#s177

New Denizen, eh?

According to Wikipedia, Hemera is the personification of daytime. Now, that would imply that Jane's a Light Player - but if that was how it worked, then she'd have been Rose's Denizen, too.

Rose and Vriska both got Cetus, which implies that Denizens are based on your Aspect - but Cetus is a sea monster, and has no connection to Light herself. Your assigned Denizen might depend on your Aspect, but they don't seem to evoke it directly.

...what exactly am I looking at here?

OBEY CONSUME STAY ASLEEP

And an Alternian warship on Mars.

The trolls are already here, and I don't think they're the funny ones who made our universe. If I'm not very much mistaken, that's the Condesce's personal flagship...

...and, now that it's sharing screenspace with Crockercorp's branding, I'm starting to doubt that their shared color palette is a coincidence. In fact, I think I'm starting to understand what's happening, here on this rebooted Earth.

When English recruited the Empress, I speculated that he might send her into the kids' universe, to get up to mischief in places he can't reach directly.

The old Handmaid spent most of her time corrupting a planet, and Crockercorp's 'multiglobal empire' sounds suspiciously like the new Handmaid's attempt to do just that. We've talked a lot about a hypothetical Second Alternian Empire, and an English-empowered Condesce is the kind of person who could actually start one, right here on Earth.

...fuck, and we already know that Betty Crocker isn't human! The more I think about it, the more perfectly it fits!

She's not just her master's witch!

...Jake.

Alright, this sequence is rapidly devolving into a comedy sketch, and I’m having the time of my life. Jane is almost certainly being brainwashed by the troll Empress, Jake is being hypnotized by her boss, and you just know Bro's placronym is five pages from being revealed as Dick Scratch. This is a hilariously compromised session, and it hasn't even started yet.

What's next? Roxy Gl'bgolyb?

GT: Jane! GT: Forgive my botherations. I know this is meant to be a spanking ripsnorter of a day for you and all. GT: But do you happen to know where the devilfucking dickens mr strider might be?

I can’t articulate how funny it is that he still talks like an octogenarian.

Like... this kid was born in 1996. He's either doing this as a bit, or he got the accent from Jade, which is even funnier.

GG: I had been meaning to message you sooner actually, but I suppose in all the hubbub today, it plumb slipped my mind. GG: Which is a shocking fact on its lonesome, considering what I have to tell you! GT: Egad… GT: Loosens collar a bit.

Did you seriously just say 'egad'? Unironically?

God, this kid rules. 'Old-timey teenager' is just such an out-of-left-field concept for a character, and I didn't expect Hussie to commit this hard to the bit - but I am very glad he did.

GG: As for this Strider business, hrmmm. He's an elusive guy Jake. You know that. GG: I talked to him yesterday. That's as much help as I can be! GT: Shoot. GT: I really need to ask him something but hes got his blasted auto responder turned on.

What, like an out-of-office message? Those usually need to be turned on manually, which means that Kid Bro's deliberately set his Pesterchum to 'do not disturb'.

That guy's unreachable in any incarnation, and it's on purpose. He'll enter the story when he's good and ready, and not a moment sooner.

GG: Hoo hoo. GG: I love that thing. :B

Knowing the Striders, Bro's out-of-office notification is some sort of ironic joke. Jane's appreciation of this humor is an interesting parallel to the John/Dave relationship, where John was happy to play along with Dave's irony, but never really understood his schtick.

GT: He wouldnt be pleased to hear you say that.

Jake, however, believes that Bro would be uncomfortable with Jane's appreciation, for some reason.

Jane is not empowered to rehash this tired running gag because all of a sudden she is too busy being the other guy.

Pen-pal jumpscare!

Well, this kid's just John with hair gel. Looks like our original protagonist had literally all of his father's genes, alongside one single strand of Jane's prankster tendencies.

There's that letter, as well as Liv Tyler in her larval stage.

One question I'm hoping for an answer to, of course, is: how the fuck was this guy sending packages between timelines?

COME THE FUCK ON!

I thought Lord English was going to be subtle about this! The bastard isn't even trying to hide his influence over the timeline! He's straight-up taunting us with this shit!

Well, that's that, I guess. Jane's being indoctrinated by Betty Crocker, and Jake appears to be under the influence of the big boss himself. I highly doubt English raised him directly - instead, I expect he was given this surname by his Bec-analogue, the First Guardian who raised him in lieu of Grandma Jade.

Who knows what his current understanding of the plot is. Jake is now just as likely to be an unwitting villain as Jane - and, come to think of it, Bro could easily be under Cal's influence already, so we might have a third Dark Player on our hands before long.

These two were originally supposed to be the same bunny at different points in time, but I'm pretty sure that loop is no longer necessary. This time around, each rabbit gets to enjoy its own, independent timeline.

The other one used to belong to your friend's MOM, and she dressed it as a wizard, which was also unapologetically more representative of her interests than yours. That's ok though, you loved the gesture anyway, and you and she are totally BFFSIES 4EVERZ, her words. And you agree with them!

Oh my god, is that how Roxy talks?

That's fucking perfect. It's exactly the kind of personality a younger Mom Lalonde would have - and now that I've seen it, I can't imagine anything different.

You did get one more bunny from your other pal. He had to make it himself from scratch, since for some ridiculous reason he didn't happen to have a ratty old bunny heirloom lying around. His gift was... somewhat less innocuous. You have no idea where it is though. Probably just as well.

If I see a bunny with Cal’s fucking face I’m closing the liveblog for good.

...how on god can you possibly be here?

Well, alright, I actually can think of a reasonable explanation - Dad Egbert could simply have been adopted. If he was, then he'd still have been born in the Scratched timeline, and there'd be nothing stopping John from adopting him instead of Nanna.

Even though it's not our Dad, I’m still happy to see his face again. I really thought we’d seen the last of the original Guardians, especially the one who didn't have Player status.

Ah, the Sylladex. Across the entirety of my long, long journey through this comic, you've remained my oldest and dearest friend.

I honestly thought you'd run out of ways to surprise me - but as usual, I underestimated just how far you can really go with punch-card alchemy.

You flip the card over and look at the back. The thing about this modus you think is really cool is that instead of showing a completely useless wobbly garbled code on the back, it itemizes the components which could be used to create it!

The comic has just given us a way to reverse-engineer item recipes, which was one of the only missing pieces left to slot into the alchemy system. Back in Act 4, John was convinced that this was impossible, but Sollux solved it off-panel, and now we know how he did it.

This is pretty crazy, isn't it? We can deconstruct items now, allowing us to disassemble any object, and take a peek at the concepts that it's synthesized from. The potential utility here is insane. If this modus works on ghost images, we could tear apart a Kernelsprite, and see what makes it tick. Hell, we could tear apart a Genesis Frog.

...we could tear apart Skaia.

Just another wonderful innovation by your favorite company. It releases many products of an experimental nature, often with applicability to other kinds of technology and products which haven't hit the market yet.

But, of course, this wonderful innovation comes with some serious strings attached. I'm sure it was given to Jane for a reason, and she'll undoubtedly end up using it in a way that causes problems for us, and solutions for Lord English.

Ayy, it's the Matriorb!

Granted, this doesn't really help Kanaya recreate the thing. The orb's code was never that hard to obtain - just draw it on Jade's Pictionary modus, or something. No, the real issue is that the Matriorb is virtually inimitable, and as a result, its Grist cost is astronomical. Plus, it requires a type of Grist that we've never even seen before.

Edit: Wait, hang on. That's not the cost of the Matriorb, that's how much it would cost to use the Matriorb to make the hat. Strange, that the same item can have multiple Grist costs - but nonetheless, my point still stands. The Matriorb is probably too expensive to alchemize casually.

I suppose there's nothing stopping us from editing the Matriorb's code to try and make it cheaper. Like, perhaps we could scale down the recipe somehow, and try to just synthesize a single troll's genome, rather than the genetic base of an entire race. That would be a lot more affordable, and still useful.

You captchalogue your FAVORITE HAT, which is also your ONLY HAT. You spent basically your ENTIRE CHILDHOOD in this hat, pretending to be hard boiled detectives and whatnot.

I guess it sort of makes sense that the Matriorb can be used to make Dad's hat. The orb represents Alternian parenthood, and the book of prophecies it was merged with could represent the future. Combine those two concepts, and you get the future of parenthood, from the perspective of Alternia - in other words, the parenthood of humanity. So, the merger yields an item representing a human parent: Dad Egbert's hat.

Alright, there’s a lot going on in this room.

First of all, it’s clear that the Betty Crocker Corporation has supplanted more than just Skaianet. This woman's been stamping her name on chests, cutlery, computers, calendars, and even Fetch Modi, so her company is more like an unholy fusion of Skaianet, Google and Amazon.

I'd give it a week before she pulls a Musk, and rebrands this abomination as 'C' - assuming she hasn't already done so.

Second of all, I initially thought this wall of blue hunks was advertising Jane's tastes, but upon closer inspection, each of them bears a signature in the Pen-Pal's color.

His older self did have a strange fixation on blue women, and apparently it's etched into his DNA.

Your name is JANE. As was previously mentioned, you are poised for an ELITE OPPORTUNITY to test the SBURB ALPHA. It is so elite in fact, you are the only of your kind invited to playtest!

Jane is the only member of her 'kind' to be given a copy of Sburb, which implies that there are other kinds of people on this version of Earth. Crocker is confirmed to not be a human, so maybe the planet is also populated by whatever kind of creature she is.

Though you guess that probably comes with the territory of being the HEIRESS APPARENT TO A BAKED GOODS EMPIRE. You don't suppose it hurts that you are said empire's NUMBER ONE FANGIRL, either!

She practically worships the Crocker megacorporation - and even worse, she's being raised to lead the damn thing. Jane might actually be starting out as an antagonist to our original heroes, completely unaware that she's being shaped into a weapon against them.

In short: Jesus Christ, Jane. We need to get you out of here.

You fancy yourself a SKILLED PRANKSTRESS, if by no other measure than lineage.

I guess Nannasprite's mischievous nature wasn't derived solely from the jester doll.

It's sweet to imagine Jane learning the prankster's arts from her Grandpa John - but I am extremely worried for Grandpa John right now, so I can't even enjoy it.

You once dabbled in AMATEUR BOTANY but found it TOO FRUSTRATING, because your VEGETABLES KEPT DISAP-actually you know what, you DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.

Growing pumpkins is every horticulturist's first mistake.

You are also pleased to contemplate FRIGHTENING FAUNA, though saddened by their regrettable FAKENESS ATTRIBUTE.

Flora and fauna. I was waiting to see a little of each Player's personality before making Title guesses, and Jane's evoking Life to me, just as her pervious incarnation did.

Now, that would break the apparent rule that Scratch-swapped Players preserve the session's original Aspects, but that rule hasn't been confirmed yet. Plus, Life might just be my Aspect, so I'd love to see it become more prominent in the story.

But none of that's on your mind now, because you are PSYCHED about this SPECIAL DATE, 11.11.11 [...] a date exhibiting just the sort of numerical gimmick corporations love to exploit for their big releases, or for launching MAJOR REBRANDING INITIATIVES. In the case of your CHERISHED MULTIGLOBAL EMPIRE, both such events are slated to happen today.

Wow, so Betty Crocker is already operating on multiple planets?

You bluster frequently of exuberance for FIREARMS and FISTICUFFS and ADVENTURE, though have no human company with which to share these interests.

I think the narration is taking a page from Doc Scratch's book, and trying to mislead us without technically lying. Like - sure, Jake might be the only human in his vicinity, but I'm willing to bet that he's not alone in this house.

Also, SKULLS. Gosh you love SKULLS. There is a good SKULL at the heart of any mystery, haunting its EVERY PAGE.

If I was to assign any Aspect to Jake's general vibe, it'd be Doom. Not only is he a fan of skulls, but one of his favourite movies is Weekend at Bernie's, which is about a corpse. Plus, Grandpa was a hunter, so he killed as a hobby.

Evidently, we haven't unlocked the blondes yet. It looks like they're virtually identical to their Guardiansonas, though, right down to Bro's pointy glasses.

They're also living in the same locations that Rose and Dave were, so we can rest assured that no house-swapping shenanigans are in play.

Who do you want to be?

Well, Jane was the first post-Scratch Player we were introduced to, which traditionally makes her the leader of her session. Let's get to know her a little better.

Earlier this morning you thought you heard the mail truck, even though the mail never comes in the morning. But just to be sure, you rushed downstairs to check, even though due to recent events, you are FORBIDDEN FROM LEAVING THE HOUSE. Alas, it was not there, and you sort of spaced out at the sky with a goofy grin on your face for no great reason, and then you were caught red handed by your guardian. Then you got in trouble.

She’s apparently on house arrest. I imagine her custodian intends to keep her on lockdown until she enters the Medium, under whatever circumstances Crocker approves of.

In other words, Jane is the first Homestuck character to actually be homestuck.

You think you might be grounded now? Whatever, DAD!

And who is this new Dad, I wonder?