#is there such a thing as goy washing? is that a term?

[capsrecedinghairline]

Just saw a clip where David Mazouz talks about how a WB exec called him “too Jewy” to play young Bruce Wayne so uhhh now I have decided that Bruce should have thick curly hair, he should have bold, broad features, he be exactly what people think of when they stereotype Jews.

And yeah, obviously there is no singular way to “look Jewish”. That’s not the point. The point is that a Jewish kid had to load his hair down with gel in order to play a canonically Jewish character. I shouldn’t have to spell out the rest for you.

The point is visibility. The point is that Jewish-American comic book innovators used the concept of superheroes’ secret identities to explore identity and assimilation. The point is that I want Bruce Wayne in a kippah and I’m not gonna shut up about it.

[perenial]

hi! could you elaborate on your point about tos Kirk and aos Kirk? whenever you can!! thank you

(re: this post)

so here's the thing: I actually love aos. it's a total trash fire of a film series and riddled with issues – and that's exactly why it still holds a very special place in my heart. youtuber and all-round GOAT jessie gender elucidates what makes the kelvin 'verse a defining piece of trek media in her incredible retrospective series here, which i highly recommend bc she, like me, is super enthusiastic about the transformative quality that the alternate timeline proposed, and the ways in which it succeeded/failed. in her analysis of into darkness, jessie mentions that she approached her critique with the presupposition that

JJ Abrams really seems to excel at being able to take franchises - things we have loved from our past - and modernise their core themes, visuals and style into the modern day, making movies that evoke how we remember something rather than how they actually were…But when Abrams tries to move beyond homage or pastiche, he really doesn’t have much to say beyond ‘hey, wasn’t that thing you remember really cool?’

(emphasis mine)

and while she ultimately teases this thought into a different thread of analysis, I think her point about movies that "evoke how we remember something rather than how they actually were" is especially salient to the characterisations of jim kirk in both tos and aos. because ultimately, jim kirk doesn't really exist anymore. he's entered public consciousness in a way that means he, and we, can never return to the original conception of the character from 1966. and that's okay.

as a first point of call: we don't remember jim kirk all that well. in their essay on collective cultural memory, erin horáková coins the term 'kirk drift' to describe how the idea of kirk - brutish, sexist womaniser and playboy extraordinaire - has deviated from the 'actual' kirk through decades of pop culture osmosis and a very specific remolding of kirk's masculinity into the homogenous WASP-y ideal that was being pushed so ardently during and after the cold war. horáková notes that one of the primary motivations in doing this is actually located in the trend of positing bigoted and discriminatory behaviours and ideas as something that always happened in the past, and therefore any piece of art or media from the past must inherently reflect these opinions. we think of the 60s as a era of injustice (despite, u know, the various civil rights movements that were gathering public recognition), so of course any media from the period must be saturated in racist, homophobic, sexist overtones. of course captain kirk was a white cis hetero american power fantasy; of course he disrespected women and treated them like objects; of course his masculinity was reckless and violent. I'm not saying there aren't aspects of kirk in tos that aren't shitty - it's that the memory of kirk is so tied to the idea of a discriminatory era that he has become this figure in the public consciousness.

(horáková also makes an excellent point about how shatner's jewish identity which is arguably transposed onto kirk has been goy-washed through this process, furthering the cultural image of the 'all-american man'. it's a super interesting thought that deserves more attention than I'm affording with this post so I might return to it at a later point)

so what horáková argues is that we're left with this culturally-mediated form of jim kirk that has permeated pop culture so completely that even star trek fans enter into tos with this preconceived notion of who he is. the kirk drift, they state, is responsible for the way jim is characterised in the kelvin 'verse films - but instead of expanding on why this might be and what opportunities it might afford, horáková does what a lot of tos fans (not all!! but a significant portion) end up doing: universally panning aos as inauthentic, disingenuous, and impure:

Bullshit easter eggs aside, the new Star Trek films are not for people who like Star Trek. They are spectacularly bad at delivering the essence of Star Trek: that universe, those characters. They are aimed at people who recognise the line “beam me up, Scotty” and sweet Fanny Adams else. Even the TOS films cater to people’s sense of recognition, and making them “feel like fans” without much of the playbour of having to become familiar with the canon. These pre-packaged elements also give casual viewers the satisfying sense of a bona-fide Star Trek Experience: if McCoy hasn’t told you he’s a doctor, Jim, not a wand'ring minstrel, have you truly seen a Star Trek film at all? Time and distance from the source material have only exacerbated these effects.

(emphasis mine)

and this.......this just really pisses me off. it's the kind of gatekeeping attitude that keeps casual viewers at arm's length and refuses to acknowledge that people engage with media in different, ever-evolving ways that are not, and should not have to be contingent on someone's ability to binge hundreds of hours of content in order to 'truly understand' the media in question.

in her analysis on whether star trek '09 is 'real trek', jessie points out that while many critics of '09 point to its lack of philosophical content as proof that it doesn't ring true to the original roddenberry vision. her argument against this is twofold: firstly, star trek films (as opposed to tv shows) have never really been all that introspective to begin with. if we measure a trek film by a moral yardstick, most, if not all, star trek films fall short of the ethical questioning set up in the series they're born from – instead, these movies are character-driven dramas cloaked in a veneer of big(ish) budget sci-fi action, which may tie in to broader allegories and themes, but often don't. secondly (and most radically), jessie highlights that due to this split between philosophy and character focus, it could be the case that the former.....isn't actually the singular heart of trek the way we think it is. instead, jessie poses that

What makes a good Star Trek film is using character arcs to further Trek's ideals, not necessarily having a giant philosophical discussion...And honestly, I don't think you can find a better character discussion than Star Trek 2009, because I think this film's message is as clear as day, how it uses Kirk and Spock to tell the most essential and classic Star Trek story there is: how we find a balance between our logic and our emotions, and to not let ourselves be guided by solely one or the other in order to make ourselves better humans between the collision of the two.

[...] To all those who say this film doesn't get Gene Roddenberry's vision, I would ask that you take another look at this film, because I think it might be one of the most distilled versions of that vision that any Trek film has ever done, even more so than Roddenberry himself was sometimes able to achieve.

basically, the point of trek – its films especially, but the tv shows too – is that it is a conduit for showing and discussing the huge ethical quandaries of the universe through the minutiae of individual characters and their relationships to each other. the philosophy is nothing without the characters – and, in turn, these characters are nothing without their ability to connect to the audience. which leads me to my ultimate defense of aos,

star trek 2009 was made to reboot the franchise in a way that brought new fans in, not to solely cater to existing fans. creating a heavily canon-dependant, ultra sophisticated trek movie in the spirit of tos literally would not be possible nor would it have had an inviting (or marketable) effect on the next generation of potential viewers. we live in a vastly different time with different norms and expectations surrounding media - why do you think the frame rate has increased from 14 to 24 FFS in the last century? social demand creates certain kinds of technologies and these technologies in turn change how we experience the social: this is what sociologists mean when we talk about the social construction of technology (and specifically social interactionist scholars when we talk about actor-network theory, but that's a whole other post in itself).

another concept that holds a lot of weight here is 'the medium is the message', coined by communications theorist marshall mcluhan to describe the unique relationship a piece of media has to the technology through which it is delivered. much like social constructionist theories of technology, mcluhan is pointing out that the way things are structured – televisions, books, film, radio, etc etc – influence the message the media is being filtered through. my favourite example of this is the change in the structure of tv through the syndicated '60s to now: back in the days of i love lucy (and, yes, star trek), there was no way for a viewer to save every episode of a show to watch in sequential order. instead, each episode had to be intelligible to a new viewer every single time – this is why the 'status quo' was reset at the end of episodes, so that a new viewer wouldn't need to have that prior context in order to understand subsequent episodes. with the development of more cable options and video recording equipment, eventually culminating in the streaming services we enjoy today, serialization became more accessible and even preferred as a method of storytelling. we are literally telling different stories now because of the mediums we're using. you can't tell me that isn't the tightest shit you've ever heard.

anyway, i mention these theories bc my girl jessie alludes to them in her review of lower decks season 1:

As a 50 year old franchise, it becomes harder and harder to welcome new people into the fold. While Star Trek Discovery certainly can be welcoming to newer fans, its first two seasons still had a fair reliance on previous Trek lore…And with the last major influx of Star Trek fans coming from the Kelvin Star Trek films, and Lower Decks and even Star Trek Picard not being the most welcome of starting places for newer fans, it does leave me mildly worried for the longevity of the franchise as a whole if it continually focuses on catering to its existing fans, instead of trying to find new ones.

trek's greatest feat is its heaviest problem: its history, entrenched in the development of syndicated television, is proving impenetrable for potential viewers. canon is so vast and creative and complex that it drives people away – and on a smaller scale, we've already seen this happen. when tos was cancelled in '69, it was largely considered dead until efforts were made to reintroduce the now-franchise to the, uh, next generation. through the next generation. trek was kept alive, from its successful first motion picture to the debut of next gen, by catering to non-fans.

......and this, in a roundabout way, gets me to aos kirk.

i'll be the first to point out that aos kirk is an asshole. he's brash, arrogant, misogynistic, immature – everything he was built up to be by the kirk drift and subsequently derided by tos fans. but here's the thing: he needed to be a jerk, both in and out of aos canon, for his character to make sense.

on an in-universe level, this is a very specific version of the character we're encountering. this is a young man who was born from trauma, implied to been abused as a child, who grew up without a formative influence (and yeah, it's kinda fucked up how fathers are so prominent in trek and maternal influence seems to take a backseat) and lacked the structural support to lead him on the path he was 'destined' for. i don't think we can understate just how big of a deal george kirk, or rather the figure of him, was in the development of aos jim – this is a masculine role he grew up in the shadow of, the image of a self-sacrificing, brave, heroic legend that exemplified the best of starfleet's and humanity's ideals.

wait, am i talking about george kirk, or tos jim?

meta-textually, aos jim exists within the kirk drift. his inception comes about from cultural depictions of tos kirk, for better or worse, for all his idealised qualities and the incorrect stereotypes he garnered. he will always be measured against tos kirk, will always be considered an imitation, will always be a carbon copy with the ink smudged. he exists in our public consciousness as an extant form of jim kirk, and more importantly, he exists as this copy in a modern context. the way we reflect on tos kirk is mediated by social conventions and, critically, the medium through which we understand him – which is why a modern film kirk, as both a product of the kirk drift and a product of modern filmic conventions and structures, only makes sense as a heavily conflicted, problematic character.

aos kirk is this frankenstein's monster of the kirk drift, action heroes of yore, and modern western models of white masculinity. dude literally cannot exist as anything but a messy, fucked up amalgamation of his sociotechnical media context. so not only is george kirk a metaphor for tos kirk in the kelvinverse, aos jim himself is a metaphoric mix of masculinity in modern film that is informed by, but not entirely necessitated upon, tos kirk. if the message of trek is the mediation of emotion and logic, of culture and nature, of right and wrong, then the medium of reboot film is telling us a very specific story about a figure that has been warped by pop culture and is irrevocably indebted to a legacy that existed and continues to exist in its own very specific sociotechnical media context.

and that's so fucking cool.

[ketsuyuki-hibana-typed]

Rengoku Kyoujurou x Litte Sister Figure!Reader (Part 4)

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 5

I wanted to say that marrying has deep meaning than it thought. It’s about commitment, because you’re going to spend the rest of your life with your loved one.

Bruh, I acted like I already married, can somebody find me a husband like Kyoujurou or Sanemi

And please, please read from the first part because if you haven’t, this really sounded like incest, holy shit

Because it’s too long, I put the Keep Reading!

When they said woman-side parents don’t go easy on male one, they’re probably true, probably wrong. It could be easier or the obstacle became tougher.

You sat with folded feet there, covered your mouth with your palm.

When Kyoujurou gave his father with kneeling bow in his room, Shinjurou poured his sake all over his son body, from head until the hair was wet. The liquid dripped to the floor. He gave displeased face towards Kyoujurou.

But Kyoujurou didn’t budge, not a single protest even said. He sticked his forehead on the floor. His palm held his figure to kneel still.

“Father, that’s too-”

“Quiet, (y/n).” His voice was fierce. You jolted and not going to interfere anymore. “I want to disillusion him, bring him back to this cruel world. To think that this half-assed and stupid boy about to marry my daughter. Hah.”

He threw the empty bottle to his side, turning around and sat with crossed leg on the engawa.

“Don’t ever show me your face if your only main reasons are your heart and that you’re eligible to marry her. You are even far from ‘eligible’ word, you shit. You don’t deserve her.”

“Then, I will come to you when I fulfilled the requirements.” He bowed once again towards his father and stood up. “If you’ll excuse me.”

“As if.” He mocked him again.

He went out first, you stood up and closed the door. You followed behind him, looking timidly at his wet hair.

“Kyouju- Aniki-”

“Don’t worry about it. Father have been always like that.” He turned around and smiled, tried to not make you worry.

“Fi- First, let’s change your clothes.” You pushed him into his room.

You make him sit down on the tatami. You put towel on his head and ruffled his hair.

“You should wash your hair. I will take your new kimono and put it in front of the bathroom.” You stood up.

“Sorry for making you busy.”

“No, it’s okay. Half of this is my fault too.”

“No-”

And the shouji door was closed. He sighed. On the other side, you pulled some new clothes and sighed too.

Well, Shinjurou being your father isn’t technically wrong. As soon as you stepped in this house, your family name maybe not automatically become “Rengoku”, but he’s still your step father after all.

You really pitied Kyoujurou at this point. First, he made efforts to melt your heart and now, in order to marry you, he had to melt his father too.

That wouldn’t be easy. He had to fulfill the requirements that both of you even didn’t know what are those, and what he should do to accomplished them.

You prayed towards Ruka’s Altar, even though you never met her in person, but you prayed that everything will be fine and that she will give blessings to both of you.

Everyday, Koujurou always tried to talk to his father. He also tried to make him proud on what he did as a Pillar and often told him about your development, about how he loved you.

But when he did, Shinjurou will either ejected him again or worst, pouring his sake all over him again.

And today, he got slapped because he’s such a stubborn son. It’s the final warning.

“Ow…”

After dried his hair, you helped him changed his bed kimono. He groaned at the redness on his cheek.

“Are you okay? Should I-”

“It’s fine.”

“But-”

“Don’t worry! Don’t worry! Father always like this after all!!”

You faced his chest, pulled his kimono collar and clasped your hand there.

You sticked your forehead on his chest.

Your shoulder trembled. You suddenly sobbed, still grabbing on his collar.

“W- why are you crying?! Are there something hurt you?!” He pulled you into his chest, patiently rubbed your head.

“It must be really hard.”

“No, it’s just-” You sniffled. “It’s not fair when you’re the only one who worked out on things, and I- I’ve just watched here, I’m so useless, I wanted to do something too ”

“Hey, that’s fine by me.” He wiped your tears, slowly kissed your eyelid. “That’s how it should be. You don’t have to worry.”

He actually wanted to crybtoo, but he held it. He is the only sunshine for you and he couldn’t let himself cry too.

You didn’t say anything again but bawling on his chest. You knew you couldn’t let Kyoujurou being humiliated more at this rate. You had to step up, you had to show Shinjurou that you love all of Kyoujurou, accepted his weakness and strengthness whatever the form it took.

You had to show it.

But how?

That night, you sleep again with him. He caressed your head non-stop, soothing until you became calmer. He even cheered up for you. The flame never lose his light towards you, the flame that never gave up on you.

You should help him. For the sake of your relationship.

One day, you have small chit chats with Mitsuri on dango booth. 

“Yeah.” You relaxed your shoulder. “I think we had to work on it, somehow.”

“As long as there are love between you two, everything will be fine!!” She cheered you up,

“I know. But apparently not for Shinjurou-san.” You bit the dango from the stick, threw it into bin.

“Hmm, what about- looking for information about how is his engagement with Ruka-san?”

“How am I supposed to know that.”

“I don’t know, maybe… Getting clues on your daily life.”

“I don’t know if it works, but let’s try that.”

Senjurou ever told you, Shinjurou only soft towards you. He often asked to Senjurou on how are you doing and where did you go if you were in mission. He cherished your cooking because it reminded him with his wife, secretly of course.

This is probably the only opportunity you had.

You must help Kyoujurou if you really wanted to be happy with him

And so, the saga on how to get Shinjurou’s blessing continues.

In the morning, instead of Senjurou, you will be the one who prepared breakfast and delivered it to him.

“Father, your breakfast is ready.” You bowed in front of closed shoji door. It’s Shinjurou’s room.

“Just leave it there.” He shouted from inside, not even bother to open the door.

“Understood.”

You sighed a little. Ok, morning didn’t work, then let’s try in the afternoon.

You became often brought him sake, talking a light topic with him while he sitting on the engawa and you sweeping the yard.

Sometimes, you sat beside him with some distance, drinking tea and snacking together.

You did this for almost 1 month.

But you still don’t have a single clue. The mixed feelings and the urge to know ‘his requirements’ were really bothering you to the core.

When Kyoujurou went on long term trip to collect some information with Uzui in the city, you became sadder and lonely. For a moment, you didn’t have his chest to cry, didn’t have body to hug on, and didn’t have ‘your walking heat’.

You often asked how is he doing, did he change his eye patch, did he eat regularly, you became more stressful than the usual because he rarely reply your messages. Not to mention you had to deal with Shinjurou’s blessings while he’s away.

You even didn’t really focus on your training and often daydreaming in the middle of it.

“(y/n)-san!”

“Huh?”

A light sword attack blow landed on you from your tsugako, you didn’t anticipate it. You received that attack and resulted with red bump on your forehead.

“(y/n)-sa !! I’m sorry!!”

“It’s okay! I’m not really focused on the training.” You touched your forehead and whimpered a little. “Could you train by yourself for now? I will clear my head.”

“Su- Sure.”

You were going back and dozing off at home. You rolled your body around on the engawa while grunting.

“Hrrgghh, hoooooow- whoa!”

You eventually rolled pass from the edge of engawa. Your body hit the ground with your face kissing the soil. The bump on your forehead became worsened.

“GAAAAH!!!” You stood up, stomping on the house, went to the kitchen where Senjurou cooking for dinner.

“Nee-chan?! Why are the dust all over your body?!”

“I will clean myself up. Senjurou! Let me cook for this once!”

“O- Okay.”

After you cleanse all the dirts, you cooked your favourite dishes, the special dishes that was from your family, special recipes that passed down from ancestor to ancestor.

“Ne- Nee-chan! Your skin, it’s burning. Also the cuts on your fingers too! Aren’t you too reckless?!”

“This is okay! See? I’m still alive!!”

“That’s not the case! Nee-chan!! At least treat your fingers!”

You didn’t hear him. Your only focus now is Shinjurou. You walked to his room while bringing the dishes you made. You forced open his room.

“Why are you suddenly barging like that?!” Shinjurou jolted and didn’t look displeased. Luckily, he still sat on the engawa not sleeping or anything.

“Excuse my rudeness. Father, as Kyoujurou’s future wife and future mother, I also have obligation to made you give us our blessings. However, I didn’t think I could fit on your family, but I tried. And this is my last attempt.” You kneeled bow him, presented him the dishes. “After eating, please reconsider your rejection towards us. Reject us if I didn’t fit to be his wife thorough this food.”

“Oi, oi.” He rubbed his forehead. “It should be Kyoujurou who did this, you aware of that, don’t you.”

“Yes! He also struggled and I just helped him, this is the only thing I could do for this family, after you took care of me and claimed me as your daughter! So, please, eat and tell me the taste. From there, I will know if I’m eligible to have Rengoku as my new family name.”

After that, Shinjurou didn’t say any single thing and ate your food. You gulped in anticipation. Only silence and some munching sound from his mouth was heard.

He finished the dishes, looked at you straight while crossed his arms.

“Oi.”

“Ye- yes, Father?”

“Come with me to the town.” He stood up, and get ready to went out.

“Eh?”

“Tch, I’m not going to repeat my words two times.”

“Ye-Yes!”

You just followed him from behind when both you walked to town in silence. You were wondering, what will he do?

He stopped in front of the tailor shop. He signed ‘stay here’ to you, so you waited in front of the shop.

When he stepped outside from the shop, he gave something to you.

“This is from Ruka, let’s say that this is her gift for you.”

“Shiromuku and… Hakama. Father, is this for wedding?” He nodded.

“Listen, (y/n).” He walked, went to your home direction. You ran a little to match his step and walked beside him. “The essence of marrying someone is making two family into one. When you married a woman you loved, it means you 'married’ to the whole family too. And I can’t just let that stupid son of mine easily said he wanted to marry you only with love. I need him to show me his sincerity. Is he going to make you happy for the rest of your life? Is he going to be a responsible father to your children? I need to him to assure me that he will not and never hurt you when you become married couple.”

His long explanation made you opened your eyes. You don’t know why but it sounded like Kyoujurou wasn’t his son but you, even though what he said is all necessary.

“Then…” You stopped and looked at him. “Tell me what should we do. He already did his best to show you that he deserved me. I wanted to do something too, for your blessings.”

He blinked twice, thrice.

And spurting out laugh.

You became embarrassed, thought that you probably spouting nonsense.

“You use 'we’ instead 'he’. Impressive daughter.” He wiped his tears. “I still don’t know how could you attracted to my foolish son.”

“I- ”

“No need.” He walked towards you, patting your head. “I already gave my blessings for you, from the very start. You brought joy to this house once again, Ruka must be so proud of you from up there.”

Your eyes glistened. “Then, it means-”

“But I still not give my blessing for Kyoujurou.” It’s his final words, before both of you headed home.

Your heart about to explode. You couldn’t stop smile on the way while hugging the Shiromuku.

After you do some gratitude expression and Shinjurou went inside his room, you ran to your room, trying on your Shiromuku.

You swirled around. The traditional kimono made waving motion on the lower part. The white fabric were really match your hair. You giggled all by yourself.

“(y/n), I’m home! Do you miss- (y/n)?”

He stunned all of the white clothes. He even lose words on describing how gorgeous you are.

“Kyoujurou- wah!” He hugged you, lifted you up and spinned you around.

“My bride!” He said cheerfully. “Where did you get this? Does this mean Father finally accepted us?”

“Not yet.” He put you down. “You need to try once more.”

“That’s what I’m planning.” You striped down your Shiromuku (you still wear your daily kimono inside). “But first let me-!”

He cupped your cheek and showering your face with kisses. In his embrace, you felt like you are plushies toy, he really squeezed you.

“I miss you!!”

“Haha! I miss you too, Kyoujurou!”

“You didn’t want to use Aniki again?”

“Actually, I’m more comfortable when I called your name.” He fluttered and covered his face.

“Change it to 'Honey’ or 'Sweetheart’. Can we marry faster?”

“Try then!” You pushed his body outside your room. He chuckled, and grabbed your hand.

“I always thought what I’m lacking at.” said Kyoujurou. “Now I know what I’m going to say to him.” Kyoujurou already consulted with Uzui, as person who already has three wives, on how to ensure his father. Uzui has given all of things he knew.

He told Kyoujurou, “Let’s positioned yourself as your father. What do you want for your little princess? The best, right? Then, say those things, you had to promise him you would protect her.”

Kyoujurou became firmer and steadier.

You intertwined your fingers with him.

You trust him, ever since from the start, you already give your life to him, and so he does.

You could do this.

“Father, I come here again.”

“You again? How many times do I have to told you that I don’t want to see your face?”

“I know.” Kyoujurou head was facing him. He became really serious.

“Then, why-”

“I know that I don’t deserve her, I know it from the very start I laid my heart on heart. However, I loved her from the depth of my heart. I’m not promising her with fake vow, I came here because I pledge to protect, to make her happy and being a responsible parents in the future. I want to grow old with her, I want her to be by my side after I opened and closed my eyes, I want her to cook my food, I want her to bear my children and take care of them. I don’t care how many times you repelled me, I won’t give up. I won’t give up if all of these are necessary for marrying her.”

The tense was really different. You looked at him with glistened eyes, almost dropped your tears. But you managed to hold it.

“Therefore, Father, please give me your blessings. Please let marry her.

“Not bad.” He rubbed his chin, smirking. You sensed a glimpse of bad feeling. “Very well. You said that you loved her?”

“Yes, Father.”

“If you really loved her that deep-”

He threw short sword- a Mamogatari- in front of Kyoujurou.

“A duel?” You asked.

“No. Commit seppuku for her sake.”

Note: Seppuku is belly cutting; consists of plunging a short blade into the belly and drawing the blade from left to right, slicing the belly open.

[homespork-review]

Homespork Act 4, Part 2: Flight of the Paradox Groans

BRIGHT: Remember Spades Slick being bizarrely aware he was in a comic, back in the Intermission? Buckle up, things are about to get even more fourth-wall-breaking. Appropriately, this starts by the comic focusing on an actual fourth wall, which activates to show...Andrew Hussie.

Hussie’s MS Paint avatar notices the audience watching him, laments that his side of the wall doesn’t have an off switch, and then recaps the first year of Homestuck.

Now, in all fairness: The recap is thorough, full of links, and explains things fairly well. It’s quite long, but given how much territory it has to cover I’m not sure it could be any shorter. So it does its job well, and it’s a boon if you’re getting lost with the plot.

As for the author insertion...on this occasion I don’t mind it. It comes across as tongue-in-cheek, but framed more as the author talking to the reader than as the author inserting himself into the narrative. It’s definitely very Homestuck.

Anyway, AH gets back to work, and after a couple of false starts we return to John!

John is still flying around with his jet pack. GC trolls him to offer him a world map of LOWAS and tell him she feels awful about killing him, although in literally the next line she tells him that technically he never even died so she doesn’t understand why he’s so upset. John understandably finds this disturbing. They have a brief nonsensical discussion about Jesus/Jegus, and then John agrees to go take a look at what’s on the other side of his Second Gate. Yes, on the advice of someone whose previous advice got him killed.

CHEL: Almost a shame we didn’t set up a Too Dumb To Live count, but then to be fair that was a separate timeline and he’s probably not thinking of it as something that “really” happened. This is supported by his later dialogue.

FAILURE ARTIST: The word Jegus is really popular in the Homestuck fandom, used far more often than it is in the canon. Gets quite annoying, in my opinion. Actually, a rather Jesus-like figure does appear, but he’s not called “Jegus”.

CHEL: Yeah, I think only Terezi, John, and Dave ever use the term, but it somehow became latched onto as an actual term used by trolls in general, even though in canon it isn’t.

BRIGHT: Fortunately, this time GC appears to be playing nice. John flies though the Second Gate and emerges...into LOLAR?

FAILURE ARTIST: Hussie does an amusing trick where he has what looks like a loading screen for a flash but it’s actually a still image eternally at 2%.

BRIGHT: Yes, it’s LOLAR. John promptly crashes into Rose’s house, smashing through a wall and into her bedroom, where Rose is still snoozing in her knitting pile. Apart from briefly being stuck upside down, he does not appear injured by this collision.

Rose has somehow slept through the commotion. John decides to let her rest and borrows her computer to talk to Dave.

The first one he talks to is actually Davesprite, who points out how moronic John was to listen to GC again. No arguments here! Then he explains how the Gate system works: Odd-numbered Gates, above players’ houses, lead to somewhere on their planets. Even-numbered Gates lead to other players’ planets, exiting over their houses. Normally they aren’t meant to go through even-numbered Gates until the houses are built up, so they don’t fall to their deaths, but fortunately John has a jetpack workaround. So far Davesprite is living up to his promise of being straightforward.

John realises he’s talking to Future Dave, and asks “do you think i could talk to the real dave for a second?”

...ouch, John.

Davesprite goes off on a tear, ranting that he is a real Dave — arguably the realest Dave, since he’s been running around LOHAC for months trying to get enough information to save everyone. John apologises sincerely.

CHEL: This won’t be the last we hear of this theme, though.

EB: i think i pissed off your future self. TG: what did you do EB: i said he wasn't the real dave. TG: ahahahahaha EB: i think i might have really hurt his feelings though! TG: pff TG: dont worry about it EB: why not? TG: cause i wouldnt give a shit TG: and hes me

BRIGHT: Not a hundred percent sure I believe Dave, there.

CHEL: Dave uses John to snoop around Rose’s room and get the captcha code for her journals. Classy, Dave. Not a SLAMMER point, however, as this does come back to bite him very soon.

Rose’s dreamself has awoken on Derse, the purple planet, and flies across to the opposite tower. Dave’s dreamself appears to be awake, sitting upright in his computer chair; the room is entirely an unsettling bloody red colour apart from the SBaHJ cartoons on the walls, and… oh shit, there’s Lil Cal again, now in a long purple nightdress and hopping around the room on his own. If Rose was having nightmares because of dreamself issues, I can only imagine how Dave’s nightmares must look. Rose throws a ball of yarn at Dave’s dreamself, alerting him, and causing the awake Dave to pass out.

Back in Rose’s room, it seems that Charles Barkley quote was not misattributed:

FAILURE ARTIST: Another SBaHJ reference in the book quote. Is that where Dave got it?

Still, I don’t recall this book ever coming up again. Just another item that seems like a Chekhov's Gun but isn’t.

CHEL: John feels guilty about opening his birthday gift from Rose, but reasons that it’s technically now his anyway, so he does, finding another bunny, this one black and filthy-looking except for the pristine knitted purple patches repairing it, though its shape is eerily familiar.

The gift in this box is a resurrection. I used your present to thread life anew into a tattered heirloom. As long as I can remember, its black, greasy appendages have been tethered limply to its ratty, porous carriage. Too delicate to wash, too dear to discard. I used to love this rabbit. Now he's yours. I trust you'll find this to be adequately sentimental. Happy birthday.

Oh my gosh, awwwwww. Even if you don’t ship them romantically how can you not love their interactions? Definitely one of the comic’s strong points. Also I need to go hug my childhood teddy bear.

John puts the bunny back in the box again and the box in his sylladex, freeing Casey the salamander while he’s at it. And let’s just take a minute to feel utter horror because dead John still had Casey in his sylladex, so the best option is that she died too, and the worst is that we have an And I Must Scream situation on for a baby salamander. Gah.

FAILURE ARTIST: Thanks, I’d never thought of that and I never want to again.

You aren't actually sure if she is a girl though. You don't even know if salamanders can be girls. Aren't they hermaphrodites or something?

CHEL: No, for the record. Though some frogs can switch from one to the other.

FAILURE ARTIST: Casey is very popular as a name for an OC child of John (often having Rose as the mother).

CHEL: John answers Rose’s Pesterchum, upon which GA is half-heartedly sending antagonistic messages. John answers on Rose’s account, saying that Rose is asleep, which GA takes for Human Sarcasm, prompting John to pretend to be Rose.

GA: I Should Figure Out How The Viewport Feature Of This Application Works GA: So I Can See What Such A Primitive Creature Looks Like TT: haha, well i know what you guys look like. TT: you look kind of like... TT: howie mandel from little monsters.

Wait, how does he know? Am I forgetting a point at which he saw them?

BRIGHT: I always assumed that he was just goofing around and his guess happened to land in the right ballpark, but thinking about it, I’m not sure the kids ever express surprise at the trolls’ appearance.

CHEL: John, pretending to be Rose, talks about how awesome John is.

GA: He Is Either The Leader Of Your Party Or You Hold Whatever The Human Equivalent Of Mating Fondness For Him Is

CHEL: Both. Both is good!

FAILURE ARTIST: Knowing what we do of troll culture later this is an odd statement. Heck, it’s just an odd statement. Maybe this is why people think trolls don’t do friendship.

CHEL: John apparently confuses GA by saying it’s because Rose is thoughtful and John appreciates his gift, and suggests GA talk to John.

TT: why don't you pick the time that will make the most complicated mess out of everything imaginable?

GA sounds very annoyed, and leaves, intending to have the conversation with John that she had previously. We see her, GC, and the horns of AT and an unknown troll in the grey room, now revealed to be a computer laboratory. For some reason she chats via Pesterchum with another troll instead of just walking over to talk to them. This new troll is twinArmageddons, an appropriate name for the circumstances, who type2 iin yellow text liike thii2; he is, as it turns out, the hacker guy GC mentioned earlier. TA is busy setting up the network and seems irritable in general, and is not willing to help GA work her viewport.

TA: iif ii 2ee one more 2narl of wiire2. TA: kiind of juttiing out and beiing tangled or whatever. TA: ii am goiing two perform 2ome 2ort of athletiic fuckiing 2omer2ault off the deep end and get a call from the pre2iident or 2ome 2hiit.

Nice callback, but trolls, as we’ll later find out, don’t have presidents.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 14

GA wonders why TA doesn’t want to talk to her, and TA complains that he knew in advance the trolls were doomed and no one believed him. He refuses to troll the humans himself but is setting up the system so the others can in order to get them to leave him alone. GA asks again for help, to no avail.

TA: iif you cant fiigure 2hiit out by fuckiing around you dont belong near computer2. TA: kiind of liike wiith regii2tered 2ex offender2 and 2chool2. TA: iif you move two a new town you have two go up two your neiighbor2 door and warn them about how 2tupiid you are. TA: and giive them a chance two hiide all theiir iinnocent technology. TA: and vandaliize your hou2e.

Ooh, a threefer plus one! Tacky simile for the Problematykks. As for WSP, we’ll later find out that 1) trolls kill all their criminals, 2) trolls don’t give a shit about the welfare of their children, and 3) trolls don’t appear to actually go to school. These two counts are neck and neck in the lead now!

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 17 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 17

BRIGHT: As with much of Homestuck, the trolls give the impression of being made up as Hussie went along. That’s not entirely a bad thing -- it certainly makes the comic pretty unique -- but it does lead to some out-of-place slip-ups.

Anyway, GA chucks her F1 key at TA’s head and then starts poking him. We also see CG in the lab.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think I recall GA/TA were a popular ship before we learned more about GA. It does seem like they have a Rose & Dave dynamic going on.

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Rose and Dave have a dance party to Dave’s music while accompanied by some crows and Lil Cal, who keeps teleporting around the room. Rose eventually gets tired of Cal’s shenanigans and hurls him out of the window, to the relief of many.

FAILURE ARTIST: The flash originally included music by Bill Bolin. In fact, it was his unfinished music being included here that caused all the drama in the first place.

BRIGHT: Time for some random interludes! First up is Maplehoof the pony, who is following Rose’s mother through a large cave which, judging by the grist lying around, recently contained very dangerous monsters.

FAILURE ARTIST: Apparently pets can collect grist for their masters...and know what grist is despite being a normal(?) animal.

BRIGHT: First Mom, and then Maplehoof, stand on a transportaliser platform and disappear. Second is Dad, who has just acquired a replacement shoe and hat (which showed up in the walkaround game, way back at the beginning of the Act), when he encounters a familiar-looking stranger with a Colonel Sassacre book, who leads him to another transportalizer platform. Both of these interludes do become relevant later, but at the time they seem a tad unnecessary.

Meanwhile, John uses Rose’s alchemiter and a code Davesprite gave him mid-rant to produce a truly epic hammer called FEAR NO ANVIL. It’s far too big for John to wield, but fortunately he can use the scaling upgrade on the alchemiter to reduce it to a more useable size. ...wait. When did Rose’s alchemiter get a scaling upgrade? Dave and Jade added a lot of modifications to his, but Rose’s should be the original edition. Sigh.

EB: so what is this? EB: the thing the code made... TG: really powerful hammer EB: how do you know? EB: i thought you couldn't use hammers. TG: i cant TG: better be though TG: got it from hephaestus EB: who's that? TG: really tough to kill dude EB: you killed him for it? TG: nope EB: how'd you get it then? TG: shenanigans EB: ok.

...and we’re back to sprite evasiveness. Davesprite is being less than forthcoming here, although it’s less obvious than with Nannasprite because it superficially imitates John and Dave’s bantering.

CHEL: Now, this would be a good way of keeping us interested if we were eventually going to see how he did it, and also they have a time limit, so not going off into a long anecdote would be understandable. However, we’ll see how his evasiveness level proceeds in the future.

BRIGHT: Dream Rose and Dave see John using Rose’s alchemiter on Dream Dave’s computer. Rose wakes up.

FAILURE ARTIST: It is interesting how early Homestuck avoided having characters have face-to-face conversations. Would have been unique if it kept up throughout the entire comic.

BRIGHT: Back in the meteor, GA hassles TA into opening the viewport on her computer. This turns out to be as simple as clicking on the point in Rose’s timeline that she wants to see. No wonder TA was frustrated!

Of course, by this point, the only one left in the room is Rose, now awake, and the young salamander. Rose hurries to catch up with John, but he blasts off to explore before she can reach him, taking her mutated kitten with him.

CHEL: John renames Vodka Mutini to Dr Meowgon Spengler, and Rose renames Casey to Viceroy Bubbles von Salamancer. Interesting link to the themes of identities which are starting to crop up, though it’s not really a direct analogue. The animals are the same animals with different names; the alternate timeline characters have the same names and superficially the same identities, but are they really the same people after their new experiences?

BRIGHT: Back on Derse, Lil Cal inexplicably lands on a stray rocket board, catching the attention of AR.

You're not sure which laws are being broken, but it is probably a lot.

AR follows Cal to yet another transportaliser, and they both dematerialise.

We jump back to John, who spies a boat on one of the islands dotting LOLAR and lands to investigate. He follows hoofprints in the sand into a subterranean hallway filled with monsters. Fortunately his new hammer has time powers, which stun the monsters long enough for John to kill them. Further on, he finds the transportaliser Mom used. John, naturally, stands on it, and is transported to a meteor in the Veil.

Actually, it’s not just a meteor; it’s one of the laboratories where the Skaian troops are produced. John, along with the cat and Maplehoof, finds a bunch of chess guys being grown in glass jars on a giant podium. Most of them are the standard carapaces we’re familiar with, but there are also a few larger pieces, apparently based on knights and rooks. He also finds a JUNIOR ECTOBIOLOGIST’S LAB SUIT, and another of those strange house-shaped sets of monitors.

On Prospit, PM is preparing to board a shuttle to Skaia when a COURTYARD DROLL sneaks up behind her. Unaccountably, she fails to notice him, despite the fact that he’s wearing a hat larger than he is. CD successfully pickpockets the White Queen’s ring, and PM departs for Skaia, none the wiser.

CD radios the DRACONIAN DIGNITARY to report mission success, and is told that he doesn’t need to keep wearing his ridiculous outfit, per orders from Jack Noir, who is now going by the SOVEREIGN SLAYER. CD says he’d rather keep wearing the outfit. Apart from the sword-through-the-chest part, it is a very nice outfit, so I’m with CD on this one.

Catastrophe is averted by Jade delivering a flying kick to CD’s head and following up with a very efficient smackdown. Her robot body replicates this back on Earth, beating the stuffing out of her mummified grandfather. Jade retrieves the ring, and puts it on her fingers to remind herself to give it back to PM later. Unfortunately, this doesn’t cause Jade to sprout wings and tentacles. Seems the rings don’t work on humans like that.

Meanwhile, in a Timeless Expanse, a WARWEARY VILLEIN is getting tired of the battle between Derse and Prospit. The next animation is called “WV?: Rise Up” and it’s one of my favorites! When I first read Homestuck I had to watch it a few times before I understood what was going on, but it is a very neat video.

Watch on YouTube

The Battlefield has been prototyped three times, and is now spherical. The forces of Derse and Prospit meet. The usual carapaces with swords are backed up by larger pieces -- some of them very strange -- and by battleships clashing in the sky. In the chaos, WV, who is farming peacefully on Skaia, has his home and farm burned down. He raises a flag and addresses the troops of both armies. Elsewhere, Jack Noir appears, flying over the Battlefield in search of the Black King.

WV rallies the armies and tells them that their real enemies are the monarchs, who are responsible for the war. Encouraged, the Dersite and Prospitan troops band together and march on the Black King.

Meanwhile, PM has reached the White King and discovers that she no longer has the White Queen’s ring. The White King listens to her and hands over his scepter, which seems to represent Skaia and serves a similar function to the Queens’ rings. Behind a nearby hill, the Hegemonic Brute radios somebody to report the transfer.

As WV and the united armies reach the Black King, Jack arrives and slices the Black King’s scepter in half, nullifying its powers and turning the Black King back into a normal carapace. PM is attacked by HB, who knocks the White King’s scepter out of her hand; it falls down a waterfall. Jack Noir beheads the Black King and turns to WV, and the animation ends.

...okay, much as I love it, I have to admit there’s a glaring question here: Namely, the kids started playing the Game less than a day ago and Dave’s kernelsprite has been prototyped for a few hours max. The second prototyping made the Battlefield more complex and the third took it into its current form. That’s a very short time to instigate a cross-faction revolution, organise the troops, and march on a monarch. For that matter, how long has WV been a farmer? The inhabitants of Derse and Prospit have obviously been doing their thing all the kids’ lives, but the Battlefield was supposedly a static, rudimentary space until John entered the Medium, so what gives?

Then again, the timeline in the Medium is supposed to be distinct from the timeline on Earth, so maybe that explains it?

CHEL: An interesting point is also raised by WV’s revolution. Namely, Derse is presented as a kingdom of darkness and evil by the game, while Prospit is presented as good. However, while PM is good, WV and AR are demonstrably not bad people either. In this animation, we see carapaces of both sides apparently don’t want to be involved in the war and are willing to rise up against the Black King. The rank-and-file carapaces on both sides, it seems, are decent people who are just following orders. (Not to mention very cute.) Jack Noir and his gang are nasty pieces of work, except CD who’s also just kind of going along with it, but there’s nothing saying white carapaces couldn’t also be… And is that a Problematykks point, presenting the black-coloured people as bad and the white-coloured ones as good? I know they’re chess pieces, but still.

This raises the question, however, what’s Derse’s motive? Are its rulers and archagents simply destroying for the evulz? I wonder. I also wonder how much Skaia itself is involved in this and how aware it is. Skaia is called the crucible of creation, and it’s responsible for the creation of the carapaces too. References are made to it “seeing” and “knowing”; it’s quite possibly sentient, though maybe not sapient. On top of that, SBurb is specifically a game, and a game needs an objective, and an adventure-type game needs enemies. Derse, it seems likely, was created and presented the way it is in order to give the players something to battle against even if its people don’t want to be their enemies. No wonder WV’s pissed!

BRIGHT: Yup. Hmm, thinking about it...the imps and other enemies we saw attacking John’s house early on were obviously Dersite, but the ones we’ve seen in Rose’s seem to be Prospitian, if anything? The colour scheme looks that way, at least. But Nanna said earlier that Derse was the enemy, nothing about Prospit.

Perhaps it has something to do with Rose being a Derse dreamer, while John is a Prospit dreamer? But in that case I’d have expected it to come up in the text. Instead it just goes unremarked.

Rose goes on a massive alchemising spree and ends up creating the Thorns of Oglogoth, a pair of wands.

The needles seem to shiver with the dark desires of THE DEEP ONE. Any sane adventurer would cast these instruments of the occult into the FURTHEST RING and forget they ever existed.

Instead of throwing the wands away, Rose takes on the enemies camping all over her house, with style.

Meanwhile, Dave goes on another, less visibly productive alchemising spree.

GET ON WITH IT!: 18

FAILURE ARTIST: The SBaHJifier could be considered productive in that it provides foreshadowing cartoons. Wish Dave’s Brain in a Jar came up again.

BRIGHT: Once he’s done creating smuppet variations to disturb the monsters encroaching on his house, he sits down to take a look at those two journals he copied from Rose earlier. One of them is called ‘MEOW’, and is literally just those same four letters, repeated over and over in different orders. The second is ‘Complacency of the Learned’.

There is no way to adequately recap the beauty of ‘Complacency of the Learned’, so we’re just going to show the whole thing:

Frigglish bothered his beard, as if unkinking a hitch in a long silk windsock. A more pedestrian audience would parse the exhibit as nervous compulsion. Behavior to petition contempt among the reasonable. He was however not surrounded by the reasonable, but the wise, a distinction in men that would forever be the difference in history's garland of treasured follies. As a matter of fact, his cadre of fellow wizards were all putting similar moves on their beards as well. The practice would evince thoughtfulness - sagacity, even - if they didn't do it all the time. Standing in line at the bank. Shooing squirrels from bird feeders. Few occasions were safe. Zazzerpan inspected the clue. A single piece of evidence cradled in his coriaceous old man palms. It was a human bone, not striking in the tale it told alone so much as that told by the thousands like it festooning the marshy soil of the mass grave. The grisly expanse bore the texture of a decadent dessert, like one of Smarny's formidable custard trifles wobbled out on wheels for the holidays, to the dismay of a small nation. "You're certain of this?" asked Frigglish. Despite what he was doing with his beard, he was, in fact, immersed in meaningful contemplation. "I am afraid I am becoming more so with each terrible tick groused by that gaudy timepiece slung around your neck." In case it wasn't clear, Frigglish wore a clock Zazzerpan didn't care for. It was magic. "The massacre of Syrs Gnelph was not as written." "What has you convinced it was the hand of our disciples in this blackness?" Executus chimed in. "I believe... I..." a fat face stammered, eyes darting with the guilt of a thief in the throes of an unraveling alibi. "I can summon a... more pressing line of inquiry..." No, Smarny. Nobody was in the mood for a sticky bundt loaf just now. Zazzerpan's ears fell insubstantial to any line of inquiry, pastry-oriented or otherwise. His abstruse contour carved a pondering shape in the fog carpeting centuries-dead. His eleven contemporaries too embraced the muted consternation of their great Predicant Scholar. Few wizards kept sharper adumbratives or read them with such lucidity. When Zazzerpan treated men with silence it was seldom unrepaid by the wise and reasonable alike. It was harrowing to entertain. Zazzerpan the Learned's storied Complacency of Wizards was marked for grander descendence. Disciples hand-picked, vetted by Ockite the Bonafide and tested by Gastrell the Munificent. The twelve sweetest, most studious children a pair of elderly eyes could give their sparkle. Not the ragged guttersnipe so oft-harvested by the common Obscenity, those vituperative little beggars with hearts to corrupt as dropped bananas brown. That these chosen youngsters would turn was not merely unthinkable, but something of a roundhouse to the temporal bones of the Upper Indifference's high chamber of Softskulled Prophets. His wisdom-savaged brow pruned further with recount of his many lessons to wouldbe successors. Lessons to advance humanity's elucidation and prosperity, an outcome this bleak trail now painfully obviated. There were few puzzles The Learned could not suspend and dissect in the recondite manifold beneath his extremely expensive pointy hat. Daring to pitch his cherished pupils in with the foul melange of history's rogues, the heretofore abstract scourge that built up civilizations with ungodly magic and tore them down with joyful malice, would prove an intellectual trespass to make his calcium-deficient bones quake. And more daring yet was the only question that now mattered. Could a bunch of bearded, scraggly old men in preposterous outfits hunt them down? He didn't have an answer. Only a simple observation so blunt and uncharacteristically jejune for the lauded sage it was breathtaking in its selfevidency. "We're going to need more wands." (Wow. Think of something better.)

Wow.

Dave is understandably intimidated by this, and decides to stop reading for now. He puts his copy of the SBURB Beta in the notebook to act as a bookmark, and leaves both books in his room for later.

Then he checks in on Rose, who is burning her version of the MEOW book.

CHEL: Dave inquires about the wizard story.

TG: i thought you hated wizards TG: whats the deal with that TT: I like wizards. TT: What I don't like is my mother's obsession with feigning interest in them to antagonize me. TG: oh man thats so messed up TG: that you think that TG: she probably digs wizards for real just like you and youre blowing shit out of proportion like pretty much always

Once again, we see exactly how fucked-up Rose’s relationship with her mother is. Mom Lalonde has somehow managed to raise a child in such a way that Rose interprets everything her mother does as an attempt to mock and provoke her.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 16

TIER: The Lalondes are pretty damn dysfunctional as a family unit, and considering the zany nature of early Homestuck and its world's weird logic that is saying something indeed.

CHEL: As for the MEOW book, it turns out the gods from the Furthest Ring informed Rose while she was sleeping that the book’s contents are highly dangerous and must be destroyed. Said gods dwell in the sky above Derse; Dave’s never heard or seen them, but Rose points out his dreamself is always wearing shades, listening to music, and distracted by Cal.

TT: You're the prince of the moon. TG: ........ TT: I'm sure they've been meaning to seek a royal audience. TG: ..........................

Davesprite chats to Rose next. She protests at being spied on by two people, but Davesprite asks her why she burned the codebook. She didn’t need to in the future, but according to her future memories of the gods absorbed from her future dreamself, Davesprite appeared to make it relevant by traveling to the past. A sinister and familiar face watches through Dave’s window, soon proving to be the Draconian Dignitary, while Dave and Davesprite awkwardly spout elaborate mixed metaphors about how safe they are, until Dave, embarrassed, says "so i guess ill go back down and burn that book".

As any savvy reader could guess, he’s too late. The prompt suggests that he should go back in time to stop the books from being stolen, but, well...

It looks like you already tried that. GORE GALORE: 10

Dave looks completely undisturbed, but whether he is undisturbed is a different matter. He flings the corpse out the window into the lava, claiming it would freak Jade out.

John, in the lab, presses a button, causing the first monitor to depict his town, shortly before his birth. There is a Betty Crocker factory and a shopping mall, neither of which are in the town now. Zooming in locks a target over Nanna Egbert, who is taking a stroll with Dad. A meteor looms; this looks like it’s going to go very badly, considering the target lock, but it hits the factory instead. When John presses the glowing blue button, a PARADOX GHOST IMPRINT of Nanna is created; refer back to Rose’s experimentation in the lab and the green slime blobs. This time, the slime is sucked into a tube.

The next monitor does something similar with Grandpa Harley on his ship, and the next the same with Bro Strider, who stands over a meteor crater on an unseasonably warm day; something of an understatement, as the sky is the same lurid red and the sun the same glowing spiral that they were during the Strider bros’ battle even though it’s December. Bro is, regardless, prepared for the occasion with a small pair of outrageously awesome shades. What he needs these for will soon be revealed.

The fourth monitor goes back to John’s home town, a gigantic crater where the factory once was. In the shopping mall, Dad Egbert stands outside a joke shop, while Nanna apparently remains inside, busying herself with a tall bookshelf, a ladder, and a rather hefty unabridged joke book.

Mom Lalonde, clutching the infant Rose and wearing a rather snazzy long Jaspersprite-pink scarf, has come to town to study the meteor impact at the request of Grandpa Harley while he explores elsewhere. Unfortunately, now is the time a meteor chooses to strike Nanna’s location, destroying the shop.

An old mother lost today, but a new son gained.

Wait for it.

Mom Lalonde flees, dropping her scarf, which Dad Egbert picks up and slightly creepily sniffs. The monitor continues tracking her, and John captures her paradox imprint too, starting the machines whirring away...

Four babies abruptly appear on the pad, already diapered and bespectacled and old enough to sit up unaided. Convenient, no?

When the kitten jumps on a green button, the slime is blended in pairs; Nanna’s and Grandpa’s, and Mom’s and Bro’s. More blinking lights ensue, and another four extremely familiar-looking babies appear.

BRIGHT: I will say this: These kids are adorable.

While babies clamber over him, John vaults up his echeladder to the rank of Ectobiolobabysitter, acquiring one million Boondollars in the process. This automatically converts itself to a Boonbuck, the weight of which smashes his Porkhollow.

Finding out just what is going on here will have to wait, as the comic takes a brief detour to a battleship navigating the Medium nearby. There’s someone very familiar at the wheel…

An old man has much to do before he returns to Earth, dies, gets stuffed by his adopted-yet-biological daughter-slash-grand-daughter, and stuck in front of a fireplace.

Also aboard the ship are Dad Egbert and Mom Lalonde. Dad returns Mom’s scarf, and the two of them hold hands as Grandpa Harley pilots the ship towards Skaia.

We return to the lab, where John has his hands full with the babies. One of them has managed to break one of the paradox slime jars from earlier, but appears uninjured. Also, CG’s trolling him again.

CHEL: CG makes mention of the ULTIMATE RIDDLE, but John is confused because CG hasn’t told him about that yet. He uses an ableist description in explaining.

CG: SEE I KIND OF PAINTED MYSELF INTO A CORNER. CG: I STARTED TROLLING YOU AT THE END, JUST BEFORE THE RIFT. CG: AND THEN JUMPED BACK A LITTLE. CG: AND NOW I GUESS I'VE BECOME RAILROADED INTO WORKING BACKWARDS HERE. CG: UNLESS I WANT TO DO THE SORT OF DUMB SCHIZOPHRENIC HOPPING AROUND LIKE THE OTHERS. CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 18

… why wouldn’t you just hop right back to the start and work in a linear fashion from there?

TIER: Because CG excels at making things complicated for himself and is fundamentally rather stubborn and set in his ways/actions. Like he's made his bed, he's gonna lie in it.

CHEL: Anyway, CG banters with John for a bit, and then informs him that he (John) has arrived in the Veil and created infant versions of the players and their guardians.

EB: so they are like cloned copies of us? CG: NO. CG: THEY ARE LITERALLY YOU AND YOUR GUARDIANS. CG: PARADOX CLONES.

A paradox clone, we are informed, is A CORRECTLY CLONED DUPLICATE THAT WILL INEVITABLY GO BACK IN TIME AND BECOME THE ORIGINAL TARGET THAT WAS CLONED. The game worlds contain many clues hinting at the ultimate destiny of the players to create their own selves through the game, and the only way things could possibly go involved the players creating themselves, or else the game session would never happen.

CG: WHICH IS ESPECIALLY PATHETIC SINCE PARADOX SPACE APPARENTLY WENT TO ALL THIS TROUBLE TO MAKE YOU JUST TO HAVE YOU FAIL AND DIE. CG: REALLY THERE'S NOTHING MORE TRAGIC THAN THESE NULL SESSIONS FULL OF KIDS ENTERING THE GAME AND FULFILLING SOME COSMIC DESTINY SHIT JUST TO GET WIPED OUT AND LEAVE BEHIND AN EMPTY POINTLESS INCIPISPHERE FOR ALL ETERNITY.

Tragic and completely unnecessary, when there are millions of perfectly good humans already in existence who could just as easily create winning game sessions without this aspect of it. Here we see another aspect of Homestuck which hasn’t come up quite so clearly before; an extremely weird take on determinism. I’m not sure if this is meant as a parody of Chosen One plotlines or if Hussie just thought it sounded cool, but it’s uncomfortable. As it turns out, only clones created by SBurb have a hope in hell of winning the game, and even they fail most of the time. Regular people who enter the game to save themselves from the destruction of the planet will fail and die there, which honestly is not really selling this game as a good thing, since it’s what causes the destruction of the planet in the first place. I’ve had actual, legitimate, honest-to-God nightmares about this aspect of SBurb, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.

FAILURE ARTIST: I think many fans wish to play SBurb. There’s lots of fan sessions and fake GameFAQs and custom Lands. Yet in reality SBurb is not a fun time. This is cosmic horror. I think Hussie is sometimes playing it for horror and sometimes he ignores the implications.

Then again, some people want to live on the troll planet, which is straight-up dystopia.

CHEL: Again, it isn’t really clear what he’s going for. Is it supposed to be terrifying or did he just think it would be clever? Does even Hussie know what he was going for? While it’s not exactly a joke, I think it’s worth another point here:

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 17

It might be a joke. As I said, I could see it as a parody of or playing with the Chosen One narrative. In this case, literally only the chosen ones have any hope, for reasons that are not down to any merit of their own. But if it is, there isn’t really much made of it.

Of course, the reasons people want to live on the troll planet are reasonable when taken alone, but a) contradicted every alternate scene and b) not a fair trade for everything else that’s going on there. But we’ll get to that when we actually see it. And I admit, SBurb powers would be fun, but not worth the loss of my entire species.

TIER: To me at least it's fun in the same way wondering how I'd fare as a wizard during Harry Potter's years at Hogwarts, or a ninja in Naruto is. Fundamentally you'd rather want to never encounter this sorta stuff even if you get some swanky I guess powers, but the mental exercise of it is quite honestly, really fun. The game has quite a lot of interesting things to poke around with, from lands to quests to what your co-players are up to. And I'm def guilty of playing trollsona games, because the world presented is just really fascinating in its gruesome glory.

Never want to have to actually go through it, Lord knows I'd be dead within the first ten minutes if I'm super lucky, but stories about it are pretty neat.

CHEL: That’s true, but the paradox clones thing seems almost to be taunting us for having that mentality. We can pretend we’d be the super-smart strong competent ones who make it, but in this universe if we demonstrably have parents we’re doomed to die for nothing and there’s nothing we can do about it.

BRIGHT: Another fun thing about this is that it fundamentally isolates the players from the rest of humanity. If you think about it, unless they have children with a non-player, they are completely unrelated to anyone else on Earth.

CHEL: And they can’t have kids with a non-player unless something thoroughly horrible happened, because as is stated later SBurb specifically takes its players away and destroys their planet around the point of their puberty.

BRIGHT: Although I think John is actually related to Dad — as far as we’re told, Dad is in fact Nanna’s biological son, which makes him genetically John’s half-brother.

They also miss out on (going by how active the babies are) the first couple of years of life. Those two years are crucial in terms of brain development. SBURB probably controls for that, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there were negative consequences.

Oh, and if you’re a player, your existence means your civilisation is doomed. Lovely!

CHEL: And do the players ever feel any guilt or conflict over this? Do they hell. It doesn’t even occur to them, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t occur to Hussie either.

TIER: Welcome to the hell game that is SBURB; it's fundamentally pretty fucked up! It runs on a hellish scale of "things have already been predetermined" and I am Big Fear™.

CHEL: That’ll come up later, too, but there it’s obviously intentional nightmare fuel, and not at all a bad use of time travel as a story device.

CG, meanwhile, explains that he was the one to create his session’s players. With twelve of them it was a bit more complicated, but troll lineages are complicated anyway, and we’ll find out how later.

The babies are still getting all over the lab. Note that they're repeatedly referred to as "little pink monkeys". Then again, calling a non-white child a monkey really wouldn't be good.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 18

John’s infant self has latched onto the Sassacre book, while his infant Nanna is sitting in Dad Egbert’s old hat. Baby Bro is napping in the lap of Lil Cal; that baby’s braver than I am, I can tell you that. Baby Dave is sitting on Maplehoof, and baby Grandpa has found a pair of pistols. John does not take them away from him, or even seem to notice he has them.

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 7

BRIGHT: Earlier baby Bro broke one of the paradox slime cylinders and was sitting in it. John is pretty astoundingly bad at keeping babies away from obvious hazards.

TIER: That or the equipment is probably not sturdy enough to make it past an inspection into faulty management.

CHEL: But then he’s distracted by CG trolling him again, at least this time moving forward in time from the last conversation.

CG, like GA, apparently fails to grasp sarcasm...

EB: we had this great dare going. EB: to see who could be the least helpful and informative. EB: and you totally lost, dude! EB: you were hella helpful. CG: I WAS OBVIOUSLY JUST SPITING YOUR STUPID POINTLESS HUMAN DARE. [...] CG: ANYWAY, HOW COULD WE HAVE MADE A DARE IF I'M MOVING BACKWARDS ON YOUR TIMELINE.

… which is weird because moments later he uses it himself.

EB: do you even have elves? CG: YES, LET'S COMPARE WHICH FANTASY CREATURES THAT DON'T EXIST WE BOTH DO OR DON'T NOT HAVE. CG: WHAT A GREAT FUCKING IDEA, JOHN!

Hussie seems to waver back and forth a lot on whether trolls get sarcasm or not, in general. Since he’s contradicting himself with troll worldbuilding, that’s a point.

WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19

Banter aside, he informs John that the babies are sent to Earth via meteors during the Reckoning.

BRIGHT: How do they survive the impact? Some of those meteor strikes destroy buildings. Those are some ridiculously resilient kids.

CHEL: Cut to AR, who is still having fun on the rocketboard, until he runs into a frog temple atop a meteor. This is apparently horrifying and illegal by his standards.

You are going to throw whoever is responsible into the slammer. You always call jail the slammer when you are extra angry at crimes.

Inside, he finds an empty time capsule, like Jade’s, some complicated machinery, and a monitor screen showing a greyscale house with a very familiar bespectacled female infant and dirty old hat in it. The year depicted, says the monitor, is 1910. Enter none other than Colonel Sassacre himself.

Eight days prior, the orphan girl was taken in by an aristocratic southern colonel and legendary humorist. He recovered the young lady from a crater where a bakery once stood, operated by the man's wife, a notable baked goods baroness.

An explosion outside leads them both to a crater, where once stood the doghouse of the colonel’s pet, Halley, but before the Colonel can investigate further he’s shot through the heart.

This is exactly why babies should not be allowed to dual-wield flintlock pistols.

BRIGHT: I remain baffled as to how Baby Grandpa can even lift those things, let alone pull the triggers.

CHEL: Baby Grandpa crawls from the crater, and Halley the dog turns out to be alive.

The young boy has difficulty pronouncing the name though. Sounds more like "Harley" when he says it.

How does he know it? The colonel died before he even noticed the baby was there. Is baby Nanna speaking well enough to tell him yet? I guess he could be told later, as Sassacre wasn’t in fact their only sapient guardian...

Thirteen years later, the boy develops a taste for adventure. He and his guardian bid farewell. His sister is sad. She will be left all alone with the wicked pastry baroness. She can handle it, he tells her. He believes in her.

It isn’t clear why she didn’t go with him, or leave under her own power. They don’t seem to be imprisoned, as the panel depicts them outside on grass with no restraints or guards over them, so it’s not a matter of only one of them being able to get out. That’s a point for Nanna not trying and a point for Grandpa not bringing her:

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 9

That dog is also remarkably lively, considering it, unlike Bec, is an entirely normal dog, it was an adult thirteen years previously, and it’s somehow supporting the weight of an entire teenager on its back (again, please don’t try this at home, you can break the dog’s spine that way).

FAILURE ARTIST: As we’ve said, Colonel Sassacre is a thinly-veiled Mark Twain expy. The real Mark Twain died in 1910 at the same time Halley’s Comet was in the sky. It’s a cute historical gag having him be literally killed by a comet but it does muck up the timeline. Nanna must have been a senior citizen when Dad was born. Perhaps he’s adopted?

CHEL: The other option is that Dad is a senior citizen now, but surely John would have wondered why his dad is so ridiculously old. I think it’s just that thing in mainstream comics and cartoons where adults are split into Old and Not Old, and the parents are normal ages for parents but the grandparents would have to be in their hundreds going by the gags. See how Scrooge McDuck in the DuckTales reboot is over a hundred and forty years old yet his sister’s son is still a youngish adult.

AR notes that the appearifier is centred over Halley the dog, but hears someone coming. It proves to be the Draconian Dignitary. AR hides and watches, noting that DD is carrying Rose’s notebooks and Dave’s beta envelopes. DD keeps the MEOW book, but throws away the other items. Complacency of the Learned lands on the floor, and the envelopes land in the time capsule, which sets to bloom in four hundred and thirteen million years.

Meanwhile, John talks to CG while infant Mom Lalonde pets the mutant kitten. John asks if there’s any way to delay the Reckoning, but nope; CG warns him that the smallest meteors will start going in only a few minutes.

EB: ok, well you keep saying how doomed we are and how all this bad stuff happens sooner, but you never say why! EB: what happens in our game that's different from yours that makes things go so badly? CG: JACK NOIR.

The Jack Noir from the trolls’ game session allied with them and helped them dethrone and exile the Black Queen, while the one from the humans’ session, as you may recall, killed the Black Monarchs and gained their powers, and is currently rampaging through the Incipisphere. John asks if it’s the same Jack Noir, but CG explains.

CG: SO LET'S SAY YOU PLAY YOUR BANDICOOT AND I PLAY MY BANDICOOT. CG: THEY ARE ESSENTIALLY THE SAME BANDICOOT, SAME APPEARANCE AND DESIGN AND BEHAVIORS. CG: BUT THEY ARE STILL COMPLETELY SEPARATE BANDICOOTS ON SEPARATE SCREENS. CG: SO WE BOTH HAVE OUR OWN ASS BANDICOOTS TO OURSELVES, THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT. CG: OUR JACKS ARE THE SAME BUT DIFFERENT TOO. CG: SAME GUY, DIFFERENT CIRCUMSTANCES AND OUTCOMES. CG: OUR JACK TRUMPED THE QUEEN, BUT GOT NO FURTHER. CG: YOUR JACK GOT THE BEST OF BOTH OF THEM, AND IS NOW SOMETHING HIGHER THAN A QUEEN OR A KING… EB: like an ace? CG: SURE OK.

The trolls don’t know what went so differently to cause the two Jacks to behave so differently, but CG doesn’t think it matters by now. John interrupts him, deciding to do yet another Con Air ending re-enactment.

Watch on YouTube

Recap: montage of Con Air posters and images to the tune of “How Do I Live Without You”. John hands the thoroughly disgusting Con Air bunny to the protesting baby Rose, while CG watches huffily on his monitor. Jade demands a toy too, so John hands her the bunny he received from Rose in an excessively dramatic fashion. CG frustratedly hits himself in the head. In scribbly crayon-like drawings, Casey the salamander performs a drum solo with glowing blue mushrooms for drums and the Con Air plane crashes. More Con Air imagery, John embraces baby Jade and the baby Lalondes while sobbing; GC points and laughs at him over CG’s shoulder and they have a slapfight. John imagines himself in Nic Cage’s iconic wifebeater and mullet and performs an air guitar solo.

TIER: Lemme tell ya, as someone who's only experience with this darn movie is whatever pops up courtesy of John this sequence is just a trip and a half. Possibly a higher number.

CHEL: Cut to end-of-act curtains; they open on the next page, declaring a PSYCHE; there are more pages to go.

Cut to Dave’s hands, covered in the dead Dave’s blood. I… guess he’s supposed to be staring at them in shock? It’s impossible to tell through his shades. For all I know he could be worried about the cleanup. GC trolls him and they banter creepily, with her demanding to know what his blood smells like and him taunting her about her blindness.

TG: just him and me TG: havin a see party TG: like a couple of eagle eyed bros peepin shit up into the wee hours GC: D4V3 GC: C4N 1 COM3 TO YOUR S33 P4RTY? TG: i guess but youll have to be careful not to stumble around bumping into all the gorgeous masterpieces hanging around everywhere TG: god so beautiful to look at with my perfect eyesight GC: C4N 1 L1CK TH3 P41NT1NGS? TG: yeah thats fine

Neither of them seems to take it particularly hard. If there was narrative around the dialogue, I think we’d get a better grasp of how Dave feels. Lacking much body language or punctuation, tone is a bit tricky to get.

FAILURE ARTIST: There’s a character later who gets a lot of grief for insulting her blindness but reading what John, Dave, and CG say I don’t know how that character could be worse.

CHEL: AT, meanwhile, is trolling Jade, rather politely. He even takes time to ask if she’s having a good nap. She’s worried about John’s dreamself not waking, and AT scrolls into his view of the future timeline, but can’t find John awake, nor see into his dreams. Jade, however, will wake up soon, and she thanks him for this report. Unfortunately, when Jade wakes up she will be in danger, and AT can’t see any further. He tells her CG wants to talk to her about her exploding robot. He can’t see whether it exploded or not because there are a lot of explosions, but asking future Jade shows it did, and that she declared CG to be a pretty nice guy, which surprises AT since he doesn’t think CG is particularly nice. Jade says she thinks AT is nice too, and asks why he’s the only one who talks to her while she’s asleep.

AT: bECAUSE YOU HAVE A ROBOT, tO LET YOU SAY THINGS THAT HAPPEN, oN PROSPIT, AT: aND i'M CURIOUS, AT: bECAUSE THE ONLY TIME i EVER HAD FUN PLAYING THIS GAME WAS WHEN i WAS ASLEEP, AT: bUT NOW ALL OUR DREAM SELVES ARE DEAD, AT: }:'(

AT happily remembers his own time on Prospit, and we cut back to Rose, being trolled by GA despite the fact that Rose is obviously in the middle of an epic magic battle. The conversation is understandably chilly, and GA still hasn’t figured out that “Dumb Rose” as opposed to “Smart Rose” was John rather than a bizarre roleplaying scenario.

GC continues trolling Dave. He asks her how she operates a computer without sight.

GC: 1M SORRY D4V3 TH4T YOU W1LL N3V3R 3XP3R13NC3 TH3 S3NSORY BOUQU3T TH4T 1 3NJOY 3V3RY D4Y GC: TH4T 1 3NSCONC3 MYS3LF 1N L1K3 4 W4RM 4ND COMFY B4THROB3 M4D3 OF FL4VOR 4ND M3LODY TG: oh ok TG: so the dumbest and most far fetched explanation imaginable ok got it

Yes, pretty much. This brings me to a Problematykks point; GC is supposed to be blind, but it really doesn’t seem to affect her in any way at all. Its workaround is ridiculously convenient and effective, and while I’m not blind myself, I know many people with physical disabilities hate it when fiction does this. I know I would be pissed off if a piece of fiction showed an easy and convenient way to not have autism anymore. (Horrible, horrible memories of someone back in the days of Livejournal’s Fanficrants of a fic in which autism was somehow cured by having a foursome. I don’t remember how that was supposed to work.) “She’s a space alien” only goes so far in explaining it. Why even bother making her blind if it’s not going to affect her in any way?

CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s the least blind blind person in media. Characters like Daredevil from Marvel Comics and Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender have a Disability Superpower but at the end of the day they still can’t do things like read printed text. GC has no disadvantages.

BRIGHT: She can apparently smell and taste photons.

Which raises the question why none of the other trolls ever show a heightened sense of smell or taste. If GC can learn to interpret smells as colours, her sense of smell must have been that strong all along, and there’s no indication in the text that she’s biologically more sensitive than her companions. Trolls must be better at following a trail than bloodhounds.

CHEL: Synaesthesia which makes one strongly associate colours with smells is a thing, and synaesthesia is generally the word the fandom uses to explain Terezi’s ability, but you still have to actually see the colours for that to work. If she was only mostly blind and was picking up blurry colour patches, I could buy it (and that is how the fandom tends to do it with human AUs), but not if she’s supposed to be completely blind, and she still wouldn’t be able to read text that way.

BRIGHT: Time for another animation, and for a hop back into the recent past.

Watch on YouTube

As the meteor locked onto Dave’s house approaches, Dave climbs up the tower to retrieve his cruxite egg from the nest his sprite made. Unfortunately the sprite attacks him, knocking him and the egg off the tower. Bro Strider appears on top of the approaching meteor and slices it in half with his katana; the two halves are diverted by the blow and strike different areas of the city. Dave’s fall is broken by a rocket board, which is presumably how Bro got up to the meteor in the first place. (How did he manage to aim it to intercept Dave’s fall? Wouldn’t it take longer to get from the meteor to Dave than it takes for Dave to fall from the top of the tower to the roof of the building? We shall never know.) The egg hatches, and Dave is transported into the Medium. There’s no sign of what happens to Bro.

CHEL: Yet more cartoon physics around the Strider bros.

BRIGHT: I don’t know if we mentioned this earlier, but although Dave and Bro live in an apartment block that presumably housed multiple people, only Dave’s apartment gets transported into the Medium. Everyone else in the complex is left to die on Earth. SBURB is sociopathic.

Elsewhere in the Medium, back in the present, Grandpa’s ship is approaching Skaia, with Mom Lalonde and Dad Egbert on board.

Down on Skaia, Jack Noir draws his sword and slaughters the army WV raised to march on the Black King. WV cowers, but Jack leaves him alive. He then uses the Black Queen’s ring to send some sort of giant red tentacle attack through Skaia, slaughtering Dersite and Prospitian forces indiscriminately.

CHEL: Are they tentacles? I always thought of them as some sort of lightning lasers.

BRIGHT: That makes a lot more sense!

In the ectobiology lab, as the clock ticks down to the Reckoning, the babies are teleported to asteroids around the lab. There must be an air supply in this asteroid belt — characters are consistently shown as being able to survive outside.

CHEL: Maybe it’s just the players’ natural badassery. Batman Can Breathe In Space.

BRIGHT: On Skaia, CD makes his way through Jack’s slaughter fest, which has now ravaged a sizeable chunk of planet, and hands him the White King’s sceptre. Jack raises the sceptre and initiates the Reckoning. The meteorites start to vanish into Skaia’s defence portals. In the frog temple, DD somehow combines the MEOW genetic code with a paradox clone of Halley, creating Jade’s guardian Bec. Bec’s creation damages the laboratory equipment in the temple.

Cut to Jade, who is snoozing peacefully while her dream self explores Prospit. She looks up at Skaia, to see Jack’s shadow passing in front of it. Jack launches his tentacle attack on Prospit, slaughtering the inhabitants, then severs the chain attaching Prospit’s moon to the planet. The moon begins falling towards Skaia.

Jack then flies to LOHAC, where he encounters Bro Strider on one of the turntable mesas. Unexpectedly, Bro is able to give Jack an even fight. After a few exchanges, he drives his katana into the mesa; some sort of golden light emanates from the crack, and Bro absconds.

Wait, how did Bro get onto LOHAC? How did he survive the meteor impacts?

TIER: The ol' "rule of cool". As long as something is sufficiently "absolutely kickass!!" the rules of reality and physics can go sit on the bleachers twiddling their thumbs for all they fucking matter. There's a reason early fandom pinned down Bro as an unorthodox but immensely cool older brother type guy for so long. Because with what little information was available before we got bludgeoned with "No actually he was the absolute fucking worst thing to happen to Dave and fucked him up for life" that was the general impression he gave off.

CHEL: This and the meteor splitting are yet more reason not to take Bro’s treatment of Dave seriously; this is a world in which ludicrous animesque badassery rules the day, and physically impossible feats of battle occur every five minutes. Forcing a child to go through extensive and excessive sword training in brutal heat in a precarious place, possibly every day, ought by rights to be normal there, and I can’t believe he was physically hurt by swordfighting when he survived a meteor collision as an infant. Besides, training that extensive quite possibly could be the only thing that would keep Dave alive in these circumstances.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18

BRIGHT: There’s a random Squiddles interlude, and then we return to Skaia.

John’s unconscious dream self has fallen out of Prospit’s moon as it plummets towards Skaia. Jade tries shaking him awake, and then slaps him, but to no avail. At the last moment, she throws him out of the path of the moon, and her dream self is then killed when it lands on her. Back on Earth, her dreambot overloads and explodes.

CHEL: Taking her tower room with it; Jade’s sleeping body plummets towards the earth.

BRIGHT: The moon leaves a gigantic crater in Skaia. John’s now-conscious dreamself hovers above it.

The babies vanish through the defence portals to Earth.

CHEL: Each takes an item with them. John takes the Sassacre book, Rose the first Con Air bunny, Dave rides Maplehoof, Jade takes the bunny Rose gave to John (which is in fact the Con Air bunny plus several years and repairs), Nanna sits inside Dad’s old hat, Mom takes the mutant kitten, Bro sleeps in the lap of Li’l Cal, and Grandpa dual wields the flintlock pistols he should not be allowed.

BRIGHT: Dave and Rose reach the Gates above their houses and set out to explore their Lands. We close on an eerie shot of Bec outside the frog temple on Jade’s island at night.

CHEL: Jade’s tower room is blown to bits, and a truly enormous meteor hovers over the scene.

Curtains close. End of Act 4. Before Act 5, we receive a message from Rose, via her GameFAQ.

[ZZZZ] Rose: Egress. This is my final entry. My co-players and I have made every earnest attempt, with occasional relapse, to play this game the right way.

Really? You haven’t been in the game for more than a couple of hours and Jade still isn’t in at all! Maybe consider that the fact that not all your players are in the game yet when you wonder why it isn’t working?

I have been meticulous in documenting the process to help our peers and successors through the trials should we fail. In my hubris I believed these classes were relegated to the Earth-bound, but in even this quaint supposition I was in error. Our otherworldly antagonists have assured us of our inevitable failure repeatedly, while the gods whisper corroboration in my sleep. I believe them now. I just blew up my first gate. I’m not sure why I did it, really. I am not playing by the rules anymore. I will fly around this candy-coated rock and comb the white sand until I find answers. No one can tell me our fate can’t be repaired. We’ve come too far. I jumped out of the way of a burning fucking tree, for God’s sake.

I can see her point. The game is horrible and should be stopped. On the other hand, I’d at least attempt to spend more than one day investigating it before trying to break it. Randomly destroying shit is more likely to make things much worse than anything else.

I have used a spell to rip this walkthrough from Earth’s decaying network, and sealed it in one of the servers floating in the Furthest Ring. The gods may disperse the signal throughout the cosmos as they wish. Perhaps it will be of use to past or future species who like us have been ensnared by Skaia’s malevolent tendrils. In case it wasn’t clear, magic is real. Pardon my egress. You’re on your own now.

This note is signed with a glowing multicoloured “RL” and revealed to be emitted from a purple box with an aerial, floating in space. It seems that’s how their internet’s still working.

FAILURE ARTIST: The internet seems to be a magical dimension in Homestuck and not something that’s part of physical infrastructure.

CHEL: Hours in the future, WV lands in the desert remains of Earth, wrapped up in John’s old ghost-patterned bedsheet, which is still white. A villein becomes a vagabond. In his memory, he tears up an effigy of Jack Noir… where’d he get it? Did the game create it for some reason? Anyway, John’s blanket falls on him from the sky as Prospit plummets; WV calls it a RAG OF SOULS. Adorably melodramatic.

John’s awoken dreamself gazes sadly at Jade’s deceased one, which for some reason isn’t actually under the rubble of Prospit and appears to still be three-dimensional. There’s no excessive blood splatter like with the dead Dave, which is good, not too over the top. He retrieves the Queen’s ring from her hand. Was he told at any point that it’s important? Because if he doesn’t know, I’m not sure robbing the dead is very heroic. He sees an image of himself flying over the battlefield in a large cloud above him; in the vision he’s near a castle, so he goes to seek it out.

On Earth, PM wraps herself up in an old Prospit banner. A mistress becomes a mendicant. In her memories, she has beheaded the Hegemonic Brute and is arranging a meeting with Jack Noir. He arrives and she presents the crowns; smirking evilly, he honours their bargain, and the Courtyard Droll brings her the green parcel. She brings it to the castle from John’s vision as he arrives there, hands over the box, and angrily walks away.

FAILURE ARTIST: She’s Honor Before Reason (maybe she’s programmed that way) but she has the right reaction. This is a lot to go through to deliver a package.

CHEL: Inside the box is a letter from Jade’s unknown pen pal, who writes in dark green and a distinctive jolly-hockey-sticks dialect, with a tendency to ramble off on tangents about movies and wrestling.

Anyway you should listen to jade from here on out john because she sure seems to know whats best for you. Whatever your adventure throws at you im sure shell tell you you can handle it. She believes in you.

And another letter from Jade.

even though its super late and you probably went through a lot of trouble to get it, i really hope this present cheers you up! you looked so sad while you were reading my letter. um... which is to say, the one you are reading now.

She explains that in her dreams she goes to Prospit and John’s sleeping dream self is there, and that’s where she gets her visions. She hopes he likes his present, and says her penpal is fun…

john i am REALLY looking forward to seeing you when you wake up!!!!! its been nice playing with my prospitian friends and all, but also kind of lonely knowing you were in the other tower sleeping and having lousy dreams. :( im not sure where i am when you are reading this but im sure ill make it down to where you are soon! (jeez how did you get down there??? oh well ill find out) i cant wait to fly around the moon with you and show you all my favorite places. itll be so much fun!!!!!!!!! :D <3 jade

Ow. I think this is the only time John cries in the entire comic.

A Single Tear(™) is a bit of an understated reaction to the death of one of your best friends who you just recently learned is also your twin sister, but to be fair, John isn’t left with very much time to react, as next panel Jack Noir’s sword is pointed at his face.

BRIGHT: John knows about dream selves and waking selves by now, I think?

CHEL: He knows they’re a thing but I don’t think he knows they count as backup lives. AT told Jade dream selves can die separately from regular selves but I don’t think anyone told John.

FAILURE ARTIST: Jack Noir wants the ring, but then he’s stopped by Jade’s gift: a robotic bunny wielding multiple weapons.

They line up for a fight.

Hours in the future, on a destroyed planet, AR wraps police tape around himself and becomes a Aimless Renegade. Before the disaster, he went to the Veil, where he found a sleeping John. He saves John by putting him on a rocket board.

Back to the robotic bunny. Jack Noir flies away from the fight. Grandpa’s battleship lands and Grandpa takes away Jade’s body. Mom and Dad disembark the ship and wave goodbye as it leaves. Grandpa cries a Single Tear as he transports Jade’s already taxidermed body. Did he have a machine?

CHEL: For that matter, why isn’t he helping anyone who’s actually still alive while he’s there?

HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10

FAILURE ARTIST: Nope, transporting a dead body is more important.

Again going back, White Queen leaves Prospit. On landing, she becomes Windswept Questant and wanders the Earth. We go forward years later. She repairs the laboratory and meets up with AR, WV, and PM. WV’s homemade spear hides the ring.

John watches this scene through the clouds of Skaia. He looks at the ring in his hand. In another cloud, there’s Jade’s laboratory. We close in on it and inside is The Fourth Wall. It isn’t turned on, but we are still lead to Andrew Hussie, banging away on a computer keyboard as he recaps the plot for a second time.

CHEL: Which we shall do as well when we’re done with this section, because it’s insanely hard to keep track of everything.

FAILURE ARTIST: Andrew Hussie says Nanna’s comet landed 99 years before John’s “birth” so he has some clue about the age but still doesn’t see it odd that a woman that age has a son who is probably only in his thirties.

CHEL: As I said, it’s also possible Dad was really old too, but that’s never really suggested. Not to mention, since they were brought into existence as toddlers, shouldn’t the kids be noticeably older than the ages given for them? John should be biologically fourteen to fifteen by now and at that age that can make a visible difference. I know the art style doesn’t really give clues, but no one I’ve seen has ever pointed that out in fanfic either.

FAILURE ARTIST: Newborns aren’t distinctive looking and can’t really do the cute things toddlers do. People in TV and movies regularly give birth to six month old infants so it’s not strange.

CHEL: True, but this isn’t TV, it’s a comic, and they don’t have to use an actual infant as a prop here.

BRIGHT: Possibly it’s intentional. Among other things, we see the newly-created players survive short trips through vacuum, crash-land on Earth without even minor injuries, and handle weapons they shouldn’t be able to lift for another four or five years. This could work if players have superhuman abilities (that is, beyond the classpect system). If that was the intent then it really should be made more explicit, though.

Of course, what it really boils down to is that Homestuck runs off Rule of Cool and Rule of Funny, and occasionally breaks down on examination as a result.

On the whole this is a solid Act, I think! We have a lot of new stuff happening, more characters get introduced, and we find out some more about the trolls. It’s much less rambling than Act 1.

COUNTS ALL THE LUCK: 0 ARE YOU TRYING TO BE FUNNY?: 18 CALL CPA PLEASE: 8 CLOCKWORK PROBLEMATYKKS: 19 GET ON WITH IT!: 18 GORE GALORE: 10 HOW NOT TO WRITE A WEBCOMIC: 15 HURRY UP AND DO NOTHING: 10 IN HATE WITH MY CREATION: 0 RELATIONSHIP GOALS?: 1 SEND THEM TO THE SLAMMER: 1 SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS: 0 WHAT IS HAPPENING??: 9 WHITE SBURB POSTMODERNISM: 19 TOTAL: 127

[imonlymildlyinsane]

"You're bein' stubborn, I told you to fuckin' leave me here. Ain't no sense in both of us windin' up dead." Came the strained voice by your ear, though the conviction in it was not lost; defeated and resolute in your safety only.

It was annoying, really. There was a bullet lodged in your lower leg from enemy fire, some shrapnel had managed to knick you in the side from a couple of explosions and you were certain that there was a hunger headache looming your skull; thank the Sun for adrenaline blocking serious pain. All of that, and you were trying to save his sorry ass, but he couldn't even have the good grace to save his self-depreciation for later.

Honestly, Jesse needed to work on his manners; southerners know it's rude to refuse a service, especially one important as this.

While the both of you were clear of the danger zone, the frigid winter of Switzerland was nothing to take lightly. While they still had daylight on their side, the loss of blood on both their parts—coupled with being in the wilderness—left them very vulnerable to a plethora of situations. The last signal of location you received from Hana had been thirty minutes ago, which still gave the both of you a good chance of making it out with almost everything still in tact.

Jesse, of course, had been more focused on you getting out alive, rather than surviving.

Unfortunately, coming across Widowmaker in the crosshairs of an attack was probably one of the worst things that could have happened. They were on her playing field—being so unaffected by cold—but that was also why you had been brought on this mission. Picking off Talon operatives between the two of you was fairly easy, but dodging the perfect assassin was a whole other ballgame.

What started as a diversion shot to a gas tank to clear a way for the both of you had ended badly. The explosion had been a lot bigger than McCree predicted, with the cowboy being knocked clean out about fifty feet away from flying debris. It was a calculated shot, sure, but even those can go off the rails, and he sure as hell was going to chew himself out about it at a later date. You had immediately began dragging him away from the main scene, but when Widowmaker had shown up, you had to make a hasty decision of your own. The flames wouldn't last long in the cold atmosphere, but it still wouldn't make her falter from landing a clean shot.

Fight or Flight; a cliché classic.

You really hated to run, but with being broke off from the rest of your team, a partner unconscious and Talon forces closing in with a head assassin leading them, you had no choice. Picking the man up on one shoulder, you grit your teeth against the pain and immediately burst into a sprint; the omnium core settled in your chest pushing an overflow of adrenaline through your body. While your injuries wouldn't heal any faster, it would carry your body as far as your emotional response would carry it.

This meant you had to keep to a constant state of distress for your core to keep pushing past your limits. Mental and Physical exhaustion, and you were perpetually tired as it was.

The heavy scent of mingling blood was beginning to effect your senses, but underneath the metallic scent, you could smell an encroaching danger; tickling at the back of your neck. You risked a look over your shoulder and was met with scratching heat of a bullet scratching across your cheek, clean through one of your braids. Like clockwork, your body was flooding with adrenaline once more, and you were running with energy renewed.

The communicator at your side, thankfully, buzzed to life with the broken tone of your best friend. "W— ov— the ne—t hill!! —eep goi—!!"

Elation could not come close to how you felt, but death still loomed over your shoulder as you began up the high hill; legs shaking with the added weight and strain from injuries. However, the core in your thoracic cavity was humming with resolution as your pushed on, hands clutched tightly around Jesse's limp body, having passed out from the blood loss once more. It didn't matter, as you could still feel the slowed thump of his heart against your back, even through your body suit, and it only gave you more hope that this would not be the end. It wouldn't be—push, keep moving, do not stop. Stopping meant death. You would die on your own fucking terms, even if it meant flipping a big middle finger in the Reaper's face, and you sure as hell weren't about to lose this idiot of a man either.

The footfalls of oncoming enemies was growing closer, but you never had a chance to turn and defend yourself. Before you could reach over the hill, the sound of machine fire filled the air, D.Va's mech heavily battered, but still functioning. You grinned woflishly and ducked past her to get to the transport, Lucio at her side holding them off until you boarded safely.

Through the air, you heard Tracer's voice instructing them to get in, the strain in her own voice seeming secondary to her typical melodic tone. Once inside, the hatch closing as the rest of the team boarded, your legs immediately gave out and sent you onto the ground; pain vibrating through your bones. The world seemed a blur as the wight of Jesse was removed—probably by one of the healer's to tend to him—while your best friend carefully lifted you up. The buzz of your omnic core began to reside and decrease the chemical flowing through you, leaving every wound, tear of muscle and fracture throbbing anew with pain.

It was well worth it.

—————

It was decided that the debriefing be done without your presence, as the state of your injuries were far more worse than initially thought. The doctor had been in and out while assessing you, and you could have sworn that you felt the calming energy of Zenyatta more than once, but sleep was all you could manage during this time. Whether it had been hours or days was unbeknownst to you, but there was this lingering pain in your left leg that you couldn't place. You would try to flex it when slight wakefulness came, but would soon slip back under.

Whatever it was could be addressed later.

In the midst of being unconscious, you were fairly sure that you were in a coma; medicated, if the strange taste of chemicals lingered in your mouth. Certain voices you could zone in on, while some were deemed unimportant. Your physical state was something you would rather confront when you were fully awake, but it was fun to eavesdrop here and there. However, when the steps of heavy boots came, follows by a shutting of the door, you were sure you knew who it was.

A sigh filled the air, followed by a soft curse.

"Darlin', I...I told you to leave my ass there. This wouldn't have happened if you would've just listened to me...Can't complain though. That stubborn attitude is one reason I love you so much."

There was flutter in your stomach; panic and joy mingling together.

Steps came forward before stopping short of your bed, a big, warm hand gently cupping your cheek. "You took a risk savin' my hide, goodness knows I'm grateful, but you...shit, you deserve better than this. Better than me, definitely...I'm cheatin' you right now by sayin' all this while you're outta commission. Should hear this face to face...It's not so bad, though the damn prosthetics do come with one con. It's like you can still feel the pain, even if the damn thing ain't there anymore."

You tried to flex your left leg. There was tension at your knee cap, but anything below was oddly missing. So, that's what it was. Huh.

"If you can hear me...I'm so sorry for this. Guess it'll just be another sin to pay for. Heh, I guess I just keep rackin' 'em up." The warm, syrupy tone was still there, but tainted with sadness. His fingers were calloused and comforting against your cheek, enough so that you found yourself mentally leaning into it; like you had done so many times before. However, the gasp that came from Jesse made you think that it may have actually happened, as the coolness of his other hand contrasted the flesh one as he cupped your other cheek.

"Sweetheart, d-did you actually hear all that? I mean, sure, I'd be embarrassed, but I promise I'll be just as happy."

You chuckled, though it was a throaty sound in actuality.

He laughed wholeheartedly and leaned down to press a kiss to your cool forehead; sighing deeply in his chest. Through the sterile scent of the room, he could still smell the coconut and tea tree oil that lingered on your skin, and he never thought that such a smell could bring him that much comfort. In the midst of it all, you managed to will a hand through the medicated haze; clutching onto the serape of his, though it was weak. Nonetheless, he was elated and took hold of your hand, kissing the top of it.

"You're somethin' else, you know that? I doubt anythin' really could stop you...God, I love you."

In response, the omnic core thrummed lightly and released a flurry of endorphins through your body; euphoria washing down in warm, gentle waves. You managed a gentle squeeze around his hand, lips lifted slightly in a smile. It wasn't much, but he took it for what it was.