#s204

Dave, it's so much worse than you think.

Enjoy the next three years, dude. You'd better get really fucking good at recognizing the faint honking of a distant clown.

KARKAT: YEAH, HE DOES THIS KARKAT: HE SORT OF COLLECTS BODIES AND DECAPITATES THEM AND STUFF KARKAT: STICKS THEM IN BIG SCIENCE JARS, FOR SOME REASON?? KANAYA: Im Pretty Sure He Kisses Them Too Sometimes

Sorry, let me get this straight. You were fully aware of this behavior, but you still tried to form a quadrant with him?

Like... Karkat. The whole universe is telling you that this guy's a little beyond the help of your average moirail. If you want to do something for Gamzee, it's going to need to be a group effort - and if I were a betting gal, I'd guess that the Seers will be the key to his recovery, particularly Terezi.

KARKAT: YOU KNOW HOW EVERY NOW AND THEN YOUR LUSUS WILL BRING SOME RANDOM ASS DEAD ANIMAL BACK TO YOUR HIVE FOR NO FUCKING REASON KARKAT: AND THEY DON'T EVER STOP DOING THAT NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU YELL KARKAT: IT'S LIKE THAT, YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN DAVE: not really DAVE: oh wait DAVE: against all odds i sorta do DAVE: mine actually did do that once

This revelation is not even slightly inconsistent with the established personality of Bro 'Bigger Dirk' Strider.

DAVE: when i was really young DAVE: he made this stupid leather bib for me out of a goddamn horse […] ROSE: Was that the one you mentioned had a pink heart on it? DAVE: yeah […] ROSE: It's just that with the clarity afforded by my new abilities, it occurred to me just now that dead horse was likely the beautiful pet pony my mother gave me recently.

...alright, I don't have a clue how knowing about Maplehoof's death applies to Rose's Path to Victory ability. How does this help her achieve anyone's personal goal?

Maybe Rose obtained multiple Seer abilities upon ascension. After all, God Tier John has a bunch of Breath powers, so there's no reason why Rose should be restricted to one single Light ability, powerful as it is. Maybe this 'clarity' is another facet of Light, then, allowing Rose to see the connections between disparate pieces of information, and tie it all together, like a web of string on a Pepe Silvia evidence board.

DAVE: well shit DAVE: thats a hell of a mystery no one thought was a mystery and didnt even really need solving DAVE: but damn if it didnt just get solved so nice work

...holy shit.

Holy shit, this is the line!

Anyone who's used Tumblr in the last ten years has seen The Line - probably dozens of times, in dozens of different contexts. It's part of Tumblr's vernacular - and, up until this moment, it had completely slipped my mind that it was a Homestuck line.

🇺🇸ヘッドライト&テールライト装着！

Gotta say, I'm impressed at how quickly Davesprite put this together. Even with sprite magic, he had mere seconds to conceptualize this bit before John threw the bucket.

this is john. actually, it is john, jade, and dave sprite. we all contributed to the contents of this bucket!

I know John well enough to be 100% sure that this was not an accident. He knows exactly what he's doing here.

i deeply regret that i will not be present for these highly touted "TROLL/HUMAN SLOPPY MAKEOUTS", ha ha. maybe in three years, assuming you all aren't totally smooched out by then!!!

Fucking get his ass, John!

This is the humans' final vengeance for Project Trolling, and it is glorious.

rose and dave, you both look totally sweet! i can't believe you're both god tiers now. did you know jade is too? also, she has dog ears. she looks fantastic. how cool is it that we're all god tiers? it's like we're a super hero team, or some kind of anime squad. like the sailor moons, i guess, but not as lame, or as sexy.

I love the implication here that John's low-key into magical girl shows, and has a huge crush on the Sailor Scouts in particular. Dude is not beating the transfem allegations.

i'm already looking forward to this new session so hard. it was a fun adventure we had today, wasn't it?

One single day - but for me, as well as the liveblog's readership, that single day lasted almost three years. It's pretty wild that time is actually moving now.

i'll even miss talking to the trolls too. say hi to them for me, even though i didn't get to know many. except karkat obviously, and oh yeah, vriska too. vriska, if you read this, thanks again for all your help.

I'd honestly give decent odds that Vriska will be back in the picture before John's even learned she's dead - and we love that for her.

but now jade says i have to finish quickly! she wants me to throw this bucket and its heartfelt payload through her mysterious portal. so here i go.

This kid really is merciless. He pretends to be oblivious to this stuff, but we all know the truth - that this message was a prankster's masterful gambit, expertly constructed to get Karkat' goat.

It's John's finally gift to his friends, before they start their respective three-year journeys - and I'm sure it's appreciated.

Oh, fuck yes.

Oh yeah, this is going down immediately.

I'm so sad that this is an animation, rather than a set of gifs, because I could get a lot of mileage out of Rose's little eyebrow waggle.

Looks like Terezi's finally made up her mind about whether she's in Dave's human grill - and it appears she's landed squarely in the affirmative.

Of course, with all these couples pairing off, Karkat's only got one option left...

And this, I believe, is a tl;dr of the next three years.

KARKAT: KANAYA WHERE ARE YOU GOING? KANAYA: Clown Hunting

Knock him dead, Kanaya.

Jesus, she hasn't even cleaned off Eridan's blood yet. This girl is not messing around.

KARKAT: JUST KARKAT: BE CAREFUL KARKAT: NO MORE POINTLESS BLOODSHED, OK? THAT'S AN ORDER!

Fine. Honestly, that's probably a good call, since he's clearly not in his right mind - but at least captchalogue him, to keep him out of trouble. You can't just let him roam freely around the meteor.

...you're going to let him to roam freely around the meteor, aren't you?

Anyway, we've got an incoming bucket. At least, I hope it's a bucket, and not a surprise attack from Jack.

...

Hell yeah. Rosemary survives another day!

KANAYA: But Must We Really Leave So Soon ROSE: It's soon or never. But not immediately. ROSE: Even if the route were accessible right now, it would still behoove us to wait. ROSE: There's correspondence from John yet to arrive.

Alright, but how do you know that? Your power's supposed to tell you how to achieve favorable outcomes, not warn you about incoming bucket pranks.

Perhaps Rose is able to glean some additional information from the specific actions she's being advised to take. Her power might not explicitly tell her that John's about to send a message, but her Path's next step might be something like 'retrieve John's message from the bucket', and she can draw the obvious conclusion.

ROSE: And after that, we have to wait for one final guest to appear. ROSE: Then we ride like the solar wind. The race will be afoot. KANAYA: Wait Another Visitor KANAYA: Who

If this guest's arrival starts a race, then it's almost certainly Jack Noir.

Strange that they'd wait for their adversary to catch up with them - but on the other hand, that means he'll be in range of Aradia's time-stop effect. She can give them the ultimate head start.

KARKAT: SOLLUX, WHERE DID YOUR BODY GO??? SOLLUX: hell if i kn0w. ARADIA: oh nooo :( KARKAT: WAIT A MINUTE. KARKAT: WAIT JUST A FUCKING MINUTE, WHERE'S… KARKAT: SHIT KARKAT: VRISKA'S BODY IS GONE TOO!

It was Gamzee. We even saw him eyeing up Sollux's corpse a couple of pages ago.

I'm pretty sure I know what he's up to, as well. Sollux and Vriska are the most powerful dead trolls on the meteor, so Gamzee's making sure they can't be prototyped later. He's clearly still trying to fuck everyone over, so he's taking the opportunity to rob them of a valuable resource before they've even realized what's happened.

KARKAT: OH NO, WHERE'S GAMZEE KANAYA: He Took Them KANAYA: Look At The Trails KARKAT: OHHHH FUCK KARKAT: NO, FUCK NO, FUCK THAT CORPSE HOARDING SACK OF HORRIBLE GARBAGE.