Homestuck: Execution of a Masterpiece - Part 1 - What’s in a Game?

Whenever people ask a Homestuck fan what Homestuck is all about, or why they should read it, the vast majority of people expects a roundabout response. It’s weird and complicated, some say. You have to read it to understand it. There’s this notion that Homestuck is an inscrutable work that requires hours upon hours to get any enjoyment out of it, and this school of thought is only reinforced by Homestuck’s slow beginning. People love Homestuck, but while the first Acts serve as a great introduction to the Setting, people tend to remember and get excited by things happening later on. Where are the Trolls? Some say, already knowing the existence of these characters. Is this the right Webcomic? Was another typical question tossed around before the Viz Media redesign removed any shred of doubt regarding the comic. A lot of people outside of the Fandom hesitate to get into it, whether it be the Length, stories they may have heard about the Fans, or thinking it’s all Nonsense.

And yet, whatever it is you personally believe about Homestuck, its notoriety on the Internet speaks of there being… Something more to it. Something interesting enough to keep over a Million users checking the website daily at its height. Something interesting enough to Crash Newgrounds and partially Megaupload, Youtube, and other services with a single major update. You may not know what that is, specially with the paradoxically self-deprecating attitude a lot of the people in the Fandom have taken. With the Hiatuses and the Ending, a lot of people have left Homestuck behind, and yet you may still see people occasionally mentioning missing it, following certain Livebloggers of the comic, or creating/reblogging Fanart. Even those who didn’t enjoy the ending, as things have settled down, still remember the story fondly, and while going through a bit of a hiccup currently, Hiveswap has sparked interest in the story anew.

So the question is, of course. What makes Homestuck good? Why did it captivate so many people if it really is cryptic and confusing? Or was it just a passing fad? Is there any actual veracity to these claims? Today, I am going to explain what’s captivating about this Webcomic, and then go through the entirety of the story showcasing turning points for the narrative and how they are executed in this Modern Shakespearean Odyssey. Be warned, there will be Spoilers, but I will try to confine them to the second half of this post.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

So let’s preface this addressing the big elephant in the room. 

What IS Homestuck?

Even fans of the Webcomic may not be able to tell you specially well what it actually IS. It’s a Webcomic… But it’s not in a Comic Format, it’s more like a Choose your Own Adventure Game… But you don’t actually Choose anything… It’s been likened to Ulysses, as well as a Shakespearean Play. It’s been talked about as a Creation Myth by the author, as well as just ‘A Webcomic about Friends who Play a Game’, and a Webcomic about a Game in general.

Add to this the length and narrative shifts that occur through the story, and the ever-growing complexity of the narrative spanning through the entirety of the comic, and you have a metatextual behemoth the likes the Internet had never seen before. Perhaps bits and pieces of it, but not all together, and definitely not to such an extensive degree. But it really is not as difficult to understand as it may seem. All you need to do, is assess the Author’s prior works, and his intent with with his work, as well as Homestuck.

Before Homestuck.com was a thing, the website hosting Homestuck was Mspaintadventures. You can still read his old adventures, obviously, but back in the day Homestuck wasn’t specifically the focus- Rather, it was just the latest in a series of experimental stories Hussie had been working on. Going even further back in time, before MSPA was a thing, Hussie also worked on other things. ‘And It Don’t Stop’, and ‘Whistles the Midnight Calliope’ are stories Hussie created and illustrated, ‘Complacency of the Learned’ was a dropped project of his, and even further back he was part of a comic series at Team Special Olympics… Which. Was as awful as it sounds. And yet it’s thanks to these rather awful beginnings that we can begin assessing Homestuck in a clearer light.

The biggest key to being funny is to not be a dumbass. Really stupid people have a hard time being funny (intentionally). The smarter you are, the better the odds you have of being funny. Note that sometimes you run into really smart people who aren’t funny, or lack a sense of humor. But note, this is VERY STRONG evidence that they are not nearly as smart as they appear to be! In my view at least.

When I equate humor as a product of intelligence, I mean it is primarily a product of awareness. The more you are aware of, and the more insight you have into a myriad of things, the more you will be able to successfully illuminate absurdity, and the more clever ways to accomplish this you will be able to conceive of. Awareness lends itself to an agile imagination. This is why stupidity is such comedic poison. Awareness of the world and that from which you draw your satirical muse is deadened by the mind-blunting forces that are associated with stupidity. These forces primarily are a lack of concentration and dedication, and inalertness to all that surrounds you and all content you are exposed to. As well as being quick to judge and label whatever does manage to get through the pinhole. Those are brain killers and comedy killers. They lead to hackneyed work at best, and incredibly awful, prejudicial, bigoted stuff at worst.

Now I don’t mean to say I’m a real smart guy and that’s why I’m funny, or EVEN VICE VERSA. I’m just pointing out that, in thinking back, becoming less obtuse and deepening my understanding of as much as possible was a turning point in beginning to understand what is and isn’t funny. 

I just try to make sure every page has some purpose, whether it’s just funny or amusing, or advances the story in some way. The most important page is always the one I’m working on. I never put out pages just to take up space or kill time.

I think if a story manages to be a succession of meaningful, entertaining events, then that fluidity happens automatically.

I am making the kind of thing I would want to read. I am making the kind of thing I wish existed, but doesn’t. Yet.

I write it because I enjoy it and assume everyone else will take pity on those who don’t.

Back when MSPA first launched, the featured story was Jailbreak. A simplistic CYOA story about a dude trying to escape a prison, that allowed readers to submit commands. Once Jailbreak was finished, Hussie began Bard Quest, which followed up on Jailbreak’s spirit, but with multiple branching options. This proved to be too much for Hussie to keep track of, sadly, and ended up dropping the story. Then we move on to Problem Sleuth, a story that spanned the entirety of a Year, about Hard Boiled Detectives. In a similar way to Jailbreak, Hussie allowed people to submit commands and started to showcase more of his style and special brand of humor. Towards the end of Problem Sleuth however, Hussie knew how he wanted to end the story, and began to cherry pick the commands and even make them up entirely so that he could give the story the ending he wanted.

And this brings us to Homestuck, after Problem Sleuth was finished. Homestuck’s development is, in a way, an antithesis of Problem Sleuth. With Problem Sleuth, Hussie learned about the shortcomings of CYOA Webcomics, and got some more insight on the genre. So when Homestuck began, he already had a story in mind, but allowed people to submit commands, to explore the world he’d already crafted. As such, things that would be out of character or disrupt the story in a way he didn’t agree with were humored as intrusive thoughts. The first few Acts are a tug of war, between the Author wanting to push the story in the direction he envisioned, and the Audience having a degree of control over the characters in ways that bring new interesting ideas and possibilities. This is what makes the first Act feel like a drag for some people. They have been told about the story when it’s already going in the direction the author wants, but the beginning is a playful back and forth of narrative forces. It starts silly. It starts comedic. And it retains the comedy through all of it. But at the start, the lack of any concrete setting or storyline make everything feel like absurdist tomfoolery. 

It’s those who enjoy this style or bear through it and get hooked on by the many plot hooks afterwards that learn there’s something more to the story, and this is what creates the divide between people within the Fandom and people Outside of it.

But this didn’t exactly answer the question did it? WHAT is Homestuck really? 

Homestuck is a cultural amalgamation, and a way for Hussie to expose his inner world while improving as a person. Many people have attacked Hussie and Homestuck because of his work at Team Special Olympic, and the use of a few slurs- Namely the R word, through the first Acts of Homestuck, and while it’s commonly used up to Act 5, it falls in desuse afterwards. People outside of the circle see this and would argue that most of the comic uses slurs- However, the first Acts were made in a very small span of time, compared to how long Act 6 took to make. It was also an issue people had less awareness of back then. The further you get into the story, the more it touches upon very real themes, psychological issues, identity, orientation.

From the point of the Story itself, Homestuck is an intense Cultural Remix of old and new, mixture of Classical Themes with Pop Culture, touching everything from the Philosophy of Existentialism and Gnosticism to joking about the Obama Presidency. It’s Hussie, as a complex author, creating an intricate Multiverse with intriguing mechanics that draws inspiration from everything from Religious currents to Dragon Ball Z and Earthbound. But from the point of the Author, Homestuck is the exposition of themes Hussie feels are interesting to share with an audience, as he grows to understand more about the world around him, learns from his mistakes, and creates a work he would want everyone to enjoy.

And since it spanned a period of Seven Years, the themes it touches, the culture it reaches to, and the way Hussie himself behaves, slowly shift through the entirety of the narrative. You can see the growth, of both Homestuck and the Author, both in the art style and in the narrative, as time goes on. This is why Homestuck is so hard to pin-point and explain, because it could very well seem two entirely different stories at two different randomly picked spots. And yet, at the same time, it’s the way Homestuck evolves and grows that captivates many people, the way a simple story becomes something much more grand and intense.

And while this showcases what Homestuck IS, it definitely leaves a much more important question in the air…

What is Homestuck ABOUT?

Because of the same reasons discussed above, the very story of Homestuck seems ever-shifting depending on how deep in you are. Some people simply mention Act 1, trying to avoid Spoilers- The story about the protagonist, John Egbert, and his group of Online Friends, who play a Game together, which leads to unforseen consequences. Others will try to dig deeper into the story, but without giving specific details, perhaps teasing about some events later on in the story, or commenting about Time Travelling, but leaving it ambiguous and difficult to understand. Others may straight up decide to spoil a Plot Point in hopes of hooking their friends into the story, and yet, without the context of the rest of the comic behind it, the Plot Hook simply doesn’t stick as well as it should, and at worst, even makes others believe the story to be Ridiculous or Nonsensical.

Hussie himself has described the comic in various different ways through the years, with the most prominent two explanations being A Comic about Online Friends who Play a Game, and A Comic about Games. And you can see both of these being true through the entirety of Homestuck, the narrative does indeed begin with Kids playing a Game, and said Game is the very core of the Setting, around which the conflict revolves. At the same time, the Comic takes upon game-like characteristics, having an in-Universe inventory system the Kids mess around with, and draws themes from many other games- Building like in the Sims, a RPG-like levelling up system, and even going as far as to include Easter Eggs, Cheat Codes, Glitches and Corruptions occasionally. Homestuck makes fun of Video Game Tropes, while at the same time embracing them for its own purposes, whether it be to create a plot point or to add some comedic messing around with inventory management.

Because of this Videogame Style, too, and the Game the protagonists play, the author manages to combine a Modern Setting with Sci-Fi elements, and further digs into it with Fantasy themes. Magic and Science mix confusingly, Game Mechanics raise questions about Reality itself and Free Will, and yet in turn also allow for an incredible degree of Customization and Self-Insertion.

Through its parody of Videogames and its draw from multiple cultures, Homestuck builds one of its biggest strengths in its Versatility. It presents core ideas that become rational parts of the narrative, and allow the story to take any twist and turn imaginable without being far-fetched. People loved making theories about the direction of the story, people still make stories about the story, people love to make their own characters and include them in the setting, insert themselves. And it works! Because the Setting is Hyper-Flexible and allows for people to work with a solid foundation that spans so many fun things!

In turn, however, this also becomes one of the story’s biggest flaw when it comes to drawing in new people- The density of the story is such that most people will find something intriguing and interesting, and yet, people will find different things interesting and intriguing. So someone may read the first few Acts, and not get hooked, even though if they kept reading they would enjoy it! Conversely, others enjoyed the first few Acts, but perhaps missed some plot point along the way, or took a break and forgot something, causing confusion about later events and not letting them enjoy the setting as much as they should be. Homestuck is not a story for everyone. It has something for everyone, and it has an incredible amount of appeal to a number of different demographics, but because of this, there’s a divide among ‘when the good stuff begins’. This creates expectations- They will say the first Acts are bad, and then someone will read them and find them Hilarious and Charming. They will claim certain characters are the best and they can’t wait for their friend to get to them- But their friend fell in love with another set of characters, and now they want to skim over the thing the other was so in love with to get back to the action. Ultimately, this shouldn’t matter- If you think you’d enjoy Homestuck for what it is, it’s a great story with amazing characters. But within the Fandom, this creates a disparity on what parts of the story are good/bad/better/worse, and as such, may put off people who would otherwise love certain aspects of it.

Regardless of whether they enjoy it now or later, whether they enjoy it overall or don’t find enjoyment, Homestuck is what it is. An Hyperflexible Narrative about a Group of Friends playing a Game, parodying popular Game Tropes and getting more Intricate as time goes on, always dangling a new plot thread in front of the audience without providing all the answers, giving enough to keep their attention, but not enough to spoil them. Foreshadowing future events that, when happen, click in your head and make you realize how far back everything goes, and how everything is intertwined. It’s a crazy, often silly comedy. And in my opinion? It’s something people should give a try if they have the slightest bit of interest in.

There’s no shame in dropping the story at any point if you’re not enjoying it after all. Homestuck is long, and if you’re not liking it it’s okay to let it be and just think it’s not for you. But if it grabs you? It grabs you hard, and it makes you want more. 

And while the story and the mechanics and the narrative it presents are incredibly intriguing and rather deep, there’s also something everyone who likes Homestuck enjoys.

The Characters

One of the biggest draws in Homestuck, people will often mention, are the Characters. The group of main friends, along with everyone presented afterwards, some are more relatable than others, but ultimately they’re all enjoyable in some way. Hussie himself once said that he disliked writing characters he didn’t personally enjoy on some level. And you can see this even with the simplest of one-shot characters. They’re complex and flawed, and often come to either realize their own mistakes, or have someone else showcase their rights and wrongs. Their interests, their interactions with others, it creates for multi-dimensional characters that often feel like real people, which stick to a set of values and a type of personality.

This is magnified by the concept of the Hero Titles, what would be Homestuck’s equivalent to someone choosing a ‘Rogue’ or a ‘Paladin’ in a game. They don’t show up until later on, but even in the earlier acts these Titles give more context to the Characters’ personalities and what they did and what they will do next. And they can be applied to pretty much everything, even characters outside of Homestuck and even to yourself! Yet another layer of customization that keeps people interested in the setting, specifically because many Titles are left rather ambiguous. Flexibility is, once again, the name of the game.

And speaking of Flexibility? The characters in Homestuck are designed with Headcanon Flexibility in mind. The art style is often symbolic and rather undefined. Characters are represented by loose shapes, by their Symbols and their Colors, rather than a specific look, which has led to artists drawing them in all sorts of ways! All characters are, canonically, Aracial, a blank slate to project upon, and even the hair color is more often seen as ‘dark’ or ‘light’ rather than necessarily Black or White. Sure, Hussie slips some times because he has his own headcanons, calling babies ‘pink’ at times or mentioning about someone being ‘white’, but ultimately? Race, Height, Body Type, is often left ambiguous and shifts heavily, specially when Guest Artists begin to show up. And yet, whenever you see a specific character being interpreted in one way? It doesn’t matter what the artist’s specific Headcanons are, you can still tell they’re them. People will joke about certain characters being similar to each other with this symbolic style, but the fact you can always recognize them in fanart is a testament to their Design.

Ultimately

Homestuck is a weird and unique story, which is why it’s drawn so many people to it. Everything about it is a progression, an evolution. The Art Style improves as it goes on. The narrative gets more complex and gains more depth, building up from the very same base it started with. The characters grow and change through the story, facing relatable issues and inter-personal problems. The author gains more awareness, betters himself, grows as a person, and it reflects on the story and the themes it touches. A silly story about a group of Online Friends. A tale of self-improvement. A Creation Myth about what the author thinks is Right and Wrong. A collage of Classic and Popular Media combined in a new-age medium. A LGBT-positive tale with quite strong representation specially late-game representation. A versatile tale to entice people to get involved in the Fandom in one way or another.

It is not perfect. But it doesn’t need to be. It’s constantly pushing the boundaries that define it and experimenting, shifting in its angle and becoming more in tune with the issues in the world. A story about Hope and Change, a series of enigmas presented with just enough puzzle pieces missing to make you wonder and theorize, but not enough that things become frustratingly obtuse.

That is why Homestuck is so hard to define. That is why so many people enjoy Homestuck and have stuck with it for so long. And that is, if you think you would enjoy this silly narrative, why, you too should read Homestuck! Maybe it doesn’t stick! Maybe you simply don’t enjoy the style, and that’s fair.

But if you do enjoy it and follow through? It can and will shift your perspective on so many things.

Also, if you’re worried about not getting some of the Pop Culture references, like movies and such, don’t worry- I didn’t get half of them back in the day, and what they did was actually make me interested in movies I would’ve had no interest in whatsoever otherwise.

I’m specially looking at you, Con Air.