Homestuck

Rose has escaped the flames or destruction. Meteors from the sky have brought the end times around. The flames have burned a shrinking perimeter around her home. But Rose needs power and access to the internet. A video game caused these issues and she needs to get into that same game if she is going to escape this place. Currently Rose is in a mysterious lab door next to her mansion home. She's surrounded by glowing green boxes. And there is a device on the floor in front of her.

These boxes seem to have outlets on them so she tries to plug her laptop into one. She stores items using a tree modus which was automatically sorted. By grabbing her laptop she’s dumped out the rest of her inventory accidentally. This tosses her dead, and taxidermied cat onto the transportalizer in-front of her. Rose, having never seen such a thing, assumed her cat was vaporised. She turns off the auto sort feature on her modus.

She grabs the box that the kiosk had labelled as unlocked, box SN_LAB0413. She has no idea what it is but it seems to be a portable power source that can charge her laptop. It is also an unsecured source of internet access. Rose notices the lab has a countdown on the wall. It had 14 digits but it's down to the last 3:14 (not 4:13?) It also has the logo Skaianet. Skaia being the name of the central planet in the game.

Years in the future the Peregrine Mendicant is now inside the metal fruit. It also has a countdown that has hit 0. The screen displaying this is much like the one in a can shaped bunker a Wayward Vagabond had found. And the effect of this countdown seems to be the same, the fruit is now flying west. Some details in the scene, is that one of the mail boxes contains a letter. Also of the 4 metal worms protruding from the fruit one is missing its head. This shows that Peregrine Mendicant has decapitated the one. They where mad because it ate one of his mailboxes.

Meanwhile in the present times. Dave is still getting served by a puppet. He attempts to abscond (escape). He's punished by Big Bro directly for this. The strife continues. Dave and Big Bro fight it out, but not surprisingly Dave's beaten down hard. Big Bro eventually uses Lil’ Cal to again kick Dave. He's down the stairs of the highrise, this being the very punchline of a Sweet Bro Hella Jeff comic. The irony is strong here.

Rose has now discovered the primary session terminal for SBURB. The signs were obvious that this place she is in is actually the control centre for all sessions of the game. Before her is a massive array of screens. These are somewhat like the ones we’ve seen WV and PM find in the future, only this one is much bigger. The main monitor is a map showing all the meteor impacts around Vermont. There is a large concentration of them near Roses location. There is also another map of the game's planets but this one has 8 of them surrounding Skaia instead of just 4. Also, there's an out of place pink tea set nearby.

Rose notes there is a massive meteor heading that looks like it could wipe out everything. It's located in the middle of the pacific and still seems to be a ways out. The observant will notice this is actually Jades island. For now she decides to login and connect with John.

We left John in a tough battle between him and 2 giant crude ogres. Unlike other fights John was in pretty real danger here. He nearly died before NanaSprite stepped in with some healing. Rose finds John still in this fight. He seems to have developed a spinning hammer jump that seems very powerful. NanaSprite is still helping out using her eye lasers. Rose also helps but her usual trick of dropping a heavy fridge on the enemy isn't so effective. The ogre grabs the fridge and beams John with it. Eventually though all 3 manage to defeat the Ogres. The loot drop is huge.

Rose mentions she no longer thinks that the Cruxtruder is what summons the meteors. Having seen that there is one heading for her location the timers must only be a warning system.

John levels up to Boy-skylark. This also being the title of a pretty nice jam. He also collects a huge stack of Boondollars which he still has no idea what to do with. He also gets some new materials including tar and mercury. Nanasprite hands John his copy of Colonel Sassacre mentioning it is his birth right. Though only moments ago he was being pummeled with it.

Meanwhile John's father is in the kingdom of darkness. He was brought there as a prisoner. This is not working out well for his imp captors as he is now defeating them with pies and shaving creams. Nearby in a sort of security room a familiar looking figure is watching this unfold from a monitor.

Jade still is trying to do the same task as yesterday. John hasn't been responding to her messages. Jade has decided to move on to her other task. She's concerned about what dangers her friends are facing.

We see John in the present. Like Dave, John is also in a strife. Also much like Dave he is getting his ass kicked. Two giant Crude Ogres are facing off against John. Though John is proficient with his pogo hammer, the ogres are also armed . One has a tire swing and the other has the first edition copy of Colonel Sassacars. They beat John nearly to death but the Nana Sprite rescues and heals him up.

We're taken into a further future. To the time after the world ended and Wayward Vagabond had recently taken a rocket ride across the Earth. In a different part of the world is a Peregrine Mendicant approaching a giant metal fruit. With them they have a cart of rusty mailboxes .

In the giant metal fruit is a giant metal worm. It pops out to eat one of the mailboxes. The Peregrine Mendicant is not happy about this and reaches for a cool looking sword.

Back to the present, maybe? We are reviewing Rose’s newest update to the SBURB GameFaqs page. Though Rose isn't the one actually updating the content. It seems John is, presumably before or after getting repeatedly beaten to a near death state by ogres. He mentions that he's found out how to code punch cards and breaks down the binary translations. He actually does a pretty good job of that, though I am most definitely not going to try and explain. He theorises that by combining items, you can possibly get anything from an atomic bomb to a shoehorn.

Speaking of Rose she has traversed a secret tunnel and ended up in the laboratory which was by her house. The logo has the logo SN the S containing both an atom, and a spirograph. There is hundreds of glowing green boxes forming a “Hubgrid”. There is also a kiosk and possibly a transportilizer in the middle of them.

Speaking of transportilizers, Jade, in the past, has descended with one. She is some kind of trophy room filled with taxidermied animals. Including some weird chimaera. Jade's love of fauna does not extend to these, she finds them creepy. A floor down we see a room filled with “valiant knights” and more taxidermied animals. These are just suits of Armour in poses. Iron man is also there for some reason. The rooms around this are glowing red.

Another floor down she is now in a room filled with taxidermy, knights and decrepit mummies. These are a bit grisly to look at and jade hates them. The surrounding rooms glow purple. I wonder if Jade’s grandpa was into eating jerky.

Next room down had grandpa's collection of ladies. Weirdly he seemed to be into sunbleached posters of hair models from old salons. He apparently encouraged Jade to look them up. I guess when you’ve conquered all other things you can just collect the obscenely weird. It's also weird since They've displayed these ladies with all the other crap from the other floors.

Jade finally reaches the grand Foyer. The big trophy blocking the ground floor is apparently it's Typheus. The worm thing from John's preferred browser?. I’d find it kind of weird if someone actually found the Firefox, had it killed and stuffed.

Jade is being pestered. It’s not John or any of the kids though it's one of those TrollSlum contacts. carcinoGeneticist [CG]. CG is an asshole. He somehow knows exactly what Jade is doing and is trying to stop her but being a huge dick about it. She apparently had him blocked but that didn't take I guess.

Back to Rose. She stands before a giant grid of glowing boxes. The kiosk is indicating box 0413 is unlocked. She notes that the object in the centre of this Hubgrid looks like some of the items she has deployed in SBURB.

Jade is in her room. She’s hoping to do 2 tasks. One Wish John a happy birthday. John is currently unavailable and she is killing time. Her second task is to go out and feed her pet Beq.

While killing time Jade is on mspaintadventures.com. It was in a weird intermission but that is now over. The main story The Midnight Crew can continue at act 1031. If we assume each act is about 275 pages then this is page 283,525. I hope to start reading this adventure soon if I have any hope of catching up before I die of old age. The new act opens with a cool animation showing off the characters. There's Diamonds Drog with a pool cue. Clubs Deuce with a table leg. Hearts Boxcar with a TV antenna. And Spades Slick with a horse hitch. We see them beating up members of a rival gang, the Felt. The Felt are a bunch of green guys themed after pool balls. The animation ends with them playing some music while the cast of Problem Sleuth.

Jade is still not hearing back from John. She chats with Dave in a conversion we have seen already. Mostly she predicts here that John will lose her package, but find it when he truly needs it later.

Back to Dave, in the present. Finally we get his strife with Big Bro. On the rooftop of a high-rise as the entire world. Dave has 8 different fight options way more than the other kids. But we get none of that. Big Bro is a much tougher fight than John's coddling dad, or Rose's intoxicated mom. Big bro destroys Dave's UI. Dave can fight manically. But his appointment isn't big bro but Lil’ Cal. Big Bro manipulates Cal with light speed movement’s. Dave has some crazy flips and fast attacks of his own. But in the end is utterly and humiliatingly trampled by a puppet. That's rough my dude.

Back to Jade in the past, Rose is now chatting with her. Rose mentions that today is the day they will all play in a game that Jade had predicted they’d play. Rose points out that it seems wrong as currently the only one playing it. Jade doesn't even have a copy. Jade just advises that Rose be patient and that it will be “fun”. I think she left out the world ending in a firefly hellstorm part of the story.

And now we are with Rose in the present. In a tiny but lavish mausoleum built for a cat. The world around her is on fire and she needs to get access to power. She takes her dead (taxidermied) cat and descends into a secret passage her mother had opened for her.

Back to Jade in the past. Still waiting for John to answer her pester chats. She’s patient about this knowing exactly how busy he is.

Yesterday we met Jade. the 4th child protagonist of this story (so far). Jade is also the most odd so far. She lives in a home of impossible size. Its equipped with technology which is beyond anything that exists currently. She is also very scatterbrained, frequently blacking out and unable to remember things. But, she also has an uncanny ability to predict future events.

We are with Jade in her room. And she's equipping a rifle she says she is very good at using. She shows off her wardrobifier which grants her the ability to change her shirt design. This was a participation survey in which the atom and spirograph designs won.

The “squiddle” plush around her room are apparently “activated” by electromagnets. This causes them to form into “tangle buddies” She takes one of these. They are pretty cute, I am surprised they are not real toys.

The audience asks her to “Lose interest in fauna and never speak of it again”. Essentially begging Jade to not be a furry. To which she goes on a long speech about how wonderful it is. Though later states she would never wear a fursuit. I mean furry culture isn't exactly my cup of tea. But if you're reading this then you're probably a Homestuck. We certainly cannot judge others for their interest.

The “Magic Chest” that is in her room, and looks like Johns contains crappy fortune telling tools. She points out the magic 8 ball is always wrong because she knows “facts” about the future.

She dumps the flute for a portable refrigerator, a portable “cookalizer”, and a lunchbox. These she uses to “cook”, or irradiate a meal for Bec. We learn that the Memory modus she’s chosen is actually a pretty smart choice for her. She seems to know what is behind every card.

While Jade plays her customised bass we get a view of the island. It’s most definitely the frog temple island where we left the wayward vagabond at the end of Act 2. Her home is a huge tower on a mountaintop next to the volcano. Jade mentioned its inactive but the geothermal power it makes is what powers her home. It also seems a package has arrived. Rose had joked earlier that Jades presents arrive via a plane drop. It seems that is also how she receives them.

Taking the bass and amp into her inventory she decides to finally pester John. It turns out that the lunchbox she grabbed is actually a computer of insane power. Though she only has 3 apps on it, pesterchum, a browser, and “freshJamz”. Her pesterchum is some kind of advanced edition, but she also has way more contacts then the other kids. She organised her contacts, one category is “chumroll” containing the other 3 kids we know. There is also “Trollslum” The mood of all those in Trollslum is ranchorus. There's a few names there we can see that will become important later.

• carcinoGeneticist
• arachnidsGrip
• twinArmageddons
• terminallyCapricious
• caligulasAquarium

I would guess that Jade, unlike the other kids, Jade has social energy. She's extroverted. She is only homestuck in a more physical sense. She's on an island and unable to meet people via normal means.

Anyway turntechGodhead (Dave) is talking. She tries to get a hold of John first but he is busy. Dave has a lot to say including some terrible words I won't repeat here. Hells bells I cannot believe we used to say that kinda thing so casually. But he provides Jade with a new song that she (and we all) listen to on the FreshJamz App.

There’s actually a good chunk of an album in here, it’s even the same play order. I only know because I've listened to it like 5000 times. This sequence with the icons next to each song gives me the feeling that all 4 kids would create music together. Like a band that never actually sees each other in person. It really adds value to imagine who is playing what instruments for each song. Even as with my current Homestuck playlist there's about 60 hours of music (and it's not even the FULL one). It's also cool to know this is likely how these songs were actually made. It's just a bunch of folks on the internet mixing and evolving songs. I'm at all musically gifted myself. But I enjoy listening to it and imagining all the awesome things that inspired every song.

Anyway, Jade decides to check out mspaintadventures.com. Weirdly it's a crude drawing of John in a dunce cap next to a toilet filled with cake and the pogo ride. It’s mentioned this is a tangential intermission that’s not relevant to the plot.

That's an odd thing to say.

We’ve met 3 kids. They like video games. And they’ve stumbled into one that’s brought about the end of the world. But it also seems to have put them into a journey into something even grander. But this isn't a story of 3 heroes. The game demands 4.

We see a girl sleeping in a garden. She has long black hair, like John she has buck teeth and glasses. She wears a dress and has a bunch of colourful strings on her fingers. She’s holding a note. Next to her is a flute, and a familiar looking pumpkin. The very on a Wayward Vagabond would appearify.

The flowers surrounding her are very strange. They are spirographs. Her name is Farmstink Buttlass. The audience wants to wake her up. They attempt to drop a pumpkin onto her but it disappears. Reading the note in her hand revealed she has predicted that the audience would name her Farmstink and she doesn't like that.Her real name is Jade Harley. Given her predictions and that we’ve found her in a Garden. We can assume this is our GardenGnostic[GG].

We get to play the flute with Jade. It turns out she is terrible at it. She mentions that stuff tends to appear and disappear a lot and she has no idea where this flute came from. In attempting to take the flute we learn Jade has many different fetch modi. All themed on common board games. She chooses Memory as it’s the most practical. Her grandfather had given them to her and she mentions he is a little strict. You may also note the icon on Jades shirt changes.

On the audience's advice to do something terribly stupid involving poop she proceeds. Jade spread fertiliser over her plants while squealing like a pig. She then takes the fertiliser into her inventory. She points out the coloured strings on her fingers are reminding her to wish John a happy birthday.

It seems like our introduction to Dave we are meeting Jade in a point which occurred in the past. She needs to go to her room to get supplies for something she needs to do outside. Only Jade will understand the meaning of the reminders on her fingers. But even she's never sure what they mean.

After grabbing a pumpkin, a crab apple, a key lime, a mandarin orange, and eureka lemon, she headed out of the garden. We see the garden is huge. At its centre is a pad of stone that looks like the one under the appearifier that the Wayward vagabond found. This pad is apparently a transporter. I can assume that's a handy accessibility feature for her grandfather, no need for stairs. Also this is technology well beyond the seemingly normal homes the other kids had.

Jade's bedroom is crazy, she has the interest of all the other kids combined. Her own interest seems to be plants, she has many in there. This includes some orchids which are notoriously hard to care for. She has a magic chest that is very much like Johns but blue, She has a Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff poster. But it's vandalised to make them look like animals. She also has a lot of plush puppets, but they’re altered. Like Rose she has squids, but they are cute, she also has Rose’s interest in Beast but uhh different. As Jade puts it she's into “Fauna of an anthropomorphological persuasion”. Jade is a furry, she's a teen girl cut her some slack.

On the other half of her room is a gun collection. Also, there is what appears to be a nuclear reactor and some uranium that she likes to tinker with. Wow! did not see that coming. She says the guns are for sport only and not to harm animals. The weird gizmos are the inventions of her grandfathers.

Jades grandfather is apparently an explorer, naturalist, treasure hunter, archaeologist, scientist, adventurer, big game hunter, and billionaire. He had taught Jade but she finds him strict and his lectures stern. It seems like the others have issues with her guardian. She says he spends all day in the Grand Foyer. That’s a bit odd. If you have a massive mansion the foyer isn't usually the place to hang out all day.

She mentions she will have to encounter her grandfather soon. She needs to go out and feed her pet Becquerel. She had called them Bec before, but the word becquerel is the unit of radioactivity. But First she needs to chat with John.

Is memory loss a symptom of radiation sickness?

We left with our WaywardVagabond (WV) on his butt having failed to get out of the ladder tube. He has a few seconds left though, he can try again.

At this point we get an epic animation to the track “Explore”. There’s a lot to unpack here. A “5x cliffhanger combo” with much more going on.

• WV again climbs out of the hatch.
• Near WV is a statue’s hand holding something orb-like. I think this is a wizard statue in Rose's house Implying that WV and the bunker are near her. Just years in the future.
• The entire bunker under him rockets him far into the air and westward. It looks like a can.
• We see him pass what was John's Suburb, It’s now a sand filled creator with a giant white tree growing from it. The tree has grown a “fruit” being a large metal capsule with some SBURB branding on it. -The Peregrine Mendicant is next to this. The thing we saw in the sky was WV riding a bunker can rocket thing.
• Still blasting westward WV goes to an area where a volcano very many years prior had erupted. This may be prehistoric.
• A meteor seemingly summoned by a spirographic portal left a huge crater next to it.
• A frog temple is later built in the crater.
• And then everything got flooded. This makes the frog temple ruins, and volcano into an island. The island is flush with life including dinosaurs?
• And now the frog temple ruins lay in the middle of more desert. This is where VW lands.
• Some fans discovered that there are real latitude and longitudinal coordinates. These show you where some of the characters lived on Earth. For examples:
• Rose’s home was near the Victory Basin wildlife management area in Vermont USA. It makes sense as she's surrounded by forested areas.
• John's house was located in Maple valley Washington near Seattle. You can even see the lakes in the animation. Not sure who lives at that exact address but they must get plenty of very weird visitors.
• The Frog Shrine is in the middle of the pacific ocean. This is actually also very close to the anti-prime meridian. In this place you can travel “backwards in time”. Though that’s more to do with our wacky time zones and politics.
• Dave's home isn't shown in this segment
• We also see Rose battling her generator trying to get it to work using only violence. It is not working out and she's surrounded by fire. Her mother looks on from the house, unlocking a hidden passage in the Cat Mausoleum. Proof she really does care about Rose. Maybe?
• We see John's father. He is in the dark castle. The imps have foolishly handcuffed him with his own trick handcuffs. It seems John's father got captured purposely. He’s decided now is a good time to break and unleash creamy hell upon his captors.
• We also see Dave on his rooftop. We also see Big Bro for the first time, not as a shadow. He has really cool anime triangle shades, and a katana.

This is the end of Act 2. Ending each act with mind blowing animation sequences really worked for me.

I’ll give you the epilogue this time. Because there’s a lot to unpack in that as well. We see a note written to John. It’s in John’s first edition copy of Colonels Sassacre’s Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery. It’s another Nana lore dump!

She’s saying she wishes she could give this to John “in the flesh”. She mentions John will be “thrust into another world” which has definitely happened.

“A realm of Warring Royalty in a Timeless Expanse.” We have that as well though we haven't seen much of it yet.

“A realm of Agents and Exiles and Consorts and Kernelsprites. Of toiling Underlings and slumbering Denizens” We’ve only seen Kernelsprites so far.

“A realm where four will gather, the Heir of Breath and Seer of Light, the Knight of Time and Witch of Space, and together they will Ascend.” We have seen a few “==> Ascend” moments, but these roles sound cool as hell.

Nanna ends the note suggesting they may someday meet. And that’s also true, they have.Note her heart in the signature has a ghostly tale, and the PS. Hoo Hoo Hoo!.

You could make a few theories here. John found the book with some articles about meteors and a fire at Croker labs. One theory is that this has all happened before. Nanna experienced a similar grand adventure. Somehow she knows her grandson's destined to do the same. It’s also possible Nanna has whatever weird ability GardenGnostic [GG] has. They both can predict the future.

The Wayward Vagabond (WV) has seen war. In his caffeine fueled boredom WV divided his cans (of which he is the mayor). The war destroyed many Tab cans (because he drank them). It waged on for over 4 hours.

The timer which WV had started was now down 4 min.

Now we're shown someone else. A Peregrine Mendicant wandering the desert. This possibly means “Foreign Beggar”. They look similar the WV but they are white, like #FFF white. They are pushing a shopping cart full of rusty mailboxes. They sense something in the sky behind them. We won't get to see more quite yet though.

WV decides to step outside of the bunker for a bit. There is concern that he may not want to be around when that timer hits zero. He may think. If the place doesn't explode he can always just come back. But when he gets to the ladder a door closes behind him. The hatch leading out is now locked off by bars. WV's trapped in the ladder tube.

Hope isn't lost though. The door has a screen that seems to show the SBURB house symbol, a spirograph and a new symbol a “triangley fractal”. Currently the house is lit up. He tries to access the spirographic room but it seems locked. The triangley fractal room is available though.

The triangley fractal room is like the house room. The screens are different but there's 2. One has earth, the other.. Well if you’ve been particularly good at paying attention you may see The Medium. This is a basic representation of the planets WV painted in the other room. There are the seven gates between the planets and Skaia which is in the centre. The Incipisphere is the circle wrapping them all in. We see two other planets with a moon, one is in the centre and one is out in the darkness.

There are also some numbers below the screen. These appear to be latitude longitude elevation and time. I’m not sure if the other numbers have significance but the date is, of course, April 13 2009.

There is also a measuring stick which WV want to make a spear out of. But he left his knife back in the other room. On the opposing wall something that looks like an Alchemizer, but bigger. By messing with some buttons it makes a pumpkin appear.

WV declares this machine is an “appearifier”, the word being a reference to a gag in Problem Sleuth. But we're told this device can transport any item from any place, and any time to this specific spot. The pumpkin has a weird symbol carved in it.

He is looking at a green button which is like the door screen we saw before. This one has a X in the centre.

Continuing to explore the machine WV finds a green button. pressing it sets the coordinates and time to the current. Andrew has cleverly prevented us from seeing the date. WV uses this to transport his knife, and many cans, including amber bug friend to him from the other room.

After eating the pumpkin guts using his knife WV has an idea to use the device to free bug friend from his rocky prison. This works. WV names his bug friend Serenity. This being a reference to the space ship in the tragically cancelled series Firefly .

WV, realizing this machine manipulates time. He decides to take the rotten pumpkin from the other room that he had eaten earlier. I guess he wanted to eat it again. This results in a paradox though. If he were to take the pumpkin then he could not have eaten it. As such the machine makes a paradoxical version of the pumpkin out of green sludge.

Serenity informs WV that the timer is almost expired in the other room and that he may want to get out of this bunker. It's not mentioned yet but Serenity can communicate via Morse code. WV uses the machine to remove the bars from the ladder tube. Packing all can town into the (non sludge) pumpkin he makes a bindle and ascends the ladder to - WV falls on his butt.

We are still with our Wayward Vagabond (WV), the newly self declared mayor of Can Town. WV has recently discovered a stash of energy drinks and has consumed a rock of uranium. This guy is feeling pretty good. Having discovered that the buttons on the keyboard open caches, WV tries the escape key.

The escape opens the command history. We are able to see commands made before WV discovers the displays. There are some commands listed, HOME, VIEW, SWITCH (1-4), ESC, LOCK ROOM (with password).

VW uses SWITCH 2. He is able to see a garbled image of a wizard. It looks like one we have seen in Rose's home. Also, commands are all locked for this view. View 3 is Dave. But, Dave is holding a broken sword over a destroyed Cal. He is also standing next to what appears to be a game sprite of a bird with a sword through it. Damn WV dropping spoilers on us. WV refused to check view 4 to avoid confusion.

Using HOME WV now sees a countdown. 4 hours 13 minutes. I mean the planet is already a desert of ruins. Another apocalypse can’t do much worse right?. This also locks WV out of making any further commands. But having no idea what that countdown can mean, WV returns to his Mayoral duties.

Despite seemingly having no idea what chess is, WV makes the can into chess pieces and plays a game with himself. He does this for over 4 hours.

We are with our friend from the distant but not too distant future the Wayward Vagabond (WV). WV is hungry. He's surrounded by food but it's all in cans and he has no way to open them. He reveals he has a knife made from a mailbox flag.

He decides to just build a small town with the cans and become the mayor. CAN TOWN is actually one of the parts of the fandom I took part in. The tradition takes place at meetings, usually conventions. Homestucks would steal an area of floor and all bring cans. Naturally we’d build a town with them. Anyone cosplaying WV was mayor. The best part is we'd gather all the cans and donate them at the end. I thought that was a lovely way to give back.

Anyway, WV is now the Mayor of Can town. Mayors mustn't be kings as WV has a severe hatred of them. West of Can Town, the corner of the room we didn't notice, is some stuff. A light bug in amber, a glowing green rock or Uranium, a jug of motor oil, and some chalk. WV seems to confuse the concept of picking things up and eating them. He eats the Uranium, and some chalk, but seems OK. He gives the bug friend a home in Can Town and uses the chalk to draw some roads.

WV creates a large chess board pattern west of Can Town using white chalk and the oil as paint. He also gives himself a handsome Mayoral Sash using a label from a Mayo can (adding the R with chalk). He also draws a sky onto the walls with some interesting features

• there is a yellow luminous planet with a single moon
• a planet which is blue with a huge volcano erupting from it
• a planet which appears to be a cross between a gear and a record
• a planet which is brightly coloured blue, pink with clouds of yellow and blue around it
• a planet which is black a dripping oil blot, it has dirty clouds
• on the other wall is a purple planet surrounded in an impenetrable darkness. This one also has a moon.

These places are pretty specifically detailed. At Log 28 (page 424) when Nannaquin Sprite was lore dumping. We saw a yellow kingdom of light and purple kingdom of darkness. Possibly related? These drawings are important.

Turning back to the monitors he can see John at a point just before he went to sleep. In an attempt to turn on the remaining three monitors he tries the tab key. This unlocked another panel filled with Tab Energy drinks. Not sure these are still around. I find energy drinks pretty gross. But WV should be OK with it, he did just eat raw uranium. Also this pun was terrible.

With this new discovery Can Town prospers!

She tells John he needs to wake up, ending the chat. Notability Pesterchum records the end time of the chat as ??:??.

At this point John becomes aware there is something much bigger than imps up there with him. 2 things. The Crude Ogres are here and John has no choice but to face them..

But first. Back to Dave. Taking his brother's instruction, he grabs Cal, and arms his sword. Now he ascends to the roof of his building in a completely awesome animated sequence. This is one of the cooler sequences in the entire series. Upon opening the door to the roof the sky red with fire and meteors are destroying the entire city around him. As he's distracted by the sight, Cal is again moved. On the roof Dave prepared to fight-

We get psyched out.

We are now a girl in a greenhouse with glasses. We haven't seen this character before-

No psyched again!

We are with the wayward vagabond (now called WV). He is still many years in the future (but not too many). He discovers the ruins of some facility with a lot of SBURB symbology in it. From here he is able to command John as an audience member. He’s also discovered a cache of cans, books, plants, and other stuff. He is very hungry.

Unlike other characters so far WV can just pick stuff up without any kind of modus. His skin is a black carapace, an exoskeleton. But he is pretty weak and not able to open cans with force. He also has some sort of barcode on his wrist which he says gives him bad memories.

John and Rose have discovered the full item creation cycle. They can clone any item they can carry for a cost. Rose has made 10 new cards for John which will allow him to expand his inventory, and make new items.

One item John attempted to make was just a bunch of random letters typed into the Punch Designix. This when built was actually a cool looking jetpack. But it's mixed with random cinder blocks and other junk. This rendered it useless.

We get to see a page of the giant book Harry Anderson Wise Guy, from street to screen. This book actually exist? It seems rare, but there is a copy in some libraries for any super keeners out there. Though I don't think anything published would be that terribly written. From what little of it I can understand he’s just talking about a magic trick he saw once.

The trick inspires John to combine punch cards. This actually works. John is able to combine his hammer card and pogo to make a pogo hammer. This hammer is just the right size for John and lets him build combos. He manages to one-shot an imp with the new hammer but sends himself flying. Rose managed to catch him falling with his bed. John, tired of his adventure, just decides to sleep on the bed. He’s unaware a second giant has climbed up to his house. I guess this is why you'd probably need a few players in any given game to survive SBURB. People need to sleep eventually and unless you’ve built a secure spot to do it you're going to be vulnerable.

Also for many of this is probably the first work of Toby Fox we’d ever heard.

Rose cannot wait around for John to sleep either. The fire has now reached the generator she needs to run her laptop. She’s now out of power!

Despite this though John Wakes up. He has odd visions. Clouds form shapes that are pleasant to him. He sees the shadow of someone… before startling awake to images of spiral graphics and a pumpkin. He seems unharmed. And there is someone trying to reach him.

Dave is in his living room, also the bedroom of his older brother. He's been in there awhile now admiring his brothers cool stuff. He’s also taunted by the plush rumps of many puppets. Dave noticed one of his Brothers swords is missing from its wall mount. As the audience suggests taking the other it vanishes out of sight.

As Dave leaves his brother's room he notices that there’s a comic left for him to see. A strange one about Roulf and an animal from the muppets, also the puppet from jigsaw. Dave explains that he believes this is his brother leaving tests to see if Dave is ironic enough. He is in no mood for it currently.

Dave heads to the kitchen (also part of the living room). Is a complete mess littered with swords, ninja gear, and fireworks. I see a Kit Rae sword jammed behind the microwave. I had a shitty knock off Morthoseth from that collection. I was terribly cringey.

Anyway Dave decides to blend a puppet that his brother left in the blender. This apparently reveals a hidden camera which Dave destroys. Deciding what gear is useful he takes a lot of stuff I’ll just list here:

• the fireworks from the sink,
• he nearly murders himself by taking the shurikens
• the nunchucks.
• a skateboard
• a battery pack
• a “jumble of unbelievably shitty swords”
• some cherry bombs
• a blender

He’s about as bad with his modus as John is with his. Also, It is pretty clear to us at this point someone is moving around extremely fast behind Dave. This person is doing things like taking swords, and moving Lil Cal around. But Dave is oblivious.

Dave notices a hidden message written on the entrance of the hatch leading to his crawl space. He needed to build something to get him tall enough to reach it. I guess this means Dave is short. Anyway, figuring he was going to find his brother up there. What he actually dies us unleashes a wave of plush ass puppets which fall onto him. This was his easier conversation with Rose about being waist deep in puppet ass. It looks more like he’s complete under the pile though so perhaps he is only saying “waist deep” to sound taller.

The hatch also had a note pinned to it with a batarang. Bro is something Dave to the roof with instructions to bring Cal. They are finally going to fight or something? I fought a lot with my older brothers. It was typically less drama and more getting my face farted on.

But before we can see this epic showdown let’s check in with John. John has things he needs to build items from his new punch cards. Instead of using them he decides to build a cool fort with them. I guess the internet wants this for some reason. Anyway John is wasting important time. Rust chucks the blanket and dress off of the cliff to prevent any future urges.

John eventually built the totems from the cards. This unlocks some new items that can be made in the Alchemizer. He can build a pogo ride, a hammer, and even a new card (which are very cheap). The card he randomly typed stuff into over a card for shaving cream is just “?”)

What could “?” mean?

Rose is working on making the house taller.  She needs to build John a path to the first gate far above his house. There seems to be some degree of structural knowledge needed here. But this mostly seems like video game logic for structural engineering.  This is to say Rose is a terrible architect.

She is good at squashing imps though. As she again rescuers John from an imp while he's distracted by the voice in his head. This eventually passes as the Wayward Vagabond goes on to do something else.  

John finally snapped out of fugue state to find himself in the study. He’s surrounded by loot and imp oil, and he has a hat now.  Regardless of everyone trying to pester him, John decides to check out the Punch Designix.  It seems to show that it needs a card.

Meanwhile Dave and Rose are chatting.  Dave is still having some sort of freakout having gone into his brother's room. Dave had taken too many images of puppet ass overloading his brain. Despite Dave being Rose's one hope of survival she cannot help but antagonise him.

John discovers that the back of all his cards have a captcha like code on the back of them. He types in the codes of his claw hammer and pogo ride then punches those cards in the Punch Designix. John also attempts to mash a random code and apply it to the shaving cream card as an experiment.  This lowers his potential inventory space and makes the cards unusable. John suspects it will be worth it. He also now finally notices his PDA and his friends trying to reach him. He’s apparently going a little too slowly with that as Rose launches a bathtub through his house. This nearly hit him but also obliterated an imp.

It seems she was making a shortcut to the stair system. John and Rose debated about whether John should just go check out his fathers room. Rose feels it's bad and could cost too much time. So for now John checks out the contents of the Safe. The Colonels Sassacre’s that fell out may be a first edition. There's also a Shavers almanack which John mentions he’d like to read when he is old enough to shave.

Most interesting is the old newspaper clippings. John mentions they appear to be “decades old” though the actual date is out of frame, but it appears to be 199X. That’s not too many decades old from when this page was written. They mostly mention meteors causing mass devastation in a suburb but “it’s not a big deal”. This is a huge deal! Has this happened before!? How was John's father involved and what did he want John to know about it?

One also states   “... Crocker Facility Levelled”.  I mean I guess John's family would care about that, they do love those cake mixes. Betty Crokers stuff is mostly resigned to dollar stores these days, the mixes are ok but not great. Honestly, for a family that’s so very into baking you figure they’d have just moved to raw ingredients by now.

The note was just congratulating John on being able to lift the safe and becoming a man. It had to combo on the back. That’s a little sad, John seems to have had to grow up faster than anticipated. Also I guess Rose is more of a man then he is, since it was her who lifted the safe.  He does manage to take out another imp accidentally while messing with his inventory. This grants him a level up granting more random stats. These include more Gel Viscosity, and some Man Grit he has climbed the Echeladder to “pesky urchin” .

John also climbs the less metaphorical stairs that Rose built. Apparently from his perspective they are really thin and hard to climb. I assume he is going to his room to lathe. Rose has placed the cards and all the cruxite dowels up there for him.

 But something has climbed up from the depths. Something very big.

We left off last time seeing Nanaquin surrounded by piles of cookies in the kitchen. An imp dares to try and take one and is instantly vaporised by Nana's laser eyes. This isn't a special game sprite thing, all grandmas can do this. They just choose not to.

John heads to his living room which now has 11 imps causing chaos. John uses his pogo as a mount, wielding both the claw hammer and a bottle of shaving cream. He somehow manages to take at least one of them out in a state of absolute bouncy rage. However, he trips on one of the many cruxite dowels the imps have created. Before the mob could descend on him he manages to perform an amazing wall flip thing to escape into the study. This is a pretty insane physical feat for a 13 year old, especially one who plays video games all day. Rose seals the entrance using the fridge.

For some odd reason the audience directions are getting very mannered. As though they've developed a strong sense of human etiquette. Also they are asking for a can opener.

The study is not safe. 2 imps were hanging out there. Rose takes one out with the safe revealing its contents. It looks like more cards, another copy of Sassacars, a note, and some very old papers. John is too distracted to deal with the other imp behind him.

Years in the future we see our wayward vagabond is reading the book of human etiquette that fell out of the cache. He’s learned that being polite results in gratitude. He is also eating every page he reads.

Rose meanwhile, despite helping John, is also updating her FAQ. I need absolute focus just to write this nonsense. So compared to me Rose is a goddess of multitasking. This time she is posting screenshots of the game pointing out odd things. For example...

• John's house being able to get power and internet.
• Rose claims to have no idea what happened to John's fathers car.
• She is noticing John acting weird and hearing voices in his head.
• She also notes that she is unable to see into John fathers room. Possibly because John hasn't been in there.
• Also the quote she makes under John riding the pogo is from Russian novelist Nikolai V Gogol.

Rose has also resumed construction on making the home taller… I guess we’re all ignoring the imp next to John. These things must really be harmless! I wonder if there’s a way to not harm them, and get grist anyway. I want a SBURB pacifist run.

Dave has decided to deviate from his current mission to save Rose’s life from a quickly encroaching fire. This will soon consume her and her home. IT was more important to play an xBox skater game in which you collect Doritos and Pringles. Fortunately, that game is too glitchy and Dave quickly gives up.

Dave, still not on track, decides to check out his brother's computer. I’ll point out among all the puppet stuff I am disappointed by the lack of Dark Crystal stuff. This was best thing to ever use puppets hands down, I'll take no comments on the matter. Anyway, from Bros computer Dave mentions a major source of income they have. This is the ironically pornographic Plush Rump site his brother is running. As an ace myself I really don't get some of the weird crap people are into, but I will not judge you. Dave breaks free of the allure of looking at all that plush ass. He tries to connect with John who wasn't paying attention. Next he tries Rose.

This brings us back to the conversion they'd had on 419. Time is really fluid and confusing in this story! We’ve now caught up to where we left off two days ago with Rose smacking John with a box.

She deploys a new tool the Designix. This was only available now that John had acquired Shale from his recent fight. John finally regains some sense. This is likely because the Wayward vagabond had been distracted by unlocking a cache of cans. Rose points out to John that there’s now a lot of imps around. He’s a bit pissed that they are just using his stuff, like his piano (I guess Rose just tossed it out on the yard) , and his Pogo ride.

There is a weird little minigame here where you can get a score for rocking an imp around. It seemed to be a little broken for me. I could only get 438 points before the score got stuck. Also not sure where those score submissions are going.

Rose then murders the pogo rider by dropping John's piano on it. John points out that it was a little destructive. Also he now needs to go out and get the loot. Their solution is to put the pogo ride in the bathtub with the grist still on it. Rose will need lots of it to build upwards to the first gate. John may need to get more. John grabs 2 cans of shaving cream and the pogo ride for his inventory. Meanwhile Nanquin sprite is producing endless cookies.

We are now Rose. Months in the past. Her home's covered in a thick blanket of snow. Her room is a little less messy, there is a lack of knitted goods laying around.

This is because Rose has opened her birthday gift from John, and it is the knitting set. Rose is talking to the mysterious 4th friend GardenGnostic[GG]. GG seems to have uncanny knowledge of things about the other kids both past and future. They are also not good at hiding this from Rose who picks up on every one of GG’s abnormally accurate assumptions.

GG tells Rose she will soon find a game that will give her the ability to resurrect her recently deceased cat. Though she had no idea what game and wasn't able to provide much else. Very weird! I loved my cat friend but would absolutely not resurrect them. Rose claims she only had a “lukewarm” relationship with her cat. Also a convenient flashback to someone who was just writing about Sprite prototyping.

Now back to Dave, in the present, who is prepping for his encounter with his big brother. It’s shown that Dave lives on the top floor of a massive highrise. The bird he slew is on the roof of another building across the street. Also meteors are falling like crazy around him. This makes sense. Dave is in a much denser urban area so there must be a lot more players getting into SBURB. This is triggering doomsday events. Also how the hell does Dave afford a penthouse. He must be richer than Rose.

I’m going to totally ignore whatever the hell Dave is quoting here.

Dave enters his living room. This is also potentially his brother's bedroom. I’ve had to do this before myself, city living is rough like that. Dave mentions his brother has “gigs” implying that he does shows with Little Cal. While explaining his brothers various puppets Dave mentions he has a lot of respect and envy for him. Also Dave's layers of irony come up here, He takes a lot of comfort with living in layers upon layers of irony. That’s an important part of his character which will come up a few times. Anyway, Dave is finding it odd that his brother is not around.

Little Cal appears directly behind Dave seemingly out of nowhere. Dave just assumes he hadn't noticed him until now.

Rose is in a tiny mausoleum with her former pet, shoes on her laptop connected to hosting John's session of SBURB. Fire from an apocalyptic meteor shower closing in around her. Time is running out. She is contemplating updating her entry to the game on gameFaqs. Gotta admire the devotion.

Meanwhile John is being commanded by a loud voice in his head. He must go get cookies from his grandmother's harlequin ghost sprite. He’s resisting this command really hard.

Years in the future we see a wayward vagabond in a post-apocalyptic desert. He’s in an abandoned facility, below the sands. He accidentally strikes the caps lock key on a keyboard he is using to put a voice in John's head. This unlocks a hidden cache of human relics. Metal cylinders labelled beans and mustard. There is also a plant and a book on human etiquette. I do not think he understands what these are, but he has really hit the survivalist jackpot.

Rose meanwhile is working on those faq updates. She expresses interest in seeing a brass door-knocker and pornography collection. Those would be some knockers! ( I’m so sorry )

Her advice to players is to try and get both prototypes in before setting off the countdown. She also recommends using something sentient as a prototype. This should get a guide that can actually talk to you.

She also pontificates on the lore and how instances work. Will each player get their own Medium? Does prototyping lead to different instance outcomes? She also hatches a plan. With John's server disk not unavailable due to the car incident. They’ll need other players to form a chain.

Four because there seems to be 4 receptacles in each of the kingdoms. But how could the game predict they’d have 4 players? Rose is apparently still working on that article suggesting we bother someone else.

And so we do. Months in the past in a snow covered building…

As mentioned yesterday, Rose is running out of time. The fire is approaching the mausoleum and she’s just gotten to it. She Fires up the generator and takes shelter inside. It’s a small space, Rose kicks the coffin to the ground to make a table for the laptop. The cat is inside apparently taxidermied and put into a tuxedo. I can only assume a drunken choice made by her mom.

Dave is also pestering her and she is ignoring him. She needs to connect to John.

John meanwhile survived his first real fight. But he noticed something odd. Something fixed his bedroom door during the fight, and left slightly ajar. And when he opened.

Granny Pranked! Seems his ghost grandma sprite thing pulled a classic move on him.

Meanwhile, since John is clearly not in danger. Rose chats with Dave. Dave admits he is beginning to get creeped out by his brother's puppets. But he is still working on obtaining the beta so he can save her.

Back to John. It turns out since the sprite is fully prototyped he can just talk to it. It really is his grandma and she’s going to guide him though the medium. John had never actually met his grandma so he is just assuming this is all true. If this was my grandma she'd be about as bad as John's father in that she’d be making me eat till I explode.

Speaking of John's fathers NanaSprite explains that imps kidnapped him. She also explains that SBURB is just a thing that transports people to an instance of the medium. The medium is where John is currently. It is in something called The Incipisphere, but not in its centre.

Above John is the seven gates. These are the rings left by the sprite when it split apart. above them in the centre of the The Incipisphere is Skaia. Skaia a “crucible of unlimited creative potential”

Also there are 2 kingdoms one dark and one light which each have 4 orbs that need to be filled with sprites.

As she explains all this Skies of Skaia is playing and it's a damn good song.

Anyway by coming to this land John has triggered a war between light and darkness. One which darkness will win. But to figure out the point to all this John needs to progress in the game. She suggests John needs to build a path up to the first gate.

John's excited to start this adventure, to save the earth from doom. But granny shoots down that goal. Earth is just screwed, and not relevant to his journey. By playing the game he's triggered the end times and there's nothing he can do about it. Well that is a bummer but we’d have destroyed it anyway. Nanasprite then leaves to make cookies.

Rose meanwhile is smacking John with a box to get his attention.

Here we go: Second Strife! Rose Vs. her own mother. Seems to be a lot of Thick pent up rage between these two. Let’s see what we got.

Aggrieve: Rose launches a volley of no-holds-barred stabs using her knitting needles. but her strikes are bloto-parried. The booze seems to provide a drunken mastery of dodging.

Aggress (passive): Rose attempts an empty threat. She's ready to plunge her needles into the electric socket. This has no effect on Mom who's too drunk to really know what's up.

Abjure: Mom summons a particularly beautiful pony as a gift but Rose rejects it hard.

Abstain: Mom attempts to offer up some of the booze to her underaged daughter only to get auto Parriar-ed. I don't drink booze myself. But, if you rather drink that disgusting Perrier water then booze must be really bad.

Another Strife over with no clear victor. Mom just shrugs the event off and proceeds to dust the front door blocking it. Also there’s a pony in the living room.

Maplehoof is a recurring character and much beloved character. This was around the time Broneies where a thing. Certainly not my thing being into Homestuck was ostracising enough. But I had a friend or two who were way too into that and it was creepy for me.

John is continuing to be oblivious. He's reading Data Structures for Assholes and ignoring the monster in his room. I could probably brush up on this topic myself. The page mentions that shooting items out of your inventory can actually be a battle tactic. A thing John could use about now.

Another Strife!

John vs Oil jester imp thing?

The little bugger has your bunny and he is bullying it! Fortunately, John has a sledge hammer. John's pissed. But his weak nerd arms cause him to fumble his first attack, breaking the hammer and leaving John floored. Embarrassing!

Back to Rose.

Having escaped her house she went out back into the rain. We can see her house's transformer is completely blown by lightning.

Back to John.

Round 2. Strife!

With only the handle of a sledge hammer, John still has some fire left in him. With our help, he is able to clobber the little imp fellow a bit. But a single bunny padded punch from the imp knocks John again. The little bastard really rubs it in his face.

Back to Rose.

She is approaching the mausoleum. But, so is the massive wildfire caused by the meteor storms. It's clear that even if she gets power she is running out of time.

John. Round 3 Strife!

John has had it up to here with this nonsense. Now unarmed he uses the inventory launch attack on the imp. Grabbing pretty much anything in arms reach and launching junk at the imp.

Victory! John receives some Grist and something called Shale from the defeated enemy. Also of course the bunny which he attempts to recreate the con-air scene with.

John also gains levels. Sburb has RPG mechanics. He goes from a Greentike past “Juvesquirt* and archives Plucky tot. As well as climbing the Echeladder he receives 125 bondollars and some Gel Viscosity. What does all that mean? We have no freaking idea. Yet one useful thing is his grist cache limit increased allowing him to store more grist at any time. Rose will need this to build more stuff. Also a strife card for the Bunnykind weapon. John feels this is probably dumb but keeps it anyway.

John fixes and reequips his sledge hammer. He see’s Dave is trying to chat with him but he has other concerns…

Rose is showing a vacuum she had given her mother. She had a drink holder installed on it as an insult to her mother’s alcoholism. That's a pretty terrible thing to do. Though her mother having the vacuum encased in bronze is also a pretty snappy comeback. Having a pestle plugged in and turned on at night to antagonize Rose is brutality.

The “pink tentacle thing” is a life sized “Pretty Princess Doll”. Rose has decapitated, delimbed, and rebuilt it with knitted abomination limbs. Having not seen the original I assume this is a significant improvement regardless.

In her kitchen we see many Liquor Bottles. Her fridge has a drawing she made of a $15k frame wielded to the door. Dear god, as someone who's always struggling with money these kinda luxuries just make me sad. The door also has further arguing in magnet letters. From the fridge she takes a fancy pillow, and a magnetic letter w. She barely escapes her mother who’d appeared in the kitchen pretending to mop.

Back to Dave. He’s fixing the hole in his window with gaff tape. I have some of that stuff myself, it is expensive but very handy. gardenGnostic [GG] is chatting with him. They’re the ones we haven't met yet. GG is a bit weird in that she mentions she knows John will lose her package but finds it again later when he needs it. This is an oddly accurate prediction so far. It’s also revealed Bec is some kind of pet and she has a grandpa she doesn't want to encounter.

Anyway Dave grabs his phone. It seems he’s now in the present. John is tracking whatever is leaving an oily mess around his home. He’s back in his bedroom chatting with Dave. Dave suggests John weaponize his sylladex. This should allow him to be more prepared to fight what he thinks may be a monster. Dave is also preparing to encounter his brother. Apparently his brother is a rapping ventriloquist with a dummy named Little Cal. That’s going to be one weird fight.

John is about to do research, again dropping that terrible word. Damn we all said that too much. Not at all noticing the monster in a jester's cap standing next to his bed.

Dave jokes that this new webcomic is over 3000 pages and that he doesn't have time for this bullshit. That one hurts.

He’s chatting with Rose. She suggests that his lack of attention to her is a sign of disrespect, or “flagrant homosexuality”. She then strokes his already inflated ego in an attempt to get him to play SBURB. It seems Dave was her first choice in gaming companions. He drops some choice words (one which is definitely inappropriate by today's standard). He suggests he’d only play SBURB if her life somehow depended on it. A promise is a promise.

Back to the present John is spacing out next to the Alchemizer. I suppose he’s unsure what to do now that Rose isn't providing directions. The door to his house seems to be jostling and leaking black ooze. Upon inspection the trail of ooze leads to his room. I wonder how that smells?

Back to Dave in the past. He’s going to show his music skills. We get to play with the mixer a bit, though I'm not remotely musically gifted enough to know what to do with that. He celebrates this by attempting to drink his juice but failing as John had made him think it was monster pee. It's weird he can re-captchalogue the juice and it appears to get reseal with a lid despite the lid.

But the icon is deceiving. As when attempting to equip; a ninja sword he ejects the juice all over his mixer and his SBURB beta. These modus I swear I’d be dead in like 30 seconds. I’d wake up and somehow eject my cell phone through my liver. Dave's goal is now to get a towel, he leaves his room. Like John's dad or Roses mom, Dave's brother has the house decorated with a weird theme. In his case it's radical puppets”, and Dave wants to avoid encountering him. Having 2 older brothers myself, this one I completely understand. You can only have your face farted so many times. Fortunately, the bathroom was just across the hall. So this goal was quick and uneventful. I suspect Dave's place is really small. Dave cleans up the beta’s and hangs them to dry near an open window. Given we know we lost them in an embarrassing way we can already guess this was a bad idea. Though a crow flying in to steal them then getting vaulted with a ninja sword isn’t what I had expected. That’s unironically pretty cool.

OH SNAP!

We are back to Rose in present time. She stands in front of a 20 foot granite wizard statue that is in her living room. Its face looks weird, familiar to me. Does anyone know who drew it? Was it a guest artist? Anyway Rose friggin hates it and all the other wizards. She believes her mother keeps them to spite her.

We’ll end this in her living room. It is a huge room and filthy with wizards. It also has some kind of adult sized pink tentacle thing in a wedding dress/wizardhat. And a copper vacuum on a pedestal. It's the usual level of wacky we’d come to expect. There is also a downstairs and some doors leading around. This place is probably much bigger then what John or Dave have. This could take awhile.

Rose is on a mission to get to the generator. She just needs to get past her mother. This could be a dangerous waste of time but- oh!

We're now a cool dude who wears his shades indoors. He has a sword and no time for our bullcrap. This Dave Strider also we can safely assume this is turtechGodhand [TG]. He has a lot of interests, including electronic music, turntables and mixers. He likes weirdly preserved dead things. He considers himself an amateur photographer. Also he runs some ironic blogs, websites and profiles. His room isn't messy like Rose’’s room but it is a cluttered and chaotic mess of wires and equipment. His furniture is mostly just cinder blocks with wooden boards.

We go through the usual nonsense we’ve encountered with new characters so far. Dave isn't as obedient as John. When asked to save his friends he had no idea what we meant by that.

He does show us some of his stuff though. He has a blue package from John. It contained a signed image of “Ben Stiller” who is known for being in a lot of dumb movies. I can assume Dave likes him ironically. Also, I'm not even sure if it is an image of Ben Stiller.

He also takes the box and a bottle of apple juice to show how insane his hash modus is. It apparently stores items in a slot based on an equation. The equation uses the number of consonants in the name of the item. What a damn headache that is. Though Dave is a bit of a headache in general.

I can only relate to Dave in that I was at some point in life the cringe anime kid with a sword. I think Dave may have been what gave me the self reflection to grow the hell up.

Anyway, not really motivated to do much else Dave decides to wish John a happy birthday. Also to ask John if he’s had time to play that SBURB beta that he’d been going on about…

Ah! we’ve wandered into more timey nonsense. This conversation between them was way back in early Act 1. This might explain Dave's lack of motivation on world ending events.

We get a taste of Dave internet habits

First we see sweetbroshellablog.blogspot.com where he is posting Ironic reviews of GameBro magazine. The real site's claimed by Andrew Hussie but seems to not actually be in use other than some comments. And then there is sweetbroandhellajeff.com which redirects to a subsite MSPA. This is also in the unofficial collection system as /sbahj/1.

Now maybe I don't get Irony, but SBAHJ is just awful. It comes up a lot in Homestuck and the community was a little nuts about it. I’m sure some still have tattoos. There is a printed book for it, and the memes exist to this day. What credit I will give it is that it's possibly the most famous meta web comic in existence. It's a webcomic made by a character in a web comic. Anyway give it a read if you like it has bearing on what's happening in the story.

Also a webcomic within a webcomic is the Midnight Crew. We learn one of the members is Spades Slick and that the crew doesn't always get along. We will learn more about them later though.

Well the current goal of getting the server disc is not doing good. The disc and the car it was in has fallen off a huge cliff. I’d assume it's destroyed, who knows what's going on below those clouds.

Rose is no longer logged into Pesterchum. We can assume her laptop has run out of juice at the worst possible time.

But, gardenGnostic [GG] and turtechGodhand [TG] are currently chatting with John.

GG had reached out to John awhile back but she got interrupted by an explosion. Her present to John was also in the car. Not shockingly at this point GG explains the explosion was a meteor. Fortunately for GG the impact was far off from her. Someone she called ‘Bec’ kept her from exploring it. John explains everything GG's confused but supportive.

TG is still rapping. I’m not an expert on rap music, but I can assume TG isn't good at it. John suggests the TG use his copy of the game to somehow help Rose. TG says he’s lost his copy for embarrassing reasons but could potentially get his brother's copy.

We pop back to Rose, she’s going to have to enact her earlier plan to get to the cat mausoleum and its generator. After equipping her laptop with a knitted cosy for protection of course. She also equips her knitting needles as a needlekind Strife STRIFE SPECIBUS .

Despite the need to hurry, Rose gives us an overview of some of the monsters in her book. They’re kind of generic off-brand Lovecraftian eldritch horrors. They do look a bit cute though I’m sure she’d hate to hear that. There’s also a page suggesting that monsters can be summoned by plugging a window into a power outlet.

After this distraction though Rose takes her items and heads out of the observatory. As she passes the weird terrace thing, getting rain soaked, she curses the rainy season. She mentions a zealous god is preparing for a Symphony it finds impossible to play. We didn't get this album till quite some time later but it's lovely. Only during this reread do I understand the title.

She also then give us a quote from ~~Charles Barkley~~ TS Elliot’ the wasteland

I’ll leave us in preparation for another parental confrontation. That is what the next page title suggests.

We start off with some updates to Rose’s entry on SBURB to GameFaqs. I won't detail it all here but it's some essential instructions on how to not die while playing the game. The really short version.

• place the Phernalia and don't touch the Cruxtruder until ready.

• get punch card ready in Lathe

• get the Cruxite dowel

• make dowel into a totem using the lathe

• put totem into Alchemizer

• eat fruit?

Rose is essentially saving lives at this point as she’s noticed a dramatic uptick in meteors falling. She can only hope her instructions are getting out there in time. But she also must know that each could represent death for somebody.

Her batteries are dying and she doesn’t have power. She considers a plan to get to the cat mausoleum in her back yard to access its generator.

For now she’s going to help John prototype his Sprite. This proves to be challenging as it doesn't want to be prototyped with just any old thing. John and Rose try to distract it but it ends up bumping into Nana’s ashes, then disappearing.

Not sure where it went, Rose provides a different goal. Get the server disc from the car. She points out the real world is on fire and she may need a way out. But, Rose has blocked the front door with the Cruxtruder. She can't move it without a significant amount of grist. They decide Rose should lift the car to the balcony so John can hop in.

John get hunted a bit by his grandma combined with the harlequin sprite, but it again disappears

turtechGodhand [TG] again tries to distract John with some “sick rhymes” but John is in no mood for TG’s rapping.

This plan fails hard. As Rose lifts the car it is dropped by her lost connection. The car then falls off of the cliff and below the clouds. The server disc is still inside.

That is a big OOF.