#that fictional character really has you spitting mad over nothing huh

[abundantchewtoys]

Homestuck Epilogues: Prologue, reaction post part 1

So me and Blaperile have decided to start reading it now. I kind of hope the format & art style stays true to form, but then again, change could be interesting. In any case, if this epilogue were to include the already posted snaps, that would be a break from format in image size (not including the credits, of course).

I guess if there is immediately an [S] page, it'll be the second one, not the first, to give use aheads up in the command.

Okay, so the first is a title page.

The link to the next page says... homestuck.com/epilogues/proglogue. Andrew, NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

(Yeah okay, so it has begun. Again.)

I could see the snaps being the prologue, since they kind of set the stage for what's to come. Jane taking control over The Felt being a major development, for one. Also, the noted absence of Davepetasprite^2 & Arquiusprite on Earth C. Or, perhaps rather, the noted presence of all the other sprites, they didn't stop being spirit guides after the game ended. And in the credits of course, there was John's being aggravated by Caliborn to the point this all would lead presumably to the clay doll scene Caliborn showed us, taking place further into the future than any of us had business viewing at the time.

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> Start

AAAAAAHHHHH, Homestuck's a fanfic now!!! Yes, this is the Archive of Our Own format, including tags and... Andrew is no longer sole author of this story!!!

We have achieved MAXIMUM FANDOM (or should I say FANON).

Characters: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-h... Barack Obama?! :P I guess maybe John switched to a Baracktop in light of out-of-story events, plus of course Dave's idolization of the man. :P And Aranea returns!! And Davepeta too, cool! ... Wait, there's gonna be new OCs?? :P ... In before Joey & Jude & troll friends join the Homestuck madness. Well, if we can rely on this list of course. This IS Andrew Hussie we're talking about, of course.

Hmmm, Blaperile has a good point that Davepeta & Arquius are mentioned but not their component A2 trolls, since the "main" versions of them (post-retcon) are inside the sprites! And that all these characters except maybe for Caliborn (pre-LE, I mean) MIGHT just end up in the Furthest Ring together to do... whatever there needs to be done with the black hole aftermath of the standoff between Vriska & LE. And Calliope seems to be joining them, which is a nice thing to look forward too, main Calliope doing a plot thing. ... No mention of carapaces, but again, that doesn't have to mean anything.

Caliborn's entry seems to me to imply we might see the claydoll fight animated (or at least drawn) properly! :D

Barack is probably an Easter Egg just, nothing more. Which is funny because Easter is coming.

Content warnings: ... All these things (well not all of them, but) just refer to things mentioned in Homestuck proper. :P Quite the list we racked up, eh? Also, Gamzee hath invaded the list: clowns, honk... Hahah. Surprised "horses" didn't make it on here. And puppets. So I know I was saying I don't really believe these tags to truthfully warn about things to come in this epic, but I'm kind of scared by the mention of Trickster Mode. :P ... Oh yeah, hahah, that WAS something that happened at the wedding, didn't it, Calliope bringing the sucker & transforming John & the B2 kids? So that thing survived the end of the session we know.

Another thing making me uncomfortable is all the illicit subjects the warnings are about, but yeah, that's what a lot of fanfics contain.

Summary: ... Ooooh, so John DIDN'T immediately take off to fight Caliborn! That's... I actually had wagered the epilogue to start on April 13th, 2019 thinking about it over the weekend. It would just seem so fitting, but I thought it might have been so that the B2 kids would have aged a relative 2 years during the time the B1 kids were stuck in the house. So that they could go back to filling that big brother/sister relationship that was kind of always there, first & foremost shown in the Strider Bros, later when we didn't know yet that the kids would be the same age when they'd meet up, during Act 6 Act 1.

Blaperile has a good point, this means Terezi has been exploring the Furthest Ring for 7 years (or almost 4 sweeps).

Contents: This looks like it could grow into a list. Since, well, this is the prologue just yet for the epilogue hahah. Then again, maybe we 'return' to this page after the prologue is done, only for the list to have grown with the next... "act".

> Prologue

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH WALL OF TEXT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH HOMESTUCK IS A FANFIC NOWWWWWWWWWWWWW for real. ... Oh dear god.

Well, it's definitely a medium Andrew didn't touch on yet, the "picture this for yourselves" type of fiction. Kind of incentive for people to draw this for themselves.

And then Homestuck became a serialized novel. :D

Okay that entire first sentence. I'm definitely on the same page here as everyone when I say this must be about the Furthest Ring cracking. ... I think Andrew's propensity for dragging out a story comes over quite well in fanfic prose form.

Hmm... So, "eternity" is being filled by the black hole, and continuity is buckling up? Seems like the entirety of Homestuck proper might be at risk of being undone in something more damaging than a mere retcon.

Wow, nice vivid description of the dreambubbles being shattered. "Hypothetical futures", does that suggest that the ghosts of alternate timelines were more like... mirages? That's a harsh thing to swallow, and not something any of them would have been happy hearing stated as fact. Well, except the Aradiabots, maybe. "Double-death" mention!

... So there's a symphony at the center of the black hole. Does that mean Alternate Calliope still lives (or well, "exists"), as the conductor of the havoc? It's super black at the center, apparently. Like, Vantablack?

Wait, "> Wake up"? Did John dream about the Furthest Ring? ... What DO the kids dream, after they won the game? Or rather, where do they dream?

"You've been dreaming in anime again." Ah yes, there's the first real meme of the evening. So, John rejects this dramatic dream and will rather substitute his own fantasies? :P

"> Look outside just to make absolutely sure the world is not ending." --> Why does it feel like we've started this adventure anew? Why are command prompts working out so well in this format?

'The only sound you can hear for miles is the wind skimming the hollows of your neighbors’ pipe homes.' Well, if that isn't a reference to his atmospheric page! And oh yeah, that was his new neighbourhood! Or, after 7 years, not 'new' anymore, I guess.

'It’s a normal day in the salamander village, which you refer to as Salamander Village because the damned salamanders never bothered to give this village a name, you guess.' Perfection. So, it appears the consort species remain the same, no matter how many millenia may pass. I wouldn't like to be a mail person in the Consort Kingdom, if all packages are to be delivered at Salamander Village. Then again, the Breeze might still be on mail duty on Earth C.

'Beside your pillow, your phone is vibrating. Rose is calling. The screen of your phone reads 9:30 a.m. April 13, and also the number forty-six, which is how many text messages your friend left you while you were sleeping. A bit excessive, even for her.' Ahahahah, so even in texts Rose is wordy!! Good to see they kept in contact, then. Not as much in-person contact, seeing the credits, but then again, the kids always used to live apart, didn't they? (I can still call them 'the kids', even if we're no longer a decade apart in age. Get of my lawn!)

"> Answer the phone." Yessssss, coloured text logs!! In the absence of drawings, it would've really sucked a little and be bland if we'd lacked this.

Aww, April 13th is still a solemn day for John. :/ Rose is calling it "April Thirteenth" as if it's a holiday, which it might just be. Blaperile has a good point that John has called Rose directly, and isn't texting. The immediate assumption for what Rose said, was that they don't talk a lot, but maybe they don't CALL each other a lot, just trade messages!

"You wander to the window and watch the salamanders go about their day. All over the neighborhood, the little dad-salamanders are putting on their little rumpled hats and picking up their little suitcases and kissing their little families goodbye for the day. You’ve always been confused about what, exactly, they contribute to the global economy. But it’s pretty cute how much they love playing at being suburban businessmen."

Pfff, the rumple hats are still a thing, guess the kids really did shape this universe in much the same way as the session! (Okay yeah, so, consorts came over from the session too, so the fact that the custom remains to the current day might just be another showcase for the status quo that consorts live under when not interacting with PCs...) Of course, this is going to sting for John, all this dadly business going around.

"The silence over the phone is growing awkward. You’ve stalled long enough. You decide to just come out and say it.

JOHN: i’ve been dreaming in anime again lately."

Aaaaaand meme number two is here. Blaperile mentioned Act 7, and yeah, John DID dream about the Furthest Ring & the blackhole, both centerpice in the Act 7 animated video. :P

"ROSE: i see." Therapist mode, engaged. Next, ask him how he feels about the dream, Rose.

"JOHN: whenever i have these dreams, everything’s breaking apart.

JOHN: millions of people are screaming and dying." Huh, is it that John didn't recognize the ghosts (being the oblivous bloke he is), or is there something more to the danger of the black hole? After all, after all of the Furthest Rings is swallowed, what's left is sessions and the universes they spawned...

"A couple yards over, a salamander blows an astounding spit bubble. Truly one for the books." Meanwhile...

"ROSE: I don’t have the slightest idea what it means that you’ve been dreaming in anime, John.

ROSE: To be honest, I...

You wait for Rose to finish her thought. She doesn’t, which is troubling because you have never known Rose to leave a thought unfinished in over ten years of acquaintance." ... Did she have a Light vision, or is someone pulling her sleeve about this or other with the troll grubs? It just hit me, we might be in for some new venues in the relationships between the humans & trolls, since yeah, they're all adults now.

"JOHN: rose... are you ok?

ROSE: Not exactly.

JOHN: what’s wrong?

ROSE: I think my condition’s been getting worse lately.

JOHN: condition?

ROSE: It’s why my message probably sounded urgent.

JOHN: you left 46 messages.

ROSE: Yes. They were all urgent.

JOHN: oh.

ROSE: I don’t think I can wait much longer before telling you."

So, Blaperile was theorizing Kanaya or Rose might be pregnant based on her trailing off. I dismissed it out of hand, but now... It would be just something for Rose to designate a pregnancy as a "condition". ... And to see contractions as a worsening of that condition. If John just talked about anime over Rose trying to tell him the baby is coming, I might just scream. And it's on HIS birthday, too!

"ROSE: I held out for as long as I could. I figured your birthday was as good a time as any to let you know.

JOHN: let me know what?

ROSE: It’s crept up on me, these last couple of years.

ROSE: Gradually enough to ignore as it was happening, but I can’t anymore." Okay, so this seems to dismiss that. I'm actually somewhere halfway between "Rose is suffering from some sort of aspect-driven migraine/dementia due to the black hole", or secondly "Rose is realizing she loves John (platonically)". I mean, the latter would be standard-issue Lalonde fuckery.

"ROSE: Lately the visions have been overwhelming.

JOHN: visions??

ROSE: John, I have terrible headaches these days. Talking on the phone doesn’t help at all.

ROSE: Would you mind flying to my apartment, so we can continue this in person?

JOHN: oh, yeah. you mean...

JOHN: now?

ROSE: Yes, now is the time.

ROSE: I’ve put it off long enough." ... Oh. So, I guess Rose was ignoring these visions because she was like "fuck you, multiverse, I earned my happy ending", which I get, but... What visions does she have, do they match what John was describing? (I don't think she wants to get him over for a surprise birthday party, in any case.)

Wow, okay, so whatever drove them to go fight Caliborn, it wasn't just John convincing the rest of them. Should've known, he was never that kind of leader.

"As you hang up the phone, a familiar feeling settles over you. A feeling of...standing? Standing, and being alone. In your bedroom. As a young man. On your birthday. You swear you’ve felt this feeling before. It’s almost like...

A young man stands alone in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 13th of April, is this young man’s birthday. Though it was twenty-three years ago when he was given life, and ten years ago when he was given a name, it feels like it is only today that he will begin to understand what all that means.

That young man is YOU, John Egbert.

What will you do?"

Oh HELL yes. That first shoutout was glorious, but the actual word for word callback? Priceless. And the fact that the narration gives John the initiative for what happens now? Glorious. Because it sure as hell ain't gonna be US giving him prompts, this time around. And what in the high hills is there for John to find out about what it all means! I mean, is he going to discover the nature of his existence as a fictional character? Because that might just crush his widdle brains.

Okay, this is as good a place as any to cut off this liveblog. Since I'm not sure how long this prologue might continue after this!

Cooooool though, we've started this journey anew. For however long it's going to last. Which, given the fact the epilogues get their own entry on the Homestuck site... Might be a very, very long time. It's three years since the ending of Homestuck, and I wonder how reading up is going to be. For now, everything kind of fell back into the old pattern between me and Blaperile. We'll see what we'll do next.

I'm equal parts exhilarated and anxious about getting on Mr. Hussie's wild rollercoaster again, so I'm going to try and quarantine the anxious part and cultivate the exhilarated part.

#homestuck #homestuck liveblog #homestuck epilogues #furthest ring #upd8 #reaction #spoiler alert