The streets are empty. Wind skims the voids keeping neighbors apart, as if grazing the hollow of a cut reed, or say, a plundered mailbox. A familiar note is produced. It's the one Desolation plays to keep its instrument in tune.

It is your thirteenth birthday, and as with all twelve preceding it, something feels missing from your life. The game presently eluding you is only the latest sleight of hand in the repertoire of an unseen riddler, one to engender a sense not of mirth, but of lack. His coarse schemes are those less of a prankster than a common pickpocket. His riddle is Absence itself. It is a mystery dispersing altogether, like the moon's faint reflection, with even one pebble of inquiry dropped in its black well. It is the most diabolical riddle of all.

"Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire." -Walt Whitman

Yes, you are certain Walt Whitman said that. One hundred percent positive.

You have a feeling it's going to be a long day.

"When two great forces oppose each other, the victory will go to the one that knows how to yield." -Oscar Wilde

Wise words by a man who likely could resist everything but temptation.

You wonder if this rain will ever let up. It's driven since the month began, perhaps long enough to forget its purpose. It no longer even knows to assuage fire. 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.

How you hate this season.

"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain." -American sports legend, Charles Barkley

Dude, that bird is long gone. It probably won't last long in this heat anyway.

You don't even know what's up with this sick heat. The sun threatens to set but won't step off. It's staring you down, like the big red eye of a hot needle skipping on a groove its tracing 'round the earth. While lingering in midair its heat seems to suspend time itself, stretching it like warped vinyl. It's meant to rain this season but there ain't been a drop in sight. Even a little drizzle would help. Might help to fizzle this sizzle a little bizzle, set the record straight on this global turn-tizzle.

"So don't change the dizzle, turn it up a little

I got a living room full of fine dime brizzles

Waiting on the Pizzle, the Dizzle and the Shizzle

G's to the bizzack, now ladies here we gizzo

When the pimp's in the crib ma

Drop it like it's hot

Drop it like it's hot

Drop it like it's hot..."

-English Romantic poet, John Keats

What a daring dream, to combine the finest qualities of humanity with the elegance and nobility of the animal kingdom. How you wish you could know their world. To hear one night those muted pawpads traipse up your stairs. A low but friendly growl unsettles your slumber, and as the sopor seeps from your eyes they detect a sharp pair of ears cutting moonlight. A mysterious wolven tongue invites. Wouldn't these ears suit you? Would not this proud long snout assist you in the hunt?

No need to answer. Words slough from the busy mind like a useless dead membrane as a more visceral sapience takes over. Something simpler is in charge now, a force untouched by the concerns and burdens of the upright, that farcical yoke the bipedal tow. It now drives you through the midnight brush, your paws whisking through creepers, unearthing with each bold stomp bright odors demanding investigation. But not for long, as you and your new friend must claim the night with piercing howls moonward.

You eat a weird bug and don't even care.

~ATH - A HANDBOOK FOR THE IMMINENTLY DECEASED

"For death begins with life's first breath and life begins at touch of death" - Troll Will Smith

The lawnrings are empty. Blood skims the voids in your porous cranial plates, as if grazing the hollow of a threshed stem, or say, an abandoned cocoon. A sour note is produced. It's the one Agitation plays to make its audience squirm.

It is your sixth wriggling day, and as with all five preceding it blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Look.

You don't have time for fancy poetry. It's almost as useless as those arm-swing flappy things on mailboxes, assuming you even knew what those were, which you don't. Trolls don't have mail. Mail is almost as useless as poetry to them. Poetry is the swing arm flappy dealy of words, and mail is the red tilty lever doodad of giving people shit.

Frankly you don't know about things skimming voids or grazing hollows or whatever. You've got AMBITION. You were meant to be a bigshot. To be in charge of something huge and really important, and to be totally ruthless about it. You just haven't found the dominion in which you're destined for greatness yet. Or even a vague concept of it. You haven't found your purpose. But you will tonight.

You stew in your own impotent aggravation in the cool dusk breeze. During the dark seasons, it remains dusk for most of the day. It can stay dark for many bilunar perigees at a time. But even if it didn't, you would still have this feeling...

You have a feeling it's going to be a long night.

"I slept and saw God's forge in frost. Its hearth was quelled, and as it cooled so swooned the verdancy it kept above. In slumber it grew a thick winter skin, white as bedsheets. In their folds the waker dreamt, her breath as steam, her touch as hot as iron, forgotten in the fire.

Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!"

-Acclaimed actor and sleeping prophet, Charles Dutton

"Everybody is totally fed up with your condescending, self indulgent narrative style. They all want to go back to my slightly less condescending, slightly more self indulgent style."

"So a seemingly insignificant item from the beginning of the story is suddenly and literally RAGE'd into existence by a bloodthirsty purple alien juggalo, and the very same item connects randomly and equally insignificant-looking events to explain the cause of pretty much every bad thing in the story.

And it was all Betty Crocker's doing, because she tweeted an ICP video to a time traveling hipster wannabe on a site called Delirious Biznasty. In the past. Also, she's an alien too.

For those keeping score at home, this made things less confusing.

Welcome to Homestuck."

"It's just one of those gratifying moments where you look and you say "What in the name of God am I spending weeks on weeks reading?""

"There was only one sure thing I knew when starting HS. That was that this thing would go batshit insane in ways I couldn't begin to imagine. In fact, it was practically the mission statement."

"Trying to explain homestuck to someone who's never read it, is like trying to explain the flavour of chocolate to a rock."

"The thing is, Homestuck is both a story and a puzzle, by design and by definition. If asked to define it, “a story that’s also a puzzle” is as close to true as any answer I’d give."

"The unconventional style of storytelling present in Homestuck is somewhat reminiscent of an intense game of Jeopardy.

Instead of most stories where a question is presented and an answer is searched for, in Homestuck, answers are freely revealed while the reader has no idea that it is an answer to anything or what sort of question it could be answering.

It is backwards.

When the question is finally revealed later in the story, the reader is reminded of the answer being presented to them way back when absolutely nothing made sense, and the entire plot begins to fall into place.

The answers are often cryptic, subtle, or too obvious and ongoing for most to even consider them important.

Everything seems to have some sort of meaning and each tiny detail seems to be some sort of important key to completely unlocking and understanding the big picture.

After years of reading Homestuck, the fandom has finally gotten the hang of deciphering such an insane puzzle of a story.

For example, if a banana was randomly placed in a panel, part of the fandom would speculate as to what the significance of the banana could possibly be, part of the fandom would attempt to prove that it is in fact not a banana, and part of the fandom would make a sexual joke."

"Carefully educating you on needlessly complicated inventory systems that eventually get retired from a game you never get to play that doesn't actually exist.

HOMESTUCK."

"Guys, I don't want to alarm you, but it seems that Dante Basco, aka Rufio from Hook, is currently reading Homestuck. I wonder what he will think when he discovers me kissing his corpse?"

"the only possible people who would be semi-competent at writing homestuck if andrew wasn’t writing homestuck:
-maybe vladimir nabokov if he grew up in the 90s
-no one"

I've just had to use a walkthrough for a webcomic.