Homestuck Research Paper

The Future Developments of American English

"Write about a changed world reflected by its technical, regional, slang, or specialized language you invent". Alright, well to tell you what I think the future developments of English will be like, first… Let me tell you… about Homestuck. Homestuck is a very popular webcomic written by Andrew Hussie. It's about four kids who play this game called "Sburb" while twelve grey humanoids with candy-cane coloured horns called trolls play the troll version of the human's game called "Sgrub". The humans' and trolls' timelines clash and a mess that spans the entire universe of Homestuck is created. I would write more about it, since I have interest in it, I am not updated on the humans' and trolls' current situation. Another reason is even though the webcomic has over five thousand pages, IT'S STILL BEING WRITTEN.

What does this have to do with the development of
English? Homestuck is very popular in the U.S. and around the world. It's a phenomenon that is still continuing even though it's been three years since its start. Homestuck has been the topic of many videos on YouTube and made front pages on underground news sites. Pictures of cosplayers who cosplay Homestuck and performances of people who act as the characters have made trips around the internet. What makes it even more popular are the people who bash the fans of Homestuck and the comic itself; therefore eliciting over-reactions from the die-hard fangirls and fanboys.

It's become so popular that creator has started selling books of the webcomic and is planning on making an actual game based on Homestuck called –you guessed it- Sburb. Since, the talk of making the game, Hussie has created a fundraiser for the game project. It has so much support and anticipation to the point where fans have donated over $900,000 in just two weeks after the creation of the fundraiser… AND IT'S STILL CLIMBING.

It's obvious that Homestuck is very popular, but why is it an element in English development?
Well, what got me hooked to Homestuck are the dialogues between the humans and trolls. All of the characters have a different way of speaking, well, typing I should say (since they communicate in-game and through messagers). They all have a different typing quirk. And like I said before, some people will actually talk the way the characters type.

For example I loved Dave Strider, who is a geeky cool kid. Dave Strider uses the words applejuice, "in my grill", and the most popular "caw caw motherf-ckers". Now sometimes, I would always speak like how Dave Strider types and I would especially use "caw caw mother-ckers" whenever I saw a crow. I even had that quote on my phone cover. One day, my friend took my phone and looked at it (I don't know what urged him to do that but okay) and he asked me why I had that quote on my phone. Scared of people finding out that I liked Homestuck, I replied, "I put it there because I hate
crows."

A week later, the quote was going around the school population like an outbreak of lice. Everybody was saying it and it even prompted a small number of people to find out about where the quote came from; thus finding out about Homestuck and causing even more outbreaks of Homestuck quotes like, "I warned you 'bout the stairs bro. I warned you dawg." That was an especially funny quote because my previous school had six flights of stairs on each building and on occasion a person would fall down the stairs(luckily they had no broken bones).

My story just goes to show that Homestuck is capable of taking hold of people's vocabulary, even if it is for a few months. Now imagine the impact that Homestuck will make when the books are starting to be sold in bookstores and the game is officially finished.

Imagine, seeing people wherever you go walking around with the Homestuck comic in hand. You see them with their head in book one second, the next second they're yelling "OH, GO SECRETE ME AN EARTH RIVER THROUGH YOUR STRANGE HUMAN TEAR DUCTS" and the oh-so-common "F-CK-SS"(copyright Karkat Vantas, the troll with the most creative curse words known to humans) and creating the most imaginative curse/insults. And imagine seeing the sudden increase in applejuice sales (thanks to Dave Strider almost not drinking it out of fear it was replaced with urine).

Through Homestuck, the English language may take a change but will that change be better or for worse? You decide that after I give you a few more scenarios depicting what it would be like if Homestuck took over the vernacular of the populace.

Girls who would normally speak with the most atrocious grammar would suddenly have perfect grammar and syntax and that would all be thanks to Rose Lalonde, the "flighty broad" as she was originally named. Girls and boys would start making fish puns whenever possible because Feferi Peixes and Eridan Ampora make fish puns (because they live underwater). And imagine the people who start making cat puns (Nepeta Leijon) and the people who verbally emphasize the word STRONG (Equius Zahhak) rampaging the streets. And let us not forget the most well recognized symbol and typing quirk of Homestuck: 13375P34K (Leetspeak). Imagine students in school all writing L1K3 TH1S (like this) because they saw Terezi Pyrope do it.

Those were just a few examples of the typing quirks in Homestuck. I would write more, but there are many characters so I would possibly mix up the characters and their quirks.

I will end this essay by saying this: The Homestuck fanbase has a great number of people in it and thanks to sites like YouTube and Tumblr, it is still growing. I wouldn't be surprised if the future developments of the English language turn out to be like what I depicted here. Even if it did, I suppose the phrase "F-CK-SS" would take quite a while for it be socially acceptable.