Homestuck

Rose had been chatting with a troll who’d dumped a tonne of lore onto us. One thing they had mentioned was that the voices in the heads of players are those of exiled agents. They are living on ruined earth in the future. We’ve met A Wayward Vagabond (WV), a Peregrine Mendicant (PM) and an Aimless Renegade (AR). But who’s voice Rose has been hearing? All we know is they seem polite and have an elegant font.

They repeat she needs to find her sprite, and her purpose. Then says they will never hear from them again. Rose felt very free and liberated as she didn't need any guide. She was the guide, or at least the writer of one on GameFaqs.

In the future, on earth, WV, PM, and AR had gotten along and set up camp. WV and AR just had a giant egg land near them. From this egg a Windswept Questant (WQ, Questant meaning one who goes on quest). She is a white caprician like PM, but much taller than the others. Her robes are even cleaner than the others. PM was providing John with instructions to help her past self. But the sound of the egg crashing caught her immediate attention.

In the present a past version of PM is a mail carrier. They’ve been on a quest to retrieve a package that was taken by an agent. She’s now deep in agent territory and even encountered the black queen (possibly). She's reached the office of the archagent. Shockingly the package she is after is just there on a desk. But Jack Noir has shown up. PM’s cover of just being there to pay for a parking ticket is being tested. She failed pretty quickly but Jack has other ideas. He says he will let her go, with the parcel, but she needs to go on a mission in exchange. He provides her with the same black sword her future self still carries. Her mission is to kill the king and the queen. With little other choice she takes the sword and leaves.

Peeking inside the package to see what is worth regicide, even Jack's shocked. But we don't get to see what it is. We do know this is a gift from Jade to John. So it's either something otherworldly and chaotic or something very mundane. PM doesn't need to know what's in it. She is working on duty alone.

Rose is enjoying her new island home. It seems her mother fled to a different island which we can assume would make this place even better for her. She’s just chilling on the dock on her laptop Mewtini the kitten napping on a post nearby. It seems idyllic, if it wasn't for the bright colors and the rain I’d love to be there.

John and a troll are pestering Rose. The mystery audience is suggesting Rose consult the “heir”. This is John, one of the consorts called him that as well. John is just checking in. He Hasn't heard from Rose since before she escaped earth. He’s relieved she is ok and fills her in on his location. They figure out they are not actually near each other. John also mentions what the trolls had told him. That the trolls are now friends but travelling backwards in time. Also they are playing SBURB on a different instance.

Rose then chats with a troll using the handle gallowsCalibrator [GC]

This one is a little odd. They can apparently smell words. They are also not being friendly, but they are helpful. They explain they are choosing to remain linear to Rose's timeline. This instead of going through it in reverse like the others. She wants to be “B3ST H4T3FR13NDS FOR3V3R”. GC explains the voices in their heads are part of the game, they are “exiles”. Beings living on a future earth who subtly and unknowingly guide the players. Also the players are being assigned mythologies. Rose suggests she may be a seer.

CG continues to say that the exiles close loops in Paradox Space. Also though the players will not get to save earth, the exiles will rebuild it. Though this will inevitably be “ripe for seeding all over again”. The players have a greater purpose. The Exiles are former Agents, exiled during something called “The Reckoning”. Rose asks what agents are but GC was getting annoyed by the questions and left. This lore dump recovers a lot of what we already know as the audience, but also a lot of new things.

We go now to the past. Jade's birthday well before all this nonsense happened. I think we had seen this conversion before on page 1000 but we know more now. John messaging Jade birthday wishes. He's asking for apologies as he forgot to account for the long shipping time with her gift. We know now that Jade pulled some time trickery and has actually had the gift for years now. But during this conversation Jade was interrupted by a troll. We didn't see this conversation the first time. carcinoGeneticist [CG] has a message for Jade from her own future self. But CG has been nothing but an ass to Jade at this point so she ain't believing him. Regardless of this he tells her Jadebot will eventually blow up. When that happens she needs to contact the trolls. She naturally thinks CG is full of crap. We then see the troll in question CG. We have seen them before on a monitor during the end of the intermission on page 1353. This was the troll on the monitor that Spades Slick found.

Trolls look like humans. but with candy corn colored horns, sharp teeth, grey skin, yellowish eyes. This one looks pained. His shirt has a symbol representing the astrological sign for Cancer.

Jade then received the green package from her penpal, the one she will later send to John. The pen pal must have a sendifier. She mentions her penpal has made requested modifications to its contents. But we still don't get to see what is in there.

At this same time in the past. John's contacted by gallowsCalibrator [GC]. the troll that can taste words. This one is apparently also blind. Though all she says is that John is a terrible ectobiologist and she will slit his throat.

This is when John changed his handle to ectoBiologist.

We then see GC. She is a troll with red tinted glasses and the sign of Libra on her shirt.

In the present time a mailworker (PM) is trying to get a package from an Authority Regulator. She has tracked him to enemy territory. Her plan is to present the parking ticket that AR had left on John's dads car, then claim she is only there to pay it. She has no idea where she is or how to find the agent. We do see her pass a guy who looks suspiciously like Diamonds Droog but with cat ears.

Somehow she stumbles into the throne room. She's seen but what we can assume is the queen of this place. It’s a bizarre looking creature, a bit like Sn0wman but with a scar in its eye like Jack and milling an arm. But it has a female torso and almost mechanical limbs. It's wearing a harlequin outfit, and has tentacles. Its crown is an elaborate jester's cap. Also it has a ring on its finger.

PM shows the queen her parking ticket and gets pointed to the office of the archagent. We know this arch agent. They are ~~spades slick~~ Jack Noir.

Rose had nearly escaped a fiery death. The meteors destroying earth created a firestorm around her home. Dave had some difficulties getting the beta installed. Though after a frantic first phase of the game Rose and her home got sent to a new land. The Land of Light and Rain (LOLAR), and Rose seems to love it. A new mystery audience with a fancy font had instructed Rose to explore this now world. Now they are suggesting she find her sprite. Her sprite contains her deceased childhood cat. She isn't able to find them but sees footprints in the white sands that now surround her house.

The footprints lead to the foundation of the now destroyed mausoleum. The path that leads to the lab now goes to a dock. It appears that there may have been a boat there but now it's just a rope and an abandoned martini. This is a clear sign that Rose’s mom was also brought over, and immediately left. That audience suggests “A mother will do what is best for her child”. This is odd as they seem to know Rose's mom. There is an island in the distance which is likely where Rose's mom fled to.

In the future the Wayward Vagabond (WV) has reestablished Can Town. Clearly building and being the mayor of a town of cans will get the attention of the Peregrine Mendicant (PM). The Aimless Renegade (AR) who is also trying to get the attention of PM has his militia of bullets to watch over.

Above them a giant egg appears in the sky. It appears to be another rocket like the ones WV and PM came in on. It crashes down right next to them.

Jade trying out the item creation system, She makes Daves trigger item. John had a green apple, Rose had a purple wine bottle Dave got a red egg. Dave now notices that the Alchemiser is on an AC unit on his roof. He points out how that is a terrible place for it. Before Dave can even attempt to get the Egg his kernel sprite steals it. It’s now in a nest high up on a radio tower. The nest is mostly crappy swords, and puppets including Cal.

Dave assumes he needs to crack the egg open and maybe cook it in the microwave. Jade tosses the microwave out of the building.

We get to see the other unique items that only have been available in Dave's session for some reason.

• the card with 6 buttons is a Jumper Block Extension
• the CD is just a “CD” (for younger folks this this is what a cd is.)
• a Punch Card Shunt
• a holopad
• Intelliobeam laserstation

They also seem to have started with 2000 grist. They noticed that Johns started with 20 and Rose’s 200. It seems the more users in the session, the more each consecutive player gets. Jade gives Dave a CD though they have no idea what it does. Jade moves the alchemizer off of the AC. This is expensive but she can afford it. This space allows her to deploy a Jumper Block Extension which connects to it. They add a Punch Card Shunt and try adding a card to it but nothing happens. They assume the card needs to be punched first. But they can't get the Punch designix yet.

The CD installs something called GristTorrent onto Dave’s laptop. This program allows Dave to leech resources from other players. He begins leeching John's shale, and grist without hesitation. Nice guy.

Many years in the future. A Wayward Vagabond (WV), a Peregrine Mendicant (PM) and an Aimless Renegade (AR) have now become friends. It also seems both WV and AR have interest in PM. AR has given PM an ancient artifact. This is a squiddle plush that Jade had lost many years prior. This gift makes PM recall a memory.

We see what looks like AR. He is in the Land of Wind and Shade (LOWAS) next to John's Dad’s Car. They're dressed in the sort of outfit that the imps and Jack Noir wear. He is an Authority Regulator working for the some and needs to deal with an illegally parked vehicle. He left a parking ticket and has confiscated the contents. This includes the Package Jade left for John and the server beta.

Also on LOWAS a Parcel Mistress who looks like PM but in Prospit outfit. She notices the agent nearby holding a package she’s been looking for. She has a note about it that appears to be from Jade. But she mentions that the AR looking guy is an Agent and is dangerous.

John is also on LOWAs potentially at the same time. He’d encountered some underlings attacking a consort village. He's decided to charge at them with no strategy at all. This was a bad idea, they are too tough even for his Telescopic Sassacrusher. He’s about to get eaten by a basilisk when a shot rings out nearby. The mystery sniper explodes the basilisk with single shots. They shoot the Copper Giclops in the eye, making it flee. But it’s taken the Telescopic Sassacrusher with it. All we see is that the stranger looks a lot like Jade's grandpa and uses the same sort of blunderbuss. They leave the scene carrying a copy of Sassacare with them. John's confused but relieved.

In the future WV, PM and AR are looking up peacefully at the star filled sky. PM remember a distant memory. She suddenly realizes she needs to communicate something to John right away.

PM in the present receives a mini tablet via a Parcel Pyxis with an odd carving. She identifies this as the other object that the agent was holding. The SBURB beta. She now knows she needs to get both the green package and the beta from this agent somehow.

Past AR is immediately attracted to the PM. But this doesn't help much as AR needs permission to hand over any contraband. PM manages to convince him that the minitablet she received is official. That works and she sends it off into a Pyxis. But she still needs the package.

John meanwhile is too busy to chase off after his rescuer. The village is on fire. He attempts to use this Barbasol Bomb. But that is apparently very flammable and makes matters much worse. Fortunately a very convenient gust of wind blows out the fire. The Consorts praise John for his heroism. Even though he didn't really do anything. While getting paraded around he hears a voice in his head. It’s PM from the future telling him to carve something on it. I can assume this is the Beta minitablet PM used to get the beta from AR.

A Wayward Vagabond (WV), a Peregrine Mendicant (PM) and an Aimless Renegade (AR) had been fighting. WV and PM had separately landed near some ancient frog ruins. AR had set up base there and immediately began shooting at intruders. But after seeing the icon on WV pumpkin bindle AR freaked out and called a cease fire in his own way. Now the 3 of them are enjoying WV’s cans of preserve and Tab.

AR goes and gathers some of the artifacts to show off to his now welcome guest. WV takes PM to his bunker. It seems ARs rockets blew a hole into a room he wasn't able to access before. The console in there has a lot of spirographs on it and a frog. We learned recently the frogs are “Illegal contraband” so AR may not want to see this. Apparently its out of power so it is not functional. WV then shows the PM the console to talk to John. But she is more impressed by his drawings. We can tell what planets John and Rose are on. The ones Dave and Jade will inhabit are also pretty obvious. WV hands PM his chalk and leaves her to go investigate a nice smell. PM now goes and interacts with John. We learn she was in the “audience” doing the interactive sequence easier.

We learn what cannon events happened during this scene.

• getting the mini tablets and providing the resources requested.
• meeting “the wizard” and “crumplehat”
• getting the blank tablet, chisel, and serenity (PM doesn't know its the same firefly)
• seeing his house in the distance with the telescope

Meanwhile someone else is talking with Rose. With a very frilly font. They ask her to look around and discover. Rose is happy to oblige now that everything isn't on fire.

John at the present time has wandered through a forest trying to find his dads car. He stumbles onto a small Consort village getting raided by underlings. New enemies a Tar Basilisk which breathes fire and a gigantic Copper Giclops along with a few imps. John looks ready to fight.

Jade is trying to hide Dave's Toilet on his roof. But she has a nap attack and accidentally drops it through the roof. This hits the cruxtruder triggering it, and the 4:13 hours timer. Also spilling toilet water all over Dave's room. Jade can still type while asleep but she’s confused. Dave had been drinking juice while working with Rose. so he really needed that toilet. He also points out that it is very weird that Jade can see him everywhere.

Dave decides to “refill” his juice bottle and give the code to John as a prank. While Dave is in the shower stall doing this. Jade finds the crow Dave had impaled. Weirdly their very Beta copies Jade’s using are still with it. Jade, tired and confused but very compassionate, knows a neat trick to “help” the bird. She tosses it in the kernel sprite. Dave points out that it is a very dumb choice of guides as it can't talk. I'd also point out that he murdered the creature and it may not be cool with that. Dave is aware of how the dream bot works and tricks Jade into slapping herself awake with it. It’s a bit mean but the look of confused astonishment on her face was pretty damn funny.

Meanwhile in the future. AR has brought out his artifacts, this included Jade's food storage device. It seems all the stuff inside is still fresh. He also has the ancient Squiddles plush. He gives one to the PM. This makes WV a bit jealous, it seems both WV and AR are romantically interested in PM. Also Serenity is apparently interested in WV which is adorable but weird. PM accepts the gift but she's reminded of something from the past.

John is still exploring the Land of Wind and Shade (LOWAS). He's aware of this because his grandmother resurrected as a game sprite and told him. Johns is now attempting to contact Rose but not having much luck. He is able to chat with Jade though. Jade already knows that John is in LOWAS. Jade explains to John that she now has the game and needs to contact Dave to get started. John mentions it doesn't make any sense that she’d get Daves copy of the game. Especially since she didn't know what SBURB was last time they talked. Her response is that she was asleep at the time. She also tells John he needs to get his server a copy of the game so she can get into it. This means John's priority is to now walk over to the area directly below his house. Then he'll need to locate his dads car, and get the package. Jade swears she isn't psychic. We know this is technically true now. She’s been getting visions from the clouds of Skaia.

John now also gets pestered by trolls, but we can’t see who. Dave is also trying to contact Rose. This is a bit odd as he should be able to just see her on his screen. He threatens to prod her with a wizard statue if she doesn't respond soon. But Jade is also chatting with him. Jade explains that she's going to be his server host. Dave points out it is a bit stressful to be simultaneously playing the game as both a client and the host player. Jade mentions It’ll be easy and ribbs Dave a bit about being so dramatic in getting the game. She's well aware he was being utterly beaten by a puppet for like an hour. She knows she needs to move though. Not only has she seen “the big meteor” in her dreams but she even has a screen shot from her dream recorder. That technology would be terrifying. I think if we saw our own dream in the waking world we’d all just have a mass identity crisis. Fortunately, it seems Jade's used to this and happy to share her dreams with others. Dave mentions Rose is finally answering. But we switch to John and a troll. carcinoGeneticist [CG] and other trolls used to pester John constantly. Eventually he figured changing his handle would get rid of them and it seemed to work. Until now that is. CG explains that the trolls just didn’t care enough about John to contact him sooner. Also that his ploy never worked at all. GC as was mentioned to Rose before mentioning they are actually friends now. Though that doesn't make them any less of an asshole. But they are in an awkward situation of seeing John's timeline in reverse. Now he keeps having to explain this over and over. IT gets more and more difficult as their own past selves were being total jerks. Also apparently the trolls are also in the game but in a different game session. They need to let Jade know something urgently but she is ignoring them because they are assholes. So they are now bugging her friends to ask her to talk to them. John says he’ll consider it but proceeds on his mission to find his dads car.

Meanwhile years in the future The wayward vagabond has brokered a peace. Now he, the Peregrine Mendicant and the Aimless Renegade are sitting together. They're eating canned preserves and drinking Tab. They may even be friends now.

Jade is learning the game the hard way. Much like the others she is deploying the crafting stations in terrible locations. We can see there’s a few extra options for deployment items. Also Dave's template card is a red egg. We also see a card with 6 buttons and a CD. Dave is trying to chat with Rose who has kind of put him on hold. Dave notices Jade trying to deploy the Cruxtruder in his small cluttered bedroom. At least she has time to learn. Though she also immediately removes Dave's bed. Rose now responds to Dave pointing out the irony given what Dave had done to her bed. She also finds it funny the gamer guy only managed to get into the game minutes before Rose's imminent doom. While Jade, who doesn't play video games, got in ahead of schedule. Rose mentioned she was busy chatting with the troll, also checking on John. It seems while John is on the surface of LOWAS she can't see him from the game. Rose doesn't mention where she is currently but she does mention that she really likes it there.

Jade continues to re-configure Dave's room. She's got the Cruxtrider and room, the lathe in the living room, and she put the alchemizer on the roof on top of an AC unit. This will be a huge pain for Dave. Did they not have Minecraft? You gotta keep your crafting stations near each other! Jade wants to organize more of Dave’s stuff but notes the puppets are actually Dave's Brothers. She finds him intimating. Though much like Rose did she figures she can clean the bathroom. Then proceeds to rip out the toilet. We are now shown where Rose was sent. The Land of Light and Rain (LOLAR). This planet is very bright with pinks, yellows and blue pastel. It's a kind of vapor-wave but I don't think the term is popular yet. It seems to be oceanic, Roses house is on an island and no longer on fire. It seems damn cool but probably annoyingly bright.

In the “present” as we see it. 2 of 4 children have left earth via a video game SBURB. This is a good thing as the earth is currently getting pelted with millions of meteors. Somehow years in the future the earth has new inhabitants. We’ve met 3 capricians. There’s a Wayward Vagabond (WV), a Peregrine Mendicant (PM) and an Aimless Renegade (AR). WV and PM had both found rockets that lead them to some ancient frog ruins. This place in the Present is next to the home of Jade Harley. But currently these ruins are home to an Aimless Renegade (AR). There is a huge stash of weapons and ammo left by Jade's Grandfather. AR is not happy that WV and PM are on his turf. AR is also a gun nut who has no idea how to aim.

It seems that the PM's rocket ship isn’t defenseless. It has mechanical defense worms that blast lasers at AR’s direction. As such there is a lot of collateral damage to the ruins. But eventually AR switches to homing missiles and takes out the worms. He gets his crosshairs on WV next but stops. Something about the icon on the WV pumpkin bindle makes him freak out. The icon shaped like the head of Jades ‘pet’, the omnipotent god dog Bec. AR jumps out of his defensive position in a tower and tries frantically to talk to WV. PM who is still armed with an awesome black sword. PM jumps onto and subdues AR, sword drawn.

Meanwhile, closer to present times, in about the same place, Jade has received an odd gift. Jade's forbidden to enter the frog ruins by Bec. Today she decided to go there anyway, she knew she needed to. We didn't get to see much of what was in there. We do know Jade found a huge lotus with a timer. At the same moment Rose entered the game, and John entered the first gate, the lotus opened. The lotus had Dave’s copy of the SBURB beta. It has Dave’s name and orange juice stains on it. How it somehow ended up in a lotus in some ruins in the middle of the Pacific isn't yet known. Jade does mention the lotus will regrow in about 413 years. Jade needs this Beta though, as Jade doesn't own a copy of the game. She isn't even into video games.

In typical Jade fashion she proceeds to screw around with her inventory. She attempted the Jenga modus but that worked terribly. Then she tries the Pictionary modus. This is interesting as she can draw something, if it's recognized and nearby then it's stored. If it's not nearby it makes a ghost card with a code. If she had the crafting items in SBURB this would mean that she could draw anything then replicate it. But this modus is really bad at guessing. Jade is then caught by Bec. She's teleported to her room and loses most of her gear. This includes her advanced bass guitar. We saw this was still there in the future when AR was looking around. She still has her laptop and the beta though.

Jade installs the beta. She is doing this preemptively knowing she will need it soon. While doing this Many trolls are trying to contact her on Pesterchum. carcinoGeneticist, arachnidsGrip, and terminallyCapricious. Jade ignores them for now.

We’re back to the main story finally! We last left John leaping through the first gate. We got a peek of this place in the last act when granny tossed a copy of Sassacre down below the clouds. A dark and cloudy planet we now know is the Land of Wind and Shade (LOWAS). Our intro to this act is a big interactive segment where we play as John exploring this land.

– tangent –

This segment has a really great song playing in it called “Doctor”. This theme will come up a lot mixed into many later works. I’ll mention here again that in the original experience we didn't get the handy music credits for these. The band camp also only credited the artists on a whole album so I had no idea who made what song. This means I didn't learn about who Buzinkai was until long after my initial read. I didn't learn that we had lost them or why. I won't tell their story here. I feel those stories are best told by those close to the subject and not some internet rando’s like me. But I will mention that I think this is a really great song as are the others composed by them. So let’s appreciate it and the artist that made it.

— end tangent –

We can start by chatting with Nana who is our guide to this. She suggested we need to chat with the locals of this land. He asks if Nana was always a prankster or if the prototyping with a harlequin doll made her this way. Nana just gave him a sass answer. It's also worth noting that the player in that case Isn’t known yet. But they seem more polite than our Wayward Vagabond.

The Imps have changed. Some now have elements of princess, cats, and squids. Nana tells us this is because Rose has prototyped her sprite. It seems other players in the session will alter the entire world. John asks if he can get to Rose but Nana mentions he can't yet.

It’s shown at one point that by jumping through the first gate John got warped to the surface. Nana explains John now needs to find a gate on the surface. She doesn't really explain where that gate goes.

The locals are cute salamanders calling themselves the “Consorts” of the land. They seem to eat glowing mushrooms. But they really hate farming them. They also speak the language of bulbs.

They are pretty much bullied by “agents” or “underlings” the imps and ogres John has been mashing up. The title of “Archagent” that Jack Noir has now makes more sense. The agents are causing issues for the consorts. The land's covered in pipes and some are now clogged with crude oil. They’ve also been damaging sacred monuments. The monuments are to frogs. Nana tells us that frogs are very important to John's quest.

The Consorts speak of a hero “the Heir” who's meant to come and save them. They heavily imply that John is this hero.

The Consorts also speak of “the slumbering one”. This slumbering one can make the wind blow again and free all the fireflies who are stuck in the thick clouds. There is a big open pipe with a river of oil flowing into it. John mentions he hears something sleeping within it.

Again, the land is covered in pipes. The wind blows through them creating a pleasant sound. Many got clogged with oil from the agents. Some stick out of the ground like mailboxes. The Consorts call these Parcel Pyxides (vessels). These act as a delivery system like phemonic tubes. You're able to drop stuff into them and find items in them. These include

• Serenity! The bug friend of our wayward vagabond. But this is in the past so they are still stuck in amber.
• a jar of bugs
• 3 mini tablets. These are stone Captchalogue Cards one is blank the others have a fedora and a shoe. Apparently dropping these into a Parcel Pyxis means you are asking for this item. If you receive a carved one your duty is to provide that item.
• one oily cog
• a cruxite dowel, this is just given to you by a salamander
• an exquisite pipe
• an elegant pipe
• “Illegal contraband” which seems to just be a frog
• a bunch of rocks and mushrooms not sure if John canonically took these.

Other things of note about this sequence.

• one of the Consorts has the harlequin doll that fell below clouds way back on page 266. He offers to sell it to you for 5 Million boondollars. This shows that these are actual currency.
• I remembered what trickster mode was when doing this thing. It just makes John shrug here. Also, I've gone back and commented on some of my older logs. These have strange effects in some of the interactive sequences.
• There's a glitch with one of the Parcel Pyxis that when an item pops out from it the item will float up endlessly.
• you can use the Barbasol bomb, and attacking with your inventory works in the game.
• you can throw the box of gushers around and shale will come out
• One notable Consort is CrumpleHat. He has a crumpled hat and claim to have dishonored his ancestors by wearing it
• Another notable Consort is a wizard. Though really he is just wearing John's oily bed cover as a robe. John was too weirded out to ask for it back.

The interaction ends when you leave a path. It just hard cuts to black. I thought it was broken or something.

The midnight crew has been on a rampage. Well mostly Spades Slick. But he and Diamond Droogs, Clubs Deuce, and Hearts Boxcar are now back together. They are in front of a huge safe. This safe was the target of the whole mission. All the dead members of The Felt, and all the smashed clocks are just a bonus. Spades is a bit annoyed that his safe cracker failed to actually open the safe. Hearts had called for some help from Clubs and never got it. Spades seems to have to do everything himself. Clover(4) is one of the last members of The Felt still alive. He’s not a threat to the Midnight Crew, he’s tiny and doesn't seem to fight. He just wants them to answer his riddles. He’s very obsessed with riddles. He mentions he can open the safe in exchange for humouring his riddles.

It seems Clovers(4) ability affects luck. Attempting to shoot him would result in a jammed gun. The attempt to convince him by just batting him with a rolled up newspaper instead. Also still alive is Cans(15). We hadn’t seen this one yet but he’s just charged through a wall kool-aid man styled and knocked Droogs into next week. Literally, Droogs is now one week into his own futures in a grocery store and very confused. He’s overwhelmed by the Prices and Values in the store (another SBHJ reference). Honestly grocery stores seem like a nightmare sometimes and I hate them. The amount of times I’ve just zonned into reality while buying food is astonishing.

Hearts attempt to placate Cans(15) by throwing the headless body of eggs at him. This is a reference to problem sleuth. Also it fails terribly Cans(15) is a friggin giant even to Hearts. Hearts gets punched into a different calendar about horses. This apparently means he will become a horse farmer for the next year. This means the midnight crew is down by half in the span of about 10 seconds. Spade, seeing his odds, decides to use his Crowbar's(7) crowbar on the safe. The safe itself was a temporal artifact, opening it sent Spades to an alternate timeline. In this one everyone is dead except for himself, Sn0wman, and Lord English. Even Clubs died off screen somehow :( . The mansion and all the clocks got destroyed. It’s is just Spades and an opened vault.

The vault only contains a floor panel. It has a spade painted on it and a keyhole/barcode scanner. We saw way back at the beginning of this intermission that Spades had a spades key. He’s always had it, and considered it a good luck charm of some sort. The key is the Rules of Blackjack cards with a barcode on the back. Before he can use the card it’s shot by Sn0wman.

It seems Spades no longer cares that she is the universe itself and charges at her with her own cigarette brand. She has a whip called “the black inches”. With this she rips Spades arm off. Taking her brand back she locks Spades in the vault. Though he now only has one arm and no key he is a caprician. He has a barcode on his wrist like all the others. Just the Wayward Vagabond (WV), or that Jack Noir guy he is branded. He scans his wrist and the door opens to a hatch. This is a similar hatch to the one found by WV, it even has a similar bunker. The bunker has a monitor set-up only instead of 5 displays this one has 12. One in the top left has a weird grey skinned kid with horns on it. Spades seems to know what is happening here. He mentions he’s seen this before and that it's been a long time. Much like WV could be a voice in John Eggberts head, Spades is a voice in the grey kids head. He’s bleeding out but decides to chat with this kid anyway. It seems there isn't much else he can do right now.

Thus ends the intermission. I’ll sum up my thoughts on it. I love the characters, I have always been a fan of the film noir motif. When I first read this it was nice to get a taste of Problem Sleuth. But honestly I didn't enjoy this departure from the main story. It was really hard to read the first time around. I only had so much time per week to catch up on it. Keeping track of timelines, and time skips all the time nonsense was painful. Even during this re-read I had to go back a few times to understand what was happening. I also didn’t think the ending made much sense. I got it set up for some stuff later on, but we never learned what happened in Spades original timeline. There’s a few ways the story could have wrapped up and still allowed for the integration into the main story.

If there is a special part of hell where those who hate time paradoxes go, this is where  Spades Slick currently is. But currently he is the punishment as he’s killed many time manipulating gangsters. 

Most of the Felt is dead. Remaining is Lord English, Sn0wman are too powerful and might even be killable. Sn0wman was apparently the universe itself and her death would be the end times.  Yey even she has a boss, Lord English must be insanely powerful. 

Stitch(9) is currently working for the Midnight crew at gunpoint. Eggs(12) and Biscuits(13) and currently engaging Hearts Boxcar.   Clover(4)  is also at the safe but is apparently not a threat. This leaves Cans(15) who is apparently very hard to kill. Spades expects he will soon show up.

Clubs and Deuce drag Stitch(9) and 4 effigies over to the vault where Hearts is fighting an army of paradox clones. Clubs and Deuce decide that just firing a wave of bullets into the situation might be the best solution. They were very wrong. They’d become enveloped into the mass of clones. This means Stitch(9) is now free. He attempts to set the effigy of  Spades on Fire. These act as giant voodoo dolls so setting one on fire is bad news.   But Spades finally catches up riding his worse hitch and jousting with the lance. He impales Stitch(9) before he could do any damage. This is apparently a reference to a scene in Problem Sleuth. 

Spades mentions that the crowbar that was being used by Crowbar(7) can break any temporal item. Fortunately, Spades’ little time detour netted him this very crowbar. By breaking the egg timer that Eggs(12) ability depends on. This removes all but the original Eggs(12) and Biscuits(13).

In a stunningly odd move Hearts Boxcar eats the head off of Eggs(12). This obviously kills Eggs(12).  Biscuits(13) attempts to use his oven to travel to the future. Though as has been explained the oven isn't actually magical and Biscuits(13) is an idiot. They toss some dynomite in it and Clubs carts it away to explode somewhere else.

I’ll summarize this because this whole intermission is a timey whimy friggin’ mess. The Felt is super annoying. So far Spades Slick has killed a guy who creates a speed up time bubble around himself. Then a guy who can jump between timelines shows up with a voodoo doll only to get smacked down with a horse hitcher. Leave to an empty timeline, get bored, then come back to let Spades finish killing him. Spades noticed one of his previous victims had a pin in this voodoo. When he pulls the pin out he's sent to an alternative timeline.

In this timeline Spades encounters Sn0wman. Sn0wman is a lady and also the universe itself somehow. She stabs Spades in the eye with a cigarette brand. Spades then kills one guy and kidnaps 2 others to bring them back to his own timeline. This is where we are now. This doesn't even mention he has 3 associates running around with their own time issues.

So Spades has let his 2 hostages out of their storage containers. It seems Crowbars(7) is armed with an uzi and he’s unhappy. Sawbuck(10) is also out, he's got a lance, and a razor impaling him and a massive slash on his face. But neither of these 2 are from this timeline. Crowbar(7) was already killed here. Crowbar(7) fires his uzi at Spades but Sawbuck(10) is so huge the bullets hit him instead due to gravity. Also when hit with anything Sawbuck(10) sends everyone into a different place in time. These bullets send them all into the past where the Sawbuck(10) from the current timeline is. There’s 2 of them now.

Crowbar(7) fires again, hitting current timeline Sawbuck(10) . This sends both of them away to shoot at each other forever. This leaves Spades and his kidnapped and very stabbed Sawbuck(10) alone. Spades naturally stabs Sawbuck again with a claymore. This skipped him the moment he went to pull Crowbars(7) from the voodoo doll. Spades fails to warn his past self about anything and that loop starts over. Spades adds a butterfly knife to Sawbuck, tossing them to the future. It seems there are 2 decapitated Sawbucks(10) here and the head of Crowbar(7). Spade Pulls the lance out of Sawbuck(10). They're both brought back to where we started when Spades got back from the alt timeline. Spades waits till the second where Crowbar(7) shoots the “real” Sawbuck(10). Then manages to decapitate all 3 of them using his rapier. The scene is a mess of blood, bodies, weapons on clocks. But Spades is finally back in the right timeline and in the right time.

The vendetta itinerary is getting cluttered. 7 members of The Felt are now dead, 2 are double dead, one is dead but in an alternate timeline which doesn't count. He’s also added Sn0wman to the list even though he can’t actually kill her. This may be the original “huge bitch, bluh bluh” meme which became popular with a character we will meet later.

Spades gathers all his stuff and heads out to regroup. Droogs and Deuce Mentions Stitch(9) is still alive, and they got him to make them some Effigies. They had Spades hats from Itchys(1) stupid tricks, but they need Hearts hat still. Using the Effigy of Spade they patch up his eye.

Diamonds Droogs managed to pump Fin(5) full of bullets. This created the blood trail the Droogs followed to this location. But he knows now he can't follow the trail back or he’d be vulnerable to Fins(5) ability to see people's future paths.

Clubs Deuce is tailing Trace(6) who can see the past trails of people. Trace is tailing Droogs and isn't aware he’s himself is being traced. Deuce leaves Doze(2) on the blood trail as part of a plan. He is also supposed to go help out Hearts but completely forgot. Deuce is very forgetful. Trace eventually notices Deuce's trail and follows it. Thus he finds Doze(2) tied to a chair. He doesn't notice the bomb under his hat. Thus ends both Doze(2) and Trace(6). As well as any clocks in the room. We are at 7/15 dead targets and 107/1000 clocks.

Fin(5) is stumbling around full of holes and bleeding out. He notices Deuce's future trail and decides to follow it. But he can't aim at all right now and Deuce is walking around with a block of C4 on the head. If Fin(5) missed it’d be an explosive end for both of them. Deuce meanwhile is just following the trail of blood. And Deuce is doing the same but from out of sight.

Hearts meanwhile is dealing with a huge pain in the butt time clone situation. Eggs(12) and Biscuits(13) seem to have made an endless time loop and are cloning themselves each time. Nearby Clover(4) is willing to provide clues on how to open the safe. He had riddles to offer. But he can't even try his whole riddle routine with all the noisy clones. Clover(4) mentions that Crowbar(7) could solve time issues like this. But Crowbar(7) had died before the midnight crew even got to the mansion.

Stitch(9) is a tailor, he is making a huge Cairo Overcoat that flashes colours. This is for Lord English. All the time shenanigans are apparently damaging to space time and fabrics. Stitch(9) is also the doctor which means he’s exactly what Fin(5) needs.

Things are rough for Hearts, He’s nearly getting crushed by all the clones spawning around him. Deuce has completely wandered off. Hearts calls Spades for back-up. Spades can help, Droogs will join as well once he's done with Fin(5) and Stitch(9).

Fin(5) makes it to Stitch(9). There seems to be large Effigies to each member of the Felt hang in the workshop. Several are burnt and destroyed. The one representing Fin(5) is very damaged. Stitch(9) mentioned he just needed to fix that effigy before… Fin(5) then falls to the floor dead.

Clubs then burst into the room swinging his bull penis cane. Stitch(9) is ready with a Thomson, he’s also smart enough to know shooting C4 wont set it off. But, this was only a (not so planned) distraction as Droogs got behind Stitch(9) with his own gun. They toss him into the Brawlsoleum as he may be useful against Lord English.

Spades has been using that voodoo to track dead members of the felt. He noticed Crowbars(7) pin was still in it. Spades to an alternative dimension where Crowbar wasn’t killed. The voodoo had some of Dies(6) power in it. Since apparently crowbars was a competent one, the felt are doing much better here. Crowbar(7) Stitch(9) and Sawbuck(10) and are in a tense shooting match with the Midnight crew. Spades considers using Sn0wmans pin but thinks an encounter with her is a bad idea. Too bad for Spades she walks into the middle of the gunfight. Unlike the felt she is a tall black caprician. She's slender, beautiful and very fashionable, holding a brand (long cigarette holder). The gunfire immediately stops almost in reverence of her presence. She seems to be able to phase in and out as she pleases. She simply approaches Spades and stabs him in the eye with her brand. She then takes the cigarette from it and casually leaves. This is not a nice lady.

Spades mentions if she were to die the universe itself would be destroyed. Hence no one dares fire a weapon near her, and why she isn't on his hit list. Spades toss the brands into Sawbuck(10) this triggers a time jump into the past. Notably Sawbuck is impaled by a Lance but fine. Spades then murders Stitch(9) and throws his occam's razor at Crowbar(7). Crowbar(7) deflects the razor into Sawbucks(10) head, he’s still fine.

They’re now in the distant past, the same place Die(6) went to. A Scurrilous Straggler watches from a distance. This seems to maybe an ancestor of Spades as they have a little spade icon on their wraps and approve of Spades hat.

Spades gets a good whack at Crowbar(7) with his horse hitch. He needs him alive so he quickly takes his crowbar then crams him into the warchest. He also manages to slash Sawbuck(10) across the face. This triggers a time jump into the future where Hearts showed up to the gunfight. Since the opposition was already gone he was alone. Spades orders him to pull out his Wrathtub so he can toss Sawbuck into it. This is an alternative timeline. But Spades figures if he kidnaps them all here and brings them back to his own timeline he can just kill them there. He tosses Hearts deck into his own. He makes note to not take Hearts smut magazine.

Pulling the Crowbar(7) pin he returns to his own timeline with 3 hostages. He is completely unsure if this means there are now 2 Sawbucks(10), and Stitch(9). But he’ll kill them all to be sure.

Hearts Boxcar has broken into the mansion of a rival gang. He’s the safecracker of the Midnight Crew. But, the safe is too big even for this giant, he’s called his little associate Clubs Deuce to bring some explosives. But, Hearts hears the ticking of an oven timer. He knows this is Biscuits(13), and he’s not happy about it. Biscuits(13), gimmick is that he can time travel to the future in his oven. In reality he’s just hiding in the oven, though he’s just popped out. Biscuits(13) is huge, even bigger than Hearts. Eggs(12) have also just shown up and together Eggs(12) and Biscuits(13) are a problem.

Clubs deuce has received the message from Hearts. He’s already following a specific path to try and lure Trace(3) out for Deuce to deal with.He’ll need to help Hearts out after.

Deuce has reached the source of the blood trail. A room with many shot up clocks he finds a tooth he identified as Fin(5). Fin(5) is like Trace(3) but he can see people's future paths. This also means Deuce knew where Fin was about to be. He had no problem giving a smack with his pool cue then pumping bullets into Fin. This created the trail of blood he followed up to this moment.

Spades just had one of his targets Die(6) escape getting clubbed to death. But it seems Die(6) changed his mind about being stuck in dimension all alone. I suppose that may be a fate worse than death, so he chose to come back. This was practically choosing death. He reappeared in front of Spades who finished his grim work with his knife.

Spades also got Die’s voodoo doll. He doesn't want to use it for any henchmen, but saves it for Lord English. He mentions English is apparently indestructible and this may need any edge he can get. Spades sets fire to several more clocks and the bodies of his recent victims. He can't be too careful with all this time screwery.

We are Clubs Deuce, despite the request of the audience. Deuce seems like a nice little fella. He doesn't seem to want to actually harm any or anything. But he is a member of the notoriously violent midnight crew. He is currently searching through his Battledrobe for his back-up hat. Meanwhile one of his targets Doze(2) is escaping very slowly. His Battledrobe is full of bombs, playing cards, and a cane. Deuce doesn’t remember what his cards actually are. Some items he finds are 2 black liquorice gummy bears, a questionable black liquorice magazine, some C4. Eventually he finds his hat.

We now meet Diamonds Droogs, he’s tall and a bit lanky, currently he is wearing what was Itchy’s hat. He’s standing in a room in front of a river of blood. Like the others he has weapons, 1 pool cue, 2 guns (I can't identify guns), and 2 cards. Droog’s deck is a Brawlsoleum, a mausoleum. Droogs cares about how he looks, he has many back-up hats, and full suites in his Brawlsoleum, also a bunch more guns. He also keeps his black licorice fish in his back-up hats. He claims this was his idea and the other had to learn the hard way.

Droogs get punched from the future. He knows this is Trace(3). Trace(3) can see the time trials that people leave behind. But Droogs points out that this means that he now knows where Trace(3) will be. He calls Deuce and tells him where to be and when. We could see from a flash forward that the Deuce got the message. In the meantime Droogs follow the blood trail up stairs.

Deuce has re-captured Doze(2) using a stretch armstrong. He then attempts to load Doze(2) and all his other junk into his Battledrobe. He realises at this point that his cane is actually a Bull Penis Cane and flips out. We are back to Spades Slick. It seems Die(6) appeared from a parallel dimension. Itchy had cheated in a game of cards and Die(6) wanted to see him dead. Though now he’s in front of Spades. This results in his head getting clubbed by a horse hitch. He manages to escape into another dimension.

With the other members of the midnight crew being distracting we go to Hearts Boxcar. Hearts are big guys. The only time I've attempted cos play was this character because I am also a big guy. He’s got a tv antenna, a big axe, and a morningstar. Hearts has made it to the safe. His usual method of safe cracking is to just rip the door off with his bare hands. But this one is too big.

Hearts stores his stuff in a Wrathtub, a bathtub. Oddly the tub's ripped from its foundation and just looks a bit like John’s after Rose ripped it out. The tub's filled with giant medieval weapons, a magazine, his walkie-talkie and playing cards. Unlike the others, Hearts prefer wax lips over black licorice. He has a bit of a thing for red cheeks.

We’re with Spades Slick. Brutal; mobster type. Kinda looks like that Jack Noir guy but he definitely isn’t. He’s the leader of the Midnight Crew. It seems recently a rival gang called The Felt robbed a casino he liked. Now he’s going for nuclear John Wick style ultra violent revenge. He and his “subordinates” have broken into the hideout of The Felt and their leader Lord English. They plan to rob English’s vault and bring violence upon anyone in their way. Spades has already started by blowing up the front door.

We see that Spades has an inventory, he can only have one item but 5 weapons. He’s carrying his deck of playing cards as his item. He has a horse hitch, 2 playing cards, a switchblade, and a scalpel as his weapons.

He points out that the The felt love clocks. It seems there are 1000 in the house as the score goes to 4 as Spades sets a pile of them into a fire. Also there is an image of Guy Foxworthy(I think?) hiding under the rug. This isn't explained so I can also assume it's an inside joke that occurred in the forums.

Spades deploys his ~~playing cards~~ War Chest and examines its contents. This is a thing from back in Problem sleuth. Items in the inventory were typically never what they seemed. A simple paper clip could be a gun. I honestly forget the point of this, but for now just assume the thing you saw is not the thing you saw. For example Spades has a backup hat in this chest which contains two licorice Scottie dogs. For all we know these could be thermonuclear bombs.

We can see some other stuff in the war chest. The expected knives, a rapier, a key, more playing cards, a walkie-talkie, and a CrosbyTop. Thankfully the less terrible Bing Crosby. There’s also a heist map (floor plan) and vendetta itinerary (hit list).

Looking at mspaintadventures.com Spades' confused by the weird website with children characters. It seems from his world the site is showing Homestuck. He deletes the time setting on the laptop using a knife to the screen. This adds 1 to the score.

When Spades picks up the spade key, it becomes the “Rules to blackjack” card. This card has a set of 9 barcodes on the back which are like ones on the wrist of the caprician characters we’ve seen so far.

We then see the vendetta itinerary. There are 16 photos. 15 of them are of the green guys we saw in a preview of this. One photo at the top is just “?”. Spades has already taken down 3 members of the felt. Crowbar(7), Matchsticks(11), and Quarters(14). Spades mentions these guys use some “Time shenanigans” though. Maybe death isn't enough.

• Itchy(1) is apparently a slippery one,
• Doze(2) tight-lipped, and immune to interrogation,
• Trace(3) is sneaky and breaks into the Midnight crews hideout,
• Fin(5) is always a step ahead,
• Clover(4) spills the beans and is useful,
• Die(6) can do annoying time stuff,
• Stitch(9) likes to fix things, and is persuadable,
• Sawbuck(10) needs a clean shot to kill (he looks like a big one),
• Eggs(12) and Biscuits(13) are dangerous morons,
• Cans(15) is apparently very hard to kill

You apparently have no intel on Lord English. And Sn0wman(8) isn't listed. They apparently get to live.

The Heist map is messy, but the gist of it is that your crew's spread out all over the mansion. Hearts Boxcar is your safe-cracker and will be going right for the target.

Spades takes the war chest back into his inventory, locking it with the key. His weapons are now a switchblade, a broadsword and 3 playing cards. He uses the walkie to request a status report.

In the next room spades sees 8 more clocks. But the clocks are already destroyed. There is also blood everywhere. This is obvious time shenanigans, but the score is now 13. Deuce reports he’s captured Doze(2) for interrogation.

Deuce, being just a little guy, is apparently not effective at interrogation. His just kind of gently baps his victim softly. His item is also a card deck. He has 2 cards, a table leafs and 2 kinds of batons as weapons. He deploys his BattleDrobe (a wardrobe)

Doze(2) uses his ability to slow time around himself. With this he cant feel anything.

Deuce also doesn't seem to want to harm the clocks. We can see Itchy(1) is zooming around very quickly. His ability is the opposite of Doze(2) he makes time move fast around himself. He frees Doze(2) and changes everyone's hat. This makes deuce slightly crumple a hat from someone in his crew and Doze(2) very slowly makes an escape.

Spades has entered another room and is smashing up some clocks. Someone has swapped his hat with a smaller one. This pisses Spades off. With a slight rise of his legs Spades rips Itchy(1). Some good old fashioned off-panel violence occurs. Then Itchy get crossed off the vendetta itinerary. We see Itchy's bloody and beaten corpse in the next panel.

As Spades equips his back-up hat Die(6) appears.

John's father got captured and is being “held” in the dark castle. Mostly he's just causing problems and punching imps. This is particularly annoying to an Archagent named Jack Noir. Jack has come to deal with John's father personally. Jack doesn't play nice, Jack.. gets whopped to the head. He attempts to respond with a good some ol’ switchblade negotiation strategy. But John's dad Sets Jack's hat on fire then stomps it out destroying it. The only thing Jack seems to hate more than John's father right now was that damn ugly hat. Pleased it's now gone, Jack decides to release John's father instead of dealing with him.

Jade is on top of a short tower near the frog ruins. She uses her bass to summon lily pads to jump across the lake and get to the entrance of the frog ruins. They are full of glowing symbols.

Dave has, after much getting his ass kicked, gotten the SBURB beta. He can now host Rose and save her from fiery death. As Dave instals the game we get another Huge friggin epic animation.

The install animation is like Johns. It seems to take awhile. Dave gets bored and doodles some SBHJ, Rose is just playing with Mewtini. The animation jumps around but I’ll focus on each of the characters.

Dave immediately tosses Rose's bed into the flames then places all the crafting benches in terrible locations. Rose is cursing Dave out pretty heavily. I wish we could see some more narration on that one. Fortunately, having written the guide on this she knows the process already. Dave uses the giant wizard statue to open the Cruxiter. He then tosses it carelessly onto the ground outside. The breaks of the hand holding the orb that we saw as a wayward vagabond blasted off in a big can. She even takes her own advice and prototypes the sprite using her dead cat Jasper. Dave adds the plush tentacle princess doll Rose had on her couch. Dave does the crafting work so he is at least useful. Instead of the apple that John made Rose gets a bottle of wine as her trigger item. But, as the fires rage on they form fire tornadoes. One of these causes the dismembered hand to smack the wine bottle. This sends it flying off a nearby waterfall. Dave cannot help at all as his room had become overrun with crows who attack him. This likely as vengeance for the one he impaled. With no other options Rose makes a hail-mary leap over the waterfall to catch the bottle. She is successful, then rescued by her new tentacle princess cat sprite. Smashing the bottle we see a glimpse that below Rose's home was a giant wine bottle shaped bunker. The "cork" was the can-shaped rocket WV would later fly off in. Rose and her house disappear into the game.

Jade had discovered in the depths of the frog ruins a giant Lotus flower. It had a timer that seemed to sync with Rose’s Cruxiter. On 0 it reveals the silver proto-sprite that she has seen come out of the meteor that had fallen there. This turns into Dave’s copy of the SUBRB beta. The one that the impaled crow took. This gives Jade her own copy of the game somehow. I’m sure it's explained later.

John’s part in this starts with Nana sprite. Nana writes the note in the copy of Coronals Sassacars that we saw in the intermission between act 2 and 3 (page 1149). This is playing on our assumptions that the note had been in there prior. This also means John hasn't seen this note. She then throws the book over the edge of the cliffs around John's house. We see the book fall below the clouds into a land with a beautiful deep blue landscape.

Later we see John going ham with his new weapons. He dual wields both the pogo and the WrinkleFucker hammers. John uses his new sense of business effectiveness on massacring imps. He’s also using the Telescopic Sassacrusher to destroy ogres. John is going to earn so much exp, for this. One imp has his dads hat. This makes John punch the thing to death and takes the hat into his inventory. This ejected his Crosbytop into the void. John then gets to the top after defeating the entire horde and jumps through the first gate.

We get a few pictures that reveal that John's house had been on top of a huge mesa sticking above the clouded planet. The on WV painted on his wall. This ends Act 3.

(I had to re-watch this animation like 30 times to get all that)

Today we are the Aimless Renegade (AR). A black caprician wrapped in caution tape. You've chosen this old ruin as your stronghold. Not just 1 but 2 different aircraft have crashed nearby and armed rouges are approaching you. You let loose your whole ammo clip but can't seem to land a shot.

It's pointed out that AR’s gun is magazine fed and that they don’t know a damn thing about guns. We get to see a bit of the inside of the ruins. There are hieroglyphs which AR says are Illegal. These mostly just show frog stuff. The ruins are also stocked with several crates of ammo and weapons. The icon on the side suggesting this is the weapons stash Jade's Grandpa had hidden.

The Wayward Vagabond (WV) believes he is a mayor. The Peregrine Mendicant (PM) Believes they are a Postal Worker. Now AR believes he is a Judge, with bullets/shells as his jury. 2 trespassers have entered his “crime scene”. They had been investigating the illegal monument. They were calling it a stronghold before, it seems they are changing delusions. The jury decides the trespassers are guilty and should get blown up with an RPG launcher. Also in the ruins is a jammed moving platform. It seems Jade's advanced bass is stuck in it, though it’s now ancient and ruined.

Speaking of Jade, in present times she places the package next to the harpoon. She called it “Time Bait”. She knew that WV would in the future use the apperifer to try and get the harpoon. WV instead got the package. She now just needs to figure out how to get to the ruin entrance at the centre of the lake. Back to the future, PM and WV are hiding behind a rock while some nutjob up in the ruins is firing a gun at them. PM has received the package from WV, with some drawings from Jade as instructions. PM apparently needs to get back to their ship, or metal fruit. But, AR is now shooting rockets at them, and blowing stuff up.

WV manages to distract AR by lobbing a can of Tab. This is somehow related to a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff comic, but I'll ignore that. PM manages to complete their mission. The instructions had them use the device in their ship. Apparently this is a Sendifer to deliver the package to Jade's past self.

To reiterate, John had sent this package to Jade month before the present time. Since Jade lives on an island in the middle of the Pacific, the package had to be air dropped to her months later. Jade, without opening the letter, wrote a bunch of instructions. She then manipulated the distant future so that a guy thinking he was the mayor would get the package. He was using a device that retrieves things from any place at any past or present time. The instructions told that guy to hand off the package to a stranger who believed they were a postal worker. Then instructed that postal worker to use their own device. This was a device to send the package back to the very distant past. Pretty much Jade sent a package to her own past self.

We see toddler Jade riding Bec around the fields. Her grandfather “hunts” a butterfly with a blunderbuss. What was in the package, a blue version of John Ghost slime tee shirt. I think it was conveniently on sale at the time . Also pumpkin seeds, and another of John's letters. John mentions in this letter that Jade is the reason John met Dave and Rose. The seeds are because her pumpkins kept disappearing but he told her to grow more and never lose hope. Another beautifully sincere letter from John. You gotta admire just how vulnerable and open he is with his friends. Paradoxically, Jade has no idea who John even is as a toddler. But from this moment she decides to get into gardening and mentions she thinks blue is a pretty colour. It’s very much the bootstrap paradox.

Odd angle, but think back to Jade's room. It's a combination of the interests of all her friends. She knows the outcome of sending herself that gift would in some way make her who she is. She loves her friends so much she actually set a linchpin event into her own past to let her friends define who she is. She could have put anything she wanted in that package but chose not to open it. We all fantasise about the idea of, what would we tell our past selves, what advice, or item should we give them. She had the real opportunity to do that, and chose to send John's simple gifts. There's a certain beauty in that

We start with the ballad of awakening. As we learned recently Jade, when sleeping, is awake on the moon of Prospit. We also learned this stuff is happening in the past still, at the time Jade wishes John a happy birthday. As the Prospit moon towers piece the skies of Skaia we see some events unfold that are confusing at best.

We saw this conversation as Jade being awake in the present time. But it was actually JadeBot having that conversation, while Jade was asleep. This was when Jade heard a meteor. This was apparently the one that crashed into the earth creating the island she lives on. The one from millions of years ago. The flashback shows that the tower of Prospite was there and so was Jade. This means Jade was there in the past but able to chat with John in the present using JadeBot. The meteor itself was apparently the source of Bec. but it contained something that looked like a silver sprite kernel. Bec was not allowing Jade near it. Jade later explains that the clouds of Skaia create mirages. These mirages are portals to various places and various times.

Also we know John is in the other tower. When he slept on his roof he had seen odd visions of clouds and a girl. That was Jade. But he wasn't awake/asleep enough to really know what was happening.

Jade then had the conversation where she mentioned that she knew things were going to be ok. She mentioned that John needed to “wake up”.

Jade mentions it’s the first time she has seen Bec in the clouds. Discovering this is his birthday she wants to do something about it. She also feels she needs to explore the Frog ruins. Bec had been preventing her from ever entering them. Since he is napping she feels she should try it now.

Jade uses her Harpoon gun to make a zipline from her room to the ruins. She knows this is the same rope that is later used by a Wayward Vagabond. She also needs to "deliver" a package to him.

We check in with Rose, she’s been busy building. It looks like she’s just copied and pasted the entire house in a sloppy fashion. But this makes a tower that nearly reaches the gate. It's got some Escher vibes and most definitely not up to code.

Dave meanwhile is mourning the loss of Cal. He grabs his broken sword. Apparently his strife Specibus has reset in the fight. This caused him to get locked into 1/2 bladekind as his weapon spec. Dumping his inventory all over the roof he takes only the beta and his phone. I guess the arsenal of crappy weapons won't help much now.

Rose is watching the flames close in. She’s done her part for John, and needs Dave to do his part. She takes some time to reflect on the gift she is making for John. She needs to one-up the knitting kit and genuinely heartfelt letter he gave her.

She also recalls a conversation with a troll at that time. grimAuxiliatrix [GA] is one we haven't seen yet. They are rambling about humans not appreciating Temporal Mechanics. When Rose points out they’ve never met, GA mentions they’d chatted in the future. But they are not in the future, just Rose's future. To GA Roses future is in his recent past. Rose says that is pretty stupid but plays along on some level. They decide to be “Friends” as it seems Rose “understands” GA better than her friends do. We also see a flashback of Dave. It would have been around the same time as Dave is opening his gift from John. It's another genuinely thoughtful letter. John suggests Dave “get out of his brother's shadow.” John's gift is the pair of shades he still wears. Before this he had anime triangle shades like his brothers.

Dave also encounters a Troll. One adiosToreador [AT]. This name seems to have a lot to do with Bullfighting. Though a fighter this troll is not. Dave mercilessly counter trolls them until he is actually blocked by the Troll. It's a thing a homoerotic beauty. Witnessing Dave get beat down so thoroughly in the present. It's healing to see him serving up a literal beatdown in the past.

Johns Stilling going on about how busy he is testing out new items. Even though it's been around 40 pages and he’s only so far only made a cool hat. Though Rose has moved some of the work stations around to be closer and more efficient. Anyway though he can't do a montage I can do a list!

• combining the pogo ride and hammer. Instead of the hammer and pogo ride that made his pogo hammer he gets a hammer shaped pogo ride. It’s kind of useless.
• combining his new suit with his slime shirt he makes a suit with a slime icon. He combined it further with the Wise Guys Book to make the Wise Guy Slime Suite. This suite seems to be able to shoot cards from its sleeves.
• he combines his glasses with the PDA to make Serious Business Goggles. These allow for hands free communications, A very useful item! He compares it to something out of Spy Kids a movie I haven't seen. But I assume its only relation is having some kind of goggles like this. Still not sure how he controlled them.
• He combines the sledgehammer, telescope, and Sassacre text. This makes a gigantic Telescopic Sassacrusher. This hammer is too huge for John to use, but looks like it could crush an ogre.
• combining gushers and blue ectoplasm he made Hellacious Blue Phlegm Aneurysm Gushers. I’m guessing the audience wanted a “gushing granny” kinda thing. The ecoplasm came from his grandma, though we should be thankful it's only this. These gummies apparently work as healing items. Apparently they are still a product of the batter witch.
• By combining the fake arm, blue ectoplasm, and PDA. John made the Remote Ghost Gauntlet. A single gauntlet that allows him to control a spectral arm. This spectral arm is apparently very strong. He can use this to wield the Telescopic Sassacrusher.
• By combining the Remote Ghost Gauntlet with a mirror he makes a second one for his right hand.
• A combo of umbrella and straight razor makes a Barber's Best Friend. This item would be good for umbrella kind users. John mentioned there's a card for this in the study he might be able to use.
• Gushers and shaving cream makes a Betty Crocker Barbasol Bomb. It seems unstable.
• He’s able to clean the ghost dad poster, by adjusting the punch cards. He also makes a potted plant, and a Painting Of A Horse Attacking A Football Player.
• Combining the Cosby poster with a computer. Creates the CrosbyTop. Remember this was well before the world learned terrible things about Bill Crosby. Still John has a laptop now, which is handy.
• Combine Dad's hat and Problem Sleuth game. This just results in the same hat but with some candy corn inside. I friggin love candy corn!
• John tries to combine Hammer and Problem Sleuth game. But this one is super expensive. It must be awesome.
• Combining iron and pogo hammer, John makes the WrinkleFucker. This just seems like a stronger pogo hammer.

And that's everything. It seems John succeeded and made a better weapon. He’s going to need it. There’s a massive horde approaching him and he’ll be in a big fight soon. Also in a fight is Dave. It’s been awhile since we saw what he was up to. He got defeated by a puppet named Cal, then his brother beat him down the stairs. And now he’s back for more.

In a shorter battle with his brother Dave is once again beaten down. This time so badly even the record on his shirt is somehow smashed, and his sword shattered. Cal somehow got caught in the middle and destroyed in the conflict. Big bro drops the SBURB beta onto Dave's limp body then speeds off on a rocket skateboard.

I’ll indulge in some interpretations here. Dave's ego and self image is utterly destroyed here. The music and weapons Dave used got destroyed by Big Bro because those are his. Dave needs to get his own identity. I also suspect Dave actually destroyed Cal in that fight. Though he may not think of it this way, it was a win. He had no hope of defeating Big Bro, but his test was to defeat Cal. Having done that Big Bro gave him the Beta and left.

Dave informs John of his recent ass kicking.

Rose is working with John and they need to work together. SBURB is a game, they both play it. John is in the game trying to not die and Rose has the ability to move things and rapidly build. The goal of the game is to build up to a gate high above John's house. But John has other plans and wants to just craft things. Johns also lost his mind a bit. Something odd has happened with the graffiti in his room. From our perspective as an audience the imps cause this vandalism. But Rose is providing evidence that it was there before that. She’s also using her armchair physiology to convince John that the graffiti was always there.

Her theories are pretty conceivable. She suggests John's father never liked clowns. He only adopted the theming as he assumed John liked clowns. John’s acknowledging this but also he made a cool Sassacre bunny hat thing. Rose has been building upward, but as mentioned before she is a terrible architect. Rose is even concerned her structure could collapse. Meanwhile a giant horde of imps and ogres approach. Jade meanwhile is playing her advanced base in her dreams.

The song “the beginning of something really excellent”. I friggin' love this one, very hopeful. The animation also reveals that Jade's dreamworld bedroom is on the moon of Prospit. The planet of gold and light orbiting Skiai. This is fascinating as it means she is already in SBURB somehow. She’s likely been there for quite awhile, though only while sleeping. Prospect is an interesting place. The entire planet and its moon's covered in a dense roman gothic(?) megacity. The moon's chained to the planet with a gigantic chain. The inhabitants are white capricians like the Peregrine Mendicant (PM). They all wear light pastel shirts and funny hats. Jade looks down to one, we see that in the waking world. JadeBot is looking down at a spot of the lake near a small tower of the frog ruins, Bec watching from nearby. Years in the future in that exact place the PM is departing from their metal fruit ship.

PM landed near some frog ruins and nearby the Wayward Vagabond (WV) and Mayor of Can Town, has also landed. The letter that Jade had managed to send to the WV, instructed him to go meet PM and deliver the blue package to them. The freedom of his people demands it.

A nearby Aimless Renegade (AR) starts shooting at both PM and WV from his tower. This caused both of them to seek cover. Fortunately, the aimless part of AR’s name is well earned. Hiding behind a rock WV gives the package to the “mail lady” PM.

Jade is still floating around Prospit. The moon had 2 towers, one was hers, and she decided to visit her neighbour's tower. The tower contains John's room, and John?! He is sleeping. This means he sleeps there while awake elsewhere. His dream room is also covered in graffiti and he has an imp plushie on his bed. Jade mentions he frequently has troubled dreams in this state. Jade also mentioned she needs to ask John if he’s received his green package yet. Damn time screwy! I completely forgot Jades timeline is still behind the others.

Jade decides to head back as an eclipse will soon happen and she doesn't think it's a good idea to be outside during one.

John is in his bedroom. A familiar start to these stories, though John is looking like a business man in a suit now. Something has covered his room and posters graffiti. These symbols of John's childlike innocence were tarnished by invaders. He’s also recently discovered that his father is not who he had thought. His father is a fun street clown, but a boring and serious businessman. Our man here is only 13 and dealing with a hec of a lot.

Rose is also back in her bedroom where we first met her. Her room is in about the same condition it was back then. It's now just glowing red as her home is on fire as most everything on the earth at this point. But she’s doing alright, her new kitten Vodka Mutini or Mutie for short, is keeping her company.

John has a chat with Rose. As John predicted, Rose suggested John not go building too many items. They should instead focus on building up and accomplishing the goal of the game. But John wants to see if he can build something to better fight imps. He’s so mad that they’ve defaced his posters. This confused Rose. She tells Johns that those posters had always looked defaced like that. She assumed John defaced them out of irony. Also that he was never into bad movies. This breaks John a bit more. Something very weird is going on.

Sometime in the future. A Wayward Vagabond (VG) is having a wild day. After finding a bunker full of food and energy drinks he became the mayor of Can Town. Then somehow triggered the bunker to rocket off to an island half the world away. He’s decided to go out and explore this land and its ancient frog ruins. But he’s stuck on top of this giant can rocket ship thing.

He is with his friend Serenity the firefly. Who is able to locate a rope and harpoon nearby. He can use the appearifier in the bunker to fetch it. Though when he does this he instead gets the blue package Jade had recently received in the present. This was a present to her from John, though it seems from the note on it Jade knew this would happen. WV is very confused by this but assumes it's his duty to now protect this package with his life. This is much like a Peregrine Mendicant recently finding a letter. After setting the appearifier to his present time he is able to get the cable he needs to get down from the bunker. Though we learn he is not alone. From a distant tower in the ruins an Aimless Renegade is watching through a rifle scope. They also spot a large metal fruit coming towards their location.

The Aimless Renegade appears to be another black caprician like WV. Though instead of cloth they're wrapped in yellow caution tape. And they are packing heat. I am not at all familiar with guns but this looks modern and probably isn’t a toy.

Jade has had a second strife, This one against a very real and dangerous foe. A god in dog form. But also Jade’s beloved pet Bec. The strife ended in happy dances and snacks. Jade is once again napping out in the middle of her island. Bec returns Jade to her bed.

Rose spent some time in a lab. There she got a scarf and a new 4 eyed kitten. But an ominous timer led to Rose escaping at the last second. She used a transportalizer to an unknown location where we find her now. John had recently entered his fathers room for the first time. Now Rose has appeared in her mothers room for the first time. To no surprise, It turned out to be a well stocked bar. From here she sees the lab she was just in destroyed by a meteor. Goodbye tiny 2 headed abomination kitten :( . Though Rose's house being so close caused a lot of damage and fire to blast into the room she is in. The on full of flammable booze.

John meanwhile has apparently been having some kind of identity crisis. He is becoming an efficient businessman, and a stressed one at that. He's been using the Punch Designix on all the items in his inventory to make cool stuff. Back to Jade. It seems when she is in her bed she dreams she is in a version of her room. She is also wearing the same weird golden outfit that we saw in the portrait of her above the fireplace. She also has a robot version of herself in the waking world. It is emulating her movements in the dreamworld. She can of course fly. She has the package John sent but says she isn't meant to open it yet. She knows what is inside but wont tell us.

Months prior we see John. It is December. We learn from this flashback that Jade's birthday is December 1st, Daves is on the 3rd, and Rose the 4th of December. John is also going by the handle ghostyTrickstrer [GT]. This is not his current handle ectoBiologist [EB]. He is talking with Jade. Weirdly his room is all messed up with graffiti. That almost seems like a continuity error as that didn't happen until the imps showed up.. right?. John has just sent birthday packages to all his friends. Though he’d forget that packages to Jade can take months. He hints that it is a thing she needs. Jade's interrupted by a troll. John mentions they are a huge pain and there seems to be 12 troll accounts. Jade mentions she finds some of them funny but they’ve been bypassing her blocks for years. John decides to change his handle to try and evade them.

To those actually reading this with me congrats on making it to 1000 pages.

Jade has gone outside. Her home is on an island in the middle of the pacific which has dinosaurs and the ancient ruins of a frog shrine. We learned she is alone there. Her grandfather died some time ago. She has a pet named Becquerel, all we know is Dave referred to them as a devilbeast, and it likes irradiated meat. Jade mentions that she cannot make predictions for Bec. They're only found when they want to be. Something is stocking Jade but she isn't aware of that either. Since she is outside she decides to track the airdropped package that landed earlier. She knows its a gift from John which is very late, but just in time. We go now to John, he’s for the first time entered his fathers room. He’s shocked by the lack of clowns or harlequins. It's all boring business stuff. John freaks the hell out over this realizing his dad is a boring businessman and not a street performer.

John's father at that time is wreaking havoc in the dark castle. He's a prisoner, but not a very willing one. He destroys another imp by tossing a very heavy safe at him. A guy who looks suspiciously like Spades Slick is looking at this event from a monitor. This guy goes by Jack Noir. He is an Archagent of the dark kingdom. He has a cubicle of 3 “Fenestrated walls” (Fenestrated meaning windowed). He mentions that some had stolen the 4th wall.

He summons his burliest minion who is totally not Hearts Boxcar to put a larger safe in front of the prisoner cell. He's interrupted by the monarch, his boss, demanding he wear the hat part of his uniform. Jack really hates the hat, but he obeys. Now Jack sees his burliest minion is getting a beat-down from John dad. He decides he’ll need to handle this guy personally.

John finds there were more presents in his fathers room that he figures are for his birthday. This guy gets tons of presents and cake, yet still destroys the house. What a brat. His new gifts include.

• A control deck
• An array modus
• 10 new cards
• A box of fruit gushers
• and a suit

The control deck allows John to have multiple modus types active simultaneously. The array modus pretty much lets John take out any item. John finds this too boring though. By combining it with his stack modi his inventory is now organised as queuestacks. Hence making his inventory needlessly complicated. He also got some fruit gushers. I bought some of these recently, shocked to see they are still around. Apparently they are also a Betty Croker product, and I still curse the batterwitch. As for the suit, it looks good.

John also steals his fathers shoes. And the gushers into his inventory. He has a mild breakdown over discovering they are a Croker product. That’s pretty much me every time I discover something I like is a Nestle product.

Back to Jade. She's about to grab the package when she encounters a beast. A creature sparking with both lightning and radiation. Its head, shaped much like a pumpkin we'd seen recently, or a logo on a Jade shirt. The music indicates this in an incredibly dangerous and powerful beast. Attempting to shoot at it has a few interesting effects. It absorbs the first bullet. Melting it on contact. The second bullet causes the best to shrink both itself and Jade. They are so small they ride it to the other side of the island. With the third bullet the creature becomes the universe itself. This sends Jade through the cosmos but landing them both safely nearby. The fourth bullet the creature becomes everywhere at once. We see scenes near Rose, Dave, and John, again teleporting both itself and Jade back to where they started. The fifth bullet Jade shoots behind herself and yells “Fetch”. The creature obeys giving Jade a moment to grab the package. Jade has won her strife!

The creature is of course her pet and best friend Bec. Bec receives the irradiated stake. It’s completely not expressive as it is some sort of god dog. But we can assume it’s happy to have played a game with her. Jade has another nap attack as Bec watches over her.

Jade has entered her grand foyer. She wants to go outside to feed her dog Bec. She also knows that waiting in this foyer is her grandfather. She's worried about this encounter mentioning it is often intense.

Jade's home is a weird place, with technologies beyond what we have. But also littered with knights, mummies, faded salon ladies, and taxidermied beasts. We start this scene with a fireplace that's both purple and gold, with a portrait of Jade in weird golden clothes. I also notice one of the stuffed heads surrounding it is a crude ogre like the one John recently fought. This implies that Jade's grandfather slew a beast that exists in SBURB at some point.

This area of the foyer contains globes. Also there are distinguished house guests. They appear to be human size dolls. Jade's grandfather (as she predicted) appeared in front of the fireplace. We see an imposing silhouette. She attempts to dash by his line of sight, but has a nap attack mid leap right in front of him.

And so we cut to Dave- nope that was a psych out.

We get the strife of Jade VS grandpa Harley … it is uhh wow. So tragically it seems Grandpa Harley is very dead. He had himself made into a taxidermy statue with a huge gun. Jade has been alone in that place so long it seems her mind is gone. She “fights'' her grandpa with a series of imaginary attacks. Some which involve taking his hat or just napping like a cat on the fire hearth. The collimating into an argument. Jade suggests that her grandfather would prefer she take his big gun and not her rifle. She gets upset and leaves suggesting he was easier to deal with when he was alive. Jade is now at least outside, but damn that really was intense.

We go now to the Peregrine Mendicant (PM). They had been rocketing through the sky in a giant fruit shaped pod thing. But PM messed with a terminal which exploded, leaving a giant hole in the side of the craft. They survived this though they’ve lost a few mailboxes and are slightly on fire. One of the metal worms spares the mailbox containing the letter.

Rose is in a Laboratory near her house. She's found a very out of place bedroom set for little girls. It also has an adorable 4 eyed kitten. Next to this she finds an appearifier. This one is a bit different then the one found by a wayward vagabond years in the future. The console is more like an arcade machine. It's weirdly already dialed into a time 9 years earlier when Rose was about a toddler. She attempts to appearify her cat Jasper, but as this is a paradox she only gets sludge. But unlike the one WV found, this machine takes things further. The machine attempts to clone Jasper using the sludge material. It is an abomination. Rose points out this is an attempt to perfect the science of Ectobiology. Ecto meaning external, though often associated with ghostly things. The study of external, or ghostly life? Also this is John Pesterchum handle.

Rose recalls the moment playing on the screen. Jasper tells her a secret before dissaperifying. Present Rose didn't make that happen. He would be dead by a river sometime later. The machine isn't able to reveal what had happened to him during the time he was gone. Apparently Japser could talk and was wearing suites even before he died?

Rose uses the machine to track where Jasper had been after his death. This animation hints that the new 4 eyed kitten she found was a more successful attempt to close Jasper. This was maybe triggered when Rose dumped his body onto a transportalizer. In the centre of the lab. This animation has a hidden easter egg, featuring Maplehoof. It is important because maplehoof is in it. With 10 seconds left on the clock Rose decides to retrieve her dead cat, as well as the clone kitten. Not the abomination she made prior, that's just left in a test tube. She escapes via the transportalizer just in time

We are the Peregrine Mendicant (PM). They are years in the future. A giant meteor destroyed the area where John’s home had been. John, and his house, had teleported away at the last second. But Maple Valley WA. where John lived, is now a large crater. From that crater a large growing tree had grown bearing a metal fruit. PM had wandered into the fruit and activated it. This caused the fruit to rocket westward through the sky. This is where we are now. One of the mailboxes the PM had been casting around contains a very damaged letter. It's addressed somewhere very close to John’s house named Dr. David Brinner.

This I had to look into a bit. It is apparently a character Andrew had come up with through some joking around on the forums. There is planted rumours that it is a whole massive webcomic that existed before MSPA Adventures. We'll only see them as “FedoraFreak” in the “Serious Business” app that John's father uses. Also they have no real significance on the story. The letter but, as well as a postal workers cap that was also in the mailbox for some reason. This gives the PM an overwhelming sense of duty in the style of the 1997 movie the postman. The plot being that Kevin Costner's character is living in post apocalyptic America. He gets the same sense of duty to mail a letter. I didn't hate that one but, wow, what a stupid plot. Also in the PM's case the letter was just at the location it's addressed to. That place is now some dust in a crater.

PM attempts to use the terminal, He is able to see Jade holding her rifle. They think they know her for some reason. Odd that both PM and WV seem to have some knowledge of computers. When they use the terminal to ask Jade (this puts a voice in her head) Jade seems to acknowledge them but with panic. The terminal then explodes. Back to Rose. She is still in a giant lab, she has gotten a green box that gives her mobile power and internet access. Very convenient. The countdown on the wall is at 1:33. She doesn't seem too concerned. The audience points out the pink tea set we noticed earlier. It seems to be an entire bedroom for a little girl. It has wizard plushies and cat plushies. As Rose takes the pink scarf a black 4 eyed kitten pops out of the teapot. It's an adorable abomination. John is up on his roof. He’s just defeated the 2 massive Crude Ogres, with a lot of help. One of the Shale loot items has embedded itself in the roof above John's Dad room. John has never been there. He is apprehensive about taking the loot as it would mean seeing inside for the first time. John hops into the hole.