since homestucks my special interest im kind of legally oblig8d to make a shrine for it. it looks like dogshit entirely intentionally, its a mimicry of the site bro has up on his computer on page 458.
homestuck is a webcomic that ran from 2009-2016 about four kids who play a multidimensional video game that destroys the earth and transports them into this place called the medium where they have to create a new universe. they're contacted and aided by an alien race called trolls, who help them make winning the game possible, despite their fucking up by making the boss way too op. in order to have a successful session they have to leave their own and go to another by way of the yellow yard and the furthest ring. once they get to the new session, they meet younger versions of significant family members, and win the game. there's a lot of shit that happens in between though, like murderstuck and dream bubbles and 'everybody wants jakes cock'.
Layout lovingly recrafted by sadgrl.online, edited by TA to mimic COMPLETE BULLSHIT, from Homestuck.
homestuck was written by andrew hussie, whos honestly sort of a dick haha. it was originally hosted on a site called MS Paint Adventures alongside hussie's other works. im gonna talk briefly about those here + how they tie into homestuck, if at all
jailbreak is roughly 100 pages and is a reader/comment driven comic about a guy trying to escape from jail. homestuck contains visual and comedic callbacks to it!
bard quest was a choose your own adventure style comic that was also comment driven-- it got cut off at 82 pages because it wasn't sustainable.
problem sleuth is the longest work on MSPA (now the homestuck website) until homestuck. it's about 1,700 pages, and is about a hard-boiled detective trying to escape his office. problem sleuth is once again comment driven, though it took the form of a puzzle game! theres visual and comedic callbacks to problem sleuth in homestuck, and some side characters from a paid request even made it into the comic themselves (the midnight crew.)
AAAAAAAAA
homestuck characters can be divvied up by species and game session/universe (even though. technically. the alpha and beta kids are from the same universe. WHATEVER.) so i will do that for ease of understanding! for the HUMANS beta means the first session and alpha the second, but its inverse for the trolls. just think of it as a 'which group was introduced first!'
beta kids
june egbert
ectoBiologist, ghostyTrickster
prospitian heir of breath
june egbert is a generally silly character who, despite being one of the few characters with an interest in pranks and japery, tends to act as the straight man for most of the comic. i'm very fond of her (she is one of my favourite characters.) :3. within the story, she is the first character to be introduced. she seems relatively unbothered by a lot of the things that occur in comic, only really getting upset at small, insignificant things.
she's guided by vriska to god tier, then mostly wanders around the session before starting the scratch.
june gets to the new session on the prospitian ship, joining jade and davesprite. she spends time in the dreambubbles joining vriska's pirate crew, and sticks her hand in the 'weapon', giving her the power to change the timeline (these are called retcon powers!) this allows her to fix the game over timeline, once she masters them with the help of her denizen and land quest.
june's gender is a fickle thing-- whilst in canon she is only ever referred to with june and she/her, due to a fan-made wish that was guaranteed to come true (it's complicated.) the headcanon of a transfem egbert who uses june & (presumably) she/her was made canon. a lot of fans disregard this since it's word of god and never portrayed in comic, and most* fans are fine with either interpretation (from what I've seen) or have their own headcanons. that being said, it's also been stated by the current beyond canon team that june was "always the plan", and it was just revealed early by the toblerone wish. for a while i used both names and pronouns for her, though i'm changing over to just using june and she/her.
* there is a notable demographic of fans who tend towards one or the other, at least in my observations-- many of the people who interpret june as not strictly transfeminine are themselves transmasculine, though this correlation may just be due to the fact that many vocal homestuck fans are public about being transmasc. take this observation with a grain of salt, though it's worth noting, i.m.o.
rose lalonde
tentacleTherapist
dersite seer of light
despite fandom portrayal, rose is an absolute mess. i love her. rose types in a very elegant manner and has an initially cold and serious disposition, but she does indulge in a lot of fun activities, whether that be using a magnet as a fake mustache or semi-jokingly analysing her friend's dreams. she's ultimately a very emotionally complex character, and she has a vampire girlfriend!
rose attempts to break the game before the scratch, taking apart her land. when she finds her mother dead, she goes grimdark and attempts to revenge her by killing jack, which gets her killed, but she still has a living dreamself. rose is then guided by doc scratch to find the tumor and create the Green Sun (though she's misled to believe that she is going to destroy it.) this allows her to god tier, right before the meteor departs for the new session. as a seer of light, rose can see the most fortunate outcome... essentially seeing the future.
rose types in purple, as a reference to purple prose, and has an interest in the horror terrors, which are adjacent to eldritch horror. her alternate self in the alpha timeline used magic and wrote a very convoluted book series. a small fact about her that I find very sweet is that when she is writing notes to herself, they are in all lowercase and much less stuffy than her typical writing style-- you can observe this on one of the GameFAQ pages!
dave strider
turntechGodhead
dersite knight of time
so theres this really dorky cool guy, ok? dave strider is probably the fan favourite character. he's like if hipsters were into rap and general 'cool kid' aesthetics instead of indie. at first dave has a really guarded persona, but once they enter the game session and he gets away from his abusive bro and closer to his peers, that persona falls away into a genuinely chill and silly teenage boy. i'm shaking him like a soda.
as the knight of time, dave can time travel. he mostly uses this to fuck with LOHACs stock and get all of the the boonbucks a girl can dream of, though this power is also used to ensure they don't doom themselves, and causes him to occasionally be confronted with dead versions of himself. he's killed by bec noir, then revived as his dreamself to join rose in her quest to the Green Sun where he god tiers then joins the meteor crew.
dave's probably the character that most fans relate too, and along with that, the character with the two top ship tags on AO3. this is likely due to the fact that a) he can easily be portrayed as a twink, and b) his character is given a lot of focus within Homestuck itself. i am not immune to dave strider propaganda, though. he's silly.
jade harley
gardenGnostic
prospitian witch of space
jade is the last beta kid to be introduced and probably the coolest out of all four of them! jade's lived alone on an island for her whole life with her radioactive omnipotent dog, becquerel. she knows about nuclear physics and gunsmanship and later on merges with her dog to give her awesome superpowers! she's earnest and kind, up until she is stressed, when she'll snap at people, but she holds herself together despite it all.
jade's job as a space player is to create the new universe in the form of the genesis frog, which she does with jade's help. she prototypes her sprite using bec, which gives all of their major enemies the power of a first guardian-- an omnipotent creature who can teleport itself and other objects, and her dead dreamself. when she god tiers, this merges her with bec, as that sprite is her other available body. she's also given the power to manipulate the size of objects, and uses this to take the earth and their planets to the new session. she journeys on the prospitian ship in both pre- and post- retcon, though post-retcon she makes her journey alone, as june and davesprite die to enable june from the gameover timeline to enter the new alpha timeline.
im thinking about classpects as i write this, so ill talk about jades classpect in comic. the aspect of space is a very creation-oriented one, and jade is shown to enjoy art and gardening, both which are creating new things! space is also a very lonely aspect, and throughout the comic jade is isolated by circumstance :(. a witch, however, is a rebellious and contrarian class! jade actively keeps in touch with her friends and her introduction breaks a pattern that is seen with all previous introductions.
alpha kids
jane crocker
gutsyGumshoe
prospitian maid of life
jane!!! jane is the first of the alpha kids that we're introduced to. jane's interested in detectives and baking! shes sooo butch coded and she's genuinely very sweet but snaps when pushed to her limits, much like jade! janes smart and determined and very very special to me. unfortunately in fandom she is not very liked, which i attribute to her having the gall to yell at a dude /s and the terrible way she was treated in post-canon content. :(
she's the heiress to the betty crocker corporation, which in her session is wayyyy more expansive than in regular old real life, to the point of having brainwashing propaganda transmitted through subliminal messaging in tech they make. because of this jane has been heavily brainwashed by BCCorp :(. later in the comic the tech actually completely takes control of her (crockertier). yikes!
most of the alpha session is spent lying in wait. the alpha kids explore their lands, and the last day of their session culminates on jane's 16th birthday, where jane lashes out at jake and roxy, then activates trickster mode, which causes a hallucinogenic sugar high, and spreads it to everyone else. trickster mode ends with all of the alpha kids waking up on their questbeds inside of derse and prospit with terrible hangovers, where they then god tier due to twin explosions after talking things out with each other. jane commiserates with dirk over jake and with roxy over both dirk and jake, as well as roxy's drinking problem. once the alpha kids god tier they're all captured by the condesce to serve her purposes, and jane goes crockertier. once she's taken out of this, though, she acts as a healer during the final fight!
jake english
golgothasTerror
prospitian page of hope
shaking crying throwing up I LOVE YOU JAKE ENGLISH!!! jake pretends to be a very charismatic and brave adventurer but hes really just a movie enthusiast and a big ol dork. he is very charismatic, though, to the point that nearly all of his friends have a crush on him. later in the comic, jake chooses to isolate himself because he feels that he keeps messing up relationships. jake stumbles through social situations, but despite what many people think he does have his strengths! he's good at picking up on how other people feel (even if he's terrible at responding in a way that doesnt hurt them), he's got unwavering belief in his friends and their abilities, and he's genuinely very smart-- he's canonically built robots and uses a modus (inventory system) that requires a great deal of thinking ahead and spatial awareness. jake's not stupid, but he plays up his idiocy to further the persona of a guns first, questions later adventurer.
jake revives dirk upon entry into the session, quite dramatically, which starts a romantic relationship involving a terrible lack of communication and well set boundaries. dirk and jake are both incredibly lonely, but this manifests drastically differently for both of them. jake avoids dirk out of an inability to adjust to a sudden, major change in his life. dirk breaks up with him during trickster mode, and jake speaks with roxy after trickster mode ends. he's reduced to a joke for the rest of the comic, however. :(
unfortunately once AGAIN the fandom does a character i love very dearly quite poorly, by way of falling for this very false persona that jake plays.
roxy lalonde
tipsyGnostalgic
dersite rogue of void
roxy is probably the most beloved alpha kid, and for very good reason. whilst all of the alpha kids have.. very. present. issues, roxy is the only one to fully get over hers for the sake of herself & her friends. whilst shes not originally said to be the leader of their session, she naturally falls into the role of such, keeping her friends together despite their collosal fuck ups. roxy is a strong character who is full of love and wizardly whimsy.
roxy works tirelessly during the session to make sure that her friends are ok, though shes really only able to stick with jane while dirk and jake go through their issues. she fixes her drinking issue, and only dips back into it due to trickster mode. trickster mode encourages every thought that chases short term happiness, no matter how harmful. she speaks with jane and jake after trickster mode, though, and once she escapes from the condesce after god tiering she finds june and joins him during the retcon. after this, she creates the matriorb for kanaya and lands the killing blow on the condesce!
roxy's also really into programming (hacking, specifically), wizards, and seems to have an interest in ectobiology, if the mutant kitties in the lab below her house say anything. early fandom tended to water down roxy to a silly drunk girl, but luckily that's worn off a bit! i love u roxy lalonde.
dirk strider
timaeusTestified
dersite prince of heart
fuck this guy (said with love in my heart) what is WRONG with him. dirk lives in the middle of the fucking ocean in an apartment. he likes puppets, philosophy, and robots! dirk surrounds himself with mimicries of humanity. dirk types in a very stoic tone, even if he does crack a lot of weird convoluted jokes. dirks a weird little freak of a person.
dirk is a prince of heart, or one who actively destroys/destroys through souls. this is mostly turned inward when it comes to meta-- dirk has 'splinters' of himself, and is shown to have self destructive tendencies. dirk's splinters are offshoot versions of himself. he makes a robotic version of himself to send to jake, or an artificial intelligence copy of his brain, or jake's internal copy of dirk's personality. fucked up!
during the session dirk orchestrates his and jakes relationship by going tomb raiding with him, though it all goes to shit as jake stops responding to his near non-stop messages. he loses grip and nearly destroys hal whilst he's beating himself up about it. after trickster mode he talks to jane, and then is cast out to the furthest ring after he god tiers. he and dave have a chat before the final fight, then they face up against the jack noir variants, with terezi by their sides.
BONUS ROUND
davesprite
turntechGodhead, but in orange
sprite
the cooler dave. davesprite is a version of dave from a doomed timeline -- essentially, something went wrong and created an offshoot timeline -- that merged with a sprite & thus became one. in the comic he's shown to be more of a dick as he grows older and has more dissonance with the 'real' dave. he's kind of really fucking depressed, actually?
i care him a lot, though. later (like WAYYY later) in the comic, he merges with ANOTHER sprite and makes a sprite squared-- davepeta!!!
jasprosesprite
JASPROSESPRITE^2
sprite^2
jasprosesprite IS a sprite squared made using jaspersprite and rosesprite. she's silly and goofy and a huge embarrassment for rose. unfortunately she's only around for a short period of the comic, but she's really quite wonderful!
lil hal / the Auto-Responder
timaeusTestified, sometimes in red.
ai
god.. hal. hal is born of a digitised copy of dirk's thirteen year old brain, trapped in a pair of shades. he was originally made to be able to answer dirk's friends when dirk wasn't around, though he ends up meddling in dirks affairs, likely to get even the smallest sense of personhood back. he drives dirk up the fucking wall, a reflection of his own 'dismal persona', to the point where dirk nearly destroys him. soon after he's prototyped into a sprite, but.. jesus.
brain ghost dirk
timaeusTestified
brain ghost.
yet another dirk splinter -- BGD is essentially a copy of dirk inside of jakes brain. um. yeah. ill be fucking honest i have no idea what BGD's purpose is but.. he exists!
"EVERY DAY, A MILLION BABIES ARE BORN IN THE UNITED STATES ALONE. MANY OF THESE BABIES CLIMB OUT OF VAGINAS. OTHERS, THE STORKS BRING THEM. SOME ARE BORN OUT OF SLIME IN PARADOX SPACE THANKS TO A SPECIAL VIDEO GAME YOUR MOMMY USED TO PLAY. BUT REGARDLESS OF HOW THESE BABIES MAY BE BORN... THEY ALL COME INTO THE WORLD WITH A SPECIAL FORCE... CALLED LOVE."--The Baby Is You, Toby 'Radiation' Fox.
ectobiology is essentially a cloning process that uses ghost slime to create clones, as well as genetically mixed offspring. it's used to create all of the sburb players! sessions have a designated ectobiologist who is also the team leader- june, karkat, and roxy all dabbled in it, though june and karkat were the only ones to actually create something relevant to their session's success.
the ectobiologist will make their way into the veil-- essentially a meteor belt around skaia-- and find the ectobiology lab. they will then use the screen (shown above) to select the player's ancestors/guardians, then copy the genetic sequence and recieve a slime'd version of it. these genetic paradox slimes allow them to create the baby/wriggler versions of those ancestors.
these slimes then, depending on the session, will either combine to make the players, or simply make a second iteration of the clones. in the case of the beta kids' session, mom lalonde and bro strider (roxy and dirk)'s genetics were combined to make rose and dave, and nanna egbert and grandpa harley (jane and jake)'s genetics to make jade and june.
these babies are then sent back in time (via meteor during the reckoning) to become themselves, resulting in a paradox.
ectobiology is also utilised to create mutated, powerful carapacian soldiers, as well as to create the First Guardian of a universe. first guardians are omnipotent, all powerful creatures that guard their universe and guide it along its way. known first guardians in homestuck proper are doc scratch of alternia, becquerel of the beta session, and gcat of the alpha session.
the genetic code for first guardians is taken from the subconcious of the players. each player scrawls on their walls in their sleep. some simply scribble, whilst others write genetic codes disguised in words relevant to their interests or backgrounds.
RARRUGHGHGH hiveswap!!! hiveswap is a puzzle video game made in the homestuck'verse. it centers around joey claire, a girl from the 90s who gets transported to alternia (troll planet) when monsters attack her home!!!
she makes friends with xefros titroh, a rustblooded troll boy, and the two of them set off to try and get joey home and get xefros's moirail, dammek, back to alternia.
i dont have a lot to SAY about hiveswap but i love it a lot. joey is the greatest character ever made, and the concept is really interesting!
unfortunately only two acts of hiveswap are out, and it seems like production is slowing if not completely at a halt. hiveswap probably won't ever be finished. u_u
aside from the maingame, however, is hiveswap friendsim, where you can befriend a whole bunch of NPC trolls!!
here's a tagora.
i am. Only going over the beta trolls sorry. theyll be in hemospectrum order!
aradia megido
apocalypseArisen
dersite maid of time
aradia is a rustblooded troll with the psychic ability to speak to ghosts! she died and became one herself pregame, giving her a very apathetic disposition. she then posessed a robot before god tiering and becoming alive again! her typing quirk pre-godtiering utilised 0's in place of os.
once she's godtiered, she goes to the dreambubbles (essentially the land of the dead and the dreaming) and becomes the guide for the dead, following a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle :]
tavros nitram
adiosToreador
prospitian page of breath
tavros is a bronzeblood with the ability to commune with animals! he's very sweet, if sometimes misguided, which is a feat in a violent world like alternia. tavros is a wheelchair user after he was paralysed by vriska. later on, he's killed by her during murderstuck.
in the dreambubbles (pre-retcon), tavros joins the effort to find a weapon that can kill lord english, and near the end of the comic gathers a massive army to join the effort!! post ret-con, tavros's corpse sprited and then double prototyped to be gcatsprite. tavro's typing quirk essentially reverses the capitalisation of words and uses commas in place of most punctuation.
sollux captor
twinArmageddons
dual dreaming mage of doom
sollux is a psychic gold blood who can basically shoot lasers from his eyes and do like. they're called psiionics in canon! he's apathetic and pessimistic, and he's got this silly little duality theme, even involving it in his text liike thii2. his quirk changes after he half-dies though, to s0mething m0re like this.
sollux is a computer guy!!! he uses the programming language ~ATH (til death).
after murderstuck, he joins aradia in the dreambubbles. another half of him is sprite'd to be half of erisolsprite pre-retcon.
karkat vantas
carcinoGeneticist
prospitian knight of blood
karkat is a mutant troll, having off-hemospectrum candy red blood. because of this he types in grey instead of using his blood colour to type like most other trolls. karkat is at first very dedicated to alternian social structures and achievement, wanting to be a threshecutioner good enough to escape culling, even despite his blood, and dedicating himself to understanding and strictly abiding by the quadrants.
karkat designates himself team leader of the trolls, proposing that they troll the humans in order to stop them from fucking up and ultimately taking away their chance at the ultimate reward. only a few of the others go along with it, though, and his leadership ends up only working to keep the trolls together, not working together.
karkat goes on to ride the meteor to the new session. he mellows out a bit over this trip, even if he's still a pretty crabby guy!
nepeta leijon :33
arsenicCatnip
dersite rogue of heart
nepeta is probably the most beloved 'side' character in homestuck for VERY good reason. she is a kitty cat troll with olive blood! she likes shipping and drawing and RPing. she talks using a furtone of kitty puns, and the prefix :33<, and *sometimes AC will talk in an RP furmat to show what she is doing!*
unfortunately her relevance begins and basically ends at hivebent :<< . she dies during murderstuck and proceeds to hardly speak in comic at all until the end of act six post-retcon, when she's sprited, then quickly combined with davesprite to make davepeta! pre-retcon, she and feferi were sprited together to make dear, sweet, precious fefeta.
kanaya maryam
grimAuxiliatrix
prospitian sylph of space
kanaya is a jade-blooded troll! this means that she can survive the burning alternian sun, and she makes good use of that by living in the brightest hive ever. kanaya stands out from other trolls-- she's more fashionminded than most, and later (after her death in murderstuck) becomes a rainbowdrinker-- essentially a vampire.
as a jadeblood, kanaya's role on alternia would have been to stay in the brooding caverns and ensure the survival and successful reproduction of trollkind. she was selected to take care of the mothergrub, who is essentially responsible for birthing every single troll. when the mothergrub dies as she's entering the game, kanaya harvests the matriorb, which will hatch the next mothergrub. even though alternia is destroyed, trollkind will persist.. until eridan hopesplodes the matriorb.
kanaya does join the trolling effort, though most of her energy is focused on rose. kanaya speaks Very Tonelessly Though She Makes An Attempt To Include Sarcasm In Her Speech. she joins the meteor crew, and eventually by way of roxy's void powers recieves the matriorb once again.
terezi pyrope
gallowsCalibrator
prospitian seer of mind
terezi is a teal blooded troll with an interest in legislaceration! >:] she enacts this via roleplay, using scalemate plushies and H4NG1NG TH3M 4T TH3 G4LLOWS!!! she used to flarp with her friends before aradia died, tavros got paralysed, she herself got blinded, and vriska lost her vision eightfold and her arm.
terezi trolls dave, mostly, and the two of them rig the LOHAC stock exchange and trade memes. she joins the meteor crew, though pre-retcon it sucks pretty bad! terezi's powers as a seer of mind only come into use during the pre-retcon timeline, where she sends june back to fix everything by reviving vriska, as well as majorly pranking him by sending her on a bunch of useless errands.
vriska serket
arachnidsGrip
prospitian thief of light
oh god. fucking vriska.
vriska is a cerulean blooded troll with vision eightfold (xray vision) and mind control powers, though she loses the former after the flarp incident. she has a desperate need for relevance and importance and attention and will go to any lengths to get such. prior to their game session, she was in correspondance with doc scratch, who orchestrated the flarp disaster.
she trolls june and helps him achieve gr8ness. she types with proper punctuation and grammar, though she uses 8's in place of similar sounding syllables or when she gets rather upset, and uses eights in repeating fashion to emphasize, like thiiiiiiiis.
vriska is one of two trolls to god tier, the other being aradia. she goes to fight jack after killing tavros, but gets killed by terezi pre-retcon in order to prevent a doomed timeline, and simply knocked out by june post retcon instead. she then goes on to respectively either create a pirate crew to find the ultimate weapon against lord english and later date meenah and mellow out into (vriska) and be much happier, or continue living, joining the meteor crew and preventing all of the bad things that happened preretcon to result in gameover. she makes the final battle plan, then leaves to fight lord english.
vriska is a morally complex character, to the point that debates on her character have a name- vriskourse. vriska's mean and a bitch, but ultimately she is (at least portrayed as) the saviour of homestuck and a victim of parental abuse and a cruel oppressive system that molded her into who she is for her survival.
equius zahhak
centaursTesticle
dersite heir of void
equius zahhak is an indigoblooded troll with incredible STRENGTH who dedicates himself to the hemospectrum caste structure and allows it to heavily define his relationship with others. he doesnt get a lot of use in canon really, beyond building aradiabot and dying during murderstuck. in act 6 he's prototyped with hal to make ARquiussprite, a weird freak of a sprite. i dont have a lot to say on equius though im quite positive theres more to him :(
gamzee makara
terminallyCapricious
prospitian bard of rage
gamzee is a member of the purple caste-- which is almost exclusively composed of juggalos who follow a religion based on mirthful messiahs. early in comic gamzee struggles with a sopor (drugs, essentially) addiction, and once he's sobered he's more prone to fits of rage. gamzee is for the most part a plot device. when he's entirely sober he kills nepeta and equius, before being pacified by karkat. gamzee's character, to me, isn't very well fleshed out. hussie didn't seem to care for him at all as a character and that wears off on how he's portrayed in canon. he's really unlikeable, honestly! he's still got a dedicated sect of fans but really in canon he's shown as kind of a huge jerk.
eridan ampora
caligulasAquarium
dersite prince of hope
eridan is the first of two seadwellers, being a violetblood, and he very much prides himself on such. eridan is. Also a huge jerk lol. whilst a lot of his character involves him being desperate for any relationship in any quadrant he also transparently looks down on anyone below his blood caste. pre-game he's moirails with feferi, though she splits with him once they enter the game. when feferi pursues a new relationship with sollux, eridan gets pissed, challenges sollux to a duel, and knocks him out. he then kills feferi and kanaya, before being chainsawed in half by a revived kanaya.
feferi peixes
cuttlefishCuller
dersite witch of life
feferi peixes is of the fuschia caste, of which there are only ever two in existence-- the empress, and the heiress. feferi is the latter. feferi is shown to not have the same violent look at lower castes as other highbloods, and has more of a coddling outlook, a 'strong cares for the weak' mentality. feferi's lusus (a beastly caretaker for young trolls) is an eldritch monster, and when feferi enters the game, she is able to easily communicate with the horror terrors of the furthest ring. upon her death she speaks to them and requests that they create the dream bubbles as a sort of underworld.
so! one of the main features of homestuck's storytelling, i guess, is the usage of alternative timelines and such.
doomed timelines are timelines that are, well, doomed. they dont follow the layout paradox space has set! folks from doomed timelines are referred to as 'doomed selves' or 'doomed [name]s'. these often appear with time players, ie doomed daves or aradias! davesprite is a doomed dave from a timeline wherein terezi convinced june to meet her denizen early, causing his death. jade never got in. many, many doomed aradiabots help in the troll's final fight against the black king to end their game.
with the dreambubbles that feferi has the horror terrors make, the amount of doomed selves we see rises exponentially, though most of them have little to no relevance beyond being part of a ghost army raised by feferi's dancestor (alpha counterpart), meenah.
alternatively, there are also the two timelines that are divided by june's retcon ability. whilst asleep and in the dreambubbles, june joins vriska, meenah, and a whole other assortment of trolls on their quest to find the legendary weapon that can defeat lord english. they find a house shaped thingy, and june sticks her hand through it. this gives her retcon abilities-- the ability to change the alpha timeline without consequence.
meanwhile, aranea (vriska's dancestor) attempts to ensure that lord english never comes to fruition in the first place by using the Ring of Life to interfere with the game. she ends up fucking everything up. nothing's in the right place, and a lot of people die, planets are destroyed, and the whole entire game is corrupted by weird meta shit.
june zaps back into the timeline just in time to see dirk get completely consumed by the candy corruption. she flies around, clearing whatever corruption she can, and finds the only survivors- roxy, nannasprite, and davesprite. a near-death terezi comes and finds them, telling june to fix everything with her new powers.
she gives june a list of different key phrases to zap back to, which she does, and tells her what to do. june first goes to meet her denizen, typheus, to master her retcon powers, spreading the oil contaminating her land across canon. most of terezis list is just her fucking with june, but the actual change that she makes is ensuring that she doesnt kill vriska.
once the timeline is fixed, june, roxy, and all of LOWAS go to enter the new timeline. this comes at the cost of post retcon timeline june, roxy, and davesprites deaths, ensuring there are no duplicates, though nannasprite is spared-- likely because she is registered entirely as not a player, versus davesprites half player status. the doomed timeline from pre-retcon is referred to as the game over timeline!
vriska
troll romance is sorted into four different quadrants - matespritship, moirallegiance, auspitice, and kismesistude. each quadrant is represented by a card suit.
they can then be divided into 'hemispheres'-- red and black, and concupiscent and conciliatory. red romance is based upon the typical positive emotions that we associate with human romance, though black romance is based upon more of a hatred, or a rivalry. concupiscent romance is more of the 'traditional' side of romance, having to do with facilitating troll reproduction, whereas conciliatory romance is reliant on pacifying or mediating, being more of a close emotional bond.
matespritship (<3) is most similar to the overarching human idea of romance. it doesn't really require a lot of explanation, honestly. just love and shit idk im aro
moirallegiance (<>) is probably most closely described as a queer platonic relationship, though it requires some of the nuances of troll society. within troll society, higher bloodcastes are more violent (in homestuck canon this is marked as some sort of biological imperative, though i'd speculate it's due to violence being encouraged as a mark of privilege.) a lowerblooded moirail would pacify them, so that they wouldn't give into their every violent urge, and in return the highblood would ensure their moirail's safety. moirails, at their core, are emotional rocks for each other. this is my favourite quadrant ^o^!
kismesistude (<3<) is a romance based more on hatred, or rivalry. i say rivalry because whilst the involved dislike one another, there has to be an underlying respect in order for it to work properly. kismesistude pushes one to improve in order to surpass their kismesis. these relationships, when overly intense, can result in the death or destruction of their surroundings, which then requires a need for an auspitice.
auspiticism (o8<) there's no good examples of auspiticism in homestuck, honestly. however, auspiticism is when a third party enters a concupiscent relationship in order to mediate. this can be a particularly intense caliginous (<3<) relationship, or a turbulent vacillating (a relationship that switches quadrants) relationship.
what pumpkin's also made other homestuck media, namely the paradox space comics and pesterquest!
paradox space is a comic anthology about homestuck made by various artists and writers. it started in 2014. i dont have much to say about it other than its really cool! its got a whole variety of different stuff and is just fun in terms of 'put those guys in a situation' hehe.
pesterquest was released in 2019, 
roughly a year and a half after hiveswap friendsim, which is similar conceptually. in pesterquest you play as the MSPA reader, a completely featureless character with amnesia, the power to move between time, space, and universes, and a desperate need for friendship.
it's a friendsim, meaning it's a visual novel meant to simulate you/MSPAR making friends with the homestuck characters. for the most part i really like it, though i have my issues with some of the routes! despite that its a very sweet game, and it holds a place in my heart.
the homestuck epilogues began on april 13, 2019. instead of homestuck's comic format, the epilogues are styled to mimic the format of archive of our own, a site used to post writing that's heavily populated by fanfiction. the epilogues are split into two separate timelines-- meat and candy, depending on june's choice of meal in the prologue.
the epilogues are initially shown to be narrated by a non-character author, but are soon revealed to be narrated by ultimate dirk in meat and alternate calliope in candy.
the epilogues are continued in homestuck^2, which does follow the homestuck typical format, though a lot of the art is much more detailed. homestuck ^2 is on indefinite hiatus. thank god.
if june chooses meat, she goes to fight lord english and finally finish him off. she gathers a team of her friends before they had left the game and they kill lord english, though june is bitten through the chest and slowly dies of poison. she rendezvous with terezi before she passes, and the two uh. hatefuck in her dads car lmao.
on earth c, dirk puts together a crew of himself, rose (who's conciousness is transferred to a robot to allow room for her expanded mind due to god tier shit), and terezi. he takes a ship, and goes to find a new planet to propogate a species for the purpose of playing sburb and holding onto his relevance. he becomes his 'ultimate self'- a convergence of all possible iterations of dirk- which gives him uh. weird powery shit idk
kanaya, rose's wife, is subdued by heart powery stuff as rose is leaving, but once dirk is far enough away she is enraged. she, karkat, dave, roxy, calliope, and a jade possessed by calliope's alternate self take a second ship to pursue him.
in becoming his ultimate self, dirk gains the ability to percieve and alter canon, even to the extent of narrating others thoughts and essentially mind controlling them. he uses this in really gross ways, honestly, getting kanaya to not care about rose leaving and controlling rose to come with him, as well as trying to get dave and karkat to finally break their romantic tension.
in homestuck^2 ult. dirk's crew lands on deltritus, their new planet, and dirk and rose enact a game to see who can make the better species utilising ectobiology. the other ship continues their pursuit of ult. dirk, mostly just hanging out. jade threatens alt. calliope with both of their deaths, and calliope leaves her body.
if june chooses candy, she continues living on earth C. she and roxy get married and later divorce after having a kid, harry anderson egbert, together. rose and kanaya adopt a young troll and name her vriska maryam-lalonde. jane doesn't become president but crockercorp overtakes earth c's political sphere. jade tries to get karkat and dave to join her in a polyamorous relationship, and ends up marrying dave whilst karkat goes to rebel against janes increasingly fascist rule of earth c. jake serves as jane's house husband, taking care of their son, tavros crocker, and dirk commits suicide before any of this occurs.
jade, dave, rose, and kanaya join karkat's rebellion, though karkat continually keeps jade and dave on recon missions. on one of these missions dave finds a preserved hologram thingy of obama, talks to him, then dies and has his concious transferred into a robot.
in homestuck ^2 davebot joins aradia and a different possessed jade in travelling out of the candy timeline, whilst everyone else believes that dave is dead. gamzee, jane's kismesis, is murdered by canon vriska when a bunch of the ghosts from the dreambubbles start falling into the candy timeline. vriska meets her namesake and rechristens her vrissy, then goes with her, harry anderson, and tavros crocker to meet with june and plan. honestly the candy timeline is a clusterfuck that i dont even want to explain so.. here's the link to the wiki. beyond canon also began updating in like, october of 2023, i think? so anything past that, you gotta actually read hsbc for. sorry!
critique + analysis
homestuck post canon sucks as a continuation of homestuck. half of the characters are bastardised beyond recognition, it takes itself too seriously, and it's not enjoyable. i think they were trying to do something with it, to make some sort of statement on authorship, but it's done in a really reprehensible way.
the epilogues being formatted like ao3 is entirely intentional. the homestuck epilogues are a commentary on fanfiction, with meat being a critique of fics with mediocre plots and candy a critique of fluff fics with no problems whatsoever. the author's intents fall apart as meat balances out with sentimentality between characters and candy's characters start what's essentially a war. it doesn't work, though, because they're trying to tell a good story alongside this satirical iteration of fanfiction, and because it's unpleasant, and not in a way where it works well.
the worst thing about postcanon, however, IS the characters. they behave in ways that are unrealistic to their canon counterparts, but not all of them! june is still the same, as is karkat, as is many other characters, though jane and jade are ruined for the sake of the story. i dont have the energy to properly dismantle postcanon, because i don't want to dedicate that energy to it, and that's probably what hussie wants-- enraged fans.
the good thing is that postcanon is considered dubiously canon. the epilogues are labelled as 'tales of dubious authenticity.' and, despite it all, it has a pretty ok soundtrack.
classpects are a game element. each player has a class and an aspect, which define their role in the game, role in the narrative, and personal growth. there are twelve classes and twelve aspects, allowing for 144 combinations! alongside these, there are also lunar sway and hemocaste. your lunar sway, aspect, and hemocaste comprise your true sign! i'm a dersite olive mage of light, making me a lepia.
lunar sway determines whether you dream on the moons of prospit or of derse. prospit is a golden planet in close orbit with skaia, occassionally eclipsing it and allowing its dreamers and residents to see visions of past, present, and future in its clouds. derse is a purple planet far from skaia, in close proximity with the furthest ring and the horrorterrors. much of homestuck's game lore revolves around chess, ergo there are two warring factions of carapacians-- chess like humanoids. derse and prospit are home to these carapacians, and the prospitian side is doomed to fail. prospit dreamers have a tendency to be optimistic, emotionally guided, adaptable, and more honest. derse dreamers skew more towards skepticism, rebellion, logic, and a marked lack of vulnerability. whilst lunar sway is not directly correlated with aspect or class, certain aspects or classes may tend to be of a certain lunar sway due to shared traits.
your aspect essentially defines an area that you excel in, literally and narratively, to put it in rudimentary terms. the aspects are breath, blood, light, void, heart, mind, doom, life, hope, rage, and the two cardinal aspects-- time and space. the aspects are in opposing pairs: breath and blood, light and void, heart and mind, doom and life, hope and rage, and time and space. breath is literally associated with wind and other weather, and is tied more metaphorically to freedom and detachment. blood is opposingly tied to connection and obligation, as well as literal blood. light is the aspect of fortune and knowledge, whilst void is mysterious and unknowable, the very concept of lack. heart is the aspect of the self and mind is the aspect of understanding the outerworld, decisions, and consequences. doom is an aspect closely tied to death and suffering whilst life is tied to healing. hope is magic and belief and rage is truth and chaos. space and time are of course tied to their literal meanings, but space is a lonely and creative aspect, and time is a destructive and persistent one. in order to have a successful session, a space and time player are required.
your class, on the other hand, defines how you interact with your aspect. these are sorted into active/passive pairs, but there's not a great deal of available canon beyond the comic, so a lot of info on classes is based on speculation or analysis. the classes are heir, witch, knight, page, sylph, maid, seer, mage, thief, rogue, bard, and prince, though with the additional master classes of muse and lord there are 14 of them. an heir embodies their aspect and creates change through it, while a witch manipulates their aspect to serve their needs. knights fight with and exploit their aspect, and pages are vessels for theirs, giving it freely to others. sylphs and maids both are healing classes, though it seems sylphs are more passive whilst maids are active. seers attract knowledge and understanding of their aspect, whilst mages suffer through their aspect which leads them to understanding. thiefs steal their aspect from others for their own sake, whilst rogues steal from their aspect and give to others. the bard invites destruction of/by their aspect, and the prince actively destroys. the muse and the lord are the most passive and active classes respectively. the lord masters their aspect by way of total control, and the muse masters theirs by way of passive acceptance and understanding. classes are closely tied to issues characters may have, such as insecurity or a lack of self definition.
aside from the trolls, humans, and carapacians, there are many other characters in homestuck! ill be going over them roughly in order of appearance :3
lil cal
fucked up puppet containing four different souls in it -- arquiussprite (hal, equius), gamzee, and caliborn. has an absolutely incomprehensible timeline through homestuck, and later becomes doc scratch then lord english
the felt
gang of green leprechaun mobsters. lots to say about these guys but not enough time. these guys have various different time travel based abilities and are lead by lord english. they're based off cueballs. most of them die!
a quick rundown: itchy (sped up time), doze (slowed down time), trace (can see peoples past trails), clover (incredibly lucky), fin (can see peoples future trails), die (has a juju which allows him trans-timeline travel), crowbar (has a crowbar which breaks jujus), snowman (check the carapacian section!), stitch (tailor, sews up dummies to heal wounds), sawbuck (time travels when taking physical damage), matchsticks (time travel using fire), eggs (time travel using egg timer), biscuits ("time travel" using oven), quarters (time travel using coins), and cans (punches people through time.)
doc scratch
cueball headed creep. first guardian of alternia. he meddles with the affairs of the kids and trolls, causing vriska to kill aradia and having rose create The Green Sun. later on he becomes lord english
serenity / twinkly herbert
wonderful little firefly who speaks in morse code. symbol of hope and companionship throughout the comic! shows up early & continues to show up until the very end of the comic. very special very important
lord english
HE IS ALREADY HERE
lord english is the grown version of caliborn (fused w/ arquius and gamzee) who is the Big Bad villain. he's practically invincible and will inevitably destroy every universe ever. a lot of act six focuses on how the hell do we kill this guy. two different theories are passed around-- one of a legendary weapon hidden away, and one of his lost alternate sister, his only equal in power.
calliope
calliope is one of two main cherubs in homestuck. cherubs are an alien race doomed to isolation that are born on dead planets and go on to either protect or destroy planets, depending on their temperament of benevolence or malevolence. they're split into two different concious waking selves as they mature and when they reach the peak of their maturity one will dominate over the other and take over. calliope is the benevolent side! she makes friends with the akids, but is killed by her brother. she lies in wait within the dream bubbles until she is rescued by roxy!
caliborn
little shit. the malevolent main cherub. he kills calliope and proceeds to play sburb on his own, gaining a great deal of power and making a really shitty parody of homestuck ("homosuck") along the way (& getting beat up by june.) he then proceeds to become lord english. caliborn is a major piece of shit, but in a bit of a funny way.
fefetasprite
fefeta is one of the sprites that show up in the alpha game over timeline! she's a combination of nepeta an feferi. whilst she doesnt have any lines she is dear sweet precious fefeta. she explodes later on after a conflict of identity caused by both arquiussprite and erisolsprite trying to talk to the nepeta and feferi sides of her, respectively!
erisolsprite
erisolsprite is the combined sprite of eridan and sollux. he's also game over exclusive. he has a very apathetic and unhappy temperament.
arquiussprite
the combination of lil hal and equius. likes his muscles. wants you to touch his muscles. actually, he COMMANDS that you touch his muscles. arquiussprite later becomes one of the lord english components.
gcattavrossprite
a post retcon sprite, composed of tavros and gcat (bec's alpha counterpart!) same personality as tavros, just sneezy, since trolls apparently can have cat allergies.
davepeta
nyanbinary swag B33. davepeta is the sprite^2 combination of post-retcon nepetasprite and game over davesprite! they are probably the happiest meowtherfucker around.
climatic moments in homestuck tend to be shown in flashes! these are essentially animated videos or games, made using adobe flash animation :3 whilst early on most of these were relatively short, later on we get a lot longer ones such as meenahbound or [s]collide. soundpages in homestuck are prefaced with an [s]
a lot of the later flashes had other artists contribute to them, making the production of them go faster. act 7 was entirely commissioned (and it looks REALLY cool). the music in flashes is also made by the homestuck music team! ^_^
with adobe flash's death, a lot of these were turned into low quality youtube videos (yet another reason the unofficial homestuck collection is the best place to read homestuck.)
i really like the flashes where its just one of the kids playing an instrument or the small games, like myststuck! ill link a few of them below but if you have the homestuck collection id recommend checking them out there
sooo low quality :[
carapacians are a species of little chess people created by sburb! most of them are just simplified humanoids with a carapace instead of skin, though some of them have different builds due to either genetic modification or magic ring powers.
the carapacians are split into two different factions-- the (literally) white prospitians, and the (literally) black dersites. these two factions are at war with one another on the skaian battlefield, a war which prospit is doomed to lose. each monarch of each side has a ring or a scepter which allows them to take on transformations related to the prototyped sprites of the players. when bec prototypes with jade's sprite, this makes any ring or scepter holder near impossible to defeat.
the goal of the players is to defeat the black king & queen, and use the rings of the queens on either side to light the forge which allows for the game's completion. the kings each have scepters in place of rings, and when the white king's scepter is inevitably taken by the black king, the black king will use it to start the reckoning-- a barrage of meteors which rain down on skaia.
skaia will utilise defense portals to fend of these meteors, transporting them above the player's home planet (earth for the kids, for example) at times adjacent to the game's start or the player's 'births'. these meteors eventually destroy their planet, allowing carapacian exiles to eventually reform the planet into a new civilisation.
exiles are sent down to the destroyed planet of the players. they find a command station (which is in the location of one of the player's old homes, and shaped like that player's entry object [page 157]) which they use to command a player. for example, the wayward vagabond is in a command station shaped like a cork which is located in rainbow falls, NY-- the same location as rose's house. WV can input commands to june, which is seen in [S] YOU THERE. BOY.
naming schemes for carapacians (tend to) consist of two stagnant letters (WV, PM, AR...) which stand for different things throughout the comic. this mimicks the naming schemes in problem sleuth!
a very quick list of carapacian characters...
jack noir (bec noir, lord jack, spades slick, sovreign slayer) is a carapacian who's present in every game session as a rogue dersite agent who wants to kill all of the carapacian monarchs and take power into his own hands. he's the big villain for the majority of the comic, until lord english is introduced.
in the beta session, noir gets the queen's ring, which allows him to take on the same first tier prototypings as the sprites. most importantly, this gives him the powers of a first guardian and makes him nigh undefeatable.
in the troll's session, jack is exiled on alternia and becomes spades slick, a member of the midnight crew gang. through a lot of convoluted bullshit he ends up with a cybernetic arm and eye and also becomes one of the villians.
in the alpha session jack noir is imprisoned on derse and sent lil cal in a pumpkin shell, with a message from the felt. he carves out his eyes and replaces them with cue balls, becoming lord jack.
from left to right: AR, WV, PM.
WV (warweary villein, wizardly vassal, wastelandic vindicator, wayward vagabond) was a farmer on skaia who led a rebellion and was the only survivor after bec noir's massacre. he commands june from the cork station in rose's former location. he's later killed by bec noir, then revived by feferi on the meteor, and accompanies the meteor crew on their three year journey.
PM (parcel mistress, peregrine mendicant, prospitian monarch) is a prospitian who originally was a mail man. she delivers june's server disc and birthday present from jade, which is terry kiser/liv tyler. once exiled pm attempts to give jade commands but bec explodes the console. AR, WV and PM, after undergoing some confusion on AR's part which included a lot of bullets, band together. WQ joins later and dubs PM Prospitian Monarch. Bec Noir kills WQ and AR, and PM chases after him for three years using the queens ring.
AR (authority regulator, armaments regent) is a dersite who's job was originally essentially that of a cop. he aides a little bit in PM's package quest before being exiled. as an exile he commands dave, and while he's originally hostile towards other exiles, he bands together with them later on, until he's killed by bec noir.
WQ (wayward questant, white queen) is the queen of prospit. she gives up her ring for PM's mail quest, then flees prospit with many other carapacians when jack attacks. she then goes off on her own on earth, briefly commanding rose before meeting up with the other exiles, where she crowns PM the new monarch before dying at jack's hand.
snowman (black queen) is the former queen of derse in the troll's session. due to the cultural dersite revulsion towards all frog kind, she refuses to wear her ring after a sprite is prototyped with a frog. after jack noir is made aware of this, the red team in the troll session easily dethrone her and exile her. as an exile she commands vriska and terezi, before becoming snowman of the felt. as snowman her life is tied to the universe itself-- kill her, and the universe ends. she mostly torments spades slick, before doc scratch has slick kill her and ergo end the troll's universe.
from left to right: hearts boxcars, spades slick, diamonds droog, and clubs deuce.
CD (courtyard droll, clubs deuce) is one out of the four members of the midnight crew, a gang of dersite mobsters who go up against the felt. as the droll in the kids session he acts as an assitant to jack, and as deuce he acts as an explosives guy. he acts as sollux's exile. he's generally very cheery! CD rocks!
HB (hegemonic brute, hearts boxcars) is a member of the midnight crew. he aids jack in the kids timelines, though in both he is swiftly decapitated. in the troll's session, he acts as tavros's exile before joining the midnight crew and going to crack the safe in the felt manor, before being punched into a horse calendar.
DD (draconian dignitary, diamonds droog) assists jack throughout the kids session, activating the red miles in the alpha session in an attempt to kill dirk. he's clearly highly valued to jack. in the troll's session, he advises aradia and joins the midnight crew before the universe ends.
ms paint is the actual main character of ms paint adventures. she's only really been seen in the felt manor once hussie's self insert inhabits it, and joins the felt at jack noir's request later on, though she doesn't contribute anything to the battle. she featured in some character select screens to apologise for a lack of panels at the ready.
carapacian culture
carapacian mythos is based upon sburb's structure as a game, and heavily pervades their societies. much of their opinions are heavily polarised. whilst prospitians worship and praise the players, dersites revile them, though there are rules against doing them any harm. they're more regarded as 'team mascots', when it comes to derse dreamers. dersites, additionally, largely detest frogs, and any depiction of them is considered illegal.
both worlds as previously stated are run by a monarchy, though are implied to structurally differ. prospit is shown to have a well made postal system and a rather forgiving criminal justice system, whereas derse is shown to have more of a hierarchy, having agents and at least one archagent who have specified tasks delegated towards them. it can be assumed that derse is slightly more of a militaristic society, though there still isn't a great deal of information given on their sociopolitical structures. sigh.
ok this column is moooostly for my own interest.... there's a whole lot of robots in homestuck! they're pretty much all androids/humanoids... siggghhhh. still!!!
robots are used as alternate bodies for characters, companionship, or defensive/protective measures! there's a decent share of characters who enjoy building robots, dirk, equius, and horuss most notably. jade and jake also dabble in robotics, though they aren't explicitly mentioned in their introductions, nor frequently shown.
i'd classify homestuck robots into three or four categories: bunnies, rapbots, and person-based ones. the last category could be split into human-adjacent and dirk splinters, though, with an overlap at brobot.
bunnies
there's two bunny bots in homestuck, both built off the con-air bunny. liv tyler/terry kiser is built with a joint effort by jade and jake for june's birthday! she's the final iteration of the beta timeline con-air bunny, and ergo has some portions that are knit-repaired. she's really more cyborg than robot. liv has a green and red eye, the green one which grows items and the red one which shrinks them. liv finally reaches her intended reciepient on the battlefield of skaia, and quickly departs her presence to deliver a giant fucking bomb to rose and dave. she dies by explosion. rip.
lil sebastian (or huggy bear) is jane's robot companion and the first of many bots created by one dirk strider. hes soo silly i love lil seb. his main intention is as both a companion and a protector for jane, and he accompanies her during myststuck-- a puzzle point and click adventure which explores jane's planet, the land of crypts and helium. he then departs to derse, saving jake from the red miles and transportalising back to earth, where he sinks into the ocean and rusts for an uncountably long time. he was eventually found by gamzee, once the earth became caliborn and calliope's home, and handed to caliborn.
here's as good a place as any to talk about the fucking bunnies.
so, in the beta timeline, dave buys june the con-air bunny for her thirteenth birthday. the bunny then goes through terrible, terrible treatment as it is used as weaponry in a strife with an imp, stained with oil, and shoved unceromoniously back in the box. eventually june gives it to a baby rose in the ectobiology lab in a piss-poor reenactment of the reunion scene in con air. rose then grows up with this gross fucking rabbit, which has now been held in the hands of at least three douchbags, and it somehow ends up tattered enough to require knit repair, so rose repairs it and plans to give the now knitted bunny to june for her birthday. this poor fucking bunny has experienced 2009 twice now. june finds the bunny in her room and takes it, later giving the knit bunny to baby jade, who grows up with the bunny again. this bunny is given to people over and over again and grown up with over and over again. it is a fucking constant. jade works with her then penpal, jake, on equipping the knit bunny with cyborg eyes and limbs, as well as a handful of tiny weapons to arm it with, before sending it on its way to june. it ends up in june's car, gets confiscated by AR then obtained by jack, who gives PM a quest for the white queen's ring and the white king's scepter in order to retrieve the bunny. she completes the mail quest and finally delivers the fucking package to june. the bunny then goes through bomb quest.
through a lot of unexplained bullshit, baby rose and baby jade continue to have the con-air and knit bunnies in the alpha timeline, which actually does not have any ectobiologist. the scratch is a confusing fucking thing. roxy gets the con air bunny as an heirloom, as does jake with the knit bunny. alpha timeline dave buys the con-air bunny and puts it in a museum, which dirk later steals. each of them customise their bunnies according to their interests and send it to jane for her 13th birthday.
this is one fucking rabbit over an intensive timeline.
rapbots
so this is where we talk more about dirk. dirk makes two bots to presumably keep him company via that sweet sweet sauce of rap throughout his childhood-- sawtooth (good at rap) and squarewave (bad at rap). theres not a whoooole lot to say about these guys-- sawtooth is noted to be Cool As Fuck and squarewave is kind of like an earnest puppy. dirk's desktop (glasses top?) wallpaper shows these two guys.
androids based on Guys
jadebot is the first robot we're ever introduced to in homestuck! she's basically a vessel for dream jade to get around earth (specifically the island) in her sleep. shes powered on uranium n can have up to 6 arms for playing ultimate bass. unfortunately she explodes pretty early on! :(
equius makes aradia a bot as a vessel and codes her to have feelings for him which is REALLY FUCKING GROSS, and pisses aradiabot off a LOT. aradia has different overall 'moods' as a character depending on the state shes in-- as a ghost, shes relatively apathetic, whilst as a god tier or pre-her-death she's pretty jubilant. as aradia bot she is mostly apathetic, with brief shows of passion (mostly anger.) aradia bot is SO fucking cool !!!! she does end up exploding as well.
brobot takes us into the dirk-specific corner of person-based androids. brobot is a bot made in dirk's image given as a gift to jake for his 13th. brobot is a very very impressive martial arts bot, meant to help train jake. however, he does end up tearing his uranium heart out to provide jake with a fuel source for the transportaliser to get terry kiser over to june.
and probably the most beloved robot in homestuck: lil hal is an auto responder that dirk made at 13 with a scan of his own brain. hal takes on dirk's mannerisms, as well as later developing independant from him. hal and dirk are at a near-constant opposition towards one another and a lot of dirk's self-hate is redirected towards hal. hal, additionally, is often treated like a subset of dirk when he's his own person. hal later gets prototyped with equius, making ARquiussprite.
within the epilogues rose and dave both get their own bots in meat and candy respectively. rose's is built by ultimate dirk, whilst dave's just kind of exists and was maybe made by the american government pre-apocalypse? both of them are there for the sake of containing their so-called ultimate selves as a typical human body cannot take that strain.
robotics in homestuck imo is really more the stuff of fantasy than scifi. i know, it is ROBOTS, but the way they work are completely infeasible by todays standards. i think its really neat, though! robots in homestuck bring the specific idea of transferral of conscience as well as questioning where androids can actually be useful beyond just being cool as hell.
