I suppose I should finally put this thing to rest for good.
I last read Homestuck sometime last year, collating my thoughts in a thread on Bluesky as I went (I also did this with Problem Sleuth, the comic that directly preceded Homestuck in Andrew Hussie’s MS Paint Adventures series, wherein they1 by and large went for a less-detailed art style made in tools that were not MS Paint, though attempting to preserve the vibe of MS Paint-drawn sprites). I unfortunately cannot stop thinking about this series. I have had a lot of experience running into this bizarre webcomic-cum-multimedia-experence, and while I have roundly criticized various parts of it in the past, and I fully understand why one cannot necessarily get into it (either for style or… content), I do still like a lot of bits of it. It has fantastic music, and I adore at least a few of the characters. And regardless of how well-explored you may consider certain ideas, I actually do have to give credit to Hussie for being creative, or at least arriving at mundane things sideways.
But it’s also a piece of historical importance, right? In some ways, Homestuck invented modern fandom. In others, it was a mere product of the environment it was allowed to grow - perhaps “fester” is a more appropriate term = in. Even though MS Paint Adventures had a forum, Homestuck’s primary fandom conduit was a far less focused social media site, Tumblr - something folks would be more accepting of calling “social media” than they would be for a forum, as I just did. Its format, which encouraged dramatic behavior on some level and which was nowhere near as well-moderated as a forum would be, made for a perfect place to develop… what we have now…
But really, this ain’t about that. Homestuck is a comic I have a lot of mixed feelings about. In fact, this is true of all of Andrew Hussie’s work. I’m being as neutral about the person as I possibly can be when I say their work is very trying at times. Nevertheless, when they get deep enough in their bag, Hussie has a way with words. They’re an, at times, very flexible writer, even if they don’t like to show it. Homestuck wouldn’t be as popular as it is if they didn’t have a certain gift with dry wit, a knack for intentionally invoking bathos, and a talent for pairing humor and seriousness. Furthermore, they also have a great ability to recognize talent; after all, they probably are the reason why anyone knows who Toby Fox is in the greater scheme, leading to Undertale getting places and Fox getting work on the soundtracks of many games, including the remake of OFF and some lesser games (that you nevertheless have probably actually heard of).
Pair this off with Homestuck’s tendency toward surprisingly nice art in the middle of this very straightforwardly-stylized sprite comic - and that’s even before they get anyone with differing styles involved - and Homestuck is a pretty interesting comic that definitely manages to feel different from what you saw a lot of in webcomics at the time, and also one that frequently features a lot of extremely eye-hurty visuals that Hussie included because they think doing that is funny. Yes, Homestuck has this certain type of apparent “audience contempt” baked in, which runs the gamut from Hussie choosing the most disappointing way to answer anything in their suggestion box, to lighthearted trolling, to a level of frustration with the audience they ended up with (sometimes justified, other times over-the-top and frankly embarrassing) that often seems like a level of serious contempt for their own work in a way - not that it is, but it ends up looking that way at times and I have to assume that a lot of it is just Hussie being angry.
As you’d expect from this, Hussie is also kind of a difficult individual at times - but there’s more to this very wide net than simply what I’ve described. As of when I’m writing this (it’s 7 AM on August 6 as I type this very sentence!), Michael Guy Bowman - one of if not the most important members of the music team across the series’ entire history - has opened up about his treatment by the Homestuck team during the series’ run and even beyond that. What he attests is not pretty. I have no reason to disbelieve him, either. There’s also all kinds of rumors about Hussie, extrapolations about their behavior, and various recountings of encounters that were… not so good. Of course, this is made even more difficult because many (though certainly not all) of Hussie’s critics are huge shitheads of various types. In the interest of keeping this as factual as possible, I will do my best to cite everything as best I can. If it is not sourced, consider it to be either hearsay or editorializing on my part. I have to admit I don’t have a positive perspective on the fellow; Hussie doesn’t come out of this looking the rosiest, and their commentaries don’t help too much either.
Also, yeah, the problematic stuff. Hussie began posting stuff on the internet in the early 2000s, and Homestuck started in 2009. The culture was much different back then. Much worse, in many ways. Casual racism, ableism, misogyny and queerphobia were extremely common back in this era. If you weren’t using the internet back then, or don’t remember, I cannot exactly describe just how serious it is. I don’t know how good I’m going to be at discussing the issues with Hussie’s work in this regard, but I will try.
Speaking of commentaries: I am reading this using an old install of the Unofficial Homestuck Collection application, with a mod that transcribes the author’s commentary from the book releases of Homestuck. These dried up part way into Act 5 Act 2 (if you’re new to this series… yeah, it’s like that), so obviously that part will only go so far. There were rumors of releases of author commentary for later parts, but the VIZ deal seems to have fallen through as there have been no more books since that point, and I don’t think the commentaries have been released elsewhere.
With that considered, I will note now that the scope of this project will include only the 8,130 pages of Homestuck itself, with some occasional discussion of side matters like website news posts, blog posts that get unlocked through UHC, etc.; I may possibly do extra features for some of the side material such as Paradox Space, the routes in Namco High (bro what is Homestuck, a very non-Namco property, doing in Namco High? If I make a piece of work, will Hussie just let me put homestucks in it? Look out next month for my new novel, Magic: The Gathering: The Weatherlight Saga Retold Except Jade Harley Is There For Some Reason, I guess?2), and the animated pilot. Of these, Namco High is probably the least likely. It’d be like also including readthroughs of Problem Sleuth or other pre-Homestuck Hussie comics. I consider the independently-released video games - Hiveswap as it exists now, Hiveswap Friendsim, Pesterquest and, extremely theoretically, Hauntswitch to be outside of the scope of this project entirely. Additionally, post-Homestuck “tales of dubious authenticity,” i.e. The Homestuck Epilogues, Beyond Canon, the Snapchats, and the Skaianet Systems Incorporated website, are considered outside the scope of this project. For the time being, J××× Egbert will be referred to by the given name in mainline Homestuck, John. With apologies to any June Egbert believers. If you want my full opinion on the idea, see this note:3
Also I probably will not be looking at Homestuck Beta, Hussie’s initial attempt to make the first few pages in only Flash, which they explain sucked to do, so they switched over to Photoshop. I won’t be doing this because it’s the same content as the main story for a few pages, except with minor writing tweaks.
I will be reading this with the “controversial content” enabled in UHC, which keeps some of the more… dated language, as well as some particularly questionable content, and even restores old, changed music.
And lastly, a note on page numbers: across its history, Homestuck has had two ways of numbering its pages; the first is in page numbers for just Homestuck. The second is for page numbers across all of MS Paint Adventures. I will match the current website of homestuck dot com, which uses the latter. As a result, we shall begin on page 0019014. Which is an odd place to begin, but its ones digit is at least a 1, so that much is easy to understand. If you are reading by a method that starts Homestuck at page 1, subtract a nice round 1900 from all of my page numbers to get to where I am easily.
Oh, right, I forgot. Because I don’t think I made it clear: there will be copious spoilers throughout, so in case you haven’t read through the comic yourself and want to avoid spoilers, this is probably best avoided.
So. Shall we begin?
1. ↑ A quick note on pronouns: Andrew Hussie has most recently (to my knowledge and as of August 6) stated they accept all pronouns. I believe they described their gender identity as “clowngender” or something along those lines as well.
2. ↑ (It is of course because Andrew Hussie wrote Namco High. But it would be very funny to have them just show up random places like they are characters of older, by-and-large public-domain literary works.)
3. ↑ With regard to “June Egbert” I have only two complaints. The first is that I don’t like the name that much, because it’s extremely basic. I’ve sort of hit that point where I think giving someone a gender (or more!) change and switching to a more feminine (or masculine) version of the same name is, in fandom, basic as hell. It happens in real life, and plenty, but I do think that if you look over at a character named Shaun and you have him become a trans woman in your fan work, then name her “Shauna” in that form, I’m going to think of you as a little uncreative. The name I was born with bears no resemblance to the name “Delia” whatsoever, aside from the fact that several vowels in “Delia” are also in my birth name and I guess it also has three syllables. It’s also seemingly derived from a line in the comic’s text. I’m not about to call it bad per se, but I will say that I think I’d choose something a little different.
That’s a minor one. The one that’s a little more serious is that when Hussie and James Roach say that June was the plan from the very beginning, I think they’re blowing smoke up the fandom’s collective ass a little. Do I believe Hussie liked the idea a lot? Sure? Was it “the plan from the beginning” i.e. 2009? I highly doubt it.. Perhaps I’m wrong; I can’t get inside their head. However, I do like the idea. Exploring gender through any character is potentially very interesting, and the end results depend entirely on the author of the story that deals in such matters. If I ever decide to explore the post-canon stuff, I’ll use the name June (and I guess it might depend on if it ever actually happens - apparently this is just something that “will happen” still).
4. ↑ All of the MSPA page numbers were six-digit numbers. Shockingly for Hussie, who is infamous for being prolific, even five-digit page numbers were over-ambitious!