Homestuck is a webcomic written, illustrated, and animated by Andrew Hussie as part of MS Paint Adventures (MSPA). The webcomic centers on a group of teenagers who unwittingly bring about the end of the world through the installation of a beta copy of an upcoming computer game. Homestuck features a complex story and a large cast of characters, starring the four children John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider and Jade Harley. Andrew Hussie created an alien species, called trolls, that have a unique culture. Homestuck characters were particularly popular to cosplay at anime conventions during the early 2010s. The first few acts of Homestuck center around four 13-year-old children. Early pages of Homestuck were experiments in "fan-sourced storytelling", where Hussie allowed readers of Homestuck to name its characters and make story suggestions. The main characters of Homestuck were all named by fans. The four main characters are presented as Internet friends who have technically never met one another but interact through an online chat application named PesterChum. In the fifth "act" of Homestuck, Hussie introduced an alien species called "trolls", based on Internet trolls, who live on the planet of Alternia in another universe. While the first few acts of Homestuck focused on a more realistic theme of what it is like for a group of kids to be friends on the Internet, the trolls took on more explicit representations of facets of Internet culture. Homestuck aims to normalize and humanize internet cultures that are usually disfavored and rejected. Trolls chat with unique typing quirks, inserting clues concerning the speaker's identity in their chat patterns. Troll culture features a complex system of romance, featuring four "quadrants", that was specifically designed to encourage shipping among Homestuck fans. With few exceptions, all trolls fall on the hemospectrum, a caste system dictated by blood color and its corresponding attributes, including lifespan, powers, personality, and rarity. Each troll also has an astrological sign that carries their blood color and reflects their personality.
Kids
John Egbert John Egbert is the main protagonist of Homestuck and the first character that is introduced. He is portrayed as a loyal "leader" of the group of kids, despite also being described as a "stereotypical mischief-making teen." Jokingly described by blogger Subdee as a "shoujo heroine", John's character is notably fond of bad films and has a seemingly irrational revulsion to the Betty Crocker brand. His weapon of choice is a hammer. The first to enter the session, John spends much time communicating with the trolls, particularly Karkat, Terezi, and Vriska, who becomes his "patron troll." Under their guidance, he participates in the self-sustaining time loop that triggers his and his friend's births (through time travel and an in-universe science known as ecto-biology), achieves the god tier, and helps trigger the end game of his initial session by facilitating the delivery of "The Tumor". After he and Jade escape their initial session on a Prospitian Battleship, they travel for three years before arriving in the Alpha Kids' session. Once there, John mitigates the session's failure after he develops retcon powers, allowing him to literally retcon previous elements of the story, making key changes (most notably, preventing Vriska's death), eventually leading to the overall victory of the session, fighting and defeating Her Imperious Condescension in the final battle. After achieving this victory, the credits depict John slowly isolating himself from his friends as he gets older. After the end of the original comic, a popular headcanon/fan theory arose that John would become a transgender woman under the name June. Hussie made the headcanon "real" when a fan of Homestuck was granted "a single wish" by finding a Toblerone hidden by Hussie. The silhouette of June has since appeared in Homestuck: Beyond Canon.
Rose Lalonde Rose Lalonde is portrayed as an "intellectual", both through her obsession with Lovecraftian literature and through her organizing and planning the group's movement during the story. She tends to speak and write in a formal, overwrought manner which contrasts to her messy room. Aside from her interest in the occult, the character also enjoys knitting and uses her knitting needles as her go-to weapons. In the first acts of Homestuck's story, Rose also updates a GameFAQs walkthrough of Sburb. After some difficulties in entering the medium due to a local storm and poor internet collection, Rose begins to play the game and interact with trolls, much like her fellow players, developing a particularly close relationship with Kanaya Maryam. However, she quickly grows disillusioned with the game and ignores her questline in favor of causing destruction. This eventually causes her to enter a "Grimdark" mode, in which she fights and is killed by Bec Noir. After John revives her as her dream self, she joins Dave on his suicide mission to destroy the green sun (inadvertently creating it instead) and ascends to the god tier. Rose, Dave, and the surviving trolls spend three years travelling to the Alpha kid's session, in which Rose begins a relationship with Kanaya and succumbs to alcoholism, rendering her largely useless when the kids arrive and contributing to the game's fail state. After John retcons the timeline, the new incarnation of Rose is no longer an alcoholic, having been deterred by Vriska, and is in a much better position to help her team, fighting and defeating Her Imperious Condescension in the final battle. The previous, pre-retcon version of Rose also gets proptotyped into Roxy's kernelsprite and survives as Jasprosesprite^2. In the credits, Rose and Kanaya are shown getting married and managing the brooding caverns.
Dave Strider
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