Homestuck

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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…

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.

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

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.

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.