Is Your Favorite Podcast a Homestuck?
Some time in 2019, on an episode of Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor’s writing advice podcast Start With This, the hosts began talking about the novel 253 by Geoff Ryman. The book is about 253 passengers on a train, jumping between their thoughts and their descriptions. When the book was originally published online through a special website, readers could manually choose which passengers they wanted to hear about in any order. This wasn’t as easy to convey in the print version of the novel, so the meaning of the story hits differently.
Fink and Cranor lamented that the website of the online version of the novel was no longer up, so that whole way of experiencing this story was just gone. This struck me in a surprisingly strong way. There is some media out there that is specifically designed for the medium it is presented, to the point where taking it out of the medium would change the entire experience.
The archival of digital media is also very inconsistent. I’m thinking about how you can no longer download Hidio Kojima’s infamous P.T : Silent Hills Demo, or how there are some Luminary exclusive fiction podcasts that are no longer available anywhere. This conversation motivated me to make sure I checked out influential media that was hosted online before it was taken down forever.
Then I realized, to my horror, I had talked myself into reading Homestuck.
From a journalistic standpoint, I’m obligated to explain what Homestuck is for people who might not know. This is a big ask. Homestuck was a webcomic written by Andrew Hussie about four kids who end the world through gaming. Except it’s also about internet trolls, teen dating drama, the creation of universes, and of course time travel because it’s not complicated enough. The story is told through artwork, flash videos, gifs, chat logs, flash games and, for one segment toward the end, Vines of a puppet show.
The webcomic ran from 2009 to 2016 and is around 8000 pages and 800,000 words. According to Wikipedia, it has often been compared to Ulysses by people who probably haven’t read Ulysses and called the first great work of internet fiction by people who I hate to admit might be right.
If I am coming off as critical of Homestuck, bear in mind that I read the whole thing and didn’t hate it. Through all of its complex nonsense, there were a lot of times when Homestuck genuinely had me hyped for what’s happening, even if I didn’t fully understand what was happening. At its worst, the writing was inscrutable and long winded, but just as often it could be considered Pratchettian in it’s prose.
But I’m not here to talk about the merits or demerits of Homestuck. As someone who has read the entirety of Homestuck, I have unlocked a new power. I have the ability to recognize if other pieces of media are considered Homestucks. Anyone who has read Homestuck also has this power. We walk among you with this heavy burden. Baking has become a challenge.
I have decided to use this fun new personal flaw for content. I reached out to various sources to see what podcasts people considered Homestuck.
To verify my own credentials, I’ve read the entirety of Homestuck. I haven’t read The Homestuck Epilogues since it cannot be better than the wild things I hear about it out of context. I haven’t read Homestuck^2: Beyond Canon because I believe the healthiest way to consume Homestuck content might be after it’s been completed. I haven’t played any of the video games that have come out of it because I wouldn’t even know where to begin. We’re going to be judging this content specifically based on the original Homestuck.
What makes something a Homestuck? To reference that one court case, “You know it when you see it.” If you were to break down all of these responses and elaborations, you might be able to get a running list of what makes something a Homestuck. Yet there are some things out there that fill out all of these qualifications and still don’t have that certain je ne sais quoi that brings up thoughts of gray skin, orange horns, and those pointy sunglasses.
Yes, a Homestuck: The Adventure Zone, My Brother My Brother and Me, and other products under The McElroy Family umbrella
The argument brought to the table: much like Homestuck, the McElroy’s have a large and passionate fanbase with content that was originally queered by fans before it was by the creators.
This is a pretty fair argument, as far as I can tell. I read Homestuck after it wrapped up, so I wasn’t in the trenches for the fandom stuff. However, it does feel like a lot of fandom influence was there in where some of the relationships went.
Homestuck was famous for listening to audience feedback and interpretations, incorporating some of them into the story. For example, copying a self-insert trend in the fandom, there are some in-universe characters with “Trollsonas” which has some weird racial implications the longer I think about it.
This fandom reference meant that some of the ships that were popping up in the fandom found their way into the canon. I’m not going to go through the hits and misses of queer rep in Homestuck, although to it’s credit there is enough queer rep in there for there to be hits and misses. The same could be said about queer rep in McElroy products, specifically The Adventure Zone.
“But Eddie,” I hear you asking. “Why did you specifically call out MBMBAM and TAZ on this? Are you going back to your well of fair-yet-critical McElroy analysis? Should I finally send this hate mail I’ve been working on since you reviewed Graduation?”
Great question, Straw Man. To answer it, we need to leave this hypothetical conference room and enter this dimly lit room, with a board with a bunch of strings on it and pictures of things being connected together.
ERR…….. UH BRO……..? WHERE ARE YOURE JUMBOTRONS?
That’s right, it’s a surprise submission to Conspiracy Week!
On Episode 421 of MBMBAM, Justin McElroy read a Jumbotron where, in his character voice for The Adventure Zone Balance Player Character and America’s favorite wizard Taako, he said “Vriska Did Nothing Wrong.”
I don’t have time to go into if the controversial Homestuck Troll girl Vriska did nothing wrong and hate that I am now someone who could actually carry a conversation about the subject, but that’s not relevant. What is relevant is that, a few months later, in episode 436, MBMBAM stopped doing Jumbotrons.
Coincidence? Maybe in real life, but there’s no such things as coincidences in Homestuck.
Big Homestuck pulled its strings to stop The McElroy Brothers from doing Jumbotrons because they dared to imply that Vriska did nothing wrong.
Or they called it into doubt.
Homestuck itself doesn’t actually make any hard calls on Vriska’s wrongness.
Believe me or not, at the end of the day, if you have a character on your show that acknowledges a Homestuck character, that makes your show a Homestuck.
On that note:
Another Homestuck: Campaign Skyjacks
Gamzee Makara, clown Troll and noted canonical Insane Clown Posse fan, has appeared on the show in a new crewmate audition. While he was turned down, his appearance alone has damned the show.
Sorry James, I just made a call with TAZ on this same rule. Skyjacks is a Homestuck. This is what happens when you kill God.
It’s a Homestuck: CARAVAN
CARAVAN creator Tau Zaman has been open in the past about the subtle influence Kingdom Hearts has had on their horny cowboy road trip through Hell.
Unfortunately for them, Kingdom Hearts is a Homestuck. It is arguably the most Homestuck piece of media that isn’t Homestuck itself.
Therefore, even though CARAVAN doesn’t take influence from Kingdom Hearts’ more Homestuck-y aspects, through the transitive property of Homestuck, CARAVAN is a Homestuck.
Therefore, more Homestucks: any show that is open about its Kingdom Hearts influence
I just made this call about CARAVAN, so this actually affects all Kingdom Hearts podcasts. This includes shows such as Got It Memorized?, Interstitial Our Hearts Intertwined, Cable Town, and technically, due to their “Lore Reasons” miniseries, Waypoint Radio.
Unfortunately, Homestucks: Podcasts with a large, passionate audience and Bad People running them!
I got a few suggestions in this vein and, rather than calling each of them out and going into the reasons they’re considered controversial, I’m going to lump them all into this category. I also don’t know how comfortable I’d feel going into the other specific podcasts without linking to resources and elaborating on what happened.
However, I do not have these reservations about Homestuck creator Andrew Hussie, and am perfectly willing to throw any internet drama stones at their metaphorical green card castle.
I don’t mean to call this “internet drama” as if it doesn’t matter. It’s more that, in an archival sense, it’s hard to point to the primary research and reporting people have done about the controversy. The best and most comprehensive collection of the recent issues surrounding Hussie are these two hour-and-a-half video essays by Sarah Z.
Ironically, inconvenient ways to give out important information is pretty Homestuck.
(For those keeping score at home, this is the part of the article where it gets pretty tiring how many times I’ve used Homestuck as an adjective.)
Having a controversial creator might not feel like a core tenement of what makes something a Homestuck, but a strong creator presence definitely is. Andrew Hussie is a canonical character in Homestuck, affecting major plot beats and just being around. To their credit, it straddles the line of being just enough of a clever author insert right before it gets annoying. I don’t even want to begin to unpack the parasocial issues there (let alone the parasocial issues of Homestuck in general).
I do like the idea of adding “controversial creator of something with a booming fan following” to the growing fluid list of things that make something a Homestuck. For example, this makes Harry Potter a Homestuck. This makes Minecraft a Homestuck. This makes The Joe Rogan Experience a Homestuck. The implications are staggering.
Sorry. A Homestuck: Friends At The Table
Friends At The Table, my beloved, I’m so sorry I have to do you dirty like this.
I love Friends At The Table. However, I must blame them for training my brain to read something like Homestuck. There is a lot of effort put into how FATT presents it’s stories. A plethora of world building games with shifting settings and characters that sometimes move from game to game, or even season to season. There is a lot of worldbuilding and changing scope with overlapping characters in Homestuck as well.
The episode descriptions for some of the seasons are microfictions elaborating on things going on in the world, including two different plot important romance arcs. These are incredibly well written and evocative so it brings me no pleasure to compare it to the blocks of text chats in Homestuck. Sometimes there were some real gems in those group chats. I’m not usually a huge fan of “teen dating drama” things, but the “Karkat-Dave-John” group chat scene was a highlight.
But then there were those big angry hate texts from that mean green skull guy that my brain just kind of glossed over, toward the end of Homestuck. Was I missing lore? Maybe? I wouldn’t know.
I don’t always know what’s going on in an episode of FATT, but the energy of the show always keeps me from losing the tread and I still find myself coming back in for exciting moments. The same could also be said with Homestuck. I could not explain the rules of the game they are playing, but you feel genuine excitement when they exploit loopholes and have cool anime fights, or anytime you have an (S) flash movie page.
I’ll admit that these are all sort of specific examples, but, at the end of the day, it’s all about that funny feeling. Maybe it would make more sense to put something like Critical Role up here. Rabid fan base, imposing backlog, a critical conversation piece. It might have all of the pieces. And yet Friends At The Table has that tinge of expansive existencial weirdness that runs through the entire show. The feeling of “I don’t fully get what’s going on here but I’m down for it” that Homestuck has at its best moments.
Definitely a Homestuck: Welcome To Night Vale
I am not putting Welcome To Night Vale on this list just to spite the creators for making me convince myself to read Homestuck and you cannot prove otherwise.
In all seriousness, I think Welcome To Night Vale might be the most Homestuck of a Podcast out there. The show is long running, as one of the first audio fiction podcasts out there, and was a huge influence on the audio fiction that followed.
The first three to four years of WTNV, the podcast definitely had that rabid fandom energy that Homestuck is also known for, but in recent years, the show has gotten far more experimental in what it tries to do in its medium. The team spent a lot of their earlier years establishing characters, places, and other concepts. Recent episodes feature deeper dives and explorations on ideas they previously introduced. They put in years of work establishing this setting, so now they’re just playing around with it.
This “fuck around and find out” creative mentality is also very prevalent in Homestuck, to the point where I sometimes think about the sheer audacity of some of the creative decisions. You cannot make me care about the 12 or so brand new ancestor trolls you introduced in the last quarter of the story primarily in a flash game.
Night Vale has a library of audience submitted music, featured on the Weather section of each episode. Homestuck also featured a lot of audience submitted music that quite frankly slaps. Notably Homestuck is one of the earlier places where Undertale creator and frequent Homestuck submitter Toby Fox used his now famous battle song, “Megalovania.“
If you look at this article, you might be able to pull out a check list of aspects that make something a Homestuck. A rabid fandom, representation with varied results, needless complexity that ties everything together, problematic creators or the general acknowledgement of Homestuck. And yet there are some things out there that could look like a Homestuck and quack like a Homestuck that still aren’t Homestucks.
I’m not an expert on this matter, as you may have gathered after reading this far into the article and kept up with me swinging between critical analysis and pure biased opinions like that one Heroic/Just clock in Homestuck. Are there any podcasts you consider Homestucks? Think long and hard about it. Maybe your podcast is a Homestuck. There’s nothing wrong with that (unless it’s for one of the bad reasons.) Let me know!
Did I shoot myself in the foot by making this just about podcasts instead of a wider range of media properties? Probably, but you gotta admit that there’s something a little Homestuck about that.
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