Tag Archives: homestuck

The Homestuck Epilogues: Initial Thoughts

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Happy 10th anniversary to Homestuck (again)!

First things first, the title of this post is a lie. My initial thoughts were as follows:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I’m glad I was home alone reading this. I have something of a pattern regarding screaming at media while home alone. I was home alone when I fought Omega Flowey (or is it Photoshop Flowey?) in Undertale, and I screamed all the way through. I was home alone when I played all the way through Doki Doki Literature Club, and again I screamed all the way through. And I am so goddamn lucky that I was home alone when the beginning of the Homestuck epilogue went up. In the last few minutes leading up to 1:00 PM EST (EDT? fuck if I know), I listened to Sburban Jungle at full blast, so that near the end of the song the epilogue would go up. And that was when I started screaming.

My thoughts about the epilogue so far after all the screaming though… oh boy. Oh boy.

Wait fuck, I keep forgetting. It’s not the epilogue. It’s the epilogues, plural. Calling it “epilogues” instead of “epilogue” will take some getting used to.

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4/13 project is here!

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https://sites.google.com/site/homestuckcommentaryabridged/

^ My 4/13 project is finally out! It’s refined, polished commentary on the first two acts of Homestuck in a website that should be much easier to navigate for this kind of stuff than Blogger is.

I can’t even begin to process that real content is going to come out today. Or that Homestuck began ten years ago today. 

EDIT ~10 AM EST: Epilogues, plural? I have only two words to say:

oh fuck

One day left… (an analysis of vfromhomestuck’s tweets)

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Weekly Friday posts are still a thing, probably. My 4/13 project is basically done, aside from the video trailer and some finishing touches. I’m super excited to release it to the world!!!!!

In the countdown to 4/13/2019, the tenth anniversary of Homestuck, a mysterious figure known as “vfromhomestuck”, who took part in the Hiveswap Friendsim and probably its most controversial installment, has been posting a lot about Homestuck on Twitter. Normally the words “Homestuck” and “Twitter” will make me rage if seen together, but this case is way different. V isn’t just doing your usual obnoxious shitposts or fantroll memes. She speaks intelligently about Homestuck and Hiveswap and seems to be a bit reserved about discussing its controversial aspects. V recognizes the dislike fans have for parts of the comic and tends to question their reasoning and motives, or how much they really know at all. The strangest part is that nobody knows who V is outside of her involvement in Homestuck and Hiveswap. It feels strange that she is currently taking the reins of hyping Homestuck material, but it’s also a welcome change of pace from getting info out of Hussie’s more shitposty friends (looking at you, James Roach).

For the past two weeks, V has been hyping up something that must be HUGE, which most people assume is the epilogue. She has posted some mysterious and vague lines that give me a strange form of hope I don’t know if I’ve ever felt before. I’ll go over those tweets in chronological order.

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Announcement about plans leading to (and after) 4/13

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As I said in this schedule post (for now, still my dumping ground for small announcements), I’m currently sticking to a schedule of new Homestuck blog posts (usually) every Friday morning. But today I don’t have a Homestuck blog post in store, so I’m going to write an announcement post instead, slightly longer than the random updates I’ve added to that schedule post.

Classic Posts

Homestuck post 85 is currently planned for 4/19. I wanted to get Act 6 Act 3 done before 4/13, but I’m not sure if that’s possible. Over the next week I’ll focus more on my 4/13 project, watch a certain anime, and maybe make some videos if I’m feeling up to it such as the Futurama 20th anniversary tribute that I badly need to finish. Probably no more numbered Homestuck posts before the comic’s tenth anniversary.

I have fully planned out how to divide the acts up to Act 6 Act 5, but I don’t feel like posting that plan here; it’s not really all that interesting. Post 100 will be some point early in Act 6 Intermission 5.

Please note that all my plans are subject to change! Even though that’s probably obvious if you follow this blog, I feel obligated to restate it anyway.

Rewritten Posts

I have some rough plans for the next few acts of my rewritten posts. I’ll start Act 3 right after I release post 85. Intermission posts I already did, so I will do a recap post for those, then go on to Act 4.

I will not start my Act 4 posts until I have a physical copy of the Act 4 book. This is because the book commentary there gets very long at parts and is inconvenient to read with Homestuck Companion; I can tell that it’s far better read in book form. That’ll be a good way for me to experience the Homestuck books firsthand.

Act 5 Act 1 (the trolls’ arc) is the opposite case. In those rewritten posts, I will have a policy of not consulting the book commentary. The main reason for this is because the trolls’ arc is one of the acts I forget the most about, so I think rereading it will be interesting enough without Hussie’s commentary alongside it. I want to make my own judgments about that act’s characters and pacing as I go along; I don’t need Hussie telling me that Nepeta is a prototype for Calliope or whatever.* Maybe in the future I’ll make versions of my Act 5 Act 1 posts where I consult book commentary, but in this rewrite project I think I’ll do without it. Also worth noting that the next Homestuck book after Act 5 Act 1 won’t be released until September.

* Though I am eager to see if I end up agreeing with that idea.

My rewritten posts are really only mapped out up to Act 5 Act 1. After that point, my plans are nothing more than “we’ll see what happens”, especially considering what I have planned for my 4/13 project.

Cookie Fonster Dissects Homestuck Part 84: Cherubic Gloats and Confused Glances

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Introduction

< Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 >

Act 6 Act 3, Part 10 of 11

Pages 5137-5237 (MSPA: 7037-7137)

But no coconut guns, sadly.
If there were any, you’d better believe they can fire in spurts.

Lucky coincidence: today is the first anniversary of Homestuck’s migration from MSPA to homestuck.com!

I made this GIF myself, please appreciate it.
Why didn’t I think of making my own GIFs for these posts sooner? There’s plenty of non-[S] Flash pages I could have done that with.

Once again, last post ended with Calliope and this post starts with Caliborn. This selection screen gives us teasers of what he looks like. It leaves out just enough not to outright confirm that he is Lord English.

undyingUmbrage [uu] began jeering uranianUmbra [UU] 
uu: HEY. 
uu: I WOuLD LIKE TO PLAY A GAME. 
uu: IT’S CALLED “BOND WITH AN IDIOT SISTER OVER SOME BuLLSHIT SHARED INTERESTS BEFORE SHE DIES FOREVER.” 
uu: DOES THAT SOuND FuN. 
uu: HERE’S A GOOD PART OF THE STORY I THINK. 
uu: YOu MuST KNOW THE ONE I MEAN. 
uu: LET’S TALK ABOuT IT TOGETHER. 
uu: SHARE SOME THEORIES. 
uu: DO SOME FAN GIRLING. 
uu: PRODuCE SOME. 
uu: “FAN ART.” 

We got more than enough story told through Calliope speculating already, so it’s only fair that now we get a big dump of Caliborn’s speculation. Both cherubs’ speculation is surprisingly reliable and accurate; you’ll never fully understand how much those two have in common unless you dig deep into the stuff they say. Or if you have a realization that you were in denial about being a fan of something. I mean, purely hypothetically of course. It’s not like I was ever in denial about liking something people like to trash on, haha what are you talking about!!!!!

(I was in denial about liking something people like to trash on. Let’s not dwell on it, OK?)

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 8 Rewritten: Mayorly Foreshadowification Station

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Introduction / Schedule (outdated)

< Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 >

Pages 666-758 (MSPA: 2566-2658)

Act 2, Part 5 of 5

Link to old version

My rewritten posts lately have alternated between me making a new post title and me keeping the old one. I’m keeping the old one here again.

Random thing about the community reread that isn’t worth putting in its entire separate post: I decided to join in again yesterday to reread John and Roxy’s first conversation, at the end of Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 1. It’s just as funny and heartening as I remember it being and is one of many things recently that made remember that they are the best ship in the comic. Look forward to me praising that ship in future posts, probably.

You are now the Wayward Vagabond.

The final portion of Act 2 is a stretch of pages focusing on the Wayward Vagabond. On this page, the book commentary explains that although Hussie already had rough ideas for this character’s story role, he decided to improvise and have fun with this arc, letting readers drive the story a bit more than before. You probably know that when John was commanded by WV, he was blocked off from being commanded by readers; playing as WV for the first time gives us a fresh start and a bit of a return to the old days. This “fresh start” idea is done even stronger in the Midnight Crew intermission, which I already covered in my rewritten posts because I skipped to that part after finishing Act 1. Once I finish Act 3, I’ll do a post recapping the intermission before I go to Act 4.

> WV: Retri…

Got em already.

No arm shenanigans here; just quickly getting this joke out of the way before any nonsense can happen. Probably meant to get readers at the time to think, “hm maybe I should be creative for once instead of reiterating the same old commands again”.

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Cookie Fonster Critiques Homestuck Part 7 Rewritten: What Sword?

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Introduction / Schedule (outdated)

< Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 >

Pages 562-665 (MSPA: 2462-2565)

Act 2, Part 4 of 5

Link to old version

Haha… haha… ha ha … ha …….

Dave explores the rest of his living room and here’s where the creepiness factor escalates. It all starts with this moment:

> Dave: Take expensive ninja sword.

What sword?

This page is a shockingly simple way to establish the day-to-day nature of Dave’s home life.

As I said in my first rewritten post, early Homestuck has a habit of revisiting the running gags of the prior adventures and giving them a new context. Every instance of the “what pumpkin?” gag in Homestuck has some broader reason behind it, sometimes involving technology. This instance of the gag is a character establishing moment for Dave’s bro.

When I got these pages in my old posts, I was nothing short of creeped out. Maybe it’s because two pages in a row show Bro flash stepping and moving stuff around, subverting all expectations in the process.

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mspaintadventures.com is currently down

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Remember to check my schedule post for when I’ll release my next Homestuck posts!

Also, as of 3/27/2019 MSPA is up again.

Homestuck, Problem Sleuth, and some miscellany were all hosted on mspaintadventures.com until April 2018. After that point, they were moved to homestuck.com and any URLs on mspaintadventures.com would redirect to their corresponding homestuck.com pages. 

Today the mspaintadventures.com domain went down. I trust Viz Media (or Hussie himself?) to fix this issue soon, but for now this creates lots of dead links which is of course bad news.

Thankfully, MSPA being down doesn’t affect my blog posts very much. Most of the images in my Homestuck* posts before April 2018 are hosted on cdn.mspaintadventures.com, which is still up and running. Exceptions are screencaps from flashes, which I either took from readmspa.org or grabbed myself. The only thing that is now broken would be links to pages in Homestuck*, which I didn’t do all that often. As such, I won’t bother with changing those links unless MSPA is still down after let’s say a week.

I don’t know why MSPA itself is down but the CDN subdomain is intact, but it’s certainly better than everything being down. I asked /r/homestuck about this situation; hopefully someone there will have an answer. 

* Here, “Homestuck” is shorthand for “Homestuck and Problem Sleuth”.

New schedule for Homestuck posts! + miscellaneous rambling + other updates

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I’ve finally decided on a schedule for my Homestuck posts again! If I’m going to commit to it for a good stretch of time again, I might as well have a proper schedule. This new schedule is: new Homestuck posts every Friday morning. These new posts could be either rewrites of old posts or new posts and I have a full out plan for the next month, followed by a rough plan after that.

The schedule isn’t exactly “new”; it’s a pattern I’ve been following for the past few weeks. I just decided to make it an official schedule.

Here’s my current schedule in calendar form. Dates italicized are not Fridays and deviate from the schedule. I’ll also use this schedule to give progress updates.

02/25/2019 – Part 4 rewritten [done!]
03/01/2019 – Part 83 [done!]
03/08/2019 – Part 5 rewritten [done!]
03/15/2019 – (schedule announcement) [YOU ARE HERE]
03/22/2019 – Part 6 rewritten
03/29/2019 – Part 7 rewritten

04/03/2019 – Part 8 rewritten*
04/06/2019 – Part 84 <- OUTDATED, now shifted ahead
03/18/2019 – Part 6 rewritten [done!]
03/22/2019 – Part 7 rewritten [done!, delayed one day]
03/29/2019 – Part 8 rewritten [done!]
04/05/2019 – Part 84
04/12/2019 – Part 85** <- shifted ahead again
04/02/2019 – Part 84 [done!]
04/06/2019 – Part 85 [possibly later?]
04/13/2019 – Secret mystery project
04/19/2019 – Part 85

* Part 8 rewritten covers WV’s portion of Act 2; Part 84 covers mostly Caliborn gloating and Dirk confusing everyone. Both probably won’t take all that long so I moved them around like this. EDIT: I changed things up anyway.

** Part 85 was originally going to be for 4/13 but I moved it ahead a day so as not to overwhelm myself with releases. 

After my project for 4/13 is released, the weekly posts are a bit more up in the air. I’ll probably decide on a whim whether each weekly post is a brand new post or a rewrite of an old one. I like this idea because if I hit a roadblock on a new Homestuck post I’ll rewrite an old post instead, and vice versa. It’s just like the days when I worked on both Homestuck and Problem Sleuth posts; maybe if I’m feeling up to it one of my weekly posts might even be a Problem Sleuth post? Don’t count on anything yet, just know that bringing back Problem Sleuth posts is a distinct possibility.

Everything below this text is either rambling or other random updates (or both). This post is going to me my dumping ground for such updates for a while.

4/20/2019: nope never mind fuck everything back to hiatus for a long time probably

4/19/2019: Part 9 rewritten is out! And apparently the entire rest of the epilogue is coming tomorrow???? I have a burning suspicion V is hiding something and that isn’t quite all of it, but I’ve prepared for the worst and taken measures to avoid spoilers; I’m way too busy this weekend to read any Homestuck stuff, especially of this length. Maybe I could finish post 85 for real this time next Friday, as I blissfully avoid spoilers through next week. Yes you read that right: part 85 is planned for 4/26.

4/13/2019: The big day!!!

4/12/2019: Wrote up thoughts on V’s tweets.

4/7/2019: Just had a big discussion on hopes and worries for the Homestuck epilogue, as well as all the stuff vfromhomestuck has been teasing. I am now more cautious and nervous about it than ever before; maybe I’ll write a blog post about my epilogue fears. Also I just ordered a copy of Homestuck Book 3 (Act 4).

4/6/2019: That one anime I mentioned is an absolute blast to watch, holy shit.

4/5/2019: Made a longer announcement post. The most important part I haven’t said in this post yet: I will make a point of going through Act 5 Act 1 without book commentary.

4/3/2019 (my birthday!): Yeah, I think I’m going to delay post 85 to 4/19 for the time being. I am very busy watching a certain anime; one that will let me fully grasp the notion that fun things are fun. Please note that I don’t normally watch anime; please also note that “weeb” is a stupid word that should not exist.

4/2/2019 [2]: Maybe it’ll be a bit too tight of a squeeze to both release part 85 before 4/13 and get what I wanted to done for the 4/13 project. Or maybe it won’t be too tight, we’ll see what happens. I estimate a 25% chance that part 85 will be delayed, either to before or after 4/13. If it’s delayed to after 4/13, it’ll come out on let’s say 4/19, sticking to my plan of posts on Fridays.

4/2/2019: Part 84 is out! Hopefully soon enough I can start part 85; it may be a tight squeeze!

3/29/2019: Part 8 rewritten is now out! I’m pushing posts 84 and 85 ahead a bit, to encourage myself to work on my 4/13 project after that. I’ll start 84 this weekend; it probably won’t take long.

3/26/2019: Part 8 rewritten is already close to done! Which is good, gives me more time to work on my 4/13 project and maybe other things. Keep in mind that by 4/13, I plan to be finished with Act 6 Act 3 in my normal posts and Act 2 in my rewritten posts and not start the next acts until after that date.

Also on this topic, my next rewritten posts will be four posts for Act 3, an intermission recap post, and then I won’t start Act 4 until I have a physical copy of the book. This is because that act is where flashes and pesterlogs get long and Homestuck Companion (browser extension I’ve been using) isn’t totally convenient for reading long commentary.

To my knowledge, Homestuck Companion is the best way to digitally read Homestuck. You can read with book commentary if you want and it contains some handy notes about broken links and removed content. Also makes pesterlogs only openable with right CTRL key, fixing an annoyance I had with writing these posts.

3/18/2019: Part 6 rewritten is now out!  On Monday instead of Friday. I think it’s polished enough already. Other posts have been pushed forward so the weekly Friday posts are still intact, they didn’t go anywhere. Actually the weekly Friday posts are now more intact than they were before; previously there were some off-schedule but now those are moved to Fridays.

Why am I so awful at sticking to a schedule? Either I’m way too fast or way too slow. But I’ll try to stick to Fridays anyway; Part 7 rewritten is scheduled for this Friday.

3/17/2019: Part 6 rewritten is finished already, oops. The good news is, by “finished” I simply mean I got to the last page of that post’s stretch of pages, which means I’ll have plenty of time the next few days to revise and polish it.

3/16/2019: Today I worked a bit more on the 4/13 project! Not much so far but I roughly know how I’ll go about the whole thing.

3/15/2019: Here’s some miscellaneous rambling. The more I look at any of my old Homestuck posts before Part 80, the more I want to rewrite or make updated versions of all of them. Almost all of those posts have some major revisions I want to make, which makes me not want to cut that project short at just rewriting the first 27 posts. I don’t want to get too carried away, so I’ll just say: we’ll see what happens after I finish Part 27 rewritten.

An additional benefit to working on new posts and rewrites of old posts in tandem is that after Act 6 Act 3, I’ll have to go through the Openbound trilogy. You know, the long and rambly walkaround games featuring the pre-scratch trolls. I have no idea how long it’ll take me to write those posts, so it’s good to have some other blog post content to output alongside that.

Homestuck Mini(?)-Post: In Defense of Act 6 Act 1

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This isn’t really a mini-post at all; it’s pretty much a full blown essay. My Homestuck posts are still on a short pause, but I have an announcement post planned for Friday!

Late in Act 4 I fell behind in the Homestuck community reread and made my own blog posts instead. But in the past few days, when the reread went through Act 6 Act 1, I decided to join in again and share my thoughts.

It’s no secret that the early Act 6 acts with the alpha kids are polarizing. Some people like those acts, some people can’t stand them. Rereading the first of those acts, my feelings are more positive than negative but I do have some issues. What follows is a rundown of my thoughts on this act; skip to the end if you want it briefly summarized.

Note in advance: I still stand by most of what I said in my Act 6 Act 1 posts from 2016 (Part 60 / Part 61 / Part 62 / Part 63). Feel free to refer back to those for more detail. 

INTRO

Overall, Act 6 Act 1 is a remix of Act 1 done a bit more in the style of Act 5 Act 2. While Homestuck itself opened with a single introductory page, Act 6 opens with a big flash teasing our four new heroes and their new alien friend; I absolutely love that flash and it still gives me chills. After Jane and Jake are introduced we get a character select screen, where you can start with Jane or start with Jake. This time I started with Jane, then did Jake.

SELECTION SCREEN: JANE

Jane’s half of the selection screen is a bit like John exploring his bedroom, but without any of the captchalogue nonsense and modernized in many other ways. A whole different kind of nonsense is shown in Jane’s half: she is shown to be badly brainwashed by the Condesce, who has led her to believe Betty Crocker is just a friendly company that makes super awesome technology and the hyped up game of Sburb.

Jane has three pesterlogs in her selection screen:

  • One with Jake which is mostly filler and some hints at plot stuff. Kind of boring and reads way better from Jake’s perspective.
  • One with Calliope which is also mostly filler and some hints at plot stuff. Again a little boring but it works because it’s a brand new character’s debut.
  • One with Roxy which is incredibly fun and hilarious, setting us up for a brand new character readers will surely be excited to meet and with some actually exciting plot stuff. Is it any wonder Roxy is everyone’s waifu?

General thoughts on these pesterlogs: My biggest issue with the Act 6 Act 1 pesterlogs is that they tend to start with a bunch of general nonsense, setting the rough tone of the characters’ personalities. It wasn’t really much of a problem that the Act 1 pesterlogs were short; the characters were set up in a perfectly fine and enjoyable way. And this is a case where if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

SELECTION SCREEN: JAKE

Jake’s half of the selection screen is more interesting than Jane’s (who would have guessed?). We get a much more subdued and lonely spin on Jade’s magical home life and it’s surprisingly well done. The narration also doesn’t take long to establish how the bunny mission goes from Jake’s perspective, which also works really well. I’m pretty happy the story gets that arc out of the way early on; it only makes sense to do it now rather than pretending it’s a big mystery.

Jake has four pesterlogs in his selection screen:

  • One with Calliope which gets a lot of nonsense out of the way fast and has more plot hints. Still does get kind of rambly though.
  • One with Dirk, no wait, his auto-responder. Probably the most stupidly rambly of them all, mostly tolerable because the whole pesterlog is pretty much a ruse.
  • One with Jane that we already saw from Jane’s perspective. As I said before, it reads better from Jake’s perspective because the rambly opening seems a bit less out of place and it’s a little more enticing seeing Jane vaguely describe mysteries from Jake’s perspective rather than her own perspective.
  • A second one with Dirk’s responder. This time it’s actually useful to the plot and interesting to read. It also shows some parallels between Dave’s relationship with Bro and Jake’s relationships with Dirk’s splinters.

In this short reread, I wanted to see if Act 6 Act 1 read better from Jane’s perspective first instead of Jake’s perspective. Now I know that the answer is Jake. Jake’s pages give Act 6 a strong start with some plot stuff tying back to earlier acts and ruses involving Dirk; Jane’s pages are more laid back and seem harmless after reading Jake’s. If you start with Jane, you’re more likely to think “oh my god this is so boring” in her half.

General thoughts on the guardian traits: A lot of what we learn about the alpha kids and their ancestors is extrapolations from the beta kids’ guardians and their traits. Act 6 Act 1 is weird in that regard, both in Jane and Jake’s parts; it’s loaded up with early installment weirdness. In those pages, the author chooses guardian and beta kid traits to call back to, and some of them work while others don’t. If you want specific examples, just reread the act yourself. I don’t want this post to get even more rambly than it already is.

THE FOREBODING DREAM

The next big thing that happens is a pesterlog between Jane and Jake, where she recounts a foreboding dream where Prospitians gathered around holding a funeral for Jake’s dream self. The surprise factor in this scene, as well as the message it gives, is worth analyzing.

A player’s dream self being dead in advance isn’t normally something that just happens. You can’t do that, you just can’t. Prospit and Derse both follow strict rules which are always followed without questioning. What factor could have possibly caused these rules to be thrown out the window?

I bet many readers did not expect the Condesce to be behind these rules getting broken. Jack Noir is the one carapacian who isn’t afraid to break rules, but is always held in check by the black queen. With the queen usurped, everything breaks loose; for more discussion on this topic, check out this post.

Jane thinks the dream was supposed to warn her of something, but she wasn’t sure what. It’s our very first clue to readers that things are going to go even more off the rails than ever before.

SETTING THE STAGE ON JAKE’S ISLAND

As Jake explores his island, everything we knew about Jade’s home life is beautifully subverted. His house was destroyed, with only his room and the small area below remaining; his island is a dark forested area, filled with replications of the trolls’ lusii. I think these scenes are a highlight of this act: it puts a new twist on Jade’s magical life on an island and brings back the lusii in a magnificently unusal way. 

Jake’s following conversation with Roxy is pretty cool too; a decent mix of character stuff and plot stuff. Roxy’s use of troll terminology is a subtle hint that she lives in the future, which I kind of wish was done more often rather than coming across as early installment weirdness here.

JANE’S FINAL(?) MOMENTS

Jane and Jake both have robot pseudo-guardians that I consider to count as Dirk’s splinters. Jake has Brobot who does much more later on. Jane has Lil’ Sebastian who creates a mess in the house. Jane’s conversation with Dirk (finally, the actual Dirk!) is super fun and balances characterization with plot discussion, plus a quick look into Dave’s adult self; a very strong start for Dirk’s character.

Jane’s echo of the nonsense where John (with Rose’s help) messes up his house is quite an oddity. The antics in the early acts were just the kids playing Sburb, but the antics in this act are Jane making a fool of herself trying to leave her home. It’s a much more literal interpretation of the title “Homestuck” than before.

The end of this act is super interesting to me. It’s an echo of the end of Act 1 in a way as direct as possible: a surprise explosion that, to our knowledge, would kill our new hero. In both cases, we have no idea how the victim could possibly have survived.

The Hussiebot interlude following this act is just as hilarious as I remember it being but I’d count it more as Act 6 Intermission 1 so I won’t talk about it here.

Strong points: Three of the four protagonists are engaging to read and follow.* The twists upon the early acts are surprising and subvert many expectations. And lots of cool mysteries are teased.

Weak points: The pesterlogs spend too much time with lengthy greetings and closings. Some of the guardian callbacks are forced and then left in the dust due to early installment weirdness. One of the four protagonists is not that engaging to read and follow.

* This also holds for the beta kids in the first two acts. Jade in the early acts is kind of a shit character.

Overall: Act 6 Act 1 isn’t as bad as people say but is certainly flawed in its presentation. I can understand people’s annoyances with it, but the positive aspects often aren’t appreciated.