I’ve caught up with Pesterquest and will probably stay caught up now. Gamzee’s route is where it’s getting good. I’m not largely surprised by this.

That, uh, sequence sure was very Marble Hornets Season 3, though. Abandoned infrastructural hallway, person in hoodie (who is generally the Second-Person You) walking toward a bright overexposed white light, with honest-to-god visual tearing, and then of course that punchline. Like right out of Entry 64, or 83.
Wasn’t Mark Hadley on the Pesterquest team? He’s not Marble Hornets, but he’s worked with and been inspired by them before. Just.. popped into my mind.
But I mean. If, by some chance, I am right about this being definite Marble Hornets influence, I’d bet this sequence was using that influence to communicate something that MH also excelled at executing: “surprise, there’s another threat that you have never seen before. have fun speculating.”

Other thought: Pesterquest is a compelling narrative on its own (as a continuation of the MSPA Reader Cycle which seems to go Hiveswap Act 1 -> Friendsim -> Homestuck -> Pesterquest). But Pesterquest is also seriously good supplementary material for new readers who go straight for Homestuck. The information you would learn about, say, John or Dave is information that you would pick up on way way later in the comic, but not handled in a way that would legitimately spoil anything. At best, reading Pesterquest alongside Homestuck (reading new routes when characters are introduced in the comic, maybe not touching the troll routes until Act 5 is reached, that kind of thing) might heighten emotional reactions to the plot twists and grand themes that Homestuck is able to do.
I say all this because I casually picked up my A5A1 book today, read a page of Gamzee/Karkat dialogue, and felt all kinds of emotions that weren’t anywhere near as potent for me before.

Pesterquest is a good idea. This didn’t really need to be confirmed, but I wanted to.