CRAZE: Homestuck (The Web Comic)

Homestuck Cosplay at Aki-con 2011 (Photography by Molly McIsaac)

About a year ago I started noticing something … strange … happening in the land of cosplay. Suddenly everyone was grey, and wearing strange t-shirts, and sporting black emo wigs and odd orange horns that came in all varieties. They were like myspace kids who had died, or hipsters who thought that grey skin was ironic. I wasn’t quite sure what the hell was going on, because since I am pretty abreast of most pop culture, anime, and manga the fact that I didn’t know what these grey skinned teenagers was about was a little disconcerting.

However, my pride got in the way and I didn’t ask anyone for a long time what was going on, until I started to see actual hordes of these cosplayers congregating en masse and acting more annoying than most fandoms I have ever encountered. Seriously – a bunch of grey skinned, screaming teenagers acting like their blood had been replaced with caffeine. It was like they were trying to out annoy and out obnoxious everyone else at the conventions and cosplay gatherings – by screaming weird phrases like “OH MY GOG!!!”, clutching buckets and yelling weird sexual innuendos about them, photo bombing Hetalia (another anime fandom) photoshoots, etc, etc, etc.

Now, I’m used to the more intense fans of anime and manga being a little awkward, to say the least (please reference one of the first articles I ever wrote for ifanboy about how anime conventions just seem to bring out some of the most socially dysfunctional people I have ever met). As such, I have a very high tolerance and even a sort of fondness for the strange antics that people at these gatherings display – the broken Japanese, the cries of “CAN I HUG YOU?!” when they see characters they like, the unrelenting need to be 100% in character when they’re cosplaying. But these grey kids – my god (or should I say my “gog”) – they just brought it to a whole new level. I saw the people who were usually considered the most annoying or awkward even rolling their eyes at them, and this is when I knew I had to figure out what was going on.

Well, I asked some questions, I poked around, and I discovered these grey skinned, Buddy Holly glasses wearing cosplayers were all dressed as “Troll” characters from a web comic called Homestuck. It’s hosted on MS Paint Adventures, arguably one of the most successful web comic websites on the internet (in that its creator, Andrew Hussie, is able to fully support himself on merch sales, and there are over 6,000 pages of content on the actual website). The comics that Hussie creates usually have a video game element to them – pulling inspiration from RPGs and “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. They feature click throughs, sometimes flash animations, occasional chiptune music, etc. The format is very, very unique, and that in itself I think draws people in.

The first panel of HOMESTUCK

But to be honest, I had not read Homestuck until yesterday morning, and as I type this I haven’t even finished Act 1 yet (I believe there’s 6 acts, and it spans something like 3,000 pages. Yikes). Why? Well, despite the fact it started popping up EVERYWHERE – at cons, in my facebook feed, on cosplay websites, on tumblr, on deviantart… the more interactions I had with Homestuck fans the more it left a bad taste in my mouth. I consider myself a tolerant and accepting person, but Homestuck fans truly tested my patience. And I continued to read accounts of other weird things happening with the “Homestuckers” – I read a tumblr entry about a convention in the UK in which Homestuck fans made a Hetalia fan deaf in one ear with a bull horn in a “good natured” rivalry, spray painted Homestuck graffiti around, and stole a wheel chair from a crippled person (all for the lulz).

I couldn’t really understand why a fandom would have so much immaturity and downright obnoxious-ness, so I immediately assumed it was because the web comic endorsed that sort of behavior.

But recently, some of my more respected friends – cosplayers and spearheads in the community – started posting about Homestuck… so I finally decided to give it a try. As I mentioned earlier, I have barely skimmed the surface of it, but it has been… intriguing so far. I am definitely going to read further.

Basically, from what I can surmise, it revolves around the adventures of a 13 year old boy and his two best friends, who learn they have to save the world by playing a video game. The grey skinned characters I mentioned earlier are “trolls”, and there are many in the world of Homestuck.

Aside from reading Homestuck, it was spawned a huge, huge internet community – to the point that it is an actual meme. The community is so obsessed with Homestuck that they have Troll alter egos, “ship” every single character together with multitudes of fanfiction, have vibrant and thriving communities on livejournal and tumblr, huge fan art collectives, etc. In fact, the creator of the web comic himself, Andrew Hussie, is regarded as a meme in his own right as he is very involved in the community and takes suggestions from fans on the forums to help shape the web comic as it goes.

Recently, actor Dante Basco (the guy who played Rufio in Hook) has started reading Homestuck… and he’s even liveblogging about it. The fact that it has reached into the world of celebrity geeks is telling to me – that I need to stop ignoring this fandom and start trying to at least make sense of what draws so many people to it.

As far as the Homestuck and Hetalia rivalry – well – that is something I am going to be addressing in the future in a lengthy article about the strange complexities of wars between fandoms. If anyone has any insight on warring fandoms or first hand experience (good or bad!) with Homestuckers, your view on the web comic, etc: post below in the comments.

In the next few months I am going to be doing a fairly frequent column called CRAZE, where I address the fads that are on the peripherals of manga, anime, and comic book fandoms – things like Vocaloid, Homestuck, Hetalia, etc. Fandoms that seem to saturate everything but if you ignore it enough you just know its name. I know that I am the sort of person who is LESS inclined to like something if it’s popular, so join me on my journey to fandom discovery. If there’s any geeky trends you would like me to address in upcoming editions of CRAZE, please email me at mollymcisaac@gmail.com

Molly McIsaac believes in unicorns and tweets recklessly. Follow her twitter for frequent rants or cute animal pictures.