Webcomic / HSETAU

Pictured: Karkat Vantas-Maryam and Speid Spriveska.

"The Story About Alien Chess People"

— The comic's Tag Line.

The Homestuck Extra-Terrestrial Alternate Universe (HSETAU for short) is an Alternate Universe Fic of Homestuck and Problem Sleuth. It is created by Consuelo Higdon (a.k.a. Calamity Jane), the creator of Don't Name It. It is set in an alternate universe where the trolls are humans and live on Earth, but the carapaces are extra-terrestrials.

The plot starts when Speid Spriveska (later known as Spades Slick), an alien from the planet Derse, crash-lands onto planet Earth. From there, he is found by siblings Karkat Vantas-Maryam and Kanaya Vantas-Maryam, who take him in. Upon waking up, he finds out he has been taken to the fictional Alternia Trailer Park, the home of Karkat, Kanaya and most of the other trolls. From there, Speid tries to figure out a way to return to Derse and find the remaining members of the Midnight Crew. But first, he has to deal with the residents of the Alternian Trailer Park, and make his way through that human emotion called friendship.

The creator's Tumblr, which contains information on the AU, can be found here.

Tropes found in HSETAU include...

• Accidental Misnaming:
  • Karkat calls Preabori "Peabody".
  • WV calls John "Yob", but this is mostly because Carapacians cannot produce certain sounds and thus WV sounds nasal as a result.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Some of the characters have brand-new examples of baggage loaded onto them as a result of the AU.
  • Karkat had extremely Abusive Parents and Kanaya was favored as the golden child.
  • Slick was jailed, beaten and forced into Derse's super soldier program. He does not think fondly of those times whatsoever.
• Adaptational Name Change:
  • Downplayed with the carapacians. The carapaces speak an alien language, and their names change to reflect the words in their language. But their new names in the comic resemble their old names to an extent. Speid Spriveska is Spades Slick, Problem Sleuth's name becomes Preabori Slúothi, and so forth.
  • A Zigzagged Trope with some of the human character names. Certain characters have their canon names as nicknames (Such as Equius' real name in HSETAU being Arthur) while others are renamed entirely (Aradia is now named Aria, Terezi is now named Teresa). Some characters (Gamzee, Karkat, Kanaya) just keep their names entirely.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: The Midnight Crew are murderous Nominal Heroes at best in canon. HSETAU frames them in a much more sympathetic and friendly light due to the comic's nature as an Alternate Universe Fic.
• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul:
  • The Midnight Crew are ik'ladi— in other words, they're in a polyamorous marriage. The five heroes of Problem Sleuth are ik'ladi as well, and PM, AR and WV desire to be in one together.
  • While there was some Ship Tease between John and Rose in canon, it went nowhere and Rose got with Kanaya. In HSETAU, John has a crush on Rose.
  • Platonic Life-Partners Nepeta and Equius are married in HSETAU.
• Adaptation Species Change: Not only have the trolls swapped around to become humans, the characters of Problem Sleuth are now carapaces in this fic. Team Sleuth and friends were heavily implied to just be normal humans in canon.
• Affectionate Nickname: Aria calls DD "deedee".
• A Day in the Limelight: The fic acts as this for the carapaces, who were originally side-characters in Homestuck.
• Age Lift:
  • Most of the trolls have been aged up to adulthood, with the exception of Karkat. He's been aged down to be 8 years old. Aria and Eridan are still young teens.
  • John, Rose and Dave are all 13 years old like they were in canon, but Jade is 8 years old instead.
  • The adult WK is now an Adorably Precocious Child.
• Albinos Are Freaks: Karkat has albinism and was treated badly by his parents because of it.
• Aliens Speaking English: Zig-Zagged. While some carapaces have a better understanding of the English language than others, their biology makes it so that they can't pronounce certain sounds. In the dreambubbles however, humans and carapaces can understand each other perfectly due to dream logic.
• All There in the Manual: There's a lot of additional content on the creator's blog regarding everything from the official timeline to various details about Skaia, Prospit, and Derse. Some of the timeline has changed since and may be out of date.
• Ascended Extra: In a sense. Mobius Trip and Hadron Kaleido were two extracanonical characters invented for a Homestuck music album. In HSETAU they are not only physically shown, they aided in the jailbreak of the Midnight Crew.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Licorice the dog is scared of Vriska because she (accidentally) ran the former over while recklessly riding her bike.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Slick opens one of Teresa's books and notices it's written in Braille. He doesn't understand what it says, but the letters are the first few lines of the entire Bee Movie script.
  • The comic also has its own conlang that the carapacians speak in-comic, complete with alt-text translations for what they're saying.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Carapaces apparently breathe through their knees.
• Covered with Scars: Karkat has scars all over his arms and chest because of parents' abuse.
• Crossover: With Problem Sleuth.
• Cuteness Proximity: Preabori Slúothi's reaction to Karkat.
  PS: Oh my god is that a child. [...] They are so cute holy shit.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • Before coming to the trailer park, Karkat's unseen parents were extremely abusive to him.
  • Spades Slick was jailed for trying to rebel against the Black Queen. In prison, he was beaten by the guards and forced to witness prisoners wearing prototyping artifacts that forcefully turned them into monstrous soldiers barely capable of thinking. He presumably was forced to wear the prototyping ring too.
• Ditzy Genius: Roxy, mostly due to Alcohol-Induced Idiocy. She is a self-made billionaire who does advanced genetics research, but she doesn't want to buy an x-ray machine to examine WQ and WK because they're pricey, so she purchases an infrared sauna instead. Rose suggests that she should borrow the horse x-ray machine at the veterinarian clinic, and Roxy realizes not only is that a more reasonable solution, assembling the sauna would put them on a fast track to giving WK and WQ cancer.
  ROXY: ROSEY UR A GENIOUS I WSIH I WERE AS AGOOD @ BEING SAMRT THAN U
  ROSE: Mom.
  ROXY: *sniff*
  ROSE: I am a 13 year old child. You're a self-made billionaire whose revolutionary genetics research advanced our understanding of DNA by one hundred years. How could I possibly be smarter than you.
  ROXY: bcuz ur beautyfulllllll
  ROSE: And you're probably drunk.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Karkat's albinism in this AU is analogous to his status as a mutant in Homestuck.
• Dysfunction Junction: Many of the Alternian Trailer Park residents have dark pasts they left behind and/or mental illnesses. Vriska even refers to their friend group as such.
• Funetik Aksent: WV understands the English language, but has a heavy accent thanks to his alien biology. He can't make "n" or "m" sounds and instead turns them into "l" and "b" sounds.
• Funny Background Event: While Aria contemplates a skull, Eridan and PS can be seen fighting in the background.
• Intentional Engrish for Funny: Some of WV's shirts have intentionally garbled English grammar on them. Like one that says "Almost Philosophy of all the Star" and "Who the FUCK is Jegus". John collects the shirts whenever his family goes to Seattle Chinatown because he finds them hilarious.
• Intergenerational Friendship: John and WV, Karkat and Slick, Karkat and the Alternia Trailer Park residents, Aria and DD... the list goes on.
• Mars Needs Women: When encountering him in a Dream Bubble, Eridan suspects that PS is out to kidnap human women for reproduction purposes. He is incorrect in this assumption.
• Mook–Face Turn: AR was an Authority Regulator at the prison where the rebels were kept. He rebelled against the government and helped to stage the jailbreak that broke the Midnight Crew out of prison. According to DD, his actions caused his crop of Authority Regulator clones to be "decommissioned" due to cloning defects.
• Mythology Gag: WV calls John "Yob". While it's to portray that WV isn't used to speaking English, it's also "boy" backwards.
• Only Known by Their Nickname:
  • According to Calamity, "Vriska" is not Vriska's real name.
  • Also according to Calamity, "Eridan" is a nickname (shortened from his middle name Eridanos) and his first name is Joseph.
• Precocious Crush: Karkat has a crush on Teresa, who is an adult while he is a child.
• Promotion to Parent: Kanaya has been taking care of her younger brother Karkat ever since she helped him get away from his Abusive Parents.
• Queer Colors: The first panel of this page features a picture of Nepeta and Equius holding an asexual pride flag and a pansexual pride flag respectively.
• Related in the Adaptation:
  • Karkat and Kanaya are brother and sister.
  • Tavros is Nepeta's nephew.
  • The White King is the White Queen's son instead of her husband.
• Shout-Out:
  • Consuelo has admitted that the major inspirations for HSETAU are the movies E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Lilo & Stitch.
  • One of the balanced aspects is Wheels, the combination between Light and Time. This is a reference to cool and new web comic, a fellow fanadventure that has Wheels as a fan-aspect. John notes that a "rollercoaster tycoon" would have this aspect, as a nod to Jhon's quest being Rollercoaster Tycoon-themed.
  • When John hangs in the air trying to master his Breath powers, WV admonishes him for hanging there like "Wily Kai-Yo-Tee".
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: The 8-year-old Karkat regularly swears like a sailor.

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