< Homestuck

Homestuck/Tropes P-R


>LAND OF PAINT AND RUMORS

You wander between the concrete and graffiti-clad walls of the Land of Paint and Rumors, hoping to rendezvous with some tropes beginning with P, Q, and R. Maybe you'll play the LOPAR stock exchange while you're here; a bit of time travel and you should be rolling in the Boondollars.

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  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Karkat is simply the best there is at these. He gives one to John in Act 5.2 that almost completely justifies his hatred and vitriol at John up to that point.
  • Freudian Trio Plus One: Complete with psychological reasoning!
    • John: Ego
    • Rose: Id
    • Dave: Superego
    • Jade: Unconscious Mind
    • Their Act 6 counterparts also fit these roles.
  • Painting the Fourth Wall: The names of The Felt are always in lime.
    • Along with Snowman and Doc Scratch (and later Lord English's) names are green except for the o (black, white, and an animated pool ball cycle, respectively).
    • Later, Dave starts complaining about it when Rose talks about THE TUMOR and the Green Sun.
      • Then again, they aren't physically speaking; it's an internet messaging program, so obviously he would notice that she's typing in different colours.
    • Bro physically destroys Dave's Strife battle commands not once, but twice.
    • Terezi ended up scratching Homestuck Disc 2. Since then, animations and panels have been notably glitched-looking. After the "scratching", Doc Scratch takes over as narrator once more. For our convenience, he changes the site format to a green color theme, so we could read the white text. That was nice of him. While this is happening, the audience is treated to the interior of Felt Manor/Doc Scratch's house, as seen at the top of the page. Eventually, Spades Slick walks in, and proceeds to give Doc Scratch the hitching post drubbing we saw earlier.
    • Kanaya's description of Rose here could be seen as this -- specifically, the part about her skin being "white as a ghost".
  • Painting with a Forsaken Child: Turns out that Alternian paint sets use the blood of culled wrigglers.
    • Although, From a Certain Point of View, it's a form of recycling. You wouldn't have to specifically kill any yourself; just head underground and find the ones that were so pathetic they couldn't even survive until pupation (the ones culled by nature, if you will). You'd have to beat back a few predators here and there, but if you made it to the surface, you already did that once.
  • Palmtree Panic: The Land of Light and Rain, except it doesn't have palm trees. There is plenty of sand and water, though.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise: Even the protagonist thinks so.
  • Parasol of Pain: BARBER'S BEST FRIEND, which kind of has to be seen to be believed.
  • Parasol Parachute: An imp absconds off of John's roof via umbrella.
  • Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Spoofed.
  • Paste Eater: The Wayward Vagabond compulsively eats any green things he can find. Examples include two green crayons, a chunk of radioactive material, and the Uberbunny's eye.
  • People Jars: Here.
  • Percussive Prevention: Rose stops Dave from embarking on the suicide mission to deliver The Tumor to the Green Sun by beaning him with a ball of yarn.
  • Perfect Pacifist People: What trolls used to be like in their original reality, before Doc Scratch made the Axe Crazies we know and love today.
  • Persona Non Grata: John's Dad is banned from the Cirque du Soleil for unspecified reasons.
  • Perverse Puppet: Not only is Dave's brother's fascination with puppets a little off putting to begin with, he's been playing mind-tricks on Dave (and the audience!) to make them think his favorite, Lil' Cal, is actually alive (he is, or at least used to be).
  • Phosphor Essence:
    • The troll's inverse version of vampires, "rainbow drinkers", glow a bright white.
    • When Rose goes Grimdark, she gains a black glow to show her immense power.
  • Piggy Bank: BOONDOLLARS go into your CERAMIC PIGHOLLOW.
  • Plot Armor: Played straight. There are several loopholes that allow dead characters to come Back From the Dead, like being resurrected as their dream selves that live on Prospit or Derse, reaching their God Tier, time travel, alternate timeline duplicates, and prototyping a Kernelsprite with their dead body.
    • Due to the plot element of Weird Time Shit, readers often have knowledge of conversations or actions that may or may not have happened yet, depending on the perspective. Most notably, Karkat trolls the kids backwards in time and thus has plot armor that lasts until his first conversation with them has taken place (from his perspective).
  • Plot-Relevant Age-Up: The journey across the Yellow Yard will take three years according to Jade... coincidentally putting her and John at 16, same age (or close) as the kids from the post-Scratch universe, as well as the age they would be if time in the comic flowed normally compared to the Real World. With the timeline weirdness that occurs in the Furthest Ring, it also happens Rose, Dave, WV, and the Trolls.
    • The Post-Scratch story starts two and a half years later than the Pre-Scratch one did, and so the Post-Scratch kids are two and a half years older, meaning that the Running Gag of trying to give them a terrible name on their 13th birthday can't continue. Despite this, they look identical to the kids and trolls sizeways in their "symbolic form", though look noticeably older in "hero mode"
      • Given that the rest of the protagonists are traveling for 3 years, the Post-Scratch Kids may well end up younger than their counterparts by the time they meet.
  • Poe's Law: Dave's Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff webcomic is described as "a webcomic ironically maintained through a satirical cipher" with "legions of devoted fans, most of whom are totally convinced" of his sockpuppet persona's sincerity.
  • Portmanteau: Given the sheer number of random places and concepts requiring some form of new terminology, there are pretty much an endless assortment of these to choose from, many of which one might not even notice at first.
  • Possession Implies Mastery: As soon as someone ascends to God tier, they have instant, perfect control over their powers.
  • Poster Gallery Bedroom: John actually collects movie posters, most of them from bad movies.
  • Potty Emergency: Dave undergoes one after a cleaning mishap sends his toilet crashing through the ceiling.

[[color:red:TG: its like fucking christmas up in my bladder here<br/> TG: and where do i find my toilet<br/> TG: oh look here it is<br/> TG: amputated in my room<br/> TG: gagged with a towel like a fucking prison hostage]]

  • Power Gives You Wings: A consequence of Dave's sprite prototyping when putting on one of the queen's rings.
    • Less explicable is the tendency of trolls to sprout fairy wings when they ascend to God Tier. This apparently has something to do with the trolls' insect-like life cycle.
      • Word of God says that God Tier transformations are based on a species' ideal form. Since trolls have a metamorphic life cycle, their ideal form is a fairy (the butterfly from a caterpillar, so to speak). Since humans don't have a similar ideal, they just get cool clothes.
  • Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: Here.
  • Precision F-Strike: Rose and Jade don't swear that often, but each lets loose an "oh fuck" after wrecking their client player's plumbing.
    • Rose has another here, after shit gets real for real.
    • Equius, master and enforcer of blue-blooded grammatical politesse, lets one slip.
    • The Sufferer let out the Vast Expletive, an F-bomb so mighty that it became one with the fabric of the universe itself.
    • Also Feferi from the second Alterniabound flash:

Feferi: <span style=" color:

  1. 77003c;">NO. You )(ave lost ALL RIG)(T to use fis)( puns FOR-EV-ER. I revoke your fis)( punning licence, as well as our fronds)(ip!

Eridan: <span style=" color:

  1. 6a006a;">don't take that tuna vvoice wwith me princess

Feferi: <span style=" color:

  1. 77003c;">W)(AT T)(-E FUCK DID I JUST SAY???
  • Precursors: Apparently the Trolls to Earth.
  • Preemptive Declaration: Miss Mail Lady gets a letter from Jade about where to go; however, the actual location is considerably less damaged than the picture illustrates.

"But you guess it's straightforward enough, even if the drawing is somewhat inaccurate... (next panel) Oh no!"

    • Snowman does this in the Midnight Crew intermission.

"Hold still, Slick. Something in your eye."

  • Product Placement: For the author's own merchandise.
  • Promoted Fanboys/Fangirls: Andrew takes some art submissions to use in flash updates, and the entire sound team arguably qualifies.
  • Prophecy Twist: It was initially believed that Sollux's prediction that all the trolls would die was fulfilled, for the most part, by the death of their Dream Selves. It turned out that Dream Self deaths didn't count, and a real self death that led to a God-Tier ascension didn't count either; the only deaths that count are final Killed Off for Real ones. Currently there are four trolls left, and Kanaya is planning to reduce that to three.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Trolls. It's not evident until they get off of Alternia, though. John even compares them to Klingons.
  • Pseudo Crisis: "I won't be coming back." It's just her dream self won't be coming back, actually; she herself will be fine. Counts because that page was where Andrew stopped for the day. Though Kanaya seems to be worried regardless. Oh the irony...
    • John's dramatic impalement in the chest on this page is a lot less worrisome for those who remember that players who've reached the God Tiers can only die heroically or justly, and getting sucker-stabbed by the Big Bad is very unlikely to fall into either category. Or, who remembers that we've seen a panel that shows John, in his godhood, that takes place after that battle.
      • Confirmed much later by Doc Scratch's narration.
    • Sadly, Rose does not seem to remember John's immortality. After watching Bec "kill" John she goes into Roaring Rampage of Revenge mode, nuking the whole castle and dying in the process. So she (as her dream self) actually dies on her mission... except she does so on her Quest Bed inside Derse... which means she ascends right out of the Green Sun, together with Dave.
    • What's that? The Courtyard Droll is going to blow up the Battlefield?! Oh, wait: according to Rose, that will actually allow the Battlefield from the pre-Scratch Earth session to come in and finally allow the kids to win. Looks like it doesn't matter that Jane couldn't prototype her Kernelsprite.
  • Psychic Powers: Several of the Trolls have psychic abilities. Apparently this is not unusual on Alternia. Jade "gardenGnostic" Harley also appears to have "psychic" premonitions, but it's just because her dream self woke up early.
    • Also, she seems to be able to talk to her stuffed grandpa corpstatue.
    • Vriska has Telepathy/MindControl powers. She lost her "VisionEightfold" in her accident, but regained it upon dying and being replaced by her dreamself. Additionally, she has since gained supernatural luck which she obtains by stealing it from enemies. She uses Pstandard Psychic Pstance (s), reaching Psquirms if she's doing something particularly difficult.
    • Tavros also uses Pstandard Psychic Pstance to become a Beastmaster.
    • Sollux has "Vision Twofold," and Karkat is Properly Paranoid that he can read minds, but he has only expressed strong Telekinesis, levitation, vague precognition and partial resistance to mind control. There's probably some relationship to his mind honey-induced Superpower Meltdown Eye Beams. His dream self expresses powerful flight and the ability to blow up an exile command terminal he mistakes for voices in his head. His powers obviate his STRIFE SPECIBUS.
      • Blood Caste generally applies more to the resistance to the Glub (Feferi is damn near immune to it while Sollux is bleeding from every orifices). Aradia is at the bare bottoms of the blood caste but she also happens to be among the most resistant to Vriska's mind probe. On the other hand Equius is fully aware that Vriska can reach into his mind but he averts it because he implemented a countermeasure in Vriska's robotic arm in case she did that.
    • Aradia has Soul Power from the dead and is introduced with a spectacular display of Mind Over Matter. She has a little bit of Mind Control and speaks with ominous certainty about the future of the game. It gives her a Ouija FETCH MODUS.
    • Feferi's lusus is a horrorterror that threatens to emit a psychic shockwave that will kill all trolls. Black King gained this power through prototyping.
    • Psychic Block Defense: Vriska informs us that it's hard for her to dominate other psychics and the strong minded; so Aradia and Terezi are out. She consequently controls Sollux whose vision twofold is apparently fair game half the time into killing one and Tavros into indirectly blinding the other. So two of her three greatest displays of power have been on a fellow psychic; Tavros must just be really Weak-Willed.
      • Word of God is that higher blood castes have much greater psychic resistance, but virtually no psychic powers. Tavros is low caste, so he's a relatively easy pushover.
    • Gamzee's bloodline, according to Word of God, can plant ideas into the subconscious minds of trolls lower on the hemospectrum. All of the trolls. The system is kept in order because of psychic influences on nearly all of the population.
  • Psychic-Assisted Suicide: Vriska has killed countless Trolls with her mind control.
  • Punched Across the Room: Dad decking a Shale Imp through a wall.
  • Pure Awesomeness: The Warhammer of Zillyhoo. It brings everybody who basks in its glory to tears.
  • Purple Prose: Intentionally exhibited in Rose's GameFAQs entry for Sburb Beta, even as she assures the reader that she will not waste time with such prose. She does it again with "Complacency of the Learned". Good god, Rose! It's even subtly lampshaded: Rose's Pesterchum color is purple.
  • Queer People Are Funny: Dave apparently attempts to use this to embarrass Tavros by pretending to flirt with him. He starts by implying that Tavros wants a handful of Davecock, and by the end of the pesterlog they're apparently having a Jewish wedding on a battlefield in the Vietnam War. Although Everyone Is Bi on Alternia, it works anyway because Tavros is easily embarrassed.
  • Quip to Black: Dave makes one while pestering Rose, making use of a sunglasses smiley in imitation of CSI. Sollux does it as well during Act 5.
  • Race Against the Clock: Multiple uses, all of them involving specific countdown clocks and lots of really, really big meteors.
  • Rage Against the Author: Taken to the logical extreme. The Big Bad, Lord English, not only kills Hussiebot, but he kills Andrew Hussie himself.
  • Rainbow Speak: universe and universe, for example. Often, these 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: SHE HAS WHAT!?
  • Raised By A Giant Crab: Instead of parents, Trolls have monsters known as Lusus Naturae. Adult trolls are all mostly elsewhere being busy with universal conquest. Judging by Terezi's thoughts as she observes Dave and Bro, the ones who stick around on Alternia range between parasitic mooches at best and murderous home-invaders at worst, so either way adult trolls don't have their best interests in mind.

Trolls sure are weird!

    • After her Grandpa died when she was still quite young, Jade's guardianship was taken over entirely by a dog... well, something genetically half dog and half god anyway.
    • Jake on the other hand grew up in isolation.
  • A Rare Sentence: Via Hussie himself on Twitter.

a line i seriously just wrote in reality: "People were less prepared for a double juggalo presidency than they ever imagined.

  • Ravens and Crows: Dan and Bro's building is infested with these.
  • Readings Blew Up the Scale: Kanaya's "flighty broads and their snarky horseshitometer" explodes when Kanaya watches Rose blow up her first gate. It simply couldn't take this much horseshit.
  • A Real Man Is a Killer: Vriska pretty much gave up on Tavros after he proved himself a coward who would desert a dying [wo]man, lacking the guts to either Mercy Kill her while she was bleeding to death or just plain kill her for crippling and manipulating him. She also tells John that if they weren't combined into one team by Karkat they would have probably tried to kill each other and more would've gone god-tier.
  • Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: In a more roundabout way that usual, exemplified during the first text log of post-Scratch Lalonde: she is the only character to make accidental misspelling in her text and then correct them with an asterisks (something way more common in real life texting). Even she only appears to do this because she is drunk.
  • Reality Warper: Becquerel, Doc Scratch, and other First Guardians. And Jack, once Becquerel prototypes himself.
    • It Got Worse. After the fourth prototyping, Jack's Mooks are reality warpers as well! Just look!
    • And then it got better again, as Jade ascended through Jadesprite (which apparently counts as living dream self) to the Dog Tier, demonstrating reality warping on a whole new scale.
  • Recap Episode: One immediately after the one-year anniversary update, and another a bit after the end of Act 4. Complete with Hussie himself Breaking the Fourth Wall.
    • We get a third one in Act 5 Part 2. In white text.
  • Recurring Riff: Sburban Jungle pops up alot.
    • Also a variant in Descend, the Act 4 closer, which samples riffs from literally every song that came before, and some that never even were released.
  • The Red Stapler: Ask a Homestuck fan if they've started buying Fruit Gushers. Or Faygo.
  • Resentful Guardian: Rose and her mother hold up a passive-aggressive oneupmanship contest with each other. Rose sees her mother as being resentful in nature, and her somewhat quirky personality as hateful. May or may not be a huge misunderstanding on her part.
  • Reset Button: The Scratch ends up functioning as this, up to and including erasing the players who initiated it. Well, switching guardians/ancestors and players and giving them Victory-Guided Amnesia anyway.
  • Resigned to the Call: John seems pretty nonplussed about the whole thing and is just going along with it because it's what Nanna told him to do. Dave's only really in this to save his friends and himself from fiery meteor death. Jade mostly seems to go with what the Skaia visions and Stable Time Loops tell her to do (this may change a bit following the death of her dreamself). Rose wanted to resurrect her cat, but she's now decided to go Off the Rails.
  • Resurrective Immortality: There is guaranteed immortality for any Sburb player who reaches God Tier which can only be achieved by a player arranging to be killed on their Quest Bed. They simply cannot be Killed Off for Real unless the death is deemed just or heroic. They'll be dead for a few minutes, and then they'll jump right back up again without any blood on their clothes (lucky for the main characters.) In theory they can come back even if their corpse is annihilated (and it has been more or less proven that they can come back after being incinerated.) They also won't succumb to old age.
  • Retroactive Preparation: The Appearifiers and Sendifiers easily facilitate this. The Bunny was intended to be this trope by Jade and her penpal from the future. While it definitely helps the Kids against Jack, it's also what caused Jack to be such a problem to begin with.
    • A more subtle example: The Trolls help the Kids in their preparations for the Scratch by passing on information from their future selves. They then tell the Trolls what they need to be told in the past.
  • Returning the Handkerchief: John's Dad to Rose's Mom, though it's actually more of a Scarf of Asskicking. Hey, she's a Guardian.
  • The Reveal: By completing their Session, the trolls created Earth's Universe. Sburb's purpose is to create universes.
    • Karkat rushed making the kids' universe and gave it cancer, then a rage-filled Gamzee made it terminal.[1]
    • The trolls' session a post-scratch session and the players and the ancestors were switched; also Alternia was a lot like earth: peaceful but unprepared to play SGRUB. Because it's essentially an alternate universe no one is supposed to remember the pre-scratch session but the Signless Sufferer did and it's what got him tortured and killed.
  • Rhetorical Question Blunder:

GT: Yeah but come on its not like youre from a century in the future.
TT: Well. No.

GT: Nor am i a quaint man of the past. Pardon me but do i SOUND like some trollycar bellwether toiling in the heart of the mustache belt from the ruff n tumble year of nineteen aught nine???

[[color:orange:TT: ...<br /><br/> TT: He said unironically.]]

TT:The founding fathers warned us about this, but nobody listened.

  • A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery Inside An Enigma: WV comments to himself that women are "a riddle draped in a mystery wrapped in post-apocalyptic shroudwear."
  • Right-Hand Attack Dog: The Lusii.
  • Right-Hand-Cat: The Condescension has one. It is unknown whether G-Cat is willingly helping the Condesce, if he is helping her as part of a bigger plan, or if he is being manipulated.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The infamous FLARP incident and the appropriately titled [S] Make Her Pay.
    • And after her mother's death, Rose goes off on one too.
    • As it turns out, this is the explanation for why Bec Noir massacres the Troll's session; upon watching Jade die, he fell prey to Bec's attachment to her, and then proceeded to enter a state of blind rage and destruction.
    • PM is about to embark (hehe) on one after prototyping herself with the ring because Jack slaughtered her friends.
  • Rocks Fall Everyone's Lusus Dies: Literally in the case of Vriska, Nepeta, and Equius' lusii.
  • Rooftop Confrontation: John's 'Boss Fight' vs the Ogres on the roof of his house.
  • Room Full of Crazy: John, Rose and Dave have graffiti on their walls as an expression of their repressed subconcious. Jade presumably doesn't have this problem because she's aware of her "dream" self in Prospit.
  • RPG Mechanics Verse: 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...
  • Rube Goldberg Device: The alchemization system. Captchalogue cards have 6 bit 8 character item codes on the back. The punch designix allows one to punch an item code into a captchalogue card. The totem lathe reads punched cards, translates the codes and carves them into cruxite dowels produced by the cruxtruder. Finally, the alchemiter scans the item code off of the carved cruxite dowel to create the item. Items can be combined, which requires either stacking the cards or combining the binary item codes in various ways. Averted once the alchemiter's been upgraded with a jumper extension, holopad and integrated punch designix.
  • Rule 34: Naturally exists as with every series, despite efforts to the contrary by forum admins due to the ages of the main characters. However it bears mentioning that the response time is down to mere hours after an update, and the known speed record is ten minutes.

EB: hey, i don't have a problem with your weird sort of alien hate-love thing!
EB: it is just that, uh...
CG: WHAT
EB: i am not a homosexual.
CG: WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?
EB: it is like, when a boy likes another boy.
EB: or i guess hates, in this case.
CG: HUMANS HAVE A WORD FOR THAT?
EB: yes.
CG: HOW IS THAT EVEN A THING?
EB: shrug. it just is.
CG: HUMAN ROMANCE SURE IS WEIRD.

    • Of course Karkat thinks humans are weird for making incest a thing, so whatever.
    • Spineret Mindfang seems to have a thing for lowbloods, particularly lowbloods of unknown caste (or maybe just squicking her kismesis by defying social conventions).
    • Rule 34 Homestuck fanart is lampshaded by Hussie in this post.

"the answer is two" ... "you're welcome, internet, for all the terrible art that joke answer will be responsible for".

  • Rule of Animation Conservation: 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).
  • Running Gag: Too many to list. Just go here, or we could be here all day...

> Go Back

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  1. ↑ According to Word of God via Hussie's old Formspring account, this started the chain of events that led to John's maimed-clown prototyping and the resulting costume demands which finally pissed off Jack enough to become a problem.
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