#(im very normal) (lying)

[bacchuschucklefuck]

while teen while goblin while aroace while injured while doing your best

[linkedin-offficial]

one more of him

[rookdaw]

monster X monster hunter

[lovearsonist]

its all about you girl

on your 46th birthday

[skitskatdacat63]

okay.

[turtleplushi]

I need to stop drawing them my god

[tsubomiiiii]

I had to draw this the moment @corffee mentioned it LMAOO

[getosugurusbangs]

one last kiss - hikaru utada

[homestuckreplay]

I have dishonored my ancestors beyond comprehension with this frivolous accessory.

(page 1349-1358; LOWAS walkaround)

JOHN EGBERT IS BACK. HE’S HERE!!!! Damn it is good to see him. His goofy face and glasses and his cool green slime suit appearing on my screen at the start of Act 4 was such a pleasure and a delight. To be honest I would’ve loved a day or two between the end of the Intermission and the start of Act 4. I am so excited to see John again as well as getting a bunch of new land and lore to explore that it’s super hard to concentrate on both things. The end of the intermission is pretty huge too so one thing at a time.

End Intermission

Beneath the barcode scanner door to English’s vault is a bunker of the kind WV and PM have flown to Jade’s island, complete with a command terminal and some similar establishing shots. For sure this is the bunker that Slick (then the Scurrilous Straggler) hung out in when he first arrived in this wasteland, sending commands to a Sburb player who brought about the apocalypse on this pink and green planet. Slick had a similar city building instinct to WV and succeeded in building this town – it’s uncertain whether he used the bunker’s homing function, but that may be how he met up with the rest of the Midnight Crew and Snowman. The Felt’s species and origin remain unknown. For some reason, Lord English – who still has not been seen now the intermission has ended – wanted to cut off this communication. The terminal allows for communication through time (interesting, considering Slick’s distaste for time based powers) so possibly English was researching this as a way to enhance his or his gang’s own powers?

Slick’s command terminal has twelve windows, in place of WV’s four. On page 1355, we see a Creature of some description – a sprite in the same style as the kids, with pale gray skin, yellow eyes and horns, fangs, and a black shirt with a gray symbol. Behind them floats a pincered, crablike sprite(?). They have a gray cruxite dowel and two black captchalogue cards, and there are purple clouds in the window behind them in the same twelve-square pattern as the monitor.

Barring any major twists I think this is probably carcinoGeneticist, a troll Jade talked to on page 859. They write in gray text, with text color often matching cruxite and/or shirt symbol, and the ‘carcino-’ prefix can refer to either crabs or the astrological sign Cancer, which is their shirt symbol. That’s my star sign also so I’m pretty excited about this little guy, even if he sounded like a jackass while trolling Jade and looks really angry with those fangs.

It seems like Trollslum is another intermission in the Midnight Crew MS Paint Adventure that the beta kids are reading? And therefore possibly a future intermission for actual Homestuck? I’m not sure but these pages set up a fun parallel for carcinoGeneticist and John Egbert, in addition to the ‘weird scientist’ format of both their chumhandles. This intermission did a pretty good job of introducing the Felt and giving them distinct appearances and powers despite their large numbers, so I can imagine a future intermission doing this with twelve trolls, and I’m curious what type of genre the story would slip into for them.

ACT 4

We are dropped into Act 4 with no time to prepare; I have been asking for it, but when the moment came I was not prepared. John has passed through the First Gate, which has portaled him down to the Land of Wind and Shade (!), a planet (!!) ‘where the constellations dance beneath the clouds’ (p.885) (!!!) populated by yellow salamanders (!!!!) who have an extensive mail system (!!!!!) which we the reader get to walk around in and explore (!!!!!!). This mirrors ‘YOU THERE. BOY’ (p.253) where we also get to take over as John after he enters a new area of Sburb.

As previously established John Egbert has probably spent his whole life in western Washington, primarily the suburbs. We don’t know if his family even took vacations. This could be the first other place John has ever been, and it is mystical and magical, glowing blue mushrooms and trees (which look kind of like cruxite!!) surrounding him like some sort of bioluminescent cave video game level. After the day John’s had this place is kind of peaceful when he can find a quiet spot away from the imps. What an absolute dream come true to come to a land this beautiful and get to hang out with such cool, friendly locals. I’m personally delighted by all the visuals on this page, and I’m excited for John to keep exploring LOWAS just so I can see more of it.

John in this panel acts very confused and uncertain about his situation, relying on Nanna’s guidance a lot more than he did while in his house, and nervous around the salamanders (personally, I would be thrilled to meet a secret wizard and behold his robes). That’s definitely a John trait but we don’t get to see so much of his whimsy, stubbornness, problem solving, movie recreations, etc, probably because of the format, which makes me glad this is a single panel. I loved playing through this but wouldn’t want the whole story told in this format.

I’m very grateful for the map linked below the panel, to make sure I’ve explored every corner. I did not 100% Gate 1 because combat is fairly slow and not especially engaging, but the concept is super cool and the programming is impressive. Compared to a video game it feels clunky to play (I got trapped in an endless loop of ejecting and re-captchaloguing items in my sylladex), but as part of a webcomic it’s honestly radical. I feel like I’ve read enough other webcomics at this point to understand how far this is pushing beyond what other authors are doing, and how efficiently this is giving miles of exposition where other comics might take weeks to deliver all this lore (or a handful of wall-of-text comics that readers would complain about).

This panel is PACKED with exposition, from the long distance John and Nanna conversations, and the insights from salamanders. Just like ‘[S] Enter’, this feels like a way to move the story on as quickly as possible. Some of the expository lines do feel clunky, but when it’s paired with the cool visuals and presented in such a novel way, it doesn’t bother me, and I’m sure I’ll reference this page loads just like Nannasprite’s previous exposition. Here are some of the most important things we learn, in my opinion:

John is definitely the Heir of Breath. The Heir’s arrival has long been prophesized among LOWAS’ indigenous creatures; the ‘wind’ in the land’s name presumably links to the ‘breath’ in John’s title.

‘Amphibious and reptilian life forms play a special role in your quest, John.’ ‘Underlings’ (presumably imps, ogres, etc) will deface any frog iconography they come across.

‘The Slumbering One’, who was awake and is now asleep, once cast a spell on the land’s fireflies to trap them within the clouds, much like the trapped firefly WV already rescued from a nugget of amber (p.749).

‘The Slumbering One’ also ‘commissioned’ the underlings (hired them? had them created?) and caused some sort of environmental damage using ‘sludge’, which the salamanders are not happy about.

The mail system is an extremely important part of life on LOWAS to the point of being sacred.

The Second Gate is ‘hidden somewhere in the Land’, although it also might be visible above John’s house (p.251), so there could be multiple possible routes for progression(?)

Jaspersprite’s prototyping has affected the imps on John’s land, who have tentacle, princess and cat characteristics, as well as the imps Rose will fight.

Nannasprite knows that Rose has entered the Medium (and what she looks like).

And most important of all, one salamander essentially gives John a major game quest:

‘The spell I'm sure you've heard from a reliable source cannot be broken unless The Slumbering One is first woken up, and then slain. Then the Breeze will again flow through the Pipes and the Fireflies will be released and allowed to go home. But I do not envy the adventurers who will presumably take on this responsibility!’

Clicking John gives the command ‘I am told your name is John. Is that correct?’, which is closer to the Wayward Vagabond’s ‘BOY WHO IS JOHN. DO AS I SAY’ (p.253) than to the regular player’s ‘John: Action’ command format. So this could indicate that a different future construct is talking to John – possibly the Peregrine Mendicant, because this land is very focused on the mail.

And I LOVE the mail system; it might be my favorite thing about this land. I personally looked in a whole bunch of parcel pyxis, and found several rocks, a shoe, a couple of minitablets, a chunk of amber (firefly not included), a cool frog, and best of all, a jar of bugs. I will guard this jar of bugs with my whole life. The carved minitablets moving through the pipes as a system of trade is very fun worldbuilding.

I guess my one issue with this page is the writing of some of the salamanders. Conceptually they’re great, and I love how their distinct personalities and roles within the culture come through – some are really communicative, while others are unhelpful, some have jobs in the society like mushroom farming, some are entrepreneurial (I would sell my suit to a salamander for 1 Boondollar if it was allowed) and some are outcasts (Crumplehat dishonoring their ancestors). Genuinely I think Hussie did a great job quickly showing a diverse society and hinting at its power structures and politics, but they are SO annoyingly selfconscious about making a fantasy society and it kind of makes me want to punch them? Like I’m okay with some nods to the audience and medium but ‘'GLUB' can basically mean anything I want it to mean. It's really cool having a bullshit language’ and ‘Maybe elders or something like that. Man I don't know. Also, isn't it funny how I'm sort of taking your existence here in stride? I'm treating it like it's no big deal’ do cross a line for me. Like it or not, this isn’t an ironic salamander society for a one off gag, this is a legitimate salamander society that’s going to form an important part of the story. That story isn’t going to be everyone’s thing but being all desperate pick-me about it isn’t going to make people take this story seriously who otherwise wouldn’t.

Anyway to finish on a positive note, getting to look up through the telescope and see John’s house feels very jarring, but also very cool. To see the primary location of the first three acts from a totally different vantage point feels like a point of no return for the story, and maybe John as a character. Hey if things get bad enough down here this kid’s gonna WISH he was homestuck.

[lanawinterscigarettes]

Desperately in need of this house md poster on amazon to hang on my ceiling above my bed so they can watch me while I sleep

[junkissed]

need to ride jun's abs so bad this isn't funny anymore . 💤

i soooo get you but also... what if you were riding jun's cock and right before you're about to cum he lifts your hips off of him and ruins your orgasm and instead makes you ride his abs and you have to cum from that before he'll let you have his cock again. honestly i think he would be just as into ab riding as you are, if not more (and trust me i am very into ab riding). it gives him a rush knowing you can easily get off merely by grinding against his stomach. he would hold onto your hips so tightly and drag your pussy back and forth, making sure your clit touches every single ridge of his toned abs. he would tense the muscles so it would give you something nice and hard to grind against and the entire time he would be praising you at how well you ride him (but also at the same time lowkey bragging about how good his abs are; we've seen his lives lolol and we know he loves to tease us about his abs). "does that feel good, sweetheart? which do you like more, riding my abs or riding my cock? silly question- i know it's a tough choice, baby. you want both. and i'll let you have both, if you keep being such a good girl and cum all over my abs. then you can have my cock, hm?" and then when you do finally cum, he'd make you move so you can see the trail of wetness you've left all over his body and he'd coo about how you're always so wet and beautiful and desperate for him. and only then he would let you ride his cock again

[lavalamps-and-ladydoors]

bbc boys!

[aria0fgold]

Ever think about how tragic it is to be in The Universe's place as a being that loves all of creation but can never express that in a way that the subjects of their affection can understand so they created a middle line of it. To grant any and all wishes just to show that they are there, they are listening, and they are giving you the means to grasp what you desire.

But it's never enough because to a higher being such as The Universe, with no bias on What wish to grant or a bias on What is right or wrong, they grant wishes indiscriminately. Because they love everyone, so they grant everyone's wishes, all the while bending it so as to prevent needless damage, because they love you.

But their love is also what hurts you, like how Loop had to give up in the end cuz of how hopeless it all seemed so Loop had to make another wish. And how Siffrin continued to suffer during the timeloops, and especially how much it hurts Loop, to see someone else achieve what they've always wanted to have. To Loop, they're The Universe's favourite cosmic joke but to The Universe, they love them.

They granted Loop's wish, and then granted another, they continuously grant Siffrin's wish. They love them, but they don't know how much it hurts all the same because they can't understand the way all of creation expresses love. Because their own language is incomprehensible to anyone else but them. Ever think about how lonely it must be to be a higher being with a language only they can understand.

[saphira-approves]

Okay no I’m not done talking about swords, and their names, because sword names are IMPORTANT okay and they MEAN THINGS—

I rambled in the tags of this post about Eragon and Murtagh naming/renaming their swords to be positive, compared to their fathers’ respective negative sword names, but I want to go further into it.

First is the obvious one, Morzan’s Zar’roc, Misery, and Murtagh’s Ithring, Freedom. I’m almost certain Morzan names his sword as an offensive measure—and I don’t mean offensive as in insulting, I mean it in the combat sense. It’s a curse, almost, upon his enemies: any opponent he faces with this blade will be struck by misery, literally. But one thing we know about Morzan: he’s not particularly wise, and even his best works backfire on him. We see it with Selena, and his confidence that she loves him too much to betray him, so he never warded against her. He named his sword Misery, and Misery is all it brought him: he joined Galbatorix, brought the downfall of the Order, and lost his dragon to nameless madness; he killed Brom’s dragon, making an enemy of the man who once had idolized him and sealing his own demise by Brom’s hand; he threw Misery at his own child and pushed his wife to betray him, which ultimately led to the downfall of everything he had ever worked for. Talk about a curse. He upheld Misery, and Misery came right back to bite him in the ass.

And then Brom took Misery from him, and sequestered it away, and eventually gave it to Eragon without telling him its meaning; and Eragon wielded it without knowing its meaning or history, trying his best to do good with it, and even when he did learn its history and its name he resolved to work to give it a better legacy. After all, a good sword is a good sword. But Murtagh, Morzan’s son and heir, was not done with Misery, bore too painful a scar from Misery to let it go—he took Misery from Eragon and claimed it as his own, claiming his birthright, yes… but taking Misery away from Eragon, in the very same moment that he also protected Eragon from capture and forced servitude, the fate that had befallen Murtagh himself. Complicated as feelings all around may have been, intentional as the act itself may or may not have been, Murtagh here is very much intentionally shouldering that burden. He fully believed that Eragon was another son of Morzan, he could have easily justified rejecting that part of his history and his father’s legacy and offloading it on his younger brother, and yet he didn’t. He took it for himself and declared it his own.

And then he called it Freedom.

After enduring torture and enslavement and a hundred other humiliations, he took Misery in hand and said, no. I do not uphold you. I do not fight for you. I fight for Freedom, for my own and my loved ones’, and for the Freedom of all. He looked at the horror of his past and refused to let it define him. He looked at his father’s mistakes and refused to be bound to them. He took a name of offense, of attack and hostility, and changed it to a name of preservation, of defense, of peace.

And then there’s Eragon, with Brisingr, Fire, and Brom’s mysterious Undbitr, Void-biter. At first glance it may seem that they have absolutely nothing to do with each other, but I would not be here if I wasn’t going to loudly and fervently declare otherwise.

My guess for Brom’s reasoning of naming his sword Undbitr would be somewhere between edgelord teenager antics (look me in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t have wanted a sword name Void Biter at twelve years old) and his admiration for Morzan, who named his sword the simple yet devastatingly clever Misery. Void-biter, bite of death, the bite that would send his opponents to the void. To darkness, to nothingness, to anti-life and anti-hope. A sword lost after his dragon’s death, never seen again, and yet Brom himself succumbs to the bite of his own personal void: he dedicates himself to vengeance, throws everything he has of himself into orchestrating Morzan’s downfall, and the downfall of Galbatorix and the rest of the Forsworn for good measure. It’s implied, from Brom’s own admission of fearing his son would hate him and Oromis’s discussion of his near-suicidal madness after Saphira’s death, that revenge is all Brom lived for until he met Selena—and even after he met her and fell in love with her, I suspect his need for vengeance is what ultimately decided the events leading both to Morzan’s death and Selena’s doomed reunion with Murtagh. Brom may have lost Void-biter, but the void consumed him anyway.

And then there’s Eragon. Yes I’ve said that already but if anything can sum up these books, it’s And then there’s Eragon. The first spell he learns is fire. A dangerous force, certainly, one that can easily break control and wreak untold havoc and destruction, but what force of nature doesn’t fall into that category? He could easily have learned, and thus be represented by, wind or ice or lightning, or even just pain or break. But he didn’t, and he’s not. He wields fire. A force of nature, a destructive weapon… but also the foundation of a home, fire in the hearth; the fuel of invention, to shape metal and glass; and most importantly, a light in the dark, the hope of dawn in the long cold night. Eragon names his sword Brisingr, and it’s not merely a weapon: it is a beacon. His father was consumed by darkness, but Eragon is the one who guided him back to the light, who gave him something to live for after he had defeated his enemy and lost his love; Eragon was the figurehead of the rebellion, the spark that drove a passive resistance into the blaze of true revolution; and now Eragon builds the new hearth of the Dragon Riders, to tend and defend it for future generations.

What a change from misery and the void.

Fire, and freedom. Hope, and peace. Family, and love.

I think Selena would be very proud of her sons.

[turrondeluxe]

Seeing ur Lovers Rock art made me ship them more than ever before. (I saw them first on Twitter)

I would like to nominate 2 other Spideys for Mirage and Ronin Mikey.

Spider-Man Noir for Mirage

Spider-Man 2099 for Ronin

Plz consider 🥺👉👈

NO WAIT. YOUR BRAIN IS SO BIG. I LOVE THEM.

[theokusgallery]

Something something homosexuals