> RECALL EMOTIONALLY BIPOLAR SITUATIONS
Andrew Hussie is an undeniable master of the emotional whipkind abstratus.
The End of Act 4 flash has this in spades! After the completely hilarious Con Air reenactment, we get Jack decimating The Battlefield and destroying Prospit. Even within in the flash, there's a moment where Squiddles hug a random sailor. Followed by Jade's dream self dying saving John from the wreckage of Prospit impacting Skaia. Later, Grandpa Harley recovers Dream!Jade's corpse and brings her back to his battleship. On one page, you see him crying. On the next, you see that he's already stuffed and mounted her into a goofy pose. Cue the Spit Take.
Karkat's tears of red liquid sorrow are somewhat spoiled by the honking juggalo in the background. Goddammit, Gamzee.
Not to mention Jack Noir's comforting words of "there there you goddamn blubbering pansy".
Chillingly averted when it happens again R.I.P Feferi...
John arriving back at his house at the start of Act 5 Act 2, goofing around telling imps off... and then things take a turn for the serious.
And in the middle of that conversation the mood gets flipped again with Rose calling John "our leader" D'awww.
This update. The whiplash is so heavy it can break your neck.
And then, immediately following the Jade: Enter flash, you see that Bro is dead by his own sword. Not two pages later? You see the newly christened Bec Noir donning his shades and gloves, to gut-wrenchingly hilarious effect.
Taken to extreme levels with the pages that happen after [S] John: Enter village. After a fun and happy time talking to all the salamanders and John being excited to get to the next part of his quest, he is stabbed in the chest by Bec Noir. Immediately afterwards, John ascends to the God Tiers in one of the most Awesome Moments of the comic.
[S] WAKE: Hell yes, the music is MeGaLoVania! HELL NO, Bec Noir killed dream-Feferi, dream-Nepeta, and all of Derse! Hell yeah, Aradia ascended to god-tier and froze Bec in time! SWEET JEGUS, VRISKA KILLED TAVROS! and then...
Eridan going absolutely apeshit, killing Feferi and Kanaya right after critically wounding Sollux ended a weekend of bloodshed withthis.
And the SBAHJ reference here has a similar effect.
Though for some, the mood fails to whip and just detours into Dude, Not Funny!.
And if that didn't do it for you, then we get to examine Terezi's investigative methods.
On this page, Karkat kissing Kanaya manages to be very sad while Terezi kissing Tavros manages to be very funny at the same time despite the fact that they're both essentially doing the same thing.
Probably due to the faces.
Seek the Highb100d starts out with pretty kickass/cute music, but as you progress, the music progressively changes into dark, ominous, clowny music.
GAMZEE: ENGAGE MURDER MODE is this. It's hilarious, especially due to Equius' facial reaction two or three panes later, but he's also STRANGLING EQUIUS
Pretty much anything involving Gamzee after he went homicidal.
After a long string of WHAM Panels involving multiple Troll deaths and Sanity Slippage we immediately switch to John and WV's Flying Car Shenanigans. BEEP.
Be Jack Noir. Readers should really have expected that the only way that the author could balance out a string of over 2 dozen pages of high-octane awesome would be with following it up with a swift kick to the teeth.
Terezi decides to fulfill her destiny as a Legislacerator and kill Vriska for everything she's done that was mostly done by Gamzee and Eridan. Horror ensues when she finds a page from Mindfang's journal held down by Nepeta's stolen claw and falls into the Trickster Room with flash-stepping Gamzee. She then dismisses it as one of "Spidertroll's" tricks, finds a record cover and asks, "WHO'S THIS DOUCHEBAG?". Then she finds her FLARP costume and reunites with her best scalemate, only to have it switched out with Lil Cal by Gamzee from her tightly clutching hands.
Bec Noir kills alpha!Dave before Jade's eyes. Then, when she's cradling his corpse, Noir looks absolutely heartbroken due to his Achilles Heel.
And later makes a "bawwwww" face and looks adorable when she's about to revive Dave on Derse through a kiss.
The gravity of Davesprite and Jadesprite's conversation is somewhat spoiled by Unreal Air coming in for a landing on Skaia in background.
This conversation between Gamzee and Dave is simultaneously absolutely terrifying and absolutely hilarious. On the one hand, we're seeing the exact moment where Gamzee loses it and turns into a mass-murdering psychopath... and on the other hand, Dave has no idea whether Gamzee is serious or not and is going all Deadpan Snarker on him. Not to mention that after all this (which also contained some serious plot revelations), it ended with:
Doc Scratch's prisoner is revealed to be Aradia (or someone who looks just like her), their fight starts out funny, with the mood whiplash starting around here.
Doc Scratch: [Once, in this very universe, you could say, Alternia was home to a peaceful race. Trollkind had never known the corrupting influence in their evolution which led them to perpetual war and violence.]
Doc Scratch: [That is to say, they had never known me.]
As are the stories of his adoptive mother, the Dolorosa, and his girlfriend, the Disciple.
Andrew's shenanigans in the banner during this don't help.
Here, the Sufferer is tortured with hot irons and held against an iron jut for his defiance. Upon closer inspection, he’s the Memetic Mutation Pantskat, come to life.
A main character has possibly just died, but god forbid we run out of green curtain cloth.
PM is about to face off with Jack, it looks like an epic battle is about to begin, and what does the viewer see? A heart over Jack's head, and a spade over PM's. Awwwww.
And then Jack leaves, and Serenity begs PM to help WV. And then we see that Sollux is dead, and while Karkat is crying Gamzee just seems to be staring into space, ruining the moment again.
And then we find out Gamzee was actually looking at the undead Sollux floating above them with Aradia, Rose, and Dave.
Karkat's breakdown is hilarious...until you go to the hidden part with Nicolas Cage's Nightmare Face and horribly distorted voice. Not to mention that the face appears to be a green skull with a familiar rainbow patter under his chin, raising all sorts of disturbing possibilities.
AND YOU...GOT ONE
Originally, the strife with Becquerel was to jaunty sci-fi music, called Mutiny, fitting for the space adventures and warpy whooshy stuff we see, followed by a joyful and cute, 8 bit victory tune. When the artist of Mutiny got into a fight with Hussie and left*
this is partially why there's no link to the music, as said artist has been DMCA'ing YouTube links
, this was replaced with Unbreakable Union a MUCH darker track with Tribal drums and increasingly intense piano and synth effects. The victory music was left unchanged.
After receiving the revelation that Karkat accidentally gave the entire human universe cancer and gave the kids the bad luck that accidentally gave Jack Noir the ring, we get another SBAHJ in-joke:
PCG: JACK WAS THE LIVING EMBODIMENT OF THE DISEASE ALL ALONG.
