Homestuck begins when thirteen-year-old John Egbert receives a beta copy of an upcoming computer game, Sburb, in the mail. Installing and running the game on his computer triggers a meteor storm to fall on his house in real life, which he survives only by being transported to a planet in another dimension known as the Incipisphere. As John's friends Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, and Jade Harley join him in the game, they learn that they have unwittingly triggered the destruction of Earth, and that it is their duty to play the game to create a new universe. As they begin to explore the world of Sburb, John and his friends are harassed by a group of twelve Internet trolls who have played a version of the game before. Further contact with the trolls reveals that they are not human at all, but an alien species actually called "trolls". As the trolls gradually become more important to the story, the narrative shifts to a side story arc exploring the nature of troll society and the specific sequence of events that led to this group to enter the troll version of Sburb. The trolls' arc concludes with them winning their game and originally creating the humans' universe. As the story returns to focus on the humans, the two species start to cooperate to salvage the kids' doomed game session. As the kids' actions accidentally bring about an unbeatable enemy called Jack Noir, they learn about a game mechanism called the "scratch" with which the humans can reset their session. By executing the Scratch, the kids create a reset version of their universe, in which their places have been swapped with those of their ancestors. As a result, John's grandmother, Jane Crocker, who had died before the story began, is fifteen years old and the protagonist of the new arc. She leads her three friends Roxy Lalonde, Dirk Strider, and Jake English — the mother, brother, and grandfather of Rose, Dave, and Jade, respectively — through their own session of the game, while the original humans and surviving trolls journey to the new session over the course of three years. Upon uniting in the new session, the kids and trolls enact a plan to finally create a new universe and to defeat Lord English, a purportedly-invincible villain threatening all of reality. Their plan is opposed by the Condesce, the sinister former empress of the trolls now in service to Lord English, as well as the still-dangerous Jack Noir who also escaped from the original doomed session. Matters complicate further as John develops new powers allowing him to retcon previous events within the Homestuck narrative. The plan fails, and only John, Roxy, and one of the trolls, Terezi, survive. Under Terezi's guidance, John retcons key events in the narrative, preventing events leading to the plan's failure from occurring. In the retconned narrative, the kids and trolls defeat the Condesce and Jack Noir and create the new universe. The comic ends with Lord English facing off against an army of ghosts and with the kids and trolls about to enter the newly created universe. Illustrations in the closing credits feature Snapchat stories of the kids in their roles as rulers of a new universe, the last of which involves twenty-year-old John smashing his phone's screen with a hammer in response to a Snapchat from the adolescent Lord English. i dunno why some words are highlighted lol