#homestuck explained

overview

the quadrants are the ways trolls experience romantic attraction to eachother, and what their relationships are based off of. these 4 quadrants are as follows:

matespriteship <3

moirallegiance <>

kismessitude <3<

auspiticism c3<

keep in mind ALL these quadrants are a form of dating, whether feelings are of love, hate, pacifism, etc.

(note: i looove the detail of these quadrants having little text symbols like earth's own romance (<3)!! its clever and makes troll romance seem even more realistic)

in a more literal sense, the quadrants obviously take a liking to the 4 suits in a deck of cards. this plays into the theme of "bar games", with the pool motif of the felt/lord english being another example.

quadrants can be sorted into 4 sections:

red romance: <3 and <>

black romance: <3< and c3<

concupiscent: <3 and <3<

conciliatory: <> and c3<

quadrants

matespriteship <3

this is (probably) the easiest to understand between the 4 - because matespriteship is the same to human romantic attraction. trolls will feel deep respect and adoration stemming from attributes of their matesprite, and this is a positive connection.

moirallegiance <>

moirallegience can be closely described as "platonic soulmates" - but keep in mind this is still regarded as a way of romance and dating!

moirails look out for eachother. they are the first person you confide in, as you are to your moirail. they help eachother in pacifying emotions, and keeping the other calm. theyre mostly necessary because of the violent practices in troll society, and moirails help tone down their partner's violent tendencies and general negative emotions.

an example is karkat & gamzee: at first gamzee carried out the duty of pacifying karkat's loud anger, but later the jobs flipped and karkat had to calm gamzee down from his own murder-spree.

all this pacifying is done through "shoosh-papping" which i feel is just homestuck's funny way of communicating how trolls calm eachother down as moirails: through physical comfort. overall, moirails know how to keep eachother in check aswell as always support and be there for eachother, whether its over their rage, their sadness over a quadrant, or their all-out violent thoughts.

kismessitude <3<

kismessitude is a form of romance that perfectly resembles the violent society trolls are in. it is best described as a rivalry, with a deep hatred for your kismesis. but regardless, this hatred and the quadrant in general is rooted in a deep admiration for the qualities and/or feats of the kismesis, and its just that that makes the quadrant a form of romance and not animalistic violence.

but thats why its normal for a kismessitude to be pretty violent. you hate eachother, after all. and with this deep hatred combined with alternia's normalized violence, something's bound to happen, and fights will break out indefinitely.

although, often kismessitude can be too violent for its own good. an example being when the rivalry and hatred for eachother is too strong and you can end up culling eachother is when a 3rd person (and the 4th quadrant!) must step in.

auspisticism c3<

this quadrant is only present in kismessitudes, but not all kismessitudes have/need an austpistice. the auspistice is the mediator of a kismessitude for when it gets too violent, and someone else needs to step in and calm both/either of the parties down. its to make sure the rivalry remains healthy & balanced, aswell as keeping the pair away from culling eachother, because otherwise then its not dating, and just plain hatred.

of course, auspiticism comes in different forms. the most prominent example is kanaya in a (albeit strange) kismessitude between vriska & tavros. kanaya would mediate and talk to vriska, keeping her away from getting too heated/over the top and straight-up culling tavros. this is an example of when an auspistice is needed for only one overly-violent party member of the kismessitude, but austpisticism can be especially taxing when both parties are overheated in hatred & violence.

categories

now that all quadrants have been established, we can go further in-depth with their categories.

red romance

matespriteship & moirallegiance are in this category! this is because of the non-violent elements in both of these quadrants, as one is positively romantic and the other is used to pacify negative thoughts.

black romance

this category contains kismessitude & auspisticism. this is due to the hateful nature in these romances, whether the parties are mutually hating or it's a 3rd party who must step in on the hate.

concupiscent

matespriteship & kismessitude are in this category. theyre here because they are the only 2 required for troll reproduction.

conciliatory

this category has moirallegiance & auspisticism. theyre here because theyre the other 2 that don't have any reproductive activities and are mostly used for pacifying/mediating. sometimes because of the lack of reproduction people dont view these quadrants as equally romantic as the concupiscent ones, but theyre still a form of dating and romantic bonds!

conclusion

so. homestuck is a web"comic" about 4 kids (also 12 kids. plus 4 other ones. also one really fucked up one.) playing a game. that game is called SBURB. in some instances its actually SGRUB. because yes. that game causes their world to end. but its alright! you can escape into the game world. there you can breed frogs until you have a very special frog thats gonna be a new universe for people to live in. when youve done that, you won the game! this has very little to do with the actual gameplay of that game.

One player can build things at the house of the other. but that player has to kill enemies first so they have enough recourses. you build upwards towards floating gates so you can enter the game world. In the game world, every player gets their own planet! theres a scary boss monter hiding in it. also, somewhere on it is a bed where when you die on it you become a god! What kind of god depends on your personality. Or maybe your personality depends on what kind of god you are? noone knows. also the planets each have sweet little reptiles or amphibians who just live there. theyre cool. later on you can visit the planets of the other players through further gates.

you can make basically everything you want to by combining things with alchemy! actually the alchemy is more like programming. and needlessly complicated. (also people have inventories that function like different types of data storage. but that has nothing to do with SBURB. thats just normal in the world of homestuck)

you also get a little ghostly companion as compensation for the whole rest of your planet dying! A glowing orb absorbs something and it becomes your guide. most of the time, the thing the orb absorbs is someone/something dead, so you get to revive someone basically (neat!). actually two things can be put in the guide. But what you put in there before you go into the game world also affects the enemies youll be facing.

Somewhat related to the game, there are special dream moons. when you go to sleep, theres a dream you there on one of those. One moon is yellow and for :D people and the other one purple and for B) people. Your dream you can die seperately from your awake you, but you need them both you for the magical god-bed to work! Luckily, theres also another place to die on the moons where you just need the dream bodies around. Also, on the moons live chess people. The yellow one has white and the purple has black ones.

The chess people also have a big chessboard battlefield planet in the middle of the game world. They fight a war there. What you put in your guide thingies also affects the board.

Sometimes, the previous players fucked up and made your universe frog have cancer. That makes the game unbeatable for you! Luckily, theres maybe a place on one of your planets where you can basically hard reset your universe. Yay! But that means youd normally die. So if you dont wanna die, you gotta find a way around that to get into that new universe.

Okay, that was the game kinda. Now onto stuff that actually matters!

Those are the four kids it starts with. its the one on the lefts birthday and the sburb beta comes out. so they all play sburb and cause their planet to be destroyed. but uh oh

the trolls who played sburb first fucked up making the human universe so now the previous four gotta reset it! So they do that.

Those are the new four kids that happen there. theyre actually the grandma/grandpa/mother/brother of the original four. actually theyre their mother/father/mother/father. because everyone is either a weird slime clone of themself or a mixture of two clone slimes.

the new four also talk with cherubs

these guys. the red one hires a dream assassin to kill the green one. that one plays sburb alone and thats not allowed so he suffers a totally different session which i will NOT get into but he gets green leprechaun muppet henchmeb because of it and also hes the big bad actually.

Yeah turns out due to time shenanigans he kinda has always been there and *sorta* has been pulling the strings since the beginning?

doesnt matter. they manage to defeat him after they bring a new green cherub from another timeline there.

and uhh thats the end of homestuck then.

🎉...

i left out basically everything that makes homestuck. fun. and enjoyable. But i will NOT get into the characters because everyone interacts with everyone and theyre really complex.

also, fun fact, the birthday "boy" from the beginning is actually a trans girl after someone found one of the authors toblerones. this shows up nowhere in canon material but according to hussie its canon now. its probably fine to picture that fella as whichever gender.

also everyone is hella queer and or neurodivergent. even the homophobic racist characters. especially those actually.

okay ill shut up fr now i might talk about the characters at some point but now definitely not.

FOREWORD

In order to understand Homestuck, it’s important to first note the role and rules of the game, Sburb, which the entirety of the plot is based on. And to understand Sburb, it’s important to understand the parameters of the entire Homestuck universe. So this summary will be working backwards, in a way, but I’m taking everything step by step so we can unravel these layers with full clarity. In full, we will go from the universe, to the game, to the webcomic itself.

THE UNIVERSE

It is safe to assume that a good amount of the media we consume is based on Earth as it is in our real-life, modern day reality… give or take some minor details. In Homestuck, Earth and its surrounding galaxy is all the same too. Except, of course, for the fact that the Homestuck universe (and all of its other universes, which I will explain later in this summary) takes place in a video game session. An Sburb session, to be specific.

Heroes and heroines of all sessions are generally unaware of this detail until they begin playing the game (which looks like any other video game that normal kids on normal Earth play, in their defense). And once they do, it is a race against time. Meteors begin descending on Earth with increasing danger until Earth is finally destroyed. This is something that cannot be avoided; it is simply another step in the game. Sburb, however, offers a sort of portal to another dimension of their universe: The Medium. And this is where our heroes and heroines come to either win the game, or lose the game.

In The Medium is a sort of atmosphere, named Skaia, which houses a planet known as the Battlefield at its center (imperative to Sburb; this will be explained later in the Sburb detailing). Orbiting Skaia are two planets that are consistent through each session (notice how I keep saying each session and mentioned multiple universes earlier? We’ll return to this idea soon): Prospit and Derse.

The players are “assigned” to these planets (known as dream selves, who are typically considered royalty, princes and princesses, that sleep until they are awoken by their wakened selves) according to the game’s judgement, and both planets have specific purposes to Skaia and the Battlefield and the players; this will be explained under the Sburb detailing.

That was a lot of information just there. That’s something you kinda have to get used to in Homestuck. Just keep one key, repeating theme in mind: multiple everything.

So, we’ve established that there is a “wakened” self and a “dream” self. They are separate entities, but still the same person. Typically, only one can be awake at a time, but there are cases where both can be awake at the same time. This is incredibly important to the game, and will be expanded upon under the Sburb detailing.

We’re almost done with the Universe. Hang in there my dude.

Each player that enters The Medium has their own private, assigned planet that also orbits Skaia. (Skaia is the center of the system, if that was unclear.) These are unique to each session and player, and each have what is known as a Denizen (or, heavy duty NPC boss) somewhere in the planet. These planets have their own populations (called consorts) of beings that await the arrival of the players to complete a quest unique to their planet, as they typically prophesize.

I’ll end this portion of the summary by using my good boy John, who is the first player we meet, as an example of these concepts. John enters The Medium just before the final meteor hits Earth. His planet is called the Land of Wind and Shade (the natural cadence for planet names follow a “Land of __ and __” pattern). His consorts are talking salamanders. His Denizen is Typheus. He is a Prospitian (or, he is assigned by the game to be a Prospit dreamer).

THE GAME

Sburb is a computer game reminiscent of the Sims. A server player connects to a client. A client completes missions and a server player manipulates the environment by moving things, crafting things, and placing key machines that enable the client to move onto The Medium before Earth is destroyed. Simple, right?

Nah, now we’re in The Medium. And Sburb is about to fuck up your entire life.

Or, it already has, cause Earth is completely destroyed by this point. But said client player is safely in The Medium, transported along with their home (yes, the players bring a chunk of land along with them) to their given planet. Above them, seven “gates” (that are a bit like portals) are to be passed through so that the player can reach the other players’ planets, Skaia, and by extension, the Battlefield. It is the server player’s duty to build on the piece of land the client takes with them, creating a staircase of sorts up through the portals.

But, you ask, what about the server player? All players in a session will face imminent death, of course, so who is the server player’s server player? How does the server player become the client? I’m talking in circles.

The answer to this question is unique to each session. In the very first session we are exposed to, where our heroes are dubbed as the Beta Kids (since Sburb is considered in Beta** when they play), there is a chain of 4 players that form a simple square of clients and servers.

We later meet a group of aliens called Trolls in their own session (of Sgrub, which is exactly the same game, but for Trolls), who have a grand total of 12 players that connect to each other in a convoluted way that still ends up working, somehow.

The final session covered in Homestuck is another group of 4 kids, known as the Alpha Kids (because… you guessed it, Sburb was in Alpha** in their session). They are all scattered across multiple years of Earth, able to contact each other by utilizing special non-time-sensitive technology. Their session was special for another reason, but those details will be covered in just a few paragraphs.

**To people who don’t understand game development terms, a game in “Alpha” is a game in its first testing stage. Then it moves along to its “Beta” testing. This will also make a lot more sense if you finish Homestuck and are able to see these players’ relationships to each other in full.

So, why is Skaia important? Why are Prospit and Derse important? These questions could have essays of their own, pages and pages of detail. But I’ll attempt to make it as brief as possible. To understand these things, we have to understand exactly what Sburb is. Sure, it’s a video game, but what’s the point? How do you win? How do you lose?

Let’s start at the beginning of the game. We’re about to get abstract. Just go along with it.

Before the players enter The Medium, the Battlefield at the center of Skaia is simple. It is a chess game between black and white, permanently stuck in a stalemate. As players join The Medium and prototype things called sprites (typically done before entering The Medium, these sprites serve a double purpose, so hold onto this thought), the chessboard expands. It becomes more complicated and more pieces are added. By the time all players enter, the chessboard becomes a small planet.

But, this chess game has a set winner before any prototyping is ever done. White will concede to Black. This is another thing in the game that cannot be changed.

It should be mentioned that White pieces are represented by the royalty of Prospit, the White Queen and King. Prospit dreamers can see visions of the future in the clouds of Skaia, thanks to the proximity of the two.

As you can guess, Black pieces are represented by the royalty of Derse, the Black Queen and King. Derse Dreamers are on the very outskirts of the system, and communicate with dark beings in the depths of The Medium, called Horrorterrors. If they remind you of something Lovecraftian, you’re right, cause that’s exactly what they’re based on.

In this way, both types of players have some kind of foresight or divine guidance that will give them an advantage while progressing in the game. Their sprites do this to an extent as well.

Anyway.

Once the Black royalty has won, The Reckoning begins. The Reckoning is a set period of time where the Black King summons meteors from the Veil (an asteroid belt which Derse sits just outside of) to hurl towards Skaia. Now, Skaia has its own defense system. It won’t be destroyed right away. The small meteors come down first and are transported elsewhere in the universe… But we’ll come back to that. Skaia can’t defend itself indefinitely. Eventually, the meteors will become devastating and will obliterate the Battlefield.

Sound familiar? Good, let’s keep going.

In order to stop the Reckoning, the players must defeat the Black King and Queen. But there’s a catch to this confrontation. The Black Royalty holds a special ring in their arsenal, which transforms them in certain ways with each prototyping of a session’s sprites. This is the sprites’ second purpose. Sprites begin plain and are combined with objects (or even other living people) that give the Black Royalty the same attributes.

This is a bit of a difficult thing to explain, so I’ll give a short example.

A Beta Kid, Dave Strider, ends up accidentally prototyping his sprite with a dead crow. Though, that was more the fault of his server player, but that’s not an important detail. His sprite came to life and communicated through various caws. Cause it’s a bird.

As an extended consequence, one of the powers given by the Beta session ring is givings its wearer wings.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the ring is wearable by anybody non-human or non-troll. Non-session player. It is a strictly NPC item. Consorts of Prospit, Derse, or the Battlefield (or even the players’ unique planets) are able to wear the ring and transform.

Anyway. (Again.)

In this way, the Black Queen and King are more difficult to defeat. And as you can guess, the more players that are in a session, the harder the final boss. So what happens if a player dies along the way? Is it immediately game over?

Hell no! Skaia wants you to win. Skaia has a mind of its own. It knows what it’s doing when it puts you in the game.

If the wakened self dies, the dream self takes over for them and their consciousness merges. The dream self is an allotted second life, second chance. This happens across sessions quite often.

If either self dies in a very specific way, however, the player may ascend to something called a God Tier. They are given special power over their abilities, and are only killable by either: an act of heroism (protecting another player from death), or an act of justice (an evil player being slain). Meaning that they have situational immortality.

But let’s backtrack a little. That’s right, I mentioned abilities.

Each player is assigned a role to play. “The __ of __” is the title system. John is the Heir of Breath. Dave is the Knight of Time. It goes on as such. These titles are not endless, and the aspects they have power over are not endless either, but going into detail would be a fat waste of time. All you need to know is that, for a session to succeed, there must be at least two aspects present:

Time and Space.

They work together to complete the last mission Skaia asks of them, which is… breeding frogs. Yes, really. But they are aiming to breed a special frog: the Genesis Frog. In its belly is an entirely new universe. And that is the overarching goal of Sburb. To birth a new universe. The prize for winning? Overseeing the safety of said new universe. “THANK YOU FOR PLAYING!”

There are other roles to play as well. For example, one of the players must create clones of themselves and their fellow players. These clones are put on the meteors of the Veil.

The same ones that hurl towards Skaia? Yes! The same ones that get transported elsewhere in the universe? Yep! Are you following me?

— The portals that protect Skaia don’t only send the meteors elsewhere, but also elsewhen. And if you get what I’m saying, then you’ll understand that some of these meteors are the very ones that bring about the destruction of Earth in the beginning of the players’ journey. More specifically, the clones sent back are known as paradox clones, and they are sent far back in time to ensure that the players actually play the game. It’s a very long-winded, fiery, death-laden version of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

...Jesus, I have to take a break after that one.

I’m almost done describing the parameters of the game. There’s just one final detail that I have to cover. Bless you for reading this far.

Earlier, I mentioned that the Alpha Kids’ session was special, and it’s not only because each player is in a different year on Earth. You see, not all sessions function the same or have the same final bosses. There are four kinds of sessions that can happen, each with their own possibilities and difficulties.

The standard session has all of the amenities detailed above. The final boss may vary, but it is still possible to win. None of the Homestuck sessions are standard sessions.

A null session is different. No matter what you do, you will fail. If a player fails somewhere along the line in The Medium, they can initiate The Scratch, which acts as a hard reset (at the cost of the players’ memories and progress). “BETTER LUCK NEXT TIME!” If they failed before they ever enter the medium, there is almost nothing they can do to win. This was the case with the Beta kids.

In a void session, as with the Alpha Kids, no sprites are prototyped before entering the Medium. This means that the Battlefield never changes form, and the stalemate of the chess game continues. This session can only be won if players from another session intervene, which is incredibly difficult to do. Like, Deus Ex Machina status. If no one intervenes, the players will simply have to live out the rest of their lives in this session of inactivity and hopelessness.

The final type of session is called a dead session. A player enters, alone. The parameters of the game are changed completely. It is described as “almost punishing the player for trying to play alone” and nearly impossible to win. One of the main villains is a winner of this type of session.

Homestuck is packed with information, some of it so hard to explain that the reader only understands it after reading everything. The worldbuilding is considerably well done, knowing just how much of it there is. Some aspects of Sburb are too small of details to rightfully put in this summary. I really have covered the bare bones of it.

To summarize this part of the summary:

Players enter a session. Skaia redirects meteors until the players confront the final boss. A frog is then bred and journeys itself to the center of the Battlefield, where it becomes a new universe for the winners to protect. At the cost of their Earth, they are able to give life to another dimension of endless possibilities. Easy!

Well, it should have been that easy. But before the Beta kids ever entered their session, one of our main heroines fucked absolutely everything up. And that, my friends, is my glorious transition into our Homestuck portion.

THE WEBCOMIC

A young man plays a game with his friends.

…

...

...  

Yes, really.

Homestuck is the combination of several sessions that all work together towards a common goal: defeat the undefeatable boss. Remember my little quip about the heroine that fucks everything up? Well, our little Beta heroine prototypes her sprite with a being she should have never ever prototyped with: an all-powerful, mysterious Dog with power over spatial abilities. Meaning… giving the Beta ring-wearer so much power in addition to everything else the kids give them, that the wearer is nearly invincible.

Other small details lead to a Dersite (consort of Derse), named Jack Noir, taking the ring and slaying both Queens and Kings himself. This leads to him becoming the final boss, who only has a taste for destruction.

...And that leads him to targeting another session, which was nearly won. A Troll session. Because of this, the Trolls can no longer win either.

Timey-wimey bullshit (believe me, trying to explain it now is just gonna give you a headache because it’s the buildup of like 5,000 pages of exposition) later leads these two joined sessions to take it on over to a void session: the Alpha Kids’ session. The only session that could possibly lead to a victory. Remember, a void session is winnable, but only by the intervention of extremely powerful players (see: God Tier).

But in their journey, the final bosses of the sessions chase after them, leading to the ultimate final showdown.

And that’s as simple as it goes. The comic is divided into different acts, and is 7 acts long. There are a lot of intermissions between acts, and convoluted titles like “Act 6 Act 6 Act 6” among them. There’s a portion where the villain takes over the narrative and changes the title to “HOMOSUCK.” Numerous flash games and flash animations are scattered throughout. The narrative can be a little hard to follow at times.

It starts off slow, which is why it can be hard to get into at first. Some things still confuse me, and I’ve read it in its entirety multiple times. Some of the logs (chats between multiple players) are really long. But with these details, even a beginner like you could follow Homestuck with general ease!

Or… that’s the idea, anyway. Questions are welcomed.