#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.)

[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!

[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 :)

[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.

[guster-animations]

might fuck around and reread homestuck until i get pokemon sp

[padeko]

This is incredible.

OK AM I IMAGINING THIS OR ARE THOSE SHOES DIFFERENT… AND SPARKLY… DID…. DID TEREZI STEAL JADE’S SHOES????

[those don’t belong to you]

[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.

[khaledalotaisblog]

أين أجد ذاك الغريب الذي يتحدث عنه الجميع؟ الذي يستمع لحديثنا الأحمق وفضفضتنا البلهاء ويمضي ناسيا كل ماقلنا وبدون أن نعرفه ويعرفنا .

سوالف ليل

[be-ngazi]

تنقذ نفسك، لكن المفاجأة أن أحدًا ما،

بشكلٍ ما، يعتقد بوجوب أن تكون ممتنًا له.

[yasser85]

احنا مش ساگنين في المالديف عشان مزاجنا يگون ححلو ولا مبسوطين طول الوقت ' فـ طبيعي ان الواحد يمر عليه اوقات يگون مزاجه فيها مش گويس