#a6a6

[explaining-homestuck]

What did Gamzee do after the events of the meteor pre and post retcon? The wiki page just made me more confused.

Ooh, here's an interesting one.

One thing to keep in mind is that while a lot of earlier acts made a point of showing exactly what happened to cause things to occur, characters to be in certain places and have certain things happen to them, Act 6 (and more specifically, Act 6 Act 6) tend to throw that out of the window. This is a choice made for a number of reasons: for one, showing every single thing that happens to each character would take forever, especially for two or more timelines worth. Also, narrative obfuscation is a theme of Homestuck, especially A6A6, where Caliborn spills stardust all over the game cartridge, causing glitches to obscure certain events, both for the audience and the characters.

The question given here is "what happens to Gamzee Makara after the meteor trip", so I won't go into much detail about what he specifically does while on the meteor, or in the dream bubbles (though to simplify: he hides in vents for 3 years, plots with Kurloz to help Lord English, romances and abuses Terezi, and ignores Karkat; in the post-retcon timeline Vriska puts a stop to most of this).

However, story-wise, while this is going on, Gamzee appears a couple of times in Jane's session, providing her and her friends with guides (prototyping dead trolls) and taking part in trickster shenanigans. And, he's also seen in Caliborn's session, helping him! What's going on here!?

Let's start with the pre-retcon timeline, in Jane's session. When the meteor arrives, Grimdark Jade arrives and teleports all its passengers (except Gamzee) to LoMaX, where they encounter John.

Gamzee does several things in the Alpha session, which may be impossible to actually order correctly due to the time travel involved, so let's give them in the order they're shown.

Appearance One

First, we see Gamzee, a short while after Jane Crocker entered the Medium (when she returned back to her house at the end of Myststuck), with Aradia Megido's Time Travel Music Boxes (her version of Dave's Time Tables) which allow him to travel through time to any point in the session he's in. He likely retrieved them from somewhere in the meteor, or from a dream bubble. They may also be Damara Megido's, it's impossible to tell.

He's also wearing a fake God Tier outfit, which was made for him by Kurloz Makara in a dream bubble. Furthermore, he has a large variety of bottled potions, which are made from the blood of the seven trolls who died on the meteor (Vriska, Tavros, Equius, Nepeta, Feferi, Sollux, and Eridan); he tries to sell these potions to Jane.

He also has with him a fridge, which contains Vriska Serket and Tavros Nitram's bodies, including Tavros's non-robot legs, which he then prototypes into Jane's Kernelsprite to form Tavrisprite, who proptly spritesplodes, launching Gamzee away from Jane's house.

Appearances Two and Three

According to Roxy Lalonde, Gamzee similarly appeared to create Fefetasprite with her Kernelsprite and Feferi Peixes and Nepeta Leijon's bodies immediately after she arrived back at her house in the Medium post-entry, and can be surmised to have done the same for Jake English's Kernelsprite, making Erisolsprite with Eridan Ampora and Sollux Captor. (Jake also implies this.)

Not much else is known about these appearances.

Appearance Four

While Dirk Strider is having a rather dramatic conversation with Lil Hal about whether or not he's going to prototype him, Gamzee sneaks up behind him and prototypes Equius's body into the Kernelsprite, forming Equiusprite. Hal is then subsequently prototyped, forming ARquiusprite. Gamzee also does a silly honk dance while this is happening, followed by tearing up and prostrating himself before Dirk in reverence of ARquius's majesty.

Gamzee is also present when Dirk joins the Tricksters, the Fefetasplosion, and the Trickster Alchemy Montage. The less said about all that the better.

Appearance Five

At some unknown time, Gamzee was on Derse with the Courtyard Droll, and with him, placed Lil Cal (the green suit one, which Gamzee had in his possession since Murderstuck), as well as a large assortment of knives, a hacksaw, Crowbar's Crowbar (which he received from Kurloz) and a card saying "YOU'RE MOTHER FUCKIN WELCOME" with a picture of Gamzee's face on it, into a pumpkin marked with the words "LET'S PLAY A GAME", which they then transportalized into Jack Noir's Prospit cell. Jack then was cursed by Cal, and proceeded to become Lord Jack, who then destroyed Prospit's moon and a large amount if the main planet itself.

(Technically, Appearance Five is shown before the second half of Appearance Four, but since that takes place in the same location, I grouped it together.)

Appearance Six

Once Jade Harley and John Egbert's battleship arrives in the Alpha Session, Gamzee sneaks aboard the ship after Jade, John, and Davesprite have all left (John by retcon) and steals the Ring of Life John accidentally left on the couch he was sleeping on. He then hides in the fridge, and in his dreams, gives the ring to Aranea Serket, who is revealed to be currently (and possibly previously) manipulating his mind. Aranea uses the Ring to return to life, and appears in the Alpha Session.

It's implied within this section that Gamzee's silence during his actions in the previous parts of Act 6 was due to Aranea's control over him. However, this cannot be proven for sure, although I'll mention it again later.

Appearance Seven

During the chaos on the Land of Frost and Frogs, which would later become the event known as GAME OVER, Gamzee jumps from somewhere under Aranea's control in order to prevent Crocker-Tier Jane from using her Life powers to resurrect the recently killed Grimbark Jade. He grapples and gropes her, until Terezi Pyrope appears, kicking him off of her and engaging in combat with him. She stabs him multiple times, but due to Aranea's influence, he doesn't fight back, and he survives because of his clown immortality.

When Brain Ghost Dirk breaks Aranea's concentration fully (when she's flung back after his re-fakening), Gamzee snaps out of her control reverting to his original StOnEd QuIrK. He asks Terezi to stop, telling her she's hurting him, which causes her to drop her weapons in shock, but he then flies into a clown rage, beating her mercilessly, then hanging her over the lava. Rose attempts to intervene, but Gamzee dodges her spell, then taunts Karkat and Kanaya (who are at the edge of the lava lake) while putting Terezi in a headlock.

[If you want images of this fight, go to the actual comic, please.]

Appearance Eight: GAME OVER

Immediately following Appearance Seven, Gamzee is attacked by Karkat and Kanaya. Using Terezi's canesword, he stabs Karkat twice and throws him into the lava, before Kanaya cuts him in half lengthways with her chainsaw.

This is all of Gamzee's appearances in the Alpha Kids session pre-Retcon. While Hussie has said that Gamzee cannot be killed in any timelines he knows of, bisected Gamzee is very clearly out of the picture for other appearances.

Additional Notes

Because Gamzee had access to time-travel, it's near impossible to position these events in a particular order from his point of view, except that all of them must take place for him after arriving in the Alpha Kids session (otherwise Dave would have been able to similarly skip forward and enter the session without taking the 3 year trip), and appearances 7 and 8 must take place sequentially and last.

The ordering of the first 3 appearances is trivial, as it's likely he didn't time travel at all between 1 and 2-3, just went to the planets to do the prototyping when they appeared.

Aranea may also have been controlling Gamzee through all of his earlier appearances. There's evidence to suggest that she is the narrator for the segment where he tries to sell Jane potions, and that she engineered Tavris's creation in order to pacify Vriska with Tavros's traits, making her less likely to interrupt her plans and also to distract Meenah, but that's dipping into the lines of theory more than facts.

ARquius's creation, and sending Cal to Jack, are likely more motivated by aiding Lord English, whether Gamzee understands why he did them or not.

There'll be another post sometimes soon talking more about Gamzee's motivation, including what cause him to go crazy in Murderstuck, but that's all of this for now.

Except, of course, the other timelines.

Post-Retcon

John's Retcon journey ensured that Terezi would not fall for Gamzee's Murderstuck tricks, and led to her capturing him in the basement shop area. John also prevented her from killing Vriska.

During the meteor trip, Vriska stops Gamzee from doing much of his mischief, preventing his and Terezi's relationship, stopping him from stealing all the bodies, which he complained to Kurloz about in the dream bubbles.

Vriska, using the Music Boxes, also did most of Gamzee's interventions in the Alpha Session, prototyping Jane's Kernelsprite with exclusively Tavros, and Dirk's with ARquius again, in order to help deal with God Cat and de-Crocker Tiering Jane respectively. She left Roxy and Jake's sprites open, which later became Jasprosesprite^2 and Davepetasprite^2, which was not her intention.

(There is a slight inconsistency here, as somebody has to have provided Jack Noir with Cal in order for him to become Lord Jack, and make Jane and Jake become God Tier. Nobody knows how this happens in the post-Retcon timeline, though Vriska creating overpowered Jacks in order to have them later be defeated is a recurring theme with her; all 3 Noirs that took part in [S] Collide have her to blame for their presence in one way or another, if she is the creator of Lord Jack. However, this is once again theory, not facts.)

Upon the arrival of the meteor crew in the session, or perhaps some time before or after, Gamzee was locked in Jane Crocker's fridge by Vriska.

In this fridge he remained for the rest of the comic. It was briefly transported to LoMaX by Jasprose to use as a table for her, Nepetasprite and Jake's tea party, and then once she joined Jane on LoCaH to aid with the coming battle, it was used by ARquius as a weapon against Cans, with Gamzee still inside. When Cans and ARquius began travelling between different moments and locations in the battle, the fridge went with them, eventually ending up on LoTaK, where Dave, Dirk, and Terezi were fighting Lord Jack and Spades Slick.

Gamzee was shown inside the fridge and one point, crying.

Most of LoTaK was subsequently destroyed by Lord Jack's head exploding into a black hole. Terezi, Dave, and Dirk all got clear of the blast via time travel, but Gamzee's fate was unknown.

However, this isn't the end of Gamzee's story after the Meteor.

Caliborn

A Gamzee, wearing a fake God Tier outfit, discovered Calliope and Caliborn's egg on Future Earth C, in Universe C (thousands of years after the events of the Homestuck Epilogues, with Earth's new sun expanded to a red giant reminiscent of Alternia's sun).

How this Gamzee got here is unknown. However, he raised the baby Cherubs the best he could, favouring Calliope to Caliborn (possibly because Caliborn bit him)

Gamzee set their room in the wreckage of the meteor up, providing them with meat, candy, special stardust, computers, their Jujus, the chessboard from the Cherubs famous game, and various other items. Where he got these is unknown, but one of them is Rose Lalonde's book that she and Kanaya Maryam wrote, on the workings of Sburb and the events of their sessions (with additional artwork by Dave Strider and Karkat Vantas). However, he edited it, mostly using Equius's blood, removing references to Lord English, Doc Scratch and himself. He also gave Calliope Karkat's ~ATH book (although neither the version from the Alpha Timeline, as that was destroyed in Karkat's computer explosion, nor the one from the timeline an Aradiabot brought the HoNkhOnK code back from, as that one was covered in blood, and also was already used by Doc Scratch, and once Andrew Hussie, as a scrapbook.)

He also set up Calliope and Caliborn's chains, and then left them alone until Caliborn entered the Medium, taking the Earth with him. At this point, Gamzee appeared to him again, offering to be his guide.

Caliborn shot him a bunch instead.

Gamzee followed him anyway, giving him the Crowbar and a set of keys. This may imply that this is the same Gamzee from [S] Collide, since the Crowbar was wielded by Lord Jack during the battle. The fact that Caliborn's Denizen was Yaldaboath, who was also Dirk's Denizen, and resided at the core of LoTaK, which was also consumed by the black hole, and that Caliborn *also* entered his Medium via a black hole, lend evidence to the theory that Lord Jack's head acted as a portal to Caliborn's session (which may also be an explanation for how ARquius arrived for Caliborn's Masterpiece, though it's one of many possibilities.)

Gamzee may also have got to Earth simply escaping the fridge after LoTaK's destruction, going through the Victory Door, and then waiting for thousands of years, as he might not age along with his clown immortality. He may also have entered the universe via the door at a later time, since there's nothing that confirms you must arrive at a specific time or place.

Hussie says:

I'm not even really sure how he got here, to be honest.  Maybe he stowed away in a shitty Liberty?  Or maybe he was just hiding in one of the ventshafts on your meteor when you entered? He had YEARS of practice to master that move, now that I think about it. 

Anyway, Gamzee then assisted Caliborn in his quest, where they also found Lil Seb and Lil Cal, and the 14 regular members of the Felt. Later, in Caliborn's Masterpiece, they encountered the 8 kids, and in the ensuing battle Gamzee was once again bisected lengthways (likely by Dirk), and half of his body was sucked into Lil Cal, then banished into the void to eventually become part of Lord English.

And that's everything that Gamzee did after the meteor.

I hope this confused you slightly less than the wiki! I'm going to be doing a follow-up explanation on Gamzee's motivation and the factors which changed him from silly clown boy into homicidal maniac cultist (and why that's not actually what happened), as requested by someone else, but that's not going to be the next post, so please, ask me more things! I've done two rather long explanations now, so a short one or two might be good, but feel free to ask anything!

(Oh, and I forwent the Epilogues here, because they're kind of a mess, but I can tell you with 99% certainty that the Gamzee that meets Caliborn is *not* the Gamzee from most of the Epilogues; Vriska kills that one.)

[sillayangel]

thinkin about character arcs in homestuck and how they interact with the narrative....the way that so many character arcs are DEFINED BY how they fit into the narrative itself....

throughout act 1-4 john generally does. whatever is required of him by the narrative, sometimes for reasons that are difficult to justify from the perspective of Character Motivations that would probably be called bad writing in more traditional stories. why did john create the ectobabies? he's a curious kid and likes fuckin around with technology he doesn't understand. but mostly because it's what the alpha timeline (i.e. the narrative) required of him. when we get to act 5, this starts to tie into vriska's characterization of "character who steals agency and relevance from other characters" (see also: jade's narcolepsy, creation of bec noir). instead of doing whatever the narrative requires of him, john does whataver vriska requires of him. who is so tied into the narrative at this point it's essentially the same thing. fast forward to a6a6 - caliborn takes control of the narrative and john is literally fighting against him to RESTORE the narrative. he's still doing what is required to uphold the traditional narrative but he's doing so in a way that requires his AGENCY - because the narrative is no longer able to guide and direct him anymore - because he needs to save the people he cares about from being twisted and mischaracterized until they are no longer recognisable.

vriska too, her arc throughout most of act 6 being. coming to terms with being irrelevant to the narrative (i.e. dead) after working so hard to strive towards relevance for her entire presence in the story. the culmination of this being becoming (vriska) - putting her name in parentheses as the ultimate irrelevance. dave's arc as well (i am definitely less versed in daveology than johnology and vriskology) but how he is constantly stuck in the "refusal of the call" step of the hero's journey - he basically states this outright in a6i3 when he talks about being "supposed" to defeat lord english.

[cyvonix]

starting a6i5. curious to see how this works out because we already saw jade in the new session so maybe john and jade got there a little before the others? but also where was john at? I have many queries. Also anxious to see how things shake out because I'd assume this is the intermission when everyone finally fully gets into the new session and then a6a6 will be the whole team against condy and english. not sure what will become of the old session's jack noir since he's become so irrelevant to anything else going on lately. also not sure if anything will go remotely as anticipated considering caliborn and gamzee at the narrative prompt.

[alex-just-vibing]

hi i dont think we’ve ever interacted before but i have seen you around and you like homestuck now so i am legally obligated to drop in your ask box.

are you currently reading it or just reviving an old interest?

currently reading it! im at the start of A6A6 rn!

[davestriderascend]

the homestuck reread, pt 6

ive finished it. the main comic, anyway. theres still all the bonus content to slog through and the postcanon stuff, but i finished the main comic, and you know what? i think thats a feat enough all on its own. so heres the recap of the end, from act 6 act 6, on.

heres the previous recap, and heres the first one if youre new.

act 6 act 6s intermissions and subacts works according to similar rules as act 6 acts 1-5. the acts are short and all about homosuck (excepting the last one), while the intermissions are where literally everything else is happening. that said,

Act 6 Act 6 Act 1

this is the beginning of homosuck. its just, absolutely classic homosuck. at the end, caliborn corrupts the game file, creating the glitches that plague most of the a6a6 intermissions. homosuck is, of course, fucking hilarious and meta and the stupid art style lives rent free in my brain and i find myself drawing in it constantly. basically, i had a good time. theres not much else to say.

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 1

we pick up where we last left off with the introduction of grimbark jade, crockertier jane, and hics plot. the kids have been split up among the planets, and roxy and jake are in jail. john is struggling to control his retcon powers, and hops around time and space mucking things up, while jade tries to chase him down. this is where the big character selection screens and unclickable characters joke really gets going.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 2

this is the section of homosuck where john teleports himself into the narrative and bitches a lot about how much it sucks.

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 2

this is where things start building up to game over. aranea inserts herself into the narrative. jake goes ultra hope mode. jade dies. jake dies, but gets better. terezi beats the shit out of gamzee. jade joins callie in the furthest ring, and jane might too? idk. tbh, intermissions 1-3 kind of blend for me. which is obviously bc theyre a part of one big overarching narrative.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 3

this is the part of homosuck with the animes. this also may have had some kind of impact on how i doodled growing up. this is also the part where john beats caliborn up. the act ends with the game over animation, which leads directly into the following intermission with no real clear separation between them.

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 3

this is the part where everyone dies. well, the intermission as its marked on the hs map is literally just condy killing aranea, mostly, but the game over animation leading up to it kills everybody. john is the sole survivor.

The Characters

i think here, therefore, is where i must give my final thoughts on the pre-retcon versions of characters. dave and karkat are a lot closer than i remembered- i thought we as a fandom kind of made that shit up? but they are, in fact, besties. jakes crybaby breakdown in these three intermissions is.... well theres a lot to unpack around jakes ideas of masculinity and how hes sexualized and smarter people than me have done it, so i probably wont. otherwise idk that i have like, super coherent thoughts that are worth getting into.

on the whole, the pre-retcon versions are more dysfunctional, more insecure, and more toxic in their relationships. they dont spend as much time with each other as they mean to, they dont look out for each other as much as they wish they had, and theyre all so insecure all the time about everything, especially the meteor crew.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 4

caliborns tablet is broken, and so hes back to his shitty straight line doodles. the whole act is literally just him bitching and moaning about how hard his life is as a pitiable little guy.

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 4

this is the one where terezi tells john how to go back in time and fix everything. roxy and john both make deals with their denizens to survive, which means that all other versions of john and roxy will die in every other timeline. roxy has a funeral for rose, vriska and meenah start dating and sort of give up on all of their plans, and terezi and john pitchflirt a lot. this is also the act where jane and jade hang out w calliope and talk about what happened before they woke up w her.

The Characters

something i thought was worth noting is that in this intermission, both jade and jane confess that grimbark and crockertier essentially removed their consciences and allowed them to follow through on thoughts or desires they usually wouldnt express- meaning a lot of the nasty things they say are their actual feelings, deep down. theyre both really ashamed of it all, particularly because they meant the things they said. i think reviewing these sections of hs will be really important for character analysis relating to the two of them.

we also learn that roxy just like. really likes funerals, for some reason. it feels like a mirror of dave, and daves interest in dead things.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 5

this is the claymation homosuck, that tells the story of the juju said to defeath le and how le came to be. this is also where that big stupid animation involving illuminati and le's timeilne comes from.

i remember when homestuck ended that whole juju thing was like, the BIGGEST plothole left behind that made everyone nuts. how did they get in the juju??? DID they defeat le??? how did they get to a point where they could do that?? when tf did they all go back in time and fight caliborn like that??? the epilogue tried to answer these questions, but with how much success is largely up for debate.

Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5

vriskagram. this is the part with all of those reunion conversations, with the plans to take out the bosses, with the sprite prototypings, with meenah and (vriska)s breakup, with tavros assembling an army, with the pre retcon terezi and vriska finding each other in the afterlife, with caliborn approaching his denizen, with jade, jane, and callie finding alt callie and waking up (callie coming back to life), and with the kids splitting off into groups to finally take on the bosses. everything right up until collide is right here.

The Characters

i have to comment on this. post-retcon, the kids are so much more... mellowed out. theyre in healthier, stable relationships, theyve matured a lot, they talk through their problems, and the nature of the act in general is such that the jokes take a backseat to genuine feelings and reunions and elaborating on relationships weve been waiting to see the payoffs for for ages. its setting up for closure, and it makes the following act hit so much harder for sure.

in retrospect, i think this is probably part of the reason so many people were averse to the epilogues. i genuinely dont think the tone of the epilogues is significantly different from early hoemstuck, its classically hussie in a way that i never questioned reading it for the first time, possibly bc in addition to reading hs i had in fact also read ps, jb, and bq, so id just been exposed to more of it. i also revisited logs a lot, and i think most people didnt. instead, their last and strongest memories of hs was this incredibly sincere, sweet act, which is really a MASSIVE outlier.

anyway, things that i thought were of note: jake hates crowds. not only is he really uncomfortable, but roxy backs this up by commenting on how reluctant he was to spend time w the whole group in their session, and john makes a similar comment about jades gpa liking his space so much that he moved to an island.

dave tells dirk that he hasnt told anyone else about his bro and never would, including karkat by name. he feels that dirk is the only one he really can talk to about it, and the only reason he spoke to dirk about it in the first place is bc dirks existence is just uniquely distressing enough to trigger a breakdown where he blurts it out. also on the topic of dave, i think dave first mentions paleontology pre-retcon, rather uncertainly, as something he could have gotten into but never did, to the point where hes not even sure if paleontology is the right word to describe his interest. as the comic goes on, he seems to become more confident in asserting that he wouldve liked to become a paleontologist.

callie, terezi, and jade all struggle with feelings of insecurity and worthlessness, either because they feel that they have no purpose, because they feel empty somehow, or because they feel secondary to an alternate self.

despite dvekat """""officially"""""" getting together in post-canon content, theyre alluded to being together in this act, with terezi and vriska stating that theyve settled into some kind of quadrant, japrose saying karkat has a matesprit, and daves intense aversion to answering any questions about romance, suggesting that he may be in a relationship and too embarrassed to talk about it. theres room for debate, i guess, but it really read to me like they were already together and just quiet asf about it.

anyway my favorite conversation in this act is by far the one between roxy, rose, and kanaya, and rather than even say shit about any of them i am just going to insist that you (by which i mean future me, probably) give it a reread bc its the best.

Act 6 Act 6 Act 6

collide. easily my FAVORITE flash animation in homestuck. i actually still have my old shirt that has the collide frame of dad punching through the brick, though its so full of holes ill have to repurpose it now. the rest of the act is everyone meeting up post battle and getting ready to receive the reward. ngl this act made me legit cry its just. SO good. the fraymotifs are awesome and the battle feels difficult and long without being boring, and there are so many genuine moments of emotional sincerity mixed in with punchy, exciting scenes. its just great, and the art is fantastic. i have a new pfp locked and loaded, believe it.

Act 7

act 7 is a single animation wherein alt calliope blows up the green sun, the universe tadpole becomes a frog, vriska and the ghost army unleash the second weapon, caliborn defeats his denizen and gains his le powers, wv and pm toss the rings in a volcano, and we get a preview of how earth c has developed.

the animation in this act is gorgeous. god, its so fucking stunning. the movement is so smooth, and the particle effects were really impressive. also, the tadpole was so cute.

Credits/Snapchat

theyre fucking cute. there isnt much to say, because there isnt much there. the last little plot mess with jane and the moon exploding has never made sense to me and likely never will. i get headaches trying to figure out why hussie released these if they wanted to also release the epilogues, given that they directly contradict each other more often than not. moving on.

Final Albums

during all of this time, no albums were released. however, directly after the end of hs, three were.

Collide

collide was previously my favorite album. what can i say? the music goes hard. yes its just the songs that are in the collide animation, but who cares, and also go fuck yourself. i am a really big fan of oppa toby style and just how fucking. fundamentally toby it is, god. however, heir of grief is literally my favorite homestuck song in existence period. its so bittersweet and yet the sound is so full and and the ups and downs of it are just really potent. plus, guitar is my favorite instrument and i really like the guitar in this :)

Act 7

its literally just the singular song used for the act 7 animation. i mean, its a good song. but it is literally just one song. weird that they gave it its own album tbh.

Vol 10

MY NEW. FAVORITE. ALBUM. there is not a single solitary miss on here. reading through the track commentary, its obvious that this album was created to be an ode to the end of homestuck, to show how far weve really come. it remixes so many classics, and for many of the artists who worked on this album, it was a chance to revisit stuff theyd done before and show how much theyd grown since they started out. every single song is so full, moving and beautiful and breathtaking. its the most polished album by far. i dont think i can pick a favorite song because theyre all so good. the album also wraps up in the most perfect and bittersweet way, and its just. ugh. this was such a perfect way to end.

Final Thoughts

it holds up. i mean, yeah, it has its fucking problems. however, hussie manages to capture the feelings of being a teen growing up on the internet so fucking well, and no one, ever, has written young girls like hussie has. i cannot think of a single comparable female cast in anything. there are so many really potent and genuinely touching moments alongside so many hysterical ones, and you know? i think we really forget how ahead of its time hs was in terms of gay rep.

hs was the first time i ever saw a gay couple get together in media. it was the first time i ever saw two guys kiss. it was the first time i ever saw a nonbinary character! rose and kanaya started flirting in the first few acts, and they not only survived until the end, but got married and raised an entire generation of kids. never before had i ever found myself shipping a queer couple that became canon. so its always gonna hold a special place in my heart, really.

but yeah, against all odds, i actually really enjoyed my reread. there were some rough moments, in terms of like, major bigotry hussie has and wrote in, but overwhelmingly its easy to remember why this had such a stranglehold on my life for like. idk, five fucking years? more?

my opinions have shifted around some, though, as ive gotten older.

i think, on my first read, my favorites list wouldve looked like this:

the kids: dave was my favorite, unequivocally. i think ive mentioned this before, but i imprinted on him instantly like a baby bird. i was inexplicably obsessed with davesprite and abro, also, to the point where i liked them even more. i think dirk and his splinters were favorites of mine mostly just because i viewed them as dave 2, the sequel. i liked john a lot while reading, but lost interest as the comic went on (i regained that interest much later). i always liked rose and roxy, but a large portion of that was due to their relationship to the striders.

the trolls: i imprinted on vriska instantly. she felt like the answer to the rep id been searching for my whole life. there has never been another female character like her, and there may never be again. i have always loved her and i will defend her to the death, however, after finishing my read, i never did engage w much fancontent. sollux was another early favorite of mine, though he was in hs so little that my passion sort of faded with enough time. karkat, conversely, grew on me progressively, starting as a character i was indifferent about and becoming probably my favorite troll. i was pretty attached to eridan, and violently outgrew a brief gamzee apologism phase. i liked kanaya, but she grew on me even more with time, as did aradia. equius i discovered a sudden passion for years after reading the comic for the first time.

dancestors/ancestors/guardians: ugh. ugh. i dont even remember my favorite dancestor. i dont wanna think about it. i was really fixated on them but moreso than liked them i think i just hated everything everyone had to say about them and had to be right always. my favorite ancestors were psii, dualscar, and the sufferer, and i dont want to even talk about the shipping i was up to. my favorite guardians were very obviously the bros. goes w/o saying.

carapacians: i thought droog was the coolest mc member for some reason, and itchy and crowbar were my favorite felt members. could NOT tell you why. ar and wv were my favorite exiles. i think i just thought ars little outfit was sick. i dont have toe xplain why i liked wv, everyone likes him.

pesterlogs: i recall once claiming that The convo between hal and dirk was my favorite. i also know i was a very big fan of anything erisol said ever (and sollux, similarly). however, i dont think i had one.

ships: i was a really hardcore drkjake shipper (all splinters included) while i was reading, which branched into an interest in johndve with enough time. i got big into just about every combination of eridan, sollux, karkat, and dave (sprites included), except solkt, and eventually i got rlly into aradve, dvejake, and jhnhal/johndrk. i am censoring to keep myself out of the tags. i think, in most recent years (prior to my reread), my faves were eridve, dvekat, and jhnhal?

current fave list, post reread:

kids: rose. rose rose rose. i adore her so much. roxy is a close second. there was a moment where i prefered jake over roxy, in those really early a6 acts, but she came right back in strong and reminded me why i adored her so much. hal is also very high up there. not dirk- just hal, because all of his conversations are literally so funny. john is great and i love him, my feelings about him really havent changed at all. the striders on a whole were a lot less interesting to me on my reread, though, and now theyre the characters im mostly just invested in for their connection to the lalondes. ive conquered whatever toxic masculinity i was battling when i first read hs and come out loving wizards. feminism wins.

trolls: vriska remains the og. she is still iconic. no one is doing it like her. i wont suffer argument. sollux is also still fucking incredible. my feelings about both of them havent changed in the slightest. kanaya was one of my faves this reread, and i think i really just didnt appreciate her the first time. she has such a great dry wit, and there are so many really cute, very touching moments with her. i think other than those three, i have discovered a new love and respect for equius and nepeta. i am still probably not normal about eridan. karkat, like the striders, was less interesting to me this go around. i still like them, dont get me wrong, just not as passionately as before.

dancestors/ancestors/guardians: my favorite guardian is johns dad (and also janes, bc theyre like, the same person). johns relationship w his dad is just so important to me. i couldnt give LESS of a shit about the ancestors. ive outgrown it. im different. im better now. but unofrtunately, kankri is...... sighs. probably my favorite dancestor now. hes just. so fucking funny. pray for me.

carapacians: jack is the best, period. dunno how i ever thought differently. cd is probably my second fav mc member now, just cuz hes a funny little dude. crowbar is my fave felt member bc hes the only interesting one, ig? but i dont care that much. wv is my favorite exile.

pesterlogs: every single convo between hal and jake was my new favorite for a long time, basically, up until that roxy rose and kanaya convo came up out of the blue and smashed that to pieces. definitely my favorite. its like, the perfect culmination of all of the things i love about all of them, all in one place. however, honorary mentions go to vriskas speech about being a hero, which has lived in my brain rent free since the first time i read it, and also probably The conversation between dirk and hal, bc lets be real it is pretty sick.

collide is my favorite flash animation by far, heir of grief is my favorite song, and vol 10 is my favorite album, as ive mentioned

ships: i am now an insanely hardcore haljke fan. that is most of whats come out of this tbh. i still think eridve is hilarious for no real reason i can explain, and halqius rules. arquius<>davepeta i also have strong feelings about suddenly. pay absolutely no attention to the fact that these are 75% hal ships he is just really shippable ok. butyeah mostly when ive freshly read something iactually. dont care that much about ships? that tends to come later, with too much time spent in the fandom. im sure ill be obsessive about some roxy or rose ship in a year from now

but yeah i think. those are all of my thoughts for now!! and i will just continue to chug my way through the bonus content, and probably make recaps about those eventually. if you read all of these thanks for coming along on this wild little ride. i am genuinely SHOCKED i finished the main comic in less than a month. and relieved, also.

[rukimakino-heirofheart]

I've heard people call The Homestuck Epilogues of all things mean-spirited, with a straight face, which is certainly a take. From experience, I feel like there's a few different things people mean by that which get lumped into a single category after the fact:

1. Spiteful towards the source material -- this is actually a thing that's possible for a sequel to be (HELLO, DIGIMON ADVENTURE TRI), but it does not apply to HSE. The Epilogues actively extend the symbolic and thematic language of HS1 in a constructive fashion, and they're better for it. Vriska took up the clown's role when she locked him in the fridge back in A6A6, and now by killing him she is the clown.

2. Spiteful towards the audience -- a claim mostly levelled at Candy, the idea is that it's bad on purpose to own the audience, I guess? I sometimes hear it phrased as "wants the audience to be miserable," and either way, it's blatantly untrue. I feel like the only way to arrive at this conclusion is to just refuse to engage with HSE on HSE's terms, like, if you take them as they are then you'll still have a fun time overall even if you don't vibe with their choices or don't like denpa.

3. Spiteful towards the source material's audience -- the claim here is that making a canonical sequel where everyone is miserable constitutes a middle finger towards the people who liked the original, I guess? This is a pretty self-explanatorily silly idea.

4. Spiteful towards the fandom -- a claim distinct from "spiteful towards the source material's audience," the idea is moreso that it's written from a place of hate towards the contemporary HS1 fandom. I mostly see this take in the context of people getting big mad about which characters' genders postcanon chooses to trans, which should be already a massive red flag for how dumb this idea is. The claim, of course, requires ignoring HSE's actual stance towards fandom (as elaborated in the essay Bridges and Off-Ramps, the core idea of HSE is that "the gaze [of the audience] [...] is a ravaging beam," or that the act of officially extending a story is inherently destructive, and the story's presentation in AO3 formatting serves to de-prioritize it in favor of allowing multiple fannish continuations to flourish; HSBC explicitly elaborates on this viewpoint in Page of Hope: Rise Up).

5. Spiteful towards the genre it participates in -- this is something I don't hear about HSE itself all that much, but that a lot of the same voices I hear dunking on HSE like to level at other works that they dislike. The rationale seems to be that, if you claim that "PMMM hates being a magical girl show," then it automatically follows that "PMMM is bad at being a magical girl show," when in real life neither of these assertions are true, and PMMM's mediocrity is unrelated to its choice of genre and is moreso the fault of its medium (perspective character tuned to star in a first-person VN, but stuck in a medium where you don't have constant access to her thoughts).

I have come to realize that, to me, one of the worst crimes a piece of fiction can commit is being mean-spirited. Just about anything else can be good in certain circumstances. But a mean-spirited work diminishes anyone who encounters it.

[thedude3445]

progress it 5/7

The game jam kinda fell apart, turns out when nobody in a team can use the software at the start its a bit too difficult. Also one week was way too long weirdly. A weekend is best bc the pressure is always there and better to plan for no interruptions. Next time...

Until then time to finish a super simple downscaled version

This weekend most of what I ended uo doing was reading and reminiscing about Homestuck which dude shit is so long. those opembound walkarounds must have taken me over 6 hours combined wtf.

now im at A6A6 which is basically where I fell off loving the comic originally in 2013-2015. I wonder how it'll go this time!

Zelda comin' soon. gotta hurry

I won't play though till I finish these important life tasks:

finish systemless omg its so close

finish systemless book 1 edits

finish my homestuck reread, and read epilogue for the first time

Gonna be an awesome may

[inescapableaspect]

Getting back to A6A6 really reminds you just how dirty post-canon did Jane, like. She literally only strongly affects a “businesswoman” persona while under the effects of literal mind-control. Her arc was imo clearly meant to be about getting out from under the Condesce’s thumb, not continuing to follow her footsteps just because the writers decided they needed a new villain

[thepurpleglass]

Put kombu seaweed with your beans and save yourself next time!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/kombu-a-nutritional-powerhouse-from-the-sea/2013/01/29/aa4bb830-4ad4-11e2-a6a6-aabac85e8036_story.html

tomorrow we are going for a 4 hour car ride :)

[thelezzer]

made myself sad rereading some of the pages with (vriska) in A6A6 🥲

[overtrolled-liveblog]

[6708] OH Y3S, CLOWN. YOUR R3CKON1NG 1S 4T H4ND

This gif is unsettling. maybe it’s the juxtaposition of the SBAHJ gamzee and the non-SBAHJ Terezi, the way that she seems to be stabbing him at a very weird angle, the way he’s vibrating while leaning on nothing, the fact that the last time Gamzee looked like this was when Nepeta attacked him and we all know how that went. Maybe it’s the combination of all of these.

It’s also the tone. Gamzee isn’t reacting. The vengeance isn’t cathartic. If anything it drives people (Terezi and the audience) further into anger. But I suppose that’s something fitting of the “one who invites destruction through rage”.

[rafr]

I’ve just finished my synopsis for Homestuck Act 6 Act 6 Act 1 “HOMOSUCK” and Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 1 “Stardust”. About a month ago I added pages for each A6A6 act-intermission pair and Act 7. Now I’m filling in their synopses one at a time. You might find my website useful even when there isn’t a synopsis for an act, as it has a nice way of browsing scenes by update summary.

The pleasure of writing these synopses is that while writing I recognize more of the structure of how the story unfolds beyond mere chronology. I discover that an act is usually about something, that it has a unifying subject matter. For example, A6A6I1 “Stardust” isn’t just a bunch of stuff that happens between John reuniting with his friends and the Ring of Life going missing. It’s a reveal of the parts the kids are forced to play in Condy’s plan for creating and ruling over Universe C. It’s also about how being dislocated and confined to different worlds has blunted the kids’ resistance, turning it into mere individual stubbornness.

A6A6A2 “LOSHIT” and A6A6I2 “theres problems” are next. As always, I impose no deadlines on myself and this project tends to take a backseat to everything else in my life, so it’ll happen whenever.

[jovialrecordkeeper]

anyway hi. colors

so way back when the gigapause was still paused i discovered fireheart's hemospectrum on homestuck google plus or somewhere like that i think.

it changed my brain chemistry. i cut up sheets of paper to make tiny little labels and tape them onto my colored pencils to match the expanded hemospectrum. i was very very normal. i still have the colored pencils with labels although they are shorter now from roughly ten years of time passing

the following events may or may not be in chronological order

and then later on. there was the panel in a6a6 with roxy and the matriorb and all the other jadeblood symbols. and i got Very Normal

and then the extended zodiac released and i Went Batshit

and then i looked through all of a5a1 and eyedropped every single blood color. because the extended zodiac Standardized the colors. and let me tell you. they are Not Standardized in hs proper. vriska alone has 25 different hex codes for just her blood alone

and then i saw more and more other fan hemospectrum expansions. and more people making fantrolls with mutations like karkat's. and like rainbowblood and black & white blood and pastel stuff and desaturated stuff and other mutations

and i went autismode. because if there's neon stuff and pastel stuff and dark stuff that means that there's A Variable for Brightness. and A Variable for Saturation. and of COURSE there are hue options already. because i use HSV colorspace and not RGB because i like the hue wheel and i like the satval percents

so i made a grid. i made a lot of grids

and then i got more annoyed at the ezodiac's standardized colors because none of them are the same saturation or value and the hues are not EVENLY DISTRIBUTED around the color wheel. so i was trying to do math and make it work out like. rust/0 bronze/30 gold/60 0 30 60 is fine. but then lime is 75 and olive is 90. and then we jump all the way up to jade being 150.

but then everything else is evenly spaced after that. teal/180 cerulean/210 indigo/240 purple/270 violet/300 fuchsia/330. and then we loop around to rust at 0/360.

so instead of doing math to make hue slide/hue cusp mutations (because at the time i was doing something similar to PMG's EZ Project fantrolls but with fireheart's hemospectrum instead of the ezodiac) i uh.

well now i have 24 hue castes instead of 12. going by 15 degrees around the wheel. 0 15 30 45 60 75 90 105 120 135 150 165 180 195 210 225 240 255 270 285 300 315 330 345 (360)

and then i decided "oh i should make the grids go by steps of 6% instead of 5 because trolls are so bug and so hexagon it will fit thematically" so i had to redo the ones i made already

(steps of five was as normal. like 100 95 90 85 80 etc. steps of 6 is more complicated though)

(100 94 88 82 76 70 64 58 52 46 40 34 28 22 16 10 4 0 -> 18 steps)

and then i thought "wow wouldn't it be cool if you could randomly generate a blood color by rolling for specific hsv placement and presence of blood mutation and stuff. wouldn't that be so cool"

so i made a perchance generator (i am still working on it)

(i've made one for fantroll names also but i need to redo the phonemes and probability so stuff actually like. sounds good when you say it out loud)

(but also i say fef-errr-ee and not fe-fairy. so)

then i had a thought. "how does one tell between a troll with a place on a grid that's slightly out of the norm. and a troll who has a mutation"

so then i added Extra Spots to my blood grids. so a troll with a hue mutation will always have a blood color that is "off grid". and i wanted to evenly space those out so i put steps between each chunk of 3 for my normal satval grids.

so 100 (94 88) 85 (82 76 70) 67 (64 58 52) 49 (46 40 34) 31 (28 22 16) 13 (10 4) 0

(100 85 67 49 31 13 0 -> 7 steps)

and now i have to redo them again. to space out the chunks and add the new spots.

so for context;

24 normal grids of saturation x value which have 18 possibilities each (except anything that has a Value of 0 will automatically be #000000) (and anything with a saturation of 0 will always be the same greyscale color no matter what the hue is)

so that's 17x17 colors which is 289 colors per grid

plus the offgrid colors, not counting the v000 stuff because auto #000000. and not counting the s000 stuff since it'll be the same for all hues. that's 6x6 which is 36 minus the 100/100 corner which is a normal grid spot. 35 colors per offgrid.

so that is 324 colors per hue. and there are 24 of those. 324x24 is 7776.

plus all of the sat000 colors (which includes #000 so we're counting that in here) which is 18 colors. plus the other offgrid s000 colors (five more, since 100/0 and 0/0 are already in normal gridspots) 23 greyscales.

i am making 7799 blood colors and cataloguing all of them. and verypossibly making a fantroll for all nearly eight thousand of those.

"average person things about colors blah blah" hi i'm homestucks needle thinks about blood colors everysingle fucking day of my life. i am an outlier adn (sic) should not have been counted.

but good lord i am COUNTING.

i am doing math i am shaping my own bell curves i am plotting out dice rolls and card draws and if there is some eldritch incomprehensible being assigned to the concept of colors and vision it would tremble in fear of me and abdicate its throne in favor of my ruling.

polygon hire me to take over bdg's unraveled (joking)

BEGGING you to share your spreadsheets with the public i am so interested in what you have to say about bloodhex stuff!!!

hrghhrgnrh anon i am kissing your ring like in the godfather. thank you for enabling me

in advance; this will be Very Long.

readmore here?

so

if i edit this will it move to the top of my drafts

///// hi everything above this line is from february 2022. thank you for your patience. i've made an entire sideblog for it now @jovialrecordkeeper come join me in my color madness

[guster-animations]

might fuck around and reread homestuck until i get pokemon sp

[darkmarxsoul]

The full version of the “song” used to kick off Act 6 Act 6, by Toby “Radiation” Fox. Graciously provided by the Homestuck Sound Test, an unofficial compilation of all unreleased Homestuck songs originally begun by Niklink and later picked up by Sanctferum.