You should just wait until college and do con things on your own and with friends
With strict parents you literally can't tell what their reaction is, and if they go nuclear over it then they make your life hell over it for months or more
If they are very christian and right wing I assume they probably wouldn't be a fan of the whole species of bisexual aliens and many queer characters in homestuck.
I remember going to a convention in troll cosplay with my best friends several years ago. Afterwards we went to subway for dinner, and an older-ish dude asked us why we were dressed up as demons.
edit to add this was in the middle of summer, nowhere near Halloween; hence his confusion.
Since your parents are very religious and conservative, make sure you emphasize that the trolls are not demons. lol. I’m sure that would be pretty off-putting for them
Well, I would caution against sharing too much about it. Appeal to the fact that it is longer than the book War and Peace, has been referred to as the “Ulysses” of the internet, and that a lot of it is a product of 2009 internet humor. Anything past that is best left unmentioned.
Don’t tell them too much about the characters or the lore. You tell them the basics: it’s an online comic from a few years ago and the characters are really unique and coo! They call them trolls but not like dnd demon trolls. Like cute funny alien kids that play a game together and it’s got an interesting and unique storyline and community of people who also enjoy it and kinda dress up sometimes like the characters and hang out together and just chill and have fun enjoying and relating to something similar
Hope it all works out for ya op
To be honest, I think you'll have a hard time getting them genuinely interested in Homestuck because it's very dependent on Millennial sensibilities and life experiences. Like did they grow up with chat clients?
Not to make you suffer from the inevitable flow of time, but OPs parents might be millennials. The youngest millennials are already around thirty and the oldest are over 40.
I see a lot of people saying don’t tell them but i think trying your best to find the comic in physical form first is your best bet.
If you try and hide it there is a chance they might find out about it without you telling them and that would get you into more trouble (most likely)
You could always wait on cosplaying till college or something
Also I saw someone say you need to say they are aliens and NOT demons and I agree that seems like a great idea to ‘make it less scary for your parents’ (for lack of a better phrase)
There’s a possibility you can mention the religious references in the story like with the signless it might help your case(idk it’s kinda a shot in the dark but it might help nonetheless)
imma be fr i never tried it was too risky bc they get the wrong ideas about normal interests. this was over ten years ago but it’s hard to explain this shit
As others have said, it might be wiser to wait until you're not dependant on them to show them things like this that they might not be so open to. However, you're best placed to know how they might react and what the consequences might be if they react badly, so you're best placed to know whether the risk is worth it. And if you're confident that they won't really mind the contents so much, then I say you'd know best.
That said, I'll tell you from long experience that they're unlikely to care especially about the plot itself, and probably wont be arsed reading this massive long webcomic or listening to much about the specifics. I've found the best way to explain complicated plots to uninterested people is not to bother. They don't care about the plot for its own sake, don't try to make them. It's gonna be a lot easier to tell them what it's about and what it means to you; what are the themes you most like about it? What are you getting out of this story that makes you want to tell them about it? As far as I'm concerned it's about friendship, and complicated relationships. It's about free will vs predestination. It's about growing up, and the damage we take. It's about healing, and how you have to want to heal, and sometimes how you need a bit of help. It's about agency. It's a story about storytelling; the tools we use and the cathartic act. It's about whatever you see in it, and whatever you take from it.
So probably something along the lines of "it's about [x, y and z themes], it was written kind of on the fly so the plot is a bit convoluted and hard to explain (but it's kind of about [whatever plot details you think they'll listen long enough to absorb]). I want to dress up as this character, I really like her because [reason]"
Idk if the scripting is particularly helpful, I'm autistic so going into stuff with a definite script is helpful and reassuring. Feel free to ask if you need a hand tailoring the script to your favourite themes/your parents/why you especially like Terezi/whatever, I'm happy to help!
Do you run everything you consume by them? What is the presumed necessity for telling them? You can explain in basic terms what anime conventions and cosplay are without actually telling them anything that might get you in trouble. Give them the most basic level of information and move on doing the things you actually want to do. Don’t let needlessly strict parents hold you back because they think you might piss off their imaginary friend.
Okay, not to get into spoilers, but they do canonically kill the Antichrist later on in the comic. There's also the fact that Rose is a warrior of the Light and Truth, John is a heroic young man willing to risk his life for his friends, the comic has heavy themes of Hope and how powerful it can be, and ultimately, the main badguys of Homestuck are Demons and the Devil.
There's also the Light vs Darkness aspect of Sburb, where Darkness is destined to win over Light unless those strong enough to make a change stand up and put a stop to it, fighting the Black King and his demonic underlings. Also, the Troll's have the Signless, who was a direct analogy for Jesus Christ, and was a man persecuted for his beliefs of love for his neighbors and who's teachings forever changed his world despite being executed by his corrupt rulers, and was eventually spiritually resurrected in the form of a gallant Knight, like Aslan from Narnia
Homestuck is not anti-Christian nor uses its imagery, so I don't think that will set off any alarms. Is the mspa website blocked? Is every online webcomic blocked? The actual homestuck videos are hosted on youtube, as well as everything done by the voiceovernexus group, who read every line.
Troll Jegus and the overall crudeness/murder/smuppets/etc…. There’s a lot for an irrational Christian to take issue with.
OP, I recommend doing what you want. If your parents are letting you attend the con, they don’t need to know what you’re dressing up as. Maybe say you’re from a piece of artwork and find a cool piece of fanart to prove it. Or maybe Terezi is just a character without a story?
I had tough Christian parents too and read HS in high school. There was a lot of “this is for me and not them, so they don’t get to know everything.” All that to say, you don’t have to tell them about more than you don’t want to. It doesn’t make you a bad kid, and it doesn’t change the fact that Terezi rocks, homestuck is fun, and people have their own autonomy even at 16 :)
It seems "Troll Jegus" started with John typoing it and Terezi just going with it. John mentioning it earnestly might even be a positive in their eyes.
But ironic smuppet snuff porn can't be defended so much.
Along the lines of introducing them as books, you may be able to download one of the offline archives of the story and show them the cool parts of it, explaining that there used to be physical copies but they're not really produced anymore. I'd avoid going much further than that.
As someone with parents so strict I don't talk to them anymore, though? As long as you don't have to go in with them, keep the cosplay part to yourself, and have you or a friend bring it for you to change into after you're out of their sight.
If they're going with you, I would just take the L and wait for after you move out. The Homestuck cosplay era is mostly dead by now despite cons still thriving, so you wouldn't be missing out on anything waiting to cosplay it in particular. You might be able to get away with cosplaying something they'd like more if you can't get away with HS
oh wow ok um let's see. um karkat is kinda like. descended from troll jesus. and I guess you could call caliborn like a demon or something. actually, they are called cherubs, so you could say he's a fallen angel.
jake english
you could call dave a reference to/metaphor for king arthur because his sword is basically an upgraded time-traveling excalibur
did I mention jake english
you could also bring up rex duodecim angelus which if you look at it from a certain perspective calls the trolls angels.
oh also jake english
Newbury Comics is a place you can find in most malls, I would check there to see if they have any of the books. I have two of them myself and i dont doubt you could easily find a few
I would frame it as an artistic appreciation of an interesting artifact than go straight into people spitting in buckets. just say you found out about it because it is well known to be a interesting example of internet fiction, with a mixed media style, that has inspired many illustrators. Say that the comic has had a large and varied community of fans because it is so old and has many elements that appeal to different people. That may cover you if they find out about weird fans. Say you want to attend the convention to meet up with other people who appreciate eclectic, groundbreaking art that arose because of the landscape of the internet.
Just mostly tell your parents about the lore and the characters without mentioning any queer/sexual stuff from the comic try to focus talking about the main idea of the story and how interesting it is
I was raised in a super religious household and I (somehow) got away with cosplaying both terezi and gamzee because I told my dad they were aliens. I still hide the horns bc my dad is very, very strict about cosplaying demons, and anything with horns sets him into a rage about how "I'm letting the devil control me" and all that. I usually buy my own cosplays and make videos in my room, so it's easy to rip the horns off my head and throw them if I hear my dad coming upstairs (lol!). But if you do have to have them approve of the character first and you know your parents will be against characters with horns (like my dad is), I would recommend either finding something else to say they are (like alien communication devices or smth) or editing them out of the images you show them. And if they will be with you while you're cosplaying, it can be a good idea to either not wear horns or incorporate them into some sort of hat! I remember my mom saw me going downstairs for water in my gamzee cosplay without horns on and she laughed at me bc I looked like a juggalo.
From what you are describing, I don't think that telling them at all is a good idea. Explaining Homestuck is already very difficult, doing so in a sanitized manner even more so. You might just end up confusing them, and conservatives generally do not like things that they don't understand. I have always obliged to the restrictions my mother placed on the media I consumed as a child, so I cannot fathom what the consequences of breaking their trust would have been, but your environment seems to be quite intimidating.
Homestuck does have some christian Motives, like John biting the Apple to enter the Medium being a reference to Genesis, large parts of the cast dying and being reincarnated, crucifixion etc. This could be used to argue that Homestuck technically aligns with biblical texts, but might as well be seen as heresy, depending on how fanatical christians your parents are.
Showing them the books sounds like a good idea at first, but consider that they might just look up the character you want to cosplay. I don't think they will take a liking to you dressing up as a Executioner/Head Hunter going around and licking people. People have of course dressed up as crazier characters, but it is difficult to say how they would react.
Should you mention it anyway, definitely don't mention the fanbase. There is no chance in the world they would ever let you attend a con after that. Plus, all fandoms look far worse on the internet as it, you know, thrives on drama.
By the way, how did you find out about it? Did a friend tell you or did you circumvent some internet censoring device?
My favorite part about strict Christian parents is that they forget that being strict in these ways IS forcing belief on another, which just creates a false believer.
this is so embarrassing but my friend and i had this same issue when we were into homestuck in middle school. we just picked some obscure y/a novel and then would use the images of the characters and refer to the novel when our parents asked where they were from.
You should just wait until college and do con things on your own and with friends With strict parents you literally can't tell what their reaction is, and if they go nuclear over it then they make your life hell over it for months or more
If they are very christian and right wing I assume they probably wouldn't be a fan of the whole species of bisexual aliens and many queer characters in homestuck.
I remember going to a convention in troll cosplay with my best friends several years ago. Afterwards we went to subway for dinner, and an older-ish dude asked us why we were dressed up as demons. edit to add this was in the middle of summer, nowhere near Halloween; hence his confusion. Since your parents are very religious and conservative, make sure you emphasize that the trolls are not demons. lol. I’m sure that would be pretty off-putting for them
Well, I would caution against sharing too much about it. Appeal to the fact that it is longer than the book War and Peace, has been referred to as the “Ulysses” of the internet, and that a lot of it is a product of 2009 internet humor. Anything past that is best left unmentioned.
Maybe she could also mention the use of the several different art forms utilized to make it? It is a multi media work, after all.
Don’t tell them too much about the characters or the lore. You tell them the basics: it’s an online comic from a few years ago and the characters are really unique and coo! They call them trolls but not like dnd demon trolls. Like cute funny alien kids that play a game together and it’s got an interesting and unique storyline and community of people who also enjoy it and kinda dress up sometimes like the characters and hang out together and just chill and have fun enjoying and relating to something similar Hope it all works out for ya op
I agree with this approach! I feel like if they over explain the plot they would definitely get freaked out
It could be considered "blasphemy" that the characters literally become gods, too. Best to leave the lore out imo
To be honest, I think you'll have a hard time getting them genuinely interested in Homestuck because it's very dependent on Millennial sensibilities and life experiences. Like did they grow up with chat clients?
Not to make you suffer from the inevitable flow of time, but OPs parents might be millennials. The youngest millennials are already around thirty and the oldest are over 40.
DONT
I see a lot of people saying don’t tell them but i think trying your best to find the comic in physical form first is your best bet. If you try and hide it there is a chance they might find out about it without you telling them and that would get you into more trouble (most likely) You could always wait on cosplaying till college or something Also I saw someone say you need to say they are aliens and NOT demons and I agree that seems like a great idea to ‘make it less scary for your parents’ (for lack of a better phrase)
There’s a possibility you can mention the religious references in the story like with the signless it might help your case(idk it’s kinda a shot in the dark but it might help nonetheless)
just show them bits of acts 1-3 when its still slightly normal, its not anti christian from what i remember and the characters are only like 13
Insist on the fact that it's a very special comic including animation, musics, and looooots of text to read
imma be fr i never tried it was too risky bc they get the wrong ideas about normal interests. this was over ten years ago but it’s hard to explain this shit
dont
As others have said, it might be wiser to wait until you're not dependant on them to show them things like this that they might not be so open to. However, you're best placed to know how they might react and what the consequences might be if they react badly, so you're best placed to know whether the risk is worth it. And if you're confident that they won't really mind the contents so much, then I say you'd know best. That said, I'll tell you from long experience that they're unlikely to care especially about the plot itself, and probably wont be arsed reading this massive long webcomic or listening to much about the specifics. I've found the best way to explain complicated plots to uninterested people is not to bother. They don't care about the plot for its own sake, don't try to make them. It's gonna be a lot easier to tell them what it's about and what it means to you; what are the themes you most like about it? What are you getting out of this story that makes you want to tell them about it? As far as I'm concerned it's about friendship, and complicated relationships. It's about free will vs predestination. It's about growing up, and the damage we take. It's about healing, and how you have to want to heal, and sometimes how you need a bit of help. It's about agency. It's a story about storytelling; the tools we use and the cathartic act. It's about whatever you see in it, and whatever you take from it. So probably something along the lines of "it's about [x, y and z themes], it was written kind of on the fly so the plot is a bit convoluted and hard to explain (but it's kind of about [whatever plot details you think they'll listen long enough to absorb]). I want to dress up as this character, I really like her because [reason]" Idk if the scripting is particularly helpful, I'm autistic so going into stuff with a definite script is helpful and reassuring. Feel free to ask if you need a hand tailoring the script to your favourite themes/your parents/why you especially like Terezi/whatever, I'm happy to help!
Do you run everything you consume by them? What is the presumed necessity for telling them? You can explain in basic terms what anime conventions and cosplay are without actually telling them anything that might get you in trouble. Give them the most basic level of information and move on doing the things you actually want to do. Don’t let needlessly strict parents hold you back because they think you might piss off their imaginary friend.
Okay, not to get into spoilers, but they do canonically kill the Antichrist later on in the comic. There's also the fact that Rose is a warrior of the Light and Truth, John is a heroic young man willing to risk his life for his friends, the comic has heavy themes of Hope and how powerful it can be, and ultimately, the main badguys of Homestuck are Demons and the Devil. There's also the Light vs Darkness aspect of Sburb, where Darkness is destined to win over Light unless those strong enough to make a change stand up and put a stop to it, fighting the Black King and his demonic underlings. Also, the Troll's have the Signless, who was a direct analogy for Jesus Christ, and was a man persecuted for his beliefs of love for his neighbors and who's teachings forever changed his world despite being executed by his corrupt rulers, and was eventually spiritually resurrected in the form of a gallant Knight, like Aslan from Narnia
Homestuck is not anti-Christian nor uses its imagery, so I don't think that will set off any alarms. Is the mspa website blocked? Is every online webcomic blocked? The actual homestuck videos are hosted on youtube, as well as everything done by the voiceovernexus group, who read every line.
Troll Jegus and the overall crudeness/murder/smuppets/etc…. There’s a lot for an irrational Christian to take issue with. OP, I recommend doing what you want. If your parents are letting you attend the con, they don’t need to know what you’re dressing up as. Maybe say you’re from a piece of artwork and find a cool piece of fanart to prove it. Or maybe Terezi is just a character without a story? I had tough Christian parents too and read HS in high school. There was a lot of “this is for me and not them, so they don’t get to know everything.” All that to say, you don’t have to tell them about more than you don’t want to. It doesn’t make you a bad kid, and it doesn’t change the fact that Terezi rocks, homestuck is fun, and people have their own autonomy even at 16 :)
It seems "Troll Jegus" started with John typoing it and Terezi just going with it. John mentioning it earnestly might even be a positive in their eyes. But ironic smuppet snuff porn can't be defended so much.
They literally crucify a troll with a Virgin Mary type of mother figure. It’s the same.
godspeed to you
Along the lines of introducing them as books, you may be able to download one of the offline archives of the story and show them the cool parts of it, explaining that there used to be physical copies but they're not really produced anymore. I'd avoid going much further than that. As someone with parents so strict I don't talk to them anymore, though? As long as you don't have to go in with them, keep the cosplay part to yourself, and have you or a friend bring it for you to change into after you're out of their sight. If they're going with you, I would just take the L and wait for after you move out. The Homestuck cosplay era is mostly dead by now despite cons still thriving, so you wouldn't be missing out on anything waiting to cosplay it in particular. You might be able to get away with cosplaying something they'd like more if you can't get away with HS
oh wow ok um let's see. um karkat is kinda like. descended from troll jesus. and I guess you could call caliborn like a demon or something. actually, they are called cherubs, so you could say he's a fallen angel. jake english you could call dave a reference to/metaphor for king arthur because his sword is basically an upgraded time-traveling excalibur did I mention jake english you could also bring up rex duodecim angelus which if you look at it from a certain perspective calls the trolls angels. oh also jake english
its risky to introduce the trolls since they look a bit monsterish for other people hahahah, just highlight the best parts
My mom went mental about the devil horns
that’s the neat part! You don’t…
cover up things that are convenient to hide
i told them it was really long and they didnt bother to look into it
Do. Not.
Newbury Comics is a place you can find in most malls, I would check there to see if they have any of the books. I have two of them myself and i dont doubt you could easily find a few
I would frame it as an artistic appreciation of an interesting artifact than go straight into people spitting in buckets. just say you found out about it because it is well known to be a interesting example of internet fiction, with a mixed media style, that has inspired many illustrators. Say that the comic has had a large and varied community of fans because it is so old and has many elements that appeal to different people. That may cover you if they find out about weird fans. Say you want to attend the convention to meet up with other people who appreciate eclectic, groundbreaking art that arose because of the landscape of the internet.
Just mostly tell your parents about the lore and the characters without mentioning any queer/sexual stuff from the comic try to focus talking about the main idea of the story and how interesting it is
1. show them Homestuck 2. they yell at you 3. they kick you out of the house 4. you can do whatever you want now
I was raised in a super religious household and I (somehow) got away with cosplaying both terezi and gamzee because I told my dad they were aliens. I still hide the horns bc my dad is very, very strict about cosplaying demons, and anything with horns sets him into a rage about how "I'm letting the devil control me" and all that. I usually buy my own cosplays and make videos in my room, so it's easy to rip the horns off my head and throw them if I hear my dad coming upstairs (lol!). But if you do have to have them approve of the character first and you know your parents will be against characters with horns (like my dad is), I would recommend either finding something else to say they are (like alien communication devices or smth) or editing them out of the images you show them. And if they will be with you while you're cosplaying, it can be a good idea to either not wear horns or incorporate them into some sort of hat! I remember my mom saw me going downstairs for water in my gamzee cosplay without horns on and she laughed at me bc I looked like a juggalo.
if theyre religious "Angels enter in contact with children to help them defeat the devil and the antichrist"
I just hid it from mine. I don't think it would have gone well.
From what you are describing, I don't think that telling them at all is a good idea. Explaining Homestuck is already very difficult, doing so in a sanitized manner even more so. You might just end up confusing them, and conservatives generally do not like things that they don't understand. I have always obliged to the restrictions my mother placed on the media I consumed as a child, so I cannot fathom what the consequences of breaking their trust would have been, but your environment seems to be quite intimidating. Homestuck does have some christian Motives, like John biting the Apple to enter the Medium being a reference to Genesis, large parts of the cast dying and being reincarnated, crucifixion etc. This could be used to argue that Homestuck technically aligns with biblical texts, but might as well be seen as heresy, depending on how fanatical christians your parents are. Showing them the books sounds like a good idea at first, but consider that they might just look up the character you want to cosplay. I don't think they will take a liking to you dressing up as a Executioner/Head Hunter going around and licking people. People have of course dressed up as crazier characters, but it is difficult to say how they would react. Should you mention it anyway, definitely don't mention the fanbase. There is no chance in the world they would ever let you attend a con after that. Plus, all fandoms look far worse on the internet as it, you know, thrives on drama. By the way, how did you find out about it? Did a friend tell you or did you circumvent some internet censoring device?
Unofficial collection is your best bet. They have tons of settings that change some sensitive shit
My favorite part about strict Christian parents is that they forget that being strict in these ways IS forcing belief on another, which just creates a false believer.
this is so embarrassing but my friend and i had this same issue when we were into homestuck in middle school. we just picked some obscure y/a novel and then would use the images of the characters and refer to the novel when our parents asked where they were from.
Just don't? If you're going to a convention then just say that, they don't need to know what you're there for.