Homestuck

This is a /co/ related article, which we allow because we find it interesting or we can't be bothered to delete it.

The logo of Sburb, and de-facto logo of Homestuck.

Homestuck (also known as Hamsteak or Homosuck) is a webcomic written

HOLD THE FUCK UP! He doesn't merely write homestuck...

HE CONJURES THIS INTREPID FANTASYSCAPE WITH TEARS BLED FROM THE WISDOM-WEARY EYES OF FIFTY THOUSAND IMAGINARY MAGICIANS. HE PULLS HEAVY DRAGS FROM THE BRUMES OF INSPIRATION WITH ENCHANTED BELLOWS MARAUDED FROM A GUILD OF CHURLISH MYTHICAL DWARVES. VAST BULBOUS RIDDLESPIDERS PUSH THE SILKEN STRANDS OF PURE WHIMSY THROUGH HIDEOUS ABDOMINAL SPINNERETS AND IT IS THAT WITH WHICH HE WEAVES THIS AUDACIOUS COCOON OF EXQUISITE LIES. AND WHEN IT HATCHES A GREAT MOTH OF TITILLATION WILL AWAKEN AND ROAR AND BEAT ITS WINGS, AND THE POWDER SETTLING DOWN WILL ARREST THE HUMORS OF AN ENORMOUS TERRIBLE OLD BEGGAR, RELAXING THE VULTUROUS LEATHERY VICEGRIP HE'S FIXED AROUND YOUR CAPTIVE MIND.

by one Andrew Hussie. It is but one of the comics featured on his website, MS Paint Adventures, which is often abbreviated into MSPA. It is famous for being even more WORDS WORDS WORDS than Ctrl+Alt+Delete, having a shit-ton of characters and one of the most annoying wonderful prominent fanbases in existence. For this reason it is often referred to on /tg/ as Homeskub. It is also noted for being one of the few corners of nerd-dom that is female dominated. Well over two thirds of Homestuck readers are women and the primary residence for Homestuck fans, tumblr, is as overwhelmingly comprised of nerdy female virgins as 4chan is overwhelmingly nerdy male virgins, so love/lustbound fa/tg/uys often get into it in hopes of meeting the elusive female nerd. Unfortunately, many of the female nerds in the Homestuck fandom are waist-deep in internet political bullshit, so fa/tg/uys should tread lightly (or eagerly if you're looking to mine lulz).

Spoilers ahoy.

What is Homestuck?

Homestuck began on April 13th 2009, one month after the creator's previous story, Problem Sleuth, had ended. It started out in the same vein as its predecessors; a Quest-style comic run soley by user input. The first three stories, Jailbreak (left unfinished for ages, then wrapped up hastily partway through Homestuck), Bardquest (a multiple choice experiment that was abandoned very early and will likely never be finished), and Problem Sleuth (actually finished, and whose unexpected popularity directly precipitated Homestuck) channeled old-school point-and-click adventure games based of a man trying to escape prison, a bard in his quest to slay a dragon, and a hard-boiled private investigator trying to leave his absurd office respectively. Andrew Hussie went in a different direction with his newest work, by making it about a group of early teenagers who chat and play video games online. Homestuck begins with goofy young hero John Egbert getting his hands on beta copies of a hot new game called Sburb for his birthday. What looks like a novel team-based version of the Sims takes a crazy turn when the game reveals powerful reality-warping properties, and matters soon begin to escalate as John and co find themselves surviving meteors, cloning themselves, fighting all sorts of monsters, dealing with aliens of various degrees of friendliness and/or blood thirst and ultimately facing an immortal Time Lord demonic time-travelling crime boss seeking terrible and destructive ends. All the MS Paint Adventures are notable for being more than regular comic strips; Homestuck frequently includes simple animations, occasional Flash animations of escalating complexity, entire flash games, and a soundtrack that covers several dozen albums. You can also buy printed versions of the comic from the website in case you want a hands on experience, but that means missing out on the flash goodness. So not only do you read Homestuck, you watch it, play it, listen to it and (maybe) buy it. It finally ended on April 13th 2016 after 2 gigantic pauses that disbanded the fandom, and god it was about time. For both the fandom and the comic.

This article contains spoilers! You have been warned.

Who are these douchebags?

Aka, the character primer. Homestuck has over the course of its seven years of existence amassed a spectacularly huge cast of characters. There are four kids who each have their own guardian/pet, Consort, Denizen, Exile, Archagent, Wise Black Man and more. This is discounting the Trolls and their associated characters, who increase this total by roughly four dozen, and many more beyond. The cast was then further doubled by introducing the kid versions of the Kids' guardians and the Trolls' ancestors via parallel universe shenanigans.

Kids

The four "main" characters of Homestuck are the Kids. They are the initial players of Sburb and have SHIT GO REAL on them. Also their parents except in kid form because of parallel universe shenanigans.

Kids
Name Chat Name	Mythological Role	Weapon	Guardians	Description
John Egbert ectoBiologist (formerly ghostyTrickster)	Heir of Breath	Hammerkind	Nanna(Jane)/Dad	The closest thing the comic has to a main character, John is the guy we know the most about. He's a bit of a jerk but is good and genuine to his friends , loves cheesy movies (Nicolas Cage being his personal hero), has some serious derp moments but is smart, has solid intentions and is quite brave. He started off the weakest of the bunch of kids and has developed the slowest, but has steadily caught by present day and is seen one-shotting endgame critters in droves; seeing as his equals can travel through time on a whim or teleport your guts straight out of your body this really says something. He is now phased out of the universe in a rather weird way, being capable of time traveling and actually altering the alpha timeline without creating a doomed timeline (which time players explicitly cannot do), teleporting to wherever the fuck he wants even if its across universes (superior to even first guardian teleportation), phasing through attacks, blowing away cosmic glitches, and is even said to be capable of hurting lord English. Heavily, heavily implied to have ultimately ended up in a relationship with Roxy by the end; effectively pairing the two most normal and probably the two nicest characters in the most down to earth relationship you'd be able to get in this crazy comic. On the other hand, he is dating the biological mom of two of his friends; though she isn't any older than her "children" so there's that bit of weirdness (and fodder for endless dad jokes).
Rose Lalonde tentacleTherapist	Seer of Light	Needlekind	Mom(Roxy)/Jaspers	Rose is intelligent, sarcastic and thinks that everyone but she has issues of some kind. A big fan of the works of Lovecraft and Freud, she derives no small pleasure from psychoanalysing others and seeing what skeletons pop out. In spite of her outward snark she cares for her friends and alcoholic mother and will protect and help them any way she can. Went grimdark at one point, but it did not stick. Gay as fuck.
Dave Strider turntechGodhead	Knight of Time	1/2swordkind	Bro(Dirk)/Cal	The coolkid. Dave knows everything about being smooth, hip and ironic, or at least he thinks he does. Actually has an inferiority complex where he thinks he sucks compared to his impossibly badass bro (he doesn't). He is also the author of the tremendously shitty webcomic Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff which is so bad it curves back on the badness scale and becomes solidly awesome again. Other hobbies of his include mixing music, rap, photography and keeping up with internet pop culture (again, mostly ironically). He also mastered the ability to flash step; how his older brother taught him this is unknown.
Jade Harley gardenGnostic	Witch of Space	Riflekind	Grandpa(Jake)/Becquerel	The resident "strange genki girl", Jade grew up alone on an island in the Pacific with only her grandfather, her devil-dog Becquerel and her internet friends to keep her company. She is quite skilled in the ways of nuclear science, is a crack shot and has bouts of narcolepsy. Not that she suffers because of this: she has a "dream bot" that allows her to fly around and interact with her home when she's asleep. Though quite friendly and energetic, she will drop the attitude fast when she feels threatened. She also enjoys gardening, playing the flute and bass (not at the same time) and watching tv shows with anthropomorphic animals, but she would not dream of wearing a fursuit. Ironically becomes part dog later on in the story via "shenanigans".
Jane Crocker gutsyGumshoe	Maid of Life	Spoon/Fork kind	Poppop (John)	Heiress to the Betty Crocker Baking corporation. Trapped in a nightmare love quadrangle. Her ultimate irrelevance to the story is something of a meme.
Jake English golgothasTerror	Page of Hope	x2Pistolkind	Grandma (Jade)	Pistol wielding adventure obsessed shucks fillibustering kid with even worse taste in films than John. The focus of the attraction of his entire team due to being the only heterosexual male on the team. As a Page of Hope his baseline power seems kind of crappy (he's the single worst combatant out of any of the humans) but if he's allowed to unleash his true potential he's basically the most powerful individual in fiction. That's right, more powerful than every single fictional character ever. He manages to take on the entirety of the Felt (minus Cans, Snowman, English, and Scratch) at once and win with only some help from Jane and Nannasprite though; amazing Crowbar as he bears witness to his entire gang getting beat up by some kid who isn't even wearing pants. He's kind of notoriously self centered; not in the nacisstic braggart way but more in the way that he has a lot of trouble seeing things from other people's perspectives, leading a lot of people to realize that he's not all that great a person and prompted Dirk to break up with him, Roxy to stop pursuing him, and Jane realizing he's incredibly immature. He's definitely earnest and enthusiastic though. Whether or not his accent is British is the subject of rather enthusiastic debate (it's not, it's just old timey American, in absolute fairness though; the accents spoken by upper class Americans and Britons in the Vaudeville era were much closer than they are now).
Roxy Lalonde tipsyGnostalgic	Rogue of Void	Fistkind/Riflekind	Mom (Rose)	Drunk retrogaming hacker. Just short of outright stated to have ended up being John's (or Calliope's if you want to read it that way) Girlfriend. Her god tier abilities can do quite a few things; much like everyone else's, but her primary one lets her "steal the nonexistence" of things, which is a fancy way of saying she can will items into reality. Which is obviously an insanely useful ability and perhaps among if not outright the best god tier power period. She's also probably the second most competent alphakid in combat short of Dirk (though even that's kind of debatable) and among the most competent fighters out of the cast period. For example; she was able to hold her own against the Condesce longer than John (who's not just empowered by god tier abilities and the super strength giving mangrit but is now also capable of teleporting around time at space at will), Rose (who on top of her god tier powers telling her the most path to the most optimal outcomes also has very powerful magic), or Kanaya (who's also a vampire) could and ultimately ended up killing the Condesce by ramming her through the back with Bro's sword. Personality wise she's a fun, bubbly party girl who may seem kind of ditzy at first but is actually a much smarter and more thoughtful person than you'd think given the rather stereotypically teenaged way she types. She's probably also the alphakid with the fewest moral failings as a person, and is arguably the actual main Alphakid given that her development gets the most focus.
Dirk Strider timaeusTestified	Prince of Heart	Swordkind	Bro (Dave)	Katana wielding (gay) coolkid with a mancrush one googol in size for Jake. His god tier ability as Prince of Heart basically allows him to destroy souls. Ironically Dirk never actually successfully pulls this off save for an alternate timeline version of him who shoved Caliborn's soul into his own Juju. Beyond that; he shares Yaldaboath as a Denizen with Caliborn/Calliope, which is significant as Yaldaboath is the only denizen not tied to a player's aspect, instead being the denizen of exceptionally powerful players.

Trolls

Then there are these 12... people:

Trolls
Name Chat Name	Mythological Role	Weapon	Lusus	Description
Karkat Vantas carcinoGeneticist	Knight of Blood	Sicklekind	Crabdad	The team leader. While he may fly off the handle at times, he genuinely cares for his friends and will risk his life to protect them. Possessed of a truly glorious level of rage.
Aradia Medigo apocalypseArisen	Maid of Time	Whipkind	A goat-kangaroo	Spends her time as an Indiana jones wannabe/Dominatrix
Tavros Nitram adiosToreador	Page of Breath	Lancekind	Tinkerbull	Stereotypical punching bag, would use the term wonderbread if not for the skin colour of the trolls, believes in fairies and magical FUN.
Sollux Captor twinArmageddons	Mage of Doom	As a powerful psionic, he has no need for weapons.	A two-headed cyclops	Multi-personality disorder due to being a Gemini, could be Alpharius and Omegon, one or neither, really just whines for the sake of it.
Nepeta Leijon arsenicalCatnip	Rogue of Heart	Clawkind	A two-mouthed panther	Takes Cat-girl to the next level, 'nuff said.
Kanaya Maryam grimAuxiliatrix	Sylph of Space	Makeupkind (Code for: A Fricken Chainsaw)	A virgin Mother Grub (don't ask)	Alien equivalent of a vampire lesbian (theres a vampire human relationship, ring any bells?)
Terezi Pyrope gallowsCalibrator	Seer of Mind	Canekind	A dragon	Blind dragon furry/space bug lawyer, likes to lick things, led to many PROMOTIONS.
Vriska Serket arachnidsGrip	Thief of Light	Dicekind (She rolls 8d8 to determine a random effect, I kid you not)	Spidermom	This Skublord (Skublady? Sister of Skub?) is a roleplaying game fanatic and a brutal GM (on a world where RPGs are deadly in real life). Sburb grants her the power to become a walking infinite improbability drive.
Equius Zahhak centaursTesticle	Heir of Void	Fistkind	Aurthor (a male, mustachioed centaur ... thing ... with an udder ... don't ask)	See also /d/
Gamzee Makara terminallyCapricious	Bard of Rage	Jokerkind (Code for: can use any weapon)	A sea-goat	Andrew Hussies way of inserting ISP into this train wreck of a comic.
Eridan Ampora caligulasAquarium	Prince of Hope	Riflekind	Seahorsedad	Lonely /b/tard who wants nothing more to "pail" anyone and everything (alien equivalent of a horny Labrador).
Feferi Peixes cuttlefishCuller	Witch of Life	2x3dentkind (a double-ended trident)	Gl'bgolyb (Cthulhu)	AKA: Disney's Copyright Violation lawsuit waiting to happen, essentially the little mermaid.

What is Sburb?

Sburb is the game that got the plot rolling. It is a combination of The Sims, Spore and Minecraft, with a bit of Earthbound thrown in. The main "goal" of the game (much ignored and treat as the excuse plot that it is by the protagonists) is to defeat the Black King of Derse and claim his scepter to stop The Reckoning, an event that unleashes massive desturctio via a rain of meteors. The real goal underlining all this is, via cooperation with the White Kingdom of Prospit, a series of shaky political dealings with powerful god/demon entities called The Denizens (one is assigned to each player upon entering the game) and a extensive and convoluted sidequest about frog breeding, to create a whole new universe for you and your co-players to live in. Sburb is by nature a multiplayer game, with two players as a base minimal, and the highest known number of players in a single session being 48. This number needs to be more than one, lest there be dire consequences.

The game itself is described best as an intricate LARP supplemented by vidja elements. You are the player and as you play you personally level up, gain special powers, magic items and may even transcend humanity. But more on that later.

Getting Started

To start the game you need fellow players and one copy of the game's Client and Server disks for each. You install the Client disk while your a fellow player installs the Server disk, making you the "client player" to his/hers "server player". Each player installs their disks so that everyone is both a server for and client of another player.

This does not immediately change anything for the client, but the server will see the following screen focused on the player. This menu bar is where it all happens. This grants the player three cursor options and four menus:

• The Select cursor allows the server to pick up and move objects. This expends Grist, the games abstract construction resource; the heavier/larger the object, the more it costs to pick something up.
• The Revise cursor lets the server player build: walls, stairs, ladders, roofs and so on. As above: the bigger the construction the more Build Grist it costs. For example, a ladder costs less than a flight of stairs, which costs less than a small-sized floor.
• The Deploy cursor interacts with the Phernalla Registry as listed below; it allows for game objects to be placed within the world.
• The Phernalia Registry is the game's inventory. It can hold objects created by the game itself (more on that later) and objects created with them.
• The Grist Cache is where Grist is stored, starting with basic Build Grist and expanding to include many others along the player's journey.
• The Explore Atheneum is a store of some kind: players can spend Grist to gain access to new game objects and upgrades for the existing ones.
• The Alchemy Excursus is where the crafting recipies discovered during the game are stored.

At the beginning of the game, the Phernalla Registry will have five items in it that are essential to the progress of the game:

• The Cruxtruder needs to be activated in order to start the game, revealing a countdown until a meteor strikes the player's home, setting the player's first real deadline in the game. It can also extrude an endless amount of Cruxite Dowels (ootlong cylinders of mysterious sculptable material in the color associated with the player.
• The Totem Lathe is designed to carve Cruxite Dowels into usable shapes, depending on the inserted Punched Card(s) ( more on this later).
• The Alchemiter can "read" carved Cruxite Dowels and from the pattern create an object they represent. This is obviously a massively powerful and important ability, as the Alchemiter can literally *poof* any object into existance so long as the appropriately carve Cruxite Dowel is presented to it. The Alchmetier can be upgraded (and indeed the typical player upgrades it extensively over the course of the game).

An important thing to note before the rest of the Phernalia is the matter of the player's inventories. Each player has their own personalised video game inventory that seemingly exists outside the realms of Sburb and allows them to carry around vast quantities of potentially very large items, provided the player carries enough Captchalogue Cards (disposable sheets of magic rigid card that disappear into the modus when not in use). While useful, the Fetch Modii are based on a mixture of novelty game logic and data storage structures, and are a pain in the ass to retrieve items from at times. The difficulties presented by the various Modii are part of the challenges of the early comic, having a smaller but still notable presence later on.

• The Punch Designix can turn Captchalogue Cards into Punched Cards, which can then be used to carve Cruxite Dowels and thus Alchemize more items. Players enter a code obtained from the back of a Capchalogue card and insert a Capchalogue card which is then punched. It is important to note that the code punched into the card does not need to match the code on the card, meaning you can punch empty cards and save the original object as punching a card locks the item in.
• The Pre-Punched Card is a one-off item vital for starting the game successfully; it contains your Cruxite Artifact and is the first object a player must craft and interact with in order to enter the game.

The steps to crafting new items via the Alchemization process is as follows:

• Obtain the objects you wish to combine to create an item.
• Obtain a Cruxite Dowel from the Cruxtruder.
• Read the code on the back of the Captchalogue card, enter it into the Punch Designix and punch a card. A code consists of eight digits with letters A-Z (with a difference between capital and lower case), numbers 0-9 and the ? and !, for a total of 64^8=281.474.976.710.656 (281 quadrillion) different combinations. You now have a punched card.
• Take the card and the Dowel to the Totem Lathe. Insert the Dowel and the card in that order to get a Carved Totem.
• Put the Totem on the pedestal of the Alchemiter. If you have enough Grist, the Alchemiter will substract an amount from your Grist Cache and create the item. Totems are infinitely reusable when they are made.

One of the first items a player should make is a Capchalogue Card. When you have a Carved Totem based on one (code 00000000), you can make Capchalogue Cards at the cost of 1 Grist of your choice. This is very useful when crafting a large batch of items in one go.

Entering the Medium

The first act to playing a game of Sburb is the removal of the lid from the Cruxtruder. A heavy blow or dropping something large on it will work (this is where the server player comes in handy), releasing a powerful source of energy called the Kernelsprite and "starting" a countdown anywhere between 1 minute and 25 hours. Two things must be achieved in this time: prototyping the Kernelsprite; and creating and interacting with the Cruxite Artifact.

Prototyping a Kernelsprite is simple: toss or drop something, ANYTHING into it. The item is absorbed into the Kernelsprite and gives it a form, empowering it for the rest of the game. Later, the Kernelsprite will shed its core to become two Kernel halves and a lone Sprite. The Kernels fly off to the kingdoms of Prospit and Derse, where they will radiate great power that shape both the forces of good and evil in the story. The Sprite, meanwhile, hangs around the players as their own personal ghostly mentor and assistant, getting them into the early stages of the game and being a helping hand through to the end. Protoype whatever you like, but remember that whatever you pick will be a double-edged sword: the more useful item you throw into it the more powerful both your friends and enemies will be. It may not be in your best interests to throw in your Bloodthirster or your Nicol Bolas card, unless getting swamped by monstrous powerful enemies right out the gate and having a demonic monstrosity be your "helpful" guide sounds like fun to you (although through shenanigans you can fuse with your sprite. see: dog tier jade). Prototyping must be done once, but may be done a second time, which can happen before or after the splitting of the Kernel (depending on whether you want it to affect your enemies and allies or just your sprite assistant). Failing to prototype pre-entry will cause something terrible to happen with the two kingdoms and renders the game unwinnable.

Interacting with the Cruxite Artifact is more difficult. The player will be prseented with an object symbolic of departure somehow, be it an apple to be bitten (the loss of innocence as with original sin), a bottle to be smashed (leap of faith), an egg to be hatched (leaving the nest) or a puppydog pinata to be smashed (leave the grim imagery to your own imagination there). Figuring out what needs to be done to satisfy the artifact needs to be done quickly, and failure to do this results in a meteor flattening the players house before the game even begins.

If all goes to plan, the player, their house and anyone else in it at the time is whisked away into the mystical realm called The Medium, a place of cosmic significance tailored to each player in the game and where the action takes place.

Because a player cannot access their own phernalia register among other things, a lone player can never enter medium by themselves, but must do so through the assistance of their Server player. Similarly, such is the nature of the demands of Serverhood that said player would best wait until after they've escorted their Client in that they make a move to enter themselves, at which point their Server steps up. Doing so in turn will gradually involve all the players introducing each other in turn to the game world, with the last entree being led in by the first to make it.

The Incipisphere

Players will find themselves within the heart of the Medium, a strange place called the Incipisphere, where the meat of gameplay occurs. Each Incipisphere is comprised by a number of planets, orbiting a larger body in the centre. In detail:

• Every player in a session has one planets devoted towards them, referred to as their Land. This will be the primary location for their quests, though over the course of their journey they can visit each other's Lands. They all follow the naming convention of having a pair of words, the first of which is monosyllabic, which then tends to be abbreviated; John's Land is the Land of Wind and Shade for instance, typically abbreviated to LOWAS. (one known exception overrides this to have an extra word in the name so it spelled LOLCAT). A convenient property of the Medium in which the Lands float is that in their transition from Earth, the players' homes kept their electricity, the internet and possibly plumbing working of their lack of connection. The Medium itself also provides all its locations with air and oxygen apply and a comfortable atmospheric pressure and temperature without any discernible source. The exact workings of gravity while in the Medium is unknown, but there seems to be no inertia while floating around in there. Perhaps it is related to the Elemental Plane of Air, but there is little known about the nature of the Medium. Every of the player's Lands have seven Gates located high above the player's houses; each must be traveled through in order to reach the mighty Battlefield at the heart of the Incipisphere and achieve the goal of the game.
• In the midst of the Incipisphere rest Skaia, a great and mystical blue body said to possess "limitless creative potential". The great fluffy clouds that forever cross its skies bear mystic (if often confusing) portents to those who would gaze upon them, while deep within Skaia lies the greatest planet of them all, the Battlefield, where long before the players arrived a might war rages. Finally, on the outskirts of Skaia swings the golden planet of Prospit, a glittering world of light that supplies one of those two aforementioned armies.
• The Veil is a belt of asteroids that circles the far borders of the Incipisphere. They contain numerous labs, facilities and installations needed to continue the war between Prospit and Derse.

Beyond the Incipishere lies the Furthest Ring, a Realm without reason or logic, where time and space mean nothing and is inhabited by a pantheon of unspeakable horrors whose true forms would drive any mortal insane.

Prospit and Derse

Sooner or later you discover you have another body when you fall asleep: your "dream self". You will also discover that this person wakes up in a room that looks just like your bedroom (except in either yellow or purple) on the moon of either Prospit or Derse. These are the two kingdoms that fight the war on the battlefield.

While these dream selves share the same abilities that you have they have no access to your inventory: anything you do you will have to do with your own wit and skills, more espionage and intelligence work than outright warfare. To compensate for this you are given one ability in return: based on what planet you are on you get either prophetic images of the future when you peer into the clouds of Skaia, or you can converse with the members of the Noble Circle of Horrorterrors who reside in the Furthest Ring.

There is a difference to how Prospit and Derse treat the players: Prospit sees them as heroes and saviors in a war they are destined to lose, while Derse opposes them. It is difficult for Dersites to harm the players because of a set of rules in place that prevents them from attacking the players before the full-out war begins.

The Battlefield

At the center of Skaia is the Battlefield, a chess-like location where the final parts of the game takes place. Its shape depends on the number of prototypings that have taken place. Unprototyped it resembles a 3x chess boards with the only pieces on it are two kings locked in a never-ending game: one black and one white. If you have a basic grasp of chess you will realize this is an eternal stalemate. But as more and more prototypings take place, the battlefield changes. A single prototyping increases its size to a large chess board with multiple pieces on it, a second turns it into a massive cube, a third into a sphere and a fourth adds a series of non-euclidean tentacle-ridges around the sphere.

While being mainly a series of black and white checked hills and plains, there are some features including fertile ground for growing crops, bodies of water, forests and castles.

Residents of the Incipisphere

The players are not alone in the Incipisphere. A number of beings reside on the players' planets, Prospit, Derse and the Battlefield.

Carapacians

The peoples referred to as the Carapacians (because of their tough exoskeletons) are the inhabitants of Prospit and Derse. They are on average shorter than an adult human and a slight bit stockier. While not more difficult to directly kill than humans, they are less likely to succumb to wounds to non-critical locations and are less likely to bleed out. The lower-ranking Carapaces have dentures that consist solely of molars, while the higher-ranking Carapaces possess arrays of cutting teeth for eating meat.

The King and Queen are both Carapacians, as are their subjects (commonly referred to as pawns or agents, depending on their activeness in the war). Both kingdoms also employ living constructs that are upsized versions of Carapacians. Derse is known to employ Archagents, Carapacians of more intellect, cunning and skill. They are often sent on more dangerous or difficult missions for the kingdom.

Every player will have one of five Carapacians assigned to him/her to serve as a guide (though not one per player in the case of the trolls); these are called Exiles for they have been exiled from the Incipisphere to the players' home planet, to a time period several centuries after they lived there.

Consorts

On every of the player's planets lives a race of intelligent [herp]tiles called Consorts. They live in simple agricultural Iron Age-style communities and worship Bilious Slick (more on him later). The consorts are not very smart; most famously falling for Dave Strider pulling a rather basic stock market scam on them with timeclones of himself and promptly pissing away literally quadrillions of grist; while capable of speech and able to follow simple instructions they appear to have limited capabilities of deduction and have difficulty understanding human technology. The Consorts are also non-violent; they have zero combat ability making them easy targets for the various Underlings and the best possible candidates for "damsels in distress". They can be thought of as a parody of the NPC villagers you meet in most computer RPGs who mill about doing the same inscrutable daily routines and spout the same lines until the plot says somethiong happens to them.

Underlings

Creations of the Denizens of the various planets, these are the primary enemies within Sburb. They are found on the players' planets and will begin to attack their houses upon their entry into the game. While mainly the servants of the Denizens, they are on friendly terms with the forces of Derse and will cooperate to achieve mutual goals on the planets. They seem to possess an intellect on the level of the Consorts. All Underlings are enhanced by prototyping, so if you were to prototype a Myr card and a bird, the Underlings could have Myr-like noses, wings, slender arms and legs, beaks, tails, or any of the above combined. These attributes combine with all those gained from prototyping, so you can expect to see a large variation of Underlings during the game. There exist a number of Underlings, some of which include:

• Imps are the most common enemy. Standing at roughly 1 meter tall they can pose challenges for new, unupgraded players unless they have considerable enhancements from prototyping.
• Ogres are the second-most common enemy. They are roughly 4 meters tall and possess large tusks. While large and physically strong they should prove no challenge for a player of a reasonable level or with moderately powerful equipment.
• Basilisks are lizard-like creatures approximately six meters long. They fortunately do not possess a dealy gaze like most of their namesakes do, but they can easily devour a low-level player.
• Giclopses are large (6 meters) enemies with short legs and low-browed heads. They are very strong and can be more than a match for players early in the game, but can be overcome with wits, skill and proper equipment.
• Liches are amongst the first mid-level enemies. Approximately as tall as an adult human, they have gaunt bipedal bodies and skull-like heads. They are said to be frighteningly powerful, but the few times they appeared the protagonists made quick work of them.

There are other, rarer kinds of Underlings including massive horned or multiple-armed giants, giant octopi, huge skull monsters called Acherons, tick-like things called Titachnids and the enormous faceless things called the Lich Queens.

Denizens

Breath	Light	Time	Space	Life	Hope	Void	Naturally Powerful players
Typheus	Cetus	Hephaestus	Echidna	Hemera	Abraxas	Nyx	Yaldabaoth

Quite possibly the toughest enemies in the game, the Denizens are the de facto rulers of the players' planets. They have massive serpentine bodies, are incredibly strong and possess amazing intellect. Another notable thing is that they are aware of their status as constructs in a game, but do not take action based on this. They serve as the penultimate final bosses for the players, to be defeated in a 1-on-1 fight between the planet's player and the denizen itself. However, players who do not engage them may discover there are alternate routes to victory that do not require actually fighting the Denizen, which may even result in the Denizen providing aid instead. Aside from serving as a "final exam" of sorts to test if the players are ready they also possess immense hoards of Grist which are needed for the endgame. Which Denizen a player has is determined by the player's Aspects, which is described on the right.

Classes and Aspects

Like the majority of RPGs; whether video game or pen and paper based, SBURB has a class system. At first the twelve classes; Heir, Witch, Mage, Seer, Bard, Prince, Rogue, Thief, Sylph, Maid, Page, Knight and the two master classes of Muse and Lord all seem self explanatory enough, as do the twelve aspects that when combined with a class; denote a player's role in a game; these aspects being Breath, Blood, Light, Void, Time, Space, Rage, Hope, Doom, Life, Mind, and Heart. Then you do a bit of digging and find that no, it's not at all as simple as it seems. To make a long story short, your aspect is what you govern and what governs you the most and your class is how you make use of it and how your aspect affects you. Players do not get to choose a class, they are quite literally born into it by the mechanics of ectobiology; with the class and aspect combination being a reflection of the kind of person you are and the kind of challenge you will face in your quest to grow into the role assigned to you by Skaia as you play your part in the creation myth of the universe to come. This is perhaps the single most analysed aspect of SBURB on the internet and there are hundreds if not thousands of people who have given this a lot of thought and come to a general consensus on what each class and aspect mean. We're certainly not going to pretend like we have that kind of deep knowledge of symbology or mythology so we're just going to regurgitate the general consensus below.

Classes

Classes as mentioned above, are what determine how you use your aspect and fittingly, they also determine what kind of fancy pajamas you get when you ascend to the god tiers. Classes can be divided into two categories, Active and Passive, with a sliding scale of activity versus passivity. The most active class is the very rare Lord Class, while the most passive class is the equally rare Muse class, which as far as can be told don't appear outside of two player sessions. Basically turbocharged classes meant for letting a two player session pull the weight of what's usually a four or more player game like those fucking Gestalt classes some of you munchkins use. Every active class has a passive counterpart (though you could also say every passive class has an active counterpart or whatever shit), and every class has an expected "progression", not just of character levels but also of character growth. If the aspect represents the most fundamental part of your personality and life, then the class is about the kind of challenges you are given by that and how you deal with them. They are as follows.

• Master Classes: As we've already said, Master Classes seem to only be available in sessions with only two players. They are the most complete embodiment of their aspect, and it seems that in reality, despite them having different approaches to total embodiment of their aspect; the end result is basically identical in terms of actual power. It's just that they produce completely different personalities and ask for entirely different character arcs.
  • Lord: As the name entails, the Lord rules their aspect. They are an elemental force that cannot be matched within their aspect and essentially always have an exceedingly dominant personality as befitting a lord. Caliborn is the only known Lord, and if he's the example to follow then Lords are probably not blokes you'd ever want to meet in an alley or some shit. What exactly are a Lord's powers beyond them having full control and embodiment over their aspect aren't well known as Caliborn is the only known Lord and he explicitly cheated a lot of the game's intended progression made for helping players grow as people to be ready for the responsibility of managing a universe. Lord English himself is a somewhat difficult example to analyse because it's hard to tell which of his powers are from his classpect, from his nature as an adult cherub, from absorbing Arquiusprite and Gamzee's souls, from the rainbow clockwork magics he absorbed from his god tier clock, or are from his control over the Green Sun. In what is probably a Doctor Who reference I'm not getting because I'm an old git who doesn't watch TV much, the Lord Godhoodie is a buttoned T-shirt with suspender pants, a bow tie, and a really god damn fucking long cape, seriously has Skaia ever watched the Incredibles?
  • Muse: The Muse's job is exactly what it says on the can. To inspire. They are the most passive class in the game and whereas the Lord is all about amassing personal power and control, the Muse is about sacrifice and helping others. Despite this, as the god tier and grown up Calliope from the doomed timeline showed by fucking imploding the green sun into a black hole she conjured with a literal wave of her wand, the Muse class seems to be no less powerful than the Lord once fully realised. Nor are they any less influential than the Lord; while the Lord gets things going through direct action, the Muse gets people going through more indirect means like advice, getting people the tools they need to succeed or helping the right people get into place to make sure someone fails.

• Normal Classes: Just as there are twelve aspects, there are twelve standard classes which can be matched up to any aspect for a total of 144 combinations.
  • Witch: Probably the most active class available to normal players, the Witch is someone who directly manipulates, changes, and controls their aspect. Canon examples of Witches are Jade Harley, Feferi Peixes, and Damara Megido, of which Jade is by far the most developed and whose powers were the most explored. As Witch of Space Jade could shrink and grow objects, straighten the frame of the story (it's just as weird in its context), teleport objects around (though whether this is her classpect or her green sun powers is not clear), redirect motion and alter velocity and more. We didn't get to see much of god tier Feferi's powers, but she could instantly patch up WV after he had a hole torn in his gut by Jack Noir tearing a Uranium-235 rock out of it, and once Damara decided to fuck with the rest of her session stopping her was next to impossible. Witches have basically a "cute witch" outfit as god tiers, with a mid length skirt, long stocks, a twin tailed hoodie and sparkly slippers (that in Jade's case were ruby coloured) and all known examples of witches are female.
  • Heir: Heirs can manipulate their aspect, are protected by their aspect, and can become their aspect. As far as can be told, it's not something done as consciously as the Witch does it; John for example didn't consciously exercise control over how the Breeze protected him, it just did by making it impossible for Noir to follow his scent or dispersing him into the wind when he needed it. The canon examples of Heirs are John Egbert, Equius Zahhak, and Mituna Captor. Like all Beforans we don't really see much of Mituna but through Arquiussprite we got to see at least a fair bit of Equius and John is literally the main character so we have a good idea of how this shit works. Heirs had the first godhoods designed and it kind of shows, it's just a T-shirt, long-pants, functional but not fancy shoes and a windsock hoodie. All known heirs in canon are male.
  • Seer: A fairly self explanatory class, the Seer basically uses their aspect to gain some kind of special sight. Our canon examples are Rose Lalonde, Terezi Pyrope, and Kankri Vantas the first two of which are pretty important characters so we have a good idea of how the class works. As Seer of Light, Rose used the Light to see the most optimal path possible and the way to get to it as well as see hidden things by focusing on them to reveal them, while Terezi could see the result of choices made. Essentially a support class, a good seer is utterly invaluable, and while the Witch and the Heir both didn't manifest very much in the way of their aspect's powers until god tiering, the Seer can manifest their aspect abilities before they even finish their echeladder. The Seer's outfit is a short sleeved tunic worn with leggings that has those weird flappy things you see on some robes go down to about the ankles on the front and back while the hood rather fittingly, covers the eyes when worn as a visual reference to "blind seer" tropes while they wear rather dainty looking slippers. Out of the three known seers, two are female and one is male.
  • Mage: This is one of the less well known classes as none of the human cast was one of them and of our two examples, one is a Beforan who wasn't Aranea or Meenah and will thus always be out of focus and the other kind of upped and left the narrative, but as far as can be told the Mage is a class about knowledge and suffering. Our canon examples are Sollux Captor and Meulin Legion The Mage has knowledge of things covered by their aspect, with Sollux's powers as the Mage of Doom letting him know of imminent deaths as well as the overall course of fate (such as that his session was ultimately doomed for failure) and was constantly hounded by ghostly voices while Meulin just knew who made for good match ups with each other and was always the first person to see if you had problems with personal issues and passions, while she herself was in an unhealthy relationship that destroyed her hearing and leaves her frequently surrendering her free will. The Mage's outfit has a short sleeved hooded shirt with a pointy, short hood and comes down to a pair of lobster tails, a shorter one at the front and a longer one at the back above some loose fitting pants and shin covering boots. Out of the two known mages, one is male and one is female.
  • Knight: Silly English kinnnnnniggits! The class of the fighter and the protector and probably the closest thing to the "mario" of the classes, the Knight's abilities with their aspect are largely focused around what's useful in combat and as such they have both a decent innate understanding of their aspect and a decently broad range of powers with that aspect. Our known knights are Dave Strider, Karkat Vantas, and Latula Pyrope, the first two of which are definitely major characters and the latter of which is one of the more well known Beforans, so the Knight is a well understood class. While not quite as flashy as a fully realised heir or witch, a Knight is more skilled and can pretty much immediately put their aspect to use. Knights also all share a personal flaw; they all hide behind some kind of mask, whether literal or figurative, with Dave burying his emotions beneath a coolkid demeanor and hiding his expressions with his shades, Karkat building a wall of crabbiness to keep people out, and Latula presenting herself as dumber and more care free than she actually is. They also arise in sessions lacking their aspect, the Beta Kids were pressed for time with only a few days before the reckoning, the Alternians had a horrible mess of bad interpersonal relationships and trust issues, and the Beforans were idiots with no ability to make a meaningful choice. The Knight's outfit is a coif hood over a long sleeved shirt and long pants with a snazzy cape. Out of the known knights, two are male and one is female.
  • Page: You know those classes in RPGs that are absolute garbage for the longest time before you hit a certain point and then they become totally awesome to the point of shitting all over game balance? The Page is a parody of those classes taken to the extreme. Out of the known pages, Jake English, Tavros Nitram, and Horrus Zahhak all three are fucking losers. Jake is a buffoon that can't see things from other people's perspectives who literally never wins a fight on his own until the last fight in the entire story, Tavros is a weakling who is constantly pushed around by everyone who also ends up crippled on top of that, and Horrus is a creepy weirdo who ended up being a blank slate who fills his void with other people...that came out wrong. They start off as total failures in their aspects as well as just kind of failures in general, though they always have some positive aspect to themselves, and even after God tiering they don't immediately gain any aspect specific powers. But if they manage to overcome all the challenges laid out before them they gain absolutely tremendous power over their aspect to the point where Jake could beat around a green sun empowered and evilified Jade and a Clockwork Magic boosted Caliborn who had just gained complete immortality. Even their godhoodie is really lame, being a riff on the utterly fucking atrocious outfits that golden age comic book side kicks often wore (Robin in particular) with basically a speedo for pants that, if Jane's reaction and long stare at Jake's crotch is of any indication, makes it pretty obvious when you're packing a boner, a two tone short sleeved shirt, and a coif hoodie with a small cape and a little point at the top. All known pages are Male.
  • Maid: Maids create their aspect to put it rather simply. Luckily for us, out of our three known maids in Jane Crocker, Aradia Megido, and Porrim Maryam two were active god tiers. Aradia could in a literal sense "make time", most notably buying time for everyone else by time locking a Green Sun empowered Jack Noir and even Lord fucking English while Jane could create life by resurrecting the dead regardless of any other circumstances (once per person). Given that powers in Homestuck are more like old myths than modern superpowers in that they're more about concepts and roles than strictly defined powers and levels, it's likely they can do more than that but Aradia once again basically walked out of the narrative for years on end while Jane is easily the least important human kid. The Maid's outfit is rather simple, with a short medieval looking hood, a long sleeved shirt with a large lobster tail at the back and a smaller one in the front, long pants, shin length knee wrappings and simple shoes. All known maids are female.
  • Sylph: Whereas the Maid makes things, the Sylph fixes them. The simplest possible explanation is that they're healers, but they can heal a lot more than your physical health through their aspects but also more abstract concepts. Our canon examples are Kanaya Maryam and Aranea Serket and in a very unusual example, we see much more of the class from the Beforan than the Alternian as Kanaya never god tiers and never shows overt, direct usages of her aspect's powers, instead mostly working through its secondary portfolios through mundane ways. Aranea serket's least impressive ability is the power to fix physical sight, but she can also fix figurative or abstract forms of sight, fix lost or unfound fortunes and optimizations, and even tried to "fix" the golden road itself to try and stop Lord English's formation. The Sylph's outfit is a long sleeveless dress that opens up at the waist to reveal an equally long skirt that goes down to about where your feet start with some shoes with an upward point and a simple close fitting hood that has some long tassle doohickeys that trail all the way to the ground coming from the bottom of the hood's cloth. All known Sylphs are female.
  • Prince: One of the most active classes as well as one of the most dangerous, the Prince destroys their aspect and destroys through their aspect. Princes start off as basically the complete inverses of what their aspect is and embodies; Dirk Strider was damn near emotionless with a broken sense of self and utterly consumed by rationality and machinery, Eridan Ampora was a dour guy full of doubt and anger issues and rejected all belief in religion or magic, and Kurloz Makara was absolutely calm and bereft of anger and deeply religious. Under ideal circumstances, a Prince then learns to embrace their aspect and learns to not just negate their aspect but also use it to destroy. All three princes technically speaking, failed that so they never got past bringing the ruination of their aspect such as Dirk being able to outright destroy souls and tearing down all manner of feelsy things and passions or Eridan destroying the last hope of his species and using his powers in tandem with a wand to blow shit up. Princes show up to curtail an excess of that aspect in a session, the Alpha kids were consumed by emotional drama, passion inspired issues and relationship problems; the Beforans were deeply pessimistic and the Alternians were overly optimistic generally speaking. The Prince outfit has a medium length "sock" behind it as well as a short cape, a little crown, a short sleeved T-shirt and some fore arm length fingerless gloves, and great big pantaloons worthy of Sigmar's heirs above some leggings and slippers. All known princes are male.
  • Bard: The passive counterpart of the Prince, the Bard invites the destruction of their aspect and destruction through it. The Bard is explicitly labelled as a wild card class that can either save a session or utterly tear it apart and the presence of a bard in a session guarantees chaos. Like Princes, Bards start out as ghosting the inversion of their aspect; with Cronus Ampora being a cynical motherfucker and Gamzee Makara being a chill as fuck stoner devoted to a weird religion. It's not until they hit some crisis point that they really start getting into the "inviting destruction through their aspect" half of the class, which tends to be the make or break point to decide whether they're an asset or a threat to the party. Gamzee's breaking point was Dave challenging his religious beliefs which gave Gamzee the final push to become the mass murderer he was born to be and fully serve Lord English. While Bards aren't quite as overt in their ways as Princes, they are still just as dangerous and can work quite subtly to bring the devastation they were made for. The Bard outfit is intentionally ridiculous, with a goofy buttoned up hood that makes a cone point going straight up, a cape that splits into a bunch of tassels that look like party streamers, a two piece shirt and tight pants and those curly pointed shoes as well as a massive cod piece. All known bards are male.
  • Thief: The active stealing class, the Thief steals their aspect for their own benefit. With our canon thieves; Vriska Serket and Meenah Peixes to go by, thieves are very dangerous in combat and just generally dangerous people to be around. They tend to be fiercely competitive and more than a little self absorbed and highly confident in their own abilities, tending to place the blame for any failures they experience on others. Thieves also seem to come from some sort of troubled background they have issues confronting, like Vriska having a ravenous Lusus who demanded a constant supply of trolls to eat and thus forcing Vriska to murder constantly to avoid becoming lunch herself while Meenah found the idea of ruling Beforus as a benevolent despot in constant service to others so abhorrent she ran away to the moon to get away from the prospect of ever sitting on the throne herself. The Thief outfit is rather simple, a short sleeved tunic, pants, pirate boots, and a curly hoodie with two tassels that go down to about the knees. All known thieves are female.
  • Rogue: The passive stealing class, the Rogue steals for the benefit of everyone. While Nepeta Leijon was an admitted joke character and Rufioh Nitram also kind of a joke, our main example is Roxy Lalonde who is thankfully probably second only to John in her importance to the story. Rogues all tend to have some issues concerning themselves and some trouble with their aspect even as they get along well with others. Nepeta was generally well liked by most people she met and quite happy in her moirallegiance to Equius, but she was never able to resolve her feelings for Karkat, while she spent a great deal of her time role playing. Roxy on the other hand was deeply extraverted and faced a rather strong drinking problem until she learned to sober the hell up. The Rogue outfit is one of the coolest, a short sleeved tunic with a close fitting hood, a domino mask, fingerless gloves, pants and boots; basically evoking the image of the classic burglar. Out of the three known rogues, two are female and one is male.

Aspects

The other half of your classpect, Aspects determine what aspects of the reality you control. Note that while the classes are already a bit more than what their name entails, aspects are all so very much more than that their name would imply and together the twelve of them cover every facet of the universe. While some are more self-explanatory than others, even the most obvious ones also have secondary meanings and portfolios that link back to the most obvious one. Some aspects have somewhat overlapping portfolios with each other, but in the case of overlap they cover different kinds of that concept, such as Doom's sudden and untimely death versus Time's slow erosion towards inevitable oblivion. Each aspect has an opposite; Breath with Blood, Time with Space, Doom with Life, Hope with Rage, Light with Void, and Mind with Heart. Like classes, aspects are matched to personality and when you combine the class and the aspect, you get the rough outline of the expected challenges for that player.

• The Aspects
  • Time: Along with Space, Time is arguably the most important aspect as every session needs at least one time and one space player, without which a session is automatically incapable of producing a universe. Time obviously covers all kinds of temporal powers, timelines and shit but also covers things like rhythm, death in its slow and inevitable form, entropy, and destruction. A Time players' land will always have a platform with which to start a scratch, which is basically a cosmic hard reset button that restarts the timeline and reverses the positions of ectobiology so that the parents in the old timeline are now the kids of the new timeline (though they are still biologically the parents; time travel is fucking weird man), and the kids of the old timeline are now the parental figures. A time player also needs to work constantly to make sure that the timeline follows the "correct" path and not fall out of an accepted margin of deviation or everyone's fucked like the patrons of a college student only nude beach are when the Emperor's children show up. However, the Time Players are also not allowed to edit the Alpha timeline; anything that would break the series of stable timeloops that make up a SBURB session cannot be done without dooming the timeline. With Dave, Caliborn, Damara, and Aradia, the gender ratio of time players in canon is equal. Time's colour is Red and its symbol is a black gear. Time players are always Derse dreamers.
  • Space: The other cardinal aspect, Space is not just the dimensions that we all exist and move in (though it certainly covers all that), but also the force of creativity and artistry with all known space players practising some kind of creative art. It is the Space Player who, with the aid of the Knight, gathers the frogs on her land to have their genes mixed together to create Billious Slick who will be the body of the new universe and all its timelines. The Space Player always lives near some sort of Volcano, which is where the rings of the White and Black Queens must be thrown into to destroy them and in tandem with the destruction of the Black and White King's sceptres, mark the end of the session, before the session and some time after her entry, the Space Player's volcano will be dormant, and part of her personal quest will be to activate it in some way. In many ways, the Space player is the most important one because without her there is no way to create the universe and the best case scenario is that everyone is stuck in the medium forever. The reason why we consistently refer to "her" here is that Jade, Kanaya, Porrim, and Calliope are the canon space players and all are female and there's reason enough to believe that Space is a female only aspect, but you can do what you want in your fanfics/RPGs. Space's colour is black and its symbol is a white spiral galaxy. Space players are always Prospit dreamers, which matters because the visions the space player gets from seeing the clouds of Skaia are important to getting a session started.
  • Breath: You might think that this is the aspect of the wind and storms based on John but you'd be only partially right. This is first and foremost, the aspect of Freedom, whose ultimate expression is the wind and the storms that Breath players have a special relationship with. It's also an aspect of leadership and confidence. Besides time and space, it's the most explored aspect due to John being the central character who ultimately pins the whole story together and John ends up becoming perhaps the most breathy breath player to ever breathe by becoming free from the very constraints of time and space and Paradox Space's rules and being a leader figure to three different sessions worth of people. The canon breath players are John, Tavros, and Rufioh. Breath's colour is blue, and its symbol is a stylised light blue gust of wind.
  • Blood: This aspect has the same that probably has the least to do with what it actually does. It doesn't really refer to actual physical blood but actually to "blood bonds" and other platonic relationships. It's the ties that bind and the force of friendship and teamwork, the collective order to the individual chaos of Breath. A blood player's path is going to revolve all around the team and how they interact with it. Kankri failed utterly because like all the other Beforans he's a moron and Karkat was ultimately only partly successful at holding his team together as he didn't finish his personal quest. The canon blood players are Karkat and Kankri. Blood's color is dark red and its symbol us a diagonal wound leaking bright red blood.
  • Hope: The power of belief, optimism, faith, peace, and the unreal. One of the reoccuring things in Homestuck is how magic is "fake" but if you believe it's real hard enough it becomes somewhat less fake. That is ultimately a Hope Player's power, the power to inspire people to do the impossible or even just outright breaking the rules of reality by believing hard enough until reality throws itself at your feet and pleads for mercy. It is thus a hugely powerful aspect but it tends to produce all kinds of wonky, unstable personalities that will take a substantial quest to set on the right path and let them mature properly. The canon Hope players are Jake, Eridan, and Cronus. Hope's colour is banana yellow and its symbol is a series of lines that resemble eyes closed in prayer.
  • Rage: The opposite of hope is the power of anger, scepticism, doubt, conflict, and material strength. Rage is the most mysterious aspect because both known rage players are themselves enigmas who have classes that initially work against Rage. You ever see some motherfucker who just ups and does something everyone says they can't out of sheer spite? That's rage in a nutshell. However, like Hope it is a terrifying aspect not just for the power it wields but because it tends to produce very emotionally unstable people who are basically one hulk out away from fucking up everything. The canon Rage players are Gamzee and Kurloz. Rage's colour is deep purple and its symbol is a series of lines that look like an exceptionally pissed off face.
  • Light: Something of a misnomer, Light in reality doesn't have all that much to do with physical light (blasting fuckers with bright beams of shit is more Hope's thing, but Light players can do it in a pinch), but has everything to do with fortune (in both common senses of the word), knowledge, and revelations. Light players tend to have a special relationship with luck, being either exceptionally lucky or unlucky depending on their class. They also tend to be classically smart and deeply knowledgeable as well as super fucking wordy walking libraries of exposition on demand. While more of a support aspect, Light can be incredibly powerful in the right hands as after all, knowledge is power and the ability to make sure things go well or bad for people of your choosing without even touching them is incredibly potent to have. The canon Light players are Rose, Vriska, and Aranea. Light's colour is orange and its symbol is a yellow sun with four solar flares.
  • Void: Void is the aspect of nothingness, obscurity, secrets, and darkness. Void players tend to be difficult to track when they don't want to be found and have a special connection to the furthest ring, the timeless and spaceless void of fuck nothing in which the horrorterrors live. It's important to note that under Homestuck's rules, you can change the nothingness factor of something that doesn't exist to make it exist or vice versa. With the exception of Bards and Princes, Void players are naturally sneaky sons of bitches and will often work out of the direct limelight to get the session's missions done. The canon Void players are Roxy, Equius, and Horrus. Void's colour is dark blue and its symbol is a dark vortex.
  • Heart: Heart is actually a fucking kickass power in Homestuck, it's the power of the soul, of passions and emotions, of the self and desire. Heart players always seem to have some ties with romantic relations and romantic relationships are generally especially important to Heart players in ways they aren't to other people. They also tend to express some form of altered identity whether through things like role playing or just having a bad case of split personality disorder or stuff like that. The canon Heart players are Dirk, Nepeta, and Meulin. Heart's colour is a very deep reddish purple and its symbol is a purple heart with one side being somewhat empty.
  • Mind: Mind is the power of thought, choices, reason, intellect and things like that. Mind is not quite as well established as Heart is due to none of the human players having the aspect and Terezi never ascending to the god tiers, but it is definitely a power few people wouldn't be happy to have control over. Due to their abilities regarding decision making and choice as well as thought itself, Mind players can be exceedingly manipulative when they want to be even if they're not direct leaders. And while they aren't necessarily the "super scientist with a billion inventions" kind of smart, they tend to be some of the sharper knives in the drawer. The canon Mind players are Terezi and Latula. Mind's colour is teal and its symbol is a circle with three sickle like projections coming from it.
  • Life: Life is what it says on the tin and a bit more. Life covers living things and change of both evolutionary and revolutionary forms. Interestingly, two of the three life players demonstrated interest and skill in cooking (baking specifically), though whether or not this is actually a facet of Life is not known for sure. A life player on the session is always nice to have to heal up your knicks and scrapes or potentially even bring you back from the dead, but they're more than just healbots just as most forms of life magic in fantasy can do more than just heal or buff people. The canon life players are Jane, Feferi, and Meenah. Life's colour is beige and its symbol is green fire.
  • Doom: The power of Death, the Dead, and Fate among other things. Doom is used in both its modern sense (bad times ahead/imminent death and duestruction) and its old timey sense (where it was used the way we use "fate" now). Whereas Life is full of change and evolution and growth Doom is largely stagnant and fatebound; after all the only thing that really happens with the Dead is that they continue to rot unless a Necromancer or a Resurrecter finds them. Whereas Life is pretty strongly optimistic, Doom is about as dour as it gets for aspects. However it's not an evil power, with none of the Doom players being anything worse than a bit of an ass to people who annoy them and ultimately being rather sympathetic people. The canon Doom players are Sollux and Mituna. Doom's colour is dark green and its symbol is a stylised black skull.

So Why's This so Popular?

This is a meme called "Lemmy Telya". It is a picture of a disgruntled security guard at a convention looking at disdain at a group of cosplayers. In any other fandom this would have passed over quietly. Not in Homestuck. They named him Lemmy Telya, a bastardised version of "Let me tell ya/you". There was art of him. There was a cosplay of him. There was art of said cosplay. There was Rule 63 art of him. All black people pointing/looking at Homestuck cosplays were dubbed as "Lemmy Telya", including a lunch lady and a man who looks like the black Techno Viking. The reaction of said security guard to all this is as of yet unknown, but someone will try to get it. Poor man.

For a number of reasons.

Length

First off, Homestuck is fucking HUGE, and therefore has huge guts. Said guts include having a page count that hit 5000 on June 1st this year (only two webcomics at that time shared having passed that count, and they started in fucking 1995 and 1997). MSPA as a whole hit the 7000 page count on June 21st this year. This is an average of 5 panels per day, every day. Wrap your heads around that one.

It should be noted that what counts as a "page" for MSPA can vastly differ. It can be a simple image with a caption (or none at all), or as complex as a 20-minute flash game or a 13-minute flash movie that brought down MSPA, Megaupload and Newgrounds when it was released.

So to honestly judge its length would be by word count. That, my friends, is where it goes balls-through-the-wall insane. Around August 30th 2012 (that is 3 years, 4 months and 17 days since the start of the comic) this webcomic is, including all transcribed words in the flashes, walk-around games and static images, are you ready for it?

Over 1,000,000 words long.

(To be exact 1142913 words)

That is not a typo. That is really a one followed by six zeroes. Homestuck has a bigger word count than freaking Ulysses times three, or bigger than one Ulysses combined with either War and Peace, Les Misérables or Atlas Shrugged. It is now 25% longer than Romance of the Three Kingdoms as of the end of Act 6 Intermission 5. In case you didn't get the point around your head by now, it is over twice as long as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series, and over five-fourths the length of the King James Bible (though it is just slightly shorter than the entire canon of Harry Potter Except it isn't and is longer now). In fact, even the novel In Search Of Lost Time, with a staggering 1,200,000 words, isn't as long as Homestuck. Worm is longer than Homestuck at 1.75 million words, but is a wholly textual medium story vs Homestuck's more visually oriented format so it doesn't really count.

If nothing else, Homestuck is long - and it isn't even finished.

It is, now, with a really short Act 7 setting the final counter at 1358391 words, and 4h5m2s of various flashes. Damn, it's called homestuck for a reason

Storytelling

Andrew Hussie has an above-average thesaurus and is not afraid to use it, proving rather adept at playing with words, creating new ones and giving new meanings to others. He also frequently reuses earlier parts of his story; including jokes, chat logs that are to be read a second time now that you know who the character on the other side is, and various things that suddenly turn out to be EXTREMELY important some few thousand pages later. For example, this is an 100% accurate quote from last year regarding the then-new developments:

"So a seemingly insignificant item from the beginning of the story is suddenly and literally RAGE'd into existence by a bloodthirsty purple alien juggalo, and the very same item connects randomly and equally insignificant-looking events to explain the cause of pretty much every bad thing in the story. And it was all Betty Crocker's doing, because she tweeted an ICP video to a time traveling hipster wannabe on a site called Delirious Biznasty. In the past. Also, she's an alien too. For those keeping score at home, this made things less confusing."

We at 1d4Chan would like to repeat that this is all completely accurate, and that it all makes sense (or something resembling sense) in the context of the story. Seriously.

The good mister Hussie is also fond of adding easter eggs regarding, mentioning, referring to and wholesale copying, his earlier stories. The most jarring one is an event in Act 6 Act 3 that nearly page-by-page copies an earlier of his stories. Some of them like a story called And It Don't Stop (which is about rapping robots) is homaged with a bit more restraint.

He often repeats his own jokes as well with slight twists to them, such as variations of "It keeps hapening" (sic) which has been turned into a pair of banners for 4chan. Others include "Succumb to unfathomable x", "Huge bitch bluh bluh", various uses of the word douchebag, fuckass, bulge and nook, and many, MANY more.

While on the subject of story telling, there is the absolute clusterfuck of how the story exists in relation to the others. Bardquest and Jailbreak have been shown to exist within Problem Sleuth. Problem Sleuth and these games are all video games in Homestuck. MSPA itself exists within Homestuck too, except there it is a story about a group of mobsters called the Midnight Crew, who had appeared in the extra material for Problem Sleuth. After Act 3 there was an intermission starring these guys and show that in their universe MSPA exists as well, being about a story very similar to that of Homestuck called Hivebent. It then turns out that that story actually happened, the Midnight Crew had met the characters in Hivebent and helped them in their version of Sburb. It THEN turns out that the events of Hivebent created the universe in which Homestuck takes place.

This means that the Midnight Crew is fictional in the Homestuck universe, the Hivebent universe both is and is not fictional in the Midnight Crew setting and the events of the Homestuck MSPA took place in the universe that was indirectly created by the Midnight Crew. It's the biggest brainfuck since that episode of Doctor Who that revealed that, while Doctor Who and Eastenders (A British series and not relevant to the point at hand) are fictional series in each other's universes they also exist in the same universe. It's like meeting Vulkan who tells you that his people have been telling stories about you and yours for decades. And this is not even counting the "Alpha" universe.

Also, this would mean that there are three iterations of Andrew Hussie running around; one in our universe, one in the Homestuck universe and one in the Hivebent universe. Welp.

The Story Itself

The story roughly resembles Avatar: The Last Airbender in that there are four kids with different personalities and backgrounds (yes I know Katara and Sokka are siblings and are not that different in that regard, go eat a dick) have supernatural powers and have to deal with problems far, FAR bigger than any 13 year old should handle. Or any adult. Or anyone who's not the Emperor. The scope set on only a few characters and their struggles, group dynamic and their problems with budding relationships. This, combined with the HUGE cast (there is a joke where the original 151 characters are said to the poster's favorites, this is within the realm of possibility for the story.), adds huge potentials for shipping. It should also be noted that the guy who voiced Zuko in The Last Airbender (Dante Basco) also played Rufio in the Robin Williams movie Hook, with Rufio appearing a few times in Homestuck as a fictional/real character that gets killed and has his corpse kissed by Andrew Hussie. Because Homestuck is skull-fuckingly weird like that. Then the real Dante Basco began reading Homestuck. He got a nice warm welcome along with a Saw-esque greeting of "HELLO DANTE" printed in the site's menu bar and the fans loved him for reading it. When he got to the corpse-makeout point he was rather freaked out by it but kept reading anyway, calling himself "a Homestuck". Real trooper that one.

While most fandoms have some shippers, Homestuck goes beyond by introducing four different kinds of love: regular human love, "hatelove" (not to be confused with being tsundere), platonic love involving being the better half of someone without there being sex or reproduction involved, and being a relationship councilor for another pair of people by hate-cockblocking them. Especially the first two are popular within the shipping community, with hetero, homo, interspecies (often combinations) are very common, partially because the race of aliens involved later in the story has no concept of homo/heterosexuality as they reproduce asexually (don't ask, nobody knows how it actually works since the author never divulged on the subject, all we know is that it involves donating "genetic material" out of which a large insect creature can breed young aliens) and as such do not require a partner of the opposite gender to reproduce.

The Fandom

The homestuck fandom and how to exploit it.

Homestuck has a very large, active, vocal and creative (and women dominated) fandom with a penchant of getting shit done. They write music, make games (though not very fast), debate characters, events, objects and individual pages to no end, combine it with other games, series, movies and such, and draw umpteen FUCKTONS of fanart. As always, some of it is genuinly good while other suck bleeding horse cock. Unfortunately, this also means that the ever-present percentage of fuckwad those guys is a pretty large number of people. This results in that it looks like all of the fandom are retarded cuntmuffins who kick it into maximum oversperg every time someone disagrees with them. This is not true; as in all fandoms that is the infamous vocal minority. On the Bright side this also means there are also these guys. Many of them often frequent anime conventions for some reason that only Hussie Tzeentch knows, which is how they get mainstream recognition. Often you can recongnize a fellow Homestuck even if you are not familiar with the comic due to their grey body paint and fake orange horns when they're cosplaying. Let's just say that they often forget to seal their body paint.

Internal arguments are common as well: people hating people for not liking what they like (and vice versa), and shipping wars are rife. Because of the above-mentioned place that romance has in Homestuck everyone is shipped with everyone, to the point where people pair off vaults with pogo rides. It does not really help that Mark Twain (the writer) and Betty Crocker (the baking mascot) are an in-story canon pairing.

So why do people hate it so much?

Again, a number of reasons.

1. Because it is so extremely long and starts off slow, some people do not have the patience for the comic and call it boring or say that nothing happens until act 5. The people who skip acts 1 to 4 (and the ones that skip the first Intermission, or all the parts with the exiles) are especially loathed amongst the fandom.
2. Second is that the story can really swing between whimsical fun, grim darkness and relationship shenanigans. Some people want a story to be consistent in tone, while others don't mind it switching around.
3. A third reason is the fandom: Due to its tendency to be quite vocally retarded (especially the muffcunts of the fandom) people view Homestuck as something that makes you stupid, and they fear it as horribly cancerous.
4. Fourth, many people quit Homestuck halfway through because they feel it hurt them like an abusive spouse after their favorite troll has been killed off or their ship got sunk. A good deal of the more vocal haters were avid readers turned rabid haters. It is worth noting that on the shipping front, things are rarely set in stone and at least some degree of polyamory seems to be the norm.
5. And still more people hate Homestuck because they feel it doesn't deserve the popularity it receives. They claim it is both trashy and pretentious, too avant-garde and simplistic all at the same time and that it fails to tell a story, but apparently not poor enough to warrant a simple dismissal instead of a more favorable and vocal shouting down.

• This got a lot worse for everyone when Hussie's soundtrack composer, Toby Fox, made a gorillion dollars on a video game called Undertale that copied all the elements of Homestuck that made it so popular with annoying idiots while attracting several new forms of cancer as a bonus. Oddly, this doesn't seem to have been intentional on Toby's part; he just wanted to make a video game about stuff he liked and fell ass-first into a gold mine.

So you're putting down your 40k minis and taking a gander at the fandom

Given that you're here on this site, you're likely a 40k fan primarily, maybe a D&D one too. Given that you're reading this, you're probably interested in how all this applies to you. Fear not, for those of us who are in both fandoms can tell you what to expect. One thing to remember is that with Warhammer most fellow fans are probably college age and male, in Homestuck most of the people you'll meet will be high school age and female. Yes, that's right, you're going to have to deal with women.

So there's a lot of delicate shit that you need to get over when you as an aficionado of painted plastic miniatures who engage in bloody war expose yourself to aficionados of teenaged RPG characters in webcomic format who engage in shenanigans. Firstly, most Homestuckers don't care about "who would win in a fight" questions, instead being far more interested in who's making out with whom. For those who came from the largely shipping free 40k fanbases this will be a culture shock. Secondly, Homestuckers won't care about traditional /tg/ displays of superiority such as more dakka so leave your gun porn at home.

Thirdly, whereas 40kers (which you probably are given that it's the semi-official game of /tg/) mostly hang around forums like dakkadakka or our home of /tg/, homestuckers by and large dwell in the mysterious land of tumblr where they congregate around especially creative/notable fans into cliques that take time to engage in heavy ship to ship combat, creating ever more fan content, and discuss the hell out of any updates made.

Joining tumblr is not necessary, but will help you understand the fanbase. Be careful though, there is a lot of porn there, so much so that the rule 34 site itself probably only has half of it catalogued at best, and that's not even getting into the smutfics. And being that many of the creators are teenaged girls you expect lots of very literal faggotry. Browse through tumblr at your own risk.

Fourthly, a lot of what is considered funny to Warhammer or D&D fans will go right over the heads of most homestuckers and vice versa. Creed and Gazebo jokes won't be recognized and may in fact get you marked as an outsider. While most Homestuck fans are very accepting of getting your fandom and theirs mixed together, there are some pretty loud and obnoxious purists who will jump on you for trying to "taint" Homestuck with foreign elements.

On that note, Homestuckers are notable for their general love of crossovers, typically marked by (insertnameofpremisehere)stuck. If you're good with writing and/or art, you can win some of them over by creating your own crossover. This will help you bridge the gap between them and you and may in fact get some of them interested in what you like. There are a few of the asshole purists, but they're thankfully rare and if you attract a big enough cult following they usually prove to be pussies and leave you alone.

Fifthly, you know all that teenaged drama you once dealt with? A good bit of the story is about teenaged drama. 40k fans will look for action and badassery in fanworks, Homestuck fans will look for dramatics and characterization in fanworks. Don't think that just because you can write a ball bustingly awesome action sequence that you'll win them over. You're going to have to rely more on intercharacter interactions to lord over them.

Basically the difference can be summed up like this. The 40kers and D&D players of /tg/ are mostly neckbeardy guys who focus on the setting and are most impressed by masculine stuff like explosions and big badass battle scenes. The homestuckers all over the internet are mostly energetic girls who focus on the characters and are most impressed by feminine stuff like drama and relationships. Bridging this gap can be a bit hard, but if you pull it off you are not only awesome, you now have access to the largest collection of women who might just be interested in seeing your meticulously painted collection of Death Korps of Krieg troopers on earth.

Recommended avenues of contact: The MSPA forum of course, Pesterchum, MSPARP, Cherubplay (for the love of the Emperor do not turn on the see NSFW prompts function), Tumblr, Homestuck role play forums, Homestuck's reddit board, Deviantart, and Archive of our own (for whatever reason the fandom doesn't like FF.net too much, turn on the explicit function at your own peril, teenaged girls are scary porn writers).

Things to watch out for: Smut; you would never believe a comic about thirteen-sixteen year olds could inspire so much smut. But teenaged girls will be teenaged girls. Character defilement; if you get attatched to a character, be prepared to see some people absolutely butcher them in bad role plays, terrible, terrible fanfics and some of the dumbest ideas for A.Us you have ever seen.

Homestuck and Warhammer 40k

As said before, despite the two fandoms being ECKSBAWKS HUEG and fucking everywhere on the internet, there's surprisingly little overlap between the two as their lack of shared interests leads to little reason to interact and even when they do 40k and Homestuck rarely get mentioned. That being said, there is still plenty for a 40ker to do in homestuck. Most common are fanquests that adapt 40k characters or species into SBURB players or have a SBURB session being played by members of a 40k faction. Others who like to focus on the sci-fi appeal of both settings might instead set up a sort of crossover, involving a conflict between the Imperium of Man and the Alternian Empire (the intergalactic government of the Troll race).

Ones meant more for the 40k crowd will largely keep closer to 40k canon, and thus are probably going to have adult main characters, fudge a few of the rules of SBURB, and feature stuff like Chaos and the C'tan as being way more in the forefront. Ones meant more for the Homestuck crowd will go the opposite way, and will thus have teenaged main characters, disregard select bits of 40k canon, and mainly put Homestuck related plot elements as the lynchpin.

Either works, but as that one mexican girl once put forth, why not both? Nothing's stopping you from making a fansession with a group of Eldar, Tau, Imperial, Chaos, or Ork teens that freely mixes aspects of both. Nothing's stopping you from having your fanfic's black king becoming a Daemon Prince or Necrons crashing the party or maybe Tyranids popping out of a wormhole. On the flipside of things nothing's stopping you from thinking up a way to make SBURB a part of 40k as a test for planets and/or place stuff like the Troll civilization in the 40k galaxy.

On another note, the colors of the first four main characters (commonly called the beta kids) match up to those of the Chaos gods. John is blue like Tzeentch, Rose is violet like Slaanesh, Dave is red like Khorne, and Jade is green like Nurgle. What you can make of this is entirely up to you, but their associated elements also match up to the chaos gods.

Lastly, Homestuck also has the term Grimdark, but it means something completely different to them. To them, Grimdark means you're being influenced by lovecraftian monster gods who are causing you to burn with black fire and speak and act uncontrollably. Another variation of the term that may confuse you is Grimdork, which refers to the pairing of John Egbert and Rose Lalonde, as Rose once went Grimdark and John is of course a gigantic dork, whose supporters point to the classic union of the awkward nerdy guy and the classy, elegant girl.

Andrew Hussie's T-shirt, although green with a sword and a pair of wings, is not inspired by the 40k logos of the Raven Guard or the Dark Angels.

• And now a text quest crossing the two over has been started recently. Featuring twelve Eldar protagonists out to play the big bad game of SBURB...or SPELF in this case.

Parallels with the End Times/Age of Sigmar

Strangely enough, Homestuck has parallels with the Warhammer Fantasy meta-setting as revealed during the End Times and Age of Sigmar. The plot of Homestuck revolves around a video game that destroys the civilization of the species that plays it, but allows a select few individuals to ascend to godhood and create a new universe that they can rule over, and that will also eventually play Sburb, repeating the cycle. In the Warhammer Fantasy setting, Chaos regularly destroys the central planet of the setting, but a select few individuals are able to ascend to godhood and create a new planet for them to rule over, repeating the cycle. This opens up the possibility of Sburb being somehow related to Chaos.

Games

So I'm making a tabletop game version of Sburb/Sgrub/Homestuck ...

About once a week there's a thread on /tg/ about someone new who's going to be a pioneer and make a Homestuck RPG. It's a weird case of /tg/ not getting shit done, probably because the idea is inherently flawed -- the game 'Sburb' as described is a Mongolian clusterfuck of The Sims, Minecraft, Chess, Zork, Final Fight, Street Fighter, Megami Tensei, Earthbound and Princess Maker... and maybe a couple others. Attempts usually get as far as player vs. mooks combat and end there because this is the someone's first attempt at game design, or because they give up in the face of trying to write a system for four-axis multiple simultaneous divergent timeline romances between alien/human/ghost/demigod/chesspiece/software-construct and another or maybe two aliens/humans/ghosts/demig*BLAM*.

Here are the ones that still exist for some reason

• SKRUB v 8.1 (still working on it as of may 2016)
• God Tier RPG
• A User's Guide to the Apocalypse. This one uses Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, a tabletop RPG that's about feelings instead of combat and that doesn't use dice, so it only half counts. The game is playable though, if you count "people sitting on an internet chat talking about their feelings" as play.
• RPGStuck It's a modified version of DnD with some weird shit added to it. Seems somewhat active, but it is only hosted on reddit so far.

the rest of these were hosted on mspaforums and other daoots sites, but who knows, maybe someday they will be back.

• the one based on Gamma World v4
• Updated from the original Gamma World edit, still active.
  • [Now found on the Omegaupdate forums: http://omegaupdate.freeforums.net/thread/339/homestuck-edition-temporary-omegaupdate-home]
• the one that uses poker cards for d4+d13

Be aware that we're still learning about the rules of SBURB so updates to these RPGs are fairly frequent. Just whenever we think Hussie's finally told us everything about the game, he pulls a Billy Mays and shouts "but wait, there's more!"

Links

• The big enchilada Be prepared to spend several days at least going through it.
• A homestuck *booru image repository
• The soundtrack albums free to listen streaming
• MSPFA Fan-Adventures like fanfic but with illustrations; most are started and then abandoned when the author loses interest. Recommended stories that don't need familiarity with Homestuck are:
  • A Beginner's Guide to the End of the Universe - A nondescript everyman wakes up to a barren world and tries to make sense of it.
  • Superego
  • Waterworks - You're a Concerned Citizen looking to get the water back at the local waterworks facility.
  • PAY DAT RENT!!!1 - A comedic MSPFA about a compulsive streaker trying to pay his overdue rent. Things go off the rails when he successfully sells his own soul.
• Why nothing and no one is ever safe, ever. View at your own discretion, you were warned.
• Someone actually made a Homestuck/Dungeons & Dragons fic here: Land of Dungeons & Dragons

Gallery

• 

  Post this on a Homestuck forum. The shitstorm will be legendary.

• 

  The average Homestuck reader.

• 

  Andrew Hussie, Creator of Homestuck, doing the dance of his people.

• 

  No, seriously, what is with this comic?

• 

  The comic makes a joke about grimdark for a while.

• 

  Yes, it has gotten this bad.

• 

  Problem Sleuth gave us this glorious, monolithic, porcelain edifice of a bust, known as the Bowen Stilson Dogg.

• 

  Andrew Hussie knows of /tg/. And he finds great pleasure in our gifts.

• 

  Problem Sleuth never got as complicated as Homestuck.

• 

  Sister of Battle initiate Kanaya Maryam shows you how rage is done.

• 

  It

• 

  really

• 

  is.

• 

  John Egbert and his Fanciful Harlequins.

• 

  Not even Boreale himself could withstand their crossover addiction...