Homestuck Sharpie Bath

Event
Event:	A Homestuck cosplayer is reported to have dyed her skin gray in a hotel bathtub with sharpies at Anime Expo
Participants:	Homestuck Sharpie Bath
Date(s):	Between July 1st and 4th of 2011 (allegedly)
Type:	Fandom Occurrence
Fandom:	Homestuck
URL:
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The Homestuck Sharpie Bath is an alleged fandom occurrence in the Homestuck fandom that happened at Anime Expo in 2011. That year, the convention was held in Los Angeles, California from July 1, 2011 to July 4, 2011, which gives a more specific indication of when it was said to have happened.

The veracity of this story has been called into question over the years, and it has become somewhat of a fandom urban legend.

The Original Post

Though the story is purported to have originated on 4Chan, the earliest surviving versions of this story are reblogs dating to early 2012 of a post by now-deactivated user phantom-shadow. The post reads as follows:

So,

via a recent reblog, I found out that the story of my friend’s hotel room had circulated far and wide across the internet. May I just say that this story is completely true and I was there to witness the bathroom. The post was made on /cgl/ but neither of us circulated it back to tumblr because we tend to not want to connect the two sites.

I’ll repost the story and then go into details after.

The story goes, as posted by my friend and experienced first hand.

Room with friends for Anime Expo. They have a few stragglers to makeup for last minute drop outs in the room. They don’t know one of the girls to well but they need the money. Girl IS probably where the term Hambeast originated as well as a few other words. (See: Weeaboo, japanophile, fucking retard) We’ll call her Tarry. We get to the con Friday night and Tarry is 3 hours late. (This wouldn’t have mattered but we had to pay at check in and she hadn’t paid yet).

Get settled in. She throws her stuff all over the room and proceeds to start yaking about her new favorite thing. Homestuck. (A forward, I don’t mind homestuck itself, but I hate the fandom.) Saturday rolls around. Tarry is cosplaying a troll from homestuck. (The one with the red eyes and the Libra symbol.) She locks herself in the bathroom. “I need to get into my troll makeup! Don’t come in!” 2 Hours later she still isn’t done. There are 2 people in the room with Trinity Blood costumes, and my self and my friend have makeup that takes at least an hour to apply. Plus we all still need to shower. (Not that our costumes automatically take priority but 2 hours, really?) We notice a funny smell coming from the bathroom. Door is locked, and she wont let us in.

15 minutes later we start to get really suspicious. Friend decides to shimmy open the door. Her purse and valuables are in there and she needs to go. Get door open. Tarry is sitting in the bathtub, naked. The bathtub is filled almost half way with what we later found out was 70% alchohol and sharpie dye. Bottles and sharpies everywhere. It’s all over the walls. On the tile. On almost all the towels. On several articles of clothing and bags in the bathroom. What she says?

“I was going to clean it up!”

BITCH YOU TRIED TO DYE YOURSELF GREY IN A BATHTUB.  We kick her out of the room. She pays the $700 dollars in damage fees. She gets skin poisoning/damage from her stupid stunt. Fucking Homestuck fans.

That’s the story as was posted. To clarify, it was one of those situations where my friend needed people in her room desperately because people had dropped out and we all know how expensive hotels were. They had known the girl from a prior convention and of course she seemed sane enough but things just went progressively downhill as the convention went on.

People have been saying that one can’t get ink poisoning from Sharpies, and while you actually can, the other thing was that she had used a mix of sharpies and 70%  alchohol to dye herself in. Along with alchohol poisoning, over exposure to the substances combine can produce various negative effects on the body.

I was called about the situation and dropped by my friends hotel as they were moving stuff out. The whole hotel room reeked of sharpies and alchohol. There were hand prints and streaks of grey/black sharpie residue everywhere and they had kept Tarry there to take down to the hotel staff to report the incident and have her pay for the damages.

So yeah. That’s the story. It happened. I’ll try to dig up the picture of the hotel bathroom if I can find it to post up because damn. shit was redonk.

The moral of the story is to not be such a fucking idiot and think before you act.

/April out.

https://cancerously.tumblr.com/post/19022310014/homestuck-sharpie-dying-horror-story

The original post links to another post from another now-deleted tumblr user, legdisabled. The contents of this post appear to have been entirely lost. The earliest attempt to archive either post on the WayBackMachine show that they had been deleted by March of 2016.

Veracity

If the sharpie bath ever occurred, it is unknown what ultimately happened to the cosplayer. Some have purported the individual to have died from alcohol poisoning, while others say that there were no lasting harmful effects. Regardless, no one has ever come forward with solid proof that this alleged incident happened nor has the promised photographic evidence emerged.

Over the years, it has been speculated that the post originated on 4Chan as a rumor made to damage the already negative opinion many had of Homestuck cosplayers.

An investigation by YouTuber Funk McLovin, outlined in a January 2024 video essay ascertained that there was no concrete proof that the incident happened. However, in a way the story can be seen as meta truth in that it "epitomizes the reputation of the Homestuck convention going community." At the time of the circulation of the original story, after all, young and inexperienced Homestuck cosplayers had gained a negative reputation for acts such as getting improperly applied body paint everywhere, throwing buckets at people, and passing around a bucket to spit in (video footage of the last exists). Ultimately, it can be thought of as a false story, but one that did have tangible impact on the community.

Legacy

Redbubble user FeralFoxKid has released a logo design inspired by the sharpie bath that people can buy on shirts, stickers, greeting cards, and mobile phone cases.

The Etsy shop SimplyMadeForYou also sells keychains based off the event.

Presumably in response to this event, the term "Sharpie Water" emerged by January of 2013. According to Urban Dictionary, along with referring to the sharpie bath incident, an alternate universe of the term had emerged.

Also can refer generally to ANY 'bad' or embarrassing Homestuck fan- fans who are rude to non-Homestucks, take things to their far extremes, misunderstand and twist the comic, apologize for the villains and try to excuse their wrongs, harangue people to read, and force their fandom down others' throats. Anyone who skips to Act 5 for the trolls is a sharpie water.

BluhBluhHugeWitch on Urban Dictionary, 11 January 2013 https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sharpie%20Water

Fan Reactions

I feel like the meta-truth of homestuck fans (specifically con-goers but the fandom at large too) being insane is very real. There's video evidence of so many unhinged things taht've been done, like the large group spitting in a bucket inside a restaurant. That being said, I personally wouldn't have it any other way. You have to be just a little crazy to enjoy Homestuck, and stories like the Sharpie Bath exist as both cautionary tales and a means of conveying just how far some people will go for Hussie's demon-comic I would also like to add that the "original" post cited (the cgl thread specifically) seems very much like an outsider trying to disparage the fanbase as a whole using hyperbole. The constant reinforcement of "Fucking homestuck fans" and "I hate the fanbase" really sounds like someone who just hates that Homestuck was popular at the time and wanted to get other people to hop on the bandwagon

@temporalCaster, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OSxbEhLlh4

Honestly the whole story has the same energy as the "Oppa Homeless Style" story, in that it is blatantly fake and made up to just further incite malice against a group the internet has deemed cringe enough to feel justified in bullying. Also it has a bit of Jeff the Killer-esque flair for the unrealistic, ala the sharpie and alcohol bath to make grey skin compared to being lit on fire while soaked in bleach and vodka resulting in paper white skin.

@lordskeletor481, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OSxbEhLlh4

As someone who's reaching the decade mark of being a homestuck fan, this really did open my eyes to how we treat ourselves and fellow fans. I remember being insecure for YEARS and whenever I started talking to someone about it I'd have a whole opening like "Ok I know it sounds bad and some of the fans suck but PLEASE consider..." and I realize now that was unfair.

Anything that's popular is gonna have crazy outliers. We shouldn't feed into the misconceptions and misplaced hate around fellow fans and the media we enjoy.

Tldr: Vriska fans, im giving you another chance

@spacesoda4863, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OSxbEhLlh4

If this were to have happened, its far more likely that it was a SINK full of the sharpie and alcohol. Which could explain the likely more minor health problems, and the 2 hour length of the event. Perhaps the bath wasn't FULL of the alcohol and they kinda just rolled in it like a gas station hotdog on those rotary cooker things.

@crusadingcomrade8873, 2024 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OSxbEhLlh4

See Also

• "The Homestuck Cosplayer Who Dyed Her Skin With Sharpies" by lzzzyzzz (archived version)
• "SHARPIE BATH." by Funk McLovin