Memorial for Homestuck

As most who have met me know I am a huge fan of a webcomic called Homestuck. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the genre of the webcomic, it usual comes in the form of picture, text, and a link to the next page. Or alternatively it can simply be a comic book page with a link to the next. Homestuck is the former.

The author Andrew Hussie has produced several other webcomics, such as Problem Sleuth, but with Homestuck he did something different. Often instead of a simple picture the page will include a gif instead, adding more life. Then later on some pages will include music, really good music. Well that’s my opinion anyway, my family describes the music as “video games on drugs.” But what is really exciting is when the page includes a flash animation, or even a mini-game (although the mini-games tend to be kinda tedious).

Homestuck is the story about 4 kids who live far apart you start to play a new gam called Sburb, but they soon find it’s unlike any normal game. 1 kid connects to another as the server player and manipulates their surroundings, builds up their house, deploys devices. Or usually throws a toilet about somewhere. Long story short they find that there are giant meteors heading for Earth, 4 of them heading straight for their houses. But if they can use the machines correctly, their houses and anyone inside teleports to a place called the Medium, where the majority of Homestuck takes place.

All 4 kids eventually enter and start playing, they fight imps gain resources, etc. That’s where things go badly though. An enemy in the game called Jack Noir becomes superpowered due to unfortunate circumstances, and their forced to use the Scratch. The Scratch resets the game, and them too, but they escape it using awesome powers they gained by going God-tier, or in Jade’s case Dog-tier.

How did they know to do all this you ask? Through guidance by 12 other kids, from another game session that also failed. These kids are trolls and while they completed the games mission and created a new universe (Earth’s one) their reward was taken from them by Jack Noir, who escaped the Scratch into the troll’s session. The trolls are awesome, if very confusing and they bring a lot of new concepts into Homestuck, most notably new romance prospects.

So the kids scratch their game, Earth gets reset and a new game begins. But who will play this game? 4 new kids, who turn out to be the original kids Parents, but the Scratch switched time around so these new kids were raised by adult versions of the originals (sort of, its complicated). Then we find out the trolls session was also scratched, meaning there are 12 other trolls to meet. And then there is a third race the cherubs, though there are only 2 of them, and one of them becomes the big bad guy, Lord English.

So anyway, all this stuff happened over 7 years of updates that started on 13/4/09 or as the (American) fans call it: 413. So now, 7 years later Homestuck is going to end, and it is going to be huge. Last Wednesday we had an 19 minute video go up, and considering several years ago a 12 minute video crashed the site(s) it was hosted on Hussie was smart and uploaded it to Youtube instead. So farewell Homestuck, you weird random, ambiguously awesome unsung hero. }:(

Stephen Wynton