Homestuck/Tropes G-I

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


>LAND OF GHOSTS AND IVORY

You really hope you can distinguish the tropes beginning with G, H, and I from the many spooks and spirits that lurk among the high-class architecture in this land. You always were scared to death of ghosts... why did it have to be ghosts? Just your luck you're the Prince of Spooks.

<== ==>

G

  • Gambit Pileup: One or two small ones in Hivebent, between Vriska, Terezi, Aradia, Equius, and Doc Scratch. The whole comic might be this, it can be hard to tell when gambits range from the fate of the universe to taking control of a meaningless position on a team of six players.
  • Game Breaker: Jade's present for John: A cyborg bunny carrying high-level weapons! Pity that Jack Noir gets his hands on it first.
    • It is a strong plot point that Jack Noir himself becomes a gamebreaker after gaining First Guardian powers, thus making the game unwinnable.
  • Game Breaking Bug: Every time Dave fails to resist the urge to play his Bro's Xbox, he gets caught in a clipping glitOH GOD DAMMIT!
    • There is nothing in Sburb that can be construed as a bug, though several times it has been presented as such. Later explanation shows that Sburb has preplanned procedures for everything. In-universe, things such as Bec Noir or Void Sessions are always referred to as personal mistakes or immutable fate, but never the game procedure itself screwing up.
  • The Game Plays You: A textbook example, in that Immersive Simulation apparently means that machines appear in your house and that you get sent to the Medium.
    • The game's NPC's, Agents and Exiles, take some degrees of control over players. And the extent to which Doc Scratch is manipulating everyone in both sessions has yet to be revealed. Considering he's the reason Alternia was such a horrible place it's probably a very large extent.
  • Gang of Hats: Both The Midnight Crew and The Felt fit this trope with cards and billiards themes respectively. The Felt take it a step further in that they literally have hats displaying their theme. Also they have special powers.
  • Gaslighting: John accuses Rose of this when we discover what his room really looks like... and Bro does this with Lil' Cal to make Dave (and the readers) think he was actually alive. He was.
  • Gender Equal Ensemble: The kids, the trolls, the guardians, the ancestors, and the post-scratch!kids all qualify.
  • Genetic Memory: Through Act 5 Act 2, trolls reveal the influences of ancestors they could never have known, in the form of historical echoes of their current actions.
  • Generation Xerox: Children heavily resemble their ectobiological parents. Taken to an extreme with the Trolls, who's Ancestors were almost carbon copies of them.
  • Genocide Dilemma: Double Subverted with Eridan. His intial "kill all land dwwellers" motivation was a farce to get Feferi (and Vriska) to hang around him, but he legitimately undergoes a Face Heel Turn later and destroys the Matriorb, while planning to kill the rest of the Trolls in a hope to join Jack.
  • Genre Blind / Wrong Genre Savvy: Jake doesn't understand Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act.

JAKE: (Yes i do thats what you do when you go back in time and find hitler.)
JAKE: (Thats like one of the rules of adventure if you have the chance to kill hitler and stop his crimes from happening then you do it!)

  • Genre Busting: Equal parts comic, novel, game, animation, and more.
  • Genre Savvy: "In retrospect, upon mulling cinematic tropes regarding ash-filled urns, this outcome was a virtual certainty."
    • Later:

EB: i'm in my room again, i really think there's someone else in this house.
EB: like monsters or something.
TG: dude monsters arent real
TG: thats stupid kids stuff for stupid babies
EB: maybe. yeah you're right.
TG: what are you an idiot
TG: of course there are monsters in your house
TG: youre in some weird evil monster dimension come on
TG: skepticism is the crutch of cinematic troglodytes
TG: like hey mom dad theres a dinosaur or a ghost or whatever in my room. "yeah right junior go back to bed"
TG: fuck you mom and dad how many times are we going to watch this trope unfold it wasnt goddamn funny the first time i saw it

  • Geodesic Cast: There are four kids, each with a guardian, a kernelsprite, and an exile. And then there's the twelve trolls, who also have corresponding custodians (Lusi), kernelsprites, and exiles, although eleven of their kernelsprites are prototyped with their Lusi and the remaining one is dead. We also only see five of their exiles, but they all have a counterpart in the kids' session. Then there's other characters, such as the Dersites and Prospitians, who are mirrors of each other, and Becquerel and Doc Scratch...
  • Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: Spades Slick to Karkat, after Sollux gets killed.
    • Given a callback later with Jade to Jadesprite.
  • Giant Mook: The Crude Ogres are giant versions of the Shale Imps, and the Copper Giclops is even bigger.
    • Some of the Trolls' enemies dwarf them easily, after Feferi Prototypes with an Eldritch Abomination.
  • Giant Spider: Vriska's lusus is one of these, and she (the lusus) is always hungry. The only food that satisfies her is young trolls, who Vriska gladly manipulates into killing themselves so she can grab their achivements/loot and feed her custodian.
  • Gilligan Cut

TG: i dont cry (Yes you do.)

  • Go-Karting with Bowser: Once Jack merges with the spirit of Jade's faithful dog, he follows her around like a puppy as opposed to trying to kill her like he does with everyone else. Weirdly, Jade doesn't seem to mind since while he's with her he's not killing enyone else. Jack on the other hand really does mind and tries to get Clubs Deuce to kill her; fortunately Clubs is really ditzy...
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: John has a joke one after entering his father's room and realizing the startling truth... He almost had another one after realizing Betty Crocker produces Fruit Gushers, before realizing that THIS IS STUPID.
  • Go Through Me: Tavros pulls this during Robo-Aradia's No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of Vriska. As a result, Aradia merely left Vriska to bleed to death, rather than killing her right then and there.
  • God Never Said That: Begin Intermission 2. Cue hordes of MSPA forumers getting worked up over the fact that Lord English has a pegleg just like Squiddles antagonist Skipper Plumbthroat! There's only one problem: Plumbthroat doesn't have a pegleg. Take another look.
  • God Save Us From the Queen: Her Imperial Condesce will apparently murder the next in line to the throne to cement her own position.
    • Averted by Feferi's lusus alone; a giant cephalopodian terror that would destroy all of trollkind if it was ever angered, which keeps the queen at bay by reason of it being hard to rule when you (or everyone but you) are dead.
  • Goddamned Bats: IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMPS!!!!!
  • Godwin's Law: Apropos the Condense's world takeover and humans being herded into aquatic slums. Jake quips about "Sea Hitler".
  • Good Bad Bugs: Averted (In-Universe) with the Scratch. Which was theorized to be this (along with having several other effects - such as exiling Jack Noir to the SGRUB game, keeping the trolls from claiming their reward, most if not all were debunked by none other than Doc Scratch himself. These exist in plenty in the game itself, however.
    • "Blue Slimer", where GIF compression sometimes turns the Slimer on John's shirt blue. This has become a minor meme among the community, even appearing on Jade's shirt.
  • Gone Horribly Right: The pre-Scratch trolls were too peaceful to play SGRUB and had to reboot their session. Doc Scratch and the Handmaid warped their world into something suitably aggressive, causing "our" trolls to speed through the game and ignore small but important things like listening to the Denizens and catching all the frogs to make the new universe's DNA, causing "our" universe to be so fatally flawed it needs to be scratched too.
  • Gonna Need More Trope: "You're going to need a bigger safe.", and "We're going to need more wands."
  • Gorn: Act 5 brings lots and lots of blood.
  • Got Me Doing It: A Running Gag.
    • Terezi and Soullux have this exchange at the end of a conversation:

TA: we are iin 2meariiou2 2hiit2taiin ciity.
GC: SCR3W YOU 4ND YOUR SH1TST41NS
GC: 1 W1LL H4V3 4 FUCK1NG BL4ST 4ND YOU C4NT STOP M3
GC: BLU3 T34M 2222222CUM >:]
TA: oh 2h11t 11t2 onnnnnn 2uck4.

    • After having a long conversation with Vriska, John starts to repeat some letters eight times like she does. It is also implied that Terezi's method of speech is affecting Dave.
    • Several of the trolls picked up "jegus" and "gog" from Dave via Terezi:

EB: how do you know about jegus? do you even know what that is?
AG: I have no idea! It's something Terezi has 8een saying non stop for some reason.
AG: It is weirdly infectious.

    • Vriska's and other trolls typing quirks can be infectious to the readers as well if one reads a lot of their logs.
    • It's been mentioned that Sollux has picked up Feferi's habit of making fish-related puns.
    • Jade has started swearing and raging a lot due to Karkat.
    • After Sollux gets all his knocked out teeth sloppily stuffed back into his mouth by Karkat, Aradia starts picking up on his lisp:

TA: thith ith ribicul0uth.
AA: thollux is right
AA: i mean sollux

  • The Great Flood: Future Post-Scratch Earth evokes this.
  • Grievous Harm with a Body: Boxcars tries to distract Cans by throwing Eggs' severed torso. It doesn't work.
  • Groin Attack: Invoked by Kanaya to Gamzee
  • Guardian Entity
  • Guide Dang It: All players in a session must prototype their respective Kernelsprites at least once before entering the Medium; failure to do so renders the game Unwinnable. The game comes with no documentation, and there is no guarantee the players will figure out that "prototyping" is even a thing they can do, let alone a thing they must do within a certain timeframe. The Homestuck kids learned about it from a GameFAQs guide, written by a player who wasn't part of their session.
    • It's worse than that. After realizing the sprite will help you on your quest, the logical thing would be to throw the most powerful thing/person you know in there, right? Wrong. All the enemies get stronger with your prototyping and if you used something powerful (like Becquerel or Feferi's lusus), you are screwed.
  • Guilty Pleasures: While John's liking of films including Con Air is simply because of his utter lack of taste, Karkat seems to at least be aware that his movies are terrible but loves them anyway.

You should really be EMBARRASSED for liking this DREADFUL CINEMA, but for some reason you are not.

    • Vriska's infatuation with Nicholas Cage, and her covert enshrinement of him.

H

TG: like mr president theres a meteor coming sir. oh yeah, how big is it? its the size of texas sir
TG: OH SHIT
TG: or, how big is it? its the size of new york city sir
TG: OH SHIT
TG: sir im afraid the comet is the size of your moms dick
TG: OH SNAP
TG: sir are you familiar with jupiter
TG: you mean like the planet?
TG: yeah
TG: well its that big sir
TG: hmm that sounds pretty big
TG: i have a question
TG: is it jupiter?
TG: yes sir, earth is literally under seige by planet fucking jupiter
TG: OH SHIT

  • Historical In-Joke: The 12 trolls become the creators of our universe, and their memory survives in the form of our zodiac signs.
  • Hormone-Addled Teenager: The game seems to draw in kids reaching puberty and works around them maturing. For trolls, puberty equals violence.
  • Horned Humanoid: Each troll has a pair of horns. They're all colored the same, but the exact shape of the horns is different for every troll.
  • Horny Vikings: If you check out Tavros's second trolling attempt, he chooses to invoke vikings, because in this continuity, trolls have horns. This may be the most hidden failure in that whole speech yet.
  • Hostile Show Takeover: Doc Scratch for the Act 5.2 wrap-up. Subverted in that at first it doesn't really seem like it, then double-subverted when you see just what Scratch has in store.
  • A House Divided: The Trolls degenerate into this. By the end of it, only 4 are left alive, and one is actively plotting to murder another.
  • Human Outside, Alien Inside: The Trolls.

"Trolls sure are weird!"

  • Human Shield: AUTO-HARLEY!
  • Humanity Is Infectious: Traits that the Troll culture regards as sickening - and exhibited by the protagonists - start to seep into their behavior the longer they interact with the humans. In Vriska's case, she gets Perverse Sexual Lust for one of the characters in one of John's favorite movies. It turns out their session also had a scratch and the previous version of Alternia was a lot more peaceful.
  • Humanoid Aliens: The exiles and the agents are two-armed, two-legged, and have endoskeletons and exoskeletons. The Trolls look mostly human, save for their grey skin and horns.
  • Humans Are Special: The kids' session is the one that breaks Sburb.
    • Subverted in that the breakage is due to mistakes in the creation of their universe by the Trolls.
  • Hurricane of Puns: Nepeta talking to Equius in [S Equius: Seek the highb100d.] She's making her characteristic cat puns, he's making horse puns.

I

  • I Am A Trollitarian: Gamzee apparently ate part of Tavros's corpse. Additionally, it's ambiguous if Trolls eat their infants, as some evidence suggests they do.
  • If It's You It's Okay: Jake seems to be taking this attitude towards Dirk here and here.
  • I Ate What?: Dave contemplates getting revenge on John for his earlier taunt about urine disguised as Strider apple juice.

"...and it will serve him right for liking all those dumbass movies unironically."

  • I Gave My Word: After he totally wrecks Skaia and Prospit, killing Dream Jade and countless others, Jackspers Noirlecrow is called by the Parcel Mistress, who delivers to him the White Queen and White King's crowns... whereupon he returns the package she attempted to retrieve from his office. Though as Andrew put it, "only he knows" exactly what went through his mind.
    • It has become pretty clear its because he thought she was hot.
  • I Have My Ways:

TT: My perception of the future has been informed by other sources.
EB: like what?
TT: Informants.
EB: durrrrr.

  • I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: "This is exactly why babies should not be allowed to dual-wield flintlock pistols." Poor Colonel Sassacre and Grandpa.
  • I Want My Jetpack: Mentioned here.
  • Idiot Ball: Characters frequently lose their computers and exhibit all kinds of miscellaneous carelessness for plot driven reasons. Especially Terezi, who loses her glasses for no reason save to heighten suspense in the horror arc.
    • This might be why Jade and her relatives always conclude that it's sensible to carry at least five computers on you at all times.
  • Imagine Spot: Happens with Jade a few times, and once with Dave. Kanaya does it once too.
  • Immortality:
    • Characters who have reached the God Tiers enjoy Resurrective Immortality, with extra protection. They live forever, unless killed. Specifically, their death has to be heroic, or just. That is, they have to die performing a Heroic Sacrifice of some sort, or else become corrupted and get killed by a hero.
    • Lord English has Complete Immortality, completely immune to any harm due to guaranteeing his place in the alpha timeline - he must continue to exist because he has always existed. The only way to inconvenience him is to somehow glitch the alpha timeline in a way that hinders his arrival, without turning it into a beta timeline that promptly shuffles everyone involved (except English) off to their deaths.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Jack's preferred method of execution, along with beheading. He kills John, Bro, and WQ this way. Noir himself is constantly impaled by the sword from Dave's prototyping, but it doesn't appear to harm him.
  • Implausible Deniability: Jade comes across the crow Dave accidentally skewered.

GG: but isnt this your sword?
TG: that could be anyones sword
GG: :|

  • Improbable Weapon User:
    • Rose, who specializes in fighting with needles. The kind you knit with. She went with this since using her grimiore as a weapon seemed like a bad idea. If it doesn't sound effective, watch her in action.
      • Becomes slightly less improbable after she alchemizes extremely powerful magic wands out of them.
    • John's dad is a master of using baked goods and shaving cream to great effect.
    • John when he uses the bunny against an imp.
    • After his CHEAP PIECE OF SHIT is broken, Dave fights with broken swords.
    • Equius wishes to be an archer, but due to his freakish strength, he breaks every bow he touches when he tries to fire an arrow. As such, he occasionally uses broken bows as a weapon. They do enormous damage since Equius is strong enough to simply punch any enemy to death.
    • Terezi doesn't need her cane to get around, so she uses it as a weapon instead. Not just by "drubbing" people with it, she uses it as a sword too.
    • Jane uses spoons, and swiftly gains the ability to switch between them and forks.
    • Gamzee, fitting well with his clown getup, fights with juggling clubs.
  • Improvised Weapon: During the first Intermission, Clubs can't find any rope, so he ties his prisoner up with a Stretch Armstrong doll.
    • Snowman giving Spades the business end of a cigarette holder.
  • In Medias Res: Only via flashforwards or cuts to characters in the comparative future.
  • In Which a Trope Is Described: This is the reason for all of the troll's ridiculously long movie titles. The title of the movie is In Which a Trope Is Described applied to the entire movie.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: The SAFE was slain in battle. A great flaming nautical pyre carries it off to VAULTHALLA.
    • Oh, hello there, Ms. Paint.
    • You stand nearby the two remaining cards on the floor. An OFF-SUITED KING AND JACK. You aren't going to stand around jack king off all day long, so you grab the JACK OF DIAMONDS.
    • The captcha code for a rocket pack? pchoooo. Fine, okay. The captcha code for rocket shoes? pshoooes.
  • Inevitable Waterfall: Rose doing a Richard Kimble into the waterfall attached to her house.
  • Infinity Plus One Hammer: Ordinary hammer + Copy of Problem Sleuth game = unbelievably expensive object that would probably elevate John beyond deity status. Its existence has so far proved to be completely without consequence, which, given Andrew Hussie's tendencies, suggests it may end up being the most important item in the game.
    • [S] All: Behold glory of ZILLYHOO!
    • There's also the Quills of Echidna, the Royal Deringer, Ahab's Crosshairs, and probably the Fluorite Octet.
    • And then we get this panel, in which John seems to be wielding a hammer made of the Warhammer of Zillyhoo (said to be the near strongest weapon in the Hammerkind specibus) with Vriska's Flourite Octet (Implied to be the most powerful of the Dicekind specibus). Hussie has identified it as the Pop-o-Matic Vrillyhoo Hammer.
      • This is later confirmed in-universe with Vriska telling John the code. And yes, it's as powerful as you'd expect. Giant monster that takes no damage even from a lava tornado? Bonk it on the head.
  • Info Dump: The recaps ended up confirming and clarifying a lot of info.
  • Ingesting Knowledge: how it's implied the Wayward Vagabond learned human etiquette.
  • Innocent Innuendo: From Doc Scratch of all people.

Doc Scratch: There should be no reason for you to feel uncomfortable with this interaction. Try to think of me as one of your kindly human uncle figures.

TT: Oh my god.
What?
TT: Can we talk about the scratch instead of this?
Yes.

  • Insectoid Aliens: Trolls are born as grubs and under the appropriate circumstances can grow wings.
  • Insistent Terminology: Tavros has decided that he is going to have self-confidence, which he is convinced comes from legs, which he now has, so clearly he's gonna be getting that self-confidence coming along any minute. In a recent conversation with Jade he is careful to remind her of his newfound self-confidence with every sentence, with a couple of asides regarding the fact that it would be healthier for his self-confidence if he were to acknowledge that Rufio is a figment of his imagination and not a real guy at all. And his self-confidence tells him that he shouldn't have imaginary friends anymore. And he's got self confidence now. Self-confidence. Self-confidence.
    • Kanaya does not meddle or mediate. She HELPS, dammit!
    • The Green Sun is always written in green with flickering letters (using an image file).
      • Similarly, The Tumor is always written in black, at least until its appearance is known and then it's The Tumor ("Black-and-whitened for giant yin-yang bomb.")
  • In Spite of a Nail: There's a lot of things that haven't changed in the Post-Scratch Session. Jake and Jane still have anachronistic vocabulary, Roxy is still a boozehound, and the order of their session seemingly follows the order of the Beta Session, with regards to chumhandles at least.
  • Insignificant Little Blue Planet

CG: MORE OF THIS NARCISSISM.
CG: YOU ALWAYS THINK EVERYTHING REVOLVES AROUND YOU.
CG: WE HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR DUMB LITTLE WINDY PLANET OR YOUR PETTY LITTLE QUESTS.

  • Interdimensional Travel Device: Fenestrated walls. Normally they're used to observe faraway places, but smashing through the wall allows one to travel to the location. Andrew Hussie breaks through one of these walls to get from his house in Real Life to Doc Scratch's house in the trolls' universe. Later, Jade and John use another of these walls to escape a universe that's being written out of existence.
  • Interface Spoiler: Sort of. Meenah's name is initially revealed not by anyone saying it but as a property of the "dialoglog", where her spoken lines are displayed after her name. John and Roxy aren't made aware of her name at the time, but the reader is.
  • Internet Ads: Barely SFW ads for definitely NSFW websites. Uses Project Wonderful and the auctions usually range around $40 (for about a million daily displays, with around 300,000 unique visitors), but have gotten as high as $500 on busy days.
  • Interspecies Romance: Karkat is very much against this, and receiving a bucket with a letter bearing the phrase "troll/human sloppy makeouts" from John was enough to give him a (very silly) mental breakdown after Rose and Dave joined the trolls on the meteor.
  • Inventory Management Puzzle: One for each of the four main characters, and then twelve more for the trolls. Subverted with John's Dad's WALLET MODUS, which consists of placing and removing cards from your quite functional wallet.
    • John at one point finds a modus that lets him take any object from any card. He thinks it sounds boring and converts it with his FETCH and STACK MODUS.
  • Ironic Echo: MS Paint Adventures is very fond of continuous self-reference, so there are a few of these as well including:
    • Karkat's mockery of "little human words" is quickly appropriated by John.

CG: WE'RE FRIENDS OK?
EB: hahahahahaha!
EB: oh man, look at this outburst of little human words i'm saying!

  • Isometric Projection: The art style in the comic's early days was like this. It's not so common later on, except when characters are introduced in their room.
  • It Got Worse: "[S] Descend." Oh god. Jack Noir just killed two entire armies. By himself. He proceeds to do various other terrible things to the Medium.
    • "[S] Jade: Enter." The reason Karkat blames John and Co. for ruining their lives? Because it was Jack, prototyped with Becquerel, that stopped them from completing their session, and is also the "demon" responsible for destroying Derse and Prospit.
    • The situation on the Trolls' asteroid has become like Lord of the Flies on fast-forward. One Troll is missing, One seems to have fled/left/been driven away, five are dead, and at least two of them were on killing sprees(One of which is now deceased). One of the murdered trolls "died", proceeded to become an undead "rainbow drinker", partook of various troll's blood, started glowing in the dark, bulgepunted one murdertroll, lovetapped another and hacked another clean in half with the freak lethal girltroll version of a transformer doll.
    • Basically, Act 5 Part 2 has mostly been It Got Worse: The Webcomic.
      • Culminating in [S] Cascade, which includes two universes being destroyed - both by a Jack Noir, the kids' by Jack Noir and the trolls' by Spades Slick - plus yet more characters dying, and the would-be sacrificial heroes being epically trolled by Doc Scratch into creating the Green Sun they were sent to destroy. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's trailed by [S] Begin Intermission 2, where Lord English finally makes his appearance.
      • Somewhat balanced by the fact that all the kids have now ascended to God Tier.
  • It Makes Sense in Context: Roughly 90% of this very page. This image. And a few specific examples:

If you deal in time travel you better have a damn good tailor.
Everybody out of the god damn way. You got a hat full of bomb, a fist full of penis, and a head full of empty.
This is exactly why babies should not be allowed to dual-wield flintlock pistols.

    • This page must be the best example of this trope ever.
    • The very tone of this page practically lampshades it.
  • It May Help You on Your Quest
  • It Was a Gift: the various birthday presents sent and received by John - although, thanks to time travel, he receives the same present (The Bunny) three times.
  • Item Crafting: Just put two punched cards in the TOTEM LATHE at the same time. John's since thought of punching a card twice, each time with a different code. As an amateur programmer, he's become about as aware of the possibilities, quirks and limitations of the system as the readers in the forum. It turns out that if combining items via stacking cards combines a pair of items one way, double-punching their codes will combine them in an opposite way.
  • Item Get: You got the server copy of the SBURB BETA!
    • YEAH!!!!!!!!

> Go Back

<== ==>

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Homestuck/Tropes_G-I?oldid=2049671"