garyreadshs
Re-Re-Rereading Homestuck
15 posts
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garyreadshs · 21 hours ago
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What exactly is he quoting "the mad stunts all wicked up-ins" from? The phrasing makes it sound like it's from some sort of promotional material from Sburb, which isn't entirely unbelievable. I could see Mom Lalonde writing that, then someone else spell-checking it.
"It might come in handy if you ever need something that burns easily."
It's not even the fancy magazine paper that never lights? For shame, GameBro, for shame.
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I love his little magic hat that matches his giant magic box.
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And we venture into the hallway, revealing... the exact same picture that was linked a few pages ago. Plus a pretty cool painting of a clown. That's an Andrew Hussie original, John, show some respect.
"You always thought he looked a lot like Michael Cera. But your DAD swears on the many HALLOWED TOMBS of Egypt that it is not. You're not sure about that though."
I'm pretty sure that's a stock image from a page selling groucho marx glasses. Significantly less classy.
"Hallowed tombs of Egypt", you say? What a peculiar interest for Dad Egbert to have.
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garyreadshs · 22 hours ago
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"EB: ok, i did it. TG: hammerkind? EB: yeah. TG: ok that will be the permanent allocation for your specibus TG: i guess i should have mentioned that EB: uh... TG: hope you like hammers dude! EB: yeah, that's fine i guess. i can't imagine it's going to be all that relevant."
Two punctuation marks in a casual conversation! Like I've said, this is probably up to Dave's character not being solidified yet, but if you want to be angsty about it, you could say that he was starting to come out of his shell before the game, but the stress and his Bro's death reversed all the progress that having friends made.
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"Ordinarily this ridiculous book would be way too heavy to carry around in any practical way. You guess maybe this is one respect in which the cards present some convenience."
Oh, now this is interesting. Is the sylladex something unlocked when one turns 13, like their name? If so, it's pretty rude of Dave to be making fun of him for not having a fancy modus yet. It's been less than a day, give the guy some slack.
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Sburb being "game of the year" implies that several reviewers have already played it, and thus that the meteoric apocalypse has already begun, but given John's... questionable knowledge of current events, it makes sense that he wouldn't know about these suspicious coincidences.
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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Interesting that it seems to take active effort for John to disobey the narration.
"TG: is it there TG: plz say yes TG: maybe you can play with TT shes been pestering me all day about it TG: shes mackin on me so hard all the time i start to feel embarrassed for her TG: i mean not that i can blame her or anything EB: yes, it is understandable because you are really attractive. i am attracted to you. TG: thank you EB: jk haha."
This is just painful. All of it.
"TG: whats your modus EB: what? TG: how do you retrieve artifacts from it EB: oh. like one at a time i guess. and if i put too much in, something falls out. TG: stack?? hahahahahaha EB: what is yours? TG: hash map TG: my bro taught me a few tricks he basically knows everything and is awesome"
To be fair, I have no idea what a hash map is either, and I've actually seen it in action. (Also, 😬)
"TG: did you at least allocate your strife specibus EB: no. TG: it could free up a card for you TG: plus let you attack stuff whenever things get too hot to handle TG: which is never TG: what have you got EB: well, i've got a hammer but it's trapped under some arms. TG: wow you really suck at this dont you TG: just get rid of the arms and then allocate the hammer to the specibus EB: how? TG: i dont know just use the arms on any old thing and see if it works"
I've seen posts about this before, but Dave does serve as a sort of "guide" character in the more adventure-gamey beginning. Navi, is that you?
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Great job, John.
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I'd like to go through some of these and rank them for viability.
Pizzactrkind: 7/10. There is absolutely a horror movie about a delivery boy gone rogue that uses this.
Batkind: 9/10 for the equipment, 1/10 for the animal. Unless it lets you release a swarm of vampire bats to attack your foes, in which case 6/10. Bats still aren't that indimidating.
Curlironkind: 5/10. I can totally see how Homestuck's logic would turn this into some sort of fire wand, but at the beginning it's pretty much useless.
Iceskatekind: 2/10. Might work if your opponent is very short.
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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"The little red arm-swingy-dealy thing or whatever it is called is flipped up!"
It's called a flag, in case you were wondering.
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He arrives! Back from the grocery store.
"If you go down stairs to get it, he will likely monopolize hours of your time."
Considering that you've just said that you spend most of your time on the computer, I don't think that this is a bad thing.
It's interesting that all of the CDs but three are Hussie's work. Self-promo, sure, but I think that John is the only one established to enjoy his comics, and his taste in media is... questionable. Also a sly self-own, then. Two in one!
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"...this thing is huge. It could kill a cat if you dropped it."
Ha, ha.
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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Here we go! First pesterlog!
"...TG: man i got two copies already TG: but i dont care im not going to play it or anything the game sounds boring TG: did you see how it got slammed in game bro???? EB: game bro is a joke and we both know it. TG: yeah TG: why dont you go check your mail maybe its there now EB: alright."
I love how this introduction sets up Dave (aside from the apple juice bit)- he says he doesn't care about the game AFTER asking John if he has it yet, then immediately asks if he saw a review with four question marks. Part of that is probably up to the character not being finalized, but still. Count 'em. Four.
It also highlights some key differences between them. John loves terrible movies, Dave is a "cool kid", but John is the one (lightheartedly) making fun of Dave here, instead of being intimidated. They both think Game Bro is a joke, but John is laughing at it, while Dave is laughing with it and its (non-existent) irony.
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"...a tree without a tire swing is like a proper gentleman without a monocle. That is to say, HE CAN HARDLY BE CONSIDERED A TERRIBLY PROPER GENTLEMAN AT ALL."
Well, pip pip cheerio to you too, John. I'm trying so hard to restrain myself from writing analysis about John and Jake's (archaic) view of masculinity compared to Dad and Jane's slightly outdated view and Dave and Dirk's neo-masculinity, but we're on panel 27.
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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OMG, 4/13? Homestuck referance?
"It's been three days already. It's starting to become a sore subject with you."
You'd think they'd get the game to the future of civilization quicker, but maybe Sburb and co didn't want to pay for express shipping.
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"You are sick to death of cake!!! You've been eating it all day."
More than two cakes for a two-person household certainly is excessive. Maybe Dad was preparing for a surprise party later? That's kind of sad, actually.
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"You pull up to your COMPUTER. This is where you spend most of your time. You decorated your desktop with some rather handsome WALLPAPER which you made yourself. You are really proud of it.
Your desktop is also littered with various PROGRAMMING PROJECT FILES. You are so bad at programming sometimes you wonder why you even bother with it."
I wonder how many timelines John died in from trying to hack the game and accidentally deleting a root file.
Typhoeus is theorized to come from tuphos, whirlwind, but he's actually far more strongly associated with volcanoes. He's also usually depicted as having a snake head, rather than tail, but that would be pretty difficult to draw in the space of 20 pixels.
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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"You use the HAMMER and NAILS card IN CONJUNCTION with the card beneath it."
Even I got tired of this level of game-mechanic detail pretty quickly, though. I'm glad it was replaced fairly quickly.
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And the giant cursor is back, although this time it's an extension of John rather than the reader. Interesting that this method of placement has more in common with the server player's digital interference than later examples of sylladexes.
"PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX."
Just putting this here out of respect.
"Films about impending apocalypse fascinate you. Plus, a black president??? Now you've seen everything!"
Note that this panel takes place almost a year after Obama was elected, and he appears several more times in dialogue. John, I love you, but I really can't defend you on this one.
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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Alright, ending it there for tonight! See you tomorrow, hopefully.
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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"But now all of your CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS are full. You wonder what will happen if you try to take the NAILS?"
I could make another comment about the other kids having "real" backstories and connections, but instead I'm going to choose to imagine that John has never needed to hold more than four things before.
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...Or, based on the fact that he's wincing before he even picked up the nails, he was perfectly aware and the narration merely described the situation like he wasn't for the sake of the reader. Knowing Hussie's earlier works, I'm sure he had some of the plans for a Doc Scratch-like narrator already, but I sincerely doubt that this is an instance thereof.
"This is the dumbest idea you've had in weeks!!!"
John, what ideas are you having that are dumber than "squawk like an imbecile and shit on your desk"?
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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I think the best sign of Homestuck slipping away from its parody roots is that John has nothing in his sylladex and basically no signs that he wasn't just spawned in, while later characters have visible signs of past interaction with the world and people around them before their introduction.
"You were never all that great with data structures and you find the concept puzzling and mildly irritating."
You're a thirteen-year-old who know what "copacetic" means, but you can't understand a stack? This may be why you're so bad at coding, John.
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Also, I love how John is mainly focused on comedy/stage magic but still has a detective poster, while Jane is primarily a sleuth but still appreciates classic comedians. Makes you wonder if Dad just got such an even mix of the two that they canceled each other out.
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It's probably more in-character for him to actually use a typewriter (or just have handwriting that neat), but I'm imagining Dad Egbert going to his little HP printer and cutting out a square of cardstock to leave this note on.
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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That's Harry Anderson. I may be stupid.
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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"...You CAPTCHALOGUE them in your SYLLADEX. You have no idea what that actually means though."
Unpopular opinion, but act one might actually be my favorite part of Homestuck. The first time I read it (when I was very young), I actually quit partway through act three because I was disappointed that the adventure game shtick/ sylladex shenanigans were gone.
Also, I was going to make fun of John for not understanding his universe's version of picking things up, but I probably couldn't tell you how a backpack is made, so fair enough.
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Fruity cowboy... Foreshadowing?
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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It's funny to see what survived in relevancy over the course of the comic and what didn't- we all know about Con Air, Ghostbusters, and the infamous apple juice gag, but I can't recall there ever being another mention of Deep Impact. Maybe the movie itself wasn't memorable to make gags out of?
"You have a fondness for PARANORMAL LORE, and are an aspiring AMATEUR MAGICIAN."
Here's another thing that didn't make the cut- too bad, because I would have loved to see a discussion between John and Rose about this shared interest. Though, given the aforementioned Ghostbusters, their definitions of "paranormal lore" might be a little different.
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"Out of sympathy for John's perceived lack of arms, you pick up the CAKE for him and put it on his BED."
People who know far more than me about metanarratives have likely written extensively about this, but I will note that (AFAIK) this is the only time in the comic outside of when one of the in-universe narrators are on the screen that the reader is addressed directly, and the only time when they interact with the world.
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garyreadshs · 2 days ago
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It begins...
I love how the narration refers to him as a "young man" so insistently. Good sir, you are 13.
Really wish there was a version with archives of the comments. Whoever put in "Zoosmell Pooplord" contributed more to history than most nobel peace prize winners. And that John guy, I guess.
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Also, look at his stupid little eyebrows.
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garyreadshs · 3 days ago
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Hello and welcome!
This is the blog where I will post my readthrough of Homestuck. My main hs blog is @simsandchesscrossover. I'm planning on getting pretty silly with it, so don't expect everything I say here to be a completely serious theory/analysis.
This will be a panel-by-panel readthrough, meaning that I will try to say something about every single page of the comic. If I don't, just assume I didn't think of anything funny/interesting/ridiculous enough.
Feel free to send me asks saying you agree with my theories, disagree, whatever, as long as you're polite about it!
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