Homestuck

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

> BEGIN READING EXCESSIVELY VERBOSE DOCUMENT

> [S] Ascend.

I don't merely draw Homestuck...
I CONJURE THIS INTREPID FANTASYSCAPE WITH TEARS BLED FROM THE WISDOM-WEARY EYES OF FIFTY THOUSAND IMAGINARY MAGICIANS. I PULL 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 I WEAVE 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.

A peculiar sort of Interactive Comic/Flash game hybrid. Homestuck is the fourth and latest series of MS Paint Adventures, a series of web comics done in the style of an old text-based Adventure Game, written by Andrew Hussie (and the fans). Homestuck started like the others, with every update prompted by a user suggestion, but it soon shed its suggestion box when the plot outgrew it, and has since become a multimedia thing which has grown to be longer than any other web comic on the internet - at a rate which (according to Hussie's calculations) could let him take a break for at least thirteen years and still run the most tightly updated web comic in the world, if he wanted.

A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, is this young man's birthday. Though it was 13 years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!

What will the name of this young man be?

...It will be Zoosmell Pooplord... er, sorry. It will be John Egbert. Our chief protagonist is one of four thirteen-year-old friend s-- the other three being Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, and Jade Harley -- who are fated to play Sburb, a widely-hyped multiplayer video game with real-life effects. Sburb allows players to manipulate and modify each other's environments in real time, in a way reminiscent of The Sims. But as it turns out, the consequences of playing Sburb are significantly further-reaching than they initially appear to be, and what begins as a series of amusing domestic struggles and game-mechanics goofs quickly spirals into a succession of events the likes of which need to be seen to be believed.

Homestuck began on April 13th, 2009, only one month after the end of the highly successful Problem Sleuth. It rapidly rose in popularity for many reasons, but primarily for its intricate multi-timeline apocalypse-centric plot, an insanely fast update schedule[1], a visual upgrade from the style of Problem Sleuth, the Flash animations and games accompanied by a massive soundtrack, and its incredibly high trope density.

The MS Paint Adventures Wiki is maintained by fans, and tends to be an invaluable source of assistance when reading Homestuck for the first time, though the content there should be taken with a grain of salt, as its userbase has a tendency to occasionally post speculation as fact. Hussie used to use Formspring as a means of communicating with readers, but eventually ditched it[2] in favour of his Tumblr account, which occasionally opened for questions before being abandoned as well.

There is also an Spin-Off/Expanded Universe collaborative web comic, Paradox Space, premiered on April 13, 2014, the fifth anniversary of the comic, that is considered finished and was compiled in two books. Hiveswap, a game taking place in the same universe that was financed vía Kickstarter, was released in 2017.

The web comic is currently finished, with its Grand Finale being released on April 13, 2016, the 7th anniversary of its premiere. An epilogue in novelized form followed, beginning publication on April 13, 2019, the tenth anniversary of the comic. A sequel, Homestuck²: Beyond Canon, began publication on October 25, 2019.

Viz Media has been releasing physical versions of the webcomic since 2017; as of 2019 five books have been released, with two more announced for 2020.


WARNING! There are unmarked Spoilers ahead. Beware.

Late Arrival Spoiler Warning: If the fact that this entry was breaking the site didn't clue you in, this entry has reached Troper Critical Mass at least partially because of the aforementioned reasons, ALL spoilers have been left unmarked. The old system of spoiler tagging things as they came was very haphazard and poorly implemented, and in addition Homestuck is freely available and there's no barrier to reading it save for its sheer length, so every single spoiler tag has been removed on every subpage; even visiting the character index contains spoilers, as does the page image! If you want maximum enjoyment when reading this comic, it is highly suggested you read the whole comic before reading any of the following links. You Have Been Warned. Good luck.

> Compile extensive articles of supplemental data related to Homestuck.
Contextualize currently compiled list of common media devices exemplified in Homestuck.

PSYCH! The tropes for this work have been split alphabetically due to their sheer numbers. Looks like you'll have to visit the sub-pages for the trope listing.


4/13/2009 - 4/13/2010
4 kids
365 days (and counting)
1668 pages
2024 images
85,000 words
63 Flash animations
5.5 images per day, every day
1 Flash animation every 6 days
1 hour total of animated footage
3000 imported graphic files
53 songs
4 albums[3]
1 sacred urns toppled
1 mystic ruins desecrated
1 hallowed tombs defiled
15 Sweet Bro and Hella Jeffs
1 sacred urns toppled
1 mystic ruins desecrated

1 hallowed tombs defiled
—Andrew, stats for Homestuck first year

4/13/2009 - 4/16/2011
733 days
3718 pages
300,000 words
As a point of reference, War and Peace only has around 460,000 to 590,000 words, depending on the translated version in question.
5 pages per day
hours and hours of animated footage + gameplay


Acts 1-5
4/13/09 - 10/25/2011
925 Days: 2 Years, 6 Months, 12 Days.
4107 Pages



Start Over | Go Back [4]

  1. it updated with 5.5 pages a day on average; that means a veritable torrent of updates, unless Andrew's making a Flash animation; even when accounting by the megapauses on 2013 and 2015 the content amount was still insane
  2. for those interested, the content has been archived here
  3. Five if you count "Midnight Crew: Drawing Dead".
  4. Save Game (?) | Auto-Save! (?) | Load Game | Delete Game Data