Section I: Introduction and Discourse Analysis

For as long as humans have been alive, tales have been spun to explain the unknown and unnatural. Telling tales and creating stories is something that is intrinsic to humanity and the many tales spun have a great effect on the world today. The most important of these stories is the creation myth. Almost every culture has their own rendition of a creation myth: Hebrew, Myan, Greek, and Norse are just to name a few examples. While detailing how the world was made, that does not mean the culture that created those myths had wholeheartedly believed their myth to be the absolute truth. The creation myths were made as an explanation of the unknown, something that is almost as feared as the dark. These myths, in their varying complexities, all have similarities and trends that tend to be followed. Despite there being no handbook on how to write a creation myth, many cultures come up with similar answers and ideas about what the creation of the world was like.

The internet is something that has greatly influenced, and has been influenced by, the people that use its resources. Homestuck is a webcomic, made in 2009 by Andrew Hussie spanning over 8,000 pages long, that is infamously known by internet residents as: complex, needlessly long, having a devoted fanbase, and being wholeheartedly foolish in nature. I don't wish to disprove any of the negative connotations one may have with this webcomic, as I can recognize its problematic features as a product of its age, instead I wish to argue that Homestuck is a modern creation myth for the modern age. Due to its complexity, the official Homestuck Adventure map breaks the story into (in order of longest to shortest): Sides, Discs, Parts, and Acts (with more Parts and Acts found within the longer Acts). The story of Homestuck follows young adolescents and their journey to create a new universe and the difficulties and trials they face in the game of Sburb via a game breaking glitch, in the form of an unbeatable time demon, that threatens the very structure of time and space.

The community that surrounded the early development of Homestuck consisted of men, video game fans, and internet programmers. Due to this demographic being a large part of the community, early homestuck is riddled with programming humor and nonsensical video game references and the first act is almost entirely a joke about inventory management and data structures. As the comic progressed, more and more people came to observe and get absorbed in the tale being spun. The army of fans grew to be quite large to the point of crashing a well established video and game hosting site, Newgrounds, in under two minutes when the newest page [S] Cascade (Hussie, 1409) was released.

Section II: Coming To Terms

After giving a brief introduction to what Homestuck even is, I feel it is my responsibility and duty to discuss the issues prevalent in this loved and loathed comic. Homestuck's conception was during a time period where “peak comedy” came in the form of racism, homophobia, and ableism. As a result, attempting to read this comic from the very beginning can be quite a painful experience. Many fans of the comic have taken upon themselves to rewrite the offensive jokes and slurs in order to make it more accessible to those uncomfortable with those jokes. As Homestuck aged, most if not all of these jokes died off and were transformed into something many could relate to.

Most of Homestuck’s complexity and mysticism comes from, partially its length, its nontraditional webcomic format. Homestuck is primarily told through one panel comics with chat logs, short animations, animations timed to music, and flash games that have been rendered unplayable due to the discontinuation of Adobe Flash. The large amount of variety in material and density scares off many potential fans, this leads to Homestuck being gawked from the outside with little care to its contents.

At its most basic, Homestuck is a story about four human kids that play a video game called Sburb together and are then tasked with creating a new universe. Sburb is structured in a way that is supposed to help the kids grow into adults and to learn lessons while becoming better people. Mechanics are implemented so that they are rewarded for completing tasks and are given titles should they complete the ultimate quest. The story of adolescents and the clumsy mistakes one makes when trying to make the right choices is relatable and it draws many people in. The characters are shown to make difficult decisions, such as killing an alternate version of themself in order to achieve god-like power (3091). The kids are also forced to bear the burden of saving the space-time continuum due to no fault of their own. Jade, the narcoleptic Witch of Space, is given the near impossible task of bringing all of the Beta Kids (the original four human kids who play Sburb) planets with her when she goes to travel to the new session (3985). The tasks given to the kids by Sburb are meant to help and advance their development. As each kid unlocks new powers and abilities, Sburb challenges them by giving them more responsibilities and stronger enemies to fight against.

A primary plot device in Homestuck is the video game Sburb (or Sgrub for the trolls). The game itself is a self fulfilling prophecy of creation and destruction. The game comes in the form of two discs, a server and a client disc. These discs allow the server player to interact with the client player's actual home and help them escape into their Medium; which is a planet where the main bulk of the client player's adventure will be taking place (250). Each player to enter the Medium is assigned a title in the form of a “godtier” where they will draw most of their abilities and powers from. The players can reach the title of godtier via two methods, each involving death. Another thing players of the game are assigned are “dream selves” on one of two moons that orbit Skia, Derse or Prospit, that is a representation of the player's view of themself (2576). Some players awaken on their moon before the game even starts meaning the players of the game of Sburb are predetermined long before the game is needed to be played.

The conflict of Sburb that puts the game on a time limit is the war between Derse and Prospit, the moons that orbit the main planet Skia. This war is described and depicted as a complex game of chess that gets larger and larger the more players that join or are stuck in an eternal stalemate if the players fail to prototype their Kernel Sprite, an object that functions as a tutorial for new players, before entering the medium (4703). There is a uniqueness to the game that comes from the main villain of Homestuck, Lord English. Lord English was originally the cherub Caliborn, a powerful character who had achieved godteir and became incredibly powerful, defying death and escaping the confinements of timelines. “HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO OUTRUN ME WHEN I AM ALREADY HERE?” (4080-4081) is what Lord English says to the handmaid of Doc Scratch, Damara, who was planning on trying to stop him before he came to be. This solidifies Lord English's role as a master of time holding the capabilities to destroy every universe before it even exists.

The way Lord English is defeated in Homestuck is by pocketing an eight ball and winning a game of eight ball pool. Pool exists as a metaphor in homestuck with an entire grouping of prominent enemies being named after the balls in an eight ball pool. Doc Scratch is even representative of the cue ball. In the final battle, which takes place over a nine minute animation, Lord English gets sucked into a black hole when his eyes are eight balls (8127). The game Sburb holds games within itself that’s recursive in nature leading to complex layers and intense strategy being necessary to win the game being played. There's splinters and fragments of other games all the way down to Sburb's core.

Section III: Entering the Conversation

The beginning of every creation myth starts with chaos and void. There is a distinct nothingness before the gods reach out to create the world. “The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (gen 1:2). Emphasis on the nothing and darkness can arouse the human fear of the dark and unknown, leading to a desire to seek out a light. Homestuck's void is in the form of Jack Noir (the cancer that Karkat created) and The Tumor (a bomb within Skia). Both threaten to destroy the kid’s session and ruin the creation of the universe. The darkness is a threat that is defeated with light. In many myths, that means literal light being created to chase away the endless night. In Homestuck, light comes in the form of the Thief of Light, Vriska Serket and the Seer of Light, Rose Lalonde. Both of these characters hold great knowledge of the game being played and use this knowledge in order to try and save everyone. Vriska steals the luck of her enemies to strengthen her own and defeat them, even going off to try and face Jack Noir on her own (Hussie, 3760). Rose, however, takes a “backseat” approach getting John to remove the tumor from Skia in an attempt to save the session (Hussie, 3043).

Some myths focus on what exactly each god creates or adds to the world while others brush over the creation to discuss the personal lives of the gods. In Homestuck, a blend is given to both ends. The overarching story involves the creation of a new universe to reside in while all throughout the reader gets to see how each character interacts and changes with the people around them. The struggles the character faces when creating the new universe, named after completion “Earth C” (Hussie, Epilogues Meat 2). In order to have a creation myth, you must have characters to play the role of gods. “First the primordial generation of gods Whom in the beginning Earth and Sky bore, And the divine benefactors born from them” (Hesiod 133). In the Greek creation myth, there are many deities meant to embody the natural world. Homestuck also gives names to the abstract concepts in nature. Various characters are given abilities to manipulate parts of the natural world, including but not limited to: time, space, blood, breath, light, and void. The characters of Homestuck are referred to as heroes and are trained to become gods of the lands they traverse. The titles they are given are a reflection of their character and who they are. With the given list of the classes and aspects one can be assigned within a game a Sburb, there are over 160 combinations each class and aspect having an archetype and differing abilities with it.

The end of everything and the rebirth of life is also commonly found within creation myths. Ragnarok is the norse end of the world. “First, there is a winter called the Fimbul−winter, when snow drives from all quarters, the frosts are so severe, the winds so keen and piercing, that there is no joy in the sun” (Anderson, 46). There is always a beginning to the end and in Homestuck the Reckoning (the end of the session) begins with meteors falling onto Skia. The planet will begin to defend itself by teleporting a majority of the meteors back in time to the beginning of the Sburb session on the planet of origin (Hussie, 4705). Destruction is necessary for life to bloom. The reckoning is what kickstarts the recycling process of the universe where the previous one is scraped and a new one can be made in its place.

Homestuck represents an important part of internet culture and can function as a modern creation myth. It has many different traits and tropes that are found across cultures around. Hussie takes many ideas people of the online demographic are familiar with and turns them into a story about a young man standing in his bedroom, playing a video game with three of his closest friends, and creating a new universe to live in.