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.
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).
Alternate post title: The Wonderful World of Strider Malaise
I’ll finish A6A6I1 before next 4/13, I promise. I’m setting this goal because this act (screw calling it a sub-sub-intermission) ends with a scene that I’ve been looking forward to covering for a LONG time now and I’m worried that whatever content comes out on Homestuck’s 11th anniversary might clog up my brain again.
Dirk is out of the loop both literally and figuratively.
Also, just like last time, I’m quoting all of Dirk’s conversation with Arquiusprite in images instead of text.
Picking up from where we left off, it’s time to see what Dirk is up to. He’s flying through the outer reaches of the alpha session just like the three different versions of Jack Noir, contacting Arquiusprite as a last resort to figure out what the hell is going on.
With these three lines alone, it’s already clear that the Condesce’s plan for what to do with Dirk is working exactly as intended: she has no use for him whatsoever and used Jade to warp him as far away from the action as possible. Kind of sucks that this guy is shafted for so much of Act 6 Act 6, but I guess that’s just what the empress thinks of him.
Here, Arquiusprite does what he does best: providing bizarre trivia on things absolutely no one asked about. This is what he does for most of this conversation, which is hilarious for the reader but painfully useless for Dirk.
Act 6 Act 3, Part 3 of 8 or so I hope but I really don’t know
Pages 4862-4877 (MSPA: 6762-6777)
I couldn’t resist having philosophy bullshit for a post title.
Why did I have to stop in the middle of this exposition sequence? I’m sorry everyone. Also as you probably haven’t noticed I’ve taken a bit of liberty ordering text and images.
Take a moment to appreciate this panel. Not enough people do.
TT: My bro did this too with his many fine films. TT: Practically everything was a symbol for something. Either in mockery of the batterwitch, or conveying some hidden message to its audience. Each film was always rigorously picked apart for its head-scratching symbolic meaning. TT: But he managed to accomplish all that without ever compromising the purity of his ironic vision, which I think was admirable.
Last post pretty much ended with me discussing the supposed symbolism in Rose’s books. Now we learn that Dave’s movies also had a crazy symbolism thing going on, but I guess we’re supposed to infer for ourselves what lies in there? Or maybe it’s more like how Homestuck references those comics and it’s probably intertwined with that.
GT: Your forebears are certainly entrepreneurial if nothing else. GT: I can get behind the idea of making a killing if it means i also get to be as good at doing adventures as i hope to be. GT: Did they ever bring the battle to the witchs doorstep or were the blows dealt strictly through public masquerades and theatrics? TT: Yeah, they got pretty deep into the shit eventually. TT: They were both very skilled combatants. I’m pretty sure she had some weird powers too. GT: Powers you say? TT: Communion with occult forces. Something like that. TT: She knew things. Had visions. It’s why she was able to write those books, and more importantly, why Roxy and I were able to survive here.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Rose in the scratched universe had the exact same whole crazy knowledge thing going on as her other self. The explanation almost feels like handwaving stuff but given what previous stuff we’ve seen with the trolls and their ancestors’ abilities it kind of works fine, makes sense even.
NOTE: The first 30 or so pages covered in this post are technically between Act 6 Intermission 1 and Act 6 Act 2, but it makes the most sense to consider those pages part of the latter act.
NOTE 2 (8/25/2016): Happy birthday, Andrew Hussie!
You are Jane Crocker again.
And once again, you have woken up on the moon of Prospit, without any recollection of how you fell asleep. You think you were going outside to get the mail? You can’t remember.
Here’s a bit of dream self weirdness in action. Waking up in the dream world and taking a while to remember stuff that happened is one of the defining motifs of dream bubbles, but not of dreams in Prospit or Derse. Jade’s dreams never worked that way at all, with her essentially sleeping on and off in sort of a dual state of existence, sometimes forgetting that she’s even asleep. But in fairness, Jade has always been a special case in that regard.
Fitting that post number 42 (the answer to the Ultimate Question) is where we finally get an answer to a very fundamental question in Homestuck: how exactly universes are made.
First here is a flash, titled [S] Wake, that I could’ve ended last post with but didn’t. I’m not sure if it’s more thematically appropriate to end a post with the start of Murderstuck or start a post with it. Last post was getting long so I stuck with the latter.
If there’s anything about Homestuck the average person is likely to know, it’s the story behind the song Megalovania (a version of which is used in this flash). There’s really no reason to rehash it all over again, nor is there any reason to point out for the ten millionth time how funny it is that so many people got into Homestuck through the iconic Undertale song.
Introduction < Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 > Act 5 Act 2, Part 2 of 32 Pages 2684-2731 (MSPA: 4584-4631) NOTE: I said my blog hiatus would probably last longer than this, but I’ve finished all homework and I have some spare time now, so I figured, why not release a post right now? Next post will probably be 1-2 weeks from now.
Background turtles are sweating like there’s no tomorrow.
We see what Rose is up to, and what’s the first thing she does? She destroys a turtle temple, which is kind of a character establishing moment, except that we already were introduced to her long ago so maybe it’s more of a mission establishing moment? I don’t know, it still has the same feel as a character establishing moment. But it reveals a new trait in Rose, her exceptional perseverance and desire for relevance. Dave once said that she did this crazy destruction stuff “because shes rose”.
This is the first time a character is represented in an alert bubble by a symbol against a non-white background; this gradually becomes more and more common as the story progresses.*
* As Homestuck went on, alert bubbles have progressed like so: (1) bubbles with “…” in them -> (2) bubbles with their character’s face -> (3) characters’ symbols against a white background -> (4) characters’ symbols as they appear on the shirt (this includes aspect symbols). That progression is pretty gradual, with each slowly overtaking its predecessor.
GA: Okay This Will Probably Strike You As An Odd Moment For Me To Mention This GA: But Actually GA: There Are Not Many Moments Ive Observed On Your Timeline Which Wouldnt Qualify As Odd GA: And Somehow GA: Your Idle Moments Seem To Invite Interruption The Least GA: And This Is A Difficult Topic For Me To Broach GA: For Reasons That You Probably Wont Understand TT: You’re rambling again, Kanaya.
Rose’s line here is a definite indicator of a friendship going on between them.
GA: Okay Sorry GA: Ive Just Been Meaning To Say GA: That I Read Your Instructional Guide
Why didn’t she mention this sooner? That should logically be the first thing she tells her, but I guess she was too occupied with finding the deal with her or something.
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