Homestuck

***Homestuck*** is a webcomic written, illustrated, and animated by American author and artist Andrew Hussie, and it is the fourth overall webcomic published on *MS Paint Adventures* (*MSPA*). The webcomic centers on a group of teenagers who unwittingly bring about the end of the world through the installation of a beta copy of an upcoming computer game.

The comic consists of a combination of static images, animated GIFs and instant message logs, as well as animations and games made with Adobe Flash. It has been noted for its complex plot and considerable length: over 8000 pages and 800,000 words.

## Synopsis

*Sburb*'s "beta" logo prior to the Scratch, a cataclysmic resetting event at the end of Act 5
*Homestuck* begins when thirteen-year-old John Egbert receives a beta copy of an upcoming computer game, *Sburb*, in the mail. Installing and running the game on his computer triggers a meteor storm to fall on his house in real life, which he survives only by being transported to a planet in another dimension known as the Incipisphere. As John's friends Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, and Jade Harley join him in the game, they learn that they have unwittingly triggered the destruction of Earth and that it is their duty to play the game to create a new universe.

As they begin to explore the world of *Sburb*, John and his friends are harassed by a group of twelve Internet trolls who have played a version of the game before. Further contact with the trolls reveals that they are not human at all, but an alien species actually called "trolls". As the trolls gradually become more important to the story, the narrative shifts to a side story arc exploring the nature of troll society and the specific sequence of events that led to this group to enter the troll version of *Sburb*. The trolls' arc concludes with them winning their game and originally creating the humans' universe.

As the story returns to focus on the humans, the two species start to cooperate to salvage the kids' doomed game session. As the kids' actions accidentally bring about an unbeatable enemy called Jack Noir, they learn about a game mechanism called the "scratch" with which the humans can reset their session.

By executing the Scratch, the kids create a reset version of their universe, in which their places have been swapped with those of their ancestors. As a result, John's grandmother, Jane Crocker, who had died before the story began, is fifteen years old and the protagonist of the new arc. She leads her three friends Roxy Lalonde, Dirk Strider, and Jake English — the mother, brother, and grandfather of Rose, Dave, and Jade, respectively — through their own session of the game, while the original humans and surviving trolls journey to the new session over the course of three years.

Upon uniting in the new session, the kids and trolls enact a plan to finally create a new universe and to defeat Lord English, a purportedly-invincible villain threatening all of reality. Their plan is opposed by the Condesce, the sinister former empress of the trolls now in service to Lord English, as well as the still-dangerous Jack Noir who also escaped from the original doomed session. Matters complicate further as John develops new powers allowing him to retcon previous events within the *Homestuck* narrative.

The plan fails, and only John, Roxy, and one of the trolls, Terezi, survive. Under Terezi's guidance, John retcons key events in the narrative, preventing events leading to the plan's failure from occurring. In the retconned narrative, the kids and trolls defeat the Condesce and Jack Noir and create the new universe. The comic ends with Lord English facing off against an army of ghosts and with the kids and trolls about to enter the newly created universe. Illustrations in the closing credits feature Snapchat stories of the kids in their roles as rulers of a new universe, the last of which involves twenty-year-old John smashing his phone's screen with a hammer in response to a Snapchat from the adolescent Lord English.

## Style and development

The basic premise of the comic has been described as inspired by games like *The Sims*, *Spore* and *EarthBound*. As in Hussie's prior webcomic *Problem Sleuth*, the adventure is characterized by time travel, mystery, a complex fictional universe, and frequent references to pop culture and previous adventures. Changes from previous stories include an emphasis on contemporary society, such as online gaming and Internet culture, which contrasts with the historical settings of *MS Paint Adventures* comics *Bard Quest* and *Problem Sleuth*. Additionally, this adventure introduced complex Flash animations and Flash and HTML5 games, many making use of music and assets contributed by other artists. This represented a step-up from previous adventures which exclusively used GIF images for animation.

The initial style of the webcomic was developed to be advanced by fan contributions, with the fans deciding what actions the characters would take. However, once the fan base had grown significantly by 2010,[*citation needed*] Hussie moved away from this style because the fan input method had grown "too unwieldy and made it difficult ... to tell a coherent story." While Hussie now controlled the main plot of the story and the characters' actions, he still "visit[ed] fan blogs and forums" to figure out small things to add into *Homestuck*.

Hussie first launched an early version of *Homestuck*, the *Homestuck* Beta, on April 10, 2009. The *Homestuck* Beta was made using Flash and ran from April 10–12.

### Pauses

Although the majority of *Homestuck* was posted serially, with pages irregularly added over the course of each day, Hussie decided in 2013 to add the final acts in one update. He named the time period he was taking to finish the story a "Gigapause". Hussie explained that he wanted to have the ability to tell the remainder of the story in a nonlinear fashion by writing and illustrating the storyline and then revising the chronology.[*citation needed*] Various large pauses have happened since.

* On October 16, 2013, the "Gigapause" began. Hussie announced that the hiatus had almost reached its conclusion on September 27, 2014, although he had not fully completed the story. On October 16, 2014, *Homestuck* "Gigaunpaused", and server crashes occurred as a multitude of fans visited the site.
* On January 19, 2015, Hussie announced another pause, which lasted until April 13, 2015. Though officially unnamed, Hussie humorously offered "Minigigapause", "Megapause 2: Back in the Megasaddle", and "Microterapause" as possible titles.
* On August 12, 2015, Hussie announced the "Omegapause", stating, "It will be done when it's done. As for when that is, I don't have any concrete projections. Maybe it will all drop some time next year? ... I guess we will have to wait and see." This pause lasted until March 28, 2016.

On April 13, 2016 Hussie released the final chapter of the webcomic: a nine-minute-long animated short titled "[S] ACT 7". Hussie stated that an epilogue to the webcomic would be released at some point in the future. On October 25, 2016, the comic updated with a credit sequence and more panels in the form of a Snapchat story.

### Sequels

On April 13, 2019 — exactly ten years after *Homestuck* started — the "Homestuck Epilogues" began. The Epilogues are presented in purely text format with no images, completely abandoning the webcomic genre. They serve as a bridge between *Homestuck* and *Homestuck²: Beyond Canon*, wrapping up story threads from the former and introducing new story threads for the latter.

On October 25, 2019, a sequel was launched, titled *Homestuck²: Beyond Canon*. *Homestuck²: Beyond Canon* is being written by a team of writers based on a story by Hussie. The project is funded by Patreon.

## Side projects

A significant amount of merchandise has been sold through Hussie's shop, company, and record label What Pumpkin, including "T-shirts, hoodies, pins, books" and fan art prints. Fans have also been "recruited" to make music for the webcomic. The music has been bundled into albums, with ten major soundtrack albums having been released thus far, in addition to eighteen side albums. On April 13, 2014, the fifth anniversary of *Homestuck*, *Paradox Space*, an anthology spin-off webcomic, was launched.

### *Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff*

Early in *Homestuck*, Hussie introduced a webcomic contained within the main story titled *Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff*. The webcomic, drawn within *Homestuck* by character Dave Strider, is intentionally poorly made. The comic strips have become independent of *Homestuck*: a mockup of the website on which Dave Strider hosts the comic is available on the MSPaintAdventures website. TopatoCo produced a print publication collecting the strips. The press release from TopatoCo described *Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff* as "the worst comic strip ever".

In 2017, TopatoCo announced a second *Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff* book, co-written by Dril, co-drawn by KC Green, and funded through Kickstarter.

### Video game

Main article: Hiveswap

On September 4, 2012, Hussie announced a Kickstarter to raise funds to develop a *Homestuck* video game with a (then-unannounced) game studio (later revealed to be The Odd Gentlemen). Development began in 2013, with the finished product expected in 2014; it was ultimately released in 2017. *Kotaku* noted that the project had raised "more than $275,000 in hours". More than 80% of the $700,000 goal was pledged in the first day. The game reached the full $700,000 of funding in fewer than 32 hours. The campaign also reached certain "stretch goal" amounts, whereupon Hussie added Mac and Linux support onto the proposed game. *Digital Trends* writer Graeme McMillan commented that the campaign was approaching, at the time, the record for most successful comics-related Kickstarter campaign, which was previously held by *The Order of the Stick* campaign with $1,254,120. The Kickstarter eventually raised $2,485,506, making it the "fifth game on Kickstarter to pull in a full seven figures" and the third highest funded video game in Kickstarter history at the time. An additional PayPal-based fundraiser was created to accommodate those who could not donate via Kickstarter's available methods.

The special contribution items for the campaign included digital and hard copy versions of the game and the game soundtrack, along with "exclusive sticker sheets and T-shirts, plush dolls of in-series plushes like Senator Lemonsnout and Pyralspite Plushie and primo appearances in the final product."

## Fan community

The size of *Homestuck'*s fan community is in the millions, with around a million unique visitors coming to the site daily. At one point, one of *Homestuck*'s Flash animations caused Newgrounds to crash when it was uploaded, due to the strain the number of views put on the servers. Actor Dante Basco is noted as a fan of the webcomic, having been urged to read it by friends telling him that the character Rufio, which he played as in the 1991 film *Hook*, is featured in it. This interest in the webcomic led to a friendship with Andrew Hussie and resulted in the creation of a new character, Rufioh, with Basco's "typing quirks and personality".

When a temporary hiatus was announced in early July 2012, fans of the webcomic began creating a multitude of fake screenshots of a fictional anime version of *Homestuck*, with some including subtitles and logos of various Japanese TV channels.

## Reception and impact

Lauren Rae Orsini, in an interview with Andrew Hussie, asked Hussie whether, because of the immense size of *Homestuck* and its fandom, with more than 5,000 pages and 128 characters at the time, Hussie considered himself in control of the comic. Hussie responded that he felt *Homestuck* was "still under my control", but that the background of *Homestuck* as a movement "is not under my control, and never really was." Orsini also suggested, in a separate article, that the effort put forward by people who finish *Homestuck* is an example of effort justification.

*Homestuck* was compared to James Joyce's *Ulysses* by PBS' Idea Channel due to the webcomic's length and complexity. Lori Henderson of the *School Library Journal* described *Homestuck* as being "mostly black and white with splashes of color and a minimal amount of animation", but said that it worked for the webcomic and that, because the "characters are a little goofy-looking and are often shown without arms", it only "adds to the charm". Mordicai Knode of Tor Books explained that *Homestuck* has to be discussed separately between what it is as a webcomic and what its plot actually is. Comparing it to hypertext fiction and the genre's attempted use in physical novels like *Pale Fire* and *House of Leaves*, Knode concluded that "*Homestuck* is the first great work of genuinely hypertext fiction. If that puts it in the same breath as *Ulysses*, then so be it."

Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of the graphic novel series *Scott Pilgrim*, described *Homestuck* as a "massive undertaking of deftly-handled long-term serialized storytelling. It's well-written and thoughtful. It has things to say".

## Books

### TopatoCo

In 2011, TopatoCo began publishing Homestuck in book form. Only the first three acts were ultimately published.

* *Book One* (2011) ISBN 978-1936561827
* *Book Two* (2012) ISBN 978-1936561834
* *Book Three* (2013) ISBN 978-1936561100

### Viz Media

In October 2017, Andrew Hussie announced that Homestuck would be collaborating with Viz Media to release the entire webcomic in book form.

* *Homestuck, Book 1: Act 1 & Act 2* (2018) ISBN 978-1-4215-9940-3
* *Homestuck, Book 2: Act 3 & Intermission* (2018) ISBN 978-1-4215-9939-7
* *Homestuck, Book 3: Act 4* (2018) ISBN 978-1-4215-9941-0
* *Homestuck, Book 4: Act 5 Act 1* (2019) ISBN 978-1-4215-9942-7
* *Homestuck, Book 5: Act 5 Act 2 Part 1* (2019) ISBN 978-1-4215-9943-4
* *Homestuck, Book 6: Act 5 Act 2 Part 2* (2020) ISBN 978-1-9747-0650-1
* *The Homestuck Epilogues: Volume Meat / Volume Candy* (2020) ISBN 978-1-9747-0108-7