Homestuck/Tropes D-F

>LAND OF DEATH AND FLAMES

Whoa... this place is sweltering, and with all the flames burning endlessly around you it's quite apparent why. You're glad you alchemized that COOL FRIDGE CAP before you came here. Surprisingly enough, the tropes beginning with D, E, and F don't seem to mind the heat.

<== ==>

"TT: I'm not actually trying to caricaturize a grim sorcerer. TT: There's still a perfectly intact piece of my mind which realizes how ridiculous it is to be flying across rainbow oceans with a couple of magic wands and a salamander in a little cowl. [a bit later] EB: maybe later, i will drop by your planet again and rescue you, thus breaking the spooky spell put on you by your nefarious, shadowy masters.
 * Dark Is Not Evil: In every session, roughly half the players' dream selves live on Derse. The Horrorterrors as well, who don't seem to be as malevolent as suggested.
 * Some lower ranked dersite Agents aren't as bad as their Archagents or Royalty, with WV and AR being obviously heroic examples. And maybe the Droll.
 * Darker and Edgier: Hivebent. Before the twelve trolls even leave Alternia, they go through almost as much crap as the four kids have during their whole adventure.
 * Homestuck itself arguably qualifies; it hasn't sacrificed humor, but it's significantly darker in tone than its immediate predecessor.
 * Lampshaded by Rose and John:

EB: that way you will stop being so Grimdark and ominous, and basically completely off the deep end in every way, as is now painfully obvious to anyone with a brain.

TT: Swoon!"

"TG: just once id like to see dad crap his pants when a kid says theres a vampire in his closet TG: "OH SHIT EVERYONE IN THE MINIVAN" TG: be fuckin dad of the year right there"
 * The 7th soundtrack is noticeably darker than its predecessors. Not surprising, considering how utterly grim things have been getting as of late.
 * The Post-Scratch session is this compared to the pre-scratched, in both story and even tone. This gets Lampshaded by one of the Salamander writing tablets in a crypt, missing the old and happy stories of Heroes compare to the Noble's stories.
 * Darkest Hour: Holy shit, everything after New Years Eve 2010.
 * Literally in some cases.
 * It got better (somewhat) once the End of Act 5 flash came around.
 * The Day the Music Lied: In the 4/2/11 update. John and Rose find Noir by their dead parents bodies, take out their weapons, a big Round 1 appears on the top of the screen, suitably awesome music starts to play - only to stop when Noir stabs John through the chest. Again.
 * Deader Than Dead: There are varying levels of Deader Than Dead. If your dreamself is dead or you've already used your it as an extra life you can't resurrect. If a god-tier player dies a just or heroic death they lose their immortality. But topping them all is that when the Scratch happens all the dead players in the dream bubbles will be trapped in the barren session/alternate universe forever. No escaping a la Problem Sleuth, no dream visits, nothing. Then again things haven't exactly gone as planned in this story...
 * Also, we don't actually know how dream bubbles work. This is best examplified by Sollux (who is not even dead at that point) simply walking out of his "afterlife" - just because he didn't know you're not supposed to do that.
 * Death by Irony: How the Trolls are dying.
 * Death Is a Sad Thing: Watching the flowers on Jasper's casket slowly decay is certainly sad.
 * Death Is Cheap: Subverted. When a character or their dream self dies, they die for real. That iteration of them can only exist in dream bubbles with others who have died. That said, dead characters can be revived as their dream selves (if their dream selves aren't dead) or their bodies can be prototyped, reviving them as sprites, such as with Jade's dream self.
 * Death World: Alternia. HEINOUS BROODS OF THE UNDEAD rise during the day to feast on the living, terrible MUSCLEBEASTS roam at night, and the Alternian sun is invariably described as "blistering", to the point that it permanently blinded Terezi after mere seconds of staring into it, driving most trolls to nocturnal behavior out of sheer necessity.
 * Eridan turned his planet, Land of Wrath and Angels, into one when he started to kill the consorts there to the point where they started to go berserk. Even the most powerful troll players don't want to go there.
 * Decapitation Presentation: Dave presents Bro with the severed head of one of his puppets during their fight.
 * Gamzee constructs a mock jury consisting of the severed heads of Nepeta, Eridan, Equius, and Feferi, with himself as the judge, during the showdown between Vriska and Terezi.
 * Deconstruction: Of the classic "A group of young friends go on an adventure in a magical land to save the world!" plot.
 * Defictionalization: You can buy the shirts of all of the Beta universe kids (John, Jade, Rose, and Dave) and trolls. There's also a fully functional Pesterchum program developed by fans and a functional COMPLETE BULLSHIT content aggregator, among other things.
 * Demonic Spiders: The Uranium Imps.
 * Angels once Eridan pissed them off. Fast, angry, and takes a full minute of sustained firepower from a legendary weapon just to kill one. There are thousands.
 * Demoted to Extra: Tavros, Nepeta, Equius, Eridan, and Feferi have a fair amount of spotlight during Act 5 Act 1, and Tavros was one of the first troll characters introduced, even in Act 4, but all of them were killed off midway through Act 5 Part 2 and have been scarcely mentioned since, save for their deaths being motivation for revenge.
 * Ascended Extra: Gamzee was even more minor than the others, yet he takes a central role in Act 5 Act 2
 * Department of Redundancy Department: Here, "A big gust of wind conveniently comes along and blows out all the fire. It is really convenient."
 * Once John & Jade learn the "gift of gab," we're treated to our first Dialoglog.
 * "If their imagination was a face you would shoot it. In the face
 * Desert Punk: Earth in 2422.
 * Developer Room: See the Silliness Switch.
 * The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Whatever created Sburb built in scenarios for everything. It takes an indestructible demon to break the game, and even then it may not be completely broken.
 * This is actually brutally Subverted, bordering on Deconstruction: Sburb is rather easy to set Off the Rails, to the point where certain races (Read as: Humans) could have dozens of universe-creation attempts and all of them fail for one reason or another. Granted, there are ways to set things right, such as the Time player's method of Save Scumming and The Scratch, which is in fact a hard temporal Reset Button that completely reconfigures session parameters - including players themselves. Sburb doesn't exactly think of everything so much as have terrible consequences for doing it wrong.
 * Though in a different sense, played straight, after all, the alchimeter can make ANYTHING that exists, and anything that DOESN'T exist, but is possible, usually through combinations of other things...like a pogostick-hammer-clothes iron...for example...and each of these has a unique captcha code exclusive to itsself...so in order to create the game, they would have to literally think of EVERYTHING...(this basically means scribblenauts, taken to the logical (and possibly illogical) extreme).
 * Also, the mere fact that they can go off the rails in a video game, to the degree of a tabletop rpg, without incurring massive glitches and making the game unplayable is also quite impressive...and would mean they would have to anticipate every possible way the players COULD go off the rails, or make the game capable of free thinking enough to be able to respond appropriately, and modify the state of the game...and it still be plausible...as in, the game would have to UNDERSTAND what to program, such that humans would still find it logical, and it would have to emulate proper emotional responses...(either they did think of everything, or the game is sentient enough that IT can...).
 * Did Not Do the Research: On his formspring account, Andrew Hussie claims to be an expert on "the animes", and lists Discworld as an example of one. He was just joking, however.
 * And, in canon, Jane acts like she's a big fan of Hercule Poirot but doesn't actually seem to have ever read any books or seen any movies featuring him since she believes he's French.
 * Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Jade bapping Jack on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. And it works because he is her doggie.
 * Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Terezi does this by manipulating Doc Scratch into punishing Vriska.
 * Didn't See That Coming: Jack clearly wasn't expecting the Cyberbunny to side with John.
 * No one was expecting Gamzee to go axe-crazy, Eridan to actually be able to use the wand (much less blast his allies to bits with it), or Kanaya to recover from Eridan's attack by becoming (awakening as?) a rainbow-drinker.
 * Die or Fly: Vriska pulls one on John. It works.
 * Also on Tavros. It doesn't work.
 * Dies Wide Open: Tavros, Feferi (both their real bodies and dream selves), Equius and Eridan.
 * Difficulty Spike: After Becquerel prototyped himself to save Jade, which gave some of the Imps (and the Big Bad) Bec's Teleport Spam and immunity to bullets.
 * Disaster Dominoes: Equius punches a robot through a wall for "judging" him. The robot's head falls and activates the Catentative Doomsday Dice Cascader... which fails... but becomes dislodged and causes a piece of Equius' hive to break off and fall, killing his lusus and grievously wounding Vriska's. The whole thing starts here and goes on for about ten pages.
 * Disc One Nuke:
 * Jade's present, a killer robot made from the Con Air rabbit with miniaturized versions of extremely powerful weapons, intended to be received by John way before he (or any other player) would have been able to make the big versions legitimately. Of course, it wound up in the wrong hands and caused a lot of trouble first.
 * Vriska and Eridan both had the most powerful examples of their respective kind abstrata before they even started Sgrub.
 * Future-Dave, who had been as far as the Fifth Gate, brought Dave and John some cool gear. There's also Rose's Thorns of Oglogoth.
 * Discount Lesbians: For Trolls, gender is unimportant when it comes to romance. It manages to sidestep most of the unfortunate implications from this trope. Troll romance is much more complicated in so many other ways. This is just one area in which it is simpler.
 * It also means Discount Yaoi Guys, meaning a lot of the unfortunate implications are eliminated in one fell swoop.
 * Discussed Trope: Dave voices his opinion on Arbitrary Skepticism and Not Now, Kiddo:

"This isn't a job for me, and I'll never modify my approach to protect a bottom line. If it was just a job, I guarantee I wouldn't spend every waking hour doing it. It's kind of a strange personal mission I'm on, which I happen to make money from, and that's cool. People are welcome to come along for the ride."
 * Disney Death: Three, Sollux via the Vast Glub, Vriska via Aradia and John via Bec Noir stabbing him while he slept. Their separate dream selves are still alive and able to play the game, while their original selves are dead. Not to mention Jade and all the Trolls who've lost their dream self but still have their original self. And now, Davesprite.
 * If Hussie's tumblr is to be believed, Spades Slick is alive.
 * Somewhat confirmed. However, his fate is ambiguous along with Clover's.
 * Dissonant Serenity: When Jane is seemingly killed by an explosion, the wind chime music continues playing, though the wind itself does go silent. The flash then cuts to an animation of autumn leaves falling.
 * Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: Rose struggling to build an exit before a number of flaming cyclones consume her house.
 * Does This Remind You of Anything?: Equius seems to get a little too worked up over issues of control.
 * Doing in the Wizard: The reason why pumpkins keep disappearing is finally explained by Roxy that they're specifically unhinged from reality, and easy to teleport.
 * Doing It for the Art: Quoth Andrew Hussie:

"TT: That was a really good idea, John. Nice work. color:blue:EB: thanks! EB: i got the idea from harry anderson. TT: Who?"
 * Doomed Protagonist/Foregone Conclusion: In Act 5, Sollux prophesies that all the trolls will die. Complacency of the Learned supports this. Most of them are dead as of yet.
 * Doorstopper: Colonel Sassacre's Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery
 * Dramatic Irony: Kanaya gets a hold of Rose's FAQ. Impressed by the wealth of knowledge, she assumes the person who wrote it succeeded with flying colors.
 * During Act 2, when Rose is in danger and needs Dave to get her into the Medium, the story jumps to his point of view... earlier that day. The player commands Dave to get the damn beta and save his friend's life, but he sees no reason to.
 * Some theorized that Earth's subjugation by Juggalos was an attempt on the part of the Condense to revive her previous model of governance. Even Dirk thinks that's far-fetched ("Who the fuck ever heard of an alien juggalo?")
 * Dreaming of Things to Come: Players whose dream-selves are on Prospit can catch glimpses of the future by looking through the clouds of Skaia.
 * Also, any player whose dream-self is on Derse has The Horrorterrors of the Furthest Ring whisper prophecies of the future to them. A lot of Derse dreamers however (Dave included), find this very creepy, and choose to ignore them.
 * In this panel, it seems that Dave had a particularly harsh example of this, even before his dream self woke up. Specifically, at one point some time before his 13th birthday, he had a dream about himself dying multiple times, often in violent ways, all the while being watched by crows and hearing eerie disembodied singing. It's then implied by Rose that this was a message from the horrorterrors prophesying his important role in a mission that would ultimately result in his death, but would save existence itself.
 * Dropped a Bridge on Him: A lot of the trolls' custodians die this way, probably the worst example being Tavros' lusus, Tinkerbull.
 * Recently, just about all of the trolls. All of them. Their bodies are shoved unceremoniously on panel, sometimes with a little self-parodying Unsound Effect -.
 * Droste Image: Here. If it wasn't official before, it certainly is now; those Junior Compu-Sooth Spectagoggles are awesome.
 * Dwindling Party: The trolls.
 * Dynamic Entry: Boot to the head!
 * Kanaya the rainbow drinker pulls one off fantastically.
 * Dysfunction Junction: The trolls sure are weird, aren't they? Both from their viewpoint and from our culture's viewpoint, they are really screwed up.
 * Easily Forgiven: After a failed attempt at Hello, Insert Name Here with Jane, "she is not the sort to hold a grudge, and she will let it slide this time."
 * Gamzee, due to the the way moirallegiance works. Karkat even admits to John that he'd probably think Karkat was terrible for it and that it's a troll thing.
 * Easter Egg: Trying to visit the url displayed on this page leads you here, which foreshadows the Midnight Crew intermission between Act 3 and 4. You can also enter Problem Sleuth's office through use of Trickster Mode in the Flash segment that opens Act 2, and there's a hidden page accessible from this page, which shows a somewhat... different side to Rose.
 * You can also play as Dave in John: Enter Village in the mushroom farm.
 * The Trickster Room in the Alterniabound flash. In it, you can make Gamzee play the unfinished version of tons of really cool songs, such as MeGaLoVania and Horschestra.
 * The above and many more can be found on the MSPA wiki entry for Trickster Mode.
 * Try right-clicking and selecting play on this branch-point page and the next three after it. (Sadly the first two in the series have nothing.)
 * Also, this more easily missed than Easter Egg, but the banners starting at this page have alt-text.
 * Starting around that time, you can now use Scratch and SBAHJ mode.
 * This page contains a hidden animation, which can be viewed by itself here
 * Going to the URL on the echeladder in this page sends you here. (It's .)
 * Another hidden page is accessible from here. It's the sequel to an earlier hidden page.
 * On the character select screens, right-clicking and selecting play twice without mousing over the character buttons will let you see the "panels aren't done yet!" animations.
 * E=MC Hammer: E=mc2 backgrounds show up when Eridan uses his "science" wand.
 * Eldritch Abomination: Feferi's lusus is definitely one of these, as well as anything in the Furthest Ring.
 * After it's prototyped, some of the enemies in the trolls' session become these. The Black King is especially nasty.
 * As of Jade: Wake Up, the Squiddles, apparently. Word of God is that they're a candy-coated representation of the outer gods, probably created by humans as a subconscious echo of those gods.
 * Lord English.
 * Eldritch Location: The Furthest Ring.
 * Emoticon: Several characters use these in pesterlogs.
 * The Empire: The Condesce's specialty.
 * Enemy Mine: In their last hours, the Prospitian and Dersite armies unite against Jack.
 * Entertainingly Wrong: At one point, Terezi comes across the scene of Eridan's recent killing spree. Having just seen Tavros after he was impaled by Vriska, she concocts a crazy sequence of events positing Vriska as the killer there as well...except she immediately realizes it makes no sense. Especially since some of the evidence she saw was the result of one of the "victims" reviving as the troll equivalent of a vampire.
 * Epic Fail: When John hands Wayward Vagabond his dad's wallet, Jade tries to message him. John, of course, doesn't respond because he left his only computer in the damn thing. And John's just waving as WV, Liv Tyler [Uber Bunny] and the Courtyard Droll head to Derse while having the most derpy face imaginable.
 * Dave, that's not how you do it.
 * Here's a meta example.
 * Epileptic Flashing Lights: All the time. All of it.
 * Escalating War: This happened between the trolls, and resulted in Tavros becoming crippled because of Vriska, so as revenge Aradia tormented Vriska with the ghosts of the people she'd killed. Vriska in response arranged for Aradia to be killed by Sollux, who, just to rub salt in the wound, she had a crush on. Terezi then set up Vriska to lose her arm and eye when her cueball exploded in her face, and in retaliation Vriska had Terezi blinded. Terezi and Vriska finally agreed to a truce to settle this, but then Aradia came back as a robot and kills Vriska, though Death Is Cheap so it doesn't really stick. Whew.
 * Eureka Moment: The old "Hole in the Ace" gag. Also works with punch cards, yielding hybrid items.

"Wherein Numerous Vigilantes Confront Peril; One of Them Betrays the Others; (But it Turns Out to be Part of The Plan All Along); Several Attractive Female Leads Provide Romantic Tension; Four Major Characters Wear Unusual Hats; One Holds Plot-Critical Secret; 47 On-Screen Explosions, One Resulting in Demise of Key Adversary; 6 to 20 Lines that could be Construed as Humorous; etc."
 * Even Evil Has Standards: Pretty much all of the trolls have been seen to have some issues with moral behavior, considering their insane upbringing. That being said, Vriska manages to offend even the other trolls with her behavior, especially with regards to poor Tavros. It turns out their "humanity" comes from being from a peaceful pre-scratch Alternia where they were the ancestors and their Famous Ancestors were the players.
 * Everybody's Dead, Dave: When Jade enters the Medium, the Earth is at least decimated, and possibly sterilized, behind her. Likewise, Trollkind were destroyed by a meteor shower six minutes and twelve seconds after Terezi prototyped her lusus. A Bad Future has most of the main characters dead as well (appropriately, Dave is one of the survivors).
 * Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": All of the Prospitians and Dersites, with the sole exception of Jack Noir, are named a descriptive reference to their job. Exiles maintain the convention, with the exception of the Midnight Crew and Snowman.
 * Everyone Is Bi: Not the kids, but the Trolls. They're technically a One-Gender Race as far as reproduction goes, meaning that sexual orientation is treated as a non-issue in almost all cases.
 * Dirk, Roxy, and Jake all have at least considered romance with both sexes, and Rose is implied to have done so as well.
 * More generally, there are only three characters who are explicitly not bisexual: John, Kanaya, and Doc Scratch
 * Everyone Is Related: Baby Grandpa looks an awful lot like John, baby Nanna looks an awful lot like Jade, and John's Dad and Rose's Mom are HOLDING HANDS. John and Jade were created from a mix of (paradox clone baby) Grandpa and Nana's DNA, and likewise Rose and Dave from Mom and Bro's (paradox clone babies). John's Dad is technically his half-brother...
 * Also, all trolls come from the same "incestuous slurry", although their reproductive cycle is more complicated. Enough for romantic comedies to exist. Except for the main twelve, who were cloned in a way similar to the kids.
 * It's heavily implied Betty Crocker is actually Her Imperious Condescension. If this is true, then John and Jade can technically be considered to be related to Feferi by adoption.
 * In which case, due to the relationship between Rose's Mom and John's Dad, one could also say that, at the very least, a John/Rose ship would be gross. If that is the case, then all 4 main kids are related, due to Dave and Rose being siblings and John and Jade being siblings. Due to the incestuous slurry that is how trolls are created(as well as the fact that ancestors exist), Jane & Jake's relation to Feferi means that all 20 main characters are related. All ships have been sunk.
 * Evil Versus Evil: The Midnight Crew vs The Felt. Apparently subverted during the Intermission, as The Felt (except possibly Snowman) don't seem nearly as bad as the Midnight Crew. Double subverted in act 5, where we learn that Lord English is an indestructible, time-traveling demon destined to eat the corpse of the recently-destroyed universe and trying to ensure his own eventual summoning, and presumably the universe's destruction.
 * Exact Time to Failure: The countdown to John's home being hit by a meteor, the countdown to the underground lab being 'unestablished', and the countdown timer to The Reckoning. Averted with the countdown timer in the Wayward Vagabond's hideout.
 * All of the countdowns revealed by opening a Cruxtruder display the time left before a meteor strikes their location.
 * Justified by the heavy amount of WEIRD TIME SHIT involved in Sburb. After all, if the end of the world didn't happen, there'd be no meteors to deposit the players, their guardians, and the Skaian tech that tracks this stuff in the first place.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Troll cinema has apparently exhausted any more creative titles in its thousands of years of history, leading to such titles as:

"Jake: "There is a good SKULL at the heart of any mystery, haunting its EVERY PAGE. That is what you always say. Or at least, it is what you always HOPE." Roxy: "You are known to nonseldomly employ a ROGUISH DEMEANOR toward the FELLAS" "But you have good friends and many distractions to fill this VOID in your life." Jane: "When it does, you will waste no time in embarking on the game's MAIDEN VOYAGE, and if even a fraction of what you've heard turns out to be true, you are prepared to have the time of your LIFE!!!" Dirk: "Maybe tagged as a RENAISSANCE NINJA, PHILOSOPHER PRINCE, and FLASHSTEP PUPPETEER." "You don't have the HEART to hold it against him, though.""
 * Troll television, on the other hand, is young enough to allow shorter, "normal" titles such as The Thresh Prince of Bel Air.
 * A different example concerns Rose. For a while, Kanaya has been warning Rose that there's a moment where she "goes dark" on the Trollian window, not like a death or anything but the window just literally goes dark. We finally get to the event in question in linear time, and, well... Rose goes dark.
 * The Exile: A whole class of characters.
 * Also, the Expatri8 and Alpha!Jade/Grandma English.
 * Exponential Plot Delay: It's been heavily telegraphed that the comic will have 7 acts. Act 5 ended up being split into 2 very long parts, the first of which quadrupled the player cast, and it looks like Act 6 will take place over 6 parts, albeit much shorter ones if Act 6 Act 1 is any indication.
 * Expospeak Gag: At least when it comes to household fixtures, on Alternia the "normal" names are high-falutin' Blue Blood terminology, whereas the Expospeak ones are low-class slang, e.g. "bath tub" vs. "ablution trap."
 * Expressive Shirt: John's shirt on the second page, and Nepeta's hat.
 * Extra Lives: Dream Selves, although they serve different purposes if your normal self isn't dead.
 * Extra Parent Conception: How trolls reproduce.
 * Eye Beams: Why you don't mess with Nanna.
 * Also, Sollux.
 * Eye Scream: In the Midnight Crew intermission, Snowman stabs her cigarette holder into Spades' eye. And shortly after Rose enters the Medium, she is accosted by a LIME OGRE, who is rapidly blinded. Then she uses the yarn attached to the needles in the LIME OGRE's eye sockets as reins.
 * Besides that, we eventually get to see just how Terezi was blinded.
 * Sollux is eventually blinded, as he predicted; it's possible he lost his eyes entirely.
 * Guy Fieri got an eyeful of sewing needles, courtesy of Roxy's mom.
 * Eyes of Gold: With gray irises. In certain lights, they can almost appear greenish.
 * Technicolor Eyes: When trolls reach adulthood their eyes match their blood.
 * Face Full of Alien Wingwong: A core component to playing Fiduspawn. Fortunately, or unfortunately performed on HOST PLUSHES.
 * Trolls are born through the Mother Grub.
 * Face Heel Turn: Eridan turned traitor on his fellow trolls; he killed two, knocked one unconscious, and left to find and possibly join Jack Noir.
 * Gamzee on the other hand is on a Face Heel Revolving Door.
 * Face Palm: FACEPALM x2 COMBO!
 * Slick attempts to pull off the coveted FACEPALM x2 COMBO again but falls short this time.
 * In [S Flip], Terezi pulls off a FACEPALM x3 COMBO.
 * Doc Scratch takes the gag to an extreme here.
 * Failed Attempt At Drama: YOU SAID... PUT THE BUNNY... BACK IN... THE BOX!!!!!
 * STORY TIME'S OVER WIND BAG WHOOPS OH SHIT GET THIS FUCKIN' CLOCK OUTTA MY WAY.
 * Failed a Spot Check: Dave mistaking the Apocalypse-in-progress for an abnormal heat wave.
 * Fake Band: The Midnight Crew.
 * Fake-Out Fade-Out: After the extremely silly "[S] John: Reunite with your loving wife and daughter." flash, the curtains close with the message 'END OF ACT 4". They promptly reopen on the word "PSYCHE."
 * Fake-Out Opening: The opening flash montage of Act 6 cleverly disguises the fact that some of the scenes aren't in the same time period.
 * False Start: For the comic itself. At the beginning, Hussie planned Homestuck to be done entirely in flash than how it is now. After three days, he rebooted it to be more gifs than flash, and he lampshades the False Start here. Could cross into You Do NOT Want to Know and Long Story, if still a sore subject.
 * Family Relationship Switcheroo: Dave's "Bro" is actually his biological dad. John's Dad is actually his half-brother.
 * Famous Ancestor: Literally in the case of the Trolls, and played with with the Guardians. Dad is a complete nobody, and Nanna Egbert never amounted to much, but the rest are fairly important.
 * Fandom: Its own fandom (of fan artists, and so many fan musicians and fan singers that "Homestuck" is a *genre* on Tindeck and the unofficial fan album limited each artist to two entries and they still had over fifty tracks) aside, some of the trolls are nods and parodies of various fandoms and internet subcultures: Kanaya for Twilight (at least for a short period of time); Gamzee for the Insane Clown Posse; Nepeta and Equius for Furries (Terezi to a lesser extent with dragons, though she is mostly enthralled by courtroom dramas); Sollux for hackers; Vriska for LARPers; and possibly Eridan for hipsters and Harry Potter.
 * Fandom Nod: Kanaya and Tavros's terrible attempts at trolling are inspired by the members of the forum who joined up to roleplay the comic's trolls and ended up becoming regular posters with annoying font colors.
 * (Remotely) possibly unintentional, but this page beings to mind this piece of fanart. Gamzee is even on the page.
 * Look at them go!!.
 * Also possibly unintentional: Some time ago, there was a fan-theory about Lord English being the identity of Jade's penpal. This was Jossed. But when Jade's penpal finally appeared in the story his name was revealed to be Jake English, and he brought with him a number of Shout Outs to the recently revealed Lord English.
 * John poking fun at Dave's God Tier hood and its tightness may be a nod toward the part of the fandom who considers said tightness hoodways to look really strange.
 * The auto-responder's slew of bad-anime references here, as he describes how Dirk isn't going to go about his attempt to woo Jake, may well be one to the Weeabro headcanon popular before Dirk appeared.
 * In Act 6 Intermission 2 Hussie dresses up as the common fanart depiction of uranianUmbra - Calmasis with horns.
 * Fantastic Caste System: The A2 trolls' hemospectrum, which places purple and blue at the top (Terezi barely passes as teal), green in the middle, and yellow to dark rusty-red at the bottom (Karkat's bright red isn't on the spectrum at all). After taking over B2 Earth the Troll Empress tries to recolor human blood, with disastrous results. The A1 trolls also had a hemospectrum, but it was based on helping lower castes rather than oppressing them.
 * Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Trolls have a lot in common with dictatorial regimes, most especially Sparta.
 * Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Time travel, imps, ogres, human cloning, dark magic, aliens, alchemy, parallel universes, astral projection, spaceships, psychic fortune telling, genetic engineering and elder gods from beyond the universe are just some of the things to make an appearance and have a significant effect on the plot.
 * Fauxshadow: Marquise Mindfang's journalog hints at an upcoming fight Subjuggleator/Gamzee defeating Orphaner/Eridan and a later fight between Mindfang/Vriska and Redglare/Terezi where Mindfang kills Redglare. It doesn't happen. Kanaya returns from the dead and thrashes all of them while Terezi and Vriska engage in a battle of wits. Terezi wins but allows Vriska to leave to battle Bec Noir... in an alternate timeline. In the Alpha timeline Terezi kills Vriska to prevent Bec Noir from finding the trolls, at least for a while.
 * Jake English has been given so many ham-fisted references to Lord English that much of the fandom half-expects that this is going to be a Red Herring.
 * Fetish Fuel: In-universe example: When Dave is talking to Terezi, he's contacted by his Exile (which is Aimless Renegade) for the first time. Dave accidentally starts reading what the Exile says to him, which revolves a lot around law-enforcement. Terezi tells Dave that it '1S COM1NG D4NG3ROUSLY CLOS3 TO G1V1NG M3 4 C4S3 OF TH3 V4PORS'.
 * Not soon after Kanaya's introduction it is revealed that she has feelings for Vriska, who doesn't reciprocate. However, after Kanaya awakens as a rainbow-drinker, goes on a violent rampage that involves kicking Gamzee in the groin so hard he flies off the platform, sucker-punching Vriska and sending her flying, and sawing Eridan in half before erotically applying a smeared mix of lipstick and purple blood to her lips... Vriska is suddenly very, very interested.
 * Fight Woosh: here
 * Filk Song: There are parodies and original songs.
 * Film Noir: The Midnight Crew is probably a parody of this.
 * Final Boss: The Black King is this within Sburb, being the final obstacle the players have to overcome before being granted entry into the newly created universe.
 * True Final Boss: Lord English is highly foreshadowed to be this, being an unkillable demon feasting on dead universes who can only be defeated by exploiting glitches in space-time. Most players of Sburb will never get to see him, unless something has broken the natural order of the session, however.
 * First Law of Metafictional Thermodynamics: With the introduction of the trolls, the mass of the cast exploded exponentially while the energy of the story hobbled (which naturally contributed to their Scrappiness.) Conversely, the pace raced ahead when bodies began dropping.
 * Happens again at the beginning of Act 6, though not quite to the same degree.
 * Flash Back: The story often shifts back to show earlier events from different characters' views.
 * Flip-Flop of God: Hussie has presented two contradictory views of Sburb: that A) one session occurs in any given universe (successfully anyways) and B) multiple sessions occur in any given universe and indeed multiple sessions can occur on the same planet at different points in time. There's evidence enough to support both sides, but given certain events like the Great Undoing, it seems the former explanation is more correct.
 * Flying Car: Well, it's really just an ordinary car that John is "flying" with his wind powers.
 * Foil: Vriska/Tavros, almost perfectly. Both of their faults become almost intolerable next to each other. Tavros would be Gamzee or Feferi, but when he reacts to Vriska(or tries to act like her) he's pathetic. Vriska would be Terezi or Eridan, but next to Tavros she's BLUH BLUH HUGE BITCH
 * John and Karkat, in many ways. Even their battle theme songs complement each other.
 * And now Rose and John seem to be turning into this.
 * Forceful Kiss: Featured quite humorously here.
 * Foregone Conclusion: The world will end and Prospit will lose to Derse. A whole bunch of other stuff is also inevitable due to stable time loops.
 * Subverted in some regards where Mr. Expositions have blind spots. For example, the trolls tell the kids from what they see that John is the only one among them that will ascend to God Tiers, and the other three follow in suit soon after the trolls' view of the kids' session cuts off.
 * Foreshadowing: Too many examples to list. "Retroactive Foreshadowing" is a common occurrence in this story as well, where the author re-interprets past events as foreshadowing of present events.
 * Special mention goes to John's amazing skills of observation.
 * Foreshadowing is combined with Blatant Lies to get Blatantly Foreshadowing Lies:
 * If the narration says "You're sure X isn't important", it definitely is important.
 * If it says "You're sure X won't happen again", it will happen again.
 * The author warned the readers about his avatar's entry into the story on this page, specifically to let the readers know that it won't become a Self-Insert Fic. 4 months and roughly 400 pages later, it finally happened.
 * Not to mention the fact that said self-insert was itself a foreshadow. Take a closer look at the hoodie Andrews avatar is wearing.
 * Also, note the apparently meaningless statement regarding Hussie limiting his involvement in the story: "My window of influence, end to end, will be exactly ONE YARD". Much later, we discover this means exactly what it says.
 * In Act 3, the fireplace in Jade's House is shown, above the fireplace, there is a memorial to Dream Jade and four SBURB underling trophies, hinting at the death of Dream Jade and Grandpa Harley's presence in the Medium in act 4.
 * tICK t0ck 8R8K H34DS honk HONK. Turns out, it was an omen of the cirucmstances surrounding Lord English coming into existence.
 * The artwork for the Homestuck Volume 7 album has a red and blue glare behind the Derse moon, which is within the Green Sun...
 * In Act 1, John picks up Colonel Sassacre's Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery, exclaiming that  By Act 6, Scene 2...
 * The Tomato Surprise in [S] Jane: Enter had quite a bit of this.
 * Each of the Alpha Kids' introductions contains a hint as to what their God Tier title will be:

"TG: i just want your professional take on how many things in my dream symbolize dicks TT: We've already established that all of your dreams are packed with enough homoerotic symbolism to lift Freudian theory from the ashes of discreditation."
 * Four Lines, All Waiting: Between the Loads and Loads of Characters and Anachronic Order, cliffhangers tend to accumulate rather quickly.
 * Four-Temperament Ensemble: Though it doesn't appear to be intentional, John is Phlegmatic, Rose is Melancholic, Dave is Choleric, and Jade is Sanguine.
 * Fourth Wall Psych: Jade turns it off. ...oh, wait.
 * The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Lord English somehow gets into Andrew's home in the Hussieverse during the second Act 6 Intermission, even worse being he managed to tear the head off his Robotic Author Avatar.
 * Freud Was Right:

"CCG: LATER, FAG. CCG: TOO BAD THE ACRONYM WASN'T "HAG" INSTEAD, IT WOULD HAVE SUITED YOU MUCH BETTER. CCG: INSTEAD OF THAT NONSENSE WORD CCG: MAYBE ITS ASSOCIATION WITH YOU WILL COLLOQUIALLY CAUSE IT TO TAKE ON A NEGATIVE CONNOTATION, WHAT DO YOU THINK?"
 * Freudian Excuse: Vriska's tendency to solve problems with assault, revenge, and murder appears to stem partly from the fact that she habitually murders trolls on a regular basis to feed her lusus, whether she has a beef with them or not.
 * Freudian Slip: When talking about Jade's problems with her dream self, Karkat manages to type "SHE'S PROBABLY NOWHERE NEAR AS BAD AS SHE'S MAKING OUT WITH HERSELF TO BE" when he means "AS SHE'S MAKING HERSELF OUT TO BE", and then follows that up with "SHE'D BE DOING ME A MAJOR PERSONAL SOLID BY MAKING AT LEAST SOME ATTEMPT TO GET HERSELF OFF" when he means "LET HERSELF OFF. THE HOOK. THE FUCKING HOOK, IT'S A FIGURE OF GODDAMN SPEECH."
 * Fridge Logic/Fridge Brilliance: Discussed in this conversation.
 * Full Set Bonus: Magic items.
 * The Fun in Funeral: Trolls don't have funerals, so when Aradia hears of them, she thinks of them as a "human corpse party" and is eager to try them out.
 * Fun with Acronyms: The Land Of Little Cubes And Tea, Nepeta's planet.
 * When Karkat sets up his bulletin board using Trollian, those communicating from the past have a "P" preceding their abbreviated trolltag, and those communicating from the future have an "F". So when future Vriska (arachnidsGrip) responds to one of Karkat's memos...


 * Year 411 P.C. (Post Condescension)
 * Funetik Aksent: Every troll has a typing quirk, and many of them apparently reflect the way they talk. Eridan's represents his sort of wwavvy accent and droppin' gs although he packs it in if something is distracting him. Sollux had a written lii2p, at least bef0re he g0t blinded with science and began talking m0re like Aradia used t0. Karkat is FUCKING OUTRAGED. tAVROS SPEAKS IN A FALTERING MANNER, rEFLECTING HIS WEAK PERSONALITY, Aradia's w0rds are 0ddly h0ll0w until she ascended to God-Tier. Vriska actually is that emphaaaaaaaatic. Kanaya Enunciates All Her Words Very Distinctly
 * Funny Background Event: More or less the point of the site-layout change during Scratch's narration, but pay particular attention after he pulls the fire alarm: Matchsticks turns up with a fire extinguisher, and way to the right, Spades Slick's hand is reaching back to steal more liquorice terriers. *GRAB*
 * Furry Fandom: Jade, Nepeta, and Equius, With a suprisingly accurate coverage of the Fandom across the three characters. Although Equius might not be a furry, as he claims to collect his posters because they're some sort of weird Troll fine art, which fits with his personality.
 * Fusion Dance: Jane's sprite ends up being one when Gamzee hurls Tavros and Vriska's corpses into her unprototyped kernelsprite, causing them to fuse together into Tavrisprite.
 * Future Imperfect: This is how Kanaya imagines Rose Lalonde. It's obviously a little off, but she certainly doesn't look any more or less badass than she really is.
 * Futureshadowing: Too many times to list. For example, Dave and Jade are introduced at around the same in-universe time as John, so while they're catching up with the "Present" their pesterlogs foreshadow things that they'll eventually get into. A simple example: Dave messaged John about finding some Apple Juice, so we eventually see him find the Apple Juice when he becomes playable and then pesters John about it.

> Go Back

<== ==>