Vriska Serket Has All of the Irons in the Fire (A Homestuck Persuasion Post)
Okay, so, firstly I'm going to say that I got home from holidays and instantly got knocked over by deathflu, and most of this was written while under the influence of that. That may turn out to be relevant to matters of ... coherence. And such.
But oh my god, you guys, there needs to be a Homestuck post in this journal. My heart can't even hold this much love. So on mature reflection (remember: sick! lightheaded!) I've decided that the best approach is to attempt some kind of fandom persuasion post.
Because, here is the thing, Homestuck fandom is pretty big, and active and enthusiastic and hella productive, but everyone there has apparently come from completely different parts of fandom to the corners I've moved in. I have found almost no one whose name I even recognise, let alone know. Which makes me think MAYBE PEOPLE OVER HERE DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT. MAYBE THEY NEED TO BE TOLD. You know?
NOTES: This is going to inevitably contain some spoilers. In Homestuck canon basically everything is a spoiler, every single fact functions as a reveal, including characters' names and appearances. Seriously, for the first 200 pages/panels we only know one character's name, and everybody else is only a chat handle on his screen.
THE PREMISE: Homestuck is an epic multimedia webcomic.
Most of the art, including the animated flash files, is very simple
with occasional more complex and beautiful artwork.
I'm not going to put much art in this post, because finding out what the characters look like really is this effectively suspenseful thing, I wouldn't want to take it away. (And this is a persuasion post, not a primer.)
It's currently in its sixth Act, and may be only halfway through. It's set up like a narrative-based interactive game, with a player typing in commands. (It's not a game, you don't actually get to choose the commands and there's only one narrative path, although there are occasional true interactive elements, most of which make me trip over and flail about like a beached starfish, because I'm not a gamer and gaming things utterly fail to be intuitive to me.) This means that nearly all of the narrative is second person addressing you as the character(s), or you as the player, or you as the reader, or are positioned as FROM you as the reader TO the characters, as commands that they are unaware of but do respond to, but don't always obey. (SO INTERESTING TO ME. BRING ON THE POV META, GUYS.) The direct dialogue between the characters mostly takes place in chatlogs.
TT: How did you know I wrote a story about wizards, anyway?
TG: john told me
TG: he was all snoopin around your room while you were asleep and i was like no man dont
TG: so not cool
TG: then he was like haha dude check it out this book is full of wizard slash
TG: and i was like i dont even want to know this is such a crazy violation of privacy
TT: This story sounds suspicious.
TG: do you want me to chew him out about it i will because that was so outrageous i dont know where he got off being like that
- Rose & Dave
Basically, the characters (who are all thirteen) are playing a computer game called SBURB that has the capacity to alter reality. (Their reality already runs on somewhat different rules to ours, in a geeky coding meta way.) As they keep playing, it turns out that the game is tied to the end of the world, which they may be destined to prevent, or maybe not.
It is the geekiest, most meta-tastic thing ever, utterly ridiculous and hilarious and self-conscious, EXCEPT ALSO it will break your heart and make you keysmash in overwhelmed emotion and pain and the kind of delight that fuels solar systems. It is also utterly, utterly epic, like, apocalyptic and life-and-death stakes and alien First Contact and betrayal and love and hate and adolescent crushes and time loops and alternate universes and characters with the kinds of issues that should BREAK THEM IN HALF and also amazing, brilliant shifting relationships with each other.
It has the hugest cast of fully-realised fucked-up appealing vulnerable knife-sharp adorable hilarious characters. There are currently nearly thirty characters who could be reasonably called main characters, every one of whom I fucking adore. Even the ones I don't rationally like very much regularly make my heart stop with love (Eridan and the angel slaying, what the actual fuck, why does that make me love you so much?)
For the first couple of acts (I'm not totally positive how many, I can't remember), the only major characters are four kids: John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider and Jade Harley. For reasons unknown they are being trolled by 12 kids who turn out to actually be alien troll kids (also thirteen years old). They gradually become more important characters as the story goes on, although you don't learn their names or what most of them look like until Act 5. (Also there are the Exiles, who are the most amazing, but it's complicated and I'm not going to go into them here.)
This makes getting into the fic side of the fandom slightly challenging, because (presumably due to the date the fandom really kicked off; seriously, a year ago it was a Yuletide fandom, now it has 3733 stories on AO3 and a kink meme on its 13th iteration, plus a whole world of Tumblr-based fannish space, I am still so bad at using Tumblr fannishly that I have no real idea of the extent there) did I lose that sentence, right, challenging because nearly all the fic features the troll kids. Also, the first Act, even though it's absolutely charming and it delighted me lots, doesn't give you much sense at all of the heartclenching amazingness and wholesale character adoration of later Acts.
HERE IS A PATHETICALLY INCOMPLETE LIST OF SOME OF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS:
JOHN EGBERT who is the world's biggest sweetheart and loves so easily and has an absolutely terrible prankster sense of humour. He would do anything for his friends, as long as they were ... right in front of him, or in a chat window on his screen. Because when people are off his radar he is kind of an enormous jerk about forgetting that they exist, even if the last he heard they were in terrifying peril.
TT: John.
EB: what?
TT: You're wearing one of your disguises now, aren't you?
TT: You are typing to me right now while wearing something ridiculous.
EB: no, why would you even think that??
EB: that's so stupid.
TT: Ok.
TT: Why don't you go get the game from your father?
EB: alright, wish me luck.
EB: oh, btw...
EB: jk I was wearing a funny disguise this whole time.
EB: gotcha! hehehehe
TT: I know, John.
- Rose & John
ROSE LALONDE who is engaged in a years-long passive-aggressive war of demonstrative affection with her mother, is obsessed by Lovecraftian horrorterror tentacled creatures, is incredibly wordy, smart as a whip, and who wears bookish psychoanalytically-tinged sarcasm like slightly cracked armour over the softer parts of her psyche.
DAVE STRIDER who is so painfully ironic and cool he cuts himself. Dave on first meeting is kind of an ENORMOUS DOUCHE, and I have this idea I may not have liked him that much at first? But I don't remember very clearly, through the confusing mess of how much my heart aches for him now.
JADE HARLEY who fits herself with the kind of bright silly happy armor that doesn't look like armor at all, or feel like it either, but which shields her so well she can tell herself she can do most anything. Which is good because, more than any of the other kids, she frequently has to.
KARKAT VANTAS who has epic hate-offs with his past and future selves in timey-wimey chatlogs, is eternally enraged, loves with a painful sweetness, suffers agonies in his attempts to be a good leader, and is generally so wide open and vulnerable through his furious wall of abusive sarcasm and capslocks that it physically aches to look at him. The word 'favourite' has almost no meaning to me in this fandom, as blottingtheink put it your favourite is whoever's on screen in front of you RIGHT NOW. But Karkat has a place in my heart carved out with ditches and spikes and a perimeter manned with assault rifles and nobody can touch it.
Early on Karkat accidentally gets into a pattern of trolling John backwards through John's timeline, which proves really fucking frustrating for Karkat and increasingly funny to John, who responds with enormous affection and a blythe inability to take offence.
CG: SEE THIS IS A CASE IN POINT.
EB: what point?
CG: THE POINT I WAS JUST MAKING.
CG: ABOUT THE ULTIMATE RIDDLE.
CG: YOU BLITHERING FECULENT SHITHOLE.
CG: OK THAT'S YOUR CUE TO LAUGH AT ME SOME MORE I GUESS.
CG: BECAUSE YOU SEEM TO REALLY GET OFF WHENEVER I FLAME YOU.
CG: HUMANS ARE DERANGED.
EB: oh man, i must be getting closer to the conversations where you're trolling me harder!
EB: this is pretty exciting, i can't wait to see what you've got up your sleeve.
CG: YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN??? FUCK YOU ABOUT THAT.
- Karkat & John
TEREZI PYROPE who sees the universe by licking bits of it, faces the world with an enormous shark-toothed grin and a hipster sense of humour, is obsessed with punitive justice, and used to be in cahoots with Vriska, until Vriska betrayed everybody before the beginning of the story.
VRISKA SERKET who has a giant soft heart but also a ruthless psychotic megolamaniac streak that is maybe bigger, and is basically INSANE, and also peppers her text with 8s. (All the characters have typing quirks and text colours that they never deviate from.)
AG: I h88888888 you!
AG: H8 h8 h8 h8 h8 h8 h8 haaaaaaaate!
AG: I only regret killing you cause it m8de you so 8ORING!!!!!!!!
AA: s0rry
AG: I don't want to 8e on the red team. ::::(
AG: It's full of jerks who just think I'm a 8ig jerk.
- Vriska & Aradia
KANAYA MARYAM whose default state is to be incredibly literal, especially when she's off-kilter, and whose interactions with people are a mixture of vulnerability, intelligent snark and delicate ruthlessness. She carries a chainsaw. I love her so much it hurts.
TT: Have we spoken before?
GA: Yes
GA: In The Future
TT: You and your friends never cease to invent ways to strengthen the credibility of your assertions.
GA: Oh My It Is Your Human Sarcasm Again
GA: I Enjoy Listening To It And I Wish Doing So Could Serve As My Primary Form Of Recreation
GA: There See I Just Did It Too
GA: Saying The Opposite Thing To Emphasize My Contempt
GA: But Suddenly I Feel More Primitive And Hate Myself A Little More
GA: It Was Like This Funny Miracle That Just Happened In My Heart
- Rose & Kanaya (ship of my heaaaaaaaaart)
GOD THAT IS NOT EVEN HALF OF MY FAVOURITES UGH I LOVE THEM ALL SO MUCH.
SOME OTHER THINGS THAT HOMESTUCK HAS ARE: Canon f/f and m/m ships, magic, SF, timey-wimey stuff, ghosts, robots, EVEN MORE TIMEY-WIMEY STUFF, so much Internet meta it will flood your gills up, did I mention the canon f/f and m/m pairings, and the most amazing internal mythology of the different kinds of romance that exist in troll culture, it's this whole glorious complicated thing that leads to the most amazing fic about unconventional emotional dynamics and makes me so happy. You have no idea. Also, this fandom is the most multi-shippy place I have ever been did I mention that it is brilliant.
Anyway, so like I mentioned, almost all fic in this fandom features the trolls, and most of it is super-spoilery for various bits of plot, or just makes no sense out of context. But here are some recs for stories that I think can stand alone if you want to dip your toes in the fandom before you try the webcomic, or if you just get impatient for the trolls to turn up in canon.
(Also note: Because of the format of the canon, most Homestuck fic is written in second person. Don't be put off by this! In other fandoms people write second person when they want to be literary and daring and poetic, so it kind of suggests hard work to a reader, but in Homestuck it's all the hilarious and hot and heartbreaking and every other kind of fic, and it's so normalised you don't even notice it.)
I asked blottingtheink to help me compile these, as she knows the fandom better than I do (and her recs were pretty instrumental to getting me reading it in the first place). These aren't free of spoilers, but they're fairly light on. Sort of. Look, we tried, OK /o\
RECS
The Only Recipe For Lasagna You'll Ever Need (John/Karkat, by urbanAnchorite)
2,300 words, G (but basically for nearly all these fics you need to up the rating to PG-13 for language, especially if they have Karkat or Dave in them.)
cest-what's rec: A recipe for lasagne, as cooked by one boy human (enthusiastic) and one boy troll (who cannot believe he's doing this). This is so great. Hilarious and voice-perfect and heart-clenching. Especially given the conceit is a recipe.
Of Dead Planets, Shitty Movies, and Especially Friendship (John & Karkat, by bramblePatch)
1,100 words, PG.
blottingtheink's rec: "Karkat groaned, burying his face in his hands. He wasn't sure why he'd thought things would go any more smoothly once they'd managed to meet up in person; at least when they'd been limited to a Trollian window, he'd had the filter of blue and gray text between him and the walking cloud of utter stupidity that was John Egbert." I can't even apologize for my feelings about Karkat anymore. Also John Egbert, never, ever, ever stop.
Promstuck: A Homestuck Fan Adventure (With Prom) (John/Karkat, Terezi/Dave, Rose/Kanaya, by Cephied Variable, schelby & urbanAnchorite)
Length unknown, but at least a novella, PG-13.
cest-what's rec: "Your name is KARKAT VANTAS and your LIFE IS OVER. AGAIN." This is exactly what it says on the tin. It's ridiculous and overly self-indulgent, but also hilarious. And the largely unexplained fusion of troll and human culture in some world that has high schools and proms is surprisingly convincing! (Art-based fic mimicking the webcomic format, hosted on Tumblr.)
we lost the prince of hope in the supermarket (Homestuck ensemble gen, by Anonymous)
Commentfic in 2 parts, G.
cest-what's rec: John apparently thought that taking the trolls to the supermarket would be a cultural learning experience; all Karkat is learning is that he's so fucking embarrassed by everybody he knows that he wants to die. This is hilarious and darling. (G)
if food be the music of love (Terezi/Dave, by urbanAnchorite)
4,300 words, G.
cest-what's rec: In which Terezi isn't coping, and Dave isn't equipped, so he deploys junk food. Seriously, this fic so great: the visceral quality, the weird sexiness, the heartclenching post-apocalyptic hipster doucheyness of Terezi and Dave, it's all over awesome.
A Gentleman and a Lady (Terezi/Dave, by DoctorV)
1,100 words, PG-13.
blottingtheink's rec: "He wears the denim skirt because it's stiff enough at the waist to hide a lack of hips and pulls tight enough on the back when he bends over that his ass looks fantastic." H3H3H3H3H3H3. Also, I absolutely adore the idea of them as this kind of couple.
Five Weeks in May (Terezi/Dave, by Cephied_Variable)
5,200 words, PG-13.
blottingtheink's rec: "Dave Strider is man enough to admit that Terezi Pyrope is his favourite alien and he likes it when she’s smiling." WAH! This has The Best Dave/Terezi pillow talk I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The last quarter is pitch-fucking perfect, but the whole thing is great. I also appreciate them driving out of Houston on the 59. The yellow grass isn't quite right. But I'll take what I can get.
Drop It Like It's Hot (Dave/Karkat, by roachpatrol)
900 words, R.
cest-what's rec: In which the instant any of the human kids gets out a mop bucket to clean, the trolls are there like it's a spectator sport. This is both hilarious and stupidly hot. The way this author writes Karkat is breathcatching. (Canon note: buckets are sexual aids in troll culture. It's a ... thing.)
Froth And Frogs (Jade/Kanaya, by urbanAnchorite)
1,100 words, G.
cest-what's rec: Jade and Kanaya, frog-catching in the snow, basically being the most appealing of anybody. This is funny and off-kilter and darling and I love it. (Canon note: ... I don't even know, uh: frogs are relevant to Plot, and everybody is a Hero of A Particular Element, it's part of the game structure. For Jade and Kanaya it's Space.) (G)
If Vision Is The Only Validation (Jade/Karkat, by roachpatrol)
3,900 words, NC-17.
cest-what's rec: In which Jade uses her Hero of Space goggles to see Karkat, and things go from there. This is such an adorable fic (xenophiliac voyeuristic PWP and all), and such a great Jade voice.
Domesticide (Jade/Sollux, by VastDerp)
5,900 words, R.
blottingtheink's rec: "After the Game, Sollux Captor and Jade Harley share an apartment, various clothing items, and a girlfriend with a miniature horrorterror in her living room aquarium." OMG. This is crack--Jade/Sollux, what? seriously, what?--but soft and domestic and pointy in all the ways I love. Jade and Sollux live together, are romantic rivals, have movie nights, are nerds, and call each other names. The background is woven with the other characters, and surviving Sburb--it's brilliant.
(cest-what's note: This one's a WIP! But apparently the non-soul-destroying kind?)
Voices (The Shrinking Window Remix) (Rose/Aradia, by everlit)
1,800 words, R.
blottingtheink's rec: "Aradia doesn't do sex gracefully--you've often teased her about the blotchy way she flushes, hoping to get a rise out of her--but there is something very beautiful about that momentary loss of control. It's the only time you can ever catch her off-balance." This one is beautiful, but heartbreakingly sad.
Show the Lights (Rose/Kanaya, by partingxshot)
18,000 words, PG.
cest-what's rec: Rose has come back from grimdark, but the tentacle whispers are still threatening her soul, and John is a prisoner in the Furthest Ring: there are so many more important things to be worrying about than stupid sexual identity crises, and Rose wishes she wasn't having one. OK, I'm going to admit, this is super-spoilery. But a lot of the things it presents as canon don't actually happen, fandom just thought they were going to happen because of the direction canon seemed to be going. So ... it won't necessarily spoil you because it's impossible to tell which bits are truth. Uh. OK basically I just adore this pairing, and I couldn't find a non-spoilery Rose/Kanaya fic to rec. Sorry /o\
The Finer Details of Gay Cluckbeast (Dave/John, by clumsyoctopus)
75,000 words, PG-13.
blottingtheink's rec: "As Bro carefully describes to you what, as the DJ, he’s going to play at the reception (almost entirely a medley of Nicki Minaj and Ke$ha), you carefully nurse a Rock Star and vodka like a 16 year old girl who just popped her cherry at prom and try to figure out what the fuck happened over the past decade or so to land you in this mess." This is terrible for me in all the best ways.
(cest-what's note: Also a WIP! But pretty resolved.)
cest-what: OK, and I'm not going to rec this one as an intro to the fandom, but the instant you know what the quadrants and the hemo-heirarchy are, you need to go read the Hemostuck series, because it is the kind of story that will break you up with love and make you hurt and make you bite the back of your hand with joy.
But oh my god, you guys, there needs to be a Homestuck post in this journal. My heart can't even hold this much love. So on mature reflection (remember: sick! lightheaded!) I've decided that the best approach is to attempt some kind of fandom persuasion post.
Because, here is the thing, Homestuck fandom is pretty big, and active and enthusiastic and hella productive, but everyone there has apparently come from completely different parts of fandom to the corners I've moved in. I have found almost no one whose name I even recognise, let alone know. Which makes me think MAYBE PEOPLE OVER HERE DON'T KNOW ABOUT IT. MAYBE THEY NEED TO BE TOLD. You know?
NOTES: This is going to inevitably contain some spoilers. In Homestuck canon basically everything is a spoiler, every single fact functions as a reveal, including characters' names and appearances. Seriously, for the first 200 pages/panels we only know one character's name, and everybody else is only a chat handle on his screen.
THE PREMISE: Homestuck is an epic multimedia webcomic.
Most of the art, including the animated flash files, is very simple
with occasional more complex and beautiful artwork.
I'm not going to put much art in this post, because finding out what the characters look like really is this effectively suspenseful thing, I wouldn't want to take it away. (And this is a persuasion post, not a primer.)
It's currently in its sixth Act, and may be only halfway through. It's set up like a narrative-based interactive game, with a player typing in commands. (It's not a game, you don't actually get to choose the commands and there's only one narrative path, although there are occasional true interactive elements, most of which make me trip over and flail about like a beached starfish, because I'm not a gamer and gaming things utterly fail to be intuitive to me.) This means that nearly all of the narrative is second person addressing you as the character(s), or you as the player, or you as the reader, or are positioned as FROM you as the reader TO the characters, as commands that they are unaware of but do respond to, but don't always obey. (SO INTERESTING TO ME. BRING ON THE POV META, GUYS.) The direct dialogue between the characters mostly takes place in chatlogs.
TT: How did you know I wrote a story about wizards, anyway?
TG: john told me
TG: he was all snoopin around your room while you were asleep and i was like no man dont
TG: so not cool
TG: then he was like haha dude check it out this book is full of wizard slash
TG: and i was like i dont even want to know this is such a crazy violation of privacy
TT: This story sounds suspicious.
TG: do you want me to chew him out about it i will because that was so outrageous i dont know where he got off being like that
- Rose & Dave
Basically, the characters (who are all thirteen) are playing a computer game called SBURB that has the capacity to alter reality. (Their reality already runs on somewhat different rules to ours, in a geeky coding meta way.) As they keep playing, it turns out that the game is tied to the end of the world, which they may be destined to prevent, or maybe not.
It is the geekiest, most meta-tastic thing ever, utterly ridiculous and hilarious and self-conscious, EXCEPT ALSO it will break your heart and make you keysmash in overwhelmed emotion and pain and the kind of delight that fuels solar systems. It is also utterly, utterly epic, like, apocalyptic and life-and-death stakes and alien First Contact and betrayal and love and hate and adolescent crushes and time loops and alternate universes and characters with the kinds of issues that should BREAK THEM IN HALF and also amazing, brilliant shifting relationships with each other.
It has the hugest cast of fully-realised fucked-up appealing vulnerable knife-sharp adorable hilarious characters. There are currently nearly thirty characters who could be reasonably called main characters, every one of whom I fucking adore. Even the ones I don't rationally like very much regularly make my heart stop with love (Eridan and the angel slaying, what the actual fuck, why does that make me love you so much?)
For the first couple of acts (I'm not totally positive how many, I can't remember), the only major characters are four kids: John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider and Jade Harley. For reasons unknown they are being trolled by 12 kids who turn out to actually be alien troll kids (also thirteen years old). They gradually become more important characters as the story goes on, although you don't learn their names or what most of them look like until Act 5. (Also there are the Exiles, who are the most amazing, but it's complicated and I'm not going to go into them here.)
This makes getting into the fic side of the fandom slightly challenging, because (presumably due to the date the fandom really kicked off; seriously, a year ago it was a Yuletide fandom, now it has 3733 stories on AO3 and a kink meme on its 13th iteration, plus a whole world of Tumblr-based fannish space, I am still so bad at using Tumblr fannishly that I have no real idea of the extent there) did I lose that sentence, right, challenging because nearly all the fic features the troll kids. Also, the first Act, even though it's absolutely charming and it delighted me lots, doesn't give you much sense at all of the heartclenching amazingness and wholesale character adoration of later Acts.
HERE IS A PATHETICALLY INCOMPLETE LIST OF SOME OF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS:
JOHN EGBERT who is the world's biggest sweetheart and loves so easily and has an absolutely terrible prankster sense of humour. He would do anything for his friends, as long as they were ... right in front of him, or in a chat window on his screen. Because when people are off his radar he is kind of an enormous jerk about forgetting that they exist, even if the last he heard they were in terrifying peril.
TT: John.
EB: what?
TT: You're wearing one of your disguises now, aren't you?
TT: You are typing to me right now while wearing something ridiculous.
EB: no, why would you even think that??
EB: that's so stupid.
TT: Ok.
TT: Why don't you go get the game from your father?
EB: alright, wish me luck.
EB: oh, btw...
EB: jk I was wearing a funny disguise this whole time.
EB: gotcha! hehehehe
TT: I know, John.
- Rose & John
ROSE LALONDE who is engaged in a years-long passive-aggressive war of demonstrative affection with her mother, is obsessed by Lovecraftian horrorterror tentacled creatures, is incredibly wordy, smart as a whip, and who wears bookish psychoanalytically-tinged sarcasm like slightly cracked armour over the softer parts of her psyche.
DAVE STRIDER who is so painfully ironic and cool he cuts himself. Dave on first meeting is kind of an ENORMOUS DOUCHE, and I have this idea I may not have liked him that much at first? But I don't remember very clearly, through the confusing mess of how much my heart aches for him now.
JADE HARLEY who fits herself with the kind of bright silly happy armor that doesn't look like armor at all, or feel like it either, but which shields her so well she can tell herself she can do most anything. Which is good because, more than any of the other kids, she frequently has to.
KARKAT VANTAS who has epic hate-offs with his past and future selves in timey-wimey chatlogs, is eternally enraged, loves with a painful sweetness, suffers agonies in his attempts to be a good leader, and is generally so wide open and vulnerable through his furious wall of abusive sarcasm and capslocks that it physically aches to look at him. The word 'favourite' has almost no meaning to me in this fandom, as blottingtheink put it your favourite is whoever's on screen in front of you RIGHT NOW. But Karkat has a place in my heart carved out with ditches and spikes and a perimeter manned with assault rifles and nobody can touch it.
Early on Karkat accidentally gets into a pattern of trolling John backwards through John's timeline, which proves really fucking frustrating for Karkat and increasingly funny to John, who responds with enormous affection and a blythe inability to take offence.
CG: SEE THIS IS A CASE IN POINT.
EB: what point?
CG: THE POINT I WAS JUST MAKING.
CG: ABOUT THE ULTIMATE RIDDLE.
CG: YOU BLITHERING FECULENT SHITHOLE.
CG: OK THAT'S YOUR CUE TO LAUGH AT ME SOME MORE I GUESS.
CG: BECAUSE YOU SEEM TO REALLY GET OFF WHENEVER I FLAME YOU.
CG: HUMANS ARE DERANGED.
EB: oh man, i must be getting closer to the conversations where you're trolling me harder!
EB: this is pretty exciting, i can't wait to see what you've got up your sleeve.
CG: YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN??? FUCK YOU ABOUT THAT.
- Karkat & John
TEREZI PYROPE who sees the universe by licking bits of it, faces the world with an enormous shark-toothed grin and a hipster sense of humour, is obsessed with punitive justice, and used to be in cahoots with Vriska, until Vriska betrayed everybody before the beginning of the story.
VRISKA SERKET who has a giant soft heart but also a ruthless psychotic megolamaniac streak that is maybe bigger, and is basically INSANE, and also peppers her text with 8s. (All the characters have typing quirks and text colours that they never deviate from.)
AG: I h88888888 you!
AG: H8 h8 h8 h8 h8 h8 h8 haaaaaaaate!
AG: I only regret killing you cause it m8de you so 8ORING!!!!!!!!
AA: s0rry
AG: I don't want to 8e on the red team. ::::(
AG: It's full of jerks who just think I'm a 8ig jerk.
- Vriska & Aradia
KANAYA MARYAM whose default state is to be incredibly literal, especially when she's off-kilter, and whose interactions with people are a mixture of vulnerability, intelligent snark and delicate ruthlessness. She carries a chainsaw. I love her so much it hurts.
TT: Have we spoken before?
GA: Yes
GA: In The Future
TT: You and your friends never cease to invent ways to strengthen the credibility of your assertions.
GA: Oh My It Is Your Human Sarcasm Again
GA: I Enjoy Listening To It And I Wish Doing So Could Serve As My Primary Form Of Recreation
GA: There See I Just Did It Too
GA: Saying The Opposite Thing To Emphasize My Contempt
GA: But Suddenly I Feel More Primitive And Hate Myself A Little More
GA: It Was Like This Funny Miracle That Just Happened In My Heart
- Rose & Kanaya (ship of my heaaaaaaaaart)
GOD THAT IS NOT EVEN HALF OF MY FAVOURITES UGH I LOVE THEM ALL SO MUCH.
SOME OTHER THINGS THAT HOMESTUCK HAS ARE: Canon f/f and m/m ships, magic, SF, timey-wimey stuff, ghosts, robots, EVEN MORE TIMEY-WIMEY STUFF, so much Internet meta it will flood your gills up, did I mention the canon f/f and m/m pairings, and the most amazing internal mythology of the different kinds of romance that exist in troll culture, it's this whole glorious complicated thing that leads to the most amazing fic about unconventional emotional dynamics and makes me so happy. You have no idea. Also, this fandom is the most multi-shippy place I have ever been did I mention that it is brilliant.
Anyway, so like I mentioned, almost all fic in this fandom features the trolls, and most of it is super-spoilery for various bits of plot, or just makes no sense out of context. But here are some recs for stories that I think can stand alone if you want to dip your toes in the fandom before you try the webcomic, or if you just get impatient for the trolls to turn up in canon.
(Also note: Because of the format of the canon, most Homestuck fic is written in second person. Don't be put off by this! In other fandoms people write second person when they want to be literary and daring and poetic, so it kind of suggests hard work to a reader, but in Homestuck it's all the hilarious and hot and heartbreaking and every other kind of fic, and it's so normalised you don't even notice it.)
I asked blottingtheink to help me compile these, as she knows the fandom better than I do (and her recs were pretty instrumental to getting me reading it in the first place). These aren't free of spoilers, but they're fairly light on. Sort of. Look, we tried, OK /o\
RECS
The Only Recipe For Lasagna You'll Ever Need (John/Karkat, by urbanAnchorite)
2,300 words, G (but basically for nearly all these fics you need to up the rating to PG-13 for language, especially if they have Karkat or Dave in them.)
cest-what's rec: A recipe for lasagne, as cooked by one boy human (enthusiastic) and one boy troll (who cannot believe he's doing this). This is so great. Hilarious and voice-perfect and heart-clenching. Especially given the conceit is a recipe.
Of Dead Planets, Shitty Movies, and Especially Friendship (John & Karkat, by bramblePatch)
1,100 words, PG.
blottingtheink's rec: "Karkat groaned, burying his face in his hands. He wasn't sure why he'd thought things would go any more smoothly once they'd managed to meet up in person; at least when they'd been limited to a Trollian window, he'd had the filter of blue and gray text between him and the walking cloud of utter stupidity that was John Egbert." I can't even apologize for my feelings about Karkat anymore. Also John Egbert, never, ever, ever stop.
Promstuck: A Homestuck Fan Adventure (With Prom) (John/Karkat, Terezi/Dave, Rose/Kanaya, by Cephied Variable, schelby & urbanAnchorite)
Length unknown, but at least a novella, PG-13.
cest-what's rec: "Your name is KARKAT VANTAS and your LIFE IS OVER. AGAIN." This is exactly what it says on the tin. It's ridiculous and overly self-indulgent, but also hilarious. And the largely unexplained fusion of troll and human culture in some world that has high schools and proms is surprisingly convincing! (Art-based fic mimicking the webcomic format, hosted on Tumblr.)
we lost the prince of hope in the supermarket (Homestuck ensemble gen, by Anonymous)
Commentfic in 2 parts, G.
cest-what's rec: John apparently thought that taking the trolls to the supermarket would be a cultural learning experience; all Karkat is learning is that he's so fucking embarrassed by everybody he knows that he wants to die. This is hilarious and darling. (G)
if food be the music of love (Terezi/Dave, by urbanAnchorite)
4,300 words, G.
cest-what's rec: In which Terezi isn't coping, and Dave isn't equipped, so he deploys junk food. Seriously, this fic so great: the visceral quality, the weird sexiness, the heartclenching post-apocalyptic hipster doucheyness of Terezi and Dave, it's all over awesome.
A Gentleman and a Lady (Terezi/Dave, by DoctorV)
1,100 words, PG-13.
blottingtheink's rec: "He wears the denim skirt because it's stiff enough at the waist to hide a lack of hips and pulls tight enough on the back when he bends over that his ass looks fantastic." H3H3H3H3H3H3. Also, I absolutely adore the idea of them as this kind of couple.
Five Weeks in May (Terezi/Dave, by Cephied_Variable)
5,200 words, PG-13.
blottingtheink's rec: "Dave Strider is man enough to admit that Terezi Pyrope is his favourite alien and he likes it when she’s smiling." WAH! This has The Best Dave/Terezi pillow talk I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The last quarter is pitch-fucking perfect, but the whole thing is great. I also appreciate them driving out of Houston on the 59. The yellow grass isn't quite right. But I'll take what I can get.
Drop It Like It's Hot (Dave/Karkat, by roachpatrol)
900 words, R.
cest-what's rec: In which the instant any of the human kids gets out a mop bucket to clean, the trolls are there like it's a spectator sport. This is both hilarious and stupidly hot. The way this author writes Karkat is breathcatching. (Canon note: buckets are sexual aids in troll culture. It's a ... thing.)
Froth And Frogs (Jade/Kanaya, by urbanAnchorite)
1,100 words, G.
cest-what's rec: Jade and Kanaya, frog-catching in the snow, basically being the most appealing of anybody. This is funny and off-kilter and darling and I love it. (Canon note: ... I don't even know, uh: frogs are relevant to Plot, and everybody is a Hero of A Particular Element, it's part of the game structure. For Jade and Kanaya it's Space.) (G)
If Vision Is The Only Validation (Jade/Karkat, by roachpatrol)
3,900 words, NC-17.
cest-what's rec: In which Jade uses her Hero of Space goggles to see Karkat, and things go from there. This is such an adorable fic (xenophiliac voyeuristic PWP and all), and such a great Jade voice.
Domesticide (Jade/Sollux, by VastDerp)
5,900 words, R.
blottingtheink's rec: "After the Game, Sollux Captor and Jade Harley share an apartment, various clothing items, and a girlfriend with a miniature horrorterror in her living room aquarium." OMG. This is crack--Jade/Sollux, what? seriously, what?--but soft and domestic and pointy in all the ways I love. Jade and Sollux live together, are romantic rivals, have movie nights, are nerds, and call each other names. The background is woven with the other characters, and surviving Sburb--it's brilliant.
(cest-what's note: This one's a WIP! But apparently the non-soul-destroying kind?)
Voices (The Shrinking Window Remix) (Rose/Aradia, by everlit)
1,800 words, R.
blottingtheink's rec: "Aradia doesn't do sex gracefully--you've often teased her about the blotchy way she flushes, hoping to get a rise out of her--but there is something very beautiful about that momentary loss of control. It's the only time you can ever catch her off-balance." This one is beautiful, but heartbreakingly sad.
Show the Lights (Rose/Kanaya, by partingxshot)
18,000 words, PG.
cest-what's rec: Rose has come back from grimdark, but the tentacle whispers are still threatening her soul, and John is a prisoner in the Furthest Ring: there are so many more important things to be worrying about than stupid sexual identity crises, and Rose wishes she wasn't having one. OK, I'm going to admit, this is super-spoilery. But a lot of the things it presents as canon don't actually happen, fandom just thought they were going to happen because of the direction canon seemed to be going. So ... it won't necessarily spoil you because it's impossible to tell which bits are truth. Uh. OK basically I just adore this pairing, and I couldn't find a non-spoilery Rose/Kanaya fic to rec. Sorry /o\
The Finer Details of Gay Cluckbeast (Dave/John, by clumsyoctopus)
75,000 words, PG-13.
blottingtheink's rec: "As Bro carefully describes to you what, as the DJ, he’s going to play at the reception (almost entirely a medley of Nicki Minaj and Ke$ha), you carefully nurse a Rock Star and vodka like a 16 year old girl who just popped her cherry at prom and try to figure out what the fuck happened over the past decade or so to land you in this mess." This is terrible for me in all the best ways.
(cest-what's note: Also a WIP! But pretty resolved.)
cest-what: OK, and I'm not going to rec this one as an intro to the fandom, but the instant you know what the quadrants and the hemo-heirarchy are, you need to go read the Hemostuck series, because it is the kind of story that will break you up with love and make you hurt and make you bite the back of your hand with joy.