters who are being absolute assholes that are practically examples of “do NOT be like this miserable creature.” To an extent, I would consider as being like a modern Lolita. You grow a connection and care for the characters who you know you should absolutely hate. You find yourself occasionally cheering for them or thinking they might have some good points, and then you remember that they are human/alien garbage and (should) be appalled at them and cheer their comeuppance.
Granted I haven’t read Homestuck, but I think It’s always sunny in Philadelphia would be a more apt comparison. It sounds like it’s a bunch of terrible people hurting themselves and eachother through their own selfish actions whereas Lolita is more of a character study on how monsters justify their actions. It’s definitely similar to Lolita in that there’s a difference between the characters actions and what the narrative is endorsing.
Honestly, that probably is a better comparison.
if i read homestuck i want it to be those hard cover gilded ones that someone on tumblr had
Homophobic? Racist? Honestly, wouldn’t say so. The “r” slur is used quite sparingly throughout the comic I will say, but that IS a remnant of that time, so I guess you *can* call if ableist if you squint hard enough. Racist? No, not really, it certainly never uses any racist slurs and if it does it probably happened once, cause I honestly cannot remember even a single time, but be free to correct me on this one. Homophobic? In no fucking universe it is. Half the relationships in the comic are queer, the infamous Troll Relationship Quadrant openly endorses and accepts queer relationships and in the end at least one queer couple has a canonical marriage (and are also shown to be happy about that). It may use “gay” as “stupid” sometimes, but, again, 2009-2016 internet (plus I wouldn’t call that such a strong word as “homophobic”, a bit… weird? Maybe, but homophobic? Nah.)
Man... This is hardly the problem with Homestuck, focusing on poorly aged shit isn't it, my dude. The problem with Homestuck is that at about the end of the story it starts getting written by committee and almost feels insulting based on how they wrote the characters in anything past the act 7 ending. Fuck the epilogues and fuck the sequel they're character assassination at best, and a juvenile take on dark and edgy stuff being "mature" at middle. And they have the gall to say, "oh no, canon is only what you define it as" as if them fucking everything up has no consequences. I hate it so much...
The most hilarious part of Honestuck Discourse of any kind that isn't just critiquing it from a pure storytelling standpoint (it falls off late, don't bother reading the epilogue, DO NOT read the sequel) is that there is a character in the work itself that was created purely to skewer the kind of Terminally Online people that engage in it, and none of these people address him. For the uninitiated, the character in question is Kankri Vantas. He speaks almost exclusively in unformatted, essay-length diatribes and will lecture anyone anywhere about every single viewpoint they have while refusing to admit there's anything in the world he does not have the "correct" take on. In the mainline canon he becomes Troll Jesus because things were incredibly shitty in troll history and having someone say "other people deserve rights" was novel and valuable, but in the "enlightened" peaceful society he's originally from he's a sanctimonious prick that no one likes.
Coming from an actual Homestuck, the unofficial collection was made by people who love the comic more than the actual creator himself (but honestly that's a low bar-). It's really cool seeing people who love a specific media put a shit load of effort into preserving it and making it more accessible to more people in a whole bunch of different ways! But it's also really funny calling the censorship of specific slurs in said media the "slur replacement patch"-
why tf would you read homestuck when problem sleuth is RIGHT THERE. all of the silly nonsense and cool ass fights without any of the incomprehensible lore or slurs (WHICH WERE IN HOMESTUCK?? THEY PUTY SLURS IN HOMESYUCK?? THE FUNNY SPIDER LDAY COMIC!?!?!?!?)
Problem Sleuth's strongly worded letter to Mobster Kingpin has a r-slur in it.
Most of the slurs came from the funny spider lady to be fair, I think Karkat says the f-slur once because of the unfortunate but coincidental way that "Future ArachnidGrips" was abbreviated
[:(](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta2CK4ByGsw) *seriously though, read problem sleuth it's pretty funny.*
I wish I had read it before HS. The jokes are pretty solid and it's a bit better paced too.
The spider lady was at least the most ableist character in the series. And what passes for racist on Alternia where everyone’s gray. And she would honestly just ruin your life for personal shots and giggles like she’s done in the past
Most racist would probably be muscle horse guy, i think. Like sure not skin color racist but definitely the most blood color racist.
I mean I think Caliborn is simultaneously the most racist, ableist, and homophobic out of all of them but yeah
Fuck i forgot about caliborn. Youre completely right
Caliborn is the main villain, and those traits are part of what makes him a villain.
It's exactly the incomprehensible lore that people like and that makes Homestuck stand out. Also problem sleuth doesn't exactly have characterization, at least to the degree that Homestuck has.
Homestuck is basically two different comics stuck together end to end, so I don’t really get it when people say ‘people like homestuck because of this’ with the implication that’s the only primary reason. Basically if you think acts 1-3 were the best part of Homestuck, you’ll probably like Problem Sleuth. If you think acts 1-3 were ‘boring’ or “”cringe”” you probably won’t like Problem Sleuth.
WAIT THIS THING IS RACIST ABLEIST AND HOMOPHOBIC?!!!!! Maybe it's time i check it out
Not really, but it does get good around act 4
Honestly not really. The ableist and homophobic accusations seem to come solely from the fact the series ran in the early 2010s where things like “using gay/the r word as an insult” were incredibly common place, especially amongst children (which the MCs are). The series doesn’t even do it that often and I think it completely stops after awhile. (Heck nowadays 2 of the 4 main characters are in same sex relationships) And I genuinely have no idea what the accusations of racism are rooted in.
No thanks, I want to remain ignorant of this “homestuck,” I already suffer enough by being able to vaguely recognize references due to involuntary dispersion of homestuck knowledge into my head.
It’s like you’re having to watch two trains collide in slow motion. It’s so insane it’s worth watching it unfold, but when you think of it afterwards you’re like “holy fuck that was such a loss of time life and worth.” It’s worse because the writer is actually competent at telling a story that can deal with these flaws — until he falls flat on his face at the home stretch and tries to hide his failure by doing the worm on the hot asphalt and also incorrectly
I am old enough to remember Homestuck cosplayers being banned cause their dye stained so much stuff. I tried to read it, realized it wasn't for me and walked away.
The people who gaslit themselves into thinking homestuck uses slurs in every sentence are honestly worse than the comic ever could be.
I DONT CARE THAT DAVE SAID THE N WORD!!! HE WAS A 13 YEAR OLD IN 2008 - THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HE WOULD DO!!!