Homestuck: Execution of a Masterpiece - Part 2 - Humble Beginnings

As I said in Part 1 of this exposition, Homestuck is not for everybody. It’s got a compelling narrative and it grows on you if you enjoy it, it touches real themes and the characters are interesting and complex, but like pretty much everything in this world, it’s not for everyone. Of course, however, explaining why something is good without going in detail is difficult. I tried my best to expose why I thought Homestuck was popular back in the day, what its draws and shortcomings were as a narrative, and described the more technical aspects of its creation. But while I very broadly touched upon the plot, I wanted to make something separate regarding the structure of the Comic and what actually happens in the story, to showcase the narrative shifts that kept people hooked back in the day, the differences between reading Serially and Archivally, and all that good stuff.

This part will cover the way the first 3 Acts showcase the narrative, build expectations, and toy with the reader to ease them into the setting of Homestuck. Or, that was the plan- While I do talk about that, this came out more like a sort of overview of the first 3 Acts. I still touch upon some bits of foreshadowing and how Hussie slowly introduces mechanics, but I guess I could’ve written this a little bit better. 

Oh well! Let’s begin.

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5

Act 1 seems to be notorious in the Fandom for being a weak start. So many people dislike it, and they can’t really be blamed! Compared to the rest of the Webcomic, the first few Acts are slow and sillier, there’s so much interesting stuff that happens later on! However, in dismissing the beginning of Homestuck, they’re dismissing what Act 1 does incredibly right- And that is, serve as a presentation to the Setting of Homestuck, and Hussie’s Style.

The streets are empty. Wind skims the voids keeping neighbors apart, as if grazing the hollow of a cut reed, or say, a plundered mailbox. A familiar note is produced. It’s the one Desolation plays to keep its instrument in tune.

It is your thirteenth birthday, and as with all twelve preceding it, something feels missing from your life. The game presently eluding you is only the latest sleight of hand in the repertoire of an unseen riddler, one to engender a sense not of mirth, but of lack. His coarse schemes are those less of a prankster than a common pickpocket. His riddle is Absence itself. It is a mystery dispersing altogether, like the moon’s faint reflection, with even one pebble of inquiry dropped in its black well. It is the most diabolical riddle of all.

“Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire.” -Walt Whitman

Yes, you are certain Walt Whitman said that. One hundred percent positive.

You have a feeling it’s going to be a long day.

Act 1, for all the shit it gets, is actually a really interesting beginning, specially when you know what is going on behind the scenes, that is, the fact that Hussie allowed people to submit commands! So many silly things suddenly take on a whole new light when you know people were suggesting dumb stuff and Hussie was humoring them or trolling them. It showcases the playful attitude of the author from the very beginning, and a lot of times definitely makes you go like, “oh yeah I’d totally suggest the same thing” or “PFT I know someone EXACTLY like that”.

On top of that, however, it introduces us, slowly, towards the absolute mess of an inventory system the Sylladices are, to Pesterchum and John’s other 3 friends, to his Dad and John’s dislike for his Fanciful Harlequin Obsession, slowly leading up to the first Strife Battle against him, and acquiring the Beta. To all of this, Hussie slowly builds up with a few simple Flash Animations and Games, letting you already wonder about the degree of interactability and flash animation in later Acts. Pop Culture References and Movie Posters really situate John as a 2009 Teen as well. It builds up the world, sets up expectations, and then, SBURB commences.

From this point on, there’s a major shift in what’s going on. TT takes control of John’s physical location, starts deploying things and tearing his bathroom apart. Hilarious antics ensue- But they’re using a concept everyone is aware of. A Video Game. Rose toys with John’s house like you would in the Sims or something like that. She explores options, messes with the environment, carelessly tosses the Harlequin Doll into that blue seizure ball. It brings up new possibilities, interest, wonder of what’s going to happen! Specially as the Cruxtruder Opens and showcases a countdown.

A countdown we later learn on, marks the moment when a Meteor will strike John’s house.

Suddenly, the stakes are raised, and a real threat is shown- A threat which was, in fact, foreshadowed through the entirety of Act 1, by both John’s love of the movie Armageddon, and him teasing Dave about being too busy because he was famous after discovering a new Meteor.

And to make things worse, John gets locked in his room just as TT loses connection.

And thus, we see TT, as we know now, Rose Lalonde, and start to follow her own little adventure to try and get Internet back. New character, another conflict with parents, another set of interests, it builds her up quickly through these few panels until she finally reaches the Observatory, at which point we start seeing more Meteors striking Earth, and are left to wonder what the hell everyone has gotten into with this game.

She finally connects back to John, they make the Item they thought could save the boy, and are presented with the Countdown reaching 0 as John readies to bite the Apple… And…

The Act ends with a huge Explosion. The audience is left wondering what’s going on, if John is fine, and confusion is further exacerbated by a short Intermission presenting what seems like a Side-Story- A Wayward Vagabond wandering a post-apocalyptic Wasteland, and running across a Hatch with the same Symbol as the SBURB Spirograph.

By Act 2, there’s already a fair amount of questions raised by the comic, interest built up. What happened to John? What IS SBURB? What is going to happen to Rose next? And we’re greeted with an encouraging message by Rose talking about how the Game is causing the End of the World, and failure to complete the entry process will end up in your certain Demise.

This is quickly followed by a revelation about John’s situation- Saved from the Meteor, but now transported on top of a hill overlooking an abyss, and with eyes appearing through his house. Something bad is going on. The confusion rises as the Kernelsprite splits, and transforms into a fully formed Sprite… And then is when we’re given full control of John for the first time. A Walkaround Flash to explore his house, to check out everything we’ve seen so far, and wonder what’s going on alongside the boy.

And yet at the same time? There’s a voice. The Command Prompt is no longer taking the same commands it did before, instead there’s someone, in all caps, talking to John. The Narrator seems to address this voice directly, and John seems to somewhat acknowledge it… Until we see exactly who has been talking to John in our stead.

The same Wayward Vagabond we briefly glimpsed at the beginning of the Act. Now we realize, these stories are more inter-connected than we think, but this raises so many questions. Are they in a Game now? Who is this mysterious man?

But our questions aren’t answered, just yet. John and Rose keep experimenting with the mechanics of SBURB, the Harlequin gets accidentally prototyped with Nanna’s ashes, and Rose loses John’s Dad’s car into the Abyss. We continue with Rose until she decides to head downstairs and confront her mother, when suddenly…

Dave Strider. It’s at this point that we start to see another of the main mechanics of Homestuck come into play- Temporal Perspective Shifting. Not only are we switching from John to Rose and back, we’re also going to what characters were doing in the past. This creates a deeper layer of foreshadowing and confusion, we may get messages with no context, only to go back and see exactly what was going on, or we may be told off-handedly something happened, only to actually see it happen at some point in the future. Along with this, we also have the Wayward Vagabond, which also seems to be relevant, but years in the future. The narrative can suddenly jump to any point in the timeline, and we’re left to pick up the pieces and connect them in the proper order. At first it can be jarring, but once you get used to this flow, it becomes intuitive.

This is a fantastic method of presenting the Shifting, too- After Act 1 is over and we’ve been presented to John and Rose and their Settings and what’s going on, there’s mysteries regarding characters and the world John is in, but it makes John the focus of interest, not anyone else. But Dave tells us he lost his copy, and then we go back to when he still has the copy… So we expect to see how he loses it at any point. And thus, this circle of interest begins, teasing things that will or have already happened, and leaving the thread dangling in front of us, ready to pull on it at any point. We’re further teased by Hussie messing around with Dave’s copy of the game, seeming he first ruined it with apple juice, then that it fell out of the window, only to ultimately randomly have a Crow grab it. Dave accidentally stabs and kills the crow, tossing it out of the window, and losing the Beta.

To all of this? While Dave deals with his life and Rose confronts her mother, John has to deal with the fact there’s now monsters in his house. Obviously, because he just entered a RPG-like setting.

We alternate, between him fighting the Imp, and Rose trying to re-connect to John, and the storylines join at last when she gets to the generator and sees John victorious after his fight! At this point, having been shown the Strifing, the Grist, the Echeladder, the Boondollars, all these abstractions and silly names, the narrative finally feels we’ve been waiting long enough for answers, and gives us Nannasprite’s exposition about SBURB.

We learn about Skaia, a well of infinite creative potential, about the 7 Gates leading to it, and the fight between Light and Darkness, and how John’s Entry finally tipped the balance, giving the denizens of both Kingdoms and the creatures like the Imps jester-like attributes because of what he Prototyped. For those more interested with certain kinds of Symbolism, they may also notice a few themes starting to pop up. The World of Ideas, the duality of Light and Darkness, it gives us a little dump of some intriguing themes the story is going to be touching upon, while building up hype about this Epic Quest! However, then our expectations are shut down just like John’s, when we’re told, straight away, that Light is destined to lose, and the Earth is Doomed.

This is a really unconventional thing. In these kinds of stories, you would imagine the objective would be, save Earth, win against the Darkness! But that’s just… Not the case. Which makes the audience wonder… Then what IS the purpose of the Game exactly? All we know is that John has to get to the First Gate to advance.

John messes around for a bit longer, WV accidentally unlocks the capsule containing the Human Etiquette book and some cans, and Rose decides to update her Walkthrough. The flashbacks start to happen, giving a bit more backstory of the friendship between the Kids, while Dave’s story resumes, and we start to see more of his Bro’s weird puppet obsession. The facade is broken, the cool kid is nervous, and John and Rose continue messing around with and discovering new game mechanics, while having to deal with way too many Imps.

WV starts becoming more polite, John and Rose start messing with the Punch Designix, starting what will eventually be them finding out about Alchemy Combinations, and as Dad’s Safe is opened up, we’re shown something intriguing.

Dad, investigating about Meteor Impacts. Crocker is mentioned, and the text states those go back decades. Something is evidently going on…

But we’re given little time to think about it, because there’s BIG THINGS coming. But before we can see what’s going on with anything John-related, we’re back to Dave, and we see more of his… Awful living conditions. John’s Dad has creepy harlequins but is otherwise doting. Rose’s Mom is obviously an alcoholic and has issues. But Dave’s Bro strikes a creepy factor because he’s constantly leaving weird puppets and comics and weapons everywhere. This is interrupted yet again before Dave can go track Bro as we shift back to John, and we finally get a glimpse of the possibilities Alchemy has.

Here people start to really get creative about the possible combinations. John tries out his weapon and passes out, while Rose loses her connection… We then get a weird dream in which John sees a silhouette, and immediately afterwards, Jade sends him a message about him not having woken up yet. The plot thickens, and at this moment there’s like, 3 or 4 different plot threads going on at once, leaving no room to breathe. 

John prepares for his fight with the Crude Ogres, but we’re cut off to Dave going off to face Bro- Which is then in TURN interrupted by the first picture of GG, and yet AGAIN interrupted by a shift to WV’s perspective. Rose’s generator is off, the fire is blazing. Dave is going to face his Bro. John has two Bosses to take care of with his new weapon. We’ve seen GG for the very first time. But our attention is cast towards who, until now, had only been a peripheral character.

WV starts messing around and it seems we’re just losing time with him! But then there’s little bits and pieces that makes one wonder if there’s something more. At first, his intense hatred of Kings. Then, making a Chess Board. The fact it’s obvious he’s not Human. And as he becomes the Mayor of Can Town, he starts drawing on the walls with his Chalk! 

There starts to be some clear Foreshadowing. First, on the items besides the Chalk- Chalk, Amber, Oil and Uranium, it feels arbitrary to have those 4 right there. But then as he draws, he doesn’t just draw a pretty sky with clouds.

WV is very specific in what he draws. Prospit, Derse, the 4 Lands of the Kids, and their associated Items, which relate to their Lands and the Grist they get in their Lands, are, just like that, showcased to the audience without them knowing exactly WHAT is up with that. Furthermore, WV then starts to switch the view of the Screens, and we see Rose’s Wizard Zazzerpan Statue destroyed somwhere, as well as Dave with a broken Cal, and a Prototyped Sprite! The screens are glitched and can’t be interacted with though, but we can tell there’s something deeper going on here.

Following this bit of Foreshadowing, a Countdown begins, and WV wastes time until the time comes near. We meet a new post-apocalyptic person, Peregrine Mendicant, and there’s something flying overhead, but we don’t know what! A meteor, likely, given that’s what we’ve been led to assume thus far. Likewise, the countdown for WV likely sparks the same feeling of terror John’s countdown did.

WV tries to exit the Capsule, but there’s a grate blocking his way now. He’s, however, able to access another room… And we’re introduced to the concept of Appearifying. With WV being able to transport items from any location and any time to his present location! We’re also shown how things that would cause a Paradox if removed are instead, Paradoxified, and just a ghost imprint of slime appears in their stead. This is a reference to Ghost Ectoplasm being portrayed as slime, and specifically, surely a Slimer reference from Ghostbusters, given John is the main character. This doesn’t bear much significance right now, but, it’s still presented to us. Part of the Grate is appearified, and WV prepares to leave…

But doesn’t manage to in time. Instead, the Countdown runs out, and the Capsule he’s in blasts off into the skies! We see the sands surrounding the capsule, and anyone observant enough may notice the broken hand of Zazzerpan, Rose’s statue, as well as the obvious mark of a sand-filled Meteor Crater around where WV’s capsule is. We get further confirmation this is a Meteor as we shift to what happens after the impact of John’s Meteor. His neighborhood is erased instantaneously, and from the crater emerges a white Tree which eventually drops a spherical Capsule, similar to the one WV is riding. The Peregrine Mendicant is going towards it, and the object flying overhead happens to be WV in his own Capsule!

Then we travel to the past again, ‘An Ocean Westward’, but the ‘But not too many’ message next to the ‘years in the past’ is quickly crossed. This is a LONG time ago, the Ocean is dry and next to a volcano, as a Meteor… Emerges from a Spirograph in Space, and impacts the spot next to the Volcano. Over who knows how long, a Frog Temple emerges from the impact site, the ocean appears, and then we get for a few seconds, a shot of Pterodactyls flying overhead. We know, at this point, no Human Civilization built that thing, it’s too far back in the past, and the fact we’re seeing it means it’s something really important.

Finally, we cut away from the Future, and go to the Present. Where Rose jumps out of the way of a burning tree, and we see the laboratory next door has, ALSO, the Spirograph Logo- Everything is connected, the Meteors, the Capsules, the Laboratory, the Game, there’s a big conspiracy, and Rose’s Mom is INVOLVED we see, as she punches a code to open a secret hatch for Rose to escape. John’s Dad has let the Imps use his prank handcuffs, and as he’s being carried away into the Kingdom of Darkness, he releases himself and proceeds to face his kidnappers. Finally, Dave confronts Bro on the roof, and we see his first, unobscured shot…

Before WV’s Capsule lands in the location of the Frog Temple in his current time frame, showcasing it defiled, old, and with an enormous chunk of missing land where the Island and Volcano used to be.

The Curtains Close, but before we reach Act 3? We have one last bomb. A message, from Nanna, written in the old copy of Colonel Sassacre Dad had in his safe. 

It speaks of John’s adventure ahead of him. 

You will soon delve even deeper into a realm of Warring Royalty in a Timeless Expanse. A realm of Agents and Exiles and Consorts and Kernelsprites. Of toiling Underlings and slumbering Denizens. A realm where four will gather, the Heir of Breath and Seer of Light, the Knight of Time and Witch of Space, and together they will Ascend.

John, if only you knew how important you were! I regret my passing came so early in your life. And yet I feel in my heart we have already met. But what I know for sure is that we will meet again!

We’re presented with new terms- Agents, Exiles, Consorts, Underlings, Denizens, and four Titles who we are told will ‘Ascend’. She also claims she knows they will meet again. And thus, with the Ending of the last Act, and this right before Act 3? It’s obvious there’s something going on behind the scenes we don’t know about. Clairvoyance? Someone pulling the Strings? We don’t know yet, but it opens the door to speculation, and with it, to interest. Usually, if by the End of this Act people don’t enjoy the story, they won’t get hooked afterwards. This is the first Major Flash in my opinion, and if you understand what’s going on and care about the characters, this is when things start to get really intriguing.

And so Act 3 begins, with us finally meeting the last of the 4 Kids, Jade Harley.

The bubbly, green-texted cutie that has shown to be able to tell the future in more than one occasion. We spend a good deal of time learning about her, and seeing that her place is pretty crazy. Her Grandpa is an eccentric Billionaire Explorer Tomb Raider thing and her place is full of intense futuristic gadgets. She’s basically a self-learned Nuclear Physicist with teleporting technology in her house, and contrary to her showcased future-telling powers, she doesn’t believe in the occult way! Here we see the Magic Cue Ball for the first time, a device able to tell the future startlingly accurately, but with an opaque surface, and we learn that Jade lives in a tower in the same island where the Frog Temple is. A package parachutes down in the middle of the island, and she prepares a lightly irradiated steak for her Devilbeast of a Pet, giving her a reason to exit her house. She then shows us her sweet holographic 3D Computer, and after confusing us with all of this futuristic science, we skip back to the fight between Dave and Bro, where he isn’t doing too well.

The entire introduction of Jade is an interesting counterpoint to everyone else’s- She seems out of the loop of the game because of a conversation she had with John early about not knowing what SBURB is, and yet her place almost seems to have SBURB-like Technology. It also breaks the mold of the other three seeming like normal Kids to begin with, she starts already weird and Sci-Fi-y, only adding more intrigue to HOW and WHY she knows so much.

At this point, our attention is split between the 4 Kids. John is busy fighting the Crude Ogres on the rooftop, and seems to be getting his ass handed to him, but Nannasprite has healing powers to keep him in the fight. Dave is also struggling with his brother, being tossed around like a ragdoll and even down the stairs. Jade heads down her tower through the many rooms full of strange trophies, mummies and paintings that her Grandpa has amassed through the years. And Rose descends through the hatch her mother opened and into the Laboratory right next to her house.

And in this chaos of switching back and forth among the four of them and slowly advancing the story?

We meet someone else. CG. carcinoGeneticist, who unlike the other kids, is under ‘Trollslum’, the Pesterchum Block List, yet seems to be able to contact Jade just the same. He’s cocky and insults Jade about how she’s going to fuck up everything, then she blocks him again. We can also see another 4 names, one of them cut off, implying the possibility of there being more of them. It’s a brief conversation, but an effective teaser of there being more Characters about to get involved in the story.

Meanwhile, Rose finds a grid of power hubs in the laboratory, one of which is unlocked and allows her to connect. The Laboratory is part of ‘Skaianet’, and has that same Spirograph Logo everything relating to SBURB seems to have. Additionally, there’s a countdown counting to when the laboratory will be ‘disestablished’, along with a huge screen mapping out the landing locations of the meteors, and how long until each of them strikes.

One above the Laboratory is about to impact, and one above Rose’s house will still take some time. She also zooms out to watch the two biggest meteors- The second biggest one over Texas, specifically, Houston, going towards Dave’s house. The other, biggest by a landslide, is headed to the middle of the Pacific Ocean. She dismisses this as lucky for the Earth, without realizing that specific location is Jade’s Island. I would like to point out to the diagram of a circle with eight spheres inside on the top-right of this image. This piece of foreshadowing actually tells us a lot about how long in advance Hussie planned some things, but it’s not currently relevant.

As Rose reconnects to SBURB, she sees John fighting the Ogres, and helps him and Nannasprite take them down, exploding into an incredible amount of Grist. To gather all of it, however, John will have to eventually jump down a hole in the roof towards his Dad’s room, which he has never seen. Before he can however, Nanna explains to him that once he reaches the First Gate, he will transport to the land beneath the clouds in the abyss he’s been transported to, that ‘everything will change’. At this point there’s two simultaneous revelations. Rose finds a tea set, pink scarf and cute, girly bed in the middle of the laboratory. It’s like a little girl’s room. At the same time, John hops down into his Dad’s bedroom- Only to, contrary what all of the Harlequins made him think, find it as the completely normal bedroom of a grown-ass business man.

Rose has always felt her mother’s weirdness was passive-aggressive antagonism, and John always thought his Dad was a street-performing prankster with a love of Harlequins, but now the two of them are faced with the realization they maybe didn’t know their parents too well. John is traumatized, while Rose tries not to think about the Tea Set and Bed and focus more on the lab equipment weirdness, specially as a cute mutant cat pops out to greet her.

Meanwhile, the Peregrine Mendicant’s spherical station activates a countdown just like the Mayors, and begins to fly away. She turns out to be an adorable, Mail-obsessed lady, sworn to bringing mail to its rightful place, just like how the Mayor seems sworn to civic duty and Mayoral duties. Just like the Mayor, too, there’s a screen showing one of the Kids and allowing her to contact them- But this time it’s Jade’s Screen. She appears to be somewhere snowy, but as soon as she tries to contact her, the terminal short-circuits and explodes. She survives, but renders the device useless.

Jade prepares to leave the house and go feed her pet, knowing she’ll bump into her Grandfather, and she collapses asleep right in front of him, forcing her to Strife. We go see Dave’s fight with Bro- But get psyched out. With so many shifts in narrative, the author already knows when the audience is expecting to shift to someone else, and teases us by telling us we’re going to see something else, then staying in the same scene. Slowly building up the teasing between the Audience and the Author.

As she battles him, though, it becomes her Grandfather is actually a Taxidermed Human. He has been dead for Years, and Jade is just humoring a little bit of Roleplay because she’s a 13 year old living a lonely life in an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The story, thus far, has had a lot of twists and turns, worries about characters and weirdness that make you wonder what’s going on. But the weirdness of her rambling to her deceased grandfather, followed by her saying how it was much easier to deal with him when he was alive, makes for some intense mood whiplash. 

Rose, still in the lab, takes her last minutes before it’s disestablished by a meteor by checking some weird machinery. It allows her to peer into the past, an image locked over her deceased cat Jaspers, on the day he ‘told her his secret’. The machine, like WV’s one, turns out to be an Appearifier, but since Appearifying Jaspers would cause a Paradox, instead more Slime appears- Except this time, a machine on the side collects it. The slime is not Jaspers, but it has his same genetic imprint, and the machine generates a Mutated Clone of her cat, explaining how the other Mutant Kitty got where it is. In the screen, Jaspers seems to whisper something at Rose, before disappearing. She found him weeks afterwards in the river bank and her mother hosted a funeral for him. She never knew why that happened, and she wasn’t the one to Appearify him, but she’s running out of time, and manages to hop onto a Teleporter Pad suspiciously like the ones in Jade’s house. She appears in her mother’s Cellar, which she thought was her room before finding out the room in the laboratory. The Lab is promptly disestablished as the countdown runs out. She runs upstairs and away from the fire, to her room, waiting to be able to connect with Dave- Who’s been trying to get Bro’s SBURB Copy all this time- And to chat with John in the meantime.

Meanwhile, John gets over his little trauma over discovering the truth about his father, and examining his room, finds a bunch of birthday presents. A suit, Fruit Gushers, and more things to improve his inventory, which he promptly equips. At the same time, Jade manages to find the package that parachuted to her island, sent by John months ago for her birthday- A time when he had a different username in fact, before he was forced to change it to try and evade a group of trolls that’d been messing with them. This gives some more context to the people in Jade’s block list, but only raises more questions. Furthermore, in the flashback, we see John’s wall…

With his posters already defaced with clowns months prior, a fact he’s quick to rant to Rose about, saying ‘Imps did it’. Obviously Rose has seen the posters defaced all this time, and suggest John was blocking out the fact he subconsciously defaced them, and furthermore, that his Dad’s obsession with Harlequins was caused by him trying to connect with his Son after seeing those drawings. The sudden shock seeing his Dad’s room allowed him to see what had already been there all along, but John refuses to believe it.

This is a very interesting moment, because up until this point, a lot of the psychological turmoil the Kids are going through has been downplayed. Rose’s Passive-aggressive attitude towards her mother, John’s dislike for the Harlequins, Dave being beaten around by his brother and the creepy puppets, Jade’s isolation, all of them have pretty heavy issues to deal with, but it’s only now that Rose seriously acknowledges something such as subconscious repressing damaging John and his Dad’s relationship. A first show of character evolution and shifting, of deeper, more psychological themes being touched, a hint of what’s to come in later Acts. 

Around this same time, we’ve also been shown hints of John’s Dad breaking out of prison in this Kingdom of Darkness he’s been dragged to by the Imps, and someone observing him and John on monitor screens. This someone is, recognizably, a character in a Webcomic Jade was shown reading a little while ago- Spades Slick, member of the Midnight Crew, a group of card suit-themed mobsters who face off against a rival gang of pool-ball-themed mobsters, the Felt. He teasingly comments that the name’s got a nice ring to it but no, his name is actually Jack Noir (Blackjack), and he’s the Archagent of the Kingdom of Darkness.

A strange character to introduce into the story, it seems at first, but this in fact gives us some interesting clues about other characters later on. We also learn about a Monarch of the Kingdom, wearing a ring, who forces Jack to wear his stupid hat and clown outfit. He hates this, but complies in disgust. When it becomes obvious others are just not going to get the job done, he tries to get John’s Dad back in jail himself- And getting fed up at being beat up, eventually tries to murder him. Dad simply burns Jack’s hat off, and pleased with being freed of that hideous monstrosity, simply allows Dad to walk free.

While everyone’s dealing with their own issues, we finally meet Jade’s dog. As she tries to retrieve the package, Becquerel appears… And shows itself as a blank-eyed canine capable of warping through space, shrinking and growing things, become a portal, and basically bend reality around himself in crackles of green energy and lightning crackles. Jade seems to seriously strife him, shooting at him with her rifle and watching as bullets just melt on his fur or simply go through. This eventually ends with her playing fetch with him using a bullet, taking the package while he’s distracted, and feeding him the steak. It was described as a ‘Devilbeast’, but the revelation Jade has some sort of freakish god dog is yet one of the weirdest things happening to the girl.

And as she collapses asleep and Bec brings her to her room, things get even weirder. Once asleep in bed, a ‘Dreambot’ becomes active, and we start seeing into Jade’s Dream.

It should be noted, we had already been teased about Jade’s Dream through a picture her Grandpa kept on top of the Foyer, a photo of her in these same yellow pajamas. We begin to switch then, between Jade’s Dream, and the Future Post-Apocalypse, with the Mayor trying to get down from his station, PM arriving in her spherical one, and a third of them watching them approach from the Temple, cautiously.

It’s at this point that everything starts to converge together and make sense. In Jade’s dream, we see her sleeping in a Golden Planet, Prospit, orbiting around Skaia itself. And just like how in the Purple City Dad is trapped in, we see people like Jack Noir, in Skaia Jade sees people just like PM.

It becomes obvious Jade’s Dream is actually happening within SBURB, and the 3 characters in post-apocalyptic Earth come from the Kingdoms of Light and Darkness. Meanwhile, trying to appearify some cable to get down from his station, the Mayor accidentally ends up with the present John sent Jade for her Birthday! However, much like her other instances of clairvoyance, she was expecting this, and sent instructions for him to deliver the box to PM- The Mailswoman. The Aimless Renegade shoots at them, and while taking cover, they exchange presents. We also see the Aimless Renegade go in for more of his guns and ammo into the Frog Temple- Crates full of weaponry with Jade’s Grandpa’s face on them, as well as an elevator platform jammed by Jade’s bass, hint that at some point the girl is going to head into the Temple, already building expectations about the exploration of whatever’s deep within.

Jade visits the tower on Prospit that’s next to her own, and there we find John, in the same pajamas as Jade, asleep, and tormented by the same scrawlings on the wall, and a harlequin doll.

This finally shows us why Jade told John he wasn’t ‘awake’ yet, and given there’s only two Towers on Prospit, implies, if Dave and Rose dream in a similar way, they would do it in the purple Kingdom. This starts to put things, about the Game, about the Kids, in perspective, and it’s around this point where people can really begin going ham with their theories about why Jade knows things from the future, or what the purpose of the Game may be, but there’s not yet enough information to give it away. Act 1 built the Setting, Act 2 built the basics of SBURB, and now, Act 3, slowly continues showing us there’s something really special about this game and what the Kids are doing.

Jade cannot stay too long in John’s room, however, since an eclipse is about to happen. John starts alchemizing new, more powerful equipment to take down his enemies easier, while Rose builds up towards the First Gate, Dave loses his fight with his Brother, who grants him his copies of the Beta either way before flying off in a rocket skateboard, with Lil Cal as a casualty of their strife. Rose is in her room, waiting for Dave to install the Betas, John is ready to Ascend, all the plot threads seem to be coming together towards the end of Act 3.

And then, the story throws us an intense plot bomb. As the Eclipse happens and Prospit rotates to allow Jade’s tower to enter Skaia, the clouds begin to shift and show visions, of the past, present, and future. Rose’s burning house, John’s house after entering the game, of the future on Earth. She sees the meteor that crashed on Earth millions of years ago where the Temple would eventually grow, and we see Becquerel, her dog, emerging from the lava-filled crater. Eventually, she sees John slowly beginning to wake up on Prospit, and we see her side of his little dream after collapsing, in which he saw a silhouette- Jade’s. Finally, we learn HOW she knows what she knows and how she does what she does, but it really only serves to raise more questions about what the hell is SBURB.

Jade sees something in the Temple Ruins in her Dream, and now that she’s woken up, tries to zip-line her way over there. Meanwhile, however, we’re greeted with a few Flashbacks, of Rose and Dave getting their birthday presents in the past- Before being bothered by some of those trolls in Jade’s block list. grimAuxiliatrix speaks to Rose- Speaking about Temporal Mechanics, about being able to speak to her at any point in her Timeline while for them it’s only been a few minutes, and implying they are in fact not Human. Similarly, adiosToreador attempts to troll Dave but Dave manages to out-Troll him. These conversations serve to build more anticipation about these trolls, now that they’ve expressed the fact they’re something else, now that they’ve talked about Time Shenanigans, it’s our first clue that they’re going to play a rather important role in the story.

We also finally find out, as the Aimless Renegade tries to shoot WV and PM down, that John is telling PM to send her present through a device similar to the Apperifier- A Sendificator. And once used, it sends the present back in time to herself, when she was young.

This marks the first Act-spanning important Time Loop in Homestuck, and is a good introduction to how these things work- John has been hearing Jade’s pumpkins were disappearing, so he got her Pumpkin Seeds… Which she receives in the past and inspires her to start doing gardening. She sees John’s username on the birthday note, so they can meet through Pesterchum eventually. She even gets a blue shirt from him, inspiring her to wear blue, even when her main color is green. Curiously, without this present, John would’ve never been friends with Jade, and thus he wouldn’t have sent this present to her in the first place. Starting with time weirdness in these small little steps is important to set up much larger time loops later on.

Finally, Jade reaches the Frog Temple, and everything is set up for the End of Act 3. John has his equipment and is ready to ascend to the First Gate. Rose and Dave are finally connecting and ready to get her into the game. Jade has reached the Temple as she saw there was something in it in her Dream. John’s Dad is free. 

And so [S] Enter showcases Rose’s Entry into the game. She installs the Beta while Jade enters the Temple, and descends to its depths, finding a Lilly Pad of some sort with a countdown similar to Rose’s SBURB Machinery. Dave comically messes Rose’s house up, as the intense heat of the flames around Rose’s house create fire tornadoes. Dave releases the Rose’s sprite with the Zazzerpan statue- Which breaks its hand! Rose prototypes Jaspers, makes her entry item- A bottle, rather than an apple like John… And then one of the tornadoes flings Zazzerpan’s hand to smack the bottle away and down the river. Rose does a leap of faith to catch it, and is saved only because Dave second-prototyped her Sprite with her Eldritch Princess doll, giving her Jaspersprite tentacle arms to grab her with. It should be noted, much like how John takes a bite out of an apple, Rose’s leap of faith, and then slamming of her bottle on the ground to break it in order to enter, are highly symbolic of beginnings.

We also see the meteor impact just after Rose enters the game, leaving everything set up as we see during Act 2′s finale. The station WV is on happens to be the ‘cork’ of an underground ‘bottle’ that’s grown, much like PM’s sphere is an ‘apple’ from the white tree, paralleling John and Rose’s entry items. Zazzerpan’s hand is left behind, just as we see in that flash too. And as the countdown reaches 0, the Lilly Pad in front of Jade in the temple blooms- Showing… Dave’s juice-stained, crown-stolen Beta SBURB Copies.

This makes absolutely NO sense yet, and among the many things the finale of Act 3 resolves, leaves a lot of really interesting questions in the air. Furthermore, we see Nannasprite write the message in John’s old Sassacre book- On his newer copy, then toss it down the abyss into the land below, implying that somehow, this new book she’s just written is the same old book that’s always been in Dad’s safe, and that Nanna didn’t write the message- It was Nannasprite. To cap off the flash, however, among all the confusion, we see John ascend to the highest point of his house, and bounce off into the First Gate, transporting him somewhere else.

Finally, we zoom out away from John’s house- To reveal the cloudy abyss below is not just a bottomless pit, it’s an entire planet.

But that’s not where Act 4 starts. Oh no. Because between Act 3 and Act 4, there is something else.

The notorious Intermission follows Spades Slick and his gang trying to take down their rival gang, the Felt. And at first it feels like just a silly little Intermission, making fun of time-travelling mechanics, and taking them to ridiculous extents- And it kind of is. However, through the shenanigans, there’s actually some things that become obvious. After all, Spades Slick and his crew seem to be Agents of the Kingdom of Darkness, and we learn, one of the members of the Felt…

Is just like Slick and the rest of his Crew. Her name is Snowman, and they say if you kill her, you destroy the Universe. Furthermore, as the Intermission goes along, we see the surface of an alien planet, through which Past Spades Slick wanders…

Just like WV and PM and AR. Finally, towards the end of the Intermission, Jack manages to get access to the Felt’s Vault- Only to find a very familiar station underneath their manor.

A station, with a grey-skinned, hornless character labelled as ‘CG’ on it, Spades Slick just like WV or PM, the alien landscape. While a lot of the Intermission seems to mess around with dumb Temporal Mechanics, talking about the Felt and their mysterious boss, Lord English, it turns out that the Midnight Crew are actually the Agents of the Kingdom of Darkness, for CG and the rest of the trolls bothering the Humans.

The curtains close on the Intermission, and Act 4 begins, but that will be another time.

Acts 1 through 3 have some really funny and interesting moments, and it’s a shame so many people think of them as boring. They are slow paced, in comparison to the rest of the story. But on their own, with no expectations or wanting to go faster than they should, Acts 1 through 3 become excellent introductions to everything that will be set up afterwards. The 4 Kids, and their relationship to each other. SBURB, the game mechanics and beginning to understand what they’re supposed to be doing. WV and the rest of post-apocalyptic characters being part of the Kingdoms of Light and Darkness. Jade having prophetic Dreams in Prospit that let her know what’s going to happen. Jade’s mysterious dog coming to Earth through a meteor. The trolls bothering the Kids playing the game as well. And the amount of foreshadowing left for future Acts, and the amount of things I didn’t touch upon with this little overview?

Even early in the story, Homestuck is incredibly dense. You just need to know where to look. And sometimes, a re-read, can help understand these first few Shenanigans better. They are the foundation of the very Comic, and the way Hussie toys with the beginning of temporal mechanics and teases so many new things in such a small amount of time is incredible.

Do remember, all of this was drawn and written in less than a year after all.

See you next time on Part 3!