#kind of the same context in which you'd sign a cast i guess. but also just for fun lol

[rockeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy]

happy pride :3

[byfurries4furries]

Housepets (Webcomic. Very Webcomic)

Housepets is a webcomic written and drawn by Rick Griffin, which… technically isn't very rare in the furry fandom depending on your definition of webcomic, but Housepets is much closer to more typical examples of webcomics like Penny Arcade, Ctrl+Alt+Delete, and other comics that weren't just two straight dudes complaining about video games. Housepets could have gone in that direction, but instead had a more unique concept. The comic at first focuses on two characters, Peanut and Grape. They are a dog and cat who live in a world where animals are sapient and in many cases, anthropomorphic, but still live in more or less the same roles in society as their feral counterparts, being kinda like permanent children. They are the central characters early on until the comic starts interrogating the implications of its own premise while also throwing in cosmic DnD games and magical shenanigans.

The comic is great for its massive cast of characters. Even though Grape and Peanut are the central characters at first, the comic frequently follows other characters in their own storylines. Hell, there was recently a period of time lasting three years when they didn't appear in any comics outside of 3 issues in total, most of them one-offs. Instead, there's a wide variety of characters who appear in various stories, some of whom are more geared towards serious plotlines and some of whom are more geared towards comedic and/or interpersonal plotlines. For example, Peanut is a goofier character who usually plays a central role in more comedic arcs, but his girlfriend, Tarot, is extremely important to most of the more high stakes arcs since she is a powerful magic user. Meanwhile, King, another character central to a lot of high stakes arcs due to being a pawn in the plans of celestial beings, is best friends with Fox, a character with more interpersonal dramatic arcs. The characters are all connected in some way and many characters can play major roles in multiple types of stories. This helps every kind of story feel naturally integrated instead of feeling like there's three or so separate comics in the same universe. Some characters even switch between roles, such as Keene who starts out as an almost entirely comedic side character who becomes more and more involved with high stakes arcs until he becomes just as much a fixture of those arcs as Tarot and eventually overtakes King as the central figure of them once his overarching plotline is basically wrapped up. It really helps the comic's cast feel fleshed out and fully realized as characters enter and exit overarching storylines based on their motivations, personal arcs, and roles in those storylines.

The overall story is definitely messy in a very fun kind of way, as it is for any piece of media allowed to go on for a very long time. I don't even know where to start with spoiler warnings. I could spoil the most recent arc, but you'd have so little context for it that you'd have to read several years worth of issues to even start to understand what it was I was even spoiling. I could spoil the first more serious arc, but it's only the first of several arcs that sets up so little on its own that there's no way you can guess what it'll lead to without knowing what happens in some of the arcs before that haven't intersected yet. Still everything progresses very naturally and things are introduced cleverly. For example, King's overarching plotline takes center stage for like 5-6 years, but it also introduced its own overarching plotlines that would take its place when the resolution of King's story still left a lot of loose threads that couldn't be left dangling and were therefore picked up by other characters with their own motivations that had also been built up to get to that point. The fact the comic has been going for more than a decade and it still hasn't jumped the shark is pretty impressive. There's no sign that the author has run out of ideas for what to do with the characters.

If you want a good place to start, just start from the beginning. Unlike a lot of webcomics, it doesn't take very long for things to get good and there's no point in starting anywhere else. Aside from Joey, the characters' personalities are never really retconned or changed without a significant reason in the story, but the later you start, the more catchup work you'll have to do. You can however skip the Spot arcs, which are in-universe comics written by Peanut, and every Imaginate arc after the first two, which are arcs where the cast act out chaotic improvised parodies of famous movies and plays. The first one establishes Peanut and Grape as characters and the second one resolves an interpersonal plotline between Peanut and Grape. After that though, they have virtually nothing to do with any of the other arcs other than maybe a few references to events from other arcs.

Links

Official Website (First Comic)

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