Homestuck Re-read Part 40: A6A2.
IT'S DAY 40 OF THE HOMESTUCK RE-READ!
WE ARE CURRENTLY OVER HALF WAY THROUGH HOMESTUCK. ACCORDING TO THE PAGE COUNT.
DEAR FUCKIN GOD. ACT 6 IS A LONG ONE.
Anyway in other news I'm fiiiiiine thank you for asking. I feel like it's been a while since we've had a good j4d3-update in the prologue to one of these. I don't really have a huge amount going on atm tho.
I'm working on my web server re-write project which is going well. I'm part way through implementing server side JSX rendering to use as a templating system. The actual rendering is done but I want to improve my developer experience by properly setting up intellisense for all the html5 tags, but I don't really want to do it by hand because it sounds like a pain to maintain. I also want to integrate HTMX into the JSX as well as the actual endpoint apis. I'm getting there though!
homestuck
We finally get to see ROXY LALONDE. and God Damn does she love wizards. Ectobiologist(?), Dark Fenestrationer(?) and apperifierizer(?) extraordinaire. She's also a 1337 h4x0r and a fucking alcoholic. Her mother doesn't seem to really be in her life, meaning she is mostly left to her own devices. Her mother also has vision omnifold supposedly, whatever that means.
She goes to wail like an alley cat when suddenly we're now being Dirk Strider This guy fucking loves puppets. He's some kinda AI writing guy who likes to animate strange robot/plush immitations of men with robotics and sorry I just noticed that on his TV it keeps showing ponyplay porn. That was a weird fucking choice. What. yeah uhhh he raps and fights robots and sends them to people why is there ponyplay stuff.
Anyway there's another character select screen.
ROXY LALONDE
She has a pair of strife specibi, Unarmedkind and riflekind.
She also has a collection of dead mutant kittens. She's apparently already got the hang of ectobiology though, which is a bit surprising. I always figured ectobiology was a kind of game system that could only function in the medium of a sburb session and was not just, an actual science. I guess it makes sense though, seeing as we see versions of it in the skaianet lab and with the exiles on earth.
Post-scratch Rose was an extremely successful author, it turns out. More successful then M4[^1] could account for actually legitimately existing. Potentially the result of real life magicks. We learn about her book series: "COMPLACENCY OF THE LEARNED." Calmasis the apprentice leads others to rebel against a great wizard, killing his followers. A chess match continues past it's conclusion when a king is captured but gameplay does not halt. Strangely, this will actually be important later.
We also get to see Jaspers! Alive and well. Named after a man crushed under a book, however. People should stop manufacturing such large tomes in this world. She also inherited something else from her parents, Dave's desire to steal journals.
We see the still living Derse dreamers. Roxy tends to float up and away, though. Closer to the furthest ring where she can wander through dream bubbles in her daze. It's a bit like a homestuck's greatest hit's montage. It ends with her opening her eyes and seeing her mother, but pre-scratch. Rose and Roxy wake up atop their respective plush piles. She talks to Dirk about it. He's happy to leave her out there since there's trouble on Derse, apparently. Despite being awake and seemingly aware of some sburb shit already, these guys don't know about dream bubbles. She asks what their children might be like, but Dirk isn't interested.
She also accuses Dirk of being gay.
TG: LE SIGN IS UNIVERSALLY UNDERSTOOT TO MEAN TOO BAD HES GAY YOU DELIBERABLY OBTUSE DUNDERFUCK
Although they seem to be talking about it as if "being gay" isn't a thing anymore. They do also talk about the world as if a lot of terrible things have happened.
TG: that my best friend cant bring herself to believe some really basic things about my life
TG: like the shitty things the baroness has done to us
TG: or about our upbringin
TG: like
TG: do u know how misrable it is for your bff to doubt you
TG: when you tell her your mom is dead
Although, granted.
TT: She is inundated with media coverage of those whom we've claimed as our parental figures.
TT: That they are not presently alive nor ever played that role for us as she understands it is just an extension of a much more elaborate and far reaching explanation, which is much harder for anyone to digest in its entirety.
We also learn that, Roxy ERP's with Dirk's autoresponder sometimes. Although it's ruined for her when Dirk explains it's mentally closer to 13 then they actually are.
The autoresponder talks to Rose about how Dirk is going to ask Jake out. They talk a lot about the autoresponder's feelings.
We see what happened to Jane's book. And poor ol Jaspers. Crushed in the prime of his 9th life.
Roxy shatters a fenestrated plane. Broken fenestrated planes seem to serve as portals.
Oh hey, page 6413. Another one with everyone's second favorite grey text uraniumUmbra. We get to see them loosen their tongue on causal spoilers a little, and learn they seem to quite like the void aspect (thats me :3)! Roxy tells her about the dream she had too. She starts trying to guess if Rose's father is a temporarily not gay Dirk Strider.
TG: y/n
TG: or shuold i say
TG: y/n/u
UU: U!
UU: i choose U!!! :U!!!!!
TG: ahaha u luv u's
UU: i do love U's!
TG: ur silly
TG: silly & cute & bad @ lyin
These two are adorable.
Roxy jumps into another fenestrated window, and sees her dreamself pass her by as she falls. Right before exiting, we're kicked back to character selection.
DIRK STRIDER
He gets his sword from Lil Cal. Oh fuck hey lil cal is here again. Love that guy.
He has some good posters. And good opinions, rainbow dash is cool.
THe batterwitch had Donald Glover killed, apparently.
We also find out that Post-Scratch Dave was effectively a crypto bro pumping out literal garbage that somehow generated money. This is a wildly unfair depiction.
HEGEMONIC BRUTE is eliminated. We get a pesterlog we've already had, but from Dirk's perspective this time.
Dirk's auto responder has calculated the last digit of Pi and all the prime numbers.They also spend a lot of time discussing the potential plan to romance Jake. Another conversation with UU. She has a meddlesome server player it seems. We learn Dirk is the 'Prince of Heart'
UU is a fan of the alpha kids. She's even written fan fiction about them. Even the romantic kind! We also get a little peak at the top of her head and her very prominent horns. She won't share her fanfics with Dirk, but she does share fanart. She also clarifies for Mr Strider that she is not British, or American. She does offer to share essays comparing human and troll romance, however.
UU: by jove, the nap!!!
By jove!!!!
STOP DOING CHARACTER SELECTION
We are Jane again! Roxy warns her that she needs to make a move on Jake before Dirk does, and that Dirk is likely to make a move in the game. Jane really does not want to make a move, or seem to know what it would constitute.
We get another flash. Dirk decides to take HB's head as a power play meanwhile his Robot is beating the shit out of Jake. He's drawing a full on crowd and procession following him as he makes his way for the town square. But we see something strange, instead of the black queen, Derse is ruled by a troll. The condensce is here on Derse. Dirk puts HB's head on a literal spike for all to see, drawing out the draconian dignitary. Jake also gets his shit completely fucking wrecked. He then passes out.
In his slumber, he sees a figure silhouette in a somewhat familiar cerulean blue. The sign is the same, but the details are all wrong. Fluffy looking hair, a warmish smile and a blue dress. This isn't Vriska. But non-the-less, love at first sight? He wakes and recounts it to Roxy.
GT: Man i just had a crazy dream after getting coldcocked by his roughhouse droid.
TG: what was urs about
GT: Well i dont want to alarm you or anything...
GT: But it may just have featured none other than THE GIRL OF MY DREAMS????????
GT: She had sharp funny horns and a nice blue dress and she may have been some sort of spidery vampire? I dunno. It was very brief but she waved to me.
She's having a hard enough time keeping track of the jakestakes without this. Roxy forbades him from thinking about the sexy spidery vampire girl in the blue dress and the nice horns.
He proceeds to start a conversation about his feelings with Jane, at Roxy's behest.
GT: What id like to know is...
GT: Do you like me jane?
GT: I mean do you like me as more than a friend?
She, naturally, says no and then makes this face. He finds this to be somewhat of a relief, because they can just be friends. He lets slip that he think's Dirk is hitting on him, that the robots and the mind games and such are a strange form of romance. He wonders if, considering how relentless Dirk is about achieving his goals, it would be easier to date him. He wonders if he accidentally lead Dirk on as a younger man.
GT: Later i started thinking.
GT: Maybe i was being kind of unfair to him in the first place?
GT: I mean by saying we would be a good match only if he was a girl.
GT: Like is that last condition there really all THAT important?
GT: Does that make sense?
I presume this would make Jake bi, or at least questioning of his sexuality.
She tells him to just ask Dirk out already. Tell him you know how he feels.
Jane does not take any of this super well.
Meanwhile, On Prospit.
The Draconian Dignitary updates Jack on the situation, right before he finishes Jane off. As a result of his inaction, the white queen bashes him.
Roxy isn't alone in her lab. Some of her cats are getting freaked out. A lalonde is appearified. The slime is bottled. The loop with Jaspers is finally closed.
There appears to be Dersites in the lab, and they look like they're ready to give a bashing.She absconds through a fenestrated panel but unfortunately the other side gets disconnected.
It turns out whatever space this is has a floor and a beautiful sky. It also has a troll. who starts trying to put her down.
UNDYINGUMBRAGE
Booooo this guy fucking sucks. Get out of here jigsaw wanna be. I think when I read Homestuck the first time it was obvious to me that UU and uu are the same body, just because they only showed up when the other is asleep.
We learn they're going to play the game together, uu and UU. A "two" player session, seemingly.
uu: I THINK THAT IT MuST BE THAT WAY.
uu: BECAuSE THAT IS HOW I WANT IT TO BE.
uu: AND IF I WANT SOMETHING TO BE TRuE HARD ENOuGH. THEN THAT MAKES IT SLIGHTLY MORE ABSOLuTELY IRREFuTABLE.
uu: ARE YOu FEELING ME, FuCKER?
It's like a perverse version of the law of attraction filtered through just, hatred.
uu hates Lil Cal. That I find incredibly surprising considering how important Lil Cal is to him later on.
Roxy rescues herself and makes fucking haste.
A meteor approaches Jane's home.
[S] Jane: Enter.
Last panel is A6A2 baby! Jake is at his temple, Roxy is trying to get out of Skaianet, Dirk is on his way to the roof and Jane is entering the medium. There is a slight complication with that last one, however. She failed to prototype before entry.
She also saw the arrival of the condensce's imperial cruiser, heralding her conquest of earth under the crockercorp banner. The earth is flooded. In the future, Dirk arrives on the roof. The song is the same, but the opponents are imperial drones this time around. His house is on struts sticking out of the ocean like an oil rig. Meanwhile Roxy seems to live on a strange chess board made up of tiled homes. The video starts flickering like bad hypno porn with imperial propaganda.
I am now going to go look at something else that a friend just recommended.