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Homestuck is an online webcomic (originally a webcomic proper, but there is now also a 6000-page comic book version). It ran from 2009-2016. It is presented as a work of fiction in the same universe as Hiveswap, and in particular, Homestuck "takes place in an alternate universe where the beta timeline [aka Hiveswap] was never published." It is also a sequel to a much earlier webcomic called Problem Sleuth, though I've never read that one.

Hiveswap is an attempt to make a video game sequel to Homestuck, like I said.

Homestuck itself is essentially a parody of the epic fantasy genre. (The genre it's actually poking fun at is J.R.R. Tolkien more than anything, but it includes all epic fantasy.) It centers around a motley bunch of teenage protagonists who start by discovering magical mysteries in their hometown, and who eventually go on to travel through an elaborate fantasy world and fight an evil god. So far, pretty standard stuff. But they also find a bunch of quirky characters and RPG-gameplay elements. The characters include a teenage pirate, an alien robot, a time traveler, a strangely androgynous sentient computer, and many other oddities.

Homestuck has a variety of genre-bending and self-aware features, including a narrative that draws on a wide range of literary and media influences, and which includes a focus on four-panel webcomic "comic strips" in which "panels may themselves be words on a page, and words may themselves be letters on a page, etc." It also has a very distinctive and memorable visual style that runs throughout the comic.

One of the distinctive features of the story is that most of the plot elements are designed around a weird sequence of complex computer programs called "the kids' adventure game," which the characters begin to play at the start of the story. The game is actually an in-universe video game called Hiveswap; the characters are forced to play it in an attempt to save their world from danger. Because of this, Homestuck is more directly a work of interactive fiction in some ways than it is a standard webcomic, since the reader too is forced to follow the characters as they navigate their computer game. Homestuck is a huge epic, as I said, and many parts of the story are so complicated that their full significance is only revealed months or years after their initial introduction.

Homestuck is well known for being very, very long, with a lot of bizarre, convoluted plot twists and outlandish characters. It has many sequences and characters that, while funny or interesting at the time, were controversial or downright obnoxious in retrospect, and ended up becoming the stuff of myth (for example, a sequence where the characters explore and bicker about a fictional planet that has a single, giant chess piece that serves as its major landmark). Many long sections are more distinctive and memorable than others, and these serve as landmarks in readers' memories of the story.

Character deaths are a big issue in Homestuck, as many characters are killed off in far-off pages, and the story ends up with a huge body count. The characters are incredibly invested in one another, and remain so despite this, and despite the fact that the story spans years.

Homestuck had a very healthy online fanbase (especially on tumblr) for much of its duration. The creator(s), Andrew Hussie, made a name for himself as a sort of mercenary artist who would go to great lengths to remain mysterious (the characters themselves often allude to this in the story). He stated that he didn't really know where the plot was going when he started and simply made it up as he went along. This was a way of saying that the plot was going in unexpected directions at all times, but it also meant that the story was kind of sprawling, and could be called into question as to whether there was even a consistent plot at all. As you might imagine, this engendered a lot of devotion as well as controversy. (I think there is a sense in which this is an intentional part of the literary strategy used by Hussie in telling the story. This is a big part of what I liked about the story, even though it meant the story could sometimes feel unfocused, long-winded, or silly.)

All this is just my summarized impression of Homestuck -- I'm no expert on it, I've only read up on it a bit. I'd recommend the Homestuck wiki if you want more info. But if anyone has more to add I'd be glad to hear it!

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hey frank- which trait is more fundamentally human: creation or imagination

Imagination. There's little point having a creative faculty if you didn't have an imagination in the first place. There are physical products of creativity (books, movies, paintings, etc.) but imagination is the thing that directly makes those things worth making.

You could imagine a block of plastic, but you couldn't legitimately create a "fantasy landscape" out of it unless you had a strong sense that it had a certain imaginable aesthetic or narrative.

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