Webcomic / Paradox Space

As a Homestuck page, all spoilers related to the main comic will be unmarked. The Paradox Space spoilers will be unmarked too, since it's freely available and there's no barrier to reading it.

There's nothing wrong with an alternate universe where everyone's a little happier.

Those who like [Homestuck] are extremely fond of the characters, yet those characters are trapped — "stuck" if you will — inside a very particular narrative, which itself has been at the mercy of my ability to produce it. So when I think about the future of Homestuck, I envision projects which liberate the things people love about it from the story itself, and most importantly, from my intensive personal effort. So this website is the first major step in that direction.

— Andrew Hussie, introductory news post.

Paradox Space is a Spin-Off of Homestuck, which updated every weekday between 2014 and 2016. A webcomic anthology, it was launched on 4/13/2014, Homestuck's fifth anniversary, as a surprise for the Homestuck fandom, and motivated by the desires of Andrew Hussie to ensure that the world of Homestuck wouldn't be completely limited to what he had the time and energy to create. It can be found here.

Paradox Space itself is composed of short stories with no overarching narrative, by various artists and writers working in tandem. Some of them are "possibly canon" to the main story of Homestuck, depicting takes on off-screen events alluded to in-comic or new tales plausibly set somewhere in the original comic's timeline, while others are decidedly non-canon and set in "doomed timelines", alternate scenarios, or simple silly situations featuring Homestuck characters.

Paradox Space is also available in print collections (with two volumes released), which contain extra stories and material not available online.

The following stories have been told so far (with writers and artists noted):

2014 Stories

• "You Have A Feeling It's Going To Be A Long Day": A silent introductory comic showing John waking up on his 13th birthday. (Andrew Hussie & Zack Morrison (Paranatural))
• "Headed For Stardom": Gamzee hosts a "talent carnival." It's a shame that all the participants are inanimate. (Jonathan Griffiths (Beyond the Canopy))
• "John's Birthday": The kids and trolls go to the zoo. (KC Green (Gunshow))
• "Prototyped": John's first prototyping goes a bit differently... (Zack Morrison (Paranatural))
• "A Fun Day for Bec": Bec uses his powers to play fetch around the world. (Rachel Rocklin & Matt Cummings)
• "Critical Miss": Eridan and Vriska amuse themselves with some role-playing. (Benito Cereno & Kristin Kemper)
• "Con Faire": The cast participate in the Teen Con Air re-enactment contest. (Daisy McGuire (PepsiaPhobia))
• "Deadline Day": The Dersite press struggles with uneventful times. (Matt Boyd & Ian McConville (Three Panel Soul))
• "A Fun Day for GCat": GCat uses his powers to hunt critters around the world. (Rachel Rocklin & Matt Cummings)
• "Quality Time": Dad takes John with him on a shopping trip. (Andrew Hussie & Hanni Brosh)
• "Fetch Quest": A day on the job for PM. (Phil Gibson & Evan Dahm)
• "Summer Sea Fun": Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff do some underwater diving. (KC Green (Gunshow))
• "Hunting Lesson": Nepeta takes Equius on a hunting trip. (Phil Gibson & Adrienne Garcia)
• "Togy Hark Pro Skator": Sweet Bro goes skateboarding. (KC Green)
• "Ace Sleuth Jane": Jane starts an investigation about who ate her sandwich. (Daisy McGuire (PepsiaPhobia))
• "Party Crashers": Some bored Consorts have a tea party, attracting some undesired company. (Rachel Rocklin, Kory Bing & Matt Cummings)
• "Nak Worth": Two LOHAC Stock Exchange traders discuss a business venture. (Phil Gibson & J.N. Wiedle (Helvetica)
• "Suffering Through/For the People": The Signless answers questions from the masses. (Zack Morrison, E.K Weaver, Adrienne Garcia)
• "Pones": Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff like ponies. (KC Green)
• "A Fun Day for Jaspers": Jaspers plays psychotherapist with Rose. (Rachel Rocklin, J.N. Wiedle & Allison Shabet)
• "Killswitch Engage": Equius demands help from Sollux with a computer problem. (Phil Gibson & Mallory Dyer)
• "Hand Made in Alternia": Doc Scratch welcomes the reader to his humble abode. (Phil Gibson)
• "Indemnity Double Reacharound": Terezi and Dave play with scalemates. (Benito Cereno & John Keogh)
• "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse": Rose and Jade's dream selves meet up to explore Prospit and Derse. (Mary Borsellino & Magnolia Porter (Monster Pulse))
• "Her Pale Passions": A drunk Rose meets with Kanaya to study quadrants after picking up a "textbook." (Phil Gibson)
• "Can Town in Trouble": Can Town is threatened by an intruding creature. (J.N. Wiedle, Kristin Kemper, Adrienne Garcia, & Bea Munoz)
• "Night At The 100DSEUM": Equius "kidnaps" Terezi and Karkat. (Jonathan Griffiths & Mallory Dyer)
• "Soul-Fraying Games": It's time for some tabletop gaming with Karkat, Kanaya, Rose, Terezi and Dave! (Alex Rafael & Rennie Kingsley)
• "The Viceroy and the Lady Grimme": Rose and Bubbles are on an adventure together. (Evin Weston & Fin Hickey)
• "Horse Play": Doc Scratch attempts to challenge Andrew Hussie to a game of chess. (Zack Morrison, Jonathan Griffiths & Mallory Dyer)
• "Lalondian Tourism": Kanaya and Terezi explore Rose's Memory Room. (Alex Rofael & Adrienne Garcia)
• "Go Fetch": Jade and Rose are preparing for a role-playing game. (Arden Ripley, Kristen Kemper & Shelby Cragg (Neo Kosmos))
• "The Thirst of Dornamon Gary": Sweet Bro makes Hella Jeff an immortality-granting t-shirt. (KC Green)
• "Hospitality": Gamzee visits Eridan in LOWAA. (Alex Rofael & Mary Cagle (Kiwi Blitz, Sleepless Domain))
• "Mother & Grub": The Dolorosa takes the infant Sufferer under her wing. (Alex Rofael & Adrienne Garcia)
• "Garbage Day": Somebody's got to take out the trash. (Alex Rofael & Incineraptor)
• "Stand-Up Room Only": Dualscar tells a joke. (J.N. Wiedle, Phil Gibson & Adrienne Garcia)
• "Damara": Damara Megido died yesterday. (Allison Shabet, Mary Borsellino, & Tom Siddell (Gunnerkrigg Court))
• "Antiquated Japesterism": Dirk and Jake discuss boners. (Alex Rofael & EK Weaver)
• "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven": There's a meeting at the Felt Mansion. (Andrew Hussie & J.N. Wiedle)
• "A Friend In Need": Feferi asks Kanaya for fashion advice. (Mary Borsellino & Rennie Kingsley)
• "The Mortician": Terezi hosts another scalemate trial. (Hanni Brosh)
• "Secret Sufferer": Christmas, Homestuck style. (Matt Cummings & Phil Gibson)

2015 Stories

• "Lady Grimme and the Red Knight": The continuing adventures of Lady Grimme as she encounters the Red Knight. (J.N. Wiedle & Mary Borsellino)
• "Three out of Five Hats": Dave reviews Karkat's romance novels. (Incineraptor & John Girard)
• "Birds and Bees": Jade asks her grandpa an important question about life. (Matt Cummings & Alex Rofael)
• "Steward of Void": Dave finds himself on Butler Island. (Shad Andrews & Phil Gibson)
• "Star of the Ocean": Aradia goes treasure hunting. (Phil Gibson & Adrienne Garcia)
• "Spritecon": The sprites hold a convention. (Hanni Brosh & Phil Gibson)
• "Relation Shipping": Nepeta offers her services. (Phil Gibson & Rennie Kingsley)
• "Summerteen Romance": The trolls go to summer camp. (Jonathan Griffiths, Zack Morrison, Tauhid Bondia, & Shelby Cragg)

2016 Stories

• "Vrisky Business": Vriska pays a visit to her neighbor. (Andrew Hussie and Mallory Dyer) (Preview online, full version in second print volume).

Book-Exclusive Comics

Comics published in the now out-of-print books. Can be read here.

Book 1

• "Foreword": Andrew Hussie greets the reader, but is interrupted by Spades Slick. (Jon Griffiths)
• "The Morel of the Story": The tale of a salamander farmer. (P. Gibson)

Book 2

• "Foreword": Sequel to the previous foreword. Slick pursues Hussie. (Jon Griffiths)
• "Fiduspawn": Tavros wins a tour of the Fiduspawn headquarters for himself and his friends. (Story by Mary Borsellino, Art by incineraptor)
• "Shop Til You Drop": Jake goes adventuring for Roxy. (Story by P Gibson, Art by Jon Griffiths)
• "Vrisky Business" (Story by Andrew Hussie, Art by Mallory Dyer)

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This webcomic provides examples of the following tropes:

• Alt Text: Some of the comics have this. Not all of them have it, but some may be added at any time. The only way to know when new alt text is added is to regularly check every comic.
• Always Murder: Berrybreath remarks in "Indemnity Double Reacharound" that it's "always murder in this load gaper of a town."
• Anthology Comic: Webcomic, specifically.
• Anime Hair: Played with; in "You Have A Feeling It's Going To Be A Long Day", John lathers his hair with "pixel gel" to give it the sharp, spiky appearance it has in Homestuck.
• Arc Number: 413, the date of the protagonist's birthday, pops up in "Horse Play" as the order number for Hussie's horse-themed chess set.
• Bathos: The story "Indemnity Double Reacharound" features an extremely dark and gritty art style, a story involving a murder... and all the characters are brightly colored dragons with names like "Pumpkinsniffle" and "Berrybreath", odd Alternian words used in a serious way, and one of the characters speaks using slang that feels completely out of place in the Film Noir setting.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: In "Night At The 100DSEUM", the crowning piece of Equius' collection is the Sweati, a gigantic yeti-like lusus frozen in a block of its own sweat, which he discovered during an expedition in the mountains.
• Big "YES!": Eridan's response to Vriska howling, "Me? A cheat?!"
• Bishie Sparkle: Karkat's self-insert in "Summerteen Romance" has this, furthering distancing him from the real Karkat.
• Black Comedy: "Headed For Stardom" opens with Gamzee holding a talent contest. In a room surrounded by the heads of the trolls he's killed. And they're the contestants.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: "A Fun Day for Jaspers" has the young Rose pulling off a tirade so long that this is all that Jaspers (and by extension the reader) can hear.
• Bottle Episode: Most episodes use one setting only.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In "Summerteen Romance," Dave asks whether he and Karkat can agree to the in-universe concept of paradox space sucking, and Karkat refuses in order to avoid making a meta joke about the quality of the comic.
    Dave: can we just agree that paradox space sucks and be done with it
    Karkat: (Looking at the "camera") AND MAKE THIS PANEL EXPLOITABLE?
    Karkat: HELL NO
  • Doc Scratch reads Crowbar's narration in "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven" and responds to it as if they're talking to each other.
• Broad Strokes: Hussie has stated that there are two types of stories in this webcomic — those that are not canon (be they doomed timelines or Alternate Universes), and those that are possibly canon, which would count as this trope. The only stories that are confirmed to be canon are ones that Homestuck proper actually alludes to in some way.
• Brutal Honesty: A mixture of Fantastic Racism and a valid point:
  Vriska: Equius, we never really TALK, do we? We live RIGHT NEXT to each other. We should hang out more!
  Equius: You are beneath me, and we share very few interests
• Bullying a Dragon: Eridan thinks it's a good idea to hit on and antagonize Vriska. This ends about as well as you would expect.
• The Cameo:
  • The crowd in "Con Faire" includes Ms. Paint, Spades Slick, Problem Sleuth, Pickle Inspector and Ace Dick,, Itchy, the Aimless Renegade, Spades Slick, and what could be Bec Noir.
  • A troll drawn to resemble Dammek from the Hiveswap game, can be glimpsed in the second page crowd of "Suffering Through/For The People."
• Call-Back:
  • The Alt Text for the last page of "A Fun Day for Bec" is "GOOD DOG. BEST FRIEND." That's a reference to an early part with Jade in Homestuck.
  • If you look closely on the snowglobe Horuss is given on page 20 of Secret Sufferer, you'll notice it says "Welcome to the Nudeseum".
  • The Alt Text for the first page of "Soul-Flaying Games" is "what's a mom?", calling back to "Suffering for/through the People" when a troll asked the Sufferer the same question.
  • In the one-shot "Nak Worth," one of the crocodiles notes he reads the Enquiring Carapacian, which appeared in the story "Deadline Day." He even calls it a "sleazy rag," which is on the paper's sign.
• Card-Carrying Villain: In "Con Fair," Vriska and Caliborn's team is called the Evil Team. The alt text claims that they also cheated by mind controlling the audience to receive their act the best out of everybody's.
• Cassandra Truth: In "John's Birthday," John tells Dave that the zoo's monkeys have knives. Dave takes this for an attempt at comedy, and berates John for his lack of originality. Of course, John is telling the truth.
• Chain of Deals: The plot of "Fetch Quest," wherein the Parcel Mistress travels from planet to planet exchanging goods in order to barter for a gift to the White Queen.
• Character Alignment: invoked "Soul-Fraying Games" sees Rose assign herself as Chaotic Evil and while Kanaya casts herself as a Lawful Good demoness, much to Terezi's dismay.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: If the Alt Text in "Con Fair" is fully part of the comic, then part of the reason it ended in a Crack Defeat was because Vriska attempted to mind control WV into judging her the winner, and he found out.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: "Quality Time" highlights just how weird Bro was sometimes. Apparently to teach Dave life lessons, he has Dave sit inside a concrete ball pit at a store he frequents. Except that said ball pit is empty, so it's just Dave sitting in a concrete hole in the ground until Bro gets done shopping. He also apparently buys hand-to-hand weapons from the same place he buys his groceries.
• Consulting Mr Puppet: In "Summerteen Romance", Bro doesn't just treat his hand puppet Big Cal like a living person, but acts like Big Cal is his boss, takes orders from him on the regular, and lets himself be browbeaten and intimidated by him. The campers are profoundly unsettled by this.
  Bro: this here's Big Cal. he's my right hand bro, haha.
  Big Cal: BULLSHIT. I'M THE REAL ONE IN CHARGE HERE. YOU WORK FOR ME.
  Bro: haha, you scamp.
  Bro: no but seriously he does own a controlling interest in this camp.
  Sollux: We're going to be murdered in our thleep.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: The titular dog of "A Fun Day For Bec" uses his teleportation to fly round the world grabbing baseballs, playing with frisbees, and enjoying himself; meanwhile, "A Fun Day For GCat" features a cat appearing throughout the world eating birds and killing mice before dumping the rotting remains in some poor person's room.
• Crack Defeat: Lampshaded at the end of "Con Faire," when the win goes to John and Roxy after WV THE JUDGE awards them six billion points for love and heart in "an extremely unconventional Dumbledore-esque move."
• Critical Failure: "Critical Miss" sees Eridan roll a CRITICAL WHALE, which makes brash criticisms of Eridan as Vriska defeats him.
• Curse Cut Short: In '"Critical Miss", Eridan manages to say "Oh shi-" before Vriska goes medieval on him.
• Darker and Edgier:
  • Becquerel's 'fun day' is a global game of fetch. GCat's is a global safari, in which he hunts whatever animal he can get his shiny paws on.
  • "Damara" could be argued to be this for Paradox Space as a whole. It's based on Tomie, a horror manga, and has a lot of genuinely disturbing content (even by Homestuck standards!), to the degree that they actually put a warning on it.
• Deadly Game: Eridan and Vriska's game in "Critical Miss" is one; if Vriska wins, she gets to feed Eridan's lowblood 'slaves' to her lusus.
• Defeat Equals Explosion: In "Hunting Lesson," an imp Equius punches explodes into a grist-raining fireball as it flies into the horizon, though that is a standard reaction of Denizen constructs in the comic proper.
• Don't Try This at Home: The Alt Text for the last page of "Headed for Stardom" warns readers not to put stickers on their eyes when they're cosplaying.
• Dope Slap: "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven" has Crowbar whack Sawbuck on the head with his crowbar after the latter tries to open Biscuits' oven, launching the two a few minutes back in time.
• Dude, Not Ironic: Karkat and Vriska have an exchange like that during "Con Faire".
  Vriska: Define irony........ a bunch of idiots who don't have a chance against me!!!!!!!!
  Karkat: THAT WAS NOT IRONIC AT ALL, VRISKA!
• Easter Egg: Going to a 404'd page causes Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff to show up to chide you.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: In-universe; "Summerteen Romance" ends with everyone living Happily Ever After...except Aradia. Lampshaded by Karkat's future self, who points out how needlessly cruel it was of him to give everyone else a happy ending whilst not only killing Aradia off before the story even started, but also leaving her as a miserable ghost forever (especially considering the fact that, at that point in canon, Aradia was actually the only troll who was completely happy and content with her life).
• Eye Patch After Time Skip: Karkat's self-insert gets one during "Summerteen Romance." We probably would have seen exactly how he'd gotten it if it weren't for Dave, the Knight of Time, getting bored and skipping ahead in the script.
• Faceless Masses: Lampshaded in "Suffering Through/For the People", when the Signless calls on someone from the otherwise-faceless crowd with "Next question. Yes, you with the face."
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: In "Fiduspawn", it turns out that, while regular Fiduspawn can get by with host plushes to reproduce, their breeding queens need live hosts. The shady face of the Fiduspawn tries to trick the main characters into serving this role.
• Fix Fic: "Summerteen Romance," an in-universe, deconstructed example. As Karkat's future self points out, Karkat's attempt and fixing things is more or less desperate Wish-Fulfillment, he depicted everyone getting over their problems unrealistically (and some of them just magically have no problems whatsoever) and Aradia's left as a dead ghost forever, making her part of the story pointlessly depressing (not to mention how disturbing it was that he wasn't giving her a happy ending like everyone else)
• Flat "What": Very, very prevalent throughout "Horse Play" in regards to Doc Scratch's reactions to Hussie's chess shenanigans.
• For Want Of A Nail: "Prototyped" deviates from canon events merely from John picking up an extra harlequin figurine. Indeed, the last page has John and Dave lampshade the fact that they're in a doomed timeline.
• Foreshadowing: In the first two panels of The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven, Stitch can be seen fixing up Eggs' effigy, as it has an open wound on the head. A few pages later, Eggs is shown with blood on his forehead.
• Fungus Humongous: In "Morel of the Story", the salamander farmer finds a glowing mushroom several times larger than he is.
• Funny Background Event:
  • On the first page of "John's Birthday," if you look in the background you can see that Terezi has a birthday hat strapped to her face instead of the top of her head.
  • Also, in the first page in "Prototyped," the captchalogue codes for the cards are "420BLZ" and "8UTT5."
• Gory Discretion Shot: In "Damara," the eponymous girl's death isn't depicted (except through dialogue); all the art shows is her broken-off horn. Given that she's stated to have cracked her head open, this is probably for the best.
• A Good Name for a Rock Band: The alt-text for page three "of Quality Time" remarks that "bogus dad crisis" will be the name of Hussie's new band.
• Have a Gay Old Time: "Antiquated Japesterism" is just one big joke about how "boner" meant mistake back in the 1950s, but has a less PG-rated meaning now (in fact, it would be rated R. For "Raunchy as hell").
• Her Codename Was Mary Sue: Everyone is for the most part in character, but Karkat makes himself super popular and handsome in "Summerteen Romance."
• High School AU: "Damara" sets the Pre-Scratch trolls in a Japan-based high school, with most of the comic happening in the classroom or just off the school grounds
• Hive Queen: In "Fiduspawn", certain types of Fiduspawn are shown to have large queens that implant other beings in order to produce new generations of Fiduspawn eggs.
• Humans Through Alien Eyes: "Lalondian Tourism" is about Kanaya and Terezi misunderstanding their way through Rose's bedroom and childhood, not at all helped by the fact that Rose herself misinterpreted everything her mother ever did, and has relayed those misunderstandings to Kanaya. The two trolls mistake her violin for a torture device, and mistake a photo of Rose attacking a birthday clown as her defending herself from a subjugglator.
• Immortality Inducer: Hella Jeff's t-shirt from "The Thirst of Dornamon Gary" has a drawing that ages instead of him.
• Insane Troll Logic: According to one troll in "Suffering Through/For The People", the Condesce can't be that bad if trolls prostrate themselves before her image each day. As the Sufferer quickly points out, they only do that because the Condesce murders them if they don't.
• Interrupted Intimacy: In "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven," Crowbar walks in on Clover and Itchy "doing a jig;" which is to say, doing a dance that's part of Leprechaun courtship.
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: As an In-Universe Cliché Storm, "Indemnity Double Reacharound" has Inspector Berrybreath narrate this just before his client enters.
• Joke and Receive: Dave's freaky, weird descriptions of troll reproduction are something he pulled out of his ass for want of really knowing. Karkat admits that he's actually "not too far off".
• Large Ham: The Psionic is bombastic in his declarations of loyalty to the Sufferer.
• Lighter and Softer: The vast majority of strips are lighter in tone than Homestuck proper. Yes, including the one involving Gamzee's raving insanity and corpse-mutilation. Eridan, Gamzee, Vriska and Equius in particular all tend to have their darker aspects filed off in Paradox Space comics. Avoided with Jack, who's pretty much the same.
• Literal Metaphor: One of the LOHACSE workers really lost his shirt in a round of trading. And the market is just going to eat Dave alive.
• Marty Stu: Invoked in-universe in "Summerteen Romanace", where Karkat writes an alternate-universe fix-fic that makes himself ridiculously perfect. At the end, he's called out for this by his future self.
• Mama Bear: Do not take or threaten someone under the Dolorosa's care. She will end you with extreme prejudice.
• Medium Blending: "A Fun Day For Jaspers" starts with two still panels, but ends an animated gif showing Rose talking as her speech becomes incomprehensible to Jaspers.
• Mister Exposition: In "Con Faire", John fills this role by loudly explaining the titular contest to the contestants participating in it.
  John: Just picture it, Karkat! Teens from all over competing for best portrayal of the final scene of Con Air!
• Monster in the Ice: In "Night at the 100DSEUM", the crowning piece of Equius' collection is the Sweati, a gigantic yeti-like creature frozen in a block of its own sweat, which he found sealed inside a glacier during a mountain expedition and brought back home after digging it out. It's set free when Terezi, driven past her breaking point by a night spent tasting nothing but sweat, starts furiously hacking at it and accidentally shatters the ice.
• Mood Dissonance: In Homestuck tradition. For example, "Heading For Stardom" depicts a crazed serial killer playing with the corpses of his victims, and is rendered in bright, cartoony art.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The strips' unconnected nature makes this inevitable, although most of them seem to be either comedy-based on light in nature. "Quality Time" goes from a humorous exchange between John and Dave over bro shops to Dave monologuing about being left alone in an empty concrete ball pit for hours in the span of two pages.
  • "Summerteen Romance" is a mostly comedic parody of AU fanfics with Karkat portraying himself as an (invoked) Marty Stu and everyone getting what they want and not dying. Then the penultimate page has his future self harshly criticizing all the Wish-Fulfillment, in a very soul-crushingly depressing way as opposed to the usual comedic arguing that one would usually expect from Karkat talking to himself.
• Mook Lieutenant: The Lich in "Party Crashers" is the most prominently featured of the Underlings and seems to be the "spokesperson" of the group.
• Mr. Fanservice:
  • If "Suffering Through/For The People" is to be believed, the Signless had enough admirers, given that trolls as a species are bisexual, for at least one of them to demand that he take his shirt off during one of his rallies. How they expected him to do that when he doesn't really wear a shirt in the first place is anyone's guess.
  • In "Summerteen Romance", Karkat portrays himself as a muscular hunk in his AU.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Equius lost his horn during a struggle with out-of-control robots. Or after being mauled by the sweati. Depends on the timeline. As of "Secret Sufferer", there's now the possibility that it was sawed off by one of his robots in a sparring match.
• My Little Phony: In "Pones", Sweet Bro is playing with a magenta/rainbow-colored unicorn. Hella Jeff thinks that this means Sweet Bro will want to be the back of his horse costume.
• Mythology Gag:
  • "Killswitch Engage" hides John's ghostly arm amongst the robot horde in reference to a Cosmic Retcon he created in Act 6 of Homestuck. We also learn one of the ways Equius lost his left horn.
  • "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven" sees a reference to Leprechaun charms and the Genesis Frog.
• Never My Fault: In "Damara", Cronus blames Damara not only for his assault on her, but her own death!
• No Immortal Inertia: At the end of "The Thirst of Dornamon Gary", Hella Jeff's immortality-granting t-shirt gets torn, and he instantly becomes the rotting corpse that was pictured on it.
• Noodle Incident: Two in "Secret Sufferer"; Dave apparently pantsed Karkat at some point and there was a 12th Perigee's Eve when Vriska sent everyone doomsday devices. It ended with the thirteenth troll's death.
• Not the Intended Use: In "Secret Sufferer", Karkat accidentally mixes up everyone's Secret Sufferer presents and sends them to the wrong trolls. However, they find different uses for the gifts they got.
  • Aradia gets a yellow dress, which she uses to polish her weapons.
  • Tavros gets a fighting robot intended for Equius, and has fun playing Fiduspawn with it.
  • Sollux gets bike horns intended for Gamzee, and uses them as toys to distract his lusus so he can get some sleep.
  • Nepeta gets the cuttlefish intended as pets for Feferi, and eats them.
  • Kanaya gets a bundle of spider silk intended for Vriska, and uses it to create a pattern on her newest dress.
  • Terezi gets a FLARP manual and uses it to record her coinflips.
  • Vriska gets shipping charts on stone slabs intended for Nepeta, and uses them to club a troll to death who she feeds to her lusus.
  • Equius gets some shurikens, and attaches them to his robots' hands to make it more challenging when he fights them. (He ends up getting part of his right horn sliced off.)
• Number Two: Crowbar discusses this in "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven," who acts as the Number Three to Doc Scratch and Lord English, but since Lord English leaves the gang to their own devices, Scratch is practically number one and Crowbar takes the role of Number Two. What confuses this even more is that each member of the Felt has a number, but it has nothing to do with rank, meaning Crowbar, the practical Number Two, is Number Seven while the Doc Scratch doesn't get a number at all.
• Off the Rails: Terezi sets her game of Dungeons & Dragons from "Soul-Flaying Games" in a dungeon at first, but all the other players object to how stereotypical this is and she's forced to set it in the belly of a dragon.
• One-Hit Kill: In "Hunting Lessons," both Equius and Nepeta kill their prey in one strike.
• Only Sane Man: Judging by "Suffering Through/For The People", the Sufferer was this for pretty much the entirety of the troll race. Even his followers like the Psiioniic and Disciple don't seem very bright.
• Parental Neglect: Bro apparently likes to take Dave to weekend trips to a gimmicky dollar shop, which consists mainly of Bro leaving Dave all alone in an empty concrete pit for hours at a time while he windowshops.
• Parody Sue: invoked Karkat's self-insert in "Summerteen Romance" is cartoonishly handsome, serenely wise and far beyond the influence of drugs. Writing from the future, Karkat points out he portrayed himself this way out of guilt for his own failings in leading the trolls.
• Pokémon Speak: In "Summerteen Romance", while reading Karkat's screenplay, Dave complains about Bro calling himself "Bro" and saying the word "bro" all the time, because he's "not a fucking Pokémon".
• Pun: In "Summer Sea Fun", Sweet Bro makes a deliberately low-effort wordplay on claiming and clams.
  Sweet Bro: A clam! I will "cla(i)m" its peral
• Punny Name: The Sweati's name is a simple portmanteau on "sweaty" and "yeti".
• Political Overcorrectness: Kankri's complaint about cultural appropriation and multiculturalism in "Secret Sufferer" — because trolls also had a gift-giving holiday he believed Dave was stealing from troll culture and
  Kanrki: This s9rt 9f culture sh9uld 6e kept 9nly t9 th9se fr9m wh9me it 9riginated. 9ther cultures simply cann9t understand differences fr9m their own, s9 I'm s9rry 6ut this isn't all9wed here.
  • He discomfort is forgotten when he gets own stocking filled with gifts.
• Private Eye Monologue:
  • "Indemnity Double Reacharound" mixes this with Troll terminology to create an utterly bizarre monologue from Inspector Berrybreath.
  • Crowbar has one in "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven," fitting with his role as an old-school mobster. Later on in the story, Doc Scratch uses his omniscience to read and respond to Crowbar's narration.
• Rage Breaking Point: Terezi reaches hers in "Night at the 100dseum" after having had to endure the taste and smell of sweat for the whole night and ends up unleashing a frozen yeti lusus.
• Ron the Death Eater: invoked Parodied in "Summerteen Romance" with the way Dave is portrayed in Karkat's fanfic. He even has a moustache!
• Running Gag: Apparently, Equius breaking his horn is a constant across all timelines.
• Sarcasm Mode:
  • The Alt Text for "Con Faire"'s first page.
  obviously this comic is 100% canon in every way
  • And for "Night At The 100DSEUM."
  well this isnt ominous at all
• Sanity Slippage: Doc Scratch goes through this in "Horse Play" as his chess game with Hussie goes on. Even The Omniscient can't quite grasp Hussie's complete obsession with horses.
• Scolding the Fourth-Wall Breaker: An exchange begins when Karkat uses Dave's terrible webcomic characters in his screenplay. Dave threatens to sue before Karkat says that his "Geromy" is completely distinct from Dave's "Jeromy." Dave points out that's only a difference of spelling and Karkat screams at him for getting meta. Dave points out he knew the spelling from the script and that Karkat is the one being meta. From there, the argument devolves into cursing.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • In "Prototyped," upon realizing that their timeline is doomed, the kids ditch Jack Noir and go off to watch a movie.
  • "Night at the 100dseum," after unleashing an ancient yeti lusus (and realizing the doors weren't locked), Karkat and Terezi leave Equius to fight the yeti on his own.
• Sequel Hook: "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven" ends with Crowbar off to meet Spades Slick for the very first time.
• She Is the King: Andrew's horse-themed chess set in "Horse Play", if you look attentively at the crowns and the colors of starting positions.
• Ship Tease:
  • "Headed For Stardom" kindly reminds us that yes, Gamzee did violate Tavros' corpse.
  • "Critical Miss" also has some one-sided Eridan-Vriska undertones, which go as well as you'd expect.
  • "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven" shows Crowbar getting quite flustered while talking to Snowman.
• Shout-Out:
  • Dave mentions seals with grenades in "John's Birthday", a nod to a strip in the the artist's own comic that was itself a Shout-Out to Homestuck and featured "John" at the zoo.. Likewise, a strip about a bear with a gun was featured in KC Green's earlier comic, Horribleville.
  • The final plot development in "Con Faire" directly references Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.
  • The company that Hussie gets the horse pieces from in "Horse Play" is Knight-Mare Enterprises.
  • In "Summerteen Romance", Kanaya frequently points out double entendre with "Phrasing!."
    • Camp Sgrub's lake is called "Lake Hooyoogunnakahl."
    • Some of Karkat's poses come straight from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
    • Camp Sgrub is more than a little reminiscent of Camp Campbell
• Silence Is Golden:
  • "Long Day" is completely free of dialogue, introducing Paradox Space's tendency to focus on more light-hearted and obscure stories in The 'Verse.
  • "Fetch Quest" uses the expressive nature of the Funny Animals and PM's determination to tell the story in place of dialogue
  • "Can Town in Trouble" continues the trend of treating Exiles as mutes.
• Sistine Steal: The third pages of "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven" briefly shows a portrait of Lord English as God reaching his hand out to Crowbar, who's reclining like Adam.
• Slasher Smile: Nepeta sports an especially savage one as she ambushes a bunch of imps hosting a picnic.
• Speech-Bubble Censoring: Used in "Summerteen Romance" to describe Tavros' rather... extreme reaction to being propositioned. Originally, the page actually showed his reaction, but it squicked out so many readers that a bunch of speech bubbles containing a humorous description of the imagery were put on top of it.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: In a world with a huge cast spanning billions of years and five different universes, ten out of the 52 stories (85 pages of 281) deal with the three-year journey on the Trolls' meteor, with most of the rest of the focus spread more thinly among the many characters and settings available.
• Stable Time Loop: "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven" sees Crowbar get caught up in a few while trying to assemble the Felt.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • John's and Roxy's performance in the Teen Con Air reenactment contest.
  • "Summer Sea Fun," "Togy Hark Pro Skator," "Pones," and "The Thirst of Dornamon Gary" all display this with the typical Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff flare, with mispelled typos, ungodly art and completely nonsensical humor.
• Sudden Anatomy: Bro briefly gains eyes, eyebrows, and a mouth in this page of "Summerteen Romance", in response to Terezi's Armor-Piercing Question.
• Summer Romance: Parodied in "Summerteen Romance" (it's in the title). A "Romantic Dramedy" chock-full of Summer Campy cliches, it starts off full of ShipTeases (Feferi and Nepeta, Karkat and Dave...). Dave's narrative edits renders most of the romance offscreen, but by the climax Eridan and Hella Jeff did find love across enemy lines during a magical summer at camp.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: In "Summer Sea Fun," Hella Jeff hides inside of a clam at the bottom of the sea without any gear.
• Suspect Is Hatless: "Yes, you with the face."
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: In "Suffering Through/For The People", a poorly-disguised Darkleer asks how susceptible the Signless's movement is to infiltration on behalf "of a friend."
  "A friend who is an Imperial spy...But that's not who I am. I am not a spy."
• Title Drop: In "Quality Time":
  Dave: Bro doesn't really do quality time.
• There Is No Kill Like Over Kill: When Equius goes hunting in "Hunting Lesson," he doesn't pull any punches. Literally.
• There Was a Door: Cans introduces himself this way in "The Inaugural Death of Mister Seven," prompting Crowbar to think "Oh yeah."
• Trade Snark: In "Fiduspawn", the company spokesman at Fiduspawn Headquarters tends to put a ™ superscript in front of almost every specific noun he mentions.
• Twinkle in the Sky: The giant, fat imp that Equius punches in "Hunting Lesson" gets knocked into low orbit just before exploding.
• Unexpectedly Dark Episode: "Damara," which ignores one-off gags and Continuity Nods in favor of a story about sexual assault and a child's death.
• Ungrateful Bastard: In the original comic, Spades Slick wasn't already very friendly towards Hussie (who still tried to save him), but here, in the two book-exclusive "Foreword" comics, he tries to kill him the chance he gets, which leads Andrew to run for his life.
• Unsound Effect:
  • "Con Faire" gives us "stand up".
  • PHOTOSHOP NOISES
• Wall of Blather: In "A Fun Day for Jaspers," the young Rose ends up talking so much that it is shown as a load of words that alternate into symbols.
• What If?: Both in the literal sense ("Stardom": what if Gamzee held a talent contest?) and in the alternate universe/canon sense ("Prototyped": what if John captchalogued three harlequins?)
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • "The Thirst of Dornamon Gary" to The Picture of Dorian Gray.
  • "Damara" to Junji Ito's Tomie.
• With Catlike Tread: Done appropriately enough with Nepeta in "Hunting Lesson." She tells Equius that she will teach him about sneaking up on prey and then immediately leaps over their cover and flying-kicks an underling in the face.

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