History Homestuck / TropesAToL

--->"OH GOD HOW CAN SHAVING CREAM BE SO FLAMMABLE"

* AerosolFlamethrower: Invoked when John tries to put out a fire in the salamander village with shaving cream. Needless to say, this doesn't end well for anyone.
-->''"OH GOD HOW CAN SHAVING CREAM BE SO FLAMMABLE"''
* AffectionateParody: Of just about every facet of modern day culture you can think of, from the mainstream to the underground, and mid 2000s internet culture in particular. In addition to the plot references, the heroes themselves (ESPECIALLY the trolls) all represent some facet of archetypal internet users that were common at the time of writing. Some examples include:
** Gamzee who is obviously meant to represent [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juggalo Juggalos]].
** Dave Strider, who represents the fixation on "ironic" humor, as well as the "cool, aloof artist/musician" stereotype.
** Nepeta Leijon, who takes the roles of the chatroom roleplayer and shipper simultaneously.
** Aradia Megido, who represents the goth/emo subculture [[spoiler: up until she goes God Tier]].

* InexplicableTreasureChests: The game segments contain a large number of chests scattered about the explorable areas, rooms and hallways, each contains a single item of greater or lesser interest. Only a few of these serve a particular purpose and in many segments none are stored in an inventory; for the most part they simply serve as set dressing and Easter eggs, and as a nod to the {{Eastern RPG}}s that serve as one of ''Homestuck''[='s=] inspirations. In-universe, this is lampshaded in ''Alterniabound'' when Terezi comments on how they've developed the odd habit of snatching each other's items and squirreling them away in chests around the meteor.

%%* DiesWideOpen: Many of the trolls.

-->'''TG:''' just once id like to see dad crap his pants when a kid says theres a vampire in his closet
-->'''TG:''' "OH SHIT EVERYONE IN THE MINIVAN"
-->'''TG:''' be fuckin dad of the year right there

* TheExile: A whole class of characters; although they normally begin as agents of their respective planets, they all eventually end up exiled to either post-apocalyptic Earth or Alternia, and provide assistance to the kids, sometimes unintentionally. Some of these include WV, AR, PM, and WQ.
%%** Also, the [=Expatri8=] and B2!Jade/Grandma English.
* ExponentialPlotDelay: It's been heavily telegraphed that the comic will have 7 acts. Act 5 ended up being split into 2 very long parts, the first of which quadrupled the player cast, and Act 6 consists of six sub-acts, five intermissions, seven sub-sub-acts, five sub-act intermissions, and six one-page sub-intermissions. Act 7, by sharp contrast, was one 9 minute animation and a few closing panels.

%%* ExpressiveShirt: John's shirt on the [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=001902 second page]], and Nepeta's hat.
%%** [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=007566 this]]

* ExtraLives: Dream Selves, although they serve different purposes if your normal self isn't dead.
%%* ExtraParentConception: How trolls reproduce.

** John's session, which spans Act 1 to Act 4 and most of Act 5 Act 2, took place over a day, discounting time shenanigans.

** The hours Jane has been spending brainwashed can be counted on one hand.

%%** Happens again at the beginning of Act 6, though not quite to the same degree.

* BadassNormal: All of the B1 guardians (Mom Lalonde, Bro, Dad Egbert, and Grandpa) count, as they have no powers or enhanced weaponry like the kids have, but all of them manage to make it through the Medium and their kids respective planets until the prototyping of Becquerel, which makes Jack Noir a force so powerful that he becomes nigh unbeatable and kills almost all of them. Dad Egbert/Crocker in particular has no direct connection to Sburb, as neither his pre- nor post-scratch selves played the game directly, but he is still highly capable of defending himself, and ends up being the only guardian to survive until the end as Dad Crocker.

--->'''DAVE:''' what are welsh things doing in this game
--->'''DAVESPRITE:''' thats an awesome question

* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: The players houses are built up basically by copy-pasting bits of the architecture they already have.

* BlackComedy: One of the staples of ''Homestuck'''s sense of humor, the comic has ''many'' examples of this, often accompanied by a MoodWhiplash. Some examples include:
** Jade's strife & subsequent argument with her grandfather about the gun she's taking on her quest, which ends up being quite one-sided as [[https://www.homestuck.com/918/3 Jade's grandpa is dead]], and [[https://www.homestuck.com/story/919 she's arguing with his stuffed corpse.]]

** John's shirt is pretty clearly supposed to depict Slimer from ''Franchise/{{Ghostbusters}}'', but due to copyright, it's only officially referred to as "Green Slime Ghost".

%%* BloodyHilarious

** John makes a new [[Creator/BillCosby COSBY]]TOP after remembering he lost his old one in the End of Act 3 animation. It gets a lampshade hung on it by the narration.

** And now the Post-Scratch Kids universe has the God Cat, or GCAT for short, which is a literal magic cat, being created with an alternate version of the above code.

** Jasprosesprite^2 has no filters and is particularly mean to Jake, greeting him as "Jade's unintelligent father", calling him boring when he's too stunned at her appearance to say hello, and says he's a ''prop'' at her ''Literature/AliceInWonderland''-themed tea party for Nepetasprite. She also calls Dave and Dirk boring for being too awkward to speak and "helps" Tavrosprite by, well see above. She attributes her lack of social graces to her cat-half...

--> ...but Jaspersprite was never this rude.
* CelestialBody: [[https://www.homestuck.com/story/4018 Bilious Slick]], who contains/is an entire universe.

* CharacterClassSystem: Not surprising, considering that the setting is a co-op video game. Sburb players' "[Class] of [Aspect]" titles define their aptitudes and intended roles within the game (via class), as well as which objects and forces within the Medium they can interact with in service of that role (via aspect). Aspect seems to be largely innate (all the dancestor troll pairs have the same aspect, the pre-scratch/post-scratch human pairs have thematically related aspects), while class depends more on acquired personality traits (Knights tend to be compulsively protective and self-sacrificing, Thieves are pathologically narcissistic). The underlying mechanics of the [[{{Portmanteau}} classpect]] system are left mostly unexplained until after the Scratch. Calliope's elaborations on Rose's research suggest that classes are structured in passive/active pairs (active Thief and Prince vs. passive Rogue and Bard), that some classes are gender-specific or gender-biased (Bards are all male, Muses are all female, Rogues are usually but not always female), and that class is based partly on a player's assessed competence (Pages start out essentially useless but have the greatest improvement potential if they can unlock it, Princes are exceptionally dangerous even at their starting levels). It's worth taking Calliope's statements with a grain of salt, however, as all of her data has come from 5 tightly connected sessions, and it's always possible for a player to corrupt their assigned MythArc or mimic the powers and behaviors of another class.
** For the interested, the classes are [[EntropyAndChaosMagic Bard]], [[BeneathTheMask Knight]], [[VoluntaryShapeshifting Heir]], [[GameBreaker Lord]], [[TheSmartGuy Mage]], [[TheMedic Maid]], [[TheParagon Muse]], [[StatusBuff Page]], [[BlackMage Prince]], [[JustLikeRobinHood Rogue]], [[{{Seers}} Seer]], [[WhiteMagicianGirl Sylph]], [[LovableRogue Thief]], [[TheRedMage Witch]] (though the powers of each class are strictly YMMV, this is just one possible interpretation). The aspects (which are more firmly defined) are [[BloodBrothers Blood]], [[BlowYouAway Breath]], [[YouCantFightFate Doom]], [[EmotionalPowers Heart]], [[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve Hope]], [[GreenThumb Life]], [[WindsOfDestinyChange Light]], [[SuperIntelligence Mind]], [[UnstoppableRage Rage]], [[ThePowerOfCreation Space]], [[TimeTravel Time]], and [[PowerOfTheVoid Void]].

%%* ChargeIntoCombatCut: This is fairly commonplace in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'', although the author is always kind enough to cut back to the fight in time for it to begin... eventually.

** Way back when [[http://dstrider.blogspot.com/ Dave had one.]]

--> [[SerialEscalation Chekhov's Literally Every Single Story Detail]] plays a key role in the future as well. Keep an eye out for it.

** Dirk's robots, Sawtooth and Squarewave just disappear at the end of the Trickster arc and are never mentioned again.
*** Sawtooth and Squarewave can actually be seen sparring with Jake, Dirk, GCAT-Tavrossprite, and Lord-English-bot on Earth C during the 6/15 snapchat update!

* {{Cliffhanger}}: Due to the nature of ''Homestuck'''s irregular updating schedule, many critical moments would go unaddressed for days, sometimes ''weeks'', before readers knew how things panned out. A primary example of this would be the reveal of Lord English, published on 10/31/2011, just a few days after the colossal update [S] Cascade. The next major update, the start of Act 6, was not published until 11/11, almost two weeks later.

* ClusterFBomb: Ironically, Gamzee, who's the nicest of the trolls until he goes insane, probably has the foulest mouth in the entire comic, including some variation of "motherfuck" in almost every sentence.

* ColorCodedCharacters: Most of the characters have a corresponding color assigned to them.
** In Doc Scratch's case, it's more like Color Coded For Your Inconvenience -- his text is in all white, forcing readers and characters alike to highlight it in order to read it easily. The annoyance of this is repeatedly lampshaded.

-->It's hard.
-->Being a kid and growing up.
-->[[ArcWords It's hard and nobody understands.]]

%%* {{Emoticon}}: Several characters use these in pesterlogs.

* EveryoneIsBi: Trolls are almost exclusively bisexual, to such an extent that Karkat had difficulty understanding why John would see their respective genders as a barrier to attraction. WordOfGod states that a minority of trolls have an exclusive gender preference (including Kanaya, who is only interested in other women) but orientation isn't as central to troll sexuality as it is to human sexuality.

%%* EyeBeams:
%%** [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=002392 Why you don't mess with Nanna]].
%%** Or [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=005222 Sollux]].
%%** Or [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/ACT6ACT5ACT1x2COMBO.php?s=6&p=007736 The Condesce]].

* GeodesicCast: ''Homestuck'' turns it UpToEleven with four kid protagonists, four ''other'' kids protagonists, four corresponding guardians, four ''other'' corresponding guardians four exiles, four sprites, and yes, four other sprites. And then there's twelve trolls, who turned out not to be counterparts at all- but they also each have a corresponding lusus and exile along with a counterpart from another group of trolls... and some of their exiles are alternate universe characters from the kids' session.

* LighterAndSofter: Alrhough Act 6 still has dark tones throughout, it's still more lighthearted than both parts of Act 5 were.

--> @@SQUAREWAVE: YEAH, DOGG!!!@@

* KudzuPlot: Very much so! And Andrew is extremely good at keeping plot holes from happening. [[note]] There have been a few small goofs in art and timelogs, but aside from that he's been pretty much perfect about plot holes.[[/note]]
** Though some minor plot details [[WhatHappenedToTheMouse have outright been forgotten.]]

--> ''Hold that thought.''
--> ''You need to take a moment to wear something ridiculous before you [[https://www.homestuck.com/story/1110 continue your spiel...]]''

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: Kanaya's description of Rose [[https://www.homestuck.com/story/2696 here]] could be seen as this -- specifically, the part about her skin being "white as a ghost".

* Letters2Numbers: Many of the trolls do this as part of their typing quirks, usually in a way that fits into some sort of NumerologicalMotif. Terezi, though, deserves special mention, since with as many as three letters constantly numberised, turquoise color and all-caps [=H3R=] [=T3XT=] [=C4N=] [=B3=] [=N1GH=] [=UNR34D4BL3=].
** Mituna's text is deliberately as difficult to read as possible [=W17H=] [=3V3N=] [=M0R3=] [=L3773R5=] [=R3PL4C3D=] [=1N=] [=4LL=] [=C4P5=]. Making this worse is his tendency to use made-up lingo or devolving into angrish at times.

* LighterAndSofter: Though Act 6 still has dark tones throughout, it is still more lighthearted than both parts of Act 5 were.
* LikeRealityUnlessNoted: If you copy down the GPS coordinates that appear in one of the videos, and type them into google maps, you'll find real-life locations corresponding to John's neighborhood and Rose's house.
** The coordinates for Jade's island correspond to an area of the Pacific Ocean with nothing... except a small underwater rise that looks as if it could have been an island with just a little more volcanic activity...
* LimitedSocialCircle: John, Rose, Dave, and Jade aren't shown talking to any other kids their age. Except for the trolls, they literally have no one else on their Chum List. It is also not known if they even attend school. The only exception is Jade's penpal who claims to be her own grandson.
** The post-Scratch kids aren't any different, although to be fair Roxy and Dirk live AfterTheEnd, so they don't have much choice.

* LordBritishPostulate:
** Eridan wasted a lot of time killing the angels on his planet (even though they were actually friendly when he arrived there), and they were "fast and angry as shit".
--->'''KARKAT:''' THEY DIDN'T EVEN GIVE YOU ANY GRIST, YOU IDIOT. THAT WAS YOUR FIRST CLUE.
** Lord English is an indestructible demon that has to be defeated by exploiting {{Stable Time Loop}}s and various glitches. Note that this was a retroactive reference.

* DemonicSpiders: Angels once Eridan pissed them off. Fast, angry, and takes a full minute of sustained firepower from a legendary weapon just to kill ''one''. There are thousands.[[invoked]]
%%** [[http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004901 The Uranium Imps.]]

* AnimationBump: Many panels have some sort of animation to them, but it's also used shamelessly in terms of Sound Pages (Marked with an [=[S]=]). In addition to usually having [[AwesomeMusic/{{Homestuck}} great sound]], later ones tend to have a dramatically different art style - compare John's first STRIFE page with [[WhamEpisode [=[S]=]]] Cascade and you'd think they were two different comics.

** Fedorafreak, an unseen character, also counts - he and Dad Egbert both use the same forum, and he manages to somehow survive the destruction of the Earth, get transported into the Medium, and progresses far enough to make it to his quest bed with a severe wound, suggesting he may possibly have died and gone God tier.

** "TROLLING ME FROM THE FUTURE, HOW JUVENILE CAN YOU GET" - oh, you are so right there, Karkat. [[SarcasmMode You would never do such a thing.]]

** Sollux is this for all of the Alternian trolls - he insists that playing Sgrub is a bad idea and will doom them all, but no one takes this seriously - and by the end of the comic, less than half of them have survived.

** There's also an in-universe example after Terezi inadvertently scratches disc 2 of ''Homestuck'' - the disc is readable up until the end of [[https://homestuck.com/story/3760 [S] Flip]], just as the coin is about to land and determine Vriska's fate. The disc becomes so badly corrupted that Doc Scratch himself interjects in the narrative in order to fix it.

** In Doc Scratch's case, it's more like Color Coded For Your Inconvenience - his text is in all white, forcing readers and characters alike to highlight it in order to read it easily. The annoyance of this is repeatedly lampshaded.

* DangerousDrowsiness: This comic has a character named Jade. At the start, she keeps falling asleep often at the worst of occasions and though everyone thinks she's narcoleptic, it turns out to be Vriska's doing. Vriska's thing is that she has MindControl powers, but since Vriska and Jade are two separate species, all she can do to Jade is force her to go to sleep. The reason why Vriska keeps interfering with her like this is to manipulate events on the end of Jade and her friends so that Vriska would have a huge powerful antagonist to fight against and defeat on her end (in a somewhat complicated StableTimeLoop - Vriska knows that, no matter what, that antagonist will exist, so she inserts herself into the story as the one being responsible for its existence).

** John and Rose find Noir by their dead parents bodies, take out their weapons, a big Round 1 appears on the top of the screen, suitably awesome music starts to play - only to stop when Noir stabs John through the chest. ''Again.''

** Rose's first experience with death was with her childhood cat, Jaspers, and this experience stuck with her - but she is ultimately able to prototype him and revive him, something the kids were unable to do with their guardians.

** The reason why pumpkins keep disappearing is finally given an explanation by Roxy - it's because they're specifically unhinged from reality, and easy to teleport.

* {{Filler}}: Most of [=OpenBound=] counts as this - it introduces a number of characters that have little impact on the plot for no other purpose than to [[InvokedTrope carry out a]] FandomNod, while a few bits of plot-important information are sprinkled throughout the dozens of conversations that occur. However, it does allow for Meenah to get a bit of character focus.

* AHouseDivided: The Trolls degenerate into this. By the time they stabilize, only 5 and a half are left among the living, only 4 stay on the meteor (as the remaining one and a half go off on their own journey), and one of the four is actively plotting to murder another (not that [[MonsterClown he]] doesn't deserve it.)

* HumanityIsInfectious: Traits that the Troll culture regards as unusual - and exhibited by the protagonists - start to seep into their behavior the longer they interact with the humans. In Vriska's case, she gets PerverseSexualLust for one of the characters in one of John's favorite movies. Also, though it was previously established that the concept of marriage does not exist in Troll society, Kanaya gets married to Rose in the end credits.

* CrapsackWorld: Every planet other than Earth, and it gets worse after the players enter too.

* CrutchCharacter: Time players seem to be this for their group: they are able to TimeTravel and sense changes in the timeline before they ascend to God Tier, whereas everyone else's powers are locked off, or at least harder to use, until they die on their Quest Bed. All of the Heroes of Time shown so far have been incredibly badass, Dave and Aradia especially, backing this up.
** The sprites serve this purpose as well. When the first player enters the medium, the sprite can both heal them and blast the underlings attacing them, in addition to being MrExposition. However, they can't initially leave their house, so their help is limited to getting through the first gate.
** Space players are an example as well, being the ones crucial to the creation of the new universe; they are tasked with spawning the Genesis Frog.

* CultureJustifiesAnything: Vriska's defense for killing Tavros and [[HorrorHunger feeding all those young trolls to her lusus.]]

* CurbStompBattle: Very few fights in the series are even. Most result in one side getting beaten rather badly rather quickly.
** One of the few [[SubvertedTrope subversions]] of this can be seen on the first flash segment after the end of the gigapause, in which, in between all the other stuff happening on LOFAF, there's also the fight between [[TheHero John]] and [[BigBad Caliborn]], which goes back and forth, until the end in which John gains the upper hand shortly before being teleported away by [[OrwellianRetcon his canon defying powers]].
* CurseCutShort: There's a RunningGag where each player character has an insult appear in the text box where their real name is supposed to go, only for them to get upset and have it changed. When Dave Strider gets introduced, "Insufferable Prick" gets typed halfway in the box, only for Dave to scowl and cut the box with a shitty katana.
** Karkat Vantas does the same in his introduction, thus removing the gag from it's invocation with all the other beta trolls.
* CutHisHeartOutWithASpoon: Jack Noir finally gets tired of Dad's busy fists. "Here, ''(flicks switchblade)'' stick this in your pipe and bleed to death slowly."

** Mituna's text is deliberately as difficult to read as possible W17H 3V3N M0E3 l3773R5 R3PL4C3D 1N 4LL C4P5. Making this worse is his tendency to use made-up lingo or devolving into angrish at times.

* FantasyCounterpartCulture: Trolls have a lot in common with dictatorial regimes, most especially Sparta.

-->''[[InWhichATropeIsDescribed Wherein]] [[TheyFightCrime Numerous Vigilantes Confront Peril]]; [[FaceHeelTurn One of Them Betrays the Others]]; [[FakeDefector (But it Turns Out to be Part of The Plan All Along)]]; [[LoveDodecahedron Several]] [[TheChick Attractive Female Leads]] [[WillTheyOrWontThey Provide Romantic Tension]]; [[NiceHat Four Major Characters Wear Unusual Hats]]; [[TheReveal One Holds Plot-Critical Secret]]; [[StuffBlowingUp 47 On-Screen Explosions]], [[KarmicDeath One Resulting in Demise of]] [[TheDragon Key Adversary]]; [[{{Narm}} 6 to 20 Lines that could be Construed as Humorous]];'' [[LongTitle etc.]]

* LooseCanon: The Skaianet history files fall firmly within this territory. They contain a lot of background information on the Condesce's opperations on both pre- and post-scratch Earth, as well as the backstories of Jake Harley, Jane Egbert, John Crcoker, and Jade English. However, because of some of the content[[labelnote:*]]namely the representation of Hitler as a PsychopathicManchild and how Jane Egbert has sex with Laurel in front Hitler's decapitated head[[/labelnote]], their removal from the Skaianet website, and Hussie later referring to it as "ill-advised nonsense", it's canonicity is heavily disputed.

* LooseCanon: The Skaianet history files fall firmly within this territory. They contain a lot of background information on the Condesce's opperations on both pre- and post-scratch Earth, as well as the backstories of Jake Harley, Jane Egbert, John Crcoker, and Jade English. However, because of some of the content[[labelnote:*]]namely the representation of Hitler as a PsychopathicManchild and how Squick Jane Egbert has sex with Laurel in front Hitler's decapitated head[[/labelnote]], their removal from the Skaianet website, and Hussie later referring to it as "ill-advised nonsense", it's canonicity is heavily disputed.

* FlyingCutlerySpaceship: Her Imperious Condescension, the supreme ruler of the trolls, has a starship shaped like the prongs of a trident. The resemblance is deliberate, because she also [[ProngsOfPoseidon uses a trident as her weapon of choice]].

* FourLinesAllWaiting: Between the LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters and AnachronicOrder, cliffhangers tend to accumulate rather quickly.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: See [[Characters/{{Homestuck}} the character sheet]]. Oh, sorry. Character ''sheets''. To give a quick rundown: 8 Kids, 10 Guardians, 24 Troll kids, 12 Troll ancestors, 19 Carapacians, 14 Leprechauns, 2 Cherubim, 3 First Guardians, 8 named Denizens, 20 Kernelsprites, and Andrew Hussie. Without counting doomed timelines, that brings us to 121 characters.

* AdultFear: Poor Jane's dad. It's hard enough that there have been attempts on his teenage daughter's life, but then he had to watch her get blown up by a letter bomb...

** [[TastesLikeDiabetes The Squiddles]], adorable octopuses that star in a [[SugarBowl disgustingly cutesy cartoon.]] They're actually humanity's subconscious representation of the [[EldritchAbomination Horrorterrors]], which take this trope and kick it all the way over to the "bizarrely and terrifyingly alien" side instead.