I love how in the homestuck fandom, “stuck” has become a synonymous suffix for ‘AU’. Want an au that takes place in college? collegestuck. Want an au that’s sad and angsty? sadstuck. Want an AU that takes place in the harry potter universe? potterstuck. Just add ’-stuck’ at the end and you got yourself an AU™
honestly it’s the hardest thing not to drag the terminology into other fandoms, because —stuck is much more efficient a labeling convention.
‘au’ just indicates something about the fanfic is different from canon, and it could be anything from a minor plot deviation to a genderswap to a wild west retelling to a crossover. so you have to actually use a couple words or even a whole phrase. ‘everyone’s at hogwarts AU’, ‘biker gang AU’, ‘abducted by aliens AU’, ‘AU from this canon event where that character made another decision’. it’s clumsy.
conversely, the ‘stuck suffix indicates that something major about the setting or characters has been changed, with the prefix indicating what, such as collegestuck, humanstuck, demonstuck, knightstuck, treckstuck. the exceptions that sort of prove the rule are ‘stucks that indicate a genre shift such as sadstuck and horrorstuck. you get a short, snappy compound term that conveys the basic premise of your story and off you go.
it really is awfully useful, as are the troll romance quadrants. if i say “i ship pidge and hunk pale” you know i don’t just mean they’re friends, i mean they’re in a platonic but extremely close relationship involving lots of supportiveness and squishy bro feels. it’s hard to write a story about ‘these two are friends’ because like… so what? everyone’s got a dozen friends. but it’s easy to write a story about a pale ship, because that is fraught with motherfuckin feels.
People can say what they like about the Homestuck fandom (and they will probably be right lbr) but it has yielded a number of really CHOICE concepts for transformative works that I have never seen the like of in any other fandom.
i find the decapitation meme really interesting, cus it feels like it was gonna happen for sure based on the fandoms sense of humour, but the way it works is based on how it happened in-comic
like a similar joke was gonna happen either way because even tho its a long comic where a lot of characters die repeatedly, dirk managed to get decapitated TWICE, but i feel the joke wouldve gone differently depending on whether both incidents were on purpose, both accidents, or one was on purpose and the other an accident
since both incidents were dirks idea, it became the joke that dirk comes up with being decapitated whenever hes faced with a problem (which is hyperbolic to comic effect, considering in the canon both occasions were life or death situations, but i love the hs fandoms hyperbole)
but i think that if both had been accidents, the fandom wouldve still come up with a similar meme, namely that this is just something that can randomly happen to dirk whenever. similarly hyperbolic comics would emerge of, like, him an dave playing frisbee and the frisbee accidentally decapitating him; him and the others are sitting around eating breakfast and his head falls off in his cereal. that kinda stuff
and if the first instance was on purpose but the other one turns out to be daves idea i imagine it wouldve been at least one comic of dirk complaining “wow you cut your head off ONE TIME and suddenly its A THING”; or if the first was an accident and the second was on purpose there would be at least one comic along the lines of dirk musing mid-battle “yknow actually, that decapitation worked out pretty well, maybe it will this time” (tho tbh i dont think these ones wouldve caught on as much because of the lack of room for hyperbole and possible applications for the joke)
but yh, this is just something i was musing about in the shower yesterday. i just think that this meme kinda perfectly captures a large part of the fandoms sense of humour in a few ways
i just think its amazing that we’re now imagining MEME AUS
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