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homestuckreplay · 23 days ago

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🏡 Nine Best Homestuck Moments of 2009 🏡

It’s the end of 2009, and Homestuck is currently sitting at 1088 pages – pretty huge for something that hasn’t even been going for a full year. So as we close out the year and enter what’s sure to be the Homestuck Decade, I thought I’d count down my favorite Homestuck moments of 2009. I’ve loved it all, so it was really hard to narrow down, but when I reflect on this first year of the comic’s existence, this is what sticks in my mind.

9. Rambunctious Crow. (p.350-356)

This is my favorite Dave moment because it’s his irony in action, turned against him by the narrative now that things are getting real. Already knowing that Dave’s losing the betas is a ‘stupid’ and ‘embarrassing’ story (p.294), it still comes as a surprise just how stupid, embarrassing and out of nowhere the reality is. I’m on the crow’s side – it saw something cool and colorful in a grabbable position, and it went for it. It had no idea it was going to get accidentally sylladex-murdered, and I can’t wait to see its new life in Dave’s kernelsprite.

8. Peregrine Mendicant Delivers Justice. (p.844; 892-897; 921-925)

This one is cheating because it’s really ‘everything about PM’. I will give my heart to a paladin character with a big sword and strong ideals, any day – she will kill without a moment’s hesitation if it helps her fulfil her oath to the mail, but she’ll also reward a loyal follower who helps her cause, and this applies to robotic worms as much as it does to other people. She’s a minor character who’s out here behaving like a protagonist and one of her packages could be the thing that saves all the kids.

7. John’s Clever Disguise. (p.45-89)

I wish he was still wearing it. I really do. John acknowledges on page 46 that it’s a really shitty disguise and continues to wear it for several dozen pages. He adds the pipe, switches out the hat, considers a second pipe, and overall tries to perfect it. And he does it all the time too, because Rose calls him out on it! Whether he likes it or not, the spirit of the clown is within John, and I love this section as both a funny surface level gag and when thinking about the deeper meanings of a kid disguising himself in his own home.

6. Rose-Jade Flashback. (p.441-442)

This is my favorite Pesterlog in the comic so far, and sets up a really cool dynamic between Rose and Jade. They’re both talking circles around each other, Rose because she has to sound smart, detached, and in control, and Jade because she has to sound sunny, cryptic, and also in control. But Rose clearly has a lot of respect for Jade, and Jade clearly has a deep understanding of Rose, and those things are surprising – I expected Rose to be more skeptical of Jade’s powers, but instead they’re like light and dark counterparts with similar values of understanding the world around them.

5. Zazzerpan the Learned. (p.358-359)

This might be the one thing that holds Rose back from being my favorite character. How can she possibly ‘find this grisly abomination utterly detestable’. It’s a 20 foot tall statue of a mighty wizard and if you don’t think that’s the sickest shit in the entire world then WHAT is even the point. And the glimpses on page 715 and 757 showing the broken, future Zazzerpan indicate that something is going to happen to him; probably Rose with a giant bludgeoning weapon. Unless I cause a time paradox by appearifying him and putting him in MY house. (He would not fit).

4. Act 1&2 Title Cards. (p.82; 307)

The jokes are excellent, but to me Homestuck is at its best when it lets itself be serious, and page 82 is our first real glimpse of this. These pages let us sit with John and Rose’s mental states for a moment, and they let Hussie stretch their writing skills and play with words. My hope is that these pages will age really well and have a lot of foreshadowing in hindsight, but even if not, they create atmosphere better than any other moments in the comic so far, and they read like prose poetry.

His riddle is Absence itself. It is a mystery dispersing altogether, like the moon's faint reflection, with even one pebble of inquiry dropped in its black well.

Somewhere a zealous god threads these strings between the clouds and the earth, preparing for a symphony it fears impossible to play. And so it threads on, and on, delaying the raise of the conductor's baton.

3. FreshJamz and the Beta Kid Band. (p.77; 222; 337; 822; 830)

All four kids being musically gifted in a comic that incorporates sound is a great move, and the reveal that John can play piano beautifully after he’s spent 76 pages messing up his sylladex and house as he struggles to pick things up was a huge surprise at first. The four kids sharing an interest in video games would have been too obvious, but all of them loving music pokes at the fourth wall and gives them a way to connect on a deeper emotional level even while they are all hiding parts of themselves. It’s a big act of trust to share creative work with people, and seeing all the collaborations on Jade’s FreshJamz page is the best evidence of how close they all are.

2. Rose Adopts Vodka Mutini. (p.926; 1002)

Alright, I love cats. And I know that introducing a cute animal character is a cheap move for getting an audience to fall in love, but cmon, THIS kitten has FOUR EYES that BLINK SEQUENTIALLY and was made in a SLIME CHAMBER as a failed PARADOX CLONE. They CURL UP AND SNOOZE on Rose’s desk and become a TINY VOID CREATURE. I can’t be cynical about this. I am not immune to a tiny sweet face blinking up at me from an anachronistic teapot. I am screaming and crying with how badly I want this cat to curl up with me.

1. [S] WV: Ascend and [S] Jade: Pester John. (p.757; 1073)

I know I’m not alone in loving ‘WV: Ascend’; I’ve read several forum threads where people wax as rhapsodically about it as I do, and I was sad not to see as much love for ‘Jade: Pester John’ (maybe because it does similar work, so isn’t as unexpected). Both these pages are an expansion of what webcomics can do, they perfectly tie up existing plotlines, they’re really well scripted to the music, and it’s both rewarding and enjoyable to watch them several times in a row. ‘Explore’ is one of my favorite Homestuck tracks so far, and Skaia/Prospit during the eclipse is my favorite location visually. I know there’s a lot of skill and technique that goes into creating animations like this and making them feel emotional and satisfying to watch, but sometimes I don’t want to analyze them, I just want to sit and watch and let the Flash Magic roll over me.

Honorable Mentions. A few that were on the shortlist but didn’t quite make the cut because I made myself keep it to nine: the very first page (p.1), Rose putting the bunny back in the box (p.146-147), [S] John: Take bite of apple (p.246), Rose exploring her grimoire (p.301-305), John figuring out alchemy and successfully creating the pogo hammer (p.630-635), Rose attempting to send John the Sburb server CD (p.645-647), WV becoming the Mayor of Can Town (p.685), WV drawing the Skaian cosmology on the bunker walls (p.702-704), and the Midnight Crew’s Homestuck intermission (p.831-832). Yeah, I notice the blatant favoritism towards Rose and John in this post.

If anyone has a favorite moment so far that I’ve missed, send them in!!

#homestuck #ny2010 #milestone #highlights #chrono

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tmos-time · 2 months ago

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Do you have any Erisol fanfic recommendations?

i can scrounge up a few!

come as you are by theressomanyusernames - humanstuck + college au, slowburn (46k, 2018, T)

theres a couple other erisol fanfics by this same author that i enjoy going back to as well, but this is the one that i can look at and go, "oh, yeah, no yeah, this writer had influences in how my headcanons evolved" lmfao. if your local legal drinking age is also +18, you can kind of let your eyes glaze over the underage drinking tag LOL

drafts by roundandtalented - humanstuck, established relationship (1.3k, 2015, G)

this one is just really a cute concept as a whole; i like going back to this to just get stupidly feet kick-y about the text drafts shown lmao. sollux isn't as entirely emotionally constipated as i like to read him being, but i can deal with it for a sappy fic like this <3

(don't) come home by halsey - humanstuck + college au (1k, 2020, T)

i keep coming back to this one because i happen to scroll past and go "oh yeah that one, that's fun and quick to read, ill look at it again" and then lowkey wish it was part of a multi-chapter fic lol

needed by roundandtalented - post-game + post-sprite, pale romance (2.6k, 2015, G)

one of the more prominent erisol fics that i think of when i think about pale depictions of them! simply fun when eridan is depicted as very caring lol

inconsequential august by avisceration - humanstuck (6.5k, 2013, T)

okay. if you've been reading up to this point going "well goddamn it cooper, i wanted awesome mature compelling fics that read like homestuck proper" idk man go read a urgaylol erisol fic. i skip sex scenes in erisol fics in particular so i dont know what you expect from me lmao. anyways. if you feel compelled to read something where eridan and sollux are repressed crass teen assholes who mention something sexful for the bit every other minute, i sometimes go back to this one to chuckle about the "grade-A dicks" joke

dreaming in binary by blacksparrow - no sgrub session au, helmsman sollux (51k, 2013, T)

its been about three years since ive read this one tbh! its probably for the better, its absolutely one of those fics i could binge in one day and get the bingereader's fatigue after, considering how good i remember it being. one thing i remember is REALLY being compelled by sollux's internalized ableism he expresses in particular in this fic. ill have to read it in full again sometime! i know a couple other people have been recommending it lately too lol

besides those, suppose i could also suggest looking through my own erisol fics of various qualities from the past four years if you havent looked already, i don't necessarily have any in particular i'd point out over the rest these days lmao

#tmos opens mail #erisol #tbh i need to write more erisol fics. the 13 i've posted make me feel like ive gained artistic growth since then lol #+ im slowly getting more comfortable using topics that might actually warrant a soft mature rating. mostly mental health wise lmao #anyways. hope you find one you like in this list anon! and hopefully i havent somehow rec'd several fics you've already read LOL

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davekat-sucks · 4 months ago

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"You can still think he is bi and ship him with whatever girl you like. Fuck what the fandom thinks. Just do what you like." Another banger from davekat-sucks. Sometimes I feel like you're the most sane person in this fandom, I swear to god. Unpopular opinion on Dirk's sexuality and identity: He canonically does not like to label himself. It's in the comic and in his own words. People can cite him saying that he felt like Jake was the only option and Roxy calling him the gayest man in the universe or whatever, but neither of these things means that the man is 100% homosexual. Maybe he felt like Jake was the only option because Jake was just plain the only one he felt a romantic attraction to. Maybe sometimes friends say shit like "you're the gayest person ever" as, like, a joke, or maybe it could have been wishful thinking on Roxy's part since him not being gay might make his rejection of her hurt more. I don't know. It's never explicitly stated. Isn't it possible that Dirk is homoflexible, or maybe even pan? I just don't get people being mad because someone wants to imagine Dirk and Jade kiss or something. It's also funny to see people being all about headcanoning him as transfem/genderqueer or turning him into the daintiest sluttiest girliest twink of all time while pissing their pants about stuff like this. Isn't hypermasculinity and being a man a big part of who he is? Why is making him a woman/feminine okay, while making him hold hands with Kanaya or something is a homophobic hate crime? If we're playing in this space, is it not a little hypocritical? If shipping him with a woman is homophobic why isn't it homophobic to make "the only canonically gay man" into a girl or a flamboyant stereotype? On a smaller note, I know that you've talked about this before, but the same people who freak out about this stuff are the people who totally erase Dave's identity as a bisexual man and say that he's completely gay. He's expressed interest in women (an understatement), and he's dated them. I'm starting to think that people just hate bi men. I want to understand the logic that these people are using.

Yep, Dirk did say that when speaking with Roxy.

Another reason for him to say this as well is to try and remind the readers that both Roxy and Dirk are in an apocalyptic setting that caring about terms of sexuality, is pointless if they don't want to be dead. The world has gone to shit, so things like that don't mean anything anymore. I bet Hussie was trying to point that out when the fandom would only talk about the kids' sexuality despite the bigger shit going on in the plot, but sadly, it was lost on readers back then. Part of Dirk being masculine is also in part because he looks up to Alpha Bro, DAVE STRIDER. If people want to blame anyone for making Dirk manly, blame Dave himself or another version of himself, for only portraying himself as this that Dirk thinks it is right to try be in that same standards. People had blamed Bro for this with Dave, so why don't we do the same for Dirk and Alpha Dave? The fandom stereotyping Dirk into the stereotypical effeminate gay guy, is hilarious when they are the same people that bitch about being in other media. They want their supposed LGBT rep to be taken seriously and not used for a joke. And yet they would apply it to other characters that don't act like this in different series. At this point, what more do these fucking people want? Another is that most of the fandom probably wants to have that 'gay best friend' because they think they can be cool with them and also have them as their excuse of why they aren't homophobic this or that. Kind of like how claiming to have a POC friend doesn't make you racist. The Homestuck fandom, or fandoms in general in this modern time, just hate bisexuals in general. Any sign of straight couples from character(s) that are comfortable in both sexes, pisses people off. Some claiming that two persons of same sex being close only for not to end up together, is queerbait. Whether or not evidence was there in the first place. I even recalled the Steven Universe fandom was livid when they heard Rebecca Sugar, the creator herself, was bisexual. People assume she was lesbian because of the TV show she created. The thought of her still liking guys infuriated them. At that point, I wonder what does the B in LGBT means if said people who claim to be all supportive for LGBT, hate bisexual relationships. Just because a bisexual person chooses to be with someone of their opposite sex, doesn't mean it automatically means they are straight and can't go back to bisexual. It's ridiculous. That kind of one way street thinking is stupid.

#homestuck #homestuck fandom #fandom #fandoms #Dirk Strider

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pesterquestrewritten · 1 year ago

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Sorry if this is an inappropriate question to ask, but why do you want to rewrite pesterquest? Was there anything wrong with its original version, or are you just doing this for fun?

brain is a Lil Loopy rn so please excuse if this answer is semi incoherent - recovering from ankle surgery rn.

im gonna try to not harp on the original pesterquest as a project/talk about my percieved issues with it. from what I understand about the work environment where it was developed, it was hell -- poor communication, tiny budgets, little overall direction. plus every artist/writer involved was likely busy with other things at the same time (for example finishing the development of Hiveswap Act 2). they had so much going against them, and... it sorts shows in the final work, which isn't their fault. the original PQ team was passionate and cared and like. the absolutely last thing i want to do is disrespect them.

(generally also stating for the record that calling the original PQ "trash" or "replaced" is like. not good vibes. please don't do this if you're trying to enjoy PQR -- the last thing the original postcanon team needs is more harassment.)

anyway.

pqr is fanfiction, fundamentally.

i started making pqr because in september i was sick with covid, i wanted to learn renpy, and i wanted to study homestuck more. i wanted to figure out what made PQ tick, literally, figuratively, all of the above.

plus i really wanted to write a different story arc for mspar.

i also really love the side characters in Homestuck, and wish they all got more time to shine. the pqr prologue including a set of Spades Slick sprites just for a brief encounter i think helps establish what i want to do with the like. raw potential of the premise of a Homestuck visual novel.

damara is the other big thing -- i've wanted to make a story with her in it work for ages. (if anyone remembers the old MEGIDO hades mod, that was my first big public attempt. she was gonna be the protagonist, breaking out of scratch's mansion. turns out coding in renpy is WAY easier LMAO)

like. the plan wasn't even initially to have the prologue be a full damara route? i just let the writing take me where it wanted to take me. it's been deeply fun and cathartic.

the prologue's "bad end" has some incredibly intimate themes of like. inevitability, and worrying you've let everyone you love down, and i showed it to a college friend who i hadn't spoken to for ages and she set a screenshot from it as her background.

like. to me. that's pqr. that's why i make it.

pqr is the laundry room ending of rose's route, a deeply personal look into my own fears and anxieties as an author reflected back through this girl's circumstances. pqr is also the retcon ending of rose's route, a wildly stupid and indulgent romp through my own past fanfiction for a silly gag that people seemed to really love.

pqr is about dave and myself looking for a place to stay simultaneously -- pqr is about jade leaving prospit, and how i was adding to that part of the game in real-time as i dropped out of college, changing both of our destinies to something unexpected but hopefully better, at the same time.

pqr is also a silly extended sleepover scene. it's just fun to see them interact.

pqr is an excuse to turn over corners of homestuck and see if we can't peek behind them. what was it like for roxy, to think she lost joey and then find rose's meteor barely a year later? of course she'd think it's impossible for her to succeed as a mother. pqr is about finding empathy for yourself for your own mistakes, reflected back at you through homestuck characters.

because really, isn't that what we're all here for?

pqr is me coming back to my last long-abandoned attempt at an act 5 rewrite. pqr is an excuse to watch my girlfriend grow in confidence and style as she makes all the endcards and incidental art (except for joey route pt 2, but THAT was an excuse to work with a NEW friend!!!!!!!)

pqr is a friendship simulator that i am winning by having an incredibly supportive and collaborative group of friends in the dev thread who are cheering me on with every segment of text i post, friends who will hop in vc to check out the newest segment. friends like @dare0451 who literally yesterday rendered out some new audio to upgrade the June route to be even more fucking amazing and terrifying than it already was, AND DARE HASN'T EVEN PLAYED IT????? IT'S LITERALLY JUST. IT'S FRIENDSHIP MAN. PQR IS FRIENDSHIP

what the hell was this question again.

oh right.

yeah it's been fun basically. that's why i do it lol

#pesterquest rewritten #pqr #homestuck #fansim #hom3stuck #asksbox

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binalakai-archive · 1 year ago

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i also wish people would be more receptive to relationship speculation, at the very least. there were so many moments in fionna and cake where simon and fionna’s interactions had me raising my eyebrows and thinking “wow, what’s up with this chemistry rn?” but i know posting about it to see if others also noticed would get me dogpiled lol. glad i’m not the only one entertaining the ship and its implications to/for the characters it encompasses.

also winter king/simon is intriguing as well, if only in a weird homestuck self-shipping (dave and davesprite anyone?) kind of way where both characters get to have major epiphanies bc they’re basically looking into a mirror (may be more of a funhouse mirror for winter king/simon but still works lol)

i do not ship any of these pairings, please dont take this post from a shipping perspective

i apologize in advanced if this post is said messy. its given an opening to many things ive been thinking about since the start of the show and i know i wanna come back to it in case any new developments were to happen at the final season 1 episodes tldr; Kai Talks About how much i Love Very Messed Up Pairings, not because i want them to actually be together, but because i am NOT the type to ignore Seeds That Have been Planted in canon so i will Grow Horrible Realizations i've been having out of them

YEAH NO BECAUSE I LIKE. I JUST WANNA POINT OUT WHAT'S CANON OKAY!! i think this post is like. the only one ive seen that Has Pointed out The Adventure Time Ice King/Fionna dynamic in the lenses of the Simon we have today....and even then thats just a joke post :")

because like. okay. i need people to think about this for a second: yes, ice king didn't Come With with Fionna and Cake's existence, but why in the world would he Choose to be responsible for writing it? for bringing their stories to life and showing off a world that's been living in his head? i genuinely think people don't really like the ugly side of how badly loneliness has mutated Ice King's way of thinking (i mean for gods sake the guy tries to kiss/get with anyone, mf cant even recognize the person he claims to be falling in love with). that, yeah. of course if he had a World Living inside his brain that felt so Real to him that he CONSTANTLY wished for it to not only but true, but one that would be close to him!! one that would welcome him!!!! no matter what itd be, romantic, platonic, To the point of Worship....like ANYTHING that would bring him closer to genuine Connection in his alienating experience. NOTABLY for fionna The Human!!! the human that parallels a real life actual kid that mostly has kicked Ice King's ass to eventually treating him like a Poor confused Old Lost Guy. still, i need to stress the kind of dynamic finn and the ice king have is NOWHERE near the kind of dynamic fionna and ice king have (and even with simon developments included). . ...except this time around, even when he does have his own parallel Ice Queen existing manifesting the Must Needed Rival for their universe to make sense, mutating her character into something that to make her more Vicious/Violent, making Ice King seem Nicer In Comparison and dare i say that, yeah...! some of that HAS been carried onto modern day Fionna!! who CANONICALLY has romantic feelings towards ice prince and the winter king, parallels to ice king/simon himself! just. sorry but i NEED both Simon and Fionna to like. Read Those Stories. I Need them to revisit the VERY specific stories that Ice King felt the need to tell in the first place, his and other people in their lives' inclusions. it would not only reinforce Simon's Influence in the world Period, something that he found himself doubting on ...but also I NEEEEEEDDD to see that can of worms opened. i NEED for Fionna to see for herself the people SHE'S supposed to be representing. i NEED for her to see what kind of void she's been filling in Ice King/Simon's time of existence. i NEED for her to see how big the Obsession GOT, how badly Ice King needed that outlet of escapism (and how much Simon still returns to it in the present day)

^ this moment has been living in my brain ever since the announcement of the Fionna and Cake series that Fionna's fixation on the ice prince, her life, her..everything in general, is more or less a Weird Reflection of the lives of People living Greater Lives than she ever believed to have lived, combined with how said proclaimed experiences of Magic have only been recorded by a guy who Inserted Himself in a world she doesnt even recall living in Im surprised that. hasnt been so Stressed yet in show. im prepared to eat my words if they DO come back to it. but for the time being i really wish Fionna found out how desperate Simon/Ice King was for someone to acknowledge and Desire His Existence, to a degree that would be absolutely humiliating/weird to uncover but Necessary to come back to in order to truly understand the Scope of what 1000+ years of Madness through Ostracization (from others and eventually the Self) Does to a MF

__________ AS OF FOR MY THOUGHTS ON THE WINTER KING, he alas only truly an episode to explore. but the thoughts still exist nonetheless!!! for the most part i can only truly indulge in it out of pure hilarity for its existence, while acknowledging how much im so thankful that winter king was characterized as he was n didnt overstay his welcome, as i didnt find him necessary to stay in the narrative . there's a lot of feelings i have about simon/ice king's perception of himself alone, and how most of it is Either Negative or Overcompensation Due to his own self negativity. which makes me curious on what could come of a Better Version of Himself, looking at the version of himself that has "failed" to conquer the crown the way he has, but contemplated on pursuing romantically, even for a brief moment honestly, i dont blame people for being invested in this pairing (in comparison to fionna/simon, where i cannot myself entertain it even as a joke unlike this one). it makes me curious on what the Winter King's definition of romance is in comparison to Simon's. what could even be desirable, possibly, in the eye's of the Winter King? Does the love of someone you'll go mad over truly make you a Better Person Or Worse? Simon and Winter King existing in the same room together brings up so many questions and possible ways to explore Simon's character. wayyyyyyyyyy less of a "this can be simon's way of practicing self love" thing and MUCH more of a "These Guys Kissing each other would be the equivalent of the Narcissus Tale but with a Distorted Reflection that only Represents You because the reflection Demands That of you"

#fionna and cake #adventure time #long post #text heavy #simon petrikov #the winter king #fionna campbell #i WILL delete this though genuinely if people start to get weird in my notes #but otherwise i genuinely would be very welcome to more CIVIL. discussion about this

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browniefox · 1 year ago

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Alright, more Crisis Core, let's go! This one ended up being REALLY long (we got through two chapters), so I'm putting a read more some ways down so it doesn't kill people's dashes.

The boy said the line!

Yay, Cloud is finally here! He still clearly has the basic infantry model other than the head, but it does mean he stands in the casual almost sassy way they all do haha. In general, it's so weird but cute to see him smiling and laughing. Aw, he's not traumatized yet!

I knew what was coming, but my friend I'm playing with didn't, so it was fun to see her reaction (tho i totally still got so excited anyway haha).

This is just here bc I love them so <3 And then Tseng is also here being a third wheel. The sneaking portion that is right after this I sucked ass at. I couldn't make it five feet without being seen and tossed out, and I just had to wait until the game took pity on me and took the guards away.

Genesis, please I'm begging you just kill Hollander. I do love seeing his hair, once so bright red, getting grayer and darker, how his nice leather jacket is getting all broken, giving a sense that he's not taking care of himself and his things as much as he should be.

My sister has tried to stay more-or-less blind to what happens in Crisis Core (she knows some stuff, I know a little more) but all fics tend to use the same Loveless lines (which makes sense, of course) but I did end up reciting this quote with him bc it's one of my favorites, much to the shock of my sister.

I can't believe Zack really thinks Genesis died tho. Like, the guy has a wing, he can fly, falling is not gonna kill him. I'm still not totally clear what Genesis is trying to achieve, but I've been watching some of ButterBuns CCR videos and she's kind of given me a better sense of Genesis. He's just flailing around, trying to get something, anything, to work. He's a dying man who is desperate and doesn't even know himself exactly what he wants.

HELL YEAH! If the creators weren't cowards they would have let your models touch. Our new thing while playing is being proud of Zack for having two boyfriends and one girlfriend. The boy can get it.

As per usual, my biggest problem with this game is the writing - especially with Angeal, tbh. I guess Angeal is just like Genesis in that he's desperately trying to figure out who he is, monster or man. But every time he talks about being a monster I kind of roll my eyes. He's like an emo teenager. Last chapter I felt like it was getting a better grip and liking for him, but I'm kind of back to just being like 'what's your deal man'.

That being said, I kind of dig his weird monster form! It's a mishmash but super cool, and I love how his arms are folded in front of him. My friend and sister I don't think liked it as much and mostly made fun of it which, fair.

Mostly unrelated, but i really got myself into a big of predicament in that I'm super overpowered, which means I get through battles so quick, which also means I don't get to show off all the limit breaks and summons and such when we're playing ;-; but then I turn it to hard mode and die instantly.

I'm always a sucker for sad sunsets. I might not get Angeal or his deal, but I do at least buy that Zack cares about Angeal. It's kind of like Angeal was too set in his ways of monster vs heroes, and that a monster needs to be killed by a hero. That Zack is the only hero left to kill a monster like him, or that by doing so Zack proves he's a hero. But really all it's done is given Zack trauma and made him more uncertain than ever who he is and what he stands for.

(It kind of reminds me of near the end of Homestuck, when Dave and Dirk are talking, and Dave admits it's possible that Bro was trying to train him, but all it did was make him scared.)

I wish we got to spend more time in the game with Aerith, but at least you get the sense that they do spend more time with each other, especially with Aerith being there for Zack after this.

MY BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL BOY! I wish your limit break looked cooler tho :P

Wait, so are Angeal and Genesis brothers then?? I knew they were connected through Gillian, but I guess how connected never hit me. I mean, Angeal defo has her hair while Genesis has her face, but also I've been imagining and seeing them as boyfriends this whole time???

So many mixed feelings about Zack right now. The first thing is yay, new hair cut! My sister absolutely hated his bangs, so big win for her. I do like that you get to see that, as one of the last remaining Firsts, Zack has started to take on more of a leadership and mentor role for the other SOLDIERs. However, him telling them to protect their SOLDIER honor is weird when Zack doesn't know what that is either. I've felt it, but I am glad Zack himself has acknowledged that he doesn't know what that honor is or what it means. I hope we get to see Zack figure it out. I also like that Zack is kind of unmoored and uncertain now. Puts him in an interesting place for whatever's next.

Beach episode! It is FUCKING INSANE to me that Cissnei just... tells Zack that Aerith is an Ancient. Why? What was the point of that? Cissnei, you can't just say that! I guess it could be seen as her trusting Zack and demonstrating she wants to help him, but it's still so weird. It's nice Zack has been said to be hanging with the turks more, but I wish we could have gotten more of that in game. I don't think he even knows Reno and Rude's names.

BOOO TSENG SHOULD BE IN A SWIMSUIT TOO BOO!

So I know Genesis is still alive, but interesting that this is beign considered since it's Sephiroth's whole deal. Tbh, tho, I'm not sure how I feel about Tseng openly acknowledging that Mako is life. How much is that recognized in general, actually? I mean, people do fade into mako when they die... hm, much to think about.

The chase through the city was so dumb, I've had it with Hollander, how hard can it be to catch and/or kill one guy for real. That being said, I do like how cool the buster sword is, and at the end is Sephiroth :D I'm glad that Zack seems a little bitter towards Sephiroth; they're both mourning in different ways, and it's driven a rift between both of them. But at the same time, they're the closest thing they both have to someone who can understand what they're going through.

Shoutout to Zack's little fidgets :D He's still a restless little puppy, despite it all. Sephiroth and Zack's relationship is just so good and interesting, I need them to hang out more so I can see more of it.

God Genesis is so pretty. Both him and Angeal have fucked up looking wings - which adds to what they're going through - but I actually love it for Genesis. Again, what is this dude's goal? He'll probably tell you once he figured it out himself. I love the reveal that he was also at Junon this whole time. Interesting parallel to how the Firsts fought 'at Junon' altogether and now they can't be further apart.

I need to pet that dog! Is Angeal still alive?? I totally thought he died, he has to be dead, right? Just living on in his copies? Anyway, the dog should be a character who manages to live forever because I love him. Also, laughed so hard when the little Shinra robots came into the church oh my god, it's not supposed to be funny I think but it's hilarious how non-threatening they look.

Wow Kunsel, jealous much?? Also, a little creepy? Is my boyfriend stalking me? If I trusted Kunsel, at this point I'd think he was going to betray me at some point, but I trust him too much for that. It seems more like Kunsel just doesn't know how to say 'I'm worried about you and you should talk to me about what you're going through'. I love Kunsel <3

As usual, this game feels like it goes too fucking fast. It's always one thing after another, nobody's talking or explaining things. Maybe it's because you're expected to do side missions every so often? That would probably break things up a bit more. God, there's such an interesting story here! I just wish it was told better.

Also I've been playing so much of this game and only just learned you can sprint :P

#browniefox speaks #ffvii #ff7 #crisis core #ffviicc #brownie plays ccr

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max-nexus · 10 months ago

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KGTAC Analysis Pages 2229-2425

First Analysis Previous Analysis Sburb Dog Analysis Next Analysis Hell yes! KGTAC Act 2: Home-Skillet is back baby! Here is my analysis, not too much lore wise outside of me noticing some things i missed before but I'm just glad it's back!

KGTAC PAGE 2229

2229: Well this is new! The author seems to be distancing themselves from Homestuck even more. The old house in the Beta looked like Rose house in it's vibes with a dash of John's in it's exterior

HOME-SKILLET BETA PAGE 193

KGTAC PAGE 2230

2230: Ana's house didn't have an outer area like this at all. It sorta looks like she lives in some sort of city here. Although this background looks so goddamn weird, It's like the sidewalk juts upward constantly here. 2235: Ooh, interesting. The next page animation has direct parallels!

KGTAC PAGE 2236

youtube

2236: In the Beta it was "Ana: Play a jazzy saxophone refrain." The music here is actually the same as before, it's generally the same as before at the start, just a different environment. The nanny seemingly walked into another house? Then we start seeing a bigger difference. A Showtime remix starts playing as we see FRED TRY EATING HIS GREENS LMAO. This is what we in the business call A REALLY COOL ANIMATION. i kinda wish it was actually playable but that would've been a lot more work. THEN FRED STARTS DANCING. Goddamn we can just make a full Fred Wilmore sprite sheet now, can we. That was an amazing animation. well worth the wait! Now on the theory crafting side of things. The only thing that come to mind is that Fred was expecting EDMOND to be there to eat his greens. Despite as it says in Page 2118 of the holy text "Unfortunately he ran away when you were young. He was a very good dog, though" Though to be fair, we don't know what Fred considers "young". Fred might be one of those kids who considers himself from 2 years ago "young". Another weird thing is that the STRIFE text is in the opposite direction when compared to homestuck... No look! HOMESTUCK STRIFE

KGTAC STRIFE (extracted)

2237: I wonder what HIP stands for? This clearly will be incredibly important in ACT 2 DAY 5 ROLL 2 INTERMISSION 3 2244: What's with the red eye? I guess it's just to represent that he's utterly manic right now. 2245: Beautiful animation! This also gives us a better look into the living room here which is nice for anyone looking to make a recreation. (I was actually trying to make one a while back...) 2246: We see a big package (probably his computer) there. It has a watery logo. Kinda looks like a surfboard on a wave? 2247: There's Photochat! 2248: Oh that's a different box, also it's published/made by SKYACOM. Interesting... 2252: Ok so we know that logo belongs to a company called GREENROOM now (Like, is this a reference to Doc Scratch? His room was green, i guess it could also be the felt manor back in Homestuck's Act 3 Intermission. Could also be nothing.), also we now see the desktop! Interesting it says INDEX for the home button, we also now have the EXACT TIME which is 5:30 PM, this will be useful for setting up a timeline! (Not that I'd really bother doing that right now.)

KGTAC PAGE 2253

Homestuck Page 6

2253: Wait what the hell! Random Act 1 Cursor Appearance? This sorta popped up in Act 1 of Homestuck due to the fact that Homestuck was originally designed to be made entirely in flash. It's interesting that it's showing up here. Maybe it means something, maybe Cole didn't want to animate Fred grabbing Photochat then putting it into the pc. 2255: Hm he's been to a library, maybe there is some credence to him being of the mind aspect (/j) 2264: Ah! I can't believe Cole was so bold to do it so early to kill off such a major character so early, to the forgetful ones in the audience back in my analysis of the FLOPPY DECK (my beloved) i talked about the fact there are only 3 points on the floppy deck, when the BETA Floppy deck had 4 points. I made a crackpot theory that one of the character's would die in Home-Skillet as a big event early on in the story. And well, here we have it folks! Fred is dead, dead dead, deadity dead dead, dead. What a bold move. his death moved me to tears. KGTAC RELEASE

2265: Sweet! Just putting this to note but the pages for this day's of updates (2/3/24) weren't released all at once, we had to wait like an hour when Photochat was downloading. The images were actually uploaded before this and i probably saw them before most because i decided to check because i noticed some pages were being released 1 at a time. Just putting this for historical reasons for anyone reading this in the far future in the [S] END OF ACT 2 flash when Nan unites everyone for the big fight against LORD HUSSIE (/j, man I'm including a lot of jokes in this one) because this small detail would probably be forgotten a few years from now. Heck, I'd probably forget it. 2276: LMAO 2279: Farty Gas, an excellent choice of a name good sir (Lol) 2285: Holy heck, Fred says frick! Also i love the fact he wrote this as if it were a letter, even ending it with a "Take Care" Zimodo in the comment section summarized it best. MEME

SIDENOTE 1: I just noticed… For some reason there's barely any "NAME: DO STUFF" in the ENTIRETY of Home-Skillet. Its mainly just DO STUFF, like seriously. it's not set up like a standard Homestuck command at all. Even KGTAC ACT 1 + INTERMISSION did that when a character was doing stuff. It wouldn't even be forced. Like in pg 2236 it could've been "[S] Ana: Play the sax in triumph." but it's just not? Like before the HIATUS, there was like 1 use, now its like half-n-half and I'm not sure if this is intentional or accidental. Even worse, we started seeing a lot of the standard Homestuck command structure starting February, not before... so even after the Hiatus the command structure didn't include names. Is it because Ana and Fred are talking to each other to prevent confusion or is there some deeper reason... PRE HIATUS

FEBRUARY FOR SOME REASON

2295: Death theory… (Specifically, DC can't enter into his session as his FLOPPY DECK, seemingly died in a valiant battle against time. This is incredibly bad for when you're playing the game that kills you when you don't play it. Now of course this is assuming that HomeSkillet is operating under the idea that the meteors are like destined to hit you and not that the games summon the meteors (I personally don't understand why people think that, was that ever confirmed or is that just popular fanon) But overall, this likely doesn't bode well for DC) 2303: ARG WARNING, DEAR GOD I HAVE TO SOLVE A MYSTERY NOW THESE ARE IMAGES… or not It looks like BrainFuck so uh… Yeah i don't think it means anything big (aka i don't know how i'd even transcribe the text into a working program! Also thinking about it, this might be the item duplication thing i joked about earlier, y'know with the fact that if items are just code on a floppy disc, whats preventing people from copying that floppy. Or in this case putting something on the floppy disc to get an item. Unknown: Crosshair activated towards sector 121 09

newone: Crosshair activated towards sector head_port 1 fuck

(Might actually be helga port 1?) We can guess that these are the coordinates for the meteors, for obvious reasons. And somehow P(ee)P(ee) did something to affect these coordinates. Very interesting. 2311: Light aspect /j 2326: Yep, it's green. Took you awhile farty-gas. It took you page 28 of the BETA to do that. 2332: Reference to Poltergeist 1982, Just noting this because i looked it up. 2335: Welp, that's confirmation. Edmond is dead, Grandma just sorta hid the fact because he probably was 5 at the time. 2359: YES! NO SYLLADEX GAMING! I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO SEE A SBURBVENTURE WHERE A CHARACTER DOESN'T HAVE A SYLLADEX. (To the point I've always imagined making a character for one that doesn't have one, or has some notable issue preventing them from using it fully.) 2390: Music is the same, the art is different when compared to the BETA version KGTAC ACT 2 2390

youtube

Home-Skillet BETA PAGE 159

youtube

2410: If you don't want to waste time by leaving things behind, try carrying them Doofus. Too big? That's what the FLOPPY DECK is for Farty Gas. 2411: Interestingly enough, the image for the timer (381.gif) is in the wrong order if we'd line up these images as if they come in 1 after the other. As if it was meant to be put in a different order. Presumably after page 2404 (Because that's 380.gif) SIDENOTE 2: there is a unused image here! I guess to improve the pacing this got cut out last minute. 376.GIF

2420: I'm just going to show my comment here

2425: Fun fact, i saw this image like 20 seconds before the page went up, because ever since the loading screen, i've been checking for that sort of stuff. It looks like we are about to hit an [S] Page. SIDENOTE 3: The Saxophone was always there lmao, i can't believe i missed it, it was even referenced in the text of 2186. I guess you miss stuff when you end up analyzing nearly 100 pages worth of content while trying to balance 6 college classes at the same time.

SIDENOTE 4: These have all been pretty good panels so far, I love all the work that's been put into them, with all these details, especially early on when Cole went and animated the runs there.

So that's the end of the analysis, I'd like to thank everyone here, I should do a re-reading of Home-Skillet to see what I've forgotten. I hope you enjoy and lets see what comes next! Sorry that it took so long, i wasn't exactly putting in tons of work to get this out soon. There's no rush. Y'know.

Nope, In my usual fashion, Digging up one thing digs up another. And I've discovered CONSTUCK. An April fools joke made in 2022 that i missed which is a "KGTAC RELEASE" with Act 1 just being the "Beta" https://mspfa.com/?s=27317&p=1490 1: Ah yes, Karkat 2: A general thing i've noticed is that it looks like each panel was drawn by a different person. 9: What an amazing reboot. KGTAC DISCORD GOES TO A CONVENTION PAGE 52

CONSTUCK PAGE 12

12: Holy **** Lois! KGTAC Server goes to a convention? Honestly, i had to dig a bit to figure out this is commentary on it as i never read this. The turnaround here is insane tbh looking into it, March 25th the public apology comes out, March 29th the commentary on it on it comes out as an April fools joke. Mildly impressed. Though i can't help but feel bad for the people behind KGTAC Server goes to a convention here being referenced like this. Personally speaking I'd keel over and die here, though to be fair it just takes me remembering something stupid i did a decade ago to make that happen. 13:Lmao "astrosized into out" 28: Now for the reason why I'm looking at this. FRED WILMORE STRIKES AGAIN 30: Helga? I can't remember who that is… also Nan's here and her dialog implies she's writing Home-Skillet. Maybe lore important, maybe the author is just speaking through Nan as some extra commentary on KGTAC Discord goes to a convention. 31: Nan is a Muse of Time? Neat! 32: And now for the main reason im here… TO BE CONTINUED… This if it's not just a silly April fools joke draws a direct connection between ACT 1 and ACT 2 of KGTAC. It's not much to go off of due to it's dubious canonicity but we already know MSPFA exists in the actual comic itself thanks to mspa reader to cite a more recent example and also NAN went on MSPFA in the flash [S] It was the ideas it inspired (and also uh, Act 1 takes place in what could be considered Earth, modern day. So MSPFA existing makes sense) Thanks to these facts it means that it's not impossible this is a sign of things to come, that perhaps we see how ACT 2: Home-Skillet fits into ACT 1: Karkat goes to a Convention

And now this is the end.

Also while looking i found some unlisted pages! read em if ya want! https://mspfa.com/?s=27317&p=1057 https://mspfa.com/?s=27317&p=822

Now this is REALLY the end, No PSYCHE X3 Combo's here….

See! it's just the end. Thanks for reading my analysis, Here's to the next one. I'm also less busy as of late so i should be able to get these out more frequently than when KGTAC took a break before, so i don't think i have to change the general format of this series. 1 MONTH LATER....

Me in 3/17/24 Land here. Man this took a while, as i said before, i wasn't making this a high priority because I'm working on a MSPFA called CHAINED + 4 college classes gives me time only if i make time for it. But yeah, I hope you enjoyed this analysis, if you noticed something i didn't, have any questions, or your own theories. I'd like to here em, my asks are open!

#homeskillet #home-skillet #home skillet #kgtac #karkat goes to a convention #homestuck #kgtac analysis #media analysis #constuck

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eggsploded · 1 year ago

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HOMESTUCK AND STAR TREK? :O

oh baby this posts gonna be long

blorbo (favorite character, character I think about the most)

HS: aradia and sollux. aradia is my favorite forever as my patron troll and sollux is just fun to draw because whys he look like that

ST: all the cardassians in general. garak is the best, im honestly more fascinated with andrew robinson himself and his dedication to the character. also damar who doesnt get much presence until later seasons and gets crushed by actually giving a fuck about his position. i took a shot of kanar (maple syrup) for his honor and it was agony.

dukat is excluded from this because he managed to curse the show into buffering on his face everytime i watched.

scrunkly (my “baby”, character that gives me cuteness aggression, character that is So Shaped)

HS: probably the beta kids before playing sburb. theyre all just little kids and best friends forever and it makes me tear up- in pesterquest dave literally talks about jade like shes his girlfriend that goes to a different school. all the kids were more than eager to see eachother in person and it sucks that it happened under the circumstances of.. homestuck

i dont have cuteness aggression for them theyve been through enough :-(

ST: in TNG's the enemy geordi helps out this genuinely pitiful romulan dude thats shaking like a chihuahua and i felt so much for that guy i wish he came back

scrimblo bimblo (underrated/underappreciated fave)

HS: i think people are finally past portraying kanaya as a nothingburger, it was kind of funny 10 years ago that people were falling into her flimsy veil of Perceived Normalcy, like she doesnt regularly bite her friends and wasnt unforgivably delulu about vriska when they were moirails.

truly underrated might be the felt? their designs tickle me

ST: damar? maybe hes got more content now idk. honorable mentions are: keiko obrien, worfs parents (my favorite tng ep), hugh, the cardassian scientists that hit on obrien that one time, lwaxana troi and keevan.

glup shitto (obscure fave, character that can appear in the background for 0.2 seconds and I won’t shut up about it for a week)

HS: any of signless' crew. like. we got shafted so hard with the dancestors its crazy. in my wildest dreams psiioniic didnt get utterly crushed by the vast glub and somehow escaped at the ripe age of 2000 sweeps and is now overgrown and too old and ancient for his own good, squatting in solluxs hive. we didnt get much content about how signless did his recruiting- did he just do speeches and demonstrations? did he fuck nasty? i know for sure it wasnt the cringe dialogue they strapped kankri with. same goes for dolorosas life before she raised signless, she should be at the club.

ST: background vulcans. especially in TNG when they just stopped giving a fuck about them, thank god tuvok exists or i wouldve had no incentive at all to actually watch part of VOY.

poor little meow meow (“problematic”/unpopular/controversial/otherwise pathetic fave)

HS: equius. its really a special day when a character cant be quantified with a simple archetype like the rest of the trolls. theres something so deeply strange and wrong with him that its captivating, i chalk it up to being the horse guy in a insect body.

hussie also just like, had it out for him at day one. gamzee got beaten to a pulp narratively but equius didnt even get a chance. its sad, and im more interested in what he couldve been rather than someone like eridan or meenah.

ST: kai winn. shes literally an alien white woman and its fantastic. she did her role so good that the poor actress got hatemail, and her insidiousness is just so well done. the final season of ds9 isnt that good but it was fun to see her go off the rails with dukat.

horse plinko (character I would torment for fun, for whatever reason)

HS: what do i look like? hussie? in truth when it comes to being a flop i like seeing kanaya flounder. shes weird guys. she is so fucking weird and she doesnt really know because her friends are Weirder. we dont always need her to slay, atleast in my book.

ST: riker. no further notes

eeby deeby (character I would send to superhell)

HS: jake. if he has a deeper character i havent noticed because my eyes glaze over trying to read through this dialogue. he feels like a leftover shitpost character hussie couldnt fit on the dancestors. i havent reread act 6 yet, but i remember such a large chunk being some strange love triangle-square surrounding jake and i did Not Give a Fuck, and salt in the wound was dirk and janes friendship being so fantastic but overshadowed by jakes unceasing sex appeal cursing them.

ST: obrien because it was be a standard episode plot for him, i think hed come out fine

#egg asks #homestuck #star trek

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ganonfan1995 · 2 years ago

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totk spoilers

just thoughts on totk thus far

I keep seeing ppl say they've done away with the triforce in totk...but like....im 99% sure that's what the secret stones are supposed to be.

The triforce itself is comprised of the combined power of the royal 3.

But they also seem to work 1:1 like the triforce did in like LTTP.

Also there's 8 pieces which calls back to LoZ 2.

I'm not done the game yet, but totk seems to rehashing a LOT of older lore mixed with more recent lore. Notably, this game feels like its primarily touching on the first 3 games, plus OOT, with some of the better ideas from SS.

You see implications of who the gods truly are (apparently colonizing aliens who descended upon the land to mine its resources...which was something implied in SS quite blatantly???)

But it also adds context to the original 3 goddesses, implying that they had been ancient Zonai who posed as gods to the original inhabitants of Hyrule. Later becoming dragons and mythologized after thousands of years. (also me pogging that the light dragons stoney spines are the same colours as the goddess plumes!?!?!?? idk what that means but cool?????????)

I also don't know if they touch on this later, but it really seems like the Sheikah, esp the ancient Sheikah, were Hylians who specifically followed in the footsteps of the Zonai. I think this makes sense, and ties them to previous games where they were a tribe/clan/family of ninja who were closest to the gods. And since Zonai fancy themselves gods (or at least the ancient Hylians did, I don't think they were tbh) , this kind of clarifies that relationship/connection. Maybe they have a specific tie to Mineru, which would reiterate their bond to the royal family. But that might be over complicating things, since at least in botw they're just like, straight up ninja. But who knows, maybe not??

Also the young dumb idiot energy that Rauru brings is great. Big fan of young fucko who thinks he can be a good king but inherently fucks up because that's impossible, girl ur a monarch, is super interesting. wanna take him by the ears and look him dead in the eyes like, buddy you legit should not have taken those fucking stones out and just lived a quiet life in the woods...but then we'd be without a game. 🙄

I'm still collecting the slabs, the small snippets you get of both he and Sonia's relationship and characters are so fun. Sonia is also great, wish we got a bit more of her tho.

I'm really enjoying Ganondorf, he's a bit understated, but it's been interesting to see him younger than we ever have, right before the unification wars, head full of poetry and ambition. Why he green tho???????

Also really interesting how they've loosened the whole "hylia" stuff in favor for just "goddess"

Very much loving that Link is no longer a knight, but a swordsman who travels around helping people out. Total folklore/fairytale vibes, 10/10!! Also I feel like I'm connecting to him much more in this game, I really could never get behind the devout knight energy. He's a folk hero, he's here for the love of the game, and so am I!

Also mfw "Link...interesting...I look forward to meeting him." my man's been pining to meet ME for thousands of years, confirmed. I read homestuck, I know a black-rom relationship when I see one. (swooning)

#totk spoilers #this is abt everything except the ending #i just need to ramble

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thewertsearch · 5 months ago

Text

Ask Comp 12/8

@williamjakespeare asked: One of the recent posts concludes that the circumstances around Vriska's god tiering were "so much worse than anything I thought was going to happen" and I'm curious. What exactly did you think was going to happen?

Back before I knew how God Tier ascension worked, my theory was that Vriska's Quest Bed might grant her access to a special dream moon, and that Tavros's presence there might throw some sort of spanner into the works. I wasn't sure what kind of spanner, and my theories were very vague.

Vriska's a huge taskmaster, and I thought she might have given him an instruction that he was unwilling or unable to carry out. Like, maybe she told him to leave her God Tier Moon, and he was unwilling to abandon her to a fate he didn't understand.

I guess I was right. In the end, she did give him an instruction he couldn't carry out.

Anonymous asked: For the kid who was the most vocal about her 'distaste' for their guardian, having Mom be the reason that Rose snaps is actually very sweet, in a sad way. ~DJ

The above line from Rose implies that she had a lot more affection for her mother than she was letting on.

Their relationship was complicated, but if Rose viewed her as a sister, I think there had to have been some camaraderie between the two. We just never saw it on-panel, because the narrative began on the most stressful day of Mom Lalonde's life.

@elkian asked: So, fun fact about that time John joked about rescuing Rose from the Broodfesther Throes and you were going "yes it's a joke BUT IT'S ALSO SERIOUS JOHN!!!": Hussie's author note for that page is almost verbatim your reaction. Homestuck is as serious as it is silly and typically both at once.

Every time Hussie and I share the same thought, a subtle chill runs down my spine.

@gl1tchypyr0 asked: In regards to the thing about LOWAA potentially corrupting Eridan, itd be a little smart to remember what Sollux said in his conversation with Terezi about a prophet has to go blind to earn their stripes or how an angel earns its wings, Sollux states that 'angels are terrible feathery demons that paradox space uses to usher in the end' and Eridan was actually killing them even if he wasn't Supposed to. If you really think about it I actually kinda find it sad? If he was already a troubled individual Before Sgrub and then was on a planet of 'terrible feathery demons' that whisper prophecies in his earfins for an entire month that he was made to feel he Had to kill, honestly it makes me nervous imagining just how many doomed timelines there are where Eridan snapped far earlier. Not to mention the fact he's also on the Blue Team ie Derse players ie most susceptible to waking up in his sleep and seeing tentacles and eyeballs staring back at him (not that he wouldn't be /used to that/ back on alternia with his job of feeding glybgolyb so Feferi wouldn't have to). Not really defending eridan but just, food for thought kinda? About how LOWAA might have affected him enough for Doc Scratch to bring up such a hypothetical. The idea that Eridan was already pretty bad before the inevitable Sgrub trauma and then LOWAA made thinks /worse/.

Oh, don't get it twisted - Eridan's just as much of tragedy as any of the other trolls. He's certainly written to be less sympathetic, but he didn't deserve to be raised in the Alternian Empire. Just like Vriska and Equius, he could have been a much better person, if only he was raised in a less violent and oppressive culture.

Of course, he could still be an asshole if he was born on Earth - but at least he'd have a chance to be better. Alternia stacks the deck against you in ways that simply aren't fair.

@galaxa-13 asked: It is very satisfying watching you pick apart everything Doc Scratch says without playing his game. Rose wishes she could, but unfortunately she is a child and not as smart as she pretends to be. Usually it's fun to watch people theorize because of what they don't know, so it's extra fun when someone as smart as you doesn't have the pieces I already do. Just chortling to myself, "Oh ho ho, just you wait!" @elkian asked: I may have sent this before but I ADORE your Doc Scratch dissertations. What few liveblogs (and fandom during/after the run) I've followed have other strengths and focuses, so these moments where you stop everything to shred his dialogue to see if fhere's even a GRAIN of truth are novel and absolutely fascinating. I think you've done the most thorough analyses of any 1 of his convos let alone all of them and I'm here for it. Rip that shady motherfucker apart! :D

Despite myself, I am enjoying puzzling out the true meaning of what he says. I've just got to remember that he is fully capable of lying.

I do think, on balance, that there is some hidden meaning to his words - it's just hard to find. His '50% chance of ascending' statement is definitely foreshadowing something, I just can't figure out what. I think it has something to do with the reboot session, but I'm waiting to learn more about the reboot before I really start theorizing about it.

Anonymous asked: In case the 7 Gates haven’t been fully explained yet — the Gates over a player’s house are all either entry (transport to somewhere on their planet) or exit (destination of a gate on the planet of the previous player in the chain). Using John as example: Build to gate 1, which takes him somewhere on LOWAS. Find gate 2 elsewhere on LOWAS, this will take him to the matching gate over Rose’s house — build up to her gate 3, which will lead to somewhere on LOLAR, then find the planet’s gate 4, etc.

Here's my old interpretation of the Gate system, from way back in Act 4. I'm fully in agreement with you about John's path here - the problem is that when you use it to extrapolate Rose's path, things start to fall apart.

See, this ordering method implies that in a four-player chain, your own Seventh Gate is located on the Land preceding yours, rather than your own. This means that Rose's Seventh Gate is the one that got John killed on LOWAS - the one which leads to his Denizen. It additionally implies that John's Seventh Gate should have been on Jade's Land instead. It's all very confusing.

Anonymous asked: Something I love about how this god-tier immortality system is described, however it works, is that "remaining neutral" will PROBABLY keep you alive… but when you think about it, remaining neutral means not making a REAL DIFFERENCE. As a God, if you want to make a difference in the world around you -- good or bad -- you have to be willing to stake your life on it.

True! It's an interesting balancing mechanism, where each God Tier has to decide whether their life is more valuable than their personal agency. Gods who avoid Heroic and Just situations are almost invincible, but they're also completely ineffectual.

I'd obviously try to game the system somehow, but the vague, subjective definitions of Heroic and Just make this a difficult system to game.

@spyril4132 asked: with the reveal of the heroic-just system, there's now a reason you might not want to god tier immediately: sacrificing one of your selves for a heroic cause and then doing what aradia did (but intentionally)

Good point. Although, I'm not sure I'd want to rely on the Quest Slab for my resurrection - at least, not yet. We don't really know the rules are, and how they differ from normal Quest Bed rules.

Anonymous asked: "I don't really care if Paradox Space sanctions his actions - he needs to be taken down, and if that upsets the natural order, then it's time for a new natural order." i think you for sure lean more lifeways on the life/doom player axis lol. oh, the laws of the multiverse say death is inevitable? well, that fucking sucks and i hate it, so i'm gonna wedge myself into the cracks and loopholes and *make* it evitable one day at a goddamn time, life finds a way motherfucker.

Life finds a way, motherfucker!

I actually find both Life and Doom fairly interesting, as Aspects go. I think, at this point, I'm committed to giving one to my kidsona, and the other to my trollsona.

If another Aspect ends up catching my eye, we'll have to start workshopping a Carapaciansona!

Anonymous asked: I think you got it kinda twisted what's going on with Rose. Yes she is slightly corrupted by the Horrorterrors powers/boons and Scratch's… Sheer Existence. But in her mind, she's doing this to Save her session, so if she does go God Tier and gets killed, her death wouldn't be Just, it would probably be Heroic. As she probably would've died tryong to save her session, which would cancel out the corruption from Scratch and Horrorterrors. Either way she still dies, but it's the difference in Why she dies that's important. […]

See, this is the whole problem, isn't it? These terms are incredibly subjective.

I personally think Rose's attempt to save her session is extremely Heroic - but Skaia couldn't possibly approve of her assault on the game, so I don't think it would cancel out her Horrorterror corruption. Sburb itself is probably the last word on what qualifies as a Just death, so I think that's what she'd get tagged as, if she died as a God Tier in the Green Sun's explosion.

I'm also not sure if getting tagged as Heroic would cancel out a Just tag. They're not necessarily opposites - Vriska, for example, is designed to have a controversial alignment, and could easily die in a way that counts as both.

@ben-guy asked: Small correction, you referred to the Alternian empire as "intergalactic" when it only exists within one galaxy as far as I'm aware. Yes, kind of a silly nitpick, and one that I could be wrong about, but I happen to enjoy thinking about the comparative scale of space faring societies lol. If there is a quote contradicting that, I'd like to see it! Pretty sure it's merely a galactic empire tho :)

Nah, that's fair - that's the kind of nitpick I'd point out, too.

Galaxy, singular. I think I parsed the Empire as intergalactic because massively faster-than-light travel is clearly possible in this setting, via time manipulation. We don't actually know if Alternia had access to time manipulation before Sgrub - but Earth seemingly did, so who knows?

@abacusdictator asked: Found your liveblog a few days ago and furiously binged it. Happy to find another Homestuck liveblog! Especially one I can see happen in-progress! I hope you enjoy the rest of the story!

Thanks - and you're certainly coming in at an interesting time!

Anonymous asked: Scratch "chooses not to lie," but he also has the privileged position of knowing in advance that Rose will misunderstand what the Scratch is, leading to her doing what he wants. If he knew that not lying wouldn't get him what he wants, or even if he didn't know for certain that it would, would he lie? If so, that basically means it's pointless to try to figure out his true meanings, because if you succeed, he'll have retroactively lied about it anyway.

Yeah, this is pretty much my take.

Does it really matter if he 'doesn't lie' if he can foresee all the truths that will mislead you? When you're playing at his level, the actual truth of your statements barely matters.

@skelekingfeddy asked: to my knowledge this has never been commented on by hussie, but i feel like doc scratch doesnt lie in part because he was made from the cueball. its a fortune telling device that predicts the future with remarkable precision and accuracy. you wouldnt expect it to lie, would you? its just that the difference between scratch and the cueball is that he can pick and choose WHICH truths to reveal at which moments. (his penchant for jokes thus probably comes from cal (‘haa haa hee hee hoo hoo’) i feel like him never lying is also a way to feed his own ego. its a self-imposed(!!!!) restriction, and yet despite it he effortlessly plays everyone like fiddles. and he KNOWS it. he CHOOSES never to lie. he VOLUNTARILY hands the people he manipulates an advantage on a goddamn silver platter, and he STILL wins. ‘Isn't it funny how during our various matches, I can tell you what my moves will be in advance, and still win?’ hes so fucking smug. what a pompous dipshit. i love him Anonymous asked: I think that when Scratch say he don't lie, he mean it, and not because of some vilainous valor but out of sheer ego. Scratch is prideful, he love beating other by "playing with cards face up" and tricking them with exact word, he doesn't tell the truth because it's "honorable", he tell the truth because he doesn't need to lie to win.

Also, this. He's just a smug fuck.

Do we know for sure if the cueball is always truthful, actually? Scratch heavily implies it here, but he's only stating it as a hypothetical.

Anonymous asked: Scratch is like a fae, he doesn't lie but you better watch out how he word what he say.

I'd be so screwed against the fae. Not because I couldn't parse their statements, but because I'm only halfway competent with human social customs, let alone weird alien ones.

@manorinthewoods asked: Honestly, I think it's great for his character if Scratch is actually completely dead of emotion inside, possibly even thoughts, and is just near-mindlessly carrying out the necessary parts of his role in the story so that his desired outcome is achieved. He's omniscient, he doesn't need to think. On the other hand, he does seem to have experienced genuine emotion, on occasions… ~LOSS (24/7/24)

A pseudo-omniscient character, mindlessly following the optimal path to their ultimate goal? This smells suspiciously like a Certified Contessa Moment...

Anonymous asked: In the trolls game all the trolls got to see and speak to their lusi after they died because they put them in the sprites. Meaning Gamzees dad coming back wouldn’t get him sober. Ideally Gamzee would be able to interact with his dad way more then he ever had in the past because his dad now had to guid him as his sprite.

Fair point. Although, we know that prototyping tends to affect your personality, and shifts your priorities towards guiding your Player through the game.

Goatsprite's sprite knowledge might have informed him that Gamzee needed to be on Sopor Slime, or game would become unwinnable.

@heliotropopause asked: "Well, no! That’s the problem! The cueball’s omniscience is completely redundant, because the MEOW code already contains an omniscience gene! According to the Scratch loredump, any ‘intelligent’ host for the MEOW code will be granted near-omniscience. Scratch didn’t need the cueball," I think it's worth considering the what exactly he meant with that- it seems perfectly plausible that the teleportation-based powerset established for bequerel would make an intelligent agent very good at observation, either by physically hopping around, or by teleporting light around to see distant places, or by sending out telekinetic "feelers"; we know bec has the capability to separately manipulate individual objects in physical contact from afar. None of this would give him knowledge of the future, or of physically disjoint spaces like the human session, so the cueball is not at all redundant.

It's possible. See, this is another situation where we're really being hampered by our small sample size. We've only seen two First Guardians, and only one of them has been a 'standard' First Guardian, unaltered by HONK. As such, we don't really know how First Guardian clairvoyance is supposed to function.

Another Guardian with human-level intelligence is desperately needed, for science. It's almost enough to make me want the Scratched Guardian of Earth to be made from a human...

@manorinthewoods asked: As an alternative explanation for the double-omniscience problem, one could say that the cueball, in being used to create Scratch, retroactively and conceptually gained his omniscience - so effectively, any use of a cueball allows you to attune to Scratch's awareness (as long as he's alive, perhaps?). This would subsequently imply that First Guardians are all linked to their components - for instance, there would be some link between Bec and all dogs, or specifically Halley. ~LOSS (23/7/24)

As this ask points out, I might just be drawing the causal arrows in the wrong direction. If the cueball is omniscient because of Scratch, rather than the other way round, then there's really only one root cause for his clairvoyance.

I'm not sure why it would work like that, but I do like the idea of Colonel Sassacre running around the early 1900s with a suspiciously powerful dog.

@manorinthewoods asked: The link between 'Skaia's final gate of defense' and 'first to find Alternia' is something I just didn't notice (because I didn't really pay attention to the words and botched my experience by not watching the Flashes), but it would imply, to me, that the gates run in reverse order, Skaia to World - first meteor in, last meteor out. This would mean that the moon which dropped on Jade was the last meteor to hit […]Skaia. ~LOSS (23/7/24)

Hey, good catch!

Jade's meteor was the last to arrive on Earth. By this logic, wouldn't it have been the first thing to leave the session, rather than the last?

That makes a sort of sense, actually. A meteor this enormous would dwarf the entire Incipisphere, so the game would probably want it out of the picture as soon as possible.

@manorinthewoods asked: You seem to have run with the interpretation that all First Guardians run on the same fundamental genetic code, identical to MEOW but using different letters. Not really how I thought of it - I interpret that every FG's code is different, although I also didn't think too hard about the FGs. No reason that they'd necessarily all have to have the same genetic code - after all, Bec's a dog and Scratch's a Scratch. You'd only really need a single gene to code for Green Sun powers… ~LOSS (23/7/24)

It does say they share a genetic sequence, rather than an entire genome. Becquerel presumably contains some dog DNA - the 'host' - which is absent in Scratch, so their genome can't be identical.

Unlike Becquerel, Scratch's hosts were entirely synthetic. They didn't have DNA - which, to me, implies that his entire genome is just an amalgamation of the BR8K H34DS T1CK T0CK HONK sequences. His DNA is just the First Guardian sequence, plus whatever is in HONK.

...what the hell is in HONK, then? If it's DNA, it has to come from some living thing, and I have a horrible feeling that Gamzee spliced his own DNA into the sequence. Why else would he call it HONK?

@skelekingfeddy asked: ‘…the fucking bow-tie! He’s wearing Cal’s Alternian clothes! The proof’s been staring us in the face this entire time, and we were none the wiser!’ look at what regular cal is wearing underneath his blue ‘CAL’ shirt :)

My guy's been pulling the long con.

@morganwick asked: "#but now that i have an antimatter pellet I can feed it to my bees. they can create nuclear waste honey without all the fission rigmarole" Minecraft, Sollux style. (Or maybe Minecraft, Problem Sleuth style?)

Sollux would be a Productive Bees specialist, wouldn't he? That, alongside every computer mod in existence.

@elkian asked: Sorry if I'm the 80th person to mention this but Vriska's 8r8k could also refer to the act of shooting the cue ball at the group of pool balls at the start of a game, known as a "break". @ben-guy asked: Fun fact: In pool terms, the "8r8k" actually refers to the opening shot that sends all the balls flying everywhere. Additional fun fact: The game of pool has a history of being used as a metaphor for causality, which lends some interesting metaphorical weight to Doc Scratch as a cue ball.

Oh, that's true - pool balls are often used as an analogy when talking about causality. Surprising that that's never occurred to me before.

I like to think that when the Felt storm a rival gang's lair as a group, they call their maneuver The Break.

@manorinthewoods asked: Oh my god, Aradia uses Jack to go to the Green Sun. That's such a cool detail. It's so fast, I didn't even see it. To be fair, although the timing is ridiculously impressive, Aradia is both a god and specifically a god of time. Although it's never stated, perfect timing is an obvious power for Time God Tiers to have, which does mean that Aradia would be a half-Flechette. ~LOSS (18/7/24)

And Kanaya's a fashion designer, too. Aradia x Kanaya when?

Anonymous asked: Hey, unfortunately the reqs list link seems to be janked out on my mobile client so I hope this is ok but if you haven't already heard of it I highly highly reccomend Jon Bois' 17776: What Football Will Look Like In the Future It's about football in the same sort of way that homestuck is about video games

Love that story - and I still have to read the sequel, actually!

Anonymous asked: Forwarding another question from the person without a Tumblr account: ~DJ. [I think the change in Equis and Nepeta's behavior is explained by "being together and solving problems together for a long time was great for Equius' and Nepeta's relationship" and "the destruction of Alternia helped Equius realize some facets of Alternian culture he believed where false" (because unlike Eridan he is able to change his mind about stuff like this). - RM]

I really want to see what Equius and Nepeta got up to for a month, as well as all the other trolls. It'd be great to get an 'untold stories of Homestuck' anthology at some point - and hopefully, that's something we'll see in some of Homestuck's tie-in media.

Anonymous asked: I’ve been thinking about Bec prototyping himself and I think I’ve got an answer that works for me - not necessarily the whole answer or the only answer, but I think it’s got something. Basically, Bec knows he can’t / shouldn’t get rid of the meteor entirely (he came down in a meteor that built the frog ruins, so even if we’re just going off what he’s experienced we can say that he probably on some level understands that these meteors landing is important) but he also understands he doesn’t have the type of power or the finesse with that power to only delay it until Jade can take the shot. After all, he could’ve just teleported the living room junk to a different part of the house, but he sent it into deep space because his doggy brain can only deal in absolutes when it comes to perceived danger to his best friend, and the only power we’ve seen First Guardians use (to my recollection) that would in any way help with slowing the meteor is teleportation. He can’t reliably teleport it back only far enough that it will keep falling, but won’t yet land, and he doesn’t have anything else at his disposal - except becoming a sprite, who we’ve seen use beam attacks, which allows Bec to push the meteor back as a delaying measure. Don’t know if he knew it would help so specifically, but even so, I can see Bec understanding it as the only option he has that isn’t either ‘send thing as far away as possible’ or ‘let thing squish most beloved person’. I do think the weakest parts of this theory are What Bec Understands, but puzzling through that devilbeast’s thoughts is hardly a new impossibility. If nothing else, we can all understand that he did this to save Jade, because he loves her, and we love him for that. -Megido (am a new anon, just spent the past couple days catching up and have enjoyed this liveblog immensely)

I think this theory is a good one, and Hussie's comments support it.

The meteor needed to be destroyed in a very specific way for the timeline to retain its integrity, and Bec should instinctively know that, born from Sburb as he is.

Anonymous asked: There are three lenses I think you can view troll romance through: the Xenopsychology lens, the Propaganda lens, and the Parody lens. The Xenopsychology lens is that trolls do in fact experience alien emotions which cannot be felt by humans. It's not just that troll society chooses to categorize the same types of feelings and relationships that humans have differently; these are genuinely unique and original emotions, like a new color that a human couldn't imagine. Describing kismesissitude as hatemance or rivalry or abuse, or moirallegiance as bromance or besties or queer platonic partnership, or auspisticism as third wheeling or mom friending or refereeing are all fundamentally incorrect, because there is no human analogue. You can take this a step further and say that matespritship is also fundamentally different from human romance, even if it appears similar. Therefore all attempts to analyze or write troll romance should be forays into xenofiction, attempting to understand things within a nonhuman framework. The Propaganda lens is that actually troll emotions aren't really any different than human ones, but the quadrant system benefits the hemocasteist militaristic empire by keeping trolls divided enough to become either fucked up killers or submissive victims by the time they reach maturity, but have the minimum support structure needed to actually reach maturity. Kismesissitude is fundamentally unhealthy, auspisticism serves as a counterbalance to keep everyone from killing each other, and moirallegiance serves to prevent trolls from having multiple close friendships or from being fully open with their matesprit by arbitrarily sequestering who it’s appropriate to have certain positive interactions with. None of this is really romance except the one that’s analogous to human romance, but trolls are raised to buy into the system under threat of death. It’s hard to form community and contemplate uprising if everyone confines the meaningful relationships in their life to like 4-5 other people, half of which are based on negative interactions. Also it’s a commentary on how human rules about love and relationships and where the platonic ends and romantic or sexual starts are socially enforced rather than wholly natural and can be arbitrary and unhealthy. Anonymous asked: The Parody lens is that this is all Hussie making fun of fandom shipping tropes. All sufficiently devoted rivalries are actually romantic love. All sufficiently strong friendships are actually romantic love. These two are so hopelessly oblivious to the fact that they actually want to get with the guy they hate, or that the other person they think just wants to be friends actually feels the same way, they need a third party to push them together. (Okay this one doesn’t work because auspisticism seems to basically be the opposite of that? Maybe auspisticism is supposed to be like, contrived elimination of competing romantic options to assure an OTP. Idk if anyone really knows what auspisticism is supposed to be, least of all Hussie.) Also because this was early 2010’s Hussie, there’s maybe a certain level on which trolls being societally obliged to polyamory and bisexuality is also making fun of shippers, although if it was I think Hussie turned around pretty quickly to actually being cool about it. Much like how light is a wave, and a particle, and a ray, all of these are true at different times. This is because the nature of Hussie's writing is that even when things are serious business, they are also jokes. And this is also why the Homestuck fandom will never agree on the correct way to understand and depict the quadrants.

Great breakdown. As you could probably predict, I lean a lot more towards the Propaganda lens, with a healthy dose of Parody mixed in.

The Xenopsychology lens isn't necessarily untrue - it's just that, as I've discussed before, the trolls read as extremely human to me. I honestly believe that if you raised a human on Alternia, they'd probably be compelled to form the same quadrants as everyone else.

I once got an ask stating that, according to Hussie, each of the quadrants are meant to be exaggerated versions of human relationship dynamics. I'd really like to check out that full quote, so if anyone's got a link, send it my way!

#asks #full liveblog #act 5.2

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homestuckreplay · 22 days ago

Text

New Year, New Trolls

(page 1089-1099)

So far, every scene of Homestuck has taken place on John, Rose, Dave or Jade’s birthday. I’m also really excited that the Dave flashback we got a glimpse of on page 1073 is real and here, even if his city looks miserable in December. And page 1089 includes an absolute top tier line: ‘When [John] sees your staggering gesture of sentimentality he will finally understand. He will understand that in the game of facetious sentimental gestures, no one gets the best of Rose Lalonde.’

It’s also fun learning that both Rose and Dave have changed their desktop wallpapers recently! I’m delighted to know that Rose Lalonde’s previous wallpaper was the official art for the Call of Cthulhu card game – sorry, the Foretelling of Fluthlu card game – with a heavy purple filter applied. I believe this edition is from 2008 and Rose is definitely playing it. Meanwhile, Dave has chosen an officially licensed Starsky & Hutch wallpaper, released by Warner Bros. as promotional material before the movie’s 2004 release. Dave has removed the ‘In Theaters March 5’ but kept everything else identical. Ironically, I’m sure.

John’s Letters

John is the sweetest, and I wish he could see more of his own strengths and wasn’t dunking on his own drawings here. His letters are very different to how he communicates via Pesterchum – he’s expressing feelings towards his friends far more strongly here, and he’s also showing a deeper understanding of them than usual. It must be easier for him to express himself with that extra layer of distance, having time to think about his words and knowing that he won’t get a direct response.

John casually drops that Rose has been his friend ‘all these years’, so they’ve known each other since they were… 8 or 9, maybe? That’s a reasonable age to be on the internet and proficient with typing, and see each other as old friends by 12 or 13. I mean, they’ve probably been friends for 4 years and 13 days at the start of the story, so that fits.

John knowing what a wet T-shirt contest is feels pretty jarring, and totally came from whatever movie he watched the night before writing this. More obviously in character is John saying ‘they're totally authentic! they actually touched ben stiller's weird, sort of gaunt face at some point’ in his December letter to Dave, and then using the exact same phrasing via Pesterchum the following April - ‘you do realize they touched stiller's weird, sort of gaunt face at some point’ (p.110). It’s also extremely heartwarming that Dave immediately takes off the shades that match his brother’s and puts on the new ones he got from his best friend, and then never switches back. John says ‘i think you just gotta get out of your bro's shadow and spread your wings dude!!!’ and Dave actually listens. That’s a hard thing to do all at once, but a big first step, and it only happened because Dave had support from an actual cool person in his life.

Here’s the thing: John loves his friends. Jade’s visions and their importance suggest that a lot of Homestuck is about predestination, and that it’s possible that at least John and Jade’s meeting was fated or engineered. But even if all four kids only met because of something Jade saw in dreams, that doesn’t create love! They’re still the kids who put in the effort to connect despite all their differences and who go above and beyond to care for each other and show love on each other’s birthdays! At this point John knows nothing about any predestination, he just knows that these people mean a lot to him and he wants them to know that.

Act 3 began with a page titled ‘Dear John,’ (p.759), showing us Nanna’s message inside Colonel Sassacre’s tome, and now we’ve got ‘dear rose,’ (p.1091) and ‘dear dave,’ (p.1097), so I am calling it now that the final page of the act will be a Dear Jade.

grimAuxiliatrix

carcinoGeneticist was a very disappointing and uncreative troll when we met on page 859, but grimAuxiliatrix is a master at work, and their pesterlog with Rose is a joy to read. GA’s gambit of claiming to be an alien out of sync with Earth’s time and used to dealing with species of far superior intellect is hilarious, I would actively enjoy getting trolled by them, and of course Rose would be compelled enough by the game to accidentally in some way fall for it. The ‘beginning every word with a capital letter’ is a nice touch that does make them sound more alien. Rose and Dave’s banter is great but I feel like GA challenges Rose more than Dave does, and definitely has a more similar vocabulary. Describing time as ‘A Utility That A Universe May Resort To In Order To Advance A Desired Degree Of Complexity’ is interesting, and suggests the possibility of a universe that does not utilize time – the Incipisphere, perhaps?

It seems like Rose isn’t fully buying GA’s claim to have spoken to future Rose, but we know from her relationship with Jade that she’s not fully closed off to the supernatural, so I’m hoping this previous/next conversation comes around soon.

adiosToreador

While John and Jade’s instincts are to avoid messages from the trolls, Rose and Dave’s are to play the trolls at their own game. Dave and AT’s conversation is equal parts disgusting and disturbing and contains several phrases I wish I’d never read, and hope to never read again. But essentially they’re playing online gay chicken, and Dave is willing to take it much further. GA referred to a group that is ‘All Already In Agreement’, but they could be a leader of the group, and AT a more unwilling follower who doesn’t take to trolling so well. It seems like they’re going for a mix of CG’s aggression and GA’s wordiness and not really succeeding with either, and having this easy target for bullying brings out the worst in Dave, so I’m not on anyone’s side here. They’re both knowingly trying to upset each other, and I think it is believable that they would talk like this, but I don't want any part of it.

This is also, technically, the act’s title page – Dave drops the phrase ‘insane corkscrew haymakers’ towards the end of the page, in a context I don’t especially want to explore in depth. It’s a fun phrase out of context but I too would block Dave for some of the other stuff he says.

Troll Theories

It would be way too much of a coincidence if, in a story where some locations exist ‘untouched by the flow of time’ of others, these trolls were just regular people on Earth making this all up. I personally think the trolls are currently on the ominous planet, and are specifically trying to cause problems for these Sburb players. I’m not sure if they are part of the game – either a random rival group of players admitted to the same session, or a group of NPCs – or if they’re hackers who have infiltrated this session against the game’s wishes. If they are hackers, they could end up being technically ‘good’ if they’re working against Sburb itself, but will probably still have different goals to the kids.

If they’re planted by Sburb and there are twelve of them aligned with the ominous planet, and only four fighting on behalf of Prospit, this could explain why the forces of light are destined to lose. If that’s the case, the game has a social angle – if Rose can convince GA that it’s smarter to fight for the light, and if Dave can bully AT into doing the same, then John and Jade only need to sway one person each for an evenly matched, fair fight. I also think it’s possible that the Midnight Crew is four of these guys, although I don’t have any thoughts as to which, or to who the other eight would be.

> Dave: Break old sunglasses in annoyance.

#homestuck #reaction #the pace of this story is insane! its hard to keep up just as a reader!#chrono

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