A6A6I5 has so many painfully boring panels, so I figured I’d have fun with the title pictures whenever I get the chance.
With my Psycholonials review post finished, now I can finally get on with the true home stretch of my Homestuck blog post series! It’s time to dive right in and analyze the final act of Homestuck that’s of substantial length: the polarizing Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5, or A6A6I5 for short.
Whether you love or hate Vriska, you can’t deny that her getting down to business with fully alive eyes is a satisfying shot. Or maybe you can deny that?
Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5 begins with a flash called Vriskagram. Technically, the flash is called [S] ACT 6 ACT 6 INTERMISSION 5, but everyone calls it Vriskagram because, well…
I love how the V in the Vriskagram logo is based on Vriska’s horns.
Yep, this is another instance of late Homestuck parodying social media of its time. In my Psycholonials review post, I talked at length about how the story explores the danger and perils of social media; Homestuck, in contrast, incorporates parodies of social media websites just for the hell of it. This light satire of social media is a fun motif, I must admit.
My classic Homestuck blog post series, the one I’ve been writing on and off since 2015, is on the verge of completion. I have only 14 posts left (start of A6A6I5 to the Snapchat credits), which is maybe more like the verge of the verge of completion, but it still truly feels like the final stretch! I’m greatly looking forward to the day I finish my Homestuck post series and the triumphant feeling of completion that it will surely bring… but what does that mean for my rewritten posts?
I had originally planned to end my rewritten Homestuck posts with the end of Act 5 Act 1 (the trolls’ arc), but I decided a few days ago that it would be better to finish those with the end of Act 4 instead. I’ve chosen this earlier cutoff point because I’m not motivated enough to finish my rewritten posts all the way up to Act 5 Act 1, but I still want to finish those at a natural cutoff point. I’ve been sitting on my next rewritten post (Act 4, part 2 of 6) since early March, and I’d love to finish rewriting my Act 4 posts before I’m finished with my Homestuck post series as a whole. Four and a half rewritten posts doesn’t seem like a tall order alongside the fourteen classic posts I’ve yet to write (after I write my Psycholonials review post, I have only one chapter before I’ve finished playing/reading it).
I had long wanted my rewritten posts to effectively supersede my original Homestuck posts, but now I think that if someone were to subject themselves to reading my Homestuck posts in comic order, it would be most interesting to start with the original posts and see my writing style and opinions on Homestuck evolve over time. As such, I’m not as fond of the idea of rewriting my Homestuck posts as I used to be, but I still want to give them a proper cutoff point rather than abruptly ending partway through Act 4.
For real, though, I want to finish my Homestuck post series as soon as I can so that I never have to think about Homestuck again! Even though I know deep down that I’ll never truly be free from Homestuck, it will be very liberating when I’m done with this ambitious project that I’ve willfully subjected myself to and could cancel at any time but have merely chosen not to. I can finish my Homestuck posts, and I will finish my Homestuck posts, much unlike what I thought during my nearly two years of hiatus through most of 2017 and 2018.
Because “CLAYMATION REVELATION STATION” wasn’t spicy enough.
Since I’m bored out of my mind, semester finished and all, there’s no better time than now to start the last leg of my Homestuck blog post series! Not to mention that I have all the rest of the season 1 posts for a different post series queued and ready to release… Before we begin, let me quickly recap what all is left in my Homestuck posts:
Act 6 Act 6 Act 5: 1 post (126)
Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 5: 12 posts (127-138; last one covers everything post-Omegapause before [S] Collide)
[S] Collide and following pages: 1 post (139)
Act 7 and credits: 1 post (140)
I had said in earlier posts that I planned to immediately follow the ending of my Homestuck posts with a full-out epilogues analysis in the same style, but I don’t really feel like doing so anymore. My Homestuck blog post series has been going on for five and a half years already, and I’d rather give it a clear-cut ending than continue with its further media. I already made quite a few posts talking about the epilogues anyway, including my epilogues review post. And there’s no way I would ever want to do blog posts analyzing the absolute trainwreck that is Homestuck^2. If I keep a reasonable pace of about five Homestuck posts every month, I’ll finish this post series around the middle of August! It’s going to feel so amazing finishing these posts, but to get that feeling, I actually have to, you know, finish these posts.
Now, let’s begin Act 6 Act 6 Act 5, or as it’s better known, Caliborn’s Masterpiece.
Act 6 Act 6 Act 5 of Homestuck begins with a flash, featuring Caliborn’s crudely drawn curtains fading into the same design pasted on somewhat more realistic-looking curtains. This shows how far Caliborn has come as an artist while retaining at least some of his roots and his bizarre sense of humor… which is to say, Hussie’s bizarre sense of humor.
Speaking of Hussie’s bizarre sense of humor, I’ve been meaning to play Psycholonials, which will perhaps allow me to put a brand new layer of analysis on my Homestuck posts.
The curtains open to reveal a stage that parallels Calliope’s stage in the dream bubbles, with a purple spiral drawn with Caliborn’s old jagged art style instead of a smooth, artistic yellow spiral. Well, the purple spiral is artistic too, just in a different way. There isn’t much of a story behind the stages, and I don’t think there needs to be; they’re both just suitable places for each of the cherubs to tell stories.
I came up with this post’s title months ago, so please appreciate it.
Just a reminder, don’t expect more Homestuck posts for probably the next few months. I have a real life too! Not to mention ambitious projects unrelated to these posts.
It’s time for John to read the final instruction on Terezi’s scarf. He has the following to say about it:
JOHN: uh, wow. JOHN: not sure what to expect for this one. JOHN: alright, here goes.
I can imagine how confused John is. He’s far too thick-headed to have any idea who Terezi wanted him to stop her from killing. Obviously it can’t be Vriska, right? As far as John knows, Vriska and Terezi hardly knew or cared about each another. I never stopped to think about how long it took for him to learn that Terezi killed Vriska—he didn’t know that until he was about to stop that event from happening!
Poor John remains eternally oblivious to how crucial that honk is.
Second last post of A6A6I4! After my next post, I’ll go on another pause (probably my last pause) as I finish my final college semester before I graduate.
Picking up where we left off, John continues his retcon journey and encounters Dragonsprite, Terezi’s lusus sprite.
DRAGONSPRITE: sniff sniff DRAGONSPRITE: sniff sniff sniff sniff JOHN: (hey, would you quit it!) JOHN: (i’m trying to keep a low profile here.)
Spritelogs with the trolls’ sprites probably weren’t high on the list of things people expected to return in A6A6I4, but they return here. John’s statement about trying to keep a low profile doesn’t refer to hiding his presence from Terezi entirely, but rather returning the favor with some subtle retcon pranks of his own.
Analyzing Homestuck is as easy as 1, 2, 3! (Just kidding, it isn’t.)
Only two posts left of A6A6I4 after this! I’ll probably finish A6A6I4 before this month ends, then put my Homestuck posts on what will hopefully be my last hiatus before I finish them.
Just like my last post, this one begins with a Vriska/Meenah dream bubble scene. This time, it’s somewhat more morbid in tone, taking place in what looks to be the same dream bubble that the Openbound games started in. But just like last time, I’m going to sidestep the fact that Hussie forgot all about their age difference.
MEENAH: BOOM MEENAH: there goes another one VRISKA: Wow, yeah. MEENAH: dude sure is busy today VRISKA: I’ve got to hand it to him. VRISKA: As far as indestructi8le, reality-destroying monsters go, he really is tireless. VRISKA: Even though on some level I can tell he’s pro8a8ly a complete moron, his dedic8tion and persistence is actually pretty admira8le. MEENAH: holla
This is exactly what I keep saying about Caliborn. He’s dedicated so much energy into improving his art skills and becoming as powerful as can be, and as Lord English it’s on some level admirable how relentless he is in his quest to kill his sister.
“W3 M4K3 OUR OWN LUCK 4ND YOU’R3 4BOUT TO PROV3 TH4T” —Terezi Pyrope, 2014
I would say not to expect the rest of my A6A6I4 posts to come out quickly, but not even I can predict my own work ethic. For me, motivation comes and goes like the wind.
I can tell that few things give Hussie more joy than joking about juggalos.
Time for the first of several Meenah/Vriska scenes in A6A6I4! Better known as “scenes where Hussie forgets about Meenah and Vriska’s significant age difference and then awkwardly backpedals in A6A6I5”. It’s a shame the author ended up forgetting something so significant, because this is quite a fun scene giving insight into both of these characters in a more casual setting than adventurous quests to take down Lord English.
VRISKA: Hey Meenah. VRISKA: Any idea where we are now? MEENAH: iunno VRISKA: Do you think… VRISKA: This could 8e the “Dark Carnival”?? MEENAH: nah MEENAH: that shit aint real MEENAH: its a made up religious belief pimped out by trash clowns VRISKA: Are you sure? MEENAH: shell yes MEENAH: be fake as shit MEENAH: of course the religious beliefs themselves are real MEENAH: makin it convenient for anyone who wanna exploit those delusions for her own badass objectives MEENAH: like pulling in clams hand over flipper and ruthlessly subjugating the general public MEENAH: i mean MEENAH: not that id ever bother with a dope scheme like that MEENAH: just saying
Meenah is contrasting herself against the Condesce when she says she wouldn’t ever bother with using clowns for public subjugation. Clown nonsense is so prevalent in Homestuck that I can’t blame Meenah for not wanting to get involved in it. Perhaps Meenah’s apathy towards clowns is because Kurloz, her group’s resident clown, is nothing more than a pious servant of indecipherable juggalo schemes that relate to Lord English tangentially at best.
I didn’t have any good ideas for a new name for this post, so I kept the old one.
Before my motivation inevitably drifts to something totally different, I figured I’d resume my rewritten Homestuck posts and try to at least do Act 4, if not all the way through Act 5 Act 1 (which is my planned ending point for the rewritten posts).
But before I start going through Act 4, I’ll quickly recap the intermission, which I reread before starting this post.
The Midnight Crew intermission is awesome as fuck. It’s a throwback to the story style of Problem Sleuth that blasts your face with extreme time shenanigans to prepare you for the somewhat lighter time shenanigans in the act that follows. It characterizes the quartet of Derse agents, two of whom we hadn’t ever seen before, through the Midnight Crew, as well as the black queen through Snowman. Most notably, the intermission cleverly drops hints about the trolls and the Midnight Crew’s past until it punches you in the face with the reveal that the intermission took place on the trolls’ planet. It also has a few hints about Lord English, an overarching villain we very gradually learn more about. All in all, the whole intermission is executed beautifully and lots of fun from start to finish.
Act 4 is one of several acts that begins with a walkaround game. The game’s music is called Doctor, composed by the deceased George Buzinkai* and remixed many, many times throughout Homestuck’s music. Doctor holds an extremely special place in my heart—it’s one of only three tunes that I managed to remember through my first read of Homestuck, the other two being Karkat’s Theme and Elevatorstuck. I’ve always held the sentiment that among Homestuck’s most iconic tunes, Doctor was the one that best captured the comic’s nostalgic spirit, better than even Sburban Jungle or Showtime. I can’t quite explain why I feel that way; I suppose Doctor just has this powerful, nostalgic feeling that transcends words.
* Read this Reddit comment by a Homestuck music team member for information about Buzinkai’s name.
As for the walkaround itself, you play as John exploring the Land of Wind and Shade, fighting imps, playing around with his sylladex, talking to Nannasprite from afar, and gathering lots of information from consorts about his planet’s lore and denizen and all that jazz, all the while receiving commands from an exile who is clearly not WV. This walkaround is very complicated and weird to come back to considering the heavily simplified format and pixelated art style of later walkarounds; playing it, I can really see why Hussie chose to rework the style of walkarounds in Act 5 Act 2. According to my past self, “Hussie has said that this game is somewhat experimental and that it probably could’ve been presented in a more effective way (which is what the famous YouTube series Let’s Read Homestuck does).” I assume I was referring to Hussie’s Formspring then, but I’ve decided not to bother with playing through the walkaround in full and instead consume it using my physical copy of Homestuck: Book 3 (the Viz Media print).
Finishing Act 3 in my rewritten posts was long overdue.
Been a while, hasn’t it?
I figured with me going back and continuing on reformatting my posts before I moved this blog from Blogger to WordPress, now would be a good time to resume my rewritten Homestuck posts, or at least finally finish Act 3 of those, especially as I’m taking yet another break from my regular Homesuck posts. And especially considering my next regular Homestuck post would be number 122, which is 12.2 without the decimal point.
Anyway, I’m going to pick up where I left off like nothing ever happened. Where were we?
Time to be the Aimless Renegade, who is a very well-loved character by those who remember he exists. He’s one of the few characters who is killed off for real as the story goes on, with no resurrection or alternate self relevance and therefore no screen time in the increasingly controversial sub-acts of Act 6. His per-exile obsession is law and justice, which is played out very humorously as exile obsessions tend to be.
… Yeah, I must sadly admit I don’t have a lot to say about AR’s subplot so far. We learn that he harbors the Dersite hatred towards frogs and that Grandpa Harley had this absurd collection of guns and ammo that AR has been making use of. Grandpa Harley has absurd collections of everything though, which I suppose comes as a result of combining his status as a guardian with his status as a page with his fully realized potential.
Yes, “sup”. That’s what I’ve chosen to title this post.
Sorry this post took so long! Schoolwork has been ramping up this semester, so don’t rule out the possibility of me continuing to be slow.
It’s so weird to process that John completed his planet quest at long last.
The Pipeorgankind flash is followed by a callback to the Myststuck games, with John exploring his newly cleared planet that he warped into the middle of nowhere. The fireflies are no longer confined by the fourth wall and now fly about through the screen’s space, which is quite a charming sight.
All the old setpieces from LOWAS, like the Parcel Pyxis and the salamander village, are still there, which must be a strangely nostalgic sight for John. Not an unwelcome one, though, because he still has plenty more adventures to go through.
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