let me tell you about homestuck

okay so this was gonna be a regular bulletin but homestuck is so goddamn weird and meta that i feel like it deserves its own blog entry

despite being an avid fan i have a fair amount of criticisms about homestuck (mostly the very late 2000s sense of humor and generally mean-spirited writing style) but one thing it does in a really interesting way is fourth and even fifth wall breaking

the characters rarely acknowledge that they're in a webcomic, there's convenient exposition dumps from characters like rose, dirk, karkat, and aranea but those characters are not aware of the reader, they're addressing another character during these exposition dumps

rather, the comic itself is aware that it is a comic, this is shown through ms paint adventures and sweet bro and hella jeff, which are existent in both the comic and the real world. sweet bro and hella jeff specifically is canonically written by dave, while other ms paint adventures such as problem sleuth are written by homestuck's author, andrew hussie. additionally, characters from other ms paint adventures also exist in homestuck, implying that these characters are both comic characters and real guys in homestuck (think the killjoys from gerard way's the true lives of the fabulous killjoys series and their counterparts to the real-world members of my chemical romance). other examples of self-referencing in homestuck include the constant repetition of specific numbers and phrases (413, 612, "GET IT OUT GET IT OUT GET IT OUT," "it's hard being a kid and growing up," etc)

additionally there are times the comic directly addresses the reader with its own convenient exposition dumps, for example when the comic stops being a comic to tell the reader about the quadrant system and how trolls reproduce (in great detail, for some reason)

now this is all pretty meta but it gets REALLY meta when we get to the fifth wall (or to be more accurate the ceiling), where the comic acknowledges not just the audience but the author as well. you thought all that self-referencing and addressing the reader was incomprehensible wait until we get to andrew hussie's self-insert

similarly to the characters in problem sleuth, andrew hussie exists both within and outside of homestuck. he's acknowledged as the author of the comic many times, however he is also a (sometimes crucial) character that directly interacts with other characters and influences the story in many ways. additionally, in homestuck^2/the epilogues (which are official but not completely canon), dirk directly intervenes in the story many times and is to my knowledge the only character to ever acknowledge that he is fictional

now why exactly hussie did all this wall breaking i have no idea, my guess is it was either to illustrate the unique and often turbulent relationship between an author and their characters or a subtle nod to the fanbase who tend to get mad at hussie himself rather than the characters when things like character deaths happen (knowing hussie it was likely both and also a secret third reason)

anyways this has been my rant about homestuck, this webcomic is fucking weird in a lot of ways both good and bad and i have quite a few thoughts on it if you can't already tell