Webcomic / Homestuck: Beyond Canon

Beware of spoilers. This is the sequel to Homestuck and as such all spoilers pertaining to Homestuck and The Homestuck Epilogues are unmarked.

> Dirk: Stop making Homestuck.

> Commence chronological continuance.

Surprise, bitch.^==>

I bet there was a moment just now when you thought to yourself, oh thank god. Thank the maker. Thank literally what-the-hell-ever recalcitrant entity was, is now, or perhaps always has been responsible for piloting this story. Whoever it is whose cataclysmic fingers hang suspended and quivering with anticipation somewhere beyond the curtain of the world; whose hunched form lurks forever in the shadows, its work seemingly unimpeded by the very real threat of a chronic lumbago; making no sound, giving no speech to thought, save for that fateful moment where first one elongated phalanx, and then another, crosses the threshold between thought and reality; when ten declamatory digits, possessed for the moment of a zealous frenzy, reach down and set the air astir with the heart-rending creative cacophony of an overly rambunctious mechanical keyboard. Whichever accursed species of demiurgic figure that is, you thought, let's just thank the ever living fuck that this time they decided to call it a night and get out the drawing tablet instead. Finally, this story is back on the rails. Maybe we can get back to what things were like in the good old days, where boys were brave, girls were guileful, authors were alliterative and in various dubious states of non-/un/double-death, and this comic made at least a little bit of sense to more or less everybody. No more dealing with narrators, unreliable and not. No more embittered scrimmages over the bounding metafictional reality within which everything transpires. No more stupid tang-tinted text. Your collective sigh of relief is deafening.

— Dirk Strider

Paradox Space has fallen, consumed by a black hole large enough to contain a multiverse. No longer must our heroes toil in the service of the "alpha timeline." The Prince and his Seers seek to preserve the Canon-That-Was at great personal and narrative cost. But inside the black hole, those who the paradox once discarded seek to claw back to relevance and escape to the Fanontinuum, a new fabric of story and space woven by the hands of new narrators, thousands of voices that fill the vacuum left by the death of the author.

This is not Homestuck. But it is not not Homestuck. This is Homestuck: Beyond Canon,^note Originally released as Homestuck^2: Beyond Canon prior to coming out of hiatus in 2023 an “officially commissioned” sequel to the cult webcomic Homestuck by Andrew Hussie. It began on October 25, 2019. It can be found here.

Andrew Hussie has stated that this comic — like the Epilogues on which it follows up — is intended to explore various ideas and themes about the very concept of "canon" itself, blurring the lines between Fanon and canon, and should be treated as a separate-but-connected entity to the original Homestuck. Or not, depending on if you want to. Hussie himself was directly involved in the project at the start, producing a general outline of the story; however, much of the actual writing is to be done by a series of other writers.

After a 3-year long hiatus, the comic resumed in October 2023, with long-time series composer James Roach now serving as director and a entirely new team in charge, named the "Homestuck Independant Creative Union".^note To make things brief, they're a unionized team acting independantly from What Pumpkin or VIZ Media and were given free license by Hussie himself. See more on that here.

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> Gather articles of supplemental data related to Homestuck: Beyond Canon.

• Adam and Eve Plot: Dirk invokes this when the ship reaches an empty planet, setting himself and Rose up as the progenitors of the race that will ultimately play the next Sburb.
• The Alcoholic: Candy-timeline Jake turned into quite the example over the years, though when we first see him he's been trying to hold off on the stuff. When he takes up the bottle again, he's seen imagining the adventures he had in his youth.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The POV often changes to not just characters or groups of characters, but also across the Meat and Candy timelines as well.
• Arc Number: 108 is shaping up to be a new one. The 3-year hiatus ended with an update released on October 8 (10/8), which featured Terezi's phone showing the time 1:08 PM.
• Armor-Piercing Question: After being flippant with Hussie over the topic of Yiffy in "A Threat, Sensed", Dirk gets laid into:
  Wow, sorry, this conversation was so irrelevant I completely forgot what it was even about. Me. Scared of Jade and a shittier Rose’s spawn? I have to laugh.
  Then why are you shaking?
  (Dirk, shocked, looks down at his trembling hand.)
• Artistic Age: The art style makes it hard to distinguish the ages of characters. John looks the same age as his teenage son, when he's supposed to be several years older than him. This is eventually lampshaded in the 4/13/24 update, where Dirk deliberately gives himself an older looking sprite before everyone else gets updated designs and sprites as well.
  There we go. We're adults, for fuck's sake.
• Ascended Meme: Terezi mentions having perused Dirk's "book about horses" and been deeply confused by it, particular a part about memes; this is a clear reference to the Pony Pals book that Dirk defaced, and more specifically to the fanmade full version. She even quotes the iconic line "Remember Longcat, Jane?" directly.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Rosebot and Terezi have entered into a blackrom relationship over the three year trip.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Ultimate Dirk from the Meat Epilogue timeline and Jane Crocker from the Candy Epilogue timeline.
• The Bus Came Back: Brain Ghost Dirk returns after last being seen in the events prior to [S] Game Over. He shows up in Jake's dream and later helps form a plan of rebellion. Whether he really is as independent from Ultimate Dirk as he claims remains unknown.
• Canon Welding: As of "Catnapped, Part 3", Problem Sleuth has been pulled into this pile of absolute bullshit, and is still having issues with leaving his office.
  • In Chapter 11, Aradia references her involvement in Pesterquest, although Alt!Calliope says that was a non-canon timeline.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Ultimate Dirk has adopted the mantle of "antagonist" with glee.
  DIRK: Well, I'm an antagonist now. That's what I do.
  TEREZI: OH MY GOD G3T OV3R YOURS3LF 1 4M B3GG1NG YOU
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: As before, everyone has their own text color. John's has faded to a lighter blue-gray.
• Comically Serious: Dirk of course, much to Terezi's display. Alt!Calliope in the Meat timeline as well.
• Contemplate Our Navels: Dirk tends to do this a lot, specifically on the nature of story-telling, mediums, canonicity, etc. It's so insufferable that Terezi explodes in frustration over the fact that he cares more about the nature of stories then exploring a new planet.
• Desecrating the Dead:
  • As soon as Tavros lays eyes on Gamzee's corpse, he starts kicking it repeatedly before letting out a Cathartic Scream.
  • During Gamzee's funeral, Yiffany busts open his coffin and kicks it down the church aisle.
• Disposing of a Body: Finding a decent spot to dispose of a major religious figure's body? Sketchy. A trio of awkward teens doing the same while fumbling with the body in the empty high school halls? Slightly less sketchy, but far more amusing.
• Droste Image: This page shows Dirk holding a recursive panel of himself holding a panel.
• Failed a Spot Check: Candy-timeline Jane didn't realize her husband was gone for several days. Played for Drama, Jake comments on it, and it hammers it home for him how little she really cares for him, and is the nail in the coffin that finally makes him take Brain Ghost Dirk’s advice to turn against her.
• Four Lines, All Waiting: Similar to Homestuck, there are several different character groups across the Meat and Candy timelines, and there is no particular pattern in which the story follows them. Some scenes even take place at the same time as others that were seen earlier, making it difficult to determine what's already happened and what hasn't happened yet during a chapter.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: Dirk opens up a suggestion box for the readers to use, noting it's one of the things the comic used to do before it got convoluted. As soon as he gets a suggestion he doesn't like (the page image quote), he slices the suggestion box to bits and declares it a smarter idea to let him write his own commands. It worked for the other guy, after all.
• Immediate Sequel: The Patreon bonus chapters are set in the Meat Timeline immediately after Jane wins the election.
• Improbable Weapon User: This is Homestuck, so that's kind of par for the course. Harry Anderson uses scissors.
• Incest Subtext: Dirk and Rosebot's "game" started with combining their DNA into new species, which both lampshade the implications behind immediately (and is the explicit reason they mess with the genetic codes each iteration until they're unrecognizable). Later, when the stage is set to guide their new species towards playing its version of SBURB, Rosebot sarcastically refers to their work as "starting a family", and their bonding moment in the break before the plan gets put into motion has them leaning on each other and overlooking their species' respective domains.
• Interquel: The stories set in the Candy timeline take place around Candy chapter 38.
• Inventional Wisdom: The ship the story opens on, which Dirk has dubbed the Theseus, contains - among other things - multiple fully stocked drinks cabinets, a movie theatre, and a shooting range. Unfortunately, landing gear is conspicuous by its absence. Dirk is rather disgruntled to learn that the only way to land the thing is a controlled crash.
• Instant Humiliation: Just Add YouTube!: One kid among the crowd that catches Tavros and the Vriskas carrying Gamzee's corpse and streams the scene to YouTube.
• Just Eat Gilligan: The sub-plot involving Jane Crocker would be a lot shorter if the super-powered god protagonists could use their special powers and team up to just kill Jane before she does any more harm.
• Kick the Dog: In chapter 9 Jane, who is already a rapist, xenophobe and a fascist, electrocutes Yiffy.
• Lame Pun Reaction: During chapter 4, Rose and Dirk have a brief digression on meme culture.
  Dirk: Meme-a culpa.
  Rose: I regret everything.
• Legacy Character: Harry Anderson might prove to be one to his father, as John has given him mischievous fatherly advice that "any budding prankster or newly fledged fugitive should know", he's fallen into adventure without really realizing what he's doing, and he's taken on John's original text color, while John's has faded.
• Little Stowaway: Chapter 15 reveals that Calliope has snuck aboard the ship.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: In the bonus stories in Meat, despite Jane winning the election though rigged means, she gets catnapped by Jasprosesprite^2 who forces her to redo the elections and do it cleanly this time without Dirk's help.
• Metaphorically True: Candy-timeline Jane tells Jake that her son has been captured and brainwashed by a couple of rebels who've taken Gamzee's corpse. When we actually see the scene in question, we see that the "rebels" are a couple of non-conforming troll teens bringing the corpse through a human school, and Tavros went along with the plan when he figured out who the corpse was.
• Misery Poker: Generally no sympathy is thrown Tavros' way for his controlled and stifled home life because he's obscenely wealthy. Oddly enough, only Vrissy is able to defend him on this point because all of the current gen descendants are from wealthy families and it's not fair to discriminate against him for that.
• Mood Whiplash: The comic goes right from Dave and Kanaya having a touching conversation about their relationships and issues to snarking about Jake's backside.
  Dave: every serious conversation i have inevitably falls apart into riffing on a casual acquaintances ass
  • April 13th, 2020. 11 years of Homestuck being a thing. John has more or less just tapped Harry to continue his legacy as a prankster. Shit has, as they say, gotten real. And then we discover that Jade has a daughter named Yiffy.
• More Diverse Sequel: Compared to the original comic, this devotes a fair amount of space to trans and gender identity issues, and have several characters that are presented as cis in the original come out as trans or genderqueer.
• My God, You Are Serious!: Harry Anderson thought Vrissy was joking about hiding a corpse. One look at his phone some time later, and he blanks out.
• My Secret Pregnancy: Rose quietly offered to be a surrogate so Jade could have a child, and did not tell Kanaya about any of it. Justified - the pregnancy only took two months because of Jade's canine side, and Kanaya didn't notice the weight fluctuation because Rose was recovering from a mysterious illness.
• Named After Somebody Famous: All the named humans in the Candy universe are named after popular human figures in the old universe, like Harry Anderson, Avril, and Silas.
• Offscreen Romance: Nervous Broad and Hysterical Dame return in a brief cameo, apparently on their honeymoon.
• One-Steve Limit: Vriska Serket gives Vriska Lalonde-Maryam the nickname of "Vrissy" to evoke this trope. It's at least a step up from how they handled her name before, where her name was in parentheses.
• Orphaned Etymology: Many references to modern-day slang and memes are present, despite Earth C having a history separate from that of our Earth.
• Purple Prose: Someday, Dirk Strider will learn to shut up. Today is not that day. Even Rosebot comes across as restrained compared to him, which is quite a feat given what Rose was like back in the original comic.
• Revisiting the Roots: The suggestion box briefly returns, after disappearing near the end of year one of Homestuck. Dirk himself also has this as his overarching motivation - to take the comic's narrative and tonal direction back to where it was before everything went pear-shaped. Of course, this is before he trashes the thing one suggestion in and decides to write his own "narrative" from scratch on another planet, but it's the thought that counts.
• Sexy Shirt Switch: Meat-timeline Dave and Karkat wear each other's shirts in chapter 3 and chapter 12.
• Shout-Out:
  • Hussie gave Bro Strider pointy anime shades without knowing about Kamina, but fans immediately made the connection to another badass 'bro' figure with the style. Dirk takes things full circle and wears a recolored version of Kamina's outfit.
  • Chapter 15 begins with a parody of the Futurama intro, with its take on the Couch Gag saying "Now Demi-Bi-Monthly".
• Smoking Is Cool: The Patreon adventures feature this with Dad Crocker and Diamonds Droog, who are depicted as suave and hardboiled customers while they light up.
• Something We Forgot: Aradia has to be reminded by Davebot that she left Sollux behind in the Candy timeline.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Rosebot retains the faculty for this she possessed in the original Homestuck.
  ROSEBOT: I'd say it's more of an ontological, existential headache, but that already describes basically everything that's ever happened to us up until now.
  ROSEBOT: And also sounds as fake as shit.
• Stylistic Self-Parody: When Terezi commands Dirk to do a typical "[X] like a [Y]" action, he almost goes through with it before Terezi gets mad that he didn't reject it comedically. The other intro trend of doing weird things until the narrative sets them back on track is completely skipped over, instead having Dirk tell the audience he did all of that and just showing the aftermath.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: Rose offered to serve as a surrogate so that Jade could have a child; this meant that, yes, they did have sex. This is downplayed - the affair was strictly physical, and when she finds out, Kanaya is only irritated that Rose lied to her.
• Take Our Word for It: Dirk discusses the trope when he realizes he doesn't have to narrate everything about his life since he's got narrative powers, and later invokes it when he talks about Showing Vs Telling with Terezi. He then narrates that he was put through a lot of silly commands in retaliation, which Terezi lampshades:
  TEREZI: 1M GL4D 1 GOT TO W4TCH 1T 4LL THROUGH TH1S SCR33N TOO
  TEREZI: S1NC3 1 WOULD N3V3R H4V3 B3L13V3D YOU 4CTU4LLY D1D 1T 4LL OTH3RW1S3
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Terezi hauls Rose and Dirk over the coals during chapter 4:
  TEREZI: W3 M4Y B3 1N COMPL3T3 4GR33M3NT 4BOUT D1RK B31NG 4 T3D1OUS NOOKW1P3,
  TEREZI: BUT, N3WSFL4SH
  TEREZI: YOU 4R3N'T 4CTU4LLY 4NY B3TT3R!!!!!!!! >8O
  TEREZI: SL33P W1THOUT SOPOR DO3SN'T COM3 34SY TO MY SP3C13S, 4ND Y3T 1 SOM3HOW M4N4G3D TO SP3ND 4 GOOD CHUNK OF OUR THR33 Y34R JOURN3Y UNCONSC1OUS
  TEREZI: TH4T'S HOW FUCK1NG T3D1OUS TH3 TWO OF YOU 4R3
  TEREZI: 4ND TH3 WORST P4RT 1S TH4T N31TH3R OF YOU H4V3 TH3 D3C3NCY TO DO 4NYTH1NG L3G1T1M4T3LY 4WFUL
  TEREZI: YOU JUST S1T TH3R3 4ND DRON3 ON 4ND ON, T4LK1NG 4BOUT TH1NGS TH4T DON'T M4TT3R 4ND 4SK1NG QU3ST1ONS TH4T DON'T H4V3 4NSW3RS
  TEREZI: W3R3 ON 4 N3W PL4N3T, S331NG TH1NGS WH1CH H4V3 POSS1BLY N3V3R B33N 3XP3R13NC3D B3FOR3, 4ND 4LL YOU C4N TH1NK TO DO 1S HOL3 UP 1N 4 C4V3 4ND R3GURG1T4T3 COMPL3T3LY PO1NTL3SS BULLSH1T
  • In the 4/13/24 update, Dirk fires one right back at Terezi, saying that she acts like she's above their scheming or that she cares about the new planet when she doesn't give "enough of a fuck" about either of the new species they're about to unleash to save them for the Strilondes' machinations. He then also tells her she's on the backfoot, that he's merely allowing her to facilitate the new planet's growth, and that she only wants to make the new session happen to finally do the right thing after multiple personal failures.
• Time Skip: Dirk mentions that three years have passed since the end of the Meat Epilogue.
• Took a Level in Badass: Subverted. Candy-Timeline Rose and Kanaya are rebel leaders with an awesome airship, but they - and Rose in particular - may not quite be the badasses who felled the Condesce all those years ago. Rose in particular can't seem to do much with her powers.
• Wham Line: "Catnapped, Part 2" provides a one-two doozy when Jasprosesprite^2 offers to help Jane understand the pillars of government in a new location.
  JANE: Oh jesus christ.
  JANE: What are these three vaunted pillars?
  JASPROSESPRITE^2: It's simple cherry pie:
  JASPROSESPRITE^2: Women, wine, and song.
  (Jasprosesprite^2 summons a Fenestrated Plane and smashes it against the group.)
  > PROBLEM SLEUTH^2

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