The rise and end of the webcomic Homestuck

The early rise of Homestuck: How a webcomic found its fans

The webcomic “Homestuck” by Andrew Hussie, was first published in April 2009. It was so popular that fans made music, fan art, and cosplays about the series. Conventions were also popular amongst the fan community between the mid early 2010-2016s. The most common thing to see at conventions was seeing groups of Teen-adults cosplaying as ‘trolls’ from the beloved webcomic, being talked about in tumblr, forums, twitter, etc, as well as seeing animations and fanart being made by artists that heard or read the webcomic. 

Early era: Beginning of Homestuck (introduction) 

Homestuck begins with four kids in different locations. The kids all get a copy of a game, which affects the universe of the kids in different locations. The pages to go to the other page were clicking ===> and it would change the panel of the pages. After the showing every four kids, there would be acts when a chapter finished.

Then act six shows a whole different parallel universe of twelve trolls. The parallel universe involved time travel and characters were able to cross different universes. All characters were able to get god tiers (classpect) by their roles on personality. Even fan artwork was made into the webcomic as flash animations for the lore. There were crazy events happening in the comic like two fantrolls that were in and got killed in the next panel, merch, and events in real life. The webcomic has about 8,000 pages to read.  There is also flash animation and music that shows off the places or characters and what is happening around them. 

Population of the Homestuck fandom social media, conventions, etc.)

After act six, it was very popular in Newgrounds to post about each update that would happen in the webcomic. The Newgrounds website would crash after updates to Homestruck. The fandom of Homestuck kept growing in Newsground, displaying  fanart, cosplays, and fanmade merch.  Homestuck is also very popular on Tumblr.

Eventually when Homestuck reached its prime era, Homestuckies would be at conventions. The most popular characters that would be most common to see were the twelve trolls. There would be panels for Homestuck and Promstuck and people would do things that happen in the comic.

Around July 2014, a Tumblr account held a convention, it was named DashCon. It was held by just a few teenagers, but an estimated 300-1,000 people came to the convention. Disaster happened – the only thing at the convention was just a one ball pit and chairs. 

Rumors spread amongst the Homestuck fandom, including of a cosplayer taking a sharpie bath, bathing in sharpie ink and rubbing alcohol to dye their skin grey.  This story mostly spread around 4chan and tumblr, which led many conventions to ban Homestuck. According to Fanlore, it was alleged rumor and still has not been proven nor debunked yet.

Other questionable incidents were the bucket spit, where a group of Homestuck cosplayers were in a panel and playing as their character. They passed around the bucket for the person to spit in and pass it around. Another rumored incident is when it comes to Karkat Vantas cosplayer (Cancer zodiac sign), people would throw buckets to the cosplayer, causing them to get hit on the head, due to a reference in the comic. 

End of an era (Homestuck ending)

On Homestuck Day in 2016 (April 13, the day the series began publishing) after seven years of publishing, the webcomic officially ended. The last thing was showing off John Egbert, one of the main beta kids, in a room and then the outside of the sun saying “Thanks for playing!” and fading into pitch black. The Homestuck community went crazy seeing their beloved webcomic ending and showing crazy plots of the story. But the fandom still lives on.