A Brief History of Homestuck

Video Essay
Title:	A Brief History of Homestuck
Creator:	Sarah Z, co-written by Lady Emily
Date(s):	April 13 2021
Medium:	YouTube Video
Length:	2 hours, 12 minutes
Footage:
Fandom:	Homestuck
Topic:	The history of Homestuck and its fandom
External Links:	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohFyOjfcLWQ&list=PLTwEKlomd1T-IpJn_NBmvQGuXGPmEgRMt&index=5&t=4061s
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A Brief History of Homestuck is a 2021 video essay by Sarah Z and co-written by Lady Emily. It explores the history of the webcomic Homestuck, the fan community that grew around it, and the continuations of the franchise such as Hiveswap, The Homestuck Epilogues, and Homestuck^2: Beyond Canon.

Topics Discussed

Early History

• The history of MS Paint Adventures and its forms
• The creation of the webcomic Homestuck by Andrew Hussie, the first installment was published online on April 13, 2009
• An overview of the plot and format of the story
• Early fan contribution to Homestuck's test via the MSPA forums

The Explosion of the Fandom

• Act 5 and the introduction of the trolls in 2010
• Reasons for the popularity of the trolls: varied, distinct personalities for readers to relate to and simple designs, simple yet iconic designs leading to cease of cosplay, creating fan art, and of creating ocs (trollsonas).
• Culmination of the act in [S] Cascade, which crashed Newgrounds, the MSPA website, and Mega Upload with the amount of people trying to access it
• The end of Act 5 Act 2 as the end of a golden age of Homestuck after which the fandom became a lot more divisive

Fandom Culture

• Culture of fan creativity (specifically focusing on Homestuck animatics and fan songs)
• Update culture (the hype surrounding new additions and fan culture surrounding it such as the tumblr blog MSPA Prophet, which accurately predicted the timing and size of updates)
• Memes (which were often incomprehensible to outsiders) such as a post about Homestuck as a metaphor for the Obama administration, jokes about buckets, and the popularity of the soft drink Faygo
• Infamous reputation of fans, specifically due to behavior at conventions-- generally being perceived as loud, annoying, and immature kids and cosplay mishaps (inexperienced cosplayers getting gray body paint everywhere, the Homestuck Sharpie Bath incident, spitting into bucket at a restaurant)
• Fandom controversies
  • Race of the Homestuck kids (who are racially ambiguous and vocal audience of fans who would get angry at fans who interpreted the characters as poc, which created a hostile environment for fans of color), which was particularly amplified by the "I feel so CAUCASIAN!" Panel in Act 6.
  • Some characters such as Kankri (whose personality was a parody of social justice warriors as he took offense to everything) and Damara (portrayed as a perverted Japanese schoolgirl who spoke in Google Translate Japanese) were seen as rude and offensive to fans at the time.
  • Ship wars, specifically involving shipping quadrants
  • Discourse surrounding the highly controversial character Vriska Serket, which resulted in quarantine threads in the MSPA forums to fight about her character as well as the meme Vriska did nothing wrong.

The Homestuck Kickstarter and Hiveswap

• By 2012, Homestuck had grown into a media empire with money made through sales of music and merchandise.
• Hussie launched the kickstarter for a Homestuck adventure game (that would eventually become Hiveswap) on September 4, 2012. It would be a story focusing on a new cast of characters in, though other details were not given though not much else was needed to excite the fandom. The goal was $700,000 with an estimated release date in 2014.
  • The goal was met within the first 2 days, ultimately making $2.5 million dollars from thousands of backers. Two fans contributed $10,000 to the kickstarter for the perk of having their fan trolls incorporated into the comic.

• Very few updates were given over the next few years, the studio The Odd Gentlemen was originally selected to develop the game, but this fell through (for debatable reasons) and the game was moved to be produced in-house by What Pumpkin.
• Discussion of the rumors and allegations as to why the development of the game under The Odd Gentlemen fell through
• Connection between Homestuck and Undertale by Homestuck composer Toby Fox (which led to fannish migration between the two groups)

Omegapause and the Decline of the Fandom

• July 2015 to March 2016: Homestuck went on a long hiatus known as the Omegapause, which combined with disillusionment over Hiveswap development occurring at the same time, led fans to drift away from Homestuck.
• The end of the hiatus also coincided with the shutdown of the MSPA forums. The forums and the content within were never recovered, and the only surviving material is accessible through the Wayback Machine. This didn't destroy the fandom, but Sarah Z compared the way the forums were supposed to be temporarily down only to never return as analogous to the way widespread interest in Homestuck gradually petered out in the absence of new content.
• Reception of Act 6, which was going on during the Hiveswap development and hiatuses

Accessibility Issues

• October 2017: Viz Media announced to be producing printed versions of the Homestuck comic (and digital versions of these) along with taking over the Hiveswap property and management of the Homestuck brand & website (which became Homestuck.com and not MS Paint Adventures); this changeover started to make hyperlinks within the comic unusable and rendered parts of the comic unreadable. Viz also worked on a mobile site, which ended up resulting in further accessibility issues.
• In July of 2017, Adobe announced that it would be ending support for Flash in 3 years. This provided a major obstacle to the accessibility of Homestuck as this program was instrumental in the creation of the comic, threatening the lengthy flash animations and interactive elements such as mini-games within the comic being lost. This led to efforts to preserve Homestuck, which have been viewed as having mixed results.
• As a result of these events, it is now a lot harder for new fans to read and get invested in Homestuck and for older fans to revisit the comic. Though, there are other alternatives that exist, for instance the fan-produced The Unofficial Homestuck Collection.
• While Act 1 of Hiveswap was released in 2017, the game has yet to be completed. In 2018, What Pumpkin restructured and started to focus on a series of shorter games called Friendsim with Hiveswap production being scaled back.

The Homestuck Epilogues (2019)

• Departure from Homestuck in several notable ways: text-based instead of incorporating images, first Homestuck property not to feature Andrew Hussie as the primary author
• Whether the epilogues are canon is debatable (fans were presented with there three different options: a candy route, a meat route, and a third route to just ignore the epilogues altogether)
• Many fans were left angry and dissatisfied by the epilogues

Homestuck 2: Beyond Canon

• Unexpectedly announced in conjunction with a new website and a Patreon
• Return of illustrations and the suggestion box (the latter of which was abandoned almost immediately)
• "Official Fanonization" - made by former fans under Snake Solution Studios LLP with concepts and approval from Andrew Hussie and What Pumpkin
• A sequel directly followed the epilogues and provide closure for both timelines
• Not funded by Viz Media (unlike the rest of the properties), but the Patreon. Patrons would receive bonus content.
• Sarah Z states that Homestuck 2 is "bad" and has "barely any plot progression."
• There was not much enthusiasm for the project, and production eventually stalled.

Reaction

Legal Threats

Hussie and staff at What Pumpkin were angered by the video, allegedly even prior to its release. One issue brought up against the video was the use of a 2020 document titled "The Hiveswap Fiasco" and of a 2021 document titled "More on the Hiveswap Odd Gentleman Debacle" both by blogger Giovanni on his blog GioCities. These articles are both critical of What Pumpkin and staff of the company have branded Giovanni as a "stalker" (though no specific evidence has been given to validate this allegation).

Sarah Z announced the video on April 13, and noted that it was under review from YouTube "for hours." Prior to the video's publication, Homestuck^2 writer Ayesha Farah tweeted, "will someone watch @marysuewriter's video and tell me how braced for harassment and death threats i should be." Another creator involved in Homestuck^2, Kate Mitchell, also spoke out against the video, tweeting rather aggressively, "I wish all giovan_h a very choke on a big fat dick and every YouTuber who uses stalker shit for views a very die" and "also cis women with Opinions about bad trans representation go to hell after they die."

Once the video was released, Aysha described the video (which only spent about 30 minutes discussing the controversy) as a "hit piece" produced "without talking to anyone in the studio." This is strange, as Sarah, Giovanni, and others noted that What Pumpkin is notoriously difficult to get ahold of for comments. Also, Sarah did present What Pumpkin's side of the story by incorporating the report of IGPD.

Aysha further appears to have attempted to link the video to the oppression of queer people and people of color, stating, "anyway homestuck's team is now majority queer and poc, so i hope sarah z is cool with like. the sort of shit that comes down on us literally ALL THE TIME."

Around this time, Mitchell posted, "I really truly wish these youtubers dead" which was the only tweet from this backlash that appears to have been deleted.

Both Giovanni and Sarah were harassed over the video after its release. Sarah received information from What Pumpkin later that day that prompted her to post a note stating that she had been informed that one of the sources Gio spoke to may have been "dishonest and misrepresented or treated speculation as fact." She did not change the videos contents. In the evening, the Homestuck Kickstarter also sent out its first update concerning Hiveswap in years. Sarah received legal threats over the video from What Pumpkin, resulting in the creation of a follow-up video essay, "Homestuck Sent Me a Legal Threat, And Then it Got Worse."

The legal threat from a Cindy Dominguez at What Pumpkin stated:

My name is Cindy and I’m President and CEO of What Pumpkin Games. We at WP received your contact from Sarah Z after an associate spoke with her about the Homestuck video she uploaded today on 4/13.

We were disappointed to learn that a member of your association published a video that promoted speculative, false claims about our company from a known malicious actor that could potentially cause us to incur significant financial damages.

She promoted these claims without seeking any comment from What Pumpkin prior to publication. What’s more, when [Homestuck Writer], a creative director at our company, reached out in multiple attempts to contact her following the publication of the video, she not only ignored our representative’s communications, Ms. Z chose to make a public post disparaging our representative by name. She has since deleted the post, but has not made any apology to our representative.

We finally managed to get in contact with Ms. Z many hours after the publication of the video through an associate who is not formally employed by What Pumpkin. That person was able to clear up the disinformation that Ms. Z shared in her video, and we’re glad that she appears to be amenable to issuing a correction now that she has seen proof that the documents she was promoting in her video contained false and libelous information.

All of this could have been avoided had she simply requested a comment from the primary source before publishing inflammatory speculation about a sensitive legal settlement. However, she indicated that her sponsorship with Audible prevents her from taking down or re-editing the video even with our mutual agreement that the content warrants correction.

We understand that Ms. Z is very young, and her irresponsible, unethical journalism is the result of ignorance and not active intent to damage our company.

We also recognize that the defamatory content in question is a small part of the video, and we are not seeking changes to any other segment unrelated to the matter of these false claims. Nevertheless, that small, thoughtlessly included segment as well as her choice to link directly to libelous documents in the video description poses an enormous financial and reputational risk to our company.

We are not seeking compensation and will not take legal action provided that an acceptable correction is made immediately. We consider a text clarification below the video, a Twitter post, or any other form of retraction that does not involve either taking the video down or re-editing the video to correct the defamatory material to be unacceptable. Ms. Z must also publicly acknowledge on all platforms that the original video contained disinformation and take responsibility for her lack of diligence in researching this video.

We’re hoping that by getting in contact with you that you can convey to Audible that it is in the best professional and legal interests of all parties to allow a re-edit of this video to remove the false content. Ms. Z’s large platform has already forced us to invest significant time and resources into combatting the disinformation she chose to spread. We may need to pay thousands in legal fees in the process of reviewing the necessary documentation related to our settlement, so this is not at all trivial to us. The damage she has caused is already massive and irreparable, so we’d like to emphasize that we consider preventing further harm to our company to be a grave and urgent matter.

We look forward to your timely response.

-Cindy Dominguez

email from Cindy Dominguez (President & CEO of What Pumpkin Games) https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2021/06/30/the-sarah-z-video-fallout/

Standard Broadcast LLC (which runs the streaming service Nebula and represents Sarah Z as well as other YouTube creators) responded:

Cindy,

I am sorry for taking so long to get back to you. I needed the extra time to respond to your condescending and, in my opinion, defamatory email with the appropriate professional tone.

You mention an unrelated third party getting in touch with Sarah, and I have confirmed that to be true. That person (“Mr. X”) asked to remain anonymous. Mr. X did offer supposed first-hand knowledge regarding The Odd Gentlemen’s actions and omissions. However, Sarah has not received any independent proof of Mr. X’s statements. Feel free to share any documents related to the matter in question, and I am happy to pass them along to Sarah.

Although Sarah was under no obligation to do so, she posted the relevant statements from Mr. X in a pinned post beneath her video and removed the link to the second Gio article. I think that adequately gives the non-TOG side of the story—which was itself included in the video already—further visibility and served as a thoughtful and adequate response to the new information raised by Mr. X.

Frankly, I don’t understand why you care about statements made about TOG. Weren’t they the developer before What Pumpkin took over? Are you claiming now that there were untrue statements made specifically about What Pumpkin in the video?

You refer to a settlement agreement that you have to pay lawyers to analyze. I assume that it is a confidential settlement with some third party related to development of the game. I don’t know what the terms of that settlement are, and I fail to see how that is relevant here. Surely the settlement agreement doesn’t make you responsible for Sarah’s independent reporting?

Although content creators represented by Standard are responsible for their own content, Standard is not afraid to bring its own resources to bear to assist creators in fighting off frivolous threats. We take the rights of creators very seriously, and we are of the opinion that Sarah has handled your accusations with class and poise. I think that you should be satisfied with the actions Sarah has already taken, and I recommend that you drop the matter. If you want to further share your side of the story, YouTube remains a platform accessible to all. But I consider this matter closed, and I have encouraged Sarah to avoid any more engagement on this topic.

Sincerely,

Dave

email from Dave Retrieved from https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2021/06/30/the-sarah-z-video-fallout/

Andrew Hussie (who admitted they had not watched the video in the first place) then decided to get involved. This resulted in an unproductive back and forth chain of emails that essentially provided no useful information. One redditor described this exchanged, as recounted in the follow up video as "an extremely long email correspondence with Sarah in which he repeatedly fails to answer exactly what part of the video WP found objectionable or deny the claims against WP but he does say some former employees were shitty people who took it out on the company after being fired."

Eventually, What Pumpkin sent an apology to Sarah and the subject was dropped. The aforementioned redditor summed up the entire controversy as "Basically just a normal day for Hussie and [What Pumpkin]."

In November 2021, Hussie told a writer for Polygon that they felt Sarah Z's video missed "missed important contextualization that he had intended to provide to the YouTuber in a conversation." In the same article Hussie reflected on the Hometsuck phenomenon and fandoms in general, "I came to regard that fandom [Homestuck] as being pretty close to a cult. Not formally, and nowhere near as dangerous as more conventional cults can be, but close enough to draw meaningful comparisons. And that’s about how I’ve come to regard all fandoms now.”

Several years after this fiasco, a Reddito by the username of Real_Rouxls_Kaard found a factual inaccuracy in the original video, which meant that technically What Pumpkin might have actually been able to sue over inaccuracy in the video (though at least one other user pushed back as to whether this was actually grounds for a lawsuit). However, they apparently did not seem to know who had worked for them.

TLDR: Daniel Kelly, a Kickstarter backer, reveals that WP had been quietly trying to raise more money for Hiveswap back in 2016. Gio, a blogger, cites Kelly in his article about Hiveswap's development. Note that he does NOT call Kelly a contractor, but notes that WP asked him for money. Then Sarah Z, a YouTuber, makes a video about the history of Homestuck, and talks about Hiveswap while citing Gio's article. For some reason, she states that Kelly was a "CONTRACTOR FOR WP". Later, WP threatens to sue Sarah for inaccuracies in her first video, but fails to catch onto this mistake. This means WP did not even know what people it had employed in the past. Sarah makes a 2nd video about the legal threat word salad WP had sent her.

Real_Rouxls_Kaard, c. 2023 https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/15o5pj2/apparently_there_was_a_mistake_in_sarah_zs/

Fan Reaction to the Legal Threats

After releasing her “History of Homestuck” video, Sarah Z recieved legal threats and a chain of completely bewildering, self incriminating emails from Andrew Hussie. She also recieved a bunch of separate messages from former WP staff who recieved completely awful treatment from the company that Hussie’s own comments confirmed, unbeknownst to him.

Bear in mind, Hussie approached her and said he would answer her questions, then answered none of her questions, and completely shittalked all of his former employees.

Hussie also never saw Sarah’s video. In fact, she recieved the threat before enough time passed for anyone to watch it.

Hussie confirmed he didn’t credit people because he didn’t like that they shittalked him.

If you ever cared about Homestuck, or if you enjoy watching a large property become a complete dumpster fire, give this absolutely stunning video a watch.

sometipsygnostalgic, July 1, 2021 https://sometipsygnostalgic.tumblr.com/post/655465439537889280/after-releasing-her-history-of-homestuck-video

This limp noodle of a legal threat really provided a huge amount of information about the childnessness of those involved in WP that definitely corroborates one side in this "he said she said" issue. Actual attorneys don't send passive aggressive emails like this, they send very direct statements saying that they will bring you to court and make it clear why (they think that) they will win in a case against you unless you agree to their demands. What they sent was so painfully sent by some whiny bully who felt they had the clout to pretend they had a leg to stand on. And yes, there is more to the story but stubbornly insisting that "you don't know the whole story!" while failing to actually provide anything concrete is pretty maliciously deceptive (especially since one of the few things they did provide details on [uncredited artists] they essentially confirmed?).

Cheezemansam, 2021 https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/ob1u1f/comment/h3lmadw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Having looked at Gio's blog as well as watched the video, I mean, I've never had a lower opinion of literally every person who had executive decision-making privileges with this franchise.

What's ironic is that Hussie talks about being toxic.

AFTER the CEO sends an insulting and degrading legal threat to Sarah Z, whilst not having seen the video for which the legal threat is being issued.

Toxic, motherfucker? What Pumpkin is PUTRID. Kate and Aysha's horrendous responses (including screenshots of Aysha demanding a targeted harassment campaign on Gio - IRONY ALERT?????), Cindy's Disney villain level legalese and dear old Hussington themselves, playing a game of cat and mouse with the facts because Sarah didn't want to blindly accept their narrative.

Wow.

The What Pumpkin gang exudes toxicity, and it appears they are so hung up, collectively, on thinking their feelings being hurt justifies their ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE behaviour, that they have become too deluded to realize that they are the assholes. And they're taking the thing they love down with them.

goosies-moosies, 2021 https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/ob1u1f/comment/h3nu9x3/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

This is just what Homestuck is now. It's not a webcomic, not a video game, not a novel, it's this.

There is no truth, no great revelation here; just bitter confirmation of suspicions, and a few more aggressions thrown on top.

Homestuck didn't end in 2016, it ended when it's creators gave up on it. In a way, this is the real Homestuck Epilogue.

DispenserHead, 2021 https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/ob1u1f/sarah_z_made_a_video_about_the_legal_threats_the/

I actually went on Twitter to see people's reactions bc I was curious about the state of the fandom nowadays, and it's shocking how many people are defending WP. Like....people with Marxist right in their bio going to bat for a company that screwed over workers. The writing team could murder someone on camera and they'd still claim they were just being harrassed.

sylvan1s, 2021 https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/ob1u1f/comment/h3m1bl1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I think it might be time to put this fandom to rest. It's not even fun drama anymore, it's like seeing vultures fighting over a dead body. Like, the fandom is basically dead, who cares anymore, just let it rest

MinskAtLit, 2021 https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/mr21vm/comment/gukxnxy/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

General Fan Reactions

I'm not going to speak to Sarah's character or past videos, but the latter third was a salient indictment of the way people at the top of this fan community have been acting. I agree with basically the whole thing.

Funk McLovin on Twitter.

so Sarah Z's Homestuck video is... really bad? wow that was really bad and extremely disappointing

Callidora on Twitter.

She didn't really say much bad about Homestuck itself aside from the pretty unanimously agreed bad parts like Jade's dick and the dancestors.

AnAverageTransGirl, 2025 https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/1hy9rle/comment/m6fpe4c/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

I remember watching it when it came out, it was a good video basically on the history and what prevalence it had on the internet at the time. Anything “negative” she said wasn’t untrue and was just painting a broad picture of how much of a shitshow the brand got handled near the end of the comic moving into the mid 2010s.

EntropicEmbrace, 2025 https://www.reddit.com/r/homestuck/comments/1hy9rle/comment/m6fr0tr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button