Fandoms are incredible at building entirely new concepts out of thin air, and few other media does it better than Homestuck! In this blog post I’ll be explaining the Quadrants in Homestuck, please do enjoy! :-)
Let’s start with the question “What the hell is Homestuck?” for those who aren’t chronically online. Homestuck is a web comic well over 8 thousand pages, 800,000 words, which is slightly longer than the entire Harry Potter series. That is, not counting the flash animations, interactive games and GIF-heavy panels which would add about 10-20 hours more to your Homestuck-ing. It is a modern epic, if I dare say so, with confusing time loops, weaponized irony and a thick plot that even some of the biggest fans still struggle to understand. Andrew Hussie, the author, built his own world with its own rules, such as kids saving the world by playing a game and… being able to die more than once? Seriously, what’s that all about?
In my humble opinion, one of Homestuck’s best inventions, aside from troll anatomy and reproduction, is the Quadrant System. In simple terms, it’s a structured way of defining feelings that transcend current human relationships. It exists for several reasons, but the main one is tied to how trolls function as a species.
Trolls have their own societal systems, customs and values, many of which are drastically different from anything we as humans use. Their society is rigid, often hostile, and classified by blood colour, which affects everything from status to behaviour. Because their culture is so volatile, trolls developed the quadrant system as a way to categorize and stabilize the extreme emotional dynamics in their lives. There’s a lot of world building behind this, far more than I can reasonably unpack here, but the comic is free to read here, and the Homestuck wiki is here if you want the deep dive!
So let’s get started!
