Finding Your Roots- Intermission 2, Page 41

And that's a wrap for Intermission: The Wishing Star! I hope you enjoyed this little side story. Chapter 9 will begin at the next update. See you (and our main cast) on December 20!                    

BEFRIENDUS - INTERMISSION 2 SELECT

the sides.,., they are unionizing

congratulations on solving puzzle #2!

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Before I dive into Act 6, I want to take a second and talk about a phenomenon that caught on in the fandom: the Lyricstuck. Since Homestuck is a webcomic with very little in the way of footage to make AMVs, Homestuck fans on tumblr created lyricstucks, audio posts with hand drawn images that tied scenes in the webcomic to the lyrics, so that you could play the song and then scroll down to read the lyricstuck along with the music. These were super popular, and at the time tumblr culture was a lot more used to super long posts, often with part of it under a readmore. Many of these lyricstucks were adapted into video format and put on YouTube, thus preserving them when Tumblr started cracking down on copyrighted music. However, many of these have also been taken down from YouTube, leaving fandom history somewhat lost in the lurch.

The one above, based on My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up) by Fallout Boy, is one of the surviving standouts of the genre. Another I am partial to is the one based on The Highwayman by Willie Nelson and the Highwaymen, which explores the in-universe idea of ancestors

This one, Blue Lips, is famous within the fandom, one of the most popular audiovisual examples of the sort of angsty melancholy fanworks that the fandom put out that was given the moniker “sadstuck”

the rats scurry away.

So, Vast Error’s second intermission just started and boy am I excited for it. I may be more excited for it than i have been for like, any piece of ve content, ever. And that’s because of one crucial thing: This intermission is about the Dead Shufflers. Which, in case you didn’t know, is VE’s midnight crew.

Anyway the whole thing opened up with a big flashy flash reminiscent of [S] Midnight Crew: Act 1031, to show us that we were in for a blast from the past. To really show us that we should get ready for some homestuck intermission 1 shenanigans. But, let’s go back for a second, “Blast from the Past.”

This is an interesting segue to our topic, the new narrator of VE, who is currently unknown. I will be referring to them as AN. Since they’re called “Arch Nemesis.” Throughout the flash, and the page following it, we’re introduced to a character trait of AN. One not seen previously in the last 3 pages they had appeared in.

They’re like, super into 90s memorabilia. But I feel like this is more than just a silly joke and actually ties into their character. Because with VE usually everything ties in with something. And I think in this case it’s AN’s outlook. Granted, we know basically nothing about them, but i’m willing to connect a few dots.

Throughout the intro flash, their objects are shown as something of beauty, something to admire. Something they really like. A very important thing to note is that not one bit of it is something from the modern day. It’s all 90s stuff. AN’s looking back instead of forward, dwelling on the past.

This could also be considered a metaphor for the whole intermission, which just so happened to start once AN took control. The intermission is looking back to the past of Homestuck, the midnight crew intermission, the commands, the midnight crew trying to thwart an evil creature we know virtually nothing about who has a singular color scheme and lives in a cool building. Instead of looking forward to the future of VE.

AN’s method of viewing the story also somewhat ties into this. Kind of. A projector with a vhs-type mechanism. Clearly a downgrade from White Noise’s TV. Once again, looking to the past.

Now this is all dumb speculation for an intermission that’s barely even gotten started yet and even after all that i’m still not any less excited for it. This is just some stuff I noticed. I could end up being totally wrong about this, who knows.