#lil late due to. well. due to gf keeps asking me to play magic the gathering

[homestuckreplay]

MY FINAL WORD ON BARBASOL SCIENCE

(page 1465-1490)

There are quite a few parallels with earlier acts in this update, and I definitely feel like Homestuck is bringing its Earth storylines to a close, likely so that all of the kids can enter the Medium by the end of Act 4 and the story can fully take place there.

The first parallel is this sequence of Grandpa Harley panels – killing a butterfly on pages 1130-1 and a basilisk on pages 1465-6. The next is that this basilisk head looks a lot like the heads on Grandpa Harley’s wall on page 911, only color swapped. So the implication is that Grandpa, who is of course an ‘explorer-naturalist-treasure hunter-archaeologist-scientist-adventurer-big game hunter-billionaire’ (p.790), was not content doing these activities on Earth. After discovering the Pacific island where he lives with Jade, I’d guess he explored the mystic ruins and began unearthing Skaian technology; possibly he received some sort of scientific understanding from Skaia itself that taught him how to create transportalizers (among other things) that allowed him to travel to the Medium. Here Grandpa was able to indulge his passions like never before. Due to the multiple colors of monsters, he likely explored all four planets, plus Prospit and the dark kingdom. As the Incipisphere is untethered from Earth time, of course Grandpa would visit the period of its history when it’s most exciting to be there with the most diverse lifeforms. Grandpa returned to late 20th century Earth, built hit house based on the Prospitian towers, mounted his trophies, and began raising his granddaughter.

I’ve seen a lot of speculation that Grandpa Harley is a future version of John, or that the four guardians previously played a session and Grandpa stayed behind in the Medium, etc, but I don’t think those are necessary for the story to make sense. I do like the link between John meeting his nanna, who died when he was young, and now getting to meet Jade’s grandpa who died when she was young, both of whom have interacted with his ‘inheritance’ of the Sassacre book – like John being the heir extends outside his own family (at least, outside his biological family).

After the copper giclops absconds holding the Sassacrusher and Grandpa (drawn in copper silhouette) absconds holding the Sassacre book (weird to connect the two of them like that, I know that Grandpa kills other creatures indiscriminately and without mercy but I’ve seen no evidence that the giclops is so bad).

we move from my favorite character john egbert to my favorite character the peregrine mendicant <3 what a delight!! Just as the Bec symbol on WV’s pumpkin triggered some understanding in AR, a spirograph on the mystic ruins triggers a memory in PM, and we put together a beautiful mail timeline.

Order of events within Homestuck:

John probably finds an uncarved minitablet and chisel on LOWAS (p.1358) if you play the full walkaround.

PM commands John to open the pyxis to take these items (p.1425-6).

A younger PM finds a carved minitablet and the item inscribed on it, and delivers them to the breeze (1476-82).

PM goes to command John to carve the tablet (p.1489-90).

John presumably will do this and place it in the pyxis.

Order of events in linear time:

John finds an uncarved minitablet and chisel on LOWAS.

He carves it with the symbol for the Sburb server disc.

PM finds the carved minitablet, retrieves the envelope and delivers it to the breeze.

413 years later, PM sees John through WV’s computer and commands him to take the actions of first finding and then carving the tablet.

So in the comic, past, future, John and PM are all interspersed, although John’s story stays linear, which sets some guidelines. It does make me sad that this happens in a way that takes a lot of agency from John – he doesn’t get the chance to find his dad’s car and see that the parcels are missing and try to solve the minitablet puzzle himself, he gets the command from PM soon enough to avoid that whole challenge. I think the timeline could have been played with a little more to allow John to at least reach the car before PM’s memory was prompted, and she still could have swooped in to give John a nudge in the right direction if he was struggling to solve this. John has been saved by other people a lot and it’s not satisfying if he never succeeds on his own terms.

The close ups on the minitablet make it really clear that these are stone age captchalogue cards, with the same broad function but a long time delay between ‘captchaloguing’ and possessing the item, while on Earth the technology was instant and at people’s fingertips. This fits especially well with Jade’s new fetch modus, which is interesting as the Pictionary modus was chosen through a reader poll while the minitablet system is author-created. Jade’s modus is essentially the best of both worlds – it works instantly, but can also be used to acquire new items.

John’s stone minitablet carving fits right in with the other drawings he did for his friends, which I’m sobbing and crying over cause he’s really just like this all the time. <3 I love even more that this drawing counts as ‘signed authorization to deliver one of the parcels’ (p.1481). As AR can plainly see, and only a fool would think otherwise. Finally John gets given some respect.

John and PM both leave to follow some strange men, and I have all my fingers crossed for a sword origin story for PM now the narrative has drawn so much attention to her never thinking ‘to carry a sword or resort to violence under any circumstance’ (p.1478). AR is going to the dark kingdom to return a package to his superiors and PM is following, and I’m betting every boondollar I have that these two will run into Dad Egbert.

So, the Barbasol debate. I have definitely looked into this before but I am stating once again for the record: the cream itself is not flammable and in fact can work as a flame suppressant (like a foam fire extinguisher) but the propellant in a standard aerosol can is extremely flammable pressurized gas, so a sudden change in heat, such as being thrown into a fire, will definitely ignite it. That’s my last word on Barbasol science because I’m more interested in its leadup on page 1479 – AR doffs his hat too furiously and almost starts a fire, which is ‘not the best idea around all this oil. Especially without any sort of flame suppressant handy’. ‘Flame suppressant’ links directly to a Google image search for ‘barbasol’, which has been mentioned before (along with its flammability debate). This obviously works great now because Barbasol is a current product, but Google is a dynamic search engine that will update its results with new content. All it would take is for me to create a character named Barba Sol and get them to be really popular, or create a viral meme about Barbasol, or smear the product’s name with a major scandal, and I could completely change this joke. When reading back in the future this page could be entirely different.

The big gust of wind on page 1487 is really pretty and looks great in the swirly Homestuck style. But who did that?? Surely Grandpa Harley is not out here with a giant wind cannon so who else is helping John? Did Dave’s bro zoom past on his rocketboard at such speed that it caused a huge gust of wind? Has AR declared the fire illegal contraband and blown it away?