Let Me Tell You About Webcomics: A New Postmodern Genre
by Paige Gelsimino
One of the themes that Homestuck challenges is good vs. evil. There are many characters in Homestuck that do things we could classify as evil, and yet the narrative makes it difficult for any of them to be seen as simply evil. The reader gets to see the good in the character or at least the reasoning behind it. One of these characters is Vriska. Vriska causes thousands of her species to die, Terezi to lose her eye sight, Sollux to kill his girlfriend, Aradia, Tavros to lose the use of his legs, and eventually murders Tavros. She should be considered evil for all that she's done to her friends, but the reader is also shown why she did all of these things and we see that it’s mostly the troll society that shaped her like this. Vriska leads thousands of trolls to die because her guardian needs to feed, she does awful things to Terezi, Sollux, Aradia, Tavros, because of this vicious cycle of revenge that they’ve fallen into, that is totally acceptable in their society. And through it all, Vriska still cares about her friends, whether they consider her a friend or not. In an alternate timeline the reader sees that Vriska, in an attempt to confront Jack, gets both Terezi and Karkat killed. Filled with rage and grief Vriska fights Jack and dies as well. Even when she does die, she continues to work to find a way for her friends to win, even if it’s through questionable means. Though Vriska could easily be portrayed as evil, as one of the bad guys, she isn’t. Homestuck does not make it easy for the reader to view it in black and white terms.
Another example is the theme of war in Homestuck. A large battle was fought between the White Queen and the Black Queen’s army. The reader sees Wayward Vagabond standing in a river full of the blood of the fallen. He thinks to himself, “Your RAG OF SOULS begins to soak in the BLOOD OF THE FALLEN. You suppose it could be poetic? No, instead you think it is just sad" (Hussie). Usually, even in stories proclaiming the evils of war, this would be turned into a poetic moment. Instead it is completely turned around, not making it grand or epic or poetic, just sad. People are dead and you’re alive. There’s so much wrapped up into this statement and it grips the reader in a way that the normal theme of war doesn’t.
Another theme Homestuck challenges is love in the romantic aspect. Usually in stories there are love interests that do or don’t come to pass and more recently in popular fiction the reader is presented with a love triangle. For example, the love triangle between Bella, Edward, and Jacob in Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight. There’s Bella who has two boys that love her, Edward and Jacob, and she essentially has to choose between them for one of them to be the person she stays romantically involved with. In Homestuck there is a similar situation with three of the characters, Jake, Jane, and Dirk. Jane and Dirk are both in love with Jake, and after Jane stays silent about her affection, Jake ends up choosing Dirk. They date for a while, but their relationship ends up collapsing. This breaks away from the typical love triangle theme, with none of them in a romantic relationship. Later in the story, Jane and Dirk are discussing how the whole situation went, giving out reasons why it went wrong. Jane proposes that “Or maybe we just don’t need anybody. As anything other than friends, I mean" (Hussie). In a culture where a romantic relationship is seen as the “be all end all,” this is a big statement. It’s telling the reader that there doesn’t need to be a relationship here, Jake doesn’t need to choose to fit the love triangle theme, maybe all they needed was to be friends, which is a different type of love but still love and still just as powerful.
Homestuck overall doesn’t have a specific message or theme it’s trying to convey. It goes over many themes and messages and many of them are relevant to many people. Good and evil, war, and love are all discussed but with how many characters it has there are that many more messages the reader can get out of Homestuck. As a webcomic it doesn’t feel the need to stick with anything specifically, it can explore as much as it wants. That’s the beauty of it being a webcomic and not a print comic, the options are limitless.