or is it just a lil guy who happens to look like this

I did it in unpatched Morrowind.exe at the lowest resolution for the bit and was promptly punished because Alpha slider stopped working somehow so this is dark as fuck

You will need to pause to read the dialogue or get photographic eye augmentations idk

This is the mod

Jake had better hair at one point but somehow I lost it when permanently putting on his glasses

The committee (Harry) gave me the GOG key to Oaken which is a lot nicer than what I expected (I expected some kind of presidential campaign advisor simulator tbqhwymgg)

[I was thinking about doing an essay or other high effort bullshit nobody needs about this peculiar topic: What Homestuck was about until it wasn't; but the scope is too big. To properly, diligently do so I would probably have to re-re-read Homestuck with the book commentaries and some other sources and look at the "blogosphere" and "yt essays" or dozen of hours of podcasts and ehhh no. Since somebody expressed interest I'll dump this malformed thought heap here, feel free to tell me in what ways I'm stupid and who did this better and what may be an interesting lead to follow up maybe]

Homestuck is a sediment, it's a chimera, it's baroque and incongruent and a historical geography and that's cool. There are other Homestucks in there, that could have been. I'm not talking about the fanfics and headcanons (mostly. arguably.) I talk about the ways the storyworm turned while it was happening. It's not a value judgement either, except when I get disappointed and mean. Here are some things Homestuck was about at some point:

Blood Spade

• At first, Homestuck isn't. I'm talking about this thing
• The Midnight Crew adventure that wasn't. Problem Sleuth: Beyond Canon.
• It becomes part of Homestuck itself both literally in a recurring selfindulgent meta gag and spiritually through the Midnight Crew so it has to be mentioned here
• I'm actually not read up on the background of the Midnight Crew but I believe they were a Problem Sleuth fan design semi-canonized as a donation reward?
• I've read once that Hussie considered this a fall back position if Homestuck didn't work out??? dubious but it would fit where it was on the website

I wake up, I check MSPA/4. It's the Blood Spade. I'm in the bad timeline

Yet Another Microsoft(TM) Paint(TM) Adventure(TM)

how can you retrieve your arms if theyre ALREADY HERE

• Most of Act 1 and some later portions
• Homestuck is doing the Problem Sleuth suggestion forum game/quest thing...
• ...but in retrospect that's a conceit buying time while trying out the tools, warming up, building engagement to do something different
• consider the experiment of the Homestuck Beta all in Flash
• A tutorial for the characters, the reader, but also the author
• There is some overlap with the "kids messing around aimlessly for 70 pages" thing but not even a majority actually
• This part makes NO sense if you haven't read Jailbreak et al and if you think it does it's because you read another 8000 pages giving you retrocontext
• Stops being what Homestuck is about when the mailbox explodes?

S(u)burban Ennui

and nobody has to think too much bout Desolation Row

• At one point Homestuck was going to be about suburbs sucking, obviously
• That's what The Note Desolation Plays (the prose bit) is about. it's also conveniently vague foreshadowing, and it sets a slightly darker (still comedic) tone, but what it's literally about is suburbs sucking
• related themes set up early: John's social isolation, Digital Escapism, SIMs
• SBURB is called S(u)BURB and is a Simslike we are falsely lead to believe. The Sims is suburb propaganda
• Never fully realized or even called back to because the escapism is permanent
• (even EarthC is not about suburbs somehow? It was made with a program called SBURB you guys)

The Game

u lost

• the adventure happens and now things are about the mechanics and logistics of the adventure, which happens to be a real world computer game
• Fairie Tale: children are transported to an otherworld and have to abide by arbitrary magic rules to pass a test. Gratuitous monarchs and child murder. Trappings of a moral education but kinda blue orange for the modern real world reader
• also a game for the reader? Figuring out the alchemy stuff and so on and so forth (this is distinct from being a forum game)
• Where Homestuck flipflops between cryptic and infodumpy and I love some of that like the gameFAQ. Who doesn't love the gameFAQ? Fake Gamers.
• Kinda fading and becoming the arena and background for The Conflict but...
• Doesn't really belong in this list because it returns to the focus
• and Caliborn is apparently SBURB working as intended
• and postretcon is all about orthodoxily finishing SBURB which, frankly, fail

Environmentalism

Shale is the most common source rock for hydrocarbons (natural gas and petroleum)

• I read about this theme in a reddit comment but I think it was well sourced and if not it still makes sense to me
• Consider: big faceless corporation destroys Earth
• John is put into a Land of oil and has to extract resources
• The adults are complicit in the system and the chillun can't save the planet
• kinda built up a bit but then predetermination becomes the real big bad

Hard Time Travel Fiction

if we make a mistake dead daves start piling up

• Hard in the sense of Hard Sci Fi
• Love this one. No matter the infinite bullshit Homestuck pulls from its hornse's ass, it does convince you it plays by its own rules for a long time and that's A LOT because of how hard time travel is
• Themes of determinism and free will
• The readerly satisfaction of a time loop closing answering another question nobody asked
• There are definitely some logic holes even here but who cares who the fuck cares
• (acausal information hurts my head. Especially acausal genetics! Like Dirk could be anything that could come out of an ectobiology machine like a cat or a dog or a felt dude that slavishly obeys Caliborn so why is he an american ninja? Because he is an american ninja because he is an american ninja because he )
• poor Dave
• nominally what the entire plot is about in its chronological structure as a system of time loops and in its main??? conflict which is the Lord of TIME being an angry 4chan kid
• but in fact dropped with the Retcon which works on story logic not logic logic and not even; it's vibes-based. the story isn't that interested in it somehow

BILDUNGSROMAN/but mostly parent issues

This probably isn’t what you meant but having the characters do exciting slapstick-y MSPA things as 13 year olds but mostly just get into very long conversations and love triangles as they age is one of the most important aspects of homestuck when analyzing it as a bildungsroman -HarryHinderson

• I use the big German word because u/HarryHinderson forced my hand
• ^((obviously if you have a story with a teenager, any story, any teenager, some USAmerican will call it a Comin'-of-Age Story no matter what. Homestuck is a CoA because 13))
• However in Homestuck there are lots of purposefully placed markers of a CoA story
• however...
• The characters rarely act and talk like 13yo all that much, even literary conventions' 13yo. The Beta Kids' whole pre-SBURB life is vague and myopic. The Alpha Kids too, but they have reasons for that.
• They mostly learn things about killing with hammers and seducing psychopaths and less about their place in society and values. also society dies
• But what's awesome CoA material is the Guardians
• (insert that alignment chart here) This is what people remember about Homestuck if you force them not to talk about trolls for up to 10 seconds
• Each human has a unique and interesting relationship to their parent figures who are both larger than life badasses and useless
• This relationship is where they do growing up, by getting fatherly affirmations and also finding his corpse and kicking a sword and crying
• Act 6, without adults and society, those teens deteriorate. This might be a generous reading but I can't help it I'm a generous reader
• Maybe the basic failing of the preretcon Act6 that exists is that it really wants to revisit those parents from a different angle, but it doesn't have a single good idea for that
• Anyway at some point Homestuck tells us character arcs are fake thank you thank you homestuck

Early Trollma (Troll Drama)

Shadow: They can't troll you if their dead

I posit there are 3 kinds of Homestuck Drama: Early Trollma, Vriska, and Drαmα

• Trollma is the dynamic the trolls add to the story. The early part is when they're not Protagonists
• The kids are Star Trek TNG. The trolls are Firefly at best (if there were like 4 Jaynes) (the alphas are a Star Wars porn parody)
• Early Trollma evolves rapidly as the trolls evolve rapidly from 1dimensional typing quirks to vibrant monster children.
• At its core it's about making some unwell internet friends that try to kill you through instant messenger. In my delusional dream homestuck that would be it. but in the world we live with the trolls become a phenomenon. They eat Homestuck
• Ends with Act5:1 or maybe when Vriska sexually abuses Tavros

Vriska (Vriska drama) (Vriska)

• Vriska
• Doesnt belong in this list actually because it never ever ever ever ends
• movin da fugg on

Powerleveling

• the central problem for a pretty long bit of Homestuck is that this NPC has too many powerlevels
• Also The Game wants you to level up
• Also Vriska
• Also Caliborn
• Also Rose I feel although she pretends it's about knowledge (Rose is a Worm Blaster not a Worm Thinker in actuality)
• Kinda tapers off when Vriska is stabbed and it turns out it doesn't actually matter how many broken haxx you use the timeline is the timeline
• Then is kinda revisited by making the Condesce as strong as all trolls ever combined because she has a gene lab
• and also Aranea's bullshit
• the only powerlevel that actually matters is LE's and that only because we don't know the final fight

Trαmα: Alpha session drama including trolls

• my good reader I hate this one
• there are two equally rotten daisy chains to this: Everybody wants to fuck Jake; and whatever happens to Terezi
• OK the second one is more rotten
• Once Vriska (Vriska Drama) (Vriska) is back we don't need this stinky toy anymore

other things I could mention:

God

I mean the denizens are God, that much is obvious. Needless to even spell it out. But what does this mean?

Not actually what homestuck is about at any point except it feels a lil weird it isn't, you know

Hiveswap

That's what the big holes are about. The hiatuses and their footprint. Maybe we might use it as a synonym for "burnout"? Let's not dwell on this overlong for somehow this is still ongoing drama

the fans

From day 0, no, day -4. Again, a sore subject. The strange history of the Homestuck Music Team may be enlightening here but I only semiknow one very opinionated perspective

CaNoNnNnN

OK Epilogues

but also the cool parts of the retcon, abusing the comic archive

but soon after we're not supposed to think about the cool retcon powers anymore

SHIPPING

Not just romance, there is a level of abstraction to it ever since the troll romance spiel. A riddle for the reader. And also the interfacing with fandom culture. Isolating this layer from the drama layer is hard tho.

notes

Maybe a useful method to figure out what's interesting to have on this list would be comparing it to a more normal story that drops stuff normally

Wondering if dumping this has exorcised my current Hamsteak fixation... no but getting there

• i kno stupid bullet point lists is now the rotten domain of large language model chatbots but I didn't use any of those. Butlerian jihad now

Did you know that no part of Homestuck can be kinda bad or lame because Vriska's Title translates to Seethe of Cope? checkmate, past me

art by redandblacktac (much nsfw)

Face by Tamriel_Data. Glasses by Ruffin Vangar. The game is Fallout New Vegas

I don't have time to enmonstrosify his teeth

Wild that those are the top results if you click the Homestuck tag and then relax your eyes until you see patterns on the white background

I lost approximately all data in my life, including some pretty important or sentimental stuff, but because of this althomestuck meme I ventured into an ancient pointless backup and found a folder with dozens of arcane homestuck pictures. I selected the strangest and most scumptious for your consideration. I don't know any sources or why the heck I saved those supposedly

(Image from Act Omega)

lolmaofl did this larper really think they would close that timeloop and get their asses English'd the story is OVER

closing timeloops is 2010 behavious unc

Spoiler for Psychoonials....; u can not choose.... which would be p. deep... if this was a game with choices.... instead of a kinetic v. novel...

least ambitious crossover in history?

Is Broadway Karkat outerversal? What does that even mean? How does Broadway Karkat fare against Early Retcon Potential John?