History Homestuck / TropesMToZ

** Vriska's and Tavros' dead bodies are thrown into Jane's game sprite, yanking their souls out of the afterlife and fusing them together as "Tavrisprite". Their personalities are so irreconcilable that the sprite explodes (sending the two souls back to the afterlife) mere moments later.
** Eridan and Sollux were successfully fused into an Erisolsprite (which spends most of his time flipping people off at random), and Equiusprite is fused with Dirk's sentient AI auto-responder to create Arquiusprite. Feferi and Nepeta were also fused into a Fefetasprite, which had a peaceful life for six months but doesn't last long once Erisolsprite and Arquiusprite start arguing over her.

* RaceAgainstTheClock: Multiple uses, all of them involving specific countdown clocks and [[ColonyDrop lots of really, really big meteors]].

* RainbowSpeak: Aside from color-coded chatlogs -- Often, differently colored words are also converted into animated [=GIFs=] and have a sort of supernatural sparkle to them. Then there's this particularly memorable piece of {{Angrish}}: [[https://www.homestuck.com/story/2263 SHE HAS WHAT!?]]
* RaisedByWolves: All of the trolls aren't raised by their immediate ancestors, but by a random monster called a "lusus" who chooses them after they go through several trials in the "brooding caves."
* ARareSentence: Via Hussie himself on Twitter.

* RiversOfBlood: Karkat's Sgrub BabyPlanet, the Land of Pulse and Haze, is filled with rivers of blood. Fitting for his role as the Knight of Blood.

** Sburb and the incipisphere, naturally. But more oddly, the real world also RPG mechanics in its sylladex system, and post-scratch Earth has many more elements taken from Sburb. Of course, since all the trolls & kids we've seen come from worlds created by Sburb...
** Remember whenever you'd see the kids & trolls talking to someone, how it would show up as a chat log? Turns out they honestly couldn't talk in real life outside of chat-like mechanics until [[https://www.homestuck.com/story/4294 John & Jade reached higher God Tiers]] and [[YouHaveResearchedBreathing earned the gift of gab]].

* RuleOfAnimationConservation: Flash is used for a) exposition via walkarounds in which one interacts with the environment, b) minigames, c) atmospheric detail via music or sound, or d) epic cinematic moments. Andrew seems to like the last usage best; as of late the other three types of flashpages have been greatly reduced. Simple .gif animation, on the other hand, is so common it's not even worth mentioning anymore (unlike in the early days of Problem Sleuth).

* SanDimasTime: Called "circumstantial simultaneity", which is when two events can happen at different times or [[AlternateTimeline time lines]] and can still be thought of as happening at "the same time".

* SeriousBusiness: The name of a website Dad frequents, which focuses on the distresses brought about by business attire.

** Post-Scratch Draconian Dignitary eventually takes to Dad's fashion motif, and forces the entire kingdom of Derse to wear one at the threat of execution (in effect his also causes the Courtyard Droll and the Draconian Dignitary to wear their Midnight Crew outfits). He also puts Dad's 'Serious Business' network back up, but only for Derse. Most of the discussion in the network is about hats, until the Condesce gets angry at DD for wasting money on what he told her was a 'public work project'.

--> '''KANAYA:''' (Whats Liquor)
--> '''DAVE:''' (SHIT)
--> '''DAVE:''' (oh god i never get used to how quietly troll vampires sneak around)

'''uu:''' [=JuST=] WALLS AND WALLS. OF CANDY ASSED TOOTY [=FRuITY=] [=FuCKING=] SHIT. LOADS. OF. TEXT.\\

* TransformationTrinket: The Queens' rings and Kings' scepters. They only work for Carapacians however.

** It seems that [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen the Black Queen]] enforces this trope, as seen when Jack finds himself forced to wear his much-hated harlequin costume.

* SpiderTank: [[https://www.homestuck.com/story/2512 The mobile base]] left at the site of Karkat's home in Alternia is a flattened ovoid with ten crab-like legs, presumably in relation to Karkat's Cruxite Artifact.

* NumberOfTheBeast: Rose's THORNS OF [[EldritchAbomination OGLOGOTH]] [[https://www.homestuck.com/story/1812 cost 666 units of tar to make]].

* TheyDo: Rose and Kanaya get married in the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMZU89jY2j8 credits]].

* TriangRelations: Comes up fairly often, especially with the trolls. Perhaps the "cleanest" example would be Karkat-Terezi-Dave; Karkat and Terezi may or may not have A Thing, Dave and Terezi DEFINITELY had a Thing, and Dave and Karkat are heavily implied to be an item post-retcon.
** On a similar note, there's another between Karkat, Terezi, and Gamzee. As mentioned above, Karkat and Terezi have a Thing, and even though Terezi has chosen Dave by the time they're all on the meteor together, there's nonetheless still plenty of UST between her and Karkat. Meanwhile, Terezi is [[EverybodyKnewAlready "secretly"]] hate-dating Gamzee (eventually causing her relationship with Dave to fall apart), which ends badly, and Karkat and Gamzee have a moirallegiance, which also deteriorates.
** Eridan, Feferi, and Sollux have one of these. Feferi is Eridan's ex-moirail whom he has a red crush on, Eridan probably has a black crush on Sollux (which may or may not be requited), and Feferi and Sollux totally had a Thing, although it was never made clear if it was red or pale.
** Another possible example, hidden in Act 6, consists of Dirk, Roxy, and AR. Roxy, of course, has a crush on Dirk, who doesn't reciprocate. AR is heavily implied to have a crush (or what constitutes as a crush for him) on Roxy. Roxy may or may not reciprocate, but Dirk and AR feel animosity towards each other.

* WrongfullyAttributed: In early ''Homestuck'' there is a running gag about the narrator quoting things and then attributing it to the wrong source. They start out plausible enough if you don't know your literature but quickly turn ridiculous, e.g., when "[[Music/SnoopDogg Drop It Like It's Hot]]" is sourced to "English romantic poet John Keats". Later [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] when the frequent quotes attributed to actor Charles Dutton are actually correctly attributed in-universe. Later done in-universe when a line ''from one of the characters'' is wrongfully attributed to Cherub Shakespeare.

* NoPronunciationGuide: Trolls. Averted, for their first names, at least. Hussie gave pronunciations on his old Formspring account, though he says that he doesn't care if other people pronounce them differently. Incidentally, in several cases, the fans who originally suggested the names have specified pronunciations based on the actual etymology -- and often times they're completely different (Terezi, for instance, is, according to the original suggestion, pronounced tuh-REE-see. Really.)
--> "When in doubt, be sure to pronounce everything in the least affected manner possible, from an American perspective. [[note]]CAR-cat, tuh-REH-zee, GAM-zee, TA-vros (rhymes with HAVE and GROSS), neh-PEH-tuh, eh-QUEE-us, eh-RI-dan (combine names Erin -- n + Dan), uh-RAD-ia, fuh-FERRY, SAW-lux, VRISS-kuh, kuh-NIGH-uh[[/note]]"

%%* SexyWalk: The Black Queen and the Condesce both do this.

** The number two and duality in general turn up a lot. Prospit and Derse, Sollux and all his duality attributes, the trolls' and kids' multiverse, Pre-scratch and Post-scratch sessions, the bifurcation of Act 5... you get the idea.

* WeirdWorldWeirdFood: The trolls, a race of gray-skinned, horned fantasy monsters from planets in an alternate universe to Earth, are implied to make heavy use of insects in their diet as part of their being "not from this world". Elements of their diet include grub sauce, grubloaf (covered with "sweet, tangy mucus"), and tuber paste.

* NumerologicalMotif: The number two and duality in general. It's. Freaking. Everywhere. Prospit and Derse, Sollux and all his duality attributes, the trolls' and kids' multiverse, Pre-scratch and Post-scratch sessions, the bifurcation of Act 5... you get the idea.

* MeteorOfDoom: A major element of SBURB. The moment the game starts, the race is on to get into the medium before the meteors wipe out your home planet. This is ironic considering John discussed his interest in the meteor disaster film ''Film/{{Armageddon}}'' within two hours of the first meteor impacting his house.

** Sprite prototyping affects creatures inside the ''Sburb'' game, directly determining the appearance and abilities of those who wear the royal rings. The most striking example of this influence is the transformation of Jack Noir into [[EldritchAbomination an almost omnipotent demon with wings, tentacles and (later) a dog's head]]. He became the most powerful and scary antagonist of the webcomic [[DiscOneFinalBoss before we met Doc Scratch.]]
*** [[PlayingWithATrope Playing with]] in the case of the Draconian Dignitary. For a while, he gets the Queen's ring, making readers wait with interest and horror for his transformation. However, due to the specifics of the gaming session, it is impossible for him to get physical changes. He still gets almost infinite power though.

** [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] and {{Inverted|Trope}} in the case of cherubim. While the normal life cycle of cherubim includes transformation into winged creatures and temporary transformation into giant snakes, Caliborn in one universe and Calliope in another became omnipotent beings, but at the same time lost the ability to transform. Caliborn was still going through several life phases though, including the one [[AndIMustScream where he was trapped in the doll's body.]]
*** The life phases of Caliborn themselves can be considered as such, since they mean gaining more and more power and are accompanied by enormous physical and mental changes. One of the most significant moments of the webcomic was the transformation of [[TheChessmaster Doc Scratch]] into [[TheBrute Lord English]], which differ from each other so much that it is even difficult to consider them as the same person.

* {{Mukokuseki}}: All human characters in the traditional racial sense, also extending to every character in the comic in terms of physical characteristics in general. [[http://mspandrew.tumblr.com/post/15937434515/predictably Hussie has explicitly stated]] that every character is meant to be physically ambiguous in every way, stating that their physical characteristics are effectively up to the reader to interpret as their personal headcanon. The big exception is Hussie himself:

** He's also stated that one reference to Bro being white was a mistake that he put in before he'd firmly established the character or his role in the story as Dave's father, so the intention was not to give implications of Dave or Rose's ethnicity through that line, to say nothing of commenting on Dirk.

* MagicFeather: Pretty much everyone creates something that seems to give them magical powers. These are revealed to merely focus their nascent abilities.
* MagicIsFeminine: While supernatural abilities are ubiquitous and the extent to which "magic" is real is heavily debated in-universe, the Classes thematically associated with magic, the Witch and Sylph, have very feminine God Tier costumes and only female characters have been seen to hold them.
* MagicKiss: This is a SBURB game mechanic. If a player dies (and if they have an intact dreamself), they can be revived if another player kisses their corpse within an unspecified time limit. If time runs out, the wounds propagate to the dreamself, killing them as well.

** Sprite prototyping affects creatures inside the ''Sburb'' game, directly determining the appearance and abilities of those who wear the royal rings. The most striking example of this influence is the transformation of Jack Noir into [[EldritchAbomination an almost omnipotent demon with wings, tentacles and (later) a dog's head]]. He became the most powerful and scary antagonist of the webcomic [[DiscOneFinalBoss before we met Doc Scratch.]]]]

** [[PlayingWithATrope Played with]] and {{Inverted|Trope}} in the case of cherubim. While the normal life cycle of cherubim includes transformation into winged creatures and temporary transformation into giant snakes, [[spoiler:Caliborn in one universe and Calliope in another]] became omnipotent beings, but at the same time lost the ability to transform. Caliborn was still going through several life phases though, including the one [[AndIMustScream where he was trapped in the doll's body.]]

* MagicAIsMagicA: A concept central to the game and the strip itself; everything works by rules, from the mechanics of the game, to the various powers the kids develop and the methods of obtaining them, to the rules around time travel, dying/resurrecting, creating creatures and universes, etc. Whatever extraordinary things happen in Homestuck, there are hard and fast rules around them. Even when the rules get broken, which is rare, there's usually a good reason.
* MagicOrPsychic: The psychic powers of the various troll castes are a normal and accepted part of life, and are purely genetic. Magic, however, is power lent to whoever is willing (and foolish enough) to make a DealWithTheDevil with a demon or EldritchAbomination, and is either dismissed as fake or seen as utterly terrifying.
* MagicPotion: When Jane first enters LOCAH, she encounters Gamzee, who offers to sell her an array of magic potions whose claimed effects include healing, bestowing luck on the drinker, making the drinker stronger, making someone else fall in love with you, and so on. However, the "potions" are nothing more than the bottled blood of trolls who died earlier in the comic, and have no effect outside of tasting disgusting.
* MagicRealism: There is an element of this in the way that no-one seems particularly surprised when Sburb allows you to manipulate other people's houses. Other fantastical elements of the world (particularly the gamelike ones) go unmentioned and unexplained. On the other hand, the existence of magic ''per se'' is realistically controversial.

* UnresolvedSexualTension: Many examples, but probably the biggest in the series is Karkat/Terezi. The two of them have "a thing" and EveryoneCanSeeIt, get loads of ShipTease together, and very obviously do have feelings for each other to some degree, and yet they never officially become a couple at any point during the story. Though this is downplayed post-retcon, where neither of them seems particularly interested in getting together anymore.

* VoidBetweenTheWorlds: The Furthest Ring functions as this.