Homestuck

John’s current mission is to get his PDA back. Conveniently the tiny spot of his neighbour's lawn that the PDA landed is in the void with John. Rose is able to build a thin plank leading off of his out and closer to the PDA. This is scary for John but it works and John is again able to communicate remotely.

John is able to see from his fathers social media account that Rose's account of things are true. Humidity seems more concerned about material objects than people. But the network of incredibly boring men do show some concern for John's father.

John expresses to Rose that he's compelled to do things by an odd voice in his head. She’s concerned this may be some sort of anxiety but suggests he press on and finish prototyping the sprite. She also mentions she's running low on battery power.

As John returns to the house the “audience” begins with more annoying commands. John is resisting demanding to know who is in his head.

Years in the future we see the wayward vagabond once more. They opened the hatch with the spirographic logo and wandered into a facility. There is a large device with 5 displays in the configuration of the Homestuck logo (the green house with the squares) we see in those displays John is about to bite the apple. The Wayward vagabond is the “audience” as he types “BOY.” onto a keyboard before him.

This is a bit of time buggery that Homestuck does a lot. The Wayward Vagabond is on earth (or what I assume is earth) in the future created by SBURB destroying the world. The facility he is in seems to be how to control the game. It may be a moderation centre. It's built to withstand the end times.

Well Act 1 ended with the end times. Between the meteor that was heading for John and several dozens more Rose saw in her observatory. The world ended. It seems we’re now seeing a future in which a Wayward Vagabond is wandering the desserts of what was once earth. They encounter something with the SBURB spirograph on it.

Oh god, the economy!

But that's all for the future. Act 2 opens with Rose’s entry to GameFaq’s page on SBURB. It's a letter of condolence to those who installed the game and have brought forth the end times. She mentions she will add her findings as she goes.

We get another animated sequence. John bit the Apple. We see scenes from around John's house as we had with the end of act one but something is changing. The sky outside is black. And from all the shadows we see eyes. Something, other than John's father, is in the house.

John's house is fine though, it's now located on some sort of mesa high above the clouds in a land with a black sky.

The Kernelsprite seems to split off into 3. One piece falling down below the clouds and another shooting up into space. They leave some sort of guidance rings behind. The remaining piece becomes a more completed sprite. It's looking closer to the original harlequin doll but with a ghostly tail instead of legs.

It’s here we get an interactive piece. This is only in the newer version of the comic so I hope you are using that. Pretty much a minigame built in Flash. I can say this is exceptionally professional quality for a flash animation of the time. We are able to explore John's house and interact with things as the audience has done so far. We command John to do things and he does so obediently. The “audience” is strange though. They only seem to talk in all caps and call John “BOY” regardless of his corrections. We can check out every poster and details, but we already did most of that. I’ll highlight a few interesting parts though.

• John points out the plumbing in his bathroom is gone due to Rose's “piss-poor” job of cleaning things. He can always “go over the cliff” if he needs to.
• The Bunny is not in the box, it is gone. I hope it is ok, the bunny must be protected!
• TT is trying to get ahold of John on pesterchum, he points out it's odd he still has internet connectivity in the void. His provider must be fantastic. I also wonder how he’s even getting power.
• John mentions the Kernelsprite is a Sprite now. It’s still only tier 1 and still must be prototyped. Only the server host can prototype it
• John admits it was pretty funny when his dad got him with the pie during their Strife
• The Cruxitor is no longer active and the countdown is blank
• The area downstairs now has many large black smudges and not just the original comic this time.
• John's father is now gone, and he appears to have left in a hurry. I hope he didn't leave the oven on.

John's ordered to talk to Rose by the new audience.

Rose mentions she can still see John in the game. Apparently there’s been other meteors but his was the largest of them. His entire neighbourhood was destroyed. I guess he wasn't that close with his neighbours as no one seems remotely upset by the fact they are likely dead.

I’ve never met my neighbours, in the big city we move around a lot from condo to condo. But if I learned all my neighbours were killed, because I decided to play a video game, I’d not be ok. I think humanity in general would not be ok if such things could happen. But I guess we can shrug all that off.

Rose suggests John's first course of action should be to retrieve the PDA he lost during the chaos. John, never being on topic, decided now is a good time to call Rose out for not wishing him a happy birthday yet. She mentions she had something in mind but it was late and wished him a happy birthday.

John's new audience demands he take the towel and the totem. Together they discover they can delete the Generic Cubes John had made earlier to get some grist.

Game over, this is where Homestuck ends with everyone dead…

Well obviously not. I already mentioned there’s over 8000 pages of this and we’re only on 247.

Rose is in a hurry, she needs to get online ASAP to save John. An encounter with her mom could be disastrously time consuming. But it seems she’s managed to avoid the encounter. The path to the observatory is still perilous. She needs access to a terrace to get to it. A pretty dangerous sort of outdoor hallway built onto her home. It doesn't even have handrails, who approved this design!.

In the observatory we learn the quirk of Rose’s modus. As she pulls out her laptop all other items fall to the floor. This is because her laptop was the root card to all other cards. This is still nicer than John’s Modus violently ejecting items.

She’s able to confirm the read streaks are more meteors. And there’s a lot of them!. But no time for that, Rose has a mission.

She’s able to reconnect and get a hold of John. He’s at 31 seconds and has accepted his fate. She tells John he needs to take the new totem item back to the Alchemiter. With the last of the Grist she rips John's door out. Then completes her real mission of cleaning John's bathroom. With utilities connected to rubble, the bathroom is not functional at all. but good enough!

John gets to the Alchemiter and puts the totem on it. The Generic cubes are able to go in the Phernalia Registry. The totem results in a giant blue tree growing and dropping a huge apple in Johns arms.

[S] John: Take bite of apple. Is a pretty big animation. As suburban countdown plays the meteor crashes down. We see flashes of some other things going on. Johns father is baking, a few shots of posters, one of nana’s ashes, and the slime icon on John's shirt. Then an apocalyptic looking mushroom cloud.

Game over, this is where Homestuck ends with everyone dead…

Well obviously not. I already mentioned there’s over 8000 pages of this and we’re only on 247.

This is odd, but Homestuck isn’t just John’s story after all. We have a page that is very like page 1. Only we are being introduced to a young lady. One who we’ve known so far as tentacleTherapist [TT]. Her power is out at home and she must find a way to get online to save her friend ectoBiologist [EB] (John). It’d be particularly bad if she didn't. This given she's just locked him in his room by inadvertently dumping a bathtub in front of his door. The young lady’s name is Rose Lalonde.

Despite her earlier desire to keep John's home clean, her own room is a complete mess. Her bed is unkept, and the room is littered with knitting projects and notebooks. It’s a common phenomenon, messy people enjoy games where they can keep things clean and orderly. I’m definitely guilty of this.

She has a passion for obscure literature of a bestially strange and fictitious nature. She also likes Psychoanalysis, knitting and video games.

While I was in college for game development. Around the years I started reading Homestuck, I was taking classes in psychology. I'd also taken up some stuff about the occult and dark magics. As you can imagine this also made Rose pretty relatable. Rose prevents the readers from accessing certain elements of her room. This shows more control then John. She hides away as well her notebooks. The audience isn't allowed to know about that stuff.

We also learn Rose knows how to play a violin as she gives us another piece of the Homestuck soundtrack. But, this is a waste of valuable time.

The audience learns they can check in on John at any time. He's uhh.. saying his goodbyes to actress Liv Tylor. Also, there’s that ink smudge again. Only in the original comic.

As Rose is collecting items we learn about her Tree Modus. It seems to sort items under each other in alphabetical order.

Peeking out Rose's window we get some sense of direction. There is a huge laboratory nearby which has a strong WiFi signal and power. There is also a mausoleum nearby dedicated to her cat. I mean I love cats but that thing looks bigger than my condo. I suspect our girl here is flush with cash. Also the sky seems to show a few red streaks falling. More meteors?

Her inventory now has

• a violin,
• knitting supply bag,
• a laptop
• a Grimoire for Summoning the Zoologically Dubious. (about the size of Johns copy of Colonel Sassacre )

Rose decides to try the observatory as it is a high point and may have better reception. Her laptop has some battery power and it may be enough to help John. Leaving her room we can see a bit of her home. Much like John's father has Creepy Harlequin theming everywhere. Rose's mom has Ironically Exquisite Wizards.

All she needs to do is to get to the observatory and avoid her mother…

Father is home and is confused… he can't get into his house. He’s not aware his son's internet friend tentacleTherapist [TT] has, through the power of a magical video game, placed a large meteor summoning doomsday device in his living room.He’s also noticed his toilet is now in his backyard and is filled with cake and a fake arm. Damn parenting is hard.

John consults his friends on his PC in his room. tentacleTherapist [TT] is not very concerned about the impending threat of fiery doom from the sky. She mentions she's aware it's part of the game but was more annoyed at the GameFaqs walkthroughs for being poorly written. They are all incomplete and nothing really mentions what to do about the fireball. But Suggest that John should try the lathe.

turntechGodhead [TG] is also chatting. John thanks him for the Bunny. But informs him of the impending doom heading his way and it's not really a good time to chat. Always take time to appreciate your friends. No matter what.

John, taking TT’s advice, attempts to figure out the lathe. He figures out it also needs the Cruxite Dowel. He manages to make a Cruxite totem. He encounters but ignores his father who's wondering why the bathtub is now in the hallway. I’m still shocked TT didn't know better than to keep the workbenches closer together. That's just efficient.

But he can't figure out what to do with it. However, it seems TT has been disconnected just as she was moving the tub, it’s again fallen down locking John in his bedroom. 2 min till death.

Well those dangerous looking shards of glass were worthy of concern. As John retrieves the punch card one of these shards fires out of his inventory. This slices up the giant stuffed harlequin doll. I guess deciding these are pretty dangerous John evicts the other 2 shards in his inventory. He replaces them with some fanciful harlequin figures. Even further messing up the harlequin doll (and I assume the couch).

It's only now John acknowledges the violently flashing object floating around him. It's trying to communicate with him. tentacleTherapist [TT] mentions it's a Kernelsprite and it needs prototyping. John, tosses the now very maimed harlequin doll into the Kernelsprite.

The effect is that it becomes some kind of flashing representation of a harlequin. It's still about as useless as ever. TT explains it's only a Tier 1 Kernelsprite and still needs another prototyping. John has no interest in figuring that out. As the clock on the Cruxtruder continues to countdown.

This man is in panic mode without even knowing what that countdown means. I would have assumed it was like a Cruxite generator. The countdown was just the time until the next one became available. I mean it's not like it's something considerably less mundane and important. right?

John decides to try and figure out what the Alchemiter does. Now outside, John takes his telescope to access the Cruxite. This launches his PDA well outside of his property. That means he can't talk to TT anymore. So goodby voice of reason.

Using the Alchemiter John and TT make 3 Perfectly Generic Cubes. This burns through more of their limited Grist supply. These are completely useless green cubes.

With the Kernalsprite desperately trying to communicate something, John looks to the sky. Using the telescope. He can see it's friggin’ meteor heading straight towards him! It's suggested here that the countdown's linked to this event. And he’s only got 3 min left.

Wow. That one is going to tank the property value, His father is going to be very aggrieved for sure. Speaking of which he’s pulling into the driveway. TT is trying to communicate this but Johns is not near his PDA anymore. TT is also not aware of the imminent fire death John is about to face. At least she’s repaired the bathroom though.

Maybe the media was right, video games are dangerous.

John is again Phernalia with reckless abandon. While tentacleTherapist [TT] is moving the bathtub to the driveway for some reason. Her plan's interrupted by a lost network connection. The tub falls onto the second floor hallway. Given she had dragged that thing right over John's head it's pretty lucky it didn't fall on him.

TT explains she's been having WiFi issues due to a storm. TT’s mother is on a bit of a bender and she doesn't want to encounter her. She has a strained relationship with her mother as a result of the drinking. John compares his own situation to TT’s. She responds with much sarcastic agreement. Sarcasm he deserves really.

Despite the bad wifi it seems TT is still able to do things. John makes a sad attempt to open the Cruxtruder using a sledge hammer. That seems like a really bad idea given he has no idea what it is or how it works. Despite this TT seems to be onboard and helps him swing the hammer. This.. works!?

A weird flashing spirographic.. thing comes out of the machine. The machine starts a countdown of 4:13 (of course). TT has no idea what this actually means. She was checking Gamefaqs but wasn't able to see anything beyond this point. The entries actually exist! Which of you nerds made that happen?

What TT does know is that John is going to need some "Cruxite" and a punch card. The Cruxite is a blue cylinder which was in the Cruxtruder. The punch card is something TT is able to spawn. They seem to be ignoring the flashy orb floating around seemingly of its own accord. But they didn't ignore the countdown and are very concerned by it. It's a little too flashy and hurts my head.

So John is checking out the sky in a telescope, not seeing all that much. tentacleTherapist [TT] is cleaning up John's toilet using the game. This fails. John's toilet was ripped out of its floor leaving a huge hole down to his utility room.

John jumps down the hole and onto a dryer. That’s a big jump, down a hole lined with jagged rubble. Dude, use the stairs. Stairs are safer and there is very little chance of falling down them.

Anyway the utility room conveniently has a sledge hammer and Captchalouge Card. John being Hammerkind spec’ed was able to equip it without issue.

GardenGnostic [GG] has come back online. She asked about the green packages she sent, the one still in John's car. Also she says she has no idea what SBURB is. The convection is cut short by an explosion outside of GG’s house. That’s certainly concerning.

In the meantime TT is continuing to “clean” Johns bathroom by ripping out the bathtub and all walls supporting it. How is this place not flooding already?

Thankfully, John finds his old FILO stack Modus. Both modi can work as needed sparring John (and us) from further inventory shenanigans. This is a very good thing. Considering his current inventory is just shards of dangerous looking glass. It's a bit too convenient but lets take the win.

Johns father then leaves to get more baking supplies. Somehow ignoring all the mess, destruction and noise his son had produced. The man must really zen out hard when baking. But also I’m a little shocked he wasn’t more prepared. You gotta have your ingredients ready! I say hypocritically having just left for a mid dinner supply run.

tentacleTherapist [TT] is testing the water more by learning the game's limits. She cannot affect items beyond a range of John (looks to be about 20m). She also cannot move John.

She is able to just expand the size of rooms using a resource called grist. Also she has access to some items called Phernalia. I can assume that’s “paraphernalia". This is a collection of items or equipment associated with a particular activity, hobby, or lifestyle. Using this TT is able to help John retrieve his dads PDA.

TT informs John he is also supposed to be hosting a server with a second SBURB CD. Possibly the one in his fathers car under the green package. Which is now gone.

TT deploys the 3 Phernalia at various places in John's house. A Totem Lathe, Cruxtruder, and an Alchemiter. They're related to a punch card system but that’s all we know. For now. Maybe this will make up for the utterly destroyed property value of John’s house.

John has a smart idea to install Pesterchum on his dads PDA. Simple password lock could prevent young punks installing crap on your devices. Though I suppose this proves wifi, or at least mobile is a thing here so that's handy.

John's father is in some sort Serious Business social media thing. John mentions his dad is a Street performer. I supposed the world might be such a crazy place that the idea of a clean cut serious business might be novel. But still is John's dad the harlequin or the business man?

Anyway John is exploring the Alchemiter with 0 caution, and that’s where we’ll leave him

So in the red box is a Stuffed Bunny, the authentic one from Con Air. I wonder what that thing would actually go for in auction. Probably more since its appearance in Homestuck. I remember at some point the fandom actually had a few bunnies that got mailed around.

Folks would take pictures with it in crazy places for a few days. Some may patch something to it then send it off to another fan. I thought that was cool but could not afford shipping and I generally avoided the fandom.

Anyway tentacleTherapist [TT] mentions she has some experience involving that bunny bunny but pushes that aside. She says she is the server Host for the SBURB game and John can start playing now. It's pretty odd that John didn't need to configure anything to indicate that TT is the host but let's just go with it.

After a very cool loading sequence we are in? The game is an interface, somewhat reminiscent of the Sims as was the loading sequence. We have a bubbly flash based interface. AAA games sometimes used Flash to make UI layers. Also, the dimetric projection thing is conveniently our point of view in Homestuck. I’m sure we’ll get some more details on what these wacky buttons do later.

For now it seems TT is the “host” in control. And she’s decided to move the John magic chest to the roof. Crazy game so far, I mean you could use it to clean your friends house or rearrange their furniture.

John is taking a peek at mspaintadventures.com. Again this is not recommended as it's not an accurate archive now. Oddly, Homestuck can't exist as a web-comic in its own universe. So instead we have something called The Midnight Crew. It looks like Problem Sleuth But John says it's “not as cool as the last one” and moves on. We’ll get back to the gang later, Time for “less meta and more beta”. (did he pronounce it as “bet-ah”?)

Except it's not as it seems there’s a wait to get on the server. Surely this is an issue constrained to the olden days and something we’d have fixed in this modern age.

John decides to finally do something about his crappy modus. He had a giant stack of programming books in his closet. God I hated these things. Schools forced us to buy a metric tonne of this pulp. Since these, for some inexplicable reason, were still sold in the time of the internet. They were entirely useless. Oftentimes we just pirated the PDF so we’d at very least have the convenience of a search function. But usually the answers on stack overflow were available and more up to date. They all also had the CD of free crap on the back. These usually didn't even work.

I noticed one a few days back but there's another black smudge here on 115. It’s only on the old site and not in the newer version of Homestuck. Very odd.

John is about to learn that. Swapping his FILO (first in last out) stack modus with the FIFO (first in first out) stack modus. For the purposes of being an inventory system it seems to be much worse. John also has no idea how to use nearly offing himself with a razor while trying to get to the red package. He also jettisons the PDA, handcuffs, a large book titled “wise guys…”, and a cake all through a window and into his front yard.

How this has not immediately raised concern and alarm to his father is a mystery. Johns clogged a toilet then smashed a window shortly after a bizarre fight. It must seem like he’s having the mother of all tantrums.

But he finally opened the red box from turntechGodhead [TG].

After yesterday thrilling battle and tactical abscond John’s in his living room. He has the SBURB beta and needs to get back to his computer. I guess he’s not concerned that his dad would pop over and try to have a chat about what happened.

Of course John is following the will of the audience and that means he is going to lose focus and faff about.

So we get a quick lesson about how to NOT merge items in a stack. If you want to merge something in a stack the items need to be next to each other in the stack. So in an attempt to combine two cakes he managed to also merge 3 other items forming a mess. I know it's only Betty Crocker cake mix. Which I can get from a dollar store. But, I can't abide wasting cake :(

John decides to go to the bathroom to try and extract useful items from the cake mess. There are some interesting things there. This enforces John's part of Homestuck being a coming of age story. This has nothing to do with the bathroom itself. But, his fond memories with backyard swing-set and pogo-ride. At 13 he’s likely at an age where he is considering growing out of such things. These are also his fathers straight razor. A razor being a symbol of manhood. Straight razors are tough, I used one of those for years and bled a lot.

Anyway John uses the razor and a towel to get the package, SBURB beta, and PDA. He also gets the razor and towel though somehow not dirtied with cake. He also destroyed his toilet clogging it with cake. Poor cake. Then he goes back to his room. I mean that seems to be the only toilet in the house. That's a terrible state to leave it in.

It was at this point shown why A Time to Kill and Failure to Launch are on John's wall. It’s all McConaughey. I had forgotten John was a fan of his, and several other actors. Though this is a “man-bro crush” according to certain experts. I’ve always been terrible at associating actors with the roles they play in movies.

We also got a message from John's 3rd friend. He only has 3, which is a lot these days. gardenGnostic [GG], they were wishing John a happy birthday but it seems John missed them. They seem lovely and are one of my favourite characters because I haven't read beyond cannon.

turntechGodhead [TG] also is chatting. Mostly, TG is insulting John for his decor, and terrible modulus and does not wish to actually play SBURB. It seems he’s been drinking the GameBro Kool Aid pretty hard. We end with John visiting mspaintadventures.com in an act of 4th wall breaking meta.

Starting in real and existential. John has a moment. After realizing he is outside in the desolation of his suburban neighborhood. Surrounded by homes but also pretty much in the desert lacking any human interaction. We learn John is only 13 at this point. I can't even remember being 13 but I also lived in a suburb and hated it. There were people there but never my people. It's never a place you belong, it's your home. Though when I got into Homestuck I was in an even more isolated place. I was in a college dorm, I hated everyone. Having left what family and friends I could connect with in a city far from where I was. I was so very alone.

"Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire." -~~Walt Whitman~~ (it’s actually Francois de La Rochefoucauld)

Anyway after these dreadful thoughts John gets back to the mission at hand. He does notice a green package in his dads car. But he also sees one with the SBURB logo in the Kitchen. John has no choices left, he must face his father if he wants to get that package. Father is about what you’d expect. A gentleman with a pipe and a fedora. This was possibly from a time before the whole neckbeard thing.

The disguise fails pretty much immediately. I figured his dad would at least play along a bit but I guess not. This can only mean it's time to => STRIFE! (Strife meaning conflict). These occur occasionally during Homestuck, interactive action sequences with combat.

This one comes with another classic piece of Homestuck music. We have 2 options Aggreive (to make someone unhappy and angry) and Abjure (to say formally or publicly that you no longer agree with a belief or way of behaving). Neither option works. Father has a Auto-Pastry and CoddleBrand which John can dodge.

That may be the issue in their relationship. There’s no mom figure and father has become a major coddler. I didn't have this myself. But, the idea of a coddled child becoming isolated and weird is a bit of trope at this point.

Anyway, John is in utter peril, at this point. He’s unable to win the strife or Abscond (Run away) with the package. Father prepares a powerful move, cream pie in hand. I can't lie to you all this fight is making me want a cake, but we must go overtime here and do 20 pages. A bold defense from John. He uses the terrible disguise to deflect some of the humiliation damage dealt from the pie toss. He manages to pull off a Accede (to agree to do what people have asked you to do) move to disarm his father of the large cake. This causes the Colonels Sassacre’s to pop out and trigger the smoke bombs. Allowing him to Abscond. He manages to get the red package, pushing out the captchalogue card and activating it. Also John gets the SBURB beta, and even swipes his dads PDA. For younger folks a PDA is a Personal digital assistant, or Palm Pilot. In the days before smartphones these were devices for folks to keep track of scheduling. Kinda rude of John to take that.

Even more rude leaving his father in the kitchen to clean up the mess as John escapes back to the living room.

So we are with John exploring his fathers study. I hope he’s allowed in there. I know in my home, when I was a kid, the study was the adult only zone. Many of my friends had the same kind of thing. I assume this was more to grove the adults a bastion away from the terrors of their own children. Being older myself, child free thankfully, I can't say I blame my parents for needing a hideaway. But much like John I’d sneak in anyway and examine all the boring mundane adult things.

Though John's fathers stuff is a little less mundane. John finds a range of novelty pranks and magic items. This includes a can of peanuts, which unexpectedly contains actual peanuts. John recalls discovering a severe peanut allergy because of a can like this one. Oddly, I don't remember this coming up again at any time.

He also found a new Captchalogue captchalogue card. But he isn't able to equip it. It is a jape or does he not know how.

Moving on. There is also a piano in the study. We hear the first piece of Homestuck music, the Haunting Piano Refrain. I very much appreciate that this newer reading system actually credits the artist. If I remember correctly, the only way to get that info in the original experience was to read the forums. Even the Bandcamp didn’t credit each song, only the albums leaving me to try and guess who did what.

I’ll also point out this is the point I knew Homestuck was going huge someday. I’ve been reading webcomics for years. But having an original song built into the experience. This was crazy to me. I know others would also later follow such as Romantically Apocalyptic having some amazing atmospheric works. But the music behind Homestuck would just continue to blow my mind. I’ll gush more about that as we hear more of it.

But especially for this tune. Hold it in your mind, it will follow us and grow as this thing goes on. This little webcomic becomes something so insanely more then what we have seen. And music like this will provide the emotions we cannot get with text and images alone.

Though we are immediately smacked with comic stupidity. This as John decides to play 52 pick-up with himself while in his increasingly dumb disguise.

Deciding to check the mailbox, John again passes by his living room. This very appropriate ad playing on the TV. For the first time in this story John is outside. I’m still impressed by the lengths John will go to to avoid his dad. His dad seems like a great guy.

John exits the house to find the mailbox is empty.

There’s a good deal of japery today. Starting with John chatting with a new character TentacleTherapist [TT]. She seemed to already be aware of all John’s antics. She was also aware of TurntableGodhands [TG] claiming she was “making on him”. Her response to this was a scathing amount of sarcasm. TT pushed John to focus on getting the game from his dad, getting him back to the living room.

I loved the bit about this conversion about John wearing a “dumb disguise”. TT calls John out, John denies wearing a disguise in an attempted jape. Only when john reveals his jape to TT it’s clear she has not at all fallen for it.

John, Now back downstairs, gives his fake arms to the giant creepy harlequin doll. He puts the arms on backwards which is so very annoying. But he does also clean up the living room a bit by burning all the gift wrapper and an errant Brobrolone ad. So at least that was considerate, though not very safe.

We also get a look at what's actually in Colonels Sassacre’s a page with a portrait of the Colonel himself. He appears to be a modified image of Mark Twain. I don't know much about Mark Twain, other than his work get taught in American schools. Does anyone know if the guy was a prankster? I’m curious on who the Colonel Sassacre is.

I’ll point out that the page John is reading talking about using a fishing line to make “the creepy-crawlers” to life. Given the images on the page this implies that its a prank to make harlequins move in a life-like way to prank people.

We end today in dads study. It seems Dad isn’t in there, and likely in the kitchen baking more cakes. I assume we will be getting a very detailed description of every nook and cranny of this place. So I’ll leave it till tomorrow.

So we are admiring more stuff around John's living room now. With all the things the audience of Homestuck could do, did they seem to want to check stuff out? This brings me back to my college days and playing D&D. Our DM had put a great level of detail into the environments they had made. But, we players were too busy faffing about over tiny details to ever explore much of the world built for us.

Anyway, it's hinted that Nana got squished under the UNABRIDGED version of Colonels Sassacre’s Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery. Which I can only assume is the size of a Volvo and twice the weight.

Anyway, John somehow manages to knock the urn over causing the contents to spill out. This was chaotic in a bad comedy movie trope way. It is fortunate John doesn't have a cat to use the ashes as a litter box.

John, reaction is slow to do something about his dear grandmother's ashes being all over the floor. He instead decides to open a second gift from his father adorned with another wholesome note. The gift was of course a giant creepy harlequin doll which John was not on board with.

Anyway, after doing a terrible job cleaning up Nana's ashes he goes back to his room. We can't seem to get out of John's room. But at least we get an alternative angle revealing more posters! Including one of many Bill Cosby references… oh those didn't age well did they, we won't mention that one.

But look at these other posters

• Contact, which was in the Homestuck Beta mentioned in log 3. I also mentioned it was second fiddle to Amageddon. So of course another poster we now see is…
• Armageddon now there are a few things in this movie which are critical to Homestuck. One being a song used in this movie also appearing later in the story at a particularly stupid moment. But it's actually a good movie that did pretty well at the box office.
• Face Off I’m not going to research this one. I’ve been seeing memes and clips of it for years and I am taking this as a sign that I must see it. I have no idea how I haven't yet.
• A Time to Kill I saw this one far too young. It is unpleasant dealing with some VERY dark topics. This has nothing to do with the Homestuck story unless I've missed something. Since this poster is smaller, Maybe Andrew needed some 90’s movie to toss on the wall?
• Failure to Launch A romcom? I’ve seen very few of these as neither romance or comedy movies are appealing to me. This is an odd thing to see on John's wall though it is a comedy and it was bad according to wikipedia. Perhaps he has a soft spot for it? Even more odd is that this movie is from 2006. Weirdly enough the main male lead in this movie is in some sense homestuck. Seems to be living with his parents dealing with grief issues. So in that sense it's a bit related.

Let's take a look at this tripe of an article from GameBro Magazine. This review of the SBURB by a guy who was too wasted to actually play the game. They seem to instead review the game based on its logo. They gave it a low rating because it doesn't seem like you get the “Thrash” anything. This might be a reference to a bizarre over-marketing of first person shooters and action games in the 90’s. I've always found this odd choice of the industry. I know more recent studies around Bartle's Taxonomy show “killer” players are a minority. But, maybe this wasn't known at the time.

John dons a disguise using a Beagle puss (or Groucho glasses) and a “wizard cap”. Then, finally after 47 pages we leave John's bedroom. I’d say the pace of this journey will get faster, but it varies a lot.

Anyway, we began to get more hints about the character of John's Dad. It’s clear John gets his oldschool prankster vibes from his dad. His father also has an affinity for ~~clowns ~~ harlequins as his home has many creepy images of them. This stuff looks like it was AI generated but this was around long before the AI imaging. Someone made these arts, and they ended up in Homestuck. I appreciate art but whoever made these things, I’d like to avoid them for the rest of my years.

There is also a mention of Betty Crocker, but we’ll get into that later. Know that if you haven't read this before Betty Crocker has a role in all this.

Also John quotes "The moon's an arrant thief, and her pale fire she snatches from the sun." as Mark Twain. But, that was Shakespeare if we can trust the Internet about anything some old dead person said. Anyway, this ends with John putting the GameBro magazine burning in fire. This is certainly where it belongs.

John is holding a huge book Colonels Sassacre’s Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery If the Colonel was based on a real person I’m totally unable to find them. The pure Scope of Homestuck has overwhelmed the internet so now they are only a Homestuck related character. I’d like to imagine he was a real and particularly annoying member of some military force known for being a practical joker. Anyway John opts to not take this gigantic tome of wisdom but again takes his arms again.

Reporting back to TurntechGodhand [TG] we learn of another of Johns who we have not yet met who we can assume has the handle tentcleTherapist [TT]. TG feels that TT is “mackin on him hard”, TG is a bit cringe.

TG also gives more of an explanation of how Johns stack _SYLLADEX _ thing works and how to actually arm himself for combat. Using the STRIFE SPECIBUS John decides to spec himself as a hammer user given that he has a hammer for hanging that poster.

We do get a peek at the full STRIFE SPECIBUS and there’s a lot of neat choices on there. I found a more detailed/readable version on the fandom wiki . I think I'd be a ladlekind, serve up some sweet justice soup.

If you're following along tell me what your strife spec would be and why?

TG informs John that his choice is permanent. But with some inventory space cleared John can now take the gigantic Colonels Sassacre’s Daunting Text into his inventory. Apparently this is necessary to read the book which is a bit weird because he can read other things just fine. Perhaps this is a result of its size and John's perceived lack of arms.

John also wants to get and read the Game Bro magazine on his desk. I’m not sure if GameBro is meant to represent a specific game magazine but for those not old enough to be functional in those years Game Magazines were a big deal in the 90’s. This was also the time of Nintendo's “play it loud” campaign and the great Nintendo-Sega Console wars. Things were very “in your face” and “cool”.

So we’ll see what GameBro has to say tomorrow…

We’re back with John examining stuff on his own bedroom walls. We are now looking at a calendar. We learn it's the 13th of April (year not mentioned) John's birthday as previously mentioned and a few days after the release of SBURB Beta.

Neatly, there’s a link to actually play SBURB it’s… familiar. It’s Homestuck? But with some minor differences. The linked version of the game looks essentially the same, slightly different, more freehand art style but is more animated and interactive with sounds.

Now for those not from the olden days, Flash had a unique vector graphic editor. The flash editor worked pretty decently with a stylus so this art style was pretty common. The SBURB version of John’s room has the magic chest at the foot of John's bed, the hammer and nails are on the desk, there is now a poster for the movie Contact, is where the Deep impact poster was and the deep impact poster was moved next to a now smaller Con Air Poster. Also weirdly the view outside the “SBURB John” window is just blank. But, John has a view of a tree branch in front of a blue sky.

The beta ends with John receiving his “arms” page 7 of Homestuck. Now I point this out because I believe this was my initial reaction as well. I was wondering if SUBURB was the “endgame” of this Homestuck thing. Was Andrew Hussie building a point and click game based on the audience generated content being generated from Homestuck the webcomic? I was really curious on what changes were being made and what assuming the flash game would grow into a huge thing.

Off of this Beta tangent, let's look at John computer.

He has some .^cake files. Possibly some kind of in-story language. I kinda wish I could actually see his “terrible” attempts to code, as my own code was probably about as bad in those days.

Anyway, someone is trying to pester John. Page 26 “John: Open message.” is the first example of a “pesterlog”. A prettier significant chunk of Homestuck is written through these. You can actually download it though it does not provide friends for you so good luck with that.

Pesterchum has some weird rules, these will be very annoying but also help us identify characters as we go through these. I’ll break this down as briefly as possible as these rules are explained organically. Other than the rules though Pesterchum is pretty similar to AOL messenger.

• usernames consist of 2 words
• users have a unique assigned colour
• all character in Homestuck have a unique typing quirk

Johns handle is EctoBiologist [EB] and He’s chatting with a TurntechGodhand [TG]. It’s revealed in this conversation that John has not actually received his copy of the SBURB beta yet. TG suggests that John go check his mailbox. Resulting in John looking out his window. Finally we acknowledge there is in fact a world beyond John’s Bedroom and since the “Arm-swingy-dealy thing” of his mailbox is up, he indeed has mail (It’s called a “flag” by the way). But John’s father has just pulled into the driveway in his car, and John doesn't want to have his dad chat him up.

That’s a bit sad, the man probably just got home from work, maybe he just wanted to chat with his son after a long day. Also, as this is a re-read I can never look at that car the same again.

John takes a moment to perform his favourite hobby of examining stuff in his room (it’s like its his first time in there). He has a fun video game collection. 3 games being links to other MSPA projects, one is a Ghostbusters MMORPG (yes this will come up later), A little monsters video game by Konimi, which definitely did not exist but if it had I could only assume it was made by Hideo Kojima and it was his worst game of all time. Also something called Harry Anderson’s Call my Bluff.

I guess I need to research who that is and why he’s relevant… According to wiki he was a comedian/actor/magician who frequently appeared on SNL and “Call my Bluff” is a british TV show. I can't be certain this is what the reference is about. But given the guy is a magician/comedian I can see why John may have liked them.

The next few pages are just a challenge of picking up a hammer and some nails like 3 feet away. It seems Andrew was showing the audience how John stack SYLLADEX will cause stuff to violently fly out of his inventory when too many items are collected. Though I did enjoy poor John getting slapped out by a pair of fake arms. It also demonstrates the item merging ability.

Finally we hang the poster gift from Johns father for the 1989 film little monsters. I would have been about 2 years old when that one came out so I have no idea what this is about.

So let’s take a quick peek at that. I won’t actually be watching this movie, I don't know how to do piracy. But let's just look at the plot on wiki for relevant parawells.

Brian Stevenson, an 11-year-old boy, and his family has just moved to suburban Boston, and he feels isolated in his new neighborhood.

Brian sets booby traps, and leaves cheese Doritos as bait to attract the alleged "monster."

Maurice and Brian have fun making mischief in other people's homes (you might say he’s a “prankster”)

Some interesting parawells If anyone has bothered to actually watch this please share anything I am missing here?

Then we look at the Con Air Poster. Now this one I know, it’s a masterpiece. Is it related to the plot of Homestuck? Well It DAMN WELL WILL BE! At least the bunny in the box scene. Fortunately, this newer system links the relevant scene from the movie for us. And that is probably the only part of the move you actually need to know.

(Though I still recommend watching Con Air, it beautiful)

Ok last page for today John: Examine Deep Impact poster. Clearly John is a man of amazing taste. I think I've only seen this one once as it came out too close to Armageddon which had a similar plot and was just better. But John provides us with some FOREBODING message about “Films about impending apocalypse fascinate you” real subtle.

So again we leave off with John looking at posters in his room.

We meet a young man named ~~ZooSmell PoopLord~~ John Eggbert. I found it smart to immediately set us in his bedroom. I never considered just how much our bedrooms are just visual profiles of who we are. We learn a tonne about John just in this image.

This was also sadly relatable, I grew up near a novelty shop, I was learning coding in college when this came out, I had fond memories of watching terrible movies with my dad, and of course I enjoy games. Damn Pooplord is a relatable loser.

“Remove CAKE from MAGIC CHEST”. Does an interesting thing. It shows that we as the reader have direct control over John’s world. I weirdly don't remember this being used frequently.

The Items management thing though, the CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS and _SYLLADEX _ stuff was a bit of a headache. Johns Stack method is easy enough I had just learned about in college around the time I was reading this so it was actually educational.

The last page I’m looking at is “John: Examine Problem Sleuth Poster.” which is an ad to go buy the poster to Problem Sleuth. Which is still available! If only I had walls, or money.