Homestuck

So far in act 5 we’ve met Karkat and Gamzee. Karkat is some kind of angry kid who seems fed up with everything and has “ambitions”. Gamzee is just some sort of stoned juggalo.

We are with Karkat as he attempts to code using a Trollian programming language. This language sounds like looping recursive hell. He shows off a virus made by twinArmageddons [TA]. The virus will apparently make the target's computer explode. This also apparently curses the user and everyone it then spreads too. Notably this is importing 2 libraries Universe 1 and 2. He has no idea how this code works and is too proud to ask.

TA reaches out to invite Karkat to invite him to the game. He describes it as a game in which their civilization depends on them playing it. TA had somehow adapted the game using some kind of technology that apocalypseArisen [AA] (who we haven't met) found in a ruin. Boy does that seem like a good idea. Karkat also mentions that TA has a “mutant brain”. It seems like TA can hear thoughts or something but it isn't explained yet. More on the game TA explains there is a red and blue team. TA is leading the Blue team. Karkat is on the red team but he's upset he isn't the leader. TA chose gallowsCalibrator [GC] for that. The accusation is that TA chose a blind girl to lead his opposition so that he could win. Though Karkat isn't very vague about his jealousy over his self given status as a great leader. TA mentions he doesn't really care and if Karkat can get GC to agree to give him leadership of the team then he can have it.

After this conversation, Karkat notes that the resident below him is getting “crabby”. He needs to have an encounter with them soon. This is similar to the kids not wanting to face their guardians.

We are then taken to another character. This one we’ve met before as gallowsCalibrator [GC]. Her room is very colourful, but she can't actually see it. Though from what we know she can taste colours. So perhaps the semi transparent colorful curtains make the air taste nice? Her name is Terezi Pyrope. She has a wall covered in colorful dragon scales, dragon plushies called Scalemates. Terezi also enjoys roleplay. She describes it as hardcore justice and “orchestrating the demise of the wicked”. She has many Trollian law books in braille. Almost shocking such a brutal culture would have respect for accessibility needs. She also has a bunch of chalk drawings on her walls. She mentions she lives alone in the woods. Also she is currently the leader of the red team with 5 friends. The blue team also has 6 players.

She starts us off with a scenario. One of her Scalemates is on trial. She is the prosecuting attorney and the Judge which she calls the Honorable Tyranny. She is prosecuting Senator Lemonsnout, and defence isn't a thing in Alternia. She proceeds to slap the yellow plush to interrogate them. They’re accused of stealing beetle reserves. The key witness was murdered. It seems the green plush was stabbed by a dagger. However, the senator dropped his personal satchel containing illicit beetles in the courtroom. As the prosecuting attorney she can decide the fate of the accused. The Honorable Tyranny is apparently just there to be menacing. She borrows old movie tropes from Batman and no country for old men and flipped a coin. Though the coin flip is favorable to lemon snout. She reminds him that justice is blind and hangs him anyway. Lemonsnout hangs from Terezi’s treehouse along with many other Scalemates. She adjourns and ends the fantasy by licking the drawing of the Honorable Tyranny she made on the wall. She says the red chalk taste good.

We are currently in a new act. All the stuff involving human kids getting sucked into a video game will be put aside for a while. The story is now focused on these trolls and how they came to be in their own failed session. Karkat is the first of these trolls we get introduced to. We know him as carcinoGeneticist [CG] before this act.

We are still checking out Karkat's bedroom. His PC looks somewhat normal except the tower is a big purple larval sack. Also, there are way too many cords running to the display. He has a copy of game Grub magazine which we can assume is the Trollian equivalent to Game Bro. He also shows a DVD copy of the trollian version The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. This is mostly useless info, but he does mention “blue bloods” seem to be trolls with literally blue blood. The blue bloods are higher socially and snobbish.

A fellow troll pesters Karkat, terminallyCapricious [TC]. We haven't actually seen this one yet, though they did try to contact Jade at some point. TC considers Karkat to be his best friend. Though Karkat seems to hate this guy. TC is really into “miracles” and the drink Faygo. Karkat and TC talk about a big thing that twinArmageddons [TA] has going on. We know TA is the computer savvy one who was helping grimAuxiliatrix [GA]. Karkat has no idea what TA is up to though and figures it will be another project that wastes time.

We then go to TC, we see he is pretty different from the other trolls. He's obsessed with clowns. I had no idea what this was when I first read through this. These are references to a specific fandom for a band. More details on this come out later but to spoil it for your sanity TC is a Juggalo. I still don't know much about Juggalo culture but it doesn't seem like something I’d mesh well with. It’s also pretty much non-existent in my area. Anyway TC’s profanity laden introduction tells us his name is Gamzee Makara. He considers himself a fan of “clowns of a grim persuasion which may not be in full possession of their mental faculties”. He describes his as an obscure cult following some minstrels. These minstrels will lead them to a planet that doesn't exist yet. He mentions the cult's looked down upon by the rest of society. That's a bit of an ironic comparison to how the Homestuck community is sometimes viewed. Anyway his room is a mess of clowning/busking tools. This includes juggling pins, horns, and a unicycle. He doesn't know how to adjust the unicycle's height so it is too tall for him to actually use. There's also a lot of Faygo and pie tins of green sludge. His fetch modus is some kind of random nonsense. He claims to have no understanding of it and actively chooses not to. Also as he takes his husktop (laptop) it seems he can break the fourth wall and see the UI. The “pies” that he “bakes” are just pie tins filled with the Sopor Slime that is in troll beds. He mentions that he is not supposed to eat the stuff and it causes brain damage. He claims to not know this (despite explaining it) and blames his custodian. The custodian is apparently “out to sea”. We can see Gamzee’s hive is on a beach next to the sea. He’s equipped with a juggling pin which is a club type.

While on the beach he attempts to answer a pester from another troll. His inventory system tosses a bottle of Faygo into the ocean. He then just violates the “rules” entirely and just grabs his laptop out of the ui with his hands. This is pretty concerning, it also raises the questions of why modus exist at all. The modus, and other inventory systems are not a mechanic of SBURB, they just exist in the universe. It’s as fundamental as gravity, and yet this guy is so spaced out he can just ignore it.

The other troll pestering him is gallowsCalibrator [GC] (the blind troll). GC wants Gamzee to play a game with her. This is apparently the big mystery game that they had all been excited about. Ganezee agrees to join once he is back inside. Though GC knows he will just space out on the beach.

We’ve entered the 5th Act. My hot take from my original read of this is that the trolls kind of suck. I know they are a fan favourite, but I'll explain as we do this thing. One thing you may notice is the trollian language. It’s from The Elder Scrolls which apparently landed the writers in some hot water from Bethesda. But the archives use it, and provide a handy codex. Anyway we start out on –Turdodor Fuckball– Alternia. We're greeted with a character we have met before. carcinoGeneticist [CG] gets introduced in the same fashion John was. It is his 13th “wriggling day” (birthday). We learn his real name is –Bulgereek Nookstain– Karkat Vantas. We can see his room has grey walls and floors. His bed seems to be a big purple larval thing filled with green stuff. We can see a purple sky and clouds outside.

Much like John he is into bad rom coms and he has posters for them all over his room. The cast on these posters are just photoshopped earth actors with grey skin. Horns are also added, and the titles are ridiculously long. With more totally not controversial actors like Will Smith. He also is an amature coder. He has a cool Sickle in hopes of becoming something called a Threshecutioner. Karkat mentions he has a new chat system called Trollian and he is going to play a game with 5 of his friends. A game that doesn't exist yet. It seems this is a past event from where we left off, from before the trolls got into the game. He shows off his stuff. His bed is something called a Recuperacoon and it's full of Sopor Slime.

His modus is a system that puts his items in an encoded vault that he needs to hack to use. This is the least practical one yet. Taking the vault into his inventory doubled the weight and sent it through his floor. This means his scythe is now gone and there is a hole in his floor.

He also shows his programming manual. The ~ATH - A Handbook For The Imminently Deceased. This doesn't look like any language I know about but I pretty much only code in Typescript these days.

Karkat goes out of his “respiteblock” (bedroom) and onto his “extraterraneal landing slats” (balcony). He explained he designed and built his “Hive” (House). Trolls get taught to do this very young. He also lives with his Custodian (troll version of a guardian). He goes into a poem but cuts to a rant. Karkat likes to rant. He mentions he has grand ambitions but no real direction. He feels tonight will change this.

Note this isnt act 5 yet, I think we are in an epilogue for act 4.

The situation has become bad.

We start with Roses “final” entry to gameFaq.com. We vaguely saw in [S]Descend Rose's gate exploded. She explains here that she blew it up. She’s mentioned that both the troll and the old gods have told her this is a doomed session . With this in mind there is no sense in playing the game as intended. She's now hellbent on changing her fate. She’s also used magic to place her guide on a server that can exist outside of earth. Her hope is it will help “any future species” who may find it.

Meanwhile, hours after the Reckoning, the Warweary Villein(WV) is wandering a destroyed planet. He's wrapped in the bed sheets from John's dream bedroom. The Warweary Villein is now the Wayward Vagabond. He thinks back to the events that got him here. WV was for some reason spared by Jack. Perhaps it was to make him suffer being a survivor. Or perhaps Jack felt the WV was so little of a threat he just ignored him entirely. He saw John's dreamself over the body of Jade's former Dream self. She is dead. He takes her ring though we don't know why he’d have known to do so. The clouds of Skaia reveal events past, present and future. John sees himself near a castle and knows that is where he must now go.

The Postal mistress (PM) also crashes to the desert planet. Her clothing bloodied she fashions some new clothes from a Prospite banner. She has her sword the ground has a bunch of mailboxes around her. The Postal Mistress becomes the Peregrine Mendicant. She recalls slaying the Hegemonic Brute (HB). HB had attempted to take the white kings scepter from her and failed. She now holds the crowns of the white king and the queen. Using HB’s walkie talkie she summoned Jack. Her mission from him was to kill the white king and queen. These crowns would be evidence of that. Even though she didn't actually harm them, She’s tricked Jack. She's presented with the Green package. The package she absolutely must present to John. She finds him and completes her mission. John now finally receives the package from Jade, the one he should have received at the beginning. He just found Jade's dead body not long ago. Now he has the message that came with it. The message doesn't seem to be from Jade, it's someone else who says they convinced Jade to give him this present. John will meet them soon. It doesn't really mention who wrote but it does mention all the contents of the box.

There is a second letter which is actually from Jade. She mentions she can't see John reading but isn't sure why he looks sad. She’d lived on Prospit most of her life, and used the clouds to see the future. She knows that when John wakes up it’ll be because something bad has happened but she’s happy he is awake. The present is something that her “Penpal” had suggested. The penpal had gotten the idea from someone else. She knows these are items that John needs for some reason. She can't wait for him to wake up and she really wants to finally meet him in the real world. This is of course devastating. As John sits alone in his grief the tip of the sword is at his face. Jack has come for him and he wants the ring. But, he's interrupted by the contents of the box. It's the Bunny, in some new ultimate form. It is now modified with mechanical parts and seems to be fully autonomous. It’s also geared up with some crazy weapons including a hammer, 2 needles, a rifle and broken sword. Jack seems to know that this is and he is not going to mess with it.

On the desert planet the Authority Regulator (AR) is near some old frog ruins. He is wrapping himself in caution tape and seems to have found some arms. The Authority Regulator is now the Aimless Renegade. He witnessed The “Draconian Dignitary” (DD) use the MEOW book on a machine aimed at a dog. This created some sort of green energy and a puppy. AR hopped on his rocket board and flew out of the temple as it began to fire green light. He returned to the lab where John had been. John is still there though as he is in the dreaming world he is no longer awake in the lab. The lab is on one the asteroids affected the Reckoning and is currently being flung into a portal. AR decides it's his duty to protect citizens. He straps John to the rocket board with caution tape and sends him off into space. This is apparently safe, folks can just breathe in space. Jack flees the scene. Somehow he knows not to fight the mecha bunny. Meanwhile Jade's Grandpa is landing his spaceship. We see grandpa collect Jade's body and return to his ship. He leaves Rose's Mom and John's Dad Behind. John must have moved far from this as he doesn't see any of it. On the ship in the sky Granpa follows tradition and we see Jade's taxidermied body.

That’s pretty messed up there.

We see the white queen fly her ship into a portal she looks as Prospit is now in crumbles floating in space. She lands on the desert planet with her entourage. The White Queen becomes the Windswept Questant (WQ). We see her many years later finding and repairing the Egg ship. Then years later she is with WV, PM and AR in Can town. The mayor of cantown had been harbouring a secret. In his rusty knife all these years he had hidden a ring. The ring of power. John witnesses this. He sees it in a cloud.

Next to that cloud is another one with.. Awl damn it Andrew Hussie (AH) with another recap.

So as before I suggest reading that if you’re confused. Here are the many points I missed, or did not explain well enough.

• The Lil Cal sent back with the Bro baby is specifically the Dream version Cal. The “real” Cal got sliced up in the fight between Dave and Bro. This might imply that Cal is actually originally from the dream realm. AH mentions that Cal was so annoying to Dave that he was in Dave’s dreams. This would make Cal a manifestation of pure annoyance.

• A little more on the old gods. We know both Rose and Dave can hear them though Dave doesn't want to. This is because they are the “Children of Derse”. I think this is a balance. Derse kids get the old gods chattering in their heads. The Prospit kids get early access to the clouds of Skaia. Jade took advantage of this to help everyone.

• The reason that Daves egg hatched was apparently time. His bird wasn't trying to keep the egg from Dave by keeping it in the tower, it was trying to hatch it. It did so at just the right time. I don't think that was really clear enough in the story though. Dave sprite could have easily confirmed this.

• I completely conflated “Skaia” and “The Battleground” and had to go back and make a bunch of edits. Sorry.

• he confirms that it was Becquerel (Bec) that DD used the MEOW book to make. I figured that’d be a spoiler but I guess it is kind of obvious. He mentions it will make him “dangerous” though we don't know how yet.

• I may not have it clear enough. The battlefield changed on each player entering. So if a 4th player entered it would evolve further. AH hints at this. - he suggests one of the reasons Jack may have spared WV is out of respect for a fellow mutineer.

• the dueling pistols that were left with Jade's Grandpa were in Jade's room. I think AH mentioning that might be for a reason given the room recently blew up and scattered some stuff.

• The dog Halley was called “Harley” by grandpa as a result of a speech impediment. Harley is also Jade's surname. - way back when AR surrendered to WV, this was because the symbol for Bec was carved into the pumpkin WV was carrying. AH points out that AR was afraid of the events he witnessed in the labs.

• I didn’t notice that the “ships” found by the exiles represented the items used to access the medium. These were actually in the meteors which had hit their homes. Johns grew into a tree that became an apple ship that PM found, Roses was a wine bottle and the cork was the ship WV found. Daves was an egg and the ship the WQ had come in on. She found that ship split into two because Bro cut the meteor in half. AR didn't find a ship yet.

Buckle up I’m counting this animation as several pages. This is another one of those critical moments in the story. It starts a bit awkwardly. Since we never actually saw Dave unlock the egg to get the medium. The story kind of skipped that to try and trick us with the Davesprite timeline.

So the animation starts with that event. As Dave was climbing up the radio mast to get the egg the bird sprite started to peck at his head. The result was Dave and the egg falling off of the tower. The giant meteor would have landed directly on him at that time. But, what Dave may not have seen was that the meteor was split in Half. This gave him the extra split second he needed. Though we don't see Dave actually crack the egg it's implied. Dave is rescued by his brother's rocket board. When the meteor came down Bro was riding on top of it, He split it in two with his sword saving Dave. We then see present Dave in his red tux looking towards his first gate. Though he didn't see his brother at that moment he likely knew that he was there protecting him. This is why he’d been thinking of him in the last panel.

Next we see the starship that Jade's Grandpa is piloting flying closer to Skiai. Roses mom has a mean looking sniper rifle, Dad has a pipe in his mouth and a cake in hand. They are going to kick some ass or something.

When we last left Jack, he’d just slain the black king. The army of the Warweary Villein(WV) was surrounding him as they’d come to do the same thing. But though they had the same goal they are not allies. Jack begins slaughtering the army as WV watches on in horror. Using the ring, Jack summons miles of red vines. These vines begin to cover the battleground destroying everything in their path. They even rip the planet itself asunder. An underling surrenders the scepter to Jack. Though he uses this to start the reckoning.

Jack then flies to Prospit and destroys it using the same Red Miles. He also severs the chain holding the moon of Prospit causing the moon to fall towards the Battleground.

Before this we See the former white queen and her entourage escaping. We’d see a ship leaving just as Jack arrives implying that she escapes. Also you may notice one of her entourage is holding a bucket of paint. This character is actually important later.

Also on Prospit is Jade and John’s dream selves. Jade is awakened and currently in the dreamworld of Prospit. But John has never awakened and has not yet gained control of his dream self. Jade know she needs to wake John up but now with the moon falling towards the Battleground she needs to move fast. As the moon falls John falls from the tower. Jade catches him but she is now between Skiai and a falling moon about to smash into it. She tries desperately to wake him, including slapping him around but he will not awaken. In disparity she throws him out of the path of the moon. But, she cannot escape. Jade's dream self is killed. I’ll note she was still wearing the ring of power from the white queen when this occurred. Being disconnected so violently from Jades dream self the dreambot explodes. This caused Jade's awake self to fall from her tower in the waking world.

Also John finally awakens in the dream world. Too late. lazy bastard.

the Battleground is not destroyed but the moon of prospit leaves a massive creator. We see about 30% of the planet's surface, another 30% is by the red miles.

Jacks rampage continues as he moves to the Land of Heat and Clockwork (LOHAC) where Dave currently is. But he encounters Big Bro instead on a huge turntable. They fight, we only see the fight end with Bro destroying the turntable they are fighting on.

There is an intermission involving Squiddles for some reason. I’m sure there is actually a deep point to the Squiddles stuff. Relate to the old gods, but in this instance they are just a tension cut. It’s not related to the story.

John is with the babies as the Reckoning clock counts down. Watch baby has an item with it.

• John has the colonel sassacre.
• Jade has the “modified” half knit bunny
• Rose has the unmodified oil stained bunny
• Dave has Maplehoof (interesting..)
• Johns Grandma(?) had the oil stained fedora
• Roses mom(?) has Mewtini
• Jades Grandpa(?) has the dueling pistols
• Big Bro(?) has Lil Cal

Odd that John's guardian isn't actually his dad but his grandmother. But anyway the babies are pulled towards the Battleground by the Reckoning but fall through portals. Warping them through time and space.

We also see The “Draconian Dignitary” (DD) who uses the MEOW book on the machine. The machine is targeting Halley, the normal dog. The creates the usual sludge copy but the machine goes haywire with green sparks. The Authority Regulator (AR) watches in terror at the situation. It seems this is the birth of Bec? We see Dave and Rose fighting their way to their first gates. With Rose we see an explosion by her gate and her flying away.

Lastly, we see Bec outside Jade's tower in the waking world. There is a massive meteor in the sky and the part of the tower where her room was is just a smoking limb.

Before ending this I’ll gush about the animation here. It’s friggin’ amazing. The way the animation moves to the music, another piece by Toby is well coordinated. There are moments of the music which highlight the motifs of the characters involved giving them their own sound profiles. This one also has a lot of visual artist involvement including some of Lexxy Douglass’ work. I think she’s my favorite of the visual artists for Homestuck.

The time of reckoning is near!

As far as we know this means all the asteroids in the veil get warped around many of them into Skiai. carcinoGeneticist [CG] mentioned that this was the game's way of making the player hurry up and kill the black king. But this isn't quite fair, or normal. Johns only passed the second ring and Jade isn't even in the game yet (at least not in the waking world). What extra unfairness as the game seems to be the entire reason John exists. The game somehow made him create himself in a lab just to play it, and it’s doomed him.

CG contacts John once more. John's surrounded by babies and wonders how the reckoning is going to get them to their timelines. CG reminds John he can't really stop the reckoning. Also it’s about to start in a few minutes. It’s not an instant process but it's way too early to prevent. CG has mentioned that his own session was different. That he knows that the event is occurring too early, but he’s never said way. John asked CG what is different here. CG only responds with “JACK NOIR”.

John had no idea who Jack was at this point. In the troll session Jack had been an ally. He helped the trolls defeat the queen then became their exiled guide. He’s not supposed to have committed regicide and become a usurper. By taking control he is advancing the game's plot way ahead of schedule. John is not really processing any of this.

CG mentions he might as well give the babies to bunnies now. John thinks about this a minute and we get what many consider to be the most stupid moment in all of Homestuck. As once again John relives that scene from Con Air.

(I had to watch is many times, you owe me).

This animation's done with Micheal Guy Bowman serenading us with a version of How do I Live. The song featured in this scene of Con Air. John emotionally returns to the oil covered bunny to Baby Rose. Rose doesn't really want it but seems to take it anyway. This while practically punching the baby version of her mother out of the way. As he does this CG is watching in cringe and confusion. As John was taking in the raw emotion of this moment, baby Jade tugged on his pants. John remembers he had taken the modified bunny that Rose had made for him. So he once again repeats the scene but for baby Jade. He gives her the half knitted bunny as the music hits its crescendo. At this point as CG is dying of cringe gallowsCalibrator [GC] comes from behind him pointing at the screen and laughing. I’ll point out that this doesn't even make sense! She can't see the damn screen!

Anyway I can kind of see why this might be somewhat of a real emotional moment for him. Again he hasn't actually met most of his friends in person. He recently ran into Rose but she was asleep. This is the only moment so far where he is with all of his friends in person. Even if they are all babies. John takes his friendships very sincerely and isn't afraid to show them vulnerability. We’ve seen this in the notes he had left to each of them. Today is really another birthday for all of them and he again gets to give them gifts (except Dave I guess?). He could have also at least pinned a note to himself or something but there is still time i guess. Another way we can see this is that John is processing some serious Trauma. For John movies are his source of comfort. Engaging in flatout escapism seems like his reaction to all the crap he is dealing with. Last time he was dealing with stuff he learned he had vandalized his own room and had no idea why. He also learned his father wasn't really a professional busking prankster. He learned his was a mundane businessman. Though we now know his fathers interest in japery is actually from John's grandma. Johns now just learned he was born in a lab. His father isn't actually his father at all, John may have just realized he's adopted. He saw his grandmother's death, by a meteor. He might also have noted that the meteor was actually his baby self crashing to the planet. So in some sense he may now blame himself for his grandma’s death. There’s also an existential horror here. He is his own creator, and the creator of his friends. What responsibility must he feel from this? Especially knowing that they are all doomed. That part probably is what broke him at this time with CG pushing that knowledge onto him.

And this ends Act 4…? Well no. I guess Andrew decided to follow up the dumb moment with a psyche out. That's fine because I have a 10 page minimum.

Speaking of Trauma Dave is looking at his blood soaked hands. He’s just unceremoniously tossed a body out of his window into a lake of lava. It was his own body. He’s learning that time travel can be dangerous. He hid the body quickly because he knew if Jade saw it, that it might freak her out.

gallowsCalibrator [GC] pesters Dave. She asks Dave what his blood smells like, what it tastes like. Apparently this is the first time she’s pestered Dave. GCs trolling is weird and only effective in how persistent she is about it. She draws a lot of pictures, but given she is blind they dont really make sense. Dave explains what his blood looks like, he poetically calls it a vermillion symphony to his eyes. Though it's hard to say if he really feels that or if he’s just trying to be cool. He’s trying to use the fact that he can see to counter troll, which is a bit mean but GC is rolling with it. adiosToreador [AT] is pestering Jade. Though Jade is still asleep in the waking wor;d her dream bot is allowing her to respond. She mentions to AT that she would wake up but she needs to figure out how to get John to awaken first. She doesn't know how yet. AT has so far absolutely failed at trolling. Even with the timeline advantages Dave and Rose have both counter trolled him into dust. It seems he’s just giving up now and trying to help Jade. He mentions this to Jade and tries to help out. Firstly, At mentions he can't really tell if she succeeds or not but he knows that she will wake up soon. He also lets her know that her robot will blow up in the future; he is able to confirm this with her future self. She also says that the other trolls are not as bad as they seem. AT seems skeptical on that one. Jade points out the other trolls refuse to talk to while she is dreaming. AT mentions that is odd as he preferred the dreaming world, at least until his dream self died.

Rose is using her newest gear to do some house cleaning. In that she is effortlessly making Orges explode with her cool spell wands. grimAuxiliatrix [GA] pesters her at this time. GA’s first encounter with Rose was actually with John using Rose's account. This has led to GA having a really bad opinion of Rose ever since. GA is wondering if she’s reached the “Smart Rose” or the “Dumb Rose”. Rose explains there is actually an explanation to that. But she’s actually a little too busy at the moment to chat about it. Also she’s worried it will affect the timeline. GA takes this as scorn and leaves the conversation.

Back to GC and Dave. GC attempts another photo edit of Dave and his bro being Marty and the Doc from Back to the Future. Dave mentions he hasn't actually seen his Bro in awhile. Neither have we the audience. He wasn't on the ship with Rose's mom and John dad. She confirms that between now and The Rift (the event where the trolls cannot see past) he doesn't see his brother again. She ribs him for missing his brother and suggests that she will guide him instead. She mentions he will meet friendly crocodiles past the first gate and he 's terrified of them.

An Authority Regulator (AR) had been on the beat in Derse and he witnessed a weird puppet flying a rocket skateboard into a transportalizer. Upon following the puppet to issue a citation he ended up in a lab way out in the veil. He confiscated the rocket board from the puppet and decided to try it outside. Now AR is rocketing around the veil feeling more alive than ever.

AR comes across an asteroid with the frog shrine on it. We know that this asteroid would crash into ancient earth and eventually millions of years later biome Jades Home island. Frogs are considered illegal under Derse rulership, so AR needs to explore this illegal site.

In the frog ruins AR sees the time capsule lotus thing where Jade finds the SBURB beta. It's currently waiting on an item. Deeper in the ruins, deeper than we have seen there is another lab. AR passes a giant single panel screen. We see what looks like Johns grandma as a baby, in a very fancy home she is next to a fedora covered in even more crude oil then the one currently in the Lab with John. The date is 04/21/1910.

A man enters the frame, the adoptive father of the baby. Colonel Sassacre. It's mentioned a meteor had landed in the bakery his wife had owned and this baby was in the creator. Unlike John's grandma, the wife wasn't in the bakery at the time. Another meteor strikes in the backyard taking out the family doghouse. In this new crater was another baby. This one a boy with dueling pistols, and shot the colonel dead. However the family dog, Halley, was fine. It arrived to greet the babies. Halley looks kind of like Bec, but normal. The machine is targeting the dog.

We see these 2 children at 13 years old. The boy is riding off on Halley for a life of adventure, the young girl is forced to live with the “wicked pastry baroness”.

AR of course has no idea what any of this means but it doesn't appear to be illegal. At that moment the “Draconian Dignitary” (DD) appeared behind him. AR knows DD is a higher rank then him and chooses to hide. He witnesses DD throw some books around. It looks like the MEOW book was not the only thing DD stole from Daves room. DD also took the SBURB beta, and Roses wizard fanfics. Only needing the MEOW book he tosses the other items. The SBURB beta’s land in the lotus time capsule. This explains how Jade would find them millions of years later. The fanfic lands next to the capsule. Maybe it just rotted away there.

DD then takes the MEOW book to the machine still targeting Halley.

John had seen the origins of the guardians. His father, Rose's mother, Dave's Brother, and Jade's Grandfather. You are releasing at this point that the families are missing a few pieces. Though single parents and kin care are normal practice. There isn’t even a hint of the question, who's John’s mom? Where are Dave and Jade's parents? We just saw an important moment from the day John was born, but his father is with John's grandma.

John had used the appearifier to get genetic data from the 4 guardians. Then a machine processed that data and created 4 baby paradox clones that look a bit like the guardians. The adorable 3 eyed kitten Dr. Meowgon (formally Vodka Mewtini) Hits a button on the console. John has no idea what these buttons actually do so he’d have likely done this himself.

The 4 tubes drop into 2 different vats. Tubes 1 and 2, John's dad, and Jade's grandpa go into one vat. In the other, Rose's mom and Big Bro. Then the machine makes 4 more babies. John becomes an “Ecotobiolobabysitter”. John has just become his own father, and his own grandfather. He's also the father of his friends. The kids are all biologically related.

We learned the guardians are connected by a mystery of meteors. They'd all met up at the lab that John is now in but have since left. We see Jades grandma, who isn't dead yet, piloting a huge starship. The starship is a modern battleship but with his own theming. Grandpa also seems to know what is going on here. As he puts it he is just giving the others a ride before he returns home to die.

We see John's dad return the pink scarf to Rose's mom. This is the one he had found on the day a meteor destroyed his mother and her shop. They hold hands as the ship appears to fly towards Skaia.

Back to John and his babies. carcinoGeneticist [CG] reaches out to John. This conversation seems to be an early one from CG’s perspective. He is being an asshole and he’s confused about the timeline. He does know what's happening though. He tells John he’s actually made himself and his friends. These paradox clones will be returned to their correct times. Time in the Medium views time in John's world like we would view a recording. This is because the world he is from will be destroyed. Though so will the world he is currently in. CG reminds John that he is in a null session.

CG is somewhat sympathetic to John. In his session with 12 players he was the one to make himself and his friends. John also uses this opportunity to screw with CG. John mentions humans typically hatch from eggs into larva. We already saw the payoff of this.

Meanwhile John is trying to care for 8 babies. They're crawling around a lab and playing with the random items the guardians had left. This includes maplehoof and some dueling pistols. CG comes back and John confuses him into explaining “The Reckoning ''. This is the event that causes the babies to go to time and unite with their guardians. The meteors that have fallen are the vehicle that get them from the medium to earth. John asks CG to contact him again in a few minutes. This of course pisses CG off, but it's not like the guy has anything better to do.

Many of the adventuring kids in this story are no longer bound to a computer, they’ve adapted their technology with the “alchemy”. This means they are not spending as much time in their bedrooms. You may remember much of this story started with the kids playing SBURB in their rooms. I think this scene shows this a little bit. Davesprite was outside of Daves room and since Dave wanted to talk with him he also left his room.

Now at this time we also know there is some crazy stuff happening with the Derseite Kingdom and the new rulers are up to some shenanigans. Jack noir has committed Regicide, killing both his king and queen. We know his 3 accomplices are out in the medium causing trouble. We saw a thwarted attempt from “Courtyard Droll” (CD) to steal the white ring of power. Jade managed to prevent that. As Dave leaves his room to go hang with DaveSprite the “Draconian Dignitary” (DD) sneaks into Daves room through his window.

Dave’s conversation with his future self is about how it's weird that he has a copy of a book Rose was told to destroy by the old old gods and how that can't possibly be a bad idea. This is just Dave being ironic though and him receiving affirmation that he needs to actually destroy that book and not be an idiot.

Of course upon returning to his room the book is now gone. He’d use time travel to see who did that but he notices his own bloody corpse laying on the ground. Not even his bedroom is safe anymore it seems. Fortunately being surrounded by a lake of lava he can just dispose of the corpse by chucking out the window.

John is in an ecobiology lab way out in the veil. Somehow this place is connected to his father, Rose's mother, Dave's brother, and Jade's Grandpa. John finds a terminal for displays which may be an Apperifier of some sort. We have seen these before but John has no idea what this is. He tries some buttons and sees a feed in the top right screen. This is a feed of a place John is familiar with as it’s his old neighbourhood. It's from a few months prior to his birth and there is a Betty Crocker factory there that he doesn't remember.

Zooming in, John sees his own father walking with his grandmother. The system targets his grandmother. Shortly after a meteor falls onto the Crocker Factory, the explosion narrowly misses his father and grandmother. If you remember way back on page 545 John accesses the family vault. There are newspaper clippings mentioning this exact event.

John hits the blue button. Normally this would take the targeted object out its place in the timeline and appearify it into the present. The Rose had used to take Jasper from her own past (page 931). But we also know that if this is attempted with something which would change the timeline the device will only create a green sludge copy. The DNA of that item can then be used. The one John is using goes a step further and places that sludge into one of 4 glass tubes.

John changes the view to 4, bottom right. This shows Jades island 2 days later. A large yacht near it, a boat named “Jade”. The story tells us that Jades Grandfather was the owner of the Croocker Factory that was just destroyed. Baby Jade is on the yacht somehow with Roses patchwork bunny. The system targets her grandfather. A meteor is seen in the distance but it's not near them. John creates another sludge copy this time of Jades grandpa. It is also stored in a vat.

John changes to view 3, bottom left. This shows the next day. A huge urban city in central america had been hit by the meteor that we just saw. Dave's Brother is next to the smoking crater. His favourite record shop is now gone. The system targets big bro. Another meteor flys over head. John presses the button again. Filling the 3rd vat of sludge.

John changes to view 2, top left. This one is on the day of his birth. April 13th 1996. There is still a huge crater where the Croker Factory was. South of that there is a strip mall (This are not common everywhere so I’ll link to what this means).

John's father is outside of “The Prankster's Gambit”. Roses mom walks nearby with baby Rose in her arms. The story tells us she is working for Jade's grandpa to investigate the “celestial anomalies”. A meteor crashes down onto the joke shop. Johns grandma was still inside. Roses mother flees the scene leaving her scarf. Johns father suspects the owner of the scarf knows something. We see Rose on a hill also playing with the bunny, though one that she hasn’t altered yet.

This means the bunny from Con Air, given to John by Dave on his 13th birthday, is somehow given to Rose as a baby. Later she will modify it with knitting, and it will somehow end up with Jade as a baby. The bunny exists in multiple places at the same time.

It also means that all of the guardian characters are linked by this mystery. John Presses the button. The 4th vat is filled with green sludge. The machine begins to execute a process.

Giving a bunch of teens the ability to spy on each other like Sims characters has some creepy side effects. Fortunately, unlike most of the fan fiction, this story isn’t too crazy about that kinda thing. Andrew has some class. But despite this Dave is still a bit creepy about Rose’s privacy. At least about her Journals. Earlier Dave had convinced John to send him a copy of the item code for Roses Journals so he could “get his snoop on”. So now he is doing that.

One of the two book's titled MEOW. It's filled with the letters M, E, O, and W much like the graffiti on Roses walls. This is apparently related to DNA. We code our human DNA with codons. The second journal contains Wizard fanfiction. Rose supposedly hates wizards. I tried to read this but it's rough. Rose's love of the thesaurus made this written work as thick and inaccessible as a pit of hot magma. Tossing this into the Hemmingway app made my screen turn pure red. From what I can gather it's a scene of 12 wizards looking at evidence of some sort of crime. One suggests eating a snack but gets denied. Dave has about the same difficulty. He decides to use his juice stained SBURB beta as a bookmark. It has no use to him now but that beta will somehow end up going to Jade.

Dave checks in on Rose. She is burning her original copy of the MEOW book. She was told to do this by the old gods from the furthest rings. The told her to destroy the book. Dave seems to want to assume she is just insane. But they are both currently living inside of a video game where this kind of thing could be very real. She then questions how Dave knows about what is in her books. Dave tosses John under the bus, claiming John was snooping on Roses stuff. (Bruh). Rose doesn't quite buy this but doesn't seem to care. It seems she actually likes wizards but doesnt like that her mother likes them.

Rose tells Dave that he is the “Prince of the moon” and the gods want to talk to him. He just needs to be less distracted and try looking into the sky without his shades for once. His reaction to that is odd silence.

Davesrpite then also speaks to Rose. He has some knowledge of what Rose is experiencing having been in the future. But he mentions that she didn't burn that book in his timeline. She mentions she has now seen some of the future as a result of waking up in Derse. The timeline has changed and now the book needed to go. They agree the Gods are usually right though Dave's terrified of them. This is why we were silent on the subject. Davesprite mentions he could hear the god sing and choose to drown them out. Given these are Lovecraftian horrors I can assume they are capable of driving people mad.

As a refresher, Rose is building John’s base as a player. Dave is building Rose’s base. Then Jade is building Dave’s base. Though Jade hasn't been doing much of that yet. Dave’s been a bit sensitive about Jade's “improvements” after she prototyped a dead bird. Though Dave is currently asleep though and can't really stop Jade from doing changes to his base. Though jade is also asleep she is using Jadebot to use her laptop.

It turns out Jade is actually decent at this. Unlike Rose who was terrible at architecture, Jade's building skills made Dave's sturdy. Her job was difficult. John's house got moved to the top of a giant mesa above the clouds. Rose's home was moved to an island. Dave's apartment got removed from its highrise. It's reattached to a structure of metal beams protruding from a lake of lava. No land to work with. Jade's work is being admired in the dream world of Prospit. She has amassed a small audience of Prospiterians watching her play the game. She mentions she should wake up soon and that her neighbour (John) will be doing the same.

There's a bit of an awkward transition here. Dave is now awake, we don't get a reaction to him seeing his new home. He just smashes an imp and goes right to alchemizing. So this again. Dave has a bunch of items provided from his future self we haven't seen yet.

• Dave combines his shades with his phone to make the same iShades that his future self had.

• Combining the turntables and his pc he makes a portable floating PC. Stronger than the iShades. He will use it for SUBRB.

• he combines a puppet tux with a red puppet, to make a softer red tux.

• he tries to combine the Caledscratch (Daves broken sword), and some Ruby Contraband (like the frog John found but red and with ruby for eyes). This one is too expensive with a resource he doesn't have yet. But with the holo attachment he can see it’d make a Broken Scarlet Ribbitar.

• combining a shitty sword and a Sweet Bro Hella Jeff drawing he makes SORD, a free and crappy item. He can't even hold it apparently as it's a shitty Jpeg.

• combining a Snoop Dogg photo and mini A/C and Caledscratch makes the Snoop Dogg Snow Cone Machete. It's a weapon.

• combining a Sweet Bro crawling and a skateboard made the Unreal Air, another free shitty item. It just floats away. He makes and captures a second one.

• combining a game brom magazine with turntables makes a vintage game brom magazine. It seems that the turntables can make older versions of an item?

• batarang (batman's boomerang/ninja star thing.) with a poster of the midnight crew. This makes a set of 4 suiterangs. Daves makes a few of these as they are cheap.

• combining his tux with the midnight crew gives him an all black suit but he says it’s stiff and he doesn't like it.

• combining his tux with a poster for “The felt” would make a green tux but it needs a green Grist he doesn't have yet.

• combining a rump plush with a poster for “The felt” makes a Jutting Out And Impudent Felt Plush. Dave's enamoured by it.

• combining Combine dead things in amber and the rump plush makes a Foam Mutant Smuppet Encased In Amber. This seems useless but Dave likes the direction.

Until now we had been combining with AND (&&) logic Dave tries the previous combination using OR (||) logic. These are logic gates. This makes an Amber Mutant Smuppet Abomination. This is also a useless item but the logic thing is neat.

• AND combining the Mr. T plush and a fetus in a jar Dave apparently has to make a Foam Fetal Mr. T In A Jar.

At this point Dave's surrounded by underlings. The underlings are too creeped out by Dave circus of freaky abominations so go near him.

• AND Combining camera and captchalogue card to make a Captcharoid Camera. This item is powerful as it can make a captchalogue card of any item it takes a picture of as a ghost item.

• AND combination of the fetus in a jar and a self portrait of Dave taken with the Captcharoid Camera. This would make Dave's brain in a Jar, but it's too expensive. But Dave is able to take a picture of the Holorgram.

• Daves brain in a jar AND a sweet bro drawing OR and the Captcharoid Camera. This SBAHJIFIER cost -1000 artifact grist. This item will make a SBAHJ comic of anything it takes a picture of.

A while back John went on an alchemizing spree to create a bunch of items. Many of those are already obsolete by future Dave's provision of awesome recipes. Now it’s Rose’s turn, and she has a better alchemizer to work with. This is somehow related to the release of a new SBHJ comic about Santa (in April). This SBHJ comic was also made into a seasonal album. Remember that combining items doesn’t remove the original

• The first item combines the HUB power cube with her laptop. this makes a hubtop with unlimited battery life.
• She combines the Bronzed Vacuum with an umbrella to make something useless.
• Viceroy (formally Casey) with a plush squid to make a Huggable Soft Salamancer Plush. She gave this to Viceroy as a gift.
• black ink and Gushers made Bodacious Black Liquid Sorrow Gushers. - using the new hubtop, and a hairband Rose now has a Hubtopband. This is like the laptop glasses John and future Dave had.
• combining the Vodka and W magnet she makes Magnetic Wodka, this is vodka but magnetic?
• a Wizard statue with a ball of yarn made Silken Wizardbeard Yarn (With Magical Properties). Also she realizes that wizard statues just add magic to things.
• a wizard statue and knitting needles made NeedleWands. These are strong weapons.
• combining the velvet pillow, a pile of scarves, and her shirt she makes a Velvet Squiddleknit Dress.
• further expanding on the NeedleWands with a grimoire, she gets the Thorns Of Oglogoth. Oglogoth is pretty much Cthulhu. This weapon is apparently imbued with the strength of The Deep One.

And that’s all. We zoom out with Rose surrounded by her new gear. Further zooming out we see her home is now infested with underlings. This must have arrived during her alchemizing. Testing her new gear, Rose provides an explosive welcome to her new house guest.

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen the Postal Mistress (PM). She is the pre-exile form of the Peregrine Mendicant. PM's task is assassinating the black Queen and King, by Jack Noir. She instead took this information to the white queen who abdicated her throne and gave PM her ring of power. Making the situation worse Jack Noir decided to just kill the black queen himself. PMs current mission is to seek the white king on the Battlefield Skiai. But as she is waiting for a transport the ring gets pilfered from PMs pocket by a spy from the black kingdom. This spy is a “Courtyard Droll” (CD) who looks like this universe's Clubs Deuce in a ridiculous outfit. Performing a stealth mission in a vibrant pink hat taller themselves is a challenge.

CD sneaks off to report back. They report to a “Draconian Dignitary” (DD, Diamond Droogs) that they have the ring. DD mentions that Hegemonic Brute (HB, Hearts Boxcar) is looking for the king on the battlefield. It is not mentioned which king. Given the Sovereign Slayer (SS, Spades slick, Jack Noir) just killed his own queen it could mean they intend to kill either King or possibly both. DD also reminds CD that the ridiculous outfits and hats are no longer needed. The the new leadership, has banned them, but CD prefers it.

This report is abruptly cut short as CD is drop kicked by Jade. This is probably the first time we see any player directly involve themselves in the game. Inadvertently Jadebot is attacking her grandfather's taxidermied corpse. Jade retrieves the ring but it is too late to give it back to PM who is blasting off to the Battlefield. She puts the ring on as a reminder to deliver to PM somehow. It seems the ring has no effects on human players.

We then have a huge animation showing the war in the Battlefield. It starts by showing us that the battleground changes depending on the number of prototypes in play. Currently this session has 3 as Jade hasn't prototyped anything yet. At 1, it's a seemingly normal chessboard. At 2 sprites the chessboard is a much bigger and a cube. At 3 sprites the chessboard is seemingly a whole planet. The ground is still a black and white grid. There is now plantlife, hills, lakes, and even non combatants occupying the board. The board changes, but as we’ve seen this change also affects the pieces. The weird outfits are from Johns harlequin doll, or Roses tentacle princess. Also, the powers that the queen’s rings have are also from the sprites.

With this in mind the battlefield is weird. The pawns are about as you’d expect they are caprecians with swords and uniforms. They are marching under Dersite and Prosprit banners. But then we see them hopping out of futuristic dropships. There are also huge battleships flying in the sky shooting at each other down. We also see huge horse shaped creatures with tentacles about the size of buildings. These are fighting rook armed golems that are about the same size. There are also a bunch of weird homunculus abominations. These ones are about 4 times the size of a regular caprecian running around. The kings are also gigantic. They have some of the sprite powers that the Queens ring provides. But the kings powers come via scepters instead of the rings. I’d guess these were all created in labs like the one John is currently in. carcinoGeneticist [CG] had told John about the use of ecobiology for creating weapons of war.

On this scene 2 stories unfold. One is of a Warweary Villein living as a humble pumpkin farmer on Skiaia. This is the Wayward Vagabond (WV), and the Mayor of Cantowns former life before becoming an exile. WV forms his own tattered banner, from the burnt remains of his pumpkin stall. His farm got destroyed in the fighting. WV somehow amasses an army of the disenfranchised. WV’s army is one made from those done with the fighting and done with the monarchy. He marches his new army directly to the black king and prepares to face them. But at this time the Jack Noir arrives onto the battlefield with all his new powers provided by the ring. As WV looks upon the massive king and its scepter it looks like the king could have easily won against them all. But Jack cuts the king’s scepter in half. This makes the king into a nearly normal sized fat caprecian. Jack finishes the job cutting the black king's head clean off while WV and his army look on in confusion.

The second story is that of PM. They arrive on the battlefield and stand before the White king who is just as huge and terrifying as the black one. She would present the ring of the white queen to him but she discovers it is now gone. The White King seems to know what is going on anyway and surrenders his sceptre to PM. This leaves him vulnerable, and Hegemonic Brute takes advantage of this. He attacks PM causing the white scepter to fly off a cliff into a nearby stream.

From what I am getting from this, PM need both the ring of power and the sceptre for some greater task. It seems the white monarchs knew they’d inevitably lose the war. They have found some desperate way to change the fate of the land. Though Jack Noir seems to be aware of this and is taking matters into his own hands.

Dave has awoken in the dreaming world. Or he’s sleeping in the waking world. Unlike John and Rose it seems there wasn’t much stopping him from doing this sooner. Rose had just shown up in Dave's dreamscape and woke him up to jam to some tunes for a while. One weird thing about Daves room in the dreaming world is that Lil’ Cal is not only there but seems to be moving on its own. In the real world Cal had appeared to do this, but Big Bro was moving Cal at near light speed. The strife between big bro and Dave destroyed Cal. So how the hell was Cal here and moving on its own? Rose took the wise route by hucking Cal out of Dave's window before she returned to the waking world.

Dave had no complaint he found Cal very annoying. But, Cal’s gets caught by a random rocket board going through the streets of Derse. Also in Derse, are the exiles from a time before their exile. Aimless Renegade (AR) is an Authority Regulator at this time. This scene of a weird puppet falling onto a preposterously convenient rocket board caught AR’s attention. AR would need to investigate. Cal absconds into a transportalizer followed by AR.

John is on the Land for Light and Rain (LOLAR) where Rose entered the game. Since Rose was asleep when John had gotten there he’s decided to go exploring with his jetpack. He discovers the Island cave where Rose's mom had gone to with Maplehoof. Though it is still swarming with monsters, these ones look a bit more demonic. But John's new Fear No Anvil is very strong and takes care of them quickly.

John finds the same transportalizer and goes through it. He's sent to a lab floating on an asteroid in the veil. This is entirely off of the planet he was just on. It seems This is the same place Roses mom, John's dad, that guy who looked like Jade's Grandpa, and Cal all ended up at. We know this is the case because dad’s old oily fedora, the Colonel Sassacre, Maplehoof and Cal are just there next to the transportalizers. John naturally hops on Maplehoof, because free mount. The lab itself is huge, there is a huge wall that looks like old tape drives. The center of the lab has 4 massive jars containing huge chess pieces. Around those are jars that seem to contain capricians. John also discovers a Junior ectobiologist lab suit that seems made for him. The suit even has his green ghost logo on the belt. There is also a 4 monitor display wall.

It seems AR is outside of the lab. John isn't aware of them, and they are not aware of John. AR doing some sick tricks in ZeroG on the rocket board. This is against their uptight personality but they seem to be letting loose.

John is still at Rose's house awkwardly loitering around waiting for Rose to wake up. John visits Rose’s alchemiter. It looks like Dave had upgraded her alchemiter at some point to be similar to his own. John uses this to create the item from the code given to him by DaveSprite.

The item is a very expensive and gigantic hammer. Though by scaling it to a usable size he could actually build it. This is likely with the help of Maplehoof recently looting a huge amount of rare resources. The hammer, called Fear No Anvil, is a clockwork and ruby theme. John asked DaveSprite where he got it, but was only told “Hephaestus”. Hephaestus is also the name of Daves web browser oddly enough.

Dave, the “real” Dave, is hanging out with Rose in the dreaming world. It seems his computer from there can still see Rose's house and Rose and Dave have noticed John is there. Rose decides to return to the waking world to greet her guest.

Meanwhile twinArmageddons [TA] is helping grimAuxiliatrix [GA] with her computer. It seems the trolls have software called Trollian. It looks like the trolls can see the timelines of calling the kids (“chumps”). The “viewport” feature even allows them to see the kids. They are currently watching Rose wake up next to a panicking salamander child. She notices immediately that someone was using her pesterchum account. She goes to confront John on this but gets pranked as a bucket falls on her head filled with gushers.

John, being impatient, decides to rocket off and explore the Land of Light and Rain (LOLAR). This leaves Rose watching him zoom off as she’s just missed his departure. He takes Mewtini with him. As they’ve swapped companions they’ve also given them new names. Not knowing what names they had previously. John has named Mewtini as Doctor Meowgon, I think this is a reference to Dr. Egon from the GhostBusters Movie. Casey is now Viceroy Bubbles Von Salamancer.

John for, possibly, the first time has just met Rose. Which is to say he’s crashed through the wall of her bedroom in a jetpack. Somehow Rose is still asleep. John is trying to not be a creep about this situation. So in true non-werido fashion John is now on Rose's laptop. He responds to the troll who is messaging her, pretending to be her.

grimAuxiliatrix [GA] is trying to reach Rose. It seems from GA’s perspective this is her first contact with any of the kids. GA considers Rose a friend in Rose's perception of time. Someone she has trolled into submission of some sorts, the GA John is about to talk with knows none of that.

John uses this opportunity to hype himself as Rose's crush. He suggests GA contact John in the past to confuse him. This will explain some of the conversations between GA and Rose on page 1093 and 1592.

We get to see a bit of what is going on when the Trolls end here. We see GA in a compound of some sort on a PC. Other trolls are on her side but we can’t see who. Also gallowsCalibrator [GC] is behind her. The set-up is like an old fashioned LAN party. QA us contacting another troll twinArmageddons [TA] who we haven't seen yet. It seems that TA is sort of the IT guy of the groups and GA needs them to help with setting up the “viewport”. GA is apparently not good with computers and TA is a bit of a dick about. But, they forget GA is in the same room as she goes and bonks him for his comments.

TA is much like the other trolls, grey skinned, symbol of Gemini and 4 small horns. They have notable glasses with one red and one blue lens.

Bothe Dave and Rose are asleep in the waking world which means they awake in the dream world. As the both reside in Derse when creaming they’ve met up to jam. We get a taste of some really good tracks here. The whole time they are jamming Cal is just warping around annoyingly so Rose chucks Cal out of Dave's window.

For some reason we now get to see what Maplehoof is up to. Maplehoof went to the same island with Rose's Mom on the Land of Light and Rain (LOLAR). They'd been waiting outside while Roses mom utterly destroyed a huge monster inside. Maple hoof collects all the Grist and other resources that Roses Mom left behind. It seems she has no need for any of that. All the grist Maplehoof collects goes to Rose for some reason. As it is too much, much of it goes to a “gutter” where it's redistributed to the other player via GristTorrent. We then see maple hoof follow Mom into a transportalizer.

We also see the fedora John had delivered find its way to John's Dad on the Land of Wind and Shade (LOWAS). His current hat is stained with oil. He had found a replacement to his missing shoe. John's dad also encounters the same stranger that saved John from the Basilisk back on page 1455. They are holding the Colonel Sassacre. Also, look suspiciously like Jade's long dead grandpa. John's dad follows him through a transportalizer.

DaveSprite saved John from his own gullibility. gallowsCalibrator [GC] had convinced John that he could skip a big chunk of the game. He only needed to go directly to a late level boss. But, DaveSprite came from the doomed future where John did that and died. So John, warned of his impending doom, eventually avoided it.

John is again confronted with advice from GC. She doesn't seem to know what John could be so salty about, it's not like her advice in this timeline. GC has a map to the second gate for John to regain his trust. John's supposed to go through the second at this point in the game so it should be safer and not lead to his death. Also this map isn’t hand drawn by a blind troll so it's actually legible. John, seemingly having learned nothing, flies over to it in his jetpack.

That gate takes him directly to the Land for Light and Rain (LOLAR). Jetpacks are not exactly easy to control, and Johns ends up crashing right into Rose's bedroom. This does not wake her up. We can also see her room has “MEOW” all over it. I also noticed her lathe is now completely trashed.

This is awkward for a lot of reasons. As far as we know these friends have never met in the real world. Imagine you had a lady friend on the internet for many years. Seeing them for the first time is already pretty awkward. Crashing through a wall of their bedroom in a jetpack is just too invasive. Especially since she's asleep. At least Mewtini is awake.

DaveSprite explains that John had in fact gone through the second gate and wasn't tricked. Though he is ahead of schedule. Gate 1 for John leads to his planet, which means Rose needs to get to gate 3 to get to her own planet. And gate 4 on Roses planet leads to Daves. Normally John cant get here without building up his house more but the jetpack was a bit of a cheat. Though John finds all that fascinating he actually wanted to talk to “real Dave”. DaveSprite gave him crap for that as he is also real. DaveSprite experienced a trauma that year just to give John's timeline a chance. He gives John an item code before moving on.

Dave wants John to rummage through as much of Rose's stuff as possible before she wakes up. John isn't comfortable with this gross idea but agrees to give Dave the item codes to Roses journals.

Rose meanwhile is floating around Derse. She is ins A Purple Derse garb. She goes to Dave's tower and throws a ball of yarn at him. This actually causes him to awaken, and fall asleep in the waking world. Dave's dream tower is a bit odd, it looks exactly like his room but Cal is also there in the Dersite garb and moving around. It also has crows and the graffiti on his wall are just drawings of sweet bro and hella jeff.

In the waking world John Dave sends him a line of gibberish as he’s now asleep on his keyboard. John pursues Rose’s book selection, finding a philosophy book by Charles Barkly. This is a callback to misquoting him in a poem. John eventually succumbs to his curiosity to see what Rose was going to send him as a birthday gift. She was also sending John a Con Air Bunny but one that was half knitted. The non-knitted parts also seem to be splotch in crude oil.

Her letter suggests that it was from her childhood and something she loved dearly. The years had made it tattered and too delicate to ever wash. She resurrected it using the knitting supplies that John had given her. Now she wanted John to have it. It’s clear that this was the original con air bunny that Dave had given John. That one is currently in possession of Casey the salamander. But will somehow go back in time and end up with a child version of Rose.

This reminds John that Casey is currently in his inventory. John deploys the salamander child to stay with Rose as he believes that may be safer.

Jack Noir is a pretty cool guy. He is remarkably similar to certain 60’s mob boss and killing machine Spades Slick. What Jack absolutely is not is a bureaucratic pencil pusher, and definitely not a dress up doll. So In the animation we are starting with we see Jack being all these things by his Queen. The black queen of dark (mostly purple) planet Derse.

Before we get into the meat of this is the first time Derse gets identified. We’ve seen it a few times though. The Mayor painted Derse, on the walls of his ship. We’ve seen plenty of Prospit as the land where Jade goes when she is sleeping. Though Prospit is very close to Skaia, it actually touches the cloudy sky. Derse is far. Derse is beyond the veil, at the edge of the medium. We’ve learned the story of SBURB as a game. The players need to prevent the black kingdom from taking over, and destroying the battlefield. The battlefield is the center of Skaia, between two kingdoms. And we can assume Prospit is the location of the white kingdom. We also know the 2 queens are on these planets.

The Peregrine Mendicant (PM) was asked to assassinate the black queen and king by Jack Noir. At that time, the Kings were said to be on the battlefield. This means the battle for Skaia is already on. I’ll point out that these are anthropomorphized chess pieces. Some have suggested this is potentially a racial thing, I’m not going to open that can of worms.

Back to this animation. This is a critical scene. We see Jack finally snap. The black queen showed up in his office forcing him to wear ridiculous outfits. We never actually see what is in the green package that PM had been trying to get from him. We can see Jack is able to use it. This item had the ability to cut the ring off of the queen, and apparently make her explode. I can assume this would not be possible with any conventional weapon. The ring is also the source of power and it seems only the queens have them. With this ring no longer on the queen Jack takes it for himself. He seems to gain the powers of every active Sprite in the game. Nannaquin, Tentacle cat princess, and an overpowered time traveling player of the game. A character of the game having this power could be a huge friggin problem.

It also messes up some things. Does this mean Jack is now the black queen, and does this void his deal with PM?

We see other important things in this animation. Rose awakens in Derse. Mewtini also seems to be there. She’s now able to see the messages she had scrawled all over her walls. It's “meow meow meow meow” and “cat cat cat”.

We also get a glimpse of what the guardian's up to. Roses mom, John's dad and Saves bro are all fighting huge monsters in their respective lands. They are all very confident fighters. We also see John's dad carve the mini tablet for his fedora that we saw way back in the beginning of this act. This means John was delivering his dads stuff to him with the Parcel Pyxides. But John had no idea he was doing this. Also Maplehoof is with Roses mom for some reason.

This animation also marks the end of year 1 of the comic. Because of this Andrew Hussie proceeds to break the fourth wall for a bit to do, pretty much what I am doing, but better. Page 1674 is a good recap of everything up to this point in a written format with lots of links to important events.

I’m not going to attempt to recap a recap. I should have read this sooner to help with my own understanding on my second read-through. But I forgot this existed and I probably didn't read it the first time. And I’ll admit I am only skimming through it now (I am very tired). But I’ll point out a few segments that are interesting though.

After conversing with GA, Rose found Jaspersprite and interrogated him about the secret which she found so maddeningly mysterious years ago. He explained elements of the mythos of her land, and how she'd need to learn to play the rain to produce the musical analogue of a genetic code to reintroduce life into the ocean. In response to her question about his secret, he simply replied "Meow." She mistook this for more nonsense, but it was in fact the secret he told her years ago. The four letter sequence MEOW unlocked a genetic code in her subconscious, which she would spend years scrawling on her wall using those letters in place of the typically used GCAT letters, while completely oblivious to the scrawlings and their meaning just as John was. As Jaspers said, she would understand their meaning when her dream self wakes up.

The genetics stuff hadn't really popped up much yet. So this may have been easy to miss or I assumed it would get explained more later.. But I guess that’s what happened.

The relation between Jack Noir and Spades Slick is also explained a little more here. We know that since the Trolls are in a different session that have many of the same elements of the game of their own. It would make sense they also have some of the same characters. This is like a game using the same NPC for different roles. Spades Slick is an Exile in the Trolls session. Spades is like the Wayward Vegabond (WV) is to John but for carcinoGeneticist [CG]. This is why at the end of the intermission Spades sees and recognizes CG on a monitor. Spades slick is the Exile guide for CG. Jack however, is not an exile in the session with the kids. Though the same character he is playing a different role in the story.

Feel free to let me know if I got anything else wrong.

We also get a small sense here that maybe Andrew has some contempt for his readers. And he has a creep plush version of Cal.

John has been taking the advice of a Troll gallowsCalibrator [GC]. He’s planning to skip several milestones of SBURB to get to a late stage boss fight. Supposedly this boss enemy will be asleep and not fight John allowing him to get a quick victory. However, in a doomed timeline we learned this is nonsense and John's killed in this attempt. Dave from this timeline managed to warn John of his fate. However, John did not buy that Dave can time travel and he’s blasting off to his doomed fate anyway.

Rose, in the doomed timeline, ceased existing. This apparently allowed current timeline Rose to fall asleep and potentially “awaken”. The formally doomed timeline Dave, is now impaled bird sprite Dave. We’ll just call DaveSprite. DaveSprite reaches out to GC to let her know her plan to get John killed has been foiled. Though at this point that doesn't seem to be true as John is an idiot.

This conversation is interesting. GC mentions that she genuinely didn't think John would die from this. Since they are in a reverse timeline, she knew he’d be OK. But she’s also not surprised that one of the humans would time travel like this. The trolls have their own time traveler, they are not talking to the humans and do not approve of trolling them. She fully admits she is just trolling John, and badly. Dave points out that she convinced him to kill himself. She seems somewhat shocked by this, not realizing John is just really trusting and dumb. DaveSprite vaguely threatens to harm CG if she does anything “coy”. GC doesn’t really buy DaveSprites threats. Even with his new sprite powers, she compares him to captain planet. This seems to genuinely put them on peaceful terms.

I’ll again point out that this is Hanlons razor in action. GC may genuinely not understand the full effect of her trolling. Though she knows in the end it won't be too harmful, her getting John “killed” was not out of malice, just ignorance. It seems DaveSprite recognized this and chose a vigilant peace over aggressive vengeance. With that of the way DaveSprite can do his job and be Daves guide in the game. Instead of annoying noises and riddles DaveSprite gives straight answers. He mentions that Dave now has a bunch of high level gear, and can get through the game easily. DaveSprite can't join him on the planet yet as Dave needs to hit a certain level first. Until then he’s going to chill around and make comics or whatever. They performed a fist BUNP as bros.

At this point we are taken way back to page 131. This is when John opened Daves red package to retrieve the Con Air Bunny. This time though we see the note Dave had written to John. At least I don't think we got to see this the first time.

This letter mentions that Dave mentions he likes John because he is naive and weird. He promises John that if his naive nature ever gets him into any trouble that he will have his back. John is currently basting off towards the final ring and his death. He considers this message and reconsiders. John tells Dave he trusts him now even if his claims that his future self showed up and told him things seem insane. This loving bro moment get's interrupted by carcinoGeneticist [CG]. CG's confused about how human babies are born. This is because John will at some point convince him that babies spawn from larvae. The trolling between them is mutual. CG mentions he will troll John harder in John's future (CG’s past). CG mentions that the trolls are hiding in the Veil. This place is a belt of meteors between Skiai and a place called Derse. He’d mention that the Veil has a bunch of genetic labs and facilities used by the planets of the medium.

The game's central story is the fight between the white and black capricans in Skaia. This will end with black winning. This results in “The reckoning” the black King and Queen will use the meteors of the veil to destroy Skaia. Skaia can handle some of these by creating portals to remove them. But it is a countdown and the players need to kill the black king and queen. CG mentions that John and his friends have already screwed up terribly. The reckoning will be triggered too early for them to stop anything. This will result in something bad happening. But CG is too frustrated to tell John all this again. John asks CG to tell GC “nice try” but he believes this is another of John’s pranks.

Prepare for more temporal nonsense. When we last saw Dave he had built the trigger item to give him access to the medium. He had plenty of time before he needed to use it. It was a red egg. But, his sprite was a bird he had impaled with a sword. It took the egg to the top of a radio tower and placed it on a nest of random swords and plush asses. We saw Dave climbing to retrieve it when Rose was trying to contact him. Then we hear from him when talking to John that he had already entered the medium. He needed John's advice on giving his second prototype. This skips anything about how Dave got the egg back.

And now we have this animation sequence. Dave: Accelerate. which seems to skip even beyond his conversation with John into a further point in the future. Dave is in the Land of Heat and Clockwork (LOHAC). This place looks awesome, but like a wildly difficult place to live. It's pretty much an ocean of hot magma with steel beam structures coming out of it. All the steel structures have large rotating cogs.

We see Dave teleport to a cog. And immediately start slaying imps and ogres. He’s dressed in something more formal with a red bowtie. He’s also wielding a broken sword with a very odd looking hilt. He is also summoning a floating mixing board. His fighting style has changed significantly. He appears not only to be accelerating time, but also cloning himself to inflict more damage. Also his sprite is now fully prototyped with both the bird and Lil’ Cal. The Cal Sprite has the laser beam attack we have seen with the others. It also summons a giant plush rump to… uhhh… thrust into enemies.

After the animation we see Dave talking with his sprite. Though it's apparently useless at communicating like Rose's tentacle cat princess. It just laughs and somehow talks in weird emojis. Dave complains about this to Rose on his computer glasses (ironically with the apple logo). He mentions it’s felt like months since he entered the medium. The “time hopping” is messing with his perception.

Rose says the point of this is for him to gather as much data as possible on where they went wrong before “returning”. Apparently they messed up Jade “the witch” is possibly dead and so is John “the heir”. It seems John skipping over the gates to the denizen got him killed. Also meteor possibly took Jade out before she could get in. The trolls also stopped communications at that time. The timeline is completely doomed.But Dave is chill about this as he can fix it. He’s just going to go back stop John, tell Rose how to awaken her dream self, and absolutely not prototype Lil Cal. Rose questions if she will continue to exist if this timeline, but trusts Dave. She doesn't have much of a choice.

So Dave uses his floating mixing board thing to go back to the conversation between himself and John. This is the one where Dave asked Johns for advice on what to prototype his sprite with. But, before John could take off Future doomed Timeline Dave (FDT Dave) shows up in front of “present?” Dave.

FDT Dave tells his past self to not let John fly off in the jetpack. Dave tries to explain to John that his future self just appeared and told him to not let John fly the cool jetpack. This doesn't work, FDT Dave tells Jon that he really is from the future in a separate chat. John doesn't believe this either but agrees not to fly off yet. FDT, satisfied with this, drops off a huge stack of cards to his past. Thes cards contained items: the floating mixing board and his weird sword. He then tosses himself into the Sprite. The Sprite is now a crow with a sword in its gut mixed with FDT Dave.

John apparently decides to fly off anyway. Which may just doom the timeline again.

When we last left Rose she’d just had a conversation with her game sprite. This sprite contains her dead cat that she claimed not to care about, but clearly did. Rose is now consulting with Jade who is “asleep” about the sprites' comment. It said that Rose is the one who is actually asleep.

Jade explains the dream selves they all have. Her sprite likely meant that her dream self is still sleeping.. Only Jade can communicate with the waking world because of her dreambot. But Rose's dream self is trying to leave messages, scrawled on her walls. John had been doing the same and his own memory had convinced him the scrawings were the work of the imps. This is even though they had actually been there long prior. Rose had been pushing John to believe he was insane for not knowing the scrawings were his own doing. She had been psychoanalyzing the heck out of him. And she knows the cause of it, and that she is also doing it. She tries to get ahold of Dave to confirm this. Apparently he’d have noticed this, but hasn't mentioned it to her. But, Dave is currently climbing a radio tower on top of his apartment building. He needs to get the egg back from his spiteful sprite.

Meanwhile he is looking at the piece of junk he had made. Also the salamander child he hugged randomly seems to be there with the oily rabbit plush. A cool jetpack with a brick, violin, and a flowerpot merged into it. gallowsCalibrator [GC] mentions to him that she can fix it. She mentions she has a “hacker” who can make it work. As John is preparing to take off in the new jetpack. Dave reaches out to him. This seems to be a bit of a time jump as Dave is already in the medium apparently. Dave sprite needs its second prototype but Rose is apparently asleep at this point. Weirdly he is saying the sprite is suggesting what it wants to be prototyped with. The jetpack seems to work very well blasting John into space. I guess air, and the deadly vacuum don't seem to affect him? Very whimsical!

A Wayward Vagabond (WV) and an Aimless Renegade (AR) became a bit infatuated. The target of this was the Peregrine Mendicant (PM). This is likely because she is the only female of their species they've seen in who knows how long. That is until the Windswept Questant (WQ) showed up. It seems these guys immediately forgot about PM and went full servant mode for them instead. They made her a crown.

PM witnesses this and remembers the dreadful mission she had been sent on by Jack Noir. her duty to get a package from him pretty much made her into an assassin.

The flashback has skipped ahead for this story. We see PM, sword ready consulting the white queen. Not the black one she saw earlier. Though the white queen looks pretty much the same, just white. Also this one's left arm is missing, whereas the black queen is missing its right arm. The queen shockingly gives the PM her crown as well as her ring. The ring has 4 pearls on it 3 had been lit, but once she removed it only 2 became lit. The queen's body also became normal looking, with 2 arms and no tentacles or scars. They now look a lot like WQ.

If I had to guess it seems the ring is related to the prototypes the player has chosen. The ring provides powers from each of these. PM’s quest is to take the crown and seek the white king out on the battlefield. In the present time PM and the white queen meet again as exiles. PM bows before WQ. She is crowned by WQ with the crown made by WV and AR.

Having completed her quest, WQ has abdicated, and PM is now the queen. WV and AR have no idea what is going on.

Rose is on her island in the Land of Light and Rain (LOLAR). Her Sprite has finally emerged to guide her. Her sprite is a combination of a tentacle princess doll and her dead childhood cat. It turns out it's not a great selection of things for communicating quests. It mostly just meows but is actually capable of speech. It tells Rose she is not just the seer but the Seer of Light. Also that all the fish in LOLAR have been eaten by its Denizen. John recently learned that his land's Denizen is something he needs to defeat. We can assume this is something Rose needs to do as well. The sprite also mentions Rose is asleep and needs to wake up still. This is something Jade had told John as well, we can take some guesses on what this means. Much like we know John and Jade go to Prospit when they are sleeping, it makes sense Dave and Rose may also have a place. Perhaps it's these places where they are actually awake.

The Sprite mentions in a vague way that Rose needs to get a song in the waking world. playing it will be the key to restore life to the land.

Last time we 2 trolls connected with Dave and Rose. The trolls grimAuxiliatrix [GA] and adiosToreador [AT] are trying to gain knowledge. They want of weak points for their targets. GA came to Dave, he provided terrible advice to GA which she caught on too. But she used his bad advice to perform a decent troll on Rose. AT got equally bad advice from Rose. We’re about to see how that works out.

Predictably it’s the cringiest thing I’ve read since my own live journal. AT attempts to lay down a whole page of rhymes to damage Dave’s pride. It's a long page of senselessness. Gibberish. Dave would have utterly destroyed it but opted to simply not ignore AT. Dave just mindlessly doodles SBAHJ stuff with AT's chat window burried behind it. AT takes Dave’s non-response as a victory for himself. We see AT a male troll, as he is a Taurus his horns are huge. Otherwise I'd describe him as looking like a knob.

Sadly I am a Tarus myself, and even as self hating as I am this character is terrible.

When we last left John he had taken the advice of a troll gallowsCalibrator [GC]. on this advice he hopped in a large pipe in LOWAS to get delivered closer to his destination. We now see John being flung out of a pipe, covered in oil and his inventory scattered all over. This includes the box bunny. Reunited with the bunny and surviving the horrors in the pipe he reenacts the Con-Air scene. The one where Cages's character is returning the bunny to his daughter. In John's case a random consort and its mother. I am sure they were both confused and horrified. An oily alien creature just came up to them with some soft oily thing and started embracing a child.

2 trolls immediately have things to say about this bizarre action. John explains to carcinoGeneticist [CG] that he was re-enacting a movie. CG likes movies, and they actually nerd bond over it.

John mentions he’s receiving help from GC. It seems CG doesn't like that. This is against whatever CGs plan is. It seems the trolls even troll each other and that causes issues for them. John also mentions he hasn't talked to Jade on their behalf yet. But it seems in the time of confusion CG's shocked to hear his future self wanted John to do that. He believes it's a bad sign.

More confusing is the GC is in the same room as CG. But they are not on the same point in the timeline. GC is slightly behind the conversation John had with CG. John attempts to relay some message between them. But he inevitably ends up making them turn on each other.

GC’s guidance has actually led John to his planet's Denizen Palace. John needs to slay this huge beast to get a massive amount of grist. Also something called “ultimate alchemy”. This normally doesn't happen until gate 7, but CG is assuming it won't be awake yet and John can sneak up on it. He’d be way too weak at this point to win a fair fight. IT seems they are trying to exploit and speed run the game. It also seems super risky.

Since the area isn't accessible John locates a Return node and gets sent back to his bedroom. GC mentions she will get him to the gate shortly.

The trolls have mentioned that the human kids really mess up their entire session in the future. It’s looking like they may actually be the cause of this.

Rose is now in the Land for Light and Rain (LOLAR). She’s been loving it so far, getting left alone by both her mother and her exile guide. She is free and independent. But like John house the game eventually starts spawning imps. Rose imps are marble and chalk. She's not afraid to fight them. She’s vicious with the knitting needles and yarn. Taking her first 2 imps out without any difficulty. John nearly died from his first fight. Then after only 2 imps Rose's faced with a Lime Orge. She manages to take this out as well. She jabs the needles into its eye and rides the dang thing like a blinded pony. Meanwhile Mewtini is just enjoying hanging out doing kitten stuff. Most violent scene yet!

Despite this act of violence when Dave suggests giving the ogre the old coup de grâce for some grist Rose refuses. Seems she only wants to fight in self defence. Apparently Daves gristTorrent also helps him with Rose’s session. They’re both leeching off of John but the process is apparently slow. Both Rose and Dave get pestered by Trolls. Dave is chatting with grimAuxiliatrix [GA] we're shown this one is the sign of Virgo. They ask if Dave is the one “commanding the seer” this confirms Rose is the seer, and we know John is the heir. She also tells Dave he is the Knight. GA has come to Dave asking for advice on Rose. They seem interested in gauging her sincerity. Though it really does seem like a “how do i get her to like me?” situation. Dave provides terrible advice. Rose is sarcastic so Dave suggests that GA use sarcasm and assume Rose is always doing the same. GA points out this is just trolling but Dave encourages them to troll Rose harder.

Rose is benign pestered by adiosToreador [AT] with the mark of Taurus. AT is the troll that failed hard to troll Dave. AT got counter trolled ruthlessly as a result. Rose is also quick to detect AT is just incompetent . They’ve come to Rose seeking advice on finding Dave’s weak points. Rose plays along with this making AT think she wants to destroy Dave. Her advice is to attack Dave with poetry. Dave being very into rap battles will likely repeat his last encounter with AT and destroy them. That’ll be a cringy trainwreck we can look forward to.

GA now pesters Rose as she is still sitting on the unconscious body of the ogre she took out. GA mentions that she got some insight from Dave but isn't falling for his sabotage. It seems GA is not as dumb as certain other trolls. GA is the one who had explained the whole temporal mechanical situation to Rose back on page 1093. To Rose this is their second conversion but to GA it’s their 7th. Rose was considerably more sceptical of GA’s claims back then. They now seem a lot more plausible, thus Rose was wrong about a thing. GA has a punishment for this. They’ve given Rose a transcript of their first conversation, and asked her to transcribe it. They may have hidden a message in it that's found this way. But this also forces Rose to scrutinize and relive her error. Apparently the motivation for this is to weaken Rose's intellectual superiority. This way their first conversation from GA’s perspective is one where she will have the upper hand. This is a ridiculous and unnerving manipulation. But I suppose it may have actually impressed Rose a little.

Rose ends the conversation as her sprite has come to find her.

We get a shot of GA at their computer. She is a female troll. Her horns resemble the virgo symbol. She seems to put effort into her appearance. Her hair and eyes have a well manicured look to them.

Dave has recently entered SBURB. Unlike John and Rose, he’s got a lot of time before the meteor hits. Jade is his host, and she is new to video games in general. This means the extra time is really needed here. Dave also has other advantages. IT seems the game has some balancing mechanics to help out the players who get in later. Dave has a few extra tools that we don't know the use of yet. He also had a CD for a tool called GristTorrent that allowed him to take resources from other players. Using this he’s built the Punch designix and a bunch of cards. Jade has provided various random items for him to punch.

The Card Shunt and Jump seem to be able to alter the Alchemizer with potential upgrades. Adding a blender or game bro magazine to it was.. Not an upgrade. Jades pictograph Modus allows her to get the code for items that she draws. This is assuming she can draw it well enough. And that the terrible guessing mechanism to understand. She gets the idea to draw the Punch designix. Dave makes the card for that and adds it to a shunt. This gives a useful upgrade appending a punch desinignix to to the Alchemizer. What is even better than having the crafting stations near each other? Having a multipurpose station. They can't afford to build a holopad, but using this same method they append one to the alchemizer for free. This lets them see what items would get created without having to commit to building it. Adding the lathe naturally lets them create totems, at the alchemizer. Adding a jumper block to the jumper block makes it compacts and removes the need for shunts. Jade wants to add the intellibeam laserstation. But she can’t draw it, and it's extremely expensive. Dave has grabbed a photo enlarger from his photography. This upgrade lets them make items bigger or smaller, though the price's affected. So before the game has even really started Dave has an OP crafting station.

John is still in LOWAS. He ventured far from where he started and managed to get to his fathers car. It’s smashed of course and both the package and beta are gone. We know that Authority Regulator (AR) has confiscated those items. The Postal Maiden (PM) has sent the betas out for delivery but hasn't gotten the package yet.

gallowsCalibrator [GC] pesters John. The blind troll who dumped a lot of lore on us earlier. She forcefully advises John against his will pointing out he is nice and push-over. She is right.

She says she has a map of LOWAS and can lead him to the next gate. She draws him one but it is illegible garbage. She does agree to lead him to a pipe that will be a shortcut.This boy is hopelessly trusting isn't he?