“allegory – a story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden meaning.”
Like all good games, Homestuck tries very hard to teach the reader how to engage with it. Homestuck cues the reader into how to read some of its narrative vagueness through the use of literary allusion. This includes allusions to anime, games, books, movies and entire cultural and philosophical movements.
In this series, we’ll go over some of the biggest examples of Homestuck using references to clue the reader into what it’s doing. Hopefully, you’ll come away from these essays with a new insight into Homestuck’s logic–especially later on, where Homestuck outright finishes character arcs and thematic climaxes through this approach.
I’m numbering these posts from simplest to most complex, and roughly from least to most plot impact, too.
[4. The Gnostic Creation Myth – Literally fucking everything. A Non-Exhaustive review.]
[All of these essays are finished, and accessible to Patrons. They will be released once a week, every Monday from now on!]
This post exists for introduction purposes and as an easy link once all of them are uploaded, but please reblog the individual essays instead, as old reblogs of this post will be outdated and lack the correct hyperlinks!]
[3. Earthbound – The two Yaldabaoths, Dramatic Tension & The Diegetic Reader (That’s You!)]
[Spoilers for Earthbound:Beginnings, Earthbound, & Mother 3]
Most know by now that Earthbound is referenced every time we say the word “Homestuck”. It’s built into the name: To be Stuck at Home. To be Bound to Earth.
And fittingly for a reference which such pervasive impact on our understanding of the comic, Homestuck styles itself as a spiritual successor to Earthbound in a number of ways.
Both Earthbound and Homestuck begin with a set of four kids who go on an adventure together. Both feature kids with psychic powers, friendship, and the meaning of growing up.
But there are three particular similarities to Homestuck that I want to present you with here. In these three areas, Homestuck and Earthbound/Mother are notably alike:
The Characters:
1) Both feature a unique execution of dramatic tension and narrative stakes for the characters.
The Player:
2) Engage in heavily metatextual, diegetic relationships between the World/Story and The Player/Reader.
The Antagonists:
3) Are God-Like, Authoritarian powers that cannot engage with ideas. In other words, they operate as Yaldabaoths.
These antagonists are who I want to talk about first. We will proceed from number 3 up to number 1, talking about the context of the games and tying it into the comic further as we go.
I’ll ask you to be patient with me if you don’t see much about Homestuck at first–there’s a lot of setup work to do.
Here’s the next essay in this series on Homestuck’s use of thematic reference. This time, we go over the latter two MOTHER games, Earthbound and Mother 3, to see what they can tell us about the themes Homestuck builds up.
These games are near and dear to my heart, so I hope you enjoy this essay!
Basically, the Condesce tried to institute Lusii in the human world, and Jake’s island is presumably where she was keeping/breeding them or w.e. They’re there because of her.
This is dedicated to Gemi, who early this month promised she’d stop me from getting back into Homestuck, and is now up until 2 AM discussing it in detail with me. She tried her best, and I accept full responsibility.
Flying through Storytelling 