All spoilers will be unmarked! You Have Been Warned
> Begin reading excessively verbose document.
A sort of Interactive Comic/Flash game hybrid, Homestuck is the fourth and latest series of MS Paint Adventures, a series of web comics done in the style of old text-based adventure games, written by Andrew Hussie. Homestuck started like the others, with every update prompted by a user suggestion, but it soon shed its suggestion box when the plot outgrew it, and has since become a multimedia thing which has grown to be truly enormous.
A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, 2009, is this young man's birthday. Though it was thirteen years ago he was given life, it is only today he will be given a name!
What will the name of this young man be?
...It will be Zoosmell Pooplord... er, sorry. It will be John Egbert. Our chief protagonist is one of four thirteen-year-old friends—the other three being Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, and Jade Harley—who are fated to play Sburb, a widely hyped multi-player video game with real-life effects. Sburb allows players to manipulate and modify each other's environments in real time in a way reminiscent of The Sims. But as it turns out, the consequences of playing Sburb are significantly further-reaching than they initially appear to be, and what begins as a series of amusing domestic struggles and game-mechanics goofs quickly spirals into a succession of events far beyond the expectations of its participants.
Homestuck began on April 13, 2009, only one month after the end of the highly successful Problem Sleuth. It rapidly rose in popularity for many reasons, primarily for its intricate multi-timeline apocalypse-centric plot, insanely fast update schedule for the first few yearsnote , a visual upgrade from the style of Problem Sleuth, Flash animations and games accompanied by a massive soundtrack, and its incredibly high trope density.
As the scope and scale of the comic grew, Hussie began pausing updates of the comic in order to produce Flash animations, develop Hiveswap, and work on larger chunks of the story at once, including a weeks-long hiatus for the End of Act 5 flash, a year-long "Gigapause" during Act 6, and an eight-month "Omegapause" from July 2015. Homestuck's final stretch of updates began on March 28th, 2016, and the climax of the story finally ended on April 13th, 2016, the seventh anniversary of the comic. However, Hussie also made a credits video
released on October 25, 2016, and eventually The Homestuck Epilogues, which started on April 13, 2019. October 25 of the same year, he released the beginning of an official sequel (so to speak) to the comic, Homestuck: Beyond Canon.
Homestuck has spawned several major side projects, including the Kickstarter-funded Hiveswap, the online anthology Paradox Space, and the multimedia Homestuck 2.0 with eager involvement from Dante Basco. For a full list of side projects, see the Franchise page.
Voice acting troupe Voxus is in the process of dubbing Homestuck, and as of June 2024 the project has finished Act 6 Act 5 Act 2, soon to begin Act 6 Act 5 Act 1x2.
In October of 2017, VIZ Media announced that they had acquired Homestuck in addition to their plans to publish the comic in book form. Webcomic merchandising company TopatoCo had previously attempted to do the same, but ultimately only published the first three acts. As of March 2020, the VIZ book series has reached Act 5 Act 2 Part 2.
On September 27th, 2025, SpindleRoo, a subsidiary of SpindleHorse Toons, released a pilot for a potential animated series featuring Toby Fox as the voice of John Egbert, Colleen O'Shaughnessey (Sonic the Hedgehog) as the voice of Jade Harley, Adam McArthur (Star vs. the Forces of Evil and Jujutsu Kaisen) as Dave Strider, Cherami Leigh (Cyberpunk 2077, Black Butler, and Soul Eater) as Rose Lalonde, and Brandon Winckler (Sword Art Online) as Karkat Vantas.
Note: Homestuck is no longer accessible online in its original form, since Flash has been discontinued and the website has been poorly maintained. The fan-developed Unofficial Homestuck Collection, a downloadable version of the webcomic, was endorsed by the author in 2021 as the least broken way to read Homestuck, but was taken down by the developers in 2025 citing threats of legal action by the author. A mirror maintained by the author is still functional as of August 2025. It also contains the other MS Paint Adventures' webcomics.
After securing the rights to the comic back from VIZ Media, a rebuilt website (still titled homestuck.com, but advertising both it and the rest of the MS Paint Adventures comics) was launched in the old one's place on September 11, 2025, adding requested features like a mobile layout and Flash support through the emulation service Ruffle. This coincided with a relaunch event for Homestuck, where the comic would be rereleased in batches every weekday as more features on the site were implemented. The weekdaily updates would lead to the comic being completed up to the credits on January 9, 2026.
Late-Arrival Spoiler Warning: Homestuck is an enormous, deeply complicated story that features rapid plot developments. Additionally, it features a cast of characters filled with walking spoilers that have become ubiquitous in the story, and a majority of the story's seemingly minor events, themes and jokes themselves constitute or foreshadow what were originally major twists. Therefore, all spoilers for Homestuck have been left unmarked. Homestuck is freely available in its entirety, and there are no barriers to reading. To fully enjoy the experience, it is highly suggested you read the whole comic before visiting any of the following links.note You Have Been Warned. Good luck.
> Contextualize currently-compiled list of common media devices exemplified in Homestuck.
PSYCHE! The tropes for this work have been split alphabetically due to their sheer numbers. Looks like you'll have to visit the sub-pages for the trope listing.- > Nod to established continuity.
- > Investigate now-highly-prevalent spoilers.
- > Recall tonal juxtapositions.
- > Document references to other media.
- > Respond to dramatic turns of events.
> Gather articles of supplemental data related to Homestuck.
> Captchalogue sick beats.> Study cast dossier.
> Be Doc Scratch.
> Weigh in on subjective matters.
- > DO THE AWESOME THING.
- > Engage in confrontational debates.
- > Experience mirthful shenanigans.
- > Inspect burning vascular pump.
- > Document homoromantic affections.
- > Sleuth out internet colloquialisms.
- > Peruse bad dream catalysts.
- > Shed single tear of black liquid sorrow.
> Engage in useless learning.
> Succumb to unfathomable brevity.
> Fondly regard quotations.
> Attempt to understand mind-bending chronology.
> Compile fan works.
> Observe fan-made additions to established sick beats.
> Review unsanctioned storytelling.
> Investigate unfocused predictions.
> Report cranial irritation.
> Take inventory of thermal hull.
> Compose Japanese poetry.
> Distort presented life lessons.
==>
- 2558 days8124 pages14,913 panels817,612 words (incl. 113,319 transcribed)about 282% the size of The Lord Of The Rings, 176% the size of the King James Bible, 125% the size of the Harry Potter series, or 77% the size of A Song Of Ice And Fire (the five books so far)164 Flash updates3.2 pages per day4 hours, 5 minutes, 2 seconds of animated footage29 albumsnote51 Sweet Bro and Hella Jeffs—Anthony Bailey, stats for Homestuck's final year
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