#eoa2

Background: Normal Teenagers, Normal Development

‘A child’s social, and ontological purpose is therefore, it would seem, not to stay a child… any signs of entrenchment or backtracking, like play for example, may be interpreted as indicators of a failure to ‘develop’’ – Chris Jenks (2009)

All current adults have experienced childhood and adolescence – it is ‘the only truly common experience of being human’ (Jenks). Adolescence was not theorized in academia until the late 1800s, but had a social meaning much earlier; in 1818, Isaac Taylor published Advice to the Teens, Or, Practical Help Towards the Formation of One’s Own Character at the tender age of fifty-nine. G Stanley Hall, the first scholar of adolescence, was also fifty-nine in 1904 when he characterized the teenage experience as ‘storm and stress’, a time of turbulence, mood and behavioral changes, and conflict with authority.

In this early era of research, children and adolescents were studied in terms of their deviations from the ‘normal adult’, who was explicitly characterized as a middle-class white man. Young people were seen as speedrunning all stages of human evolution before reaching this ‘enlightened’ state at the onset of adulthood; the entirety of history recreated in each individual life. Those seen as ‘further down’ the evolutionary ladder – people of color and the working class in addition to adolescents – were viewed as biologically determined, controlled by their hormones and ‘underdeveloped’ brains, making it the job of those more ‘advanced’ to restrict their behavior. In this way, minors became a marginalized group, and adolescence became a training ground. By positioning teenagers as not yet capable of rational thinking and decision making, it was easy to justify controlling them until they were ‘ready’ to be full members of society.

Modern social scientists generally believe that our idea of ‘the adolescent’ was constructed in the early 20th century, in response to specific social conditions – but many people, including parents, teachers, journalists and young adult fiction authors, retain ideas about the ‘inherent nature’ of teenagers. Science surrounding the ‘teenage brain’ is picked up by popular media and adopted as proof of a biological basis of behavior, and two studies found that preservice teachers saw their future teenage students as ‘incomplete people’. Teenagers have long been described as overly emotional, as unstable due to raging hormones, as disrespectful and rebellious towards authority, delinquents and criminals, lacking individuality, lazy and disengaged, loud and disruptive, politically inactive, hedonistic, immature, as wasting their youth and health, and as not to be taken seriously. In the 21st century, the discourse shifts slightly: teenagers are just as much of a problem, but now they are entitled, inattentive, lacking in intelligence, work ethic and critical thinking skills, reliant on technology, spending too much time indoors, self- and celebrity-obsessed, irresponsible with money, overly sensitive and nihilistic towards the future. When these beliefs are dispersed throughout society and reiterated from all angles, it is no surprise that young people internalize them, and fulfill the prophecy they are told is unavoidable.

Politically, the ‘correct’ development of young people is crucial. The youth are the future adults, and as future adults, it is crucial that they advance society in the ‘right’ direction, and continue along the same path as the current adults. Hand in hand with the idea of teenagers’ inherent nature is the idea that their future trajectory can be changed through the right guidance and the right policy. Placed in a political spotlight, young people are always the ones to be concerned about, never able to formally raise their own concerns. Teenagers are denied the right to vote in countries they will likely be citizens of for their whole lives, and if they attempt to enter political arenas, are widely disparaged with their ideas seen as unrealistic and overly radical. They should instead be waiting their turn, with the expectation that their views will become more moderate by the time they are ‘mature’ enough to guide society.

In her re-theorization of adolescence Act Your Age! A Cultural Construction of Adolescence, Nancy Lesko points out that adolescence is defined through chronological age, and therefore through time. Pointing to theories of the clock as the technology that best defines the modern age, she discusses how youth are kept to a schedule of universalized milestones. One example is age graded schools, where all students are expected to turn thirteen during the seventh grade, and to all achieve the same defined educational standard at this age. Activities such as learning to drive and entering paid work are legally prohibited until a certain age, but people are expected to do these shortly after reaching these milestones, or they will be seen as falling behind. Physical markers of puberty are expected in narrow age ranges, and teenagers are medically pathologized if their bodies mature too fast or too slow. Social development, such as the expectation that adolescents will have their first kisses and first romantic relationships in their early teens, also qualify as milestones. Placed in narrowly age-grouped environments, young people will continually compare themselves to their peers, and those who reach milestones on time are socially rewarded by each other as well as by adults.

These milestones are not end points in themselves, but simply necessary steps along a path of becoming, always focused on the adult a teenager will be. Adults are positioned as superior in society, and to develop as a child is to become more adultlike. When a young person is given increased freedom and responsibility, it is bestowed by adults with the expectation that they will make the decisions of the adult – a teenager told they no longer have a curfew is probably still expected to come home at an adult-defined ‘reasonable time’, otherwise, the curfew will likely be reinstated.

The significance of adolescent decisions and experiences are often minimized. A first heartbreak, a failure to qualify for a sports team, or a decision between two potential friend groups or two academic tracks has a major impact on a teenager’s day to day life, but adults are typically dismissive, framing the issues from their perspective – when the teen is older, they will surely realize the insignificance of this training-ground decision to the arena of real life. Future reflections are privileged over in the moment feelings.

Time, more broadly, has been theorized by philosophers in many different ways, and studies have shown that humans intuitively understand time as both linear (happening one moment after another, continuous and unstoppable) and spatial (held in memory, with moments from the past able to be recaptured and moments from the future rehearsed). Western society heavily privileges the linear view, where time is measurable, unidirectional, and correlated with progress. Once a milestone has been reached, regression is unacceptable. A teenager putting away their Lego sets to get a part time job would be criticized for quitting that job and returning to their toys, and a high school that sees a year-on-year decline in standardized test results is seen as ‘failing’, regardless of other metrics (such as students’ mental health). Individuals and societies must continue to grow and advance with time; a logic which guides our current economic system as well as previous colonial projects. The fear of a society in decline is arguably the primary driving force behind the general obsession with youth, and with the ways the current adolescent generation is inferior to the previous.

This runs contrary to real experiences of time, which involve expansion, compression, twists, circles, loss, gain, running out and having too much. Time passes faster for a fifty year old compared to a fifteen year old. It passes faster when spending time with friends than when waiting for a bus in the rain, faster when anxiously preparing for a final exam than when waiting for results with fingers crossed. Adolescence, in its entirety, passes faster for a teenager raised in poverty who helps provide income and childcare at the age of fourteen than for an upper middle class teenager given a sizable income until they leave college at twenty-two. The past is returned to, over and over again, by adults who relive their high school yearbooks, watch television shows set in high schools, and reconceptualize their own adolescence by watching their children. My personal experience of time changed radically when I took on a seven year project, and started planning for a long term future as well as a short. Time is important not only in how it is spent, but in how it is captured, preserved, and shared.

Technological developments have further changed the experience of time for people of all ages. Writing in 2008, Judy Wajcman discusses the common belief that the pace of life is speeding up, as studies have found that across the second half of the twentieth century, people subjectively experienced feeling more rushed with decreased time for leisure. Some possible explanations discussed are how mobile communication has led to people organizing their lives around blocks of time instead of physical locations, as more activities are available ‘on the go’. There are greater expectations for people to do multiple tasks simultaneously, and mobile devices allow for people to plan and coordinate their time, and therefore optimize it for maximum productivity. Communication and the search for information happen at beyond-human speeds, and time that would historically have been ‘waiting time’ becomes obsolete.

For teenagers especially, social media has changed the experience of time, with young people feeling increased pressure to post frequently, respond to messages in the moment, and record their lives. One teenager explained social media as ‘kind of like documenting your life – you can look back in ten years time, you'll have all these pictures and comments’ while another, discussing taking photographs at Madame Tussauds, suggested that ‘the images became significant after the visit when they could be used to “tell stories” to others, providing digital prompts and enabling conversation about culture’ (Manchester & Pett, 2015). As affordable cultural spaces for teenagers decline, with fewer discos, malls and parks as well as a cultural shift away from parents allowing their children to roam outside, teenagers’ use of time also changes, and young people – especially the working class – report finding themselves with nothing to do.

In contrast, some middle-class young people have the opposite problem, their lives a far cry from the ‘leisure class’ of their peers fifty years before. Some schools begin careers education in middle school, and high achieving youth with college prospects are encouraged to fill their time with extracurriculars, volunteer work and academic preparation, held up against their peers who are using their time more effectively now, and are sure to see better futures because of it. In this way, some teenagers find themselves quite literally waiting for the time to pass and the next stage of life to arrive, while others find themselves working against the clock, trying to complete all preparatory work in time for their entry into adulthood. Despite attempts at standardization, real experiences of both adolescence and time are highly variable, responsive to individual differences, social positions, and new technologies.

Background: Narratives About Youth

‘Behind every disempowered teen narrator is an empowered adult author conveying ideology about the superiority of adult norms.’ – Petrone et al. (2015)

As teenagers became a distinct marketing group, new culture industries grew up around them. The first teen movies, focused on delinquent teenage boys committing crimes due to lack of adequate parenting, were released in the 1950s. In his book The Road to Romance and Ruin: Teen Films and Youth Culture, Jon Lewis argues that via these movies, adults projected their own discontent with modern society onto the teenage characters they created. He views all narrative as ideological, as even the most rebellious and anti-establishment teen movies end up reinforcing adult authority, with characters coming to regret their deviance and ‘reform’ themselves, or being punished for their actions.

Young adult literature was slower to develop, but grew in popularity throughout the 1970s and 80s. So named because it focuses on similar themes to adult books but intended for a younger audience, young adult books can work in any genre, but focus on teenage protagonists and coming of age narratives. Whether real or fantastical, these protagonists navigate the rules and power structures of the world around them, go through some type of trial and eventually learn a lesson crucial to adulthood. It has been argued that the classical narrative is inherently adolescent, as stories by their nature deal with development and change; postmodern fiction does not always follow these rules but it is true for many works for all age groups.

Jon Lewis also discusses the ‘notion of cause and effect’ as it applies to teenagers being ‘at once a mass movement and a mass market’. Many people have argued that the ‘teenager’ was partly created by marketing industries, who, noticing young people’s increased free time and money in the 1950s, created products to fill that niche. Other scholars assert the agency of young people in creating their own subcultures, saying that teen culture arises spontaneously, with adolescents just as likely to adopt a symbol not specifically marketed to them – such as the safety pin’s role in punk culture – as to be swayed by intentional marketing.

In media, the product being sold is an identity to embody. The protagonist of a teen movie can be both relatable and aspirational – they reflect both who the viewer is, and who they want to be. A teenage protagonist is described as ‘relatable’ and ‘authentic’ if they appear to reflect experiences of actual teenagers, who are conceptualized here as a monolith. Petrone et al. point out that such an analysis would seem ridiculous if a character were described as an ‘authentic adult’. They advocate for a more nuanced discussion of ideas surrounding adolescence in fiction – a Youth Lens, which questions how literature represents adolescence, what assumptions the story makes about youth and how that frames plots and characterizations, and to what extent the text reinforces or subverts the dominant understandings. They believe this could pave the way for more varied representations of teenagers, which could positively impact young readers, as ‘writers who foreground examples of youth who do not follow conventional expectations of adolescence can shift how youth might be understood’.

Young adult literature is typically written by adult authors, capturing a reflection of teen culture instead of the reality. It is also regulated by adults – editors and publishers who decide whether a book can be marketed for young adults, and librarians and bookstore owners who decide whether to categorize it as such. Mature themes – including mental health, death, drug abuse, sex, and structural issues such as racism – do feature in young adult fiction, but there are no formal guidelines, and any book seen as ‘going too far’ is liable to be kept away from teenagers.

Writing about young adult fantastical fiction, Alison Waller shows how fantasy narratives reinforce adult norms just as much as realistic fiction; the expectations of growth on a young witch, werewolf or ‘chosen one’ are not radically different from those on real life teenagers. A common theme in dystopian and high fantasy fiction sees a teenage protagonist framed as the only hope for the future, a person prophesized to both change and save their world. Although this narrative may seem progressive as it allows for radical change, in reality these characters are generally guided by wiser adult characters who influence their decisions, and the story is not so different from the real life expectation that the next generation will save us from the problems caused by the previous.

In time travel narratives specifically, a protagonist may go back in time to a situation where they have improved agency and a subjectively better life, but by the end of the story, will voluntarily decide that returning to the present is the right thing to do. A temporary move backwards gives this character the tools they need to succeed at the next stage of life, and overall, their chronological and developmental trajectory is not disrupted. Where a secondary character chooses the past over the future, the narrative tends to treat them with anxiety, positioning them as cautionary tales or as mistakes in need of fixing.

Novels, movies and video games are typically released as completed works – the creators know how the story ends before the work is released. This may not apply to books in a series, and also does not apply to many television shows, comic books, or audio dramas. In a format such as the sitcom, the growing up narrative is complicated – a teenage character may learn a lesson about sensitivity to others’ emotions in one episode, and return to their previous self-centered ways in the next, thereby allowing ‘adolescent’ to be a primary descriptor of the character, not a state to be grown out of. Creators who are teenagers themselves, such as published British author Rachael Wing and many online writers producing fanfiction and original fiction about characters their age, also present a new paradigm. Although they may be influenced by the judgments of adults, they are still writing based on their present experiences instead of memories and observations.

The internet expands possibilities for both narratives and creators. A work posted serially online has the chance to respond in real time to a young audience, and there are far fewer restrictions on what can be posted on the internet, meaning that stories can be made accessible to young adults even if a major publisher or a parent would disapprove. As the internet itself is an ‘adolescent’ rather than a ‘mature’ medium, exploring the possibilities of the medium itself could go hand in hand with disrupting a typical coming of age narrative.

Paragraphs in the future…

‘Try not to be so linear, dear.’ (p.421)

Homestuck is written by Andrew Hussie, a former teenager who turned 30 while writing Act 2 in 2009. Its principal characters are teenagers and like most stories, it is written from memories of being a teenager and observations of what teenagers are like today. Its first act is entirely linear, but Act 2 begins to explore time, continuity, and cause and effect. Readers can no longer assume that a page takes place after its preceding page, and the main characters – John, Rose, Dave and the Wayward Vagabond – all exist at different points along the timeline.

I believe that Act 2 represents time as it is actually experienced by teenagers, where growth and personal development are not always linear and not always in sync with that of others. John, Rose and Dave are all growing up in the 2000s USA, and are all subject to roughly the same cultural expectations as described in the earlier sections, just as the overall work is written in that context. Looking at each character in turn, I will discuss to what extent they conform to dominant conceptions of ‘the teenager’ and how they experience time within the narrative, with a view to asking whether Homestuck could offer a new understanding of adolescence.

John Egbert

‘And even meanerwhile, in the present. Sort of. Once again, the slippery antagonist eludes you.’ (p.385)

As the principal character and the first introduced, John’s time is arbitrarily defined as ‘the present’ – pages 334 and 385 both say as such. However, at the end of act 1, John is transported to a ‘realm untouched by the flow of time’ (p.421) and while time continues to pass for him, it’s not necessarily in step with Earth time, indicated by the ??:?? timestamps on his Pesterlogs. As such, John’s ‘normal’ development has been stalled on the day he becomes a teenager, and he’s locked off from the future of his society.

For John, time and space are linked. Although he has been removed from time and therefore from normal expectations, he’s still stuck in his house, the one piece of his culture that he brought with him. The picture John’s dad pinned to the fridge and the green slime pogo ride John continues to define himself by in this act both keep him tied to his childhood. While he’s here, John can’t escape a multitude of authority figures. His dad has been kidnapped, but still leaves notes around the house congratulating John on his maturity – ‘You are strong enough to lift the safe. You are now a man… I know you will take this responsibility seriously’ (p.546).

With Dad gone, Nannasprite steps in, having not seen John since he was very young. She restores John’s bedroom door to its hinges and restores the family order in the house, giving advice, controlling what John knows, and baking unprecedented amounts of cookies. Nannasprite calls John a ‘good boy’ (p.428), and the Wayward Vagabond’s first command to John is ‘BOY.’ (p.252), a word with assumptions about both John’s gender and current stage of life. Rose and WV also have guardianlike roles over John, able to control how he spends his time.

John is younger than Rose and Dave by a few months, but retains far more childlike qualities. His priorities lean towards play and silliness, as shown when he captchalogues shaving cream in case he suddenly needs to make a Santa beard (p.488) or makes a tent out of cruxite dowels (p.615), and he isn’t in any hurry to reach the signifiers of adulthood, such as shaving (p.544) or taking personal responsibility (p.643). The trait John most shares with the stereotypical teenager is poor emotional regulation – both his excitement and his frustration are obvious on his face and regularly interfere with his behavior (for example, p.429, p.637).

He passes the time instead of using the time, and is easily swayed by his peers. He has a drive for autonomy and self preservation, and will attempt to stand up for himself, but usually ends up deferring to the authority of his friends or guardians. He’s not very self-motivated except when it comes to putting bunnies back in boxes, and he enjoys consuming media, not all of which is age-appropriate – three of the movies on his wall are R-rated, including Con Air. He also plays popular video games and buys media merchandise such as T-shirts and posters, so falls into a mainstream youth marketing demographic.

As a prophesized savior positioned to undertake a hero’s journey, John is a classic young adult protagonist. He demonstrates the idea that the youth are our only hope, though they still require guidance from previous generations and are defined by their opposition to adulthood (seen through Nannasprite’s presence). However, despite Skaia influencing Earth since before life itself existed (p.757), it wasn’t until its power was harnessed into a video game that it began to threaten the world – youth’s popular culture is the thing that sends us all into decline, even if that culture was created and marketed by adults.

The earth already being ‘done for’ (p.427) allows for a subversion of the typical progress narrative. Page 757 indicates that Sburb may be influenced by ancient technology from outside of Earth, The end goal is not known, making John’s narrative defined by the journey and not by the ending, highlighting adolescence as a meaningful experience in and of itself, not only because of where it leads. And Sburb is already poking fun at John’s culture – the echeladder (p.405) parodies the milestone progression of youth, filled with meaningless and generic titles placed in an arbitrary order.

John’s destiny to ascend through the Seven Gates to Skaia, fighting with the light kingdom and attempting to overcome the dark forces’ destined win, could be read as an ascension from childhood to adulthood. John would be moving away from the sinful childlike state where young people are ruled by their base instincts of hunger, sleep, hormones and emotions, towards a rational and enlightened adulthood. But an inversion of this metaphor would work, too. John could move away from his culture’s ideal adult that he’s been told he’ll become – a person who is cynical, conformist, an obedient worker, driven by money and personal success – back towards the childlike state, retaining the open-mindedness, sense of whimsy and possibility, and creativity of childhood. Earth is done for, and so there’s no reason John should still be tied to the linear march of the culture he came from. He is perfectly positioned to imagine a new paradigm of adolescence, if he can break away from the ties – his house and his guardians – that try to tie him down to the ‘old ways’.

Rose Lalonde

‘To hear his mammoth belly gurgle is to know the Epoch of Joy has come to an abrupt end.’ (p.302)

In the narrative, Rose’s time is defined as the near future. Although her story directly overlaps with John’s, putting them at the same point in time, Rose is three timezones ahead and refers to other timezones as ‘younger’ (p.174). It’s night time for her, which visually distinguishes her panels and gives her story a more adult atmosphere. She is future oriented and proactive, planning for the next thing, and typically portrayed as one step ahead of John.

Rose has experienced the passage of time quickly, and has not had the luxury of lingering in childhood as John has. With a mother who is inattentive towards raising her and communicates through daily arguments (p.389) and ‘notes’ on the fridge (p.366), Rose likely had to develop independence and adult traits at a young age. She would be considered ‘precocious’, a word typically carrying a negative or judgmental tone describing a young person whose achievements or inclinations are happening ‘too soon’. In the narrative, Rose is continually running out of time, watching the battery on her laptop slowly drain and the forest fire surrounding her house creep closer. This anxiety of something yet to come positions Rose as a teenager who is awaiting the future and making use of every possible moment to prepare for it.

Educationally, she has a larger vocabulary than the average person her age, and likely a higher reading level. Practically, she understands construction and generator safety, has a good grasp of modern technology such as computers as well as classic skills such as knitting, and the hand eye coordination to do these things well. She demonstrates abstract and critical thinking, and attempts – with varying levels of success – to understand the consequences of her actions. She shows an understanding of a world greater than herself when she wishes Jaspers had been allowed to decompose (p.414) and avoids allocating her grimoire to her strife specibus (p.297). Despite being raised by a rich mother, she enjoys a challenge and is willing to work hard, rejecting childlike wish-fulfillment fantasies such as princesses and wizards.

Rose is a teenager who attempts to fill her time with activities she sees as productive and as bettering her as a person. She has internalized adult values and would prefer to get there too soon than be left behind, and she works hard to define herself through timeless, sophisticated hobbies such as literature, knitting and the violin, generally resisting mass culture that would be typically marketed to teens; unlike John she disrupts the idea of the teenager as mindless consumer or as defined by her peers’ interests. She tries to avoid juvenile behavior and scorns it in others (p.249) and is very attuned to cultural expectations, feeling a nebulous pair of eyes upon her judging the appropriateness of her actions, which affects her decisions (p.370), almost as if she is trying to skip the complicated, messy parts of being a modern teenager and move directly from childhood into rational adulthood.

It’s rare for Rose to regress into childlike behavior, such as the ‘W’ mustache (p.370) and the Youth Roll (p.379), and she usually ends up regretting or correcting the behavior afterwards (p.398, p.380). Her disdain for her mother suggests that she is self-correcting and trying to parent herself in response to these ‘slips’. Notably on page 440, Rose works on her GameFAQs, which are intended as an informative guide to future players. Accidentally slipping into a frustrated and self-berating personal anecdote, she strikes out the passage and again criticizes her own regression, which is immediately followed by a narrative shift into Rose’s actual past.

Rose struggles with patience, and with waiting for other people to catch up to her. She understands the seriousness of her situation; for her adolescence is a time of survival, her decisions now liable to affect her entire future. Act 2’s title, ‘Raise of the Conductor’s Baton’, appears in the text in relation to Rose - ‘Somewhere a zealous god threads these strings between the clouds and the earth, preparing for a symphony it fears impossible to play. And so it threads on, and on, delaying the raise of the conductor's baton’ (p.307). This certainly links to Rose’s experience of time, her living in expectant mode for a terrifying, looming future.

Primarily Rose strives for the ‘positive’ markers of adulthood, such as responsibility and educational attainment, but she also tries to be casual regarding sex, such as claiming to enjoy Dave’s bro’s websites (p.419). The only markers of adulthood she openly rejects are alcohol and domestic chores, both of which the text associates with Rose’s mother, who Rose views as a cautionary tale and the ‘wrong’ kind of adult. Through Rose’s relationship with her mother, there is space to question the idea put forward by other media that teenagers become dangers to society through poor parental oversight; Rose is certainly a rebellious and anti-authority teen, but her ‘rebellion’ consists of asserting her own capability and responsibility, such as turning down alcohol in favor of water (p.388).

Rose sees herself as the more responsible of the two of them, but it remains uncertain whether the narrative will legitimize this. By being positioned in a guardianlike role over John she disrupts the typical adult-youth dynamic, and is given a chance to prove her chesslike skills of thinking several steps ahead while staying responsive to new information, evidenced by her GameFAQ updates. However, in the final page of the act, Rose’s ability to manage her own life reaches its limits, and it is her mother who saves her by opening a secret passage, having apparently planned for this all along. Here Rose’s independence is taken from her and she is once again the teenager who needs a firm guiding hand, despite apparently working much harder than her mother. This reinforces a typical authority structure and is dismissive of Rose’s legitimate problems with her mother, as despite her flaws she is still a necessary figure in Rose’s life.

In future acts, Rose’s character arc could go multiple ways, particularly once she enters the Medium and is presumably separated from her mother. The story could legitimize her drive to grow up at a young age and allow her to take on a leadership role that she does seem well positioned for, given her ability to keep a clear head and solve problems in real time. In this narrative, Rose would not be punished or put back in her ‘rightful place’ for speeding through time, instead, her early development would allow her to be valuable to the group, and to challenge herself in ways a thirteen-year-old would not have access to in the real world. Alternatively, Rose could have an arc that allows her to go ‘back in time’ and reclaim her more youthful traits, taking on some of John’s silliness, handing over responsibility or making bad and uninformed decisions when in a new context, for example when she becomes a client player. This could also be subversive if returning from a more adultlike to a more childlike state is portrayed as a valid and meaningful journey in its own right, instead of as someone who grew up too fast returning to their ‘correct’ place in time.

Dave Strider

‘You just don’t have time for this bullshit. You’ll catch up later.’ (p.332)

Dave’s narrative time is defined as the past. His story begins on page 308, at the same moment where John’s story began on page 1. John and Rose are several hours ahead of him by now, and Dave’s storyline is constantly racing to catch up. Like any teen looking around and watching their peers maturing physically and socially while they fail to keep up, Dave is always missing information and excluded from his friends’ activities. The narrator makes sly references to Dave being in the past and unaware of what’s to come (p.314) like a nagging thought in the back of his head, and in every page, he has the relic of a five-year-old movie stamped on his face.

In reality, Dave is not failing to meet developmental milestones – quite the opposite. In a world where the athletic achievement of young men is prized and adults are expected to be in control of their own bodies, Dave is physically fit with quick reflexes, able to fight, jump, dodge and perform an ‘acrobatic fucking pirouette’ (p.579, p.665), even without regular access to food. The original, early 20th century Boy Scouts prepared boys for military service primarily through obedience, a sense of duty, and personal responsibility towards physical development; Dave’s brother with his strict sword-training and Saw trap regime is instilling similar values.

Dave does participate in mainstream culture, evidenced by his regular reading of GameBro and his desire to be ‘cool’ and to like the same things as his brother – but he’s not only a consumer of culture, he’s also a producer. He writes a blog, ostensibly on a regular schedule, and produces a webcomic, combining creative and analytical pursuits. He regularly refers to himself as ‘busy’ (p.309, etc) and says he ‘doesn’t have time’ for things (p.310, 332), has ‘a lot on [his] plate’ (p.333), and that it’s ‘hard to get any work done’ (p.381). Dave sees his internet projects as work, as commitments he needs to make time for, and he’s not afraid to push back against the player’s commands if he thinks they wouldn’t be a good use of his time.

He has the Complete Bullshit desktop application and keeps up with his brother’s projects, and likely other internet culture too, to stay on the cutting edge of irony that he prides himself on. It seems like Dave’s time is largely full and he struggles to fit everything in. He is very aware of the constantly changing, modern society that he lives in and wants to stay on the pulse of these changes. Less than six months after Obama’s election, a black president is no longer noteworthy to Dave (p.287), and he creates remixes with electronic samplers instead of playing classical instruments like his friends. He’s always online and always keeping in real time contact with his friends; he ‘pesters [Rose] like clockwork’ (p.415). Trying to keep the beat of an ever-shifting internet meme culture to stay cool and avoid being outdated at all costs is exhausting, and it’s no wonder Dave sometimes struggles to keep up.

Living in the city, a place where the pace of life is quickest, in a time of rapid technological and cultural change already creates a ‘racing against the clock’ mindset, and Dave’s relationship with his brother compounds this. By modeling himself on Jigsaw, a villain who created complex, physically violent traps with strict time limits, he forces Dave to be constantly on guard, constantly expecting the next danger, yet often a moment too late for it, behaving like an intense ‘no pain, no gain’ style sports coach. On the surface, Dave’s sunglasses, frown and monosyllables look like a rebellious teen movie protagonist, but beneath that, Dave best corresponds to a real life high achieving teenager who is put under pressure to achieve even more by the adults around them.

Dave’s story so far has focused on the ‘campaign of one-upmanship’ between himself and his brother as he fights for his brother’s Sburb game discs – his brother is an obstacle to both his plot development and his emotional development (for example, admitting that he’s uncomfortable with his brother’s hobbies). This is likely setting up a ‘loss of innocence’ story, where Dave has to come to terms with harsh realities of the adult world by recognizing that an authority figure is imperfect. This is a fairly typical growing up narrative that does not disrupt conventional ideas of linear growth, as the adult world is widely seen as darker, more serious, and something young people need to be protected from.

However, I think Dave’s status as a subcultural producer places him outside a typical youth/adult binary. Dave is not overall presented as adultlike, as he follows trends and is fully subservient to the adult in his life, and his hobbies – Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, sweet bro’s hella blog, and remixing music – don’t place him on a typical path to adulthood. By establishing that Dave sees these as responsibilities, and as things he creates for a real audience of at minimum four people and potentially many more, Dave’s teenage experiences and creations are given importance without needing to be legitimated by adults (such as the narrator or his brother).

Dave’s self-motivation when it comes to his creative pursuits also disrupts ideas of teenagers as lazy or needing to be shaped by outside forces; he’s capable of sticking to a self-imposed schedule. However, his creative drive is part of a real-time responsiveness to internet culture – if he is taken to the Medium, outside the normal progression of time, would he be able to maintain this? An arc that focuses on Dave as a creator instead of Dave as a soldier could do more to complicate a typical youth narrative.

Wayward Vagabond

‘The APPEARIFIER cannot appearify something if it will create a TIME PARADOX’. (p.752)

The Wayward Vagabond is not a human adolescent, and does not come from the same culture as John, Rose and Dave – they discover the concepts of ‘cutlery’ and ‘politeness’ in Act 2, so are a long way from internalizing age-based ideals. As such, although WV exists in the future – their story taking place 413 years after the human characters’ – they are not more advanced, or more adult, than the others.

Alone in a wasteland and free from social influences, WV does not regulate their eating, is described as physically weak, expresses black and white opinions on governance, and loses track of time playing pretend games. At the same time, they show a good understanding of art, chess strategy and precise movements and distances. They pick up social and technological skills quickly and are very attuned to positions in space (p.743), but far less attuned to positions in time (p.755). Many of their actions are similarly nonsensical to John’s, and these moments of whimsy frame WV as childlike.

However, WV has a privileged position in time. Not only are they in the future, but they have the technology to experiment with temporal mechanics. Through a set of screens they are able to look back at and directly influence events from the past; they have authority over at least one young person, and can appearify objects from other points in time.

Being an adult and a child at the same time feels like a time paradox to us, just as appearifying a rotten pumpkin they ate earlier is a time paradox to WV. Having authority over a young person who, if he continued to grow in linear time, would be long dead by the time WV enters the bunker is also a paradox of normal development. By mixing childlike and adultlike traits, WV draws attention to the way roles in society are socially mediated and may not exist outside of their cultural moment. By living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where advanced technology is lost to the ravages of nature, WV represents a type of person who could live in the future if the world does not follow a path of strict linear progress, but simply of change.

The appearifier and command station in WV’s bunker fundamentally change the function of time in the narrative. Although WV’s mastery of time is limited by the need to avoid paradoxes, if characters take actions to influence or improve the past, they disrupt the norm of future orientation and give equal importance to the past. Indeed, the pages titled ‘Years in the future…’ are not presented as the desirable end goal of the narrative, nor are they a terrible fate to be avoided. They are interesting asides to the story, but they are asides, with the bulk of them taking place in pages hosted outside of the main story. The story structure lets the past and present be centered in themselves, not just through their leading to the future.

The Narrator

‘Maybe you could go bug someone somewhere else for a while? Or at the very least, somewhen else.’ (p.440)

The position of any given Homestuck page within the timeline is uncertain until established by the narrator, who regularly exercises their power to shift back and forth, and to conceal these movements until the player has made a fool of themself. In this way, the narrator is positioned as an adult with perfect knowledge of the timeline, viewing adolescence in its totality. They have transcended the limitations of adolescence and have moved onto a real and meaningful time of life, and will occasionally reference their superior knowledge of future events with winks to the audience while keeping characters out of the loop – ‘you can’t imagine how a video game could save someone’s life’ (p.314) or ‘only… babies who poop in their diapers believe in [monsters]’ (p.387).

However, moments of the narrator criticizing or speaking condescendingly to the teenage characters is surprisingly rare. It happens occasionally, like with ‘This is COMPLETE BULLSHIT.’ (p.458) or ‘The circle of stupidity is complete’ (p.490) but the vast majority of narrative criticism is directed towards the Wayward Vagabond, the only character the narrator regularly speaks directly to. The narrator calls WV stupid on multiple occasions (for example, p.437, p.746), and tells them to defer to Rose’s decision making (p.277), but the majority of narrative text criticizing the kids’ behavior is actually just reporting their own thoughts, either towards themselves – ‘It seems the woman has you at a clear disadvantage’ (p.373) – or towards each other, such as ‘What the hell is that nincompoop doing?’ (p.508). When a command would lead to a bad decision, it’s generally the character who refutes it, not the narrator (p.489). In this way, although the narrator does have superior knowledge, they give center stage to adolescent perspectives.

Implicitly, the narrator controls the flow of time in the story – deciding who to switch to and in what moment of their story, allowing characters to speak or moving focus away from them – and the narrator is willing to indulge the characters in their non-plot critical diversions, rarely hurrying them along when they take extended time to read books or rearrange their sylladex, but allowing the minutiae of their experiences to matter. The narrator lists characters’ interests without judgment – adult characters are interested in clowns, wizards, puppets and sugary foods, while adolescent characters are interested in computer programming, knitting and specimen preservation, with no clear line on ‘acceptable’ interests for a given age group.

Zooming out a layer, Act 2 posits the idea of John, Rose and Dave’s stories available for viewing through a screen, four hundred and thirteen years in the future. As well as reflecting the existence of the webcomic itself, this contrasts the idea of adolescence as a transient state. The 13-year-old versions of these characters are frozen in time on the Wayward Vagabond’s screen. Born in the mid-1990s, these characters are among the first to grow up with social media, and with an internet moving away from anonymity. Their lives being recorded on the command terminal, in Rose’s GameFAQ screenshots (p.510) and in Bro’s Jigsaw puppet (p.570) are not a million miles from the teenagers documenting each other’s lives on Facebook in 2009 – and at the time of Act 2’s writing, it’s not yet certain what the real world impacts of this will be on current young people’s experiences of time.

Conclusion

‘Temporal movement into the future is understood as linear, uni-directional, and able to be separated from the present and the past… a conception of growth and change as recursive, as occurring over and over again as we move into new situations, would reorient us.’ - Nancy Lesko (2001)

Written in 2009, Homestuck carries the baggage of over a hundred years of public discourse around the teenager. Adulthood is seen as the most important stage of life, with teenagers as flawed, incomplete versions who need to be corrected before reaching the end goal of conventional adult society through conforming to a series of linear milestones. The expected development of real teenagers is reflected in the stories told about them, which focus on characters ‘coming of age’ and successfully internalizing adult norms.

By introducing nonlinear storytelling in Act 2, Homestuck represents time as teenagers actually experience it, which gives the comic a chance to explore and question dominant ideas of adolescence and adolescent time. John and Rose have relationships with guardian figures, including the narrator, that reinforce adult superiority, and all three kids have communication breakdowns between themselves and their guardians – but the skills and interests of teenagers are also given importance, and adults are not exempt from narrative criticism. The narrator is happy to indulge the teenagers just as often as to correct them.

The end of Act 2 positions Sburb as an organic entity of sorts, not necessarily created by adults in universe. Sburb encourages linear gameplay with progression up the Echeladder and through the Seven Gates, but the Medium’s position outside of time, and the fact that restoring the Earth is not the game’s goal, allow for narratives of change that are not necessarily narratives of progress, as the characters’ future in rational adult society no longer exists. The comic’s focus on creativity – both the potential of Skaia and with Dave’s role as an artist – means the story could focus on the importance of not losing childlike traits along the path to adulthood.

Rose Lalonde – I have so much fun reading anything Rose says. Her GameFAQs are so unintentionally hilarious but she’s also got a great intentional sense of humor, like her fake-mustache W and her trying to create the Colonelsprite. I do think she plays a little fast and loose with John’s life, expecting him to navigate combat on narrow platforms and stairs above an endless void, but I can cut her some slack because she’s having to balance her responsibility over John with trying to save her own life. All of her scenes so far have been based around her game connection with John – either actively playing the game, or trying to reconnect her laptop – and my hope for act 3 is for Rose to get a story of her own. Ideally one that involves summoning one of those sick ass creatures from the grimoire.

Zazzerpan the Learned – He is a twenty foot tall wizard, and as such, is the only Homestuck character I would describe as ‘hot’.

Wayward Vagabond – Easily the best mayor Can Town has ever had. Started off as a rude tyrant yelling at John, but it ended up just being cultural differences, and they’ve really worked on communication. I love how creative WV is, how ready they are to take enjoyment in life where they can get it, and how much they care for their non-edible possessions. They’re in this very structured, somewhat antagonistic, Sburb-mediated relationship with John, but I actually think the two of them have a lot in common, and if they could just sit down together with a big train set they’d have a blast.

Serenity – Not only is she glowing and sparkly, but she’s smart and good at taking responsibility in an emergency.

Like

Nannasprite – Ghost? Harlequin? Game construct? Loving grandmother? Nannasprite is all these things. Sure, she’s going way overboard on the cookies, but she doesn’t know John well enough to know he’s not into baked goods. And she really got him with the bucket on the door. That was a great prank. Mostly, I like her for giving me the Good Lore. Please Nannasprite, I will eat as many cookies as you want if you will infodump to me about Sburb for hours on end.

Rambunctious Crow – An absolute scamp who’s just doing what crows do. Made even cooler by the addition of a sword.

Neutral/Mixed

Dave Strider – I still think Dave sucks, just like at the end of act 1. I think his insistence on irony is exhausting and his raps are a chore to read, I hate how dismissive he is of other people’s interests and how superior he is about his own, I think he’s way too quick to resort to violence and way too slow to do any kind of self reflection. But. Having learned more about his bro and his living situation, I understand why he sucks so bad, and I don’t think he’s really to blame. I hope that Dave’s bro is kidnapped by imps soon, in Sburb or otherwise, because I think that’s the only way Dave could become someone I actually like.

Dad – I’m harsh on parents in fiction. I think Dad seems like an awesome guy, I love his Serious Business app, his preparedness re: shaving cream, his bucking of gender roles by always being in the kitchen, and his refusal to go quietly with the imps. But despite the external trappings of a father and his obvious love for John, he seems unwilling to meet John where he is and be the dad John actually wants and needs. I wish he would do more to get to know John as a person, to perhaps offer him some tasty roasted vegetables, to perhaps buy him the Nintendo DSi instead of a harlequin doll, to open up to John about his own life and to take him on some trips into Seattle. I wonder if he regrets not doing all that now that they’re separated.

Uncertain

gardenGnostic – I want to like GG, and I hope I will end up liking her, but Act 2 has built up so much mystery around GG that even though she’s had a few further pesterlogs I feel like I know less about her than I did at the end of act 1. She really plays up how she ‘can’t’ tell people things but still insists on mentioning them, which is an annoying trait, but I like her positive attitude and the fact that she’s so encouraging to her friends.

Peregrine Mendicant – I like that they are collecting mailboxes, as I am a huge fan of the postal service as an institution, but I do not have a sense of them as a character.

Mom – First off, we should eat the rich and redistribute Mom’s wealth. Her millionaire status aside, I don’t think she’s a good parent, or that exchanging passive aggressive notes with your daughter or ignoring her suicide threats is in any way healthy. But, it seems from WV: Ascend that her role in the story is bigger than raising Rose. Whether that goes towards redeeming her or makes her even worse, only time will tell.

Dislike

Sburb – I’m deeply fascinated by Sburb and I love to analyze it, and the story is making it increasingly clear that the game Sburb (2009) is just a small part of the larger entity Skaia (~4 billion BC). As a story element it’s amazing, but as a force acting on the characters it’s nothing but sinister. Willing to sacrifice the whole continent to achieve its secret goals, many of whom haven’t elected to play the game, and keeping its nature hidden from players until it’s far too late, it’s like a form of extreme gamer Darwinism allowing only its best players to survive. Its use of mind control and its impact on real life means it can’t even be fun to play, arguably the worst sin for a video game.

Sweet Bro & Hella Jeff – I would not hang out with these guys.

Midnight Crew – These four spent a hundred pages stuck in a bunker and all they were able to do was inflict violence on each other and fail to play 52 pickup. WV managed a skilful escape 32 pages after getting stuck. Case closed.

Hate

Bro – Just the worst guy imaginable. Anyone who controls a child through violence and fear, withholding food and a safe home, is irredeemable in my book and bad enough that I can’t even enjoy reading about him. There’s nothing wrong with being into puppets, or porn, or puppet porn, or even making a career out of puppet porn and ventriloquist rapping, but there is something wrong with forcing these things on people who aren’t comfortable with them and aren’t able to say no.

18 pages contained sound [S] (3.5%), including 31 distinct music tracks worked on by 16 artists, 25 of which were new for act 2. This includes two versions of Showtime by Kevin Regamey & Malcolm Brown and three of Harlequin byMark Hadley.

The distribution of panel types (still image, GIF, animation and interactive) was very similar between Acts 1 and 2, but the amount of new music was significantly higher in Act 2. This was entirely due to Dave’s MIDI samples on p.338, which contained 20 tracks, 19 of which were new.

333 pages contained a command in the title (65.2%). Of these, 120 commands were to John (36.0%), 55 were to Rose (16.5%), 82 were to Dave (24.6%), 64 were to WV (19.2%), and 12 were to miscellaneous characters (3.6%), including the game engine (3), narrator (1), Spades Slick (2), Nannasprite (1), John’s piano (1), John’s fridge (1), John’s bathtub (1), Dad’s safe (1), and Colonel Sassacre (1).

262 commands came from the player (78.7%) and 71 came from WV, with all of WV’s commands directed to John or the narrator except for p.277 (DO THE POTTED VEGETABLE NEXT. IT LOOKS DELICIOUS.), which was directed to Rose. There were 99 additional commands from WV within p.253, directed to a mix of John and the narrator.

I imperfectly track ‘point of view character’ based on who the ‘you’ in narrative text is directed to, or without that, whose experiences we are seeing in the image. If we are seeing something the character wouldn’t be able to see, the point of view is the player’s. Based on these metrics, John is the point of view character for 139 pages (27.2%), Rose for 102 (20.0%), Dave for 122 (23.9%), WV for 104 (20.4%), the player for 42 (8.2%), and a different character for 8 pages (1.6%), including the narrator (4), Spades Slick (3) and Nannasprite (1). Six pages contain multiple POVs, accounting for the small discrepancy in the total number.

Act 1 only contained three command recipients and four point of view characters, while Act 2 contained 13 command recipients and eight point of view characters. By both metrics, John is the main character in both Acts 1 and 2, although Act 2 is really more of an ensemble cast.

There were 39 pesterlogs on 38 pages (7.4% of pages) and 9 spritelogs (1.8% of pages). Combining all chatlogs, John appears in 31 (plus 10 where he’s the recipient but doesn’t answer), Rose in 29 (plus one where she doesn’t answer), Dave in 12, GG in 4, and Nannasprite in 9. The chatlogs vary wildly in length, but average 172.6 words. The longest chatlog is between Rose and GG on p.442, which totals 587 words.

In total, Act 2 contained 14,386 words of narrative text, 2815 words in page titles (commands plus ‘==>’, which counts as one word as it has a distinct meaning), and 8286 words in chatlogs. This includes commands and narrative text within p.253 ([S] YOU THERE. BOY) but does not include other types of words within images, as these are hard to track without extensive time or better computer skills than mine.

This gives Act 2 a total word count of 25,487, or an average of 49.9 words per page – slightly higher than Act 1’s 42.5 average. Page 253 is by far the longest page in Act 2, with 2103 total words including 1579 of narrative text; p.448 is the second longest based on narrative text alone, with 218 words.

descentintohomestuck

Guys don’t tell me that Nanna could also see into the future. This is insane she knew about her death and the actual game. 

Warring royalty is obviously the two kingdoms fighting against each other. 

Timeless expanse is the battlefield maybe? Or it could be the Incipisphere since it is outside of the original Earth timeline, according to Nannasprite.

Agent, exiles, consorts, underlings, denizens = ????

I already covered kernelsprites

The heir of breath, seer of light, witch of space, and knight of time are all titles assigned to the 4 kids. As of right now I’m guessing that Dave will be the knight because swords = knights, John will be the heir because I have no idea what to do with that title, Rose will be the witch also because I don’t know what to do with the titles, and Jade will be the seer considering the fact that she does seem to know stuff that shouldn’t have happened yet.

hsletswagon

Ok. The main thing I’m getting out of this is that everyone is getting in oh never mind, it just says that four people are getting in en toto. So, Jack shit, basically. Oh well. 

imreadingthishomestuckthing

Woah, isn’t this the sasssacre book in the safe?

I am so proud of you, grandson!

Nanna wrote this? Did she write this when she was alive?

For you see, John, like you, this book must yet take a journey! Its journey will end on the Final Day of my life, and even then will continue some. Though I suppose that will be up to your Father. Perhaps he will discuss it with you one day, when he and you are ready.

Uh….

There will come a day when you will be thrust into another world. And once you arrive, that is only the beginning!

How does she know this in the past?

You will soon delve even deeper into a realm of Warring Royalty

The chess pieces…..

in a Timeless Expanse.

The incisiphsfjhekjfh whatever

A realm of Agents and Exiles and Consorts

Don’t know what the fuck any of that is.

and Kernelsprites.

Know what a sprite is though!

Of toiling Underlings and slumbering Denizens.

I’m guessing the underlings are the monsters, but what’s a denizen?

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.

Woah woah woah…

Ok, i’m going to guess that’s referring to the four kids since we haven’t seen any other kids.

Hm…

Maybe John is the Knight of Time? Since he’s the main character he seems pretty knightly. Dave could be the Heir of Breath. A heir inherits and he’s sort of like a heir to his Bro’s irony shit I guess. But that’s still a tough one, it could be the other way around since John inherits like, all that stuff in his Dad’s safe I guess. Seer of Light and Witch of Space are pretty obvious. Rose is the witch because of how much she’s into like cthulu monsters and shit. GG is obviously the Seer of Light since she’s been shown to know things she shouldn’t.

And yet I feel in my heart we have already met. But what I know for sure is that we will meet again!

How does she knowwww.

Until then, John, I do hope your Father keeps you well fed!

I blame her for all the five hundred cakes his Dad baked for him.

manvshomestuck

I’m not going to lie, having to slog through the text of Sassacre is a massive let-down after the flash animation.  

Well, okay, there is a relevant paragraph.  Okay, our four characters have titles.  Now, I cannot actually react accurately to this development, because:

Hey, anon, remember when you suggested to me that I filter the ask questions with real life friends?  Real life friends are idiots.  So I already knew that this was coming.  Furthermore, I was told that “all the other blogs speculate about this” but “yours doesn’t,” which didn’t make any sense, because I hadn’t actually read that far.

/pointless bitching and whining

If I had to guess, Seer of Light is GG, Knight of Time is Dave, Heir of Breath is John, Witch of Space is Rose.  If I had to put this as an answer on a test, I’d put random answers because Hussie’s mind is only knowable when he deigns to make manifest his prescence.

The sick bastard.

mousathe14

You are no doubt reading this as a handsome and strapping young man! Why, the mangrit needed to lift the book is itself a sign of your maturity, not even to speak of the wisdom needed to grasp the nuance of Sassacre’s time-tested mischief. I am so proud of you, grandson!

PFFFFFTTTTTTTT! Oh man, that is rich, it looks like all of this happened too early!

How I wish I could have delivered this heirloom to you in the flesh. But I am afraid it wasn’t in the cards! For you see, John, like you, this book must yet take a journey! Its journey will end on the Final Day of my life, and even then will continue some. Though I suppose that will be up to your Father. Perhaps he will discuss it with you one day, when he and you are ready.

Oh great, that huge and ancient book is actually important somehow.

But it is your journey I am writing about to wish you luck! There will come a day when you will be thrust into another world. And once you arrive, that is only the beginning! 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.

Sounds potentially confusing.

But I’m guessing this is what Rose, John, Jade, and Dave are destined for; Ascension once they’ve learned to harness the power of the four elements. If I were to hazard a guess I’d say Dave is the Knight of Time and Rose is the Witch of Space, which leaves John the Heir of Breath and Jade the Seer of light since, you know, she sees everything apparently.

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!

Yes, you have, somehow… That’s so weird.

Until then, John, I do hope your Father keeps you well fed!

Well he tried but John doesn’t have the maturity or forethought to appreciate THREE CAKES!

P.S. PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY LAUGH NO LONGER CHARMING FROM YOU BECAUSE YOU ARE ANNOYINGLY MYSTERIOUS!

overallsreadshomestuck

This might technically be Act II material, but I’m not positive; the dividing lines between these things are still sketchy for me. Besides, none of that is important compared to all the wildly pertinent and mysterious information contained in this tiny cap. AGENTS. An agent is a spy, and didn’t I just say his dad was a spy? His padre is totally one of them; did you see him bust out of thosetrick handcuffs in that flash? Mr. Eggbert is Tom Cruise. This explains everything.

Warring royalty. The only thing better than good versus evil is kings and queens versus kings and queens in the name of good versus evil. This all, of course, plays beautifully into that wonderful image we had of the chessboard. Coincidence? Never.

Four is quickly establishing itself as a Very Important Number (henceforth referred to as a VIM). You had the four screens, the four sections in the Sburb logo, the four players in that game chain Rose referenced, four spires (mentioned somewhere? I can’t remember where anymore ;;) and now this. Agents, Exiles, Consorts, and Kernelsprites are grouped together in a list of four, as are the more explicit titles associated with the four players who will enter into this Medium realm… which must be John, Rose, Dave, and Minty the Fortune Teller. This is more of an educated guess than a well-grounded theory at this stage, but here are my predictions as of now: Rose as the Witch of Space (her little occult book), Green Text as the Seer of Light (she’s already got a knack for foresight it seems), Dave as the Knight of Time (uh… he’s got a sword?), and John as the Heir of Breath (there’s all this chatter of things being passed down to him, inheritance, etc..).

readinghomestuck

Dear John

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

At first I was all like, “Aw, how touching. She’s writing a note to her grandbaby.”

Then I was all like, “Woah, wait, hold up. What you talkin’ ‘bout, Nanna? You pulling a GG on me?”

And then I was like, “She already knew about SBURB?! O^O”

And then my last thought was, “Aw, she’s so grandmotherly~”

skepticsister

Nanna’s letter gave lots of clues as to what going to happen in Act Three!!! Will examin it more when I come back to read Act Three. 

Which I will start very soon. I’m excited.

so-i-am-reading-homestuck

I’m back! And suddenly assaulted with words!

“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.”

I have a feeling that this will be important.

Just a hunch.

treestuck

>the man grit needed

>man grit

#just taking a moment to appreciate this phrase

Yo! Master

John's whole bloody family is in the know!! That & Chosen One-ness. Hmh.

adventures-in-homestuck

Ok so i think this is how it went …

the black thing went flying away and it passed johns town in the future.(which after the meteor is now a crater) and saw the white person type thing. then we saw another meteor hit a volcano which then dried up then frogs and water appeared making a huge frog temple on a island.and more water just making it a island (which is now a dried up wasteland). when then cut to rose who’s trying to say the generator and fails (then her mother who’s watching from afar presses a button that opens a door to the cat mausoleum).and Dave about to fight his brother…..

descentintohomestuck

Oh thank god he made it out

Is he in a rocket. What.

wait that’s John’s neighborhood 

and his meteor

ok PM is there with another rocket thing

Frog Island with a volcano

ROSE

Mom lalonde what

YES DADBERT GO GO GO

woah bro is Kamina

discoveringhomestuck

CRAZY SHIT BRO

WV GETS ON A ROCKET AND WATCHES SHIT THE METEOR HIT TOWN A MYSTERIOUS PASSAGE OPENED FOR ROSE EGBERT’S DAD IS A BADASS (SOMEHOW) DAVE FIGHTS HIS BROTHER OR SOMETHING

homestuckfordildos

And then, blastoff. Or, as Kuro would say… ROCKETMAN!!!! BURNING UP HIS FUEL OUT HERE ALONE!!!

And John’s father fights with shaving cream and pastry. Yay.

howtounderstandhomestuck

I’ll give Hussie credit and it’s that he seriously knows how to music

#the music is his right????

not gonna type it out so here

[9:17:34 PM] I’m the Best: okay an island [9:17:35 PM] I’m the Best: what [9:17:39 PM] I’m the Best: is that a dinosaur [9:17:47 PM] I’m the Best: rose’s house is on fire now [9:18:01 PM] I’m the Best: oops dad got free [9:18:03 PM] Bryce: what page? [9:18:05 PM] Bryce: oh [9:18:09 PM] Bryce: yeah, the dad escaping. [9:18:18 PM] I’m the Best: is that turntechgayguy’s brother [9:18:22 PM] I’m the Best: what is this rocket thing [9:18:30 PM] I’m the Best: jawa is at the surface ………????????????????? [9:18:33 PM] I’m the Best: WHAT JUST HAPPENED

hsletswagon

Ok, lets get our attention up ins.

Ruined city in the background.

Stone hand with ball? Orb? In a crater. Station takes off. 

Johns neighborhood, meteor. Giant fuckoff tree, why not.

Many years in the past, a frog temple grows out of an atoll, what the hell. 

FUCK YOU IMPS.

Fire and Kamina. 

Ok, I’ma re watch this.

von neumann tree growing from crater, hand full of ball. Guessing that since The station was white and in a crater, it was meteor delivered as well, though apparently von neumann frog temples can grow out of meteors, so that might not be reliable. I guess we’ll see.

imreadingthishomestuckthing

Wow….. just… wow.

I really don’t know what to say.

Maybe go over what happened?

It’s pretty late and i’m having a hard time comprehending all that just happened in that flash, but uh.

The lab thing was actually a spaceship or something, and it flew up and started to take WV somewhere, it then showed a meteor hitting what I think was John’s neighbourhood and a huge tree and a big sphere came off of it like an apple, and the other white desert guy was there.

Then… we saw a meteor coming out of a green skaia portal and hitting some place near a volcano, and then suddenly a temple with a frog on it appeared.

THEN, Rose was freaking out about the generator and JUMPED OUT OF THE WAY OF A FUCKING BURNING TREE, then her Mom opened some kind of secret passage?

Then we got a glimpse of Bro before WV landed where that temple was…

manvshomestuck

VERY nice music.  So, here we are; a desert, with some…white circle HOLY SHIT IT’S A ROCKET!

Wit the sburb logo on the side.

Dude, when this comic means ascend they mean ascend…

Wait.  Wait, what, okay, thsi is the crater where the neighborhood was destroyed a TREE what is a tree doing 

um, back to the past is that MARS oh god it’s a portal a volcano what lava pool, um, some sort of frog temple, oceans filling, it decays, er, EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING SO FAST

oh hey it’s rose die you bitch

HAHAHAHA FIRE BURNS

WHAT THE FUCK UNDERGROUND PASSAGEWAY

THAT’S THE DUDE’S DAD WHAT THE FUCK

a CAKE?!

Okay, back to Dave.  IT’S KAMINA!  BRO!  HOLY SHIT!  

The rocket descends.  Um.  We’re at the frog temple.  BP logo flashes.

Dear God; shit’s going down.  Okay, so, let’s review what we know:

This worked better than the scene with the appearify-thingy, because then, I was pretty sure Hussie was trying to tell me something and I was just too stupid or he was just being too unclear to get it.  Here, he’s teasing me, and the teasing works because it’s of an epic scale.  No more “goddamn nothing” is happening; a complete reversal has occured wherein so much SOMETHING is happening that i SUPPOSE THIS IS WHY HOMESTUCK IS SEVERAL THOUSAND PAGES LONG.

I fully expect, with good reason, every single thing presented in this flash animation to be explained and become relevant.  Let’s watch this thing, um, again.  I didn’t catch all of the text the first time.

WAIT, okay, it’s not the same crater, because it says “a continent westward.”  So, the tree is a continent westward.  Also, the sburub logo appears on something he tree drops…

FUCK, I missed some stuff from the volcano part.  Take three…

An ocean westward..but many years in the past…

So, Dave’s brother is, “What if Kamina from TTGL was a complete psychopath?”

okay.  okay.  THE SHIT IS GOING DOWN NOW.  I think I get it now; contrast the empty nothingness of the first dozen pages with this, and the extreme difference provokes a reaction.  Michael Bay makes shit explode by Andrew Hussie will just sit down and do nothing for thirty minutes before snapping his fingers and making your mind implode.  

i apologize for the rambling, unorganized nature of the above text; i suppose the world’s laboratories can use it to study the effects that homestuck has on the mortal mind.

mousathe14

Desert again…

Oh GOD! IT’S A ROCKET! I KNEW IT!

Going Westward? Why? to what end?

And in the past…. It looks like where John’s house was destroyed… I think… And maybe a tree there grew? And some sort of SBURB house tree thing?

Wow, a volcano… Like on the planet WV drew? But what’ with the frog civilization tower thing?

NO! ROSE!

Is her mom being… Helpful?

Mr. Egbert is a silly badass?

And… We see Brother Strider. With Kamina glasses.

And we find WV at the ancient tower of the frog. Odd…

precisionfstrike

muuuuuuuuuuuusiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiic /makes grabbyhands at it

Hey, isn’t that hand from Rose’s statue…? I’m pretty sure I remember that! So why is it there? And then? Wasn’t earth destroyed…?

…

WAIT WHAT

IT JUST…!

…well then

I guess that’s one way to travel

in style

Huh, so a tree grew where John’s house used to be? And dropped… what looks like another of those bunker-like things, apparently. That PM is going to find?

Or it could always be a bomb

An ocean westward. Shit happened. There was something to do with a frog.

sup rose how’s that generator thing going

…apparently not very well considering that tree WHAT DID HER MOTHER JUST DO

MOM: SECRET BADASS

SUP DAD

…DAD: ALSO A SECRET BADASS? STOP GROWING ON ME GODDAMMIT

SUP DAVE 

SUP BRO

…you’re actually not as lame as I imagined you might be, though I suppose this could be a case of appearances being deceiving… :|a

And finally sup capsule thing that’s dropping to the ground oh look WV you’ve discovered the frog.

now what’s so important about it.

#a lot of that didn't make any sense #but in a totally different way than how the rest of it hasn't made any sense #is this a look at HIDDEN DEPTHS??? #maybe

readinghomestuck

      - Audio Reaction for pages 2655 to 2657

      Transcript:

Oh is that a city in the background?

Wow, this is some cool music.

Hey! I-isn’t that the … from the wizard?

Wait, wh-exs-whaaaaaaat?!

It’s a space ship?

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat.

Oh my god, that would be so much fun to ride! Look at that!

Just stand up there, be like, “Whoo!”

A continent westward, what?

And years in the past, but not man…y

Oh is this what the newspaper clippings in the safe was talking about?!

Or, no, this is probably just John’s house blowing up, right, isn’t it?

Ri … ou… what?

Oh hey it’s… that dude.

HI! And he’s waving to him! Heeeh.

Woah and I thought they were going to land. I Guess not.

Uh what?

Years in the past, but-Hey a spirograph!

Okaaaaay, lavaaaaa…

Some… temple thingy??

What?

What. Wha… WHY IS THERE DINOSAURS?!

Oh Rose!

OH GOD ROSE DON’T DIE!

OH GOD!

OH GOD NO ROSE!

Oh, Rose’s mom…

What-ohmygodscretpassage!

*gasp* Dad!

*gasp* Trick handcuuuffs, yeah! Aw yeah, I totally called it!

Aw yeah, Dad, you so awesome~!

Cake to the face-ooh Dave.

Looking pretty cool there.

OHHHHHHHHHHHH

Is this his s-creepy-OHHHHHH look at thaaat.

Uh… where… He’s landing n-O.K., where’s he landing?

O.K. that’s the temple thingy…

So… he’s in the future-well I guess it’s already been stated he’s in the future. Ooh what’s that?

It’s just a spinning, pulsating thing.

Uh-I guess that’s the end.

O.K. that… that was pretty cool!

skepticsister

SO MUCH WENT ON JUST NOW. Ok. So he launched, and I saw a hand. The wizards hand from Roses house? Meaning that’s where Roses house used to be. I think. Then I saw Johns neighborhood blow up then grow a tree, and drop an apple shaped thing. Then the forming of an island with a Frog temple type thing. Then Dave and saw bro for the first time! Reminds me of Kamina from Gurren Lagann. Only because the glasses. And the Squirtle squad. :3 Also John’s dad fought some imps with shaving cream and cake. And Rose escaped down below. Then Vagabond landed by the Frog temple.  

so-i-am-reading-homestuck

I just watched WV: Ascend

Not exactly sure what just happened, but I know two things.

1: Kicking rad music

2: Bro has fucking awesome shades

#I want those shades

sweetbroandgabbagabba

OH MY GOD

MY JOHN/DIRK FEELS

treestuck

[S] WV: Ascend.

wh

what just happen

I was talking to Corgi about her cosplay and thinking that if I ever like this thing enough to want to cosplay with her then I want to be the mayor of can town

and then he was a rocket that was a meteor that turned into a tree that the wanderer picked up in past but then there were

things

i dont

IS THAT THE FIRST BABY STIRRING OF INTEREST THAT I FEEL?

what-the-fuck-is-homestuck

What the fuck just happened

Also, that music was pretty cool, does Homestuck have a soundtrack or something?