Sixteen Songs That Will Trigger Your Fight Or Flight Response When You Hear Them In Public, Provided You’ve Read Homestuck

16. Cooler Than Me

The opening notes of this song are capable of instantly tipping me into a sort of conscious fever dream where I’m being pursued by hoards of Ikimaru Davekat drawings with a thirst for blood.

15. Nilili Mambo

I’m going to be totally real: you will never hear Nilili Mambo in public (if you do it will happen once and only once and it will feel like getting socked in the jaw), but it felt absolutely treasonous to leave it off this list. I don’t even know when Mambostuck was first posted. It feels as though it’s just always existed and always been a beacon of Homestuck cultural relevance. No matter when you got into Homestuck, how long you were into it, how casually you liked it, which characters were your favorite, etc, etc, you have seen Mambostuck at least twice.

14. Volatile Times

Volatile Times is one of those lyricstucks that comes up as the second result if you search just the song name on YouTube. This lyricstuck is sort of like the movie Avatar; I don’t remember the first time I saw it, what my reaction was, or really anything about it, and yet anytime I hear the word “adieu” I think about Gamzee (which is part of why I had to drop French).

13. Exile Vilify

I live in fear that one day this song will be part of the soundtrack of something I’m watching and I’ll be violently catapulted back in time to eighth grade me lying on the floor of my room with my best friend quietly crying over this lyricstuck.

12. Sexy Can I

I’ve been sitting here for close to half an hour trying to figure out what I can say about Sexy Kan I that won’t make me sound like a biased lesbian and there isn’t anything. I am a lesbian and I can do whatever I want.

11. Amsterdam

I’ll talk shit about Imagine Dragons until the day I die but it’s just one of the laws of nature that if paperseverywhere touches a song it becomes instantly iconic and, dare I say it, good. I’m gonna be, like, fifty with three kids and this song will come on in the Jewel Osco while I’m comparing two different flavors of crackers and I’ll turn to the nearest employee and start sobbing about how “their time really did come….. they waited for it……. they waited for it………”

10. Home

Speaking of paperseverywhere, and speaking of crying in grocery stores! Just about two weeks ago this song came on while I was over-caffeinated in an empty Kroger in Dallas at 11:30pm and I cried.

9. Turn Me On

The image of Equius just absolutely breaking it down on the dance floor will never leave me.

8. Life’s A Happy Song

One of the most earth-shaking revelations of my early adolescence was that all 20 characters in this song are sung by the same person. I also still don’t know where the original version of this song comes from?

7. Nothing Left To Say

A pox on paperseverywhere for making me sort of enjoy yet another Imagine Dragons song. This video got me in my feelings about Vrisrezi before my third eye was open enough to earnestly love Vrisrezi (back when I was fourteen and telling anyone who would listen how much I hated Vriska while simultaneously setting my laptop password as VriskaSerket which, like, we get it, Nell, you’re a dyke).

6. Blue Lips

Genuine, earnest question: Who the fuck cares about Equius? Equius is the sardines of Homestuck. Largely inoffensive, but I’ve peacefully completely forgotten his existence many times before. And yet somehow this lyricstuck has 3.7 MILLION views (that’s more than the original “You Can’t Fight The Homestuck” video) and can elicit a panic response from the average fan with just its thumbnail.

5. How Do I Live

OH, YOU KNOW.

4. Just Lose It

The Homestuck fandom in its prime produced a lot of fairly funny but largely absolutely bonkers content and although most of it enjoyed the short, bright success typical of fandom posts, some posts (like the panty raid comic—I can’t help but feel like one day someone will say something a little too close to a line from this comic and my eyes will roll back in my head exorcist-style and with a voice that isn’t mine I’ll say SHE NAMED THEM BELGARATH) proved to be demonic, unkillable monsters. [S] John: Just Lose It is one of those beasts.

3. How Far We’ve Come

No one in the world ever wanted to get to the point in their life where a Matchbox Twenty song makes them cry but HERE WE ALL ARE.

2. We Didn’t Start The Fire

INT. KARAOKE BAR – NIGHT

[I am standing onstage. The opening chords to Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” begin to play. I clear my throat and open my mouth.]

ME: *ahem*…John—

[Club security forcibly removes me from the stage.]

1. Fergalicious

Karkalicious is a song that possesses incredibly powerful energies—once, at prom, the intro started playing over the speakers and my friend Jade turned to me with a look that was equal parts wonder and abject terror and yelled “SOMEONE REQUESTED KARKALICIOUS” because somehow, through its sheer power and influence, she had been led to believe that it was an original song. I also nearly got myself and a few friends killed over this song; we were yelling along to songs in the car and Fergalicious came on and without thinking I sang “four, three, two, fuck you” and then shrieked in horror so loud the driver nearly drove off the road.

Published by Nell

Nell is just a little raccoon man rooting through the garbage pile of life.

46 thoughts on “Sixteen Songs That Will Trigger Your Fight Or Flight Response When You Hear Them In Public, Provided You’ve Read Homestuck”

  5. Anonymous says:
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    it’s upsetting how accurate this is. although i’m surprised you didn’t mention girl with one eye, but i guess for everyone there are things that seem like fandom staples, in a i-can’t-believe-you-don’t-have-the-song-and-video-memorized-i-though-everyone-had-watched-it-on-repeat-until-they-did kind of way. point is it was an important homestuck song for me but the fandom is/was vast and it might not have been for other people

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  6. ampersandra says:
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    i have literally NEVER felt so called out & uncomfortable in my life. i just relived the entirety of being 13 years old, in 7th grade, & having only ever heard the karkalicious version of fergalicious to point where even today i fear singing along to fergalicious because i have, literally, done that exact same thing in a slightly different situation. the nostalgia overwhelmed me in such a massive tidal wave that i mightve blacked out & briefly relived the first time seeing all of these. god. im gonna watch them all again now.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. Nora says:
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    I’d like to add girl with one eye and run to you (another paperseverywhere). Also I hate that you made me listen to karkalicious again

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  11. rccs says:
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    this is paperseverywhere’s Run To You (Pentatonix) lyricstuck erasure which made me feel emotions for the first time in over 5 years and still makes me cry whenever i watch it. also groveofsketches’ Bear’s Den (Pompeii) which is also tears.

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  12. Nette says:
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    I’d argue that “What’s Up” should be part of this list, along with “Just Dance” and “Combinationquest”, but it’s possible there are some areas where the fandom didn’t overlap. Great list though.

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  13. Zero says:
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    I read the word karkalicious and immediately the lyrics hit me like a freight train and I was left cold and shaking from the immense terror that my memory burdened me with. Thank you. Thank you very much for this wonderful fucking experience.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Emma Dee says:
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    I was really into the Skaianet Radio community way back when, so there’s probably not a single Homestuck fan cover that has escaped my knowledge. This list makes me cry, but it also barely scratches the surface. There are more songs than I like to admit where I know the Homestuck version better than the original. Fergalicious? Behind Blue Eyes? Black Parade? My Boy Builds Coffins? Thrift Shop? Taylor the Latte Boy? Everything is ruined for me. If you made any sort of Homestuck music content back in the day, I see you. I recognize your username. You’ll never escape your past.

    Also, props to those who even wrote original songs as well. Who else remembers PhemieC? I’m on the floor crying now.

    Also in case you’re still wondering, “Life’s a Happy Song” is originally from “The Muppets” movie from 2011! ^^

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  17. Tomx says:
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    Hahahaha OMG I love this article so much! Lyricstucks where the best way to find songs for me in those times and man I love most of them. Thanks for this so much!

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  20. manicMagician says:
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    Was somewhat questioning some of the video choices (though some, I very much did recognize and agree with), and your comment on them. But you totally lost me when you started shit talking Equius on Blue Lips.

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  24. Gay Dog says:
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    why is this article written like you lost a fight with every member of imagine dragons and whoever was behind the blue lips lyricstuck

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  28. CC says:
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    Sexy Can I played on the radio not even a day after I read this article and I felt my entire being leave my body thinking about this post, so thanks.

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  32. Lily Jones says:
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    This made me uncomfortably aware of how much older I am than most Homestuck fans…. I started reading in 2011 at age 21

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  33. Thiinka says:
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    This is Nattöpet/A Lullaby for Gods erasure, though I suppose one wouldn’t hear it in public all that often. Just Lose It though takes me right back to leaving the DeviantArt-linked flash page playing on repeat… for so long…

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  34. mikey stokes (@nekusakuranya) says:
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    i’m crying in the middle of the library thank you

    though i’d also like to second a lullaby for gods. and does anyone else remember the cronus version of that one lady gaga song that was just downpitched to sound masc? applause i think? is that just me??

    also kesha [s] enter from keshastuck. that might be more niche but i fucking loved keshastuck.

    i legitimately cannot hear die young without expecting sburban jungle behind it. someone please free me

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  37. nate says:
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    equius was the one who got me into homestuck because i somehow managed to see the all i want for christmas is you video and i thought he was cool and angsty and a little hot as a 12/13 year old so I started reading it just so I could get to him and then just completely fucking forgot he was a character. also ive completely forgotten the real lyrics to fergalicious.

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  39. Alexander says:
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    “Genuine, earnest question: Who the fuck cares about Equius? Equius is the sardines of Homestuck. Largely inoffensive, but I’ve peacefully completely forgotten his existence many times before. And yet somehow this lyricstuck has 3.7 MILLION views (that’s more than the original “You Can’t Fight The Homestuck” video) and can elicit a panic response from the average fan with just its thumbnail.”

    The answer you’re looking for is “Regina Spektor is a great singer”. She’d be the only artist on this list who I listen to in contexts other than these specific animations.

    Also, Equius is a surprisingly deep character for someone so plot-irrelevant, assuming you’ve got a high enough equine innuendo tolerance to do more than skim over his dialogue.

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