> Respond to the story's events.
Homestuck has over 5000 pages completed, and the audience has been along for the ride. These tropes include some of the many reactions.
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Wham Episode
> Appraise shocking developments.
You cannot hope to defeat Homestuck in a wham-off. It is simply the best there is. We are all completely blown away by these stunning revelations.
Most works get one or two wham episodes to set the tone, or shock the fanbase. Homestuck had to have its own page made. That does not stop any wham episode from being any less wham-y.
Note: Please organize Wham Episodes by which Act they are in, so we can make a more chronological list. Also, be careful what you add; Hussie likes to subvert this trope.
Act 1:
The MS Paint Adventures series Homestuck first seemed like a lighthearted Affectionate Parody of Sim-type games. Then the main character's house gets hit by a meteor, and the plot gets started.
The meteor's first appearance itself is something of a Wham Episode, given that it comes out of nowhere and it's on a collision course with John's house.
Shortly after, this tropes is parodied again (and then subverted) when John realizes that Betty Crocker made his favorite snack, Fruit Gushers. He starts having a mental breakdown, but stops when he realizes that it's a stupid thing to get upset over.
Played with even more on. We learn that this is actually an incredibly reasonable thing to be upset about, but for completely different reasons than what John was thinking.
[S] Enter, where Dave installs his server copy, Rose creates Jaspersprite and enters the Medium. Right after the animation, we see that John's entrance to the Medium ended up creating a planet.
Intermission 1:
This update and the ones following, which reveal that the intermission is canon after all AND shows Karkat (known only by carcinoGeneticist at the time), and the troll race, for the first time.
Jack: Ascend. It's revealed that what was written on Rose's wall is a code that in turn translates to a DNA sequence. Jack meanwhile gets sick of the Black Queen forcing him into silly outfits, and uses Jade's gift to kill her and take her ring for himself.
[S] Descend, Jack kills everyone in the Battlefield and starts The Reckoning, Bec is created using the DNA code from Rose's walls, Jack destroys Prospit and sends its moon on a collision course with Skaia, dream Jade manages to wake up dream John in the nick of time but dies herself, and Rose blows up her gate.
Act 5 Act 1:
The 07/20/10 update, a.k.a. the last update before a week-long hiatus, a.k.a. the THE GREAT ROBOSMOOCH OF 2011 update, was explicitly meant to be this (and was an overwhelming success):
And now that you have all been sufficiently nonplussed... See you in a week! I'll be back on the 27th.
[S] Make her pay. Vriska mindcontrols Terezi via dual-proxy into staring into the sun until she goes blind. Much later, Aradia finds Vriska on LOMAT and brutally maims her, her imminent death only postponed by Aradia's abscondment.
The true enormity and weight of the purpose of Sburb/Sgrub are smashed into the readers face with the force of a ton of bricks with the simple words "...int0 the universe we created"
[S] Jade: Enter: Vriska puts John to sleep at a crucial moment, Bec prototypes himself in order to save Jade, then blows up the meteor heading towards her island (while unintentionally killing everybody else on Earth with the aftershock), Jade enters the medium, Jack Noir obtains Bec's powers and kills Bro and severely wounds Davesprite, it's revealed that the demon terrorizing the troll's session is Bec Noir, having crossed the universes through the Scratch, and destroyed their version of Prospit.
Thief: tear into Page and everything that follows, as Vriska reveals she is responsible for the creation of Bec Noir.
[S]: Wake. It's revealed that Aradia does have a dreamself, sleeping on a Quest Bed in the core of Derse, and her soulbot exploding was a result of her ascending to God Tiers. About an hour later (in-universe time), Tavros finally challenges Vriska and she kills him.
Kanaya chatting with Jade, informing her Bilious Slick, the Genesis Frog Jade must breed, literally is the new universe- and that by extension, the troll version of Bilious Slick was the kids' universe.
The Scratch, long thought to be a dimensional rift that could be used to banish Jack Noir, is revealed to actually be a temporal Reset Button. And if the kids don't find some way to escape their session, they'll all be erased as well.
Rose's Grimdark transformation. It was given some foreshadowing, but not enough to keep it from being this trope.
This series of updates, where Karkat reveals that the reason why the kids session is barren is due to a flaw inherent to their universe. This was due to a mistake he made while creating said universe. The continuation count as well, as it's revealed that Jack only killed the trolls to prevent them from banishing him as well, and that his true target was Bilious Slick.
Gamzee revealing that he created Lil' Cal and paved the way for Jack Noir's rise.
This update shows the trolls' session is actually the second session their world has been through. The original session was played by the ancestors of "our" trolls, with "our" trolls taking the role of the ancestors. Alternia was also vastly different, with trolls being a peaceful race. When the original twelve players (our trolls' ancestors) were unable to win, unknowingly due to a glitch where they weren't spawned in their own session, they struck a deal and scratched their universe, in exchange for the players being properly prepared for the next game. Doc Scratch came into play to uphold this bargain, and manipulated Alternia into becoming a Death World, and the troll species into becoming sociopathic warmongers. The roles of ancestors and players was reversed, with our trolls now playing and the original twelve being ancestors. To top it all off, one of the original twelve players, The Sufferer, somehow had visions of the original Alternia, which led to his attempted rebellion.
Jack makes his trip from the Kids's session, to Earth, and finally into the Troll session, killing most of the Earth exiles along the way. He also badly maims WV by ripping the Uranium out of his stomach.
PM ascends by putting on the Queen's Ring and chases Jack into the Troll Session, accompanied by Serenity and carrying WV's body.
Spades Slick kills Snowman, resulting in the destruction of the Trolls' universe.
Derse's moon floats in the Furthest Ring, unable to find the Green Sun. Dave and Rose find Quest Beds in the center of Derse's moon, and go God Tier when the Tumor explodes, creating the Green Sun.
S u c k e r s .
Jade ascends to her God Tiers, merging with Jadesprite in the process.
Jade finds that her ascension grants her the ability to control the size of objects. She promptly uses this power to shrink down every planet and moon of note in the game, in effect packing up her entire session and taking it with her.
Jade breaks out of the Medium by breaking the fourth wall, just as the session is Scratched.
Sollux pilots the meteor the trolls are on, to the Green Sun, while blind, and then bleeds to death.
Intermission 2:
Lord English bursts out of Scratch's puppet body, shattering his cueball and basically killing him in the process. A very good host indeed.
Act 6 Act 1:
The post-Scratch universe is revealed. Meet Jane Crocker, whom you might know in another universe as Nanna Egbert and Grandpa Harley's counterpart, Jade's penpal. His name is Jake English.
[S] Jane: Enter.G Cat sabotages the prototyping of Jane's kernelsprite, and her totem is revealed to be a tree bearing no fruit. Somehow she still enters the Medium with the unprototyped sprite, but before she disappears Jane sees that the meteor heading towards her house is actually the Battleship Condescension. A Time Skip reveals that years in the future (but not many), this Earth isn't ravaged by meteors, but instead completely flooded by oceans. Jane's town will be replaced by a series of red Condesce-style towers, while Jake's island will be mostly submerged and a new Gl'bgolyb is shown around the barely visible Frog Temple and volcano. Meanwhile a large amount of Imperial Crocker Drones are about to attack Roxy and Dirk on a city-sized sprawl of buildings and an isolated skyscraper rooftop, respectively. In other words, Roxy and Dirk have been living in the future all along.
And how far in the future are Dirk and Roxy? Try 400 years. Later revealed to be 411 years from Jane and Jake.
In a dream bubble, Terezi speaks to Vriska...except she's not Vriska at all, But Pre-Scratch Mindfang, a God Tiered Sylph of Light. Also Alternia wasn't originally named Alternia - and it didn't have that green moon either.
Jane finally enters the game! Her planet is... Land of Crypts and Helium. All of her Salamander Consorts are dead, because she arrived MILLIONS of years late. Hemera, the only living thing left on the planet, instructed them to build their own crypts while they slowly died. The Alpha Kids are no longer "Heroes" to the Consorts, they're "Nobles" - something they associate with tragedy. The writing in the stone doesn't make the other Kids' survival prospects look good either. And then she meets God Tier Gamzee Makara. With Aradia's music box time machines. He prototypes her sprite with the dead bodies of Vriska and Tavros, creating the personality-confused merging that is Tavrisprite...who immediately explodes out of pure self-hatred.
Pretty much everything following Jake: Regain consciousness. After falling unconscious, Jake relives a memory from his birthday where he spoke with Dirk. In the exposition laden conversation that follows:
Dirk reveals to Jake that he and Roxy are from the future, that UU gave them the chat client that lets them contact Jane and Jake in the past, and that they are the last humans (as far as they know) on Earth in the future.
The Condesce brought the Frightening Fauna to Earth, including the new Gl'bgolyb.
Grandma English was killed by the Condesce, who then exploded her house. Jake found her body and cremated her, keeping the ashes.
The Condesce was able to unlock her full psychic potential after years of experimentation, allowing her to use all of the troll psychic abilities seen in the comic so far.
Grandma English purposely named herself after Lord English to insult the Condesce. The most surprising thing is that she seemed to know what English looks like.
Post-Scratch Mom and Bro (Rose and Dave) knew Roxy and Dirk were coming in the future and set up their houses for them to live in. They then vanished after fighting Guy Fieri and Insane Clown Posse; Fieri was responsible for the deaths of five billion people, while the ICP both became President Evil.
And then the Condesce's kills them both. With help from a mind-controlled GCat.
Post-Scratch DD has the Black Queen's ring, and decides to put it on, while Eddie Morton's Midnight Crew plays in the background. Turns out that the Red Miles attack isn't exclusive to Bec Noir.
Caliborn has killed Calliope's dreamself, with some help from Jack. Also, their version of Skaia is entirely blackened.
Why do pre-Scratch trolls exist as ghosts when the Scratch should've wiped them out completely? Meenah blew them all up with their session's tumor, before their universe could reset.
The Red Miles currently destroying the B2 universe? That's Jack Noir too. Every single version of the B universe is contained inside the Genesis Frog that Jack murdered at the Critical Moment.
UU's reveal. So shocking that there is an author's note specifically asking not to reveal her true appearance, complete with a fake image. Her true name is Calliope, she is heavily implied to have a Split Personality with undyingUmbrage, she is the Muse of Space, she has been cosplaying as a troll this whole time, she is actually a Cherub (whatever that is), and she looks like a Fun Size Lord English. The last part pretty much broke the fandom.
After several days without updates we get a character select screen...where Jane and Roxy suddenly die and Dirk and Jake get knocked unconscious. Also, Dirk couldn't kiss Jane's corpse before being knocked out and no-one could kiss Roxy, so their Dream Selves are screwed. And all this is narrated by undyingUmbrage, with a laugh like Lil' Cal and Doc Scratch.
Just to ensure there is no ambiguity, we get this page. Yep, Roxy and Jane are definitely dead, and Dirk is definitely KO'd.
The above situation is resolved when Dirk wakes up and Portal Cuts his own head. Which turns out to be a Thanatos GambitStable Time Loop that ends with Roxy, Dirk, and Jane being corpsesmooched and then meeting up with Jake on his island. Dirk's robots and Auto-Responder (now naming itself Lil' Hal) then send everyone into the Medium.
[S] Caliborn: Enter. UndyingUmbrage- real name Caliborn- takes control of Calliope's body, unchains himself by ripping off his foot with his teeth, attaches a robotic leg and unveils his Cane-turned-Machine Gun weapon- the spitting image of Lord English, who is traveling through Paradox Space destroying dream bubbles and breaking reality on a small scale. To bring the HSQ to an all-time high for Homestuck (as if that didn't already happen on a regular basis), because the cherub's cruxtruder releases both his and Calliope's kernelsprites at the same time, they self-prototype and create a black hole which sucks in his planet and the dying red sun, the latter in the splitting image of the symbol that's been haunting Calliope for years.
Act 6 Intermission 3:
In Part 1 of the Intermission game:
While the revelation that Caliborn will become Lord English isn't particularly shocking, the mentioning that Calliope is dead is. Furthermore, her soul lies within one of the Dreambubbles. English is coming for her.
Also: Hussie is Only Mostly Dead, and was not killed in Lord English's dreambubble massacre.
In Part 2 of the Intermission game, we get a lot more of Lord English's backstory all at once:
(a) Cronus fought him with magic in his youth, forcing him to split his soul into several pieces, which are, presumably, Lil Cal and the Felt's Jujus.
(b) Kurloz received such a nightmarish vision of Lord English that he accidentally deafened his matesprit, chewed out his tongue, sewed his mouth shut, and took a vow of silence until...
(c) He received a codpiece in the dreambubbles from said matesprit, Meulin, after indoctrinating her their whole lives into his Cherub-worshipping cult, and then handed the codpiece over to his fellow servant, Gamzee, completing his quest to assemble the latter's signature attire.
This also implies that Gamzee went Godtier before becoming marooned on the Troll Asteroid.
Then, Vriska reveals that she's been hunting down a weapon hidden in the Furthest Ring that could possibly take down Lord English. Maps within the Furthest Ring are normally incomprehensible, but it turns out that when Lord English started trashing the dream bubbles, it started causing things to appear on the map.
In the third portion of the intermission game, Gamzee reveals that he's been in a blackrom relationship with Terezi and asks Rose not to tell Karkat or he'll want to kill him.
Also: John somehow managed to take Tavros's ring with him back to his realself. And it's glowing.
Act 6 Act 4:
The Act's opening shows off Jake's planet (Land of Mounds and Xenon), Roxy's planet (Land of Pyramids and Neon), and Dirk's planet (Land of Tombs and Krypton). Then, the unexpected happens: the Act just ends.
Act 6 Intermission 4:
The story shifts to Caliborn's perspective as he arrives on his barren planet. Shit just got real.
Roxy tries contacting him in order to get Calliope back in control. Too bad it doesn't work.
Gamzee shows up yet again on Caliborn's planet. How does Caliborn respond? He just shoots the shit out of Gamzee. To make things more suprising, Gamzee's God Tier wings fall off during the gunfire - signifying that his God Tier appearance was just a costume.
And what was Gamzee attempting to be a guide for? It's a tower that appears to either produce or relay the narrative of MSPA.
It turns out that Gamzee, at the moment, can't die because he's a clown. Gamzee then gives Caliborn an outlet to get things the viewport working, as well as Crowbar's crowbar. The one that can break Jujus. Uh-oh.
And now we find that Caliborn's session is a dead session, which is even worse than the Alpha kids' void session.
And he can fully observe the Alpha's void session despite the void blacking it out thanks to a special signal. By the end of the Intermission, he's ready to make contact with the Alpha Session's iteration of Jack Noir.
Act 6 Act 5 Act 1:
GCat drops Roxy onto Derse following her attempt at involvement in one of the comic's worst romantic quandaries. Who's waiting for her there, smiling upon her unconscious body? Someone who should remind readers that she is a much greater problem for the Alpha session than teen angst: the Condesce.
Serenity probably contains Calliope's soul, since Calliope now manifests in Roxy's dreams in the image of Serenity.
In this dream, Calliope leads Roxy into not only her memories from her "own" universe, but also into her subconscious memories of being Mom in the preceding B1 universe.
And Calliope's revelation to Roxy while in this bubble is enormous: She is not the ultimate anti-English weapon the troll army is looking for, and yet she is that weapon. That is, her doomed (though nigh omnipotent) self from an offshoot timeline is the weapon.
Lil Cal winks. He winks. Why? Because, as Caliborn's description of his relationship with his new juju and best friend suggests, Cal will be, is, and has always been filled with Caliborn's soul.
After her launch, Caliborn and Gamzee witness through the monitors Jane passing through an unfamiliar world. Using the Spiral Sucker Juju, Jane reduces Angels of Zillyhoo into Zillium grist, transmogrifies passing horrorterrors into Squiddles, and, what may be the most important part, changes black and white winged Cherubim, aka Calliope and Caliborn's species, into life-size Lil Cal creatures. Throughout the entire thing, Gamzee reacts in shock and disbelief, while Caliborn becomes happy, eventually looking hypnotically attracted to these events.
As of this update, all four of the kids are in trickster mode. Yes, even Dirk succumbed to it...
And then resisted it purely because of his incompatible personality. He then breaks up with Jake, though that's hardly the most heartbreaking thing in the update. That event would be the death of Fefetasprite, brought on by the extremely stressful confusion of old romantic dramas revived by Erisol and Arquius.
It seems as if Trickster Mode has some positive results, as it has allowed the four Tricksters to alchemize the seven legendary weapons of "a magical kingdom from cherubim folklore." Each is seemingly tailored to the specibus of at least one human player from either universe. The first of these seven weapons? The Warhammer of Zillyhoo.
Act 6 Act 5 Act 1 X2 Combo:
And then it's all over with the command GO BACK TO ACT 6 ACT 5 ACT 1. Jane looks tweaked out of her mind, but before the reader can see more, Caliborn expresses his displeasure with Hussie's decision to end A6A5A2. After knocking the site around with the crowbar again and having a heated debate with Hussie over Trickster Mode's evils, Caliborn and Gamzee engage ACT 6 ACT 5 ACT 1 x2 COMBO, a new viewing mode featuring two panels on each page. And what do these first double-panels show? That all four Alpha kids have somehow ended up on their Quest Crypts.
Alpha Jack Noir becomes Jack English, thanks to a little gift from Gamzee.
Jack English and the Condesce then simultaneously kill all four of the Alpha players by blowing up the moons with a Lord English Mouth Laser and a psionic Optiic Bla2t, respectively, allowing them, naturally, to ascend to God Tier.
Jack attempts to kill Jane and Jake, but Jade appears and banishes Jack to the void, and thus the Beta Heroes finally begin their arrival...
An arrival that will be impeded by the fact that the Condesce, with the Tavros/Vriska powers of animal communion and manipulation that work on GCat, makes Jade go GRIMBARK and, with Jade's and the Tiaratop's help, turns Jane Crockerdark. Jade banishes Dirk to the void, and the two variously eldritch-throed ex-heroes carry Roxy and Jake to the Condesce, who ends the whole act with a lipstick mark.
Act 6 Intermission 5
Gamzee is responsible (partially, at least) for Caliborn's rise to power. From the moment of his birth.
We finally learn why Terezi has been keeping her hood down for most of Act 6: once again, she can SEE. (And once again, the expression on Karkat's face perfectly mirrors the reader's).
The ring that Hussie tried to propose to Vriska with, the ring that is presumably the one John now has, can actually bring anyone back from the dead, and it has a twin: the ring that Roxy lost.
Caliborn's treasure that he hid away from anyone who could use it against him is a transparent, intangible Sburb House logo. Sounds fair enough, right? Well, when John reaches into the logo, he's able to literally get his hands into anypointinHomestuck. Small wonder Caliborn locked it away.
All seems well at first, until John blurs and disappears ominously.
Spades Slick and a revived Felt are headed straight for the B2 session for an almost certain meetup of all three major incarnations of Jack Noir.
John not only has his hand poking around the comic, but his whole, waking body teleports to various points along the comic's timeline as an effect of the logo juju, including the sixth sub-intermission, where he and Caliborn lock eyes so that we have the first in-person encounter between a juvenile cherub (in its natural form) and a human.
The meteor group finally arrives in the new session! Unfortunately, the meteor itself misses contact with a planet altogether, and Karkat realizes that the group has no real way of slowing the meteor down when it comes into collision with something, meaning that the people on it will die. Just as Dave starts to come up with a couple of solutions, Grimbark!Jade shows up. She dumps them all (except for Gamzee) on LOMAX in front of John, who's doing nothing in particular but goofing around until that point.
Wham Line
> Further appraise verbal revelations.
Oh Jegus, how can simple words be so plot-twisting?
In John's first conversation with Nannasprite:
JOHN: and then after that, we solve this ultimate riddle thing and save earth from destruction!!!
NANNASPRITE: Oh no, I'm afraid not!
NANNASPRITE: Your planet is done for, dear! There is nothing you can do about that!
"Everyone always ceases gunplay when Snowman's around. If you kill her you destroy the universe."
CA: i slaughtered enough angels to knoww my limits and wwhere i stand against the lord of all angels they prophesized
CA: of course im not gonna fight him i stand no chance in hell against that guy
CA: im goin to join him
Then after a series of shocking events: "Don't turn your back on the body."
And then:
TC: shut up.
Just before that, "TC: honk."/"TC: HONK." is a much more subtle one. The fact that he isn't using his typical Typing Quirk is the first indication that something is not right with him.
You slip into the fabled blackdeath trance of the woegothics, quaking all the while in the bloodeldritch throes of the broodfester tongues. You advise the members of your Complacency not to be alarmed, as they chronicle the event in tomes bound in the tanned, writhing flesh of a tortured hellscholar, with runes stroked in the black tears bled from the corruption-weary eyes of fifty thousand imaginary occultists. But they fail to not be alarmed. This is because, as is now painfully obvious to anyone with a brain, you have basically gone completely off the deep end in every way. You have officially gone grimdark.
"Pardon me while I let Jack inside."
Doc Scratch gets a few of these during his intermission. Sorted by date:
5/25/11: "The duel ends. The Seer dies. The Slayer departs. The Heir comes back to life."
5/31/11: "With as little fanfare, he seized the opportunity to follow the Thief's trail quickly before it dissipated, and destroyed their hideout in the veil."
6/8/11: "What sort of story would this be, with our Knight and Seer made to stay cadavers? Certainly not one the alpha timeline would allow. And not one she'd allow either."
6/19/11: "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO KILL HER."
When Dreambubble John finally begins to remember the Awful Truth:
GT: This was not the suit i was wearing when i died.
Davesprite explains to Jade his second encounter with Hephaestus:
DAVESPRITE: see it turns out DAVESPRITE: i had no idea how the denizens worked at all
From Nannasprite, on the identity of her adopted mother, Betty Crocker:
pipefan413: She knew the baroness was not human! :B
Quoth Doc Scratch about an early set of Alternians: "The heroes chose to accept this bargain, and scratched their session."
A little later, same conversation: "But in addition to losing their memories of everything that had happened before the scratch, there was another catch for the failed heroes. In the new reality, they would not serve as the heroes."
And a final one from Scratch, probably the biggest of all, at the EOA5 flash, right before all the kids' plans come to a head and the universe is reset:
S u c k e r s.
Lord English's first appearance:
GIRL.
YOU THERE. GIRL.
GIRL, QUIT ALL THIS SCURRYING AROUND.
DO YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN ESCAPE ME BEFORE I ARRIVE?
HOW DO YOU EXPECT TO OUTRUN ME
WHEN I AM ALREADY HERE?
uranianUmbra [UU] began cheering gutsyGumshoe [GG] at 11:17
In an otherwise silly and hilarious conversation with a 15-year-old drunk:
GG: I believe SOMEBODY doesn't want me to play. GG: How else do you explain the recent attempts on my life?
"The Page is dead. Our hope is lost."
When John asks how long it will take him and Jade to cross the Yellow Yard and arrive in the new session:
GG: i would say GG: if i keep our speed constant... GG: we should arrive in about three years
"You say it's all fair game now that the kingdom's under new management. The new boss ain't opposed to taking some shrewd tactical shortcuts."
Followed by: "He says it's probably because she wears the most grand and luxurious fluffy hat he's ever seen. You say you don't think that's a hat. You think it's something called 'hair.'"
In a conversation with Dirk Strider, Roxy drops this conversational bomb, about her "upbringin"
TG: like TG: do u know how misrable it is for your bff to doubt you TG: when you tell her your mom is dead
In a dream bubble, Terezi has a chat with Vriska. Only to learn something unexpected.
GC: VR1SK4 GC: YOU SOUND R34LLY D1FF3R3NT GC: WH4T H4PP3N3D TO YOU OUT H3R3? AG: Sorry for the ruse. AG: Though it isn't as far from the truth as it possi8ly could 8e, I am not who you think I am.
And with this line, humanity's fate is made significantly less ambiguous:
TT: There are no humans either. They all went extinct. TT: Roxy and I are the only ones left, as far as we know.
Caliborn's "shitty twist":
uu: I ALREADY KILLED HER!!!!!
The prelude to one of the most shocking revelations in Act 6.
UU: oh bUgger. this is so embarrassing to have to admit. UU: i am sorry for saying things which may have reasonably led yoU to believe this. UU: probably way too many things. u_u; UU: bUt i am not actUally a troll.
"But the fact that he's a slob was never exactly breaking news to anyone. Neither is the fact that you both share a body."
Parodied while John and Jade are watching Con Air:
JOHN: jade... JADE: hm? JOHN: i think i just realized something. JADE: what? JOHN: THIS MOVIE FUCKING SUCKS!!!
Kurloz' lines after he gets the codpiece from Meulin:
EXCELLENT WORK, MY MAGE
IT MUST BE DELIVERED TO THE BARD OF RAGE AT ONCE, SO THAT HE MAY CONTINUE OUR LORDS MIRTHFUL MOTHER FUCKIN WORK
LONG LIVE THE ANGEL OF DOUBLE DEATH
Caliborn does it again.
uu: THAT SACCHARINE TRAMP IS SUCH A GONER. SHE'S NEVER COMING BACK.
uu: JUST LIKE YOUR DAPPER HUMAN GUARDIAN.
Caliborn talks to Jake about his session, and eventually reveals that he has a new Juju. What is this, you ask?
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.
Tavros sadly lamenting that one of his friends isn't real and that he's lonely is really sad...and then it cuts to Vriska on the computer messing with him and shouting "Wheeeee!" and it becomes impossible to take the scene seriously.
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.
Then afterwards, when Nepeta bursts out of the vent to attack him, he turns around SBAHJ style before breaking her wrist and slashing his face to mock her.
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.
During Calliope's reveal, we see that she and uu share the same body and they live on a planet ready to get destroyed by their sun. After The Reveal, we get uu drawing his ridiculously, pathetically horrible scribbles of the deaths and KOs of the Alpha Kids, while mocking both them and Calliope's fondness for them.
We are also treated to the revelations that they live in a building on the meteor that Rose, Dave, and the Trolls took to the Alpha universe — meaning that they are in the same universe in the future — and that the planet they collided with is infested with shitty jpeg Statues of Liberty.
In the middle of the awesome Dirk: Synchronize, Dirk takes a stop to give Meenah a high-five.
Oh man, look at how awesome Dirk is! He's flying around! He's pulling sweet tricks on a rocket board! He's...uh...beheading himself...
Right in the middle of Caliborn: Enter, one of the most Terrifying Flashes yet, we learn that the godtier Page outfit includes speedoes.
What do we cut to after said terrifying flash? Meenah grinning and running down a flight of stairs like a doofus past a giant golden statue of herself.
Part two of the A6I3 game: after an extremely silly signed conversation, Meulin goes on a quest to find and give to Kurloz Gamzee's purple god tier cod-piece. Cue The Reveal: Kurloz takes control of Meulin's thoughts and speaks with her mind-to-mind in praise of Lord English, then does his part by slipping into a hidden place in the dreambubble to give the codpiece to Gamzee. Speak to Meulin again and the two will go right back to silly signs...though Meulin does claim that she feels a little strange...
John and Jack are in the midst of an epic climactic skirmish, with the Heir of Breath nearly bringing the finishing blow to the Sovereign Slayer... And then they both stop to find that Rose has been watching them both.
After Rose gives Kanaya a Big Damn Kiss, complete with Lens Flare, she promptly passes out from drunkenness and slides down a flight of stairs, leaving behind a shoe.
Doubly jarring since immediately before that, Gamzee's nightmare-inducing honks had been making an appearance. Meaning that it jerked from "scary" to "heartwarming" to "funny" within a handful of posts.
Gamzee appears before Caliborn. Cue Mass Oh Crap from the audience. Then Caliborn nonchalantly guns him down. Cue epileptic laughter from the audience.
Hussie describes the absolute horror of a session that Caliborn is about to go through, so what does he do? Stick a piece of Candy Corn in his teeth and poses stupidly.
After Dirk and Lil Hal have a depressingly existential conversation, the former agrees to uphold his promise to prototype the latter... Only to find that Gamzee beat him to the punch with Equuis, leaving the pair staring blankly at each otherfor four panels, while Gamzee honks like a gleeful idiot in the background.
Jane returns to her home breaking into fits of tears after everything reminds her of her (presumably) dead father. Then she gets a time-displaced letter from Calliope, causing her to openly sob. Then the Condesce contacts her speaking like a cross between WV and Meenah, complete with sassy pink glittery text.
While Jane is alchemizing the Jujus, Gamzee appears out of nowhere to watch.
Jane combines both suckers, and reluctantly licks them to recieve their power. That's when this happens.
Right before heading off to Dirk's planet to assimilate him. It was amusing to see him refuse and hold Roxy off, informing the three they're mentally insane, with the possible hope of escape. Then Arquiusprite goes to inform him he might as well get Trickster-fied in order to be happy for once and that fighting them will do no good. All while mentioning his muscles in between.
And then Dirk is turned into a trickster... But remains the same, in personality. Which means he's displeased and deadpan about the whole situation. And then Fefetasprite explodes. Whiplash of this magnitude requires seatbelts.
And to top it all off, Trickster Mode is suddenly disengaged, with Jane looking tweaked out of her mind. Caliborn is not pleased with this turn of events.
After a calm time of the Post-Scratch Kids talking about their feelings and realizing their problems, we have Alpha Jack get a gift from Gamzee with Lil Cal inside. Followed by him sawing his left leg off saw-style, cutting out his eyes, and implanting Lil Cals eyes into his own sockets. (Not to mention they now look like Lord English's eyes.) Finally breaking out of prison, obliterating Prospit and its moon in the process.
In the Awesome Moment of Crowning sequence for the new Godtiers, the awesome-looking costumes are shown in close detail... And then there's get a close-up of Jake's speedo.
And then we are reminded that Jack is still there.
And then we go back to the speedo, after Jade shows up and warps Jack away.
And then the Condesce hijacks Jade, who helps her hijack Jane via Tiaratop, which leads to Dirk's own exile to the Furthest Ring and Roxy and Jake's capture. And then the act ends with the Condesce happily smoking a cigar while swimming in her mountains of riches.
At the end of Act 6 Intermission 5 Intermission 2, we get a closeup of John's drooling sleepy-face. The page right after, we see that LE has been hard at work ruining Paradox Space in an eerily circular fashion.
Gamzee caring for toddler Calliope? Heartwarming. Gamzee having to put up with toddler Caliborn? Hilarious!
Then there's the intervention, which spins between heartwarming, hilarious, and sad so quickly even Joss Whedon would get dizzy.
Aradia's shocking declaration of wanting to see everything break about is met with a Face Palm by John.
After John gets sucked into the treasure, Vriska looks on in shock - only for the tension of the moment to be completely ruined by Meenah being seconds too late to imaple John again, to her disdain.
After Grimbark!Jade shows up to confront her old friends (while Gamzee watches, nonetheless), Dave and Karkat make ridiculous-looking Oh Crap frowns.
Funny Aneurysm Moment
> Comprehend initially funny sitatutions that later turn grimdark.Homestuck is so full of these, it's getting to the point that laughing at anything is a dicey proposition. Not that that will stop us.
The throwaway line about the Sassacre tome being large enough to kill a cat becomes a bit somber when it turns out that the book is actually what killed Jaspers.
Can Town counts. Wayward Vagabond pretending to be adored by a bunch of citizen cans becomes a lot less funny once we learn he once led a rebel army only to see it wiped out by Jack Noir, with him being the only survivor. The hints that it is his way of dealing with the trauma only make it worse.
Hell, Tavros Nitram is one of the best examples of this. Prior to Act 5, he was only ever drawn from the waist up, leading to an in-joke in the community that he was in a wheel chair. Well, Act 5 comes around, and guess what...
Made even more painful by the fact that his first physical appearances shows him leaping around Prospit.
At first it is merely said that "You [Sollux] do not under any circumstance eat the MIND HONEY. The consequences are highly unpleasant." At this point, you [the reader] might even get a little chuckle out of it; at that point in the narrative, we have seen many characters dislike things for weird reasons that don't seem so bad. Then Sollux accidentally ingests a bit and destroys his hive (home) with Eye Beams, because those are the aforementioned "consequences". You might find this pretty funny, really. Though it might be horrifying, because of the Eye Beams. That depends on your interpretation - at this point. But ultimately we find out that at one point in the past, he was forced to do this and it killed his beloved Aradia. The benign, understated, almost wry way the topic was introduced contrasts heavily with its sobering actual meaning.
The humor within this scene is spoiled in hindsight of Act 5 Act 2, when Equuis does smile... by being strangled to death.
Gamzee's Hero Mode shot. A CMoA until it was remade into Murder Mode. The original is just as disturbing by association now.
Dave trolls Gamzee by showing him a video of the Insane Clown Posse, claiming that they are the "Mirthful Messiahs" of his religion, leading to a particularly amusing scene. Then we find out that his religion was really the only thing that kept him from falling off the deep end, and he becomes Ax Crazy as a result of Dave's mockery.
Everyone who thought that Gamzee's background honks were hilarious are regretting every giggle because of this, since it's his Madness Mantra.
Let's just say that pretty much any joke relating to Gamzee before he went crazy and started killing people is a potential example.
Jade notes that Dave didn't prototype his Kernelsprite with a dead relative because he was "too cool" to have a family member die. Under a hundred pages later, Bro is Killed Off for Real.
This strip made Rose's "empty suicide attempt" in this flash seem much less funny. The strip immediately following it mitigated this somewhat.
Speaking of empty suicide threats... Not to mention, pretty much any interaction Doc Scratch has ever had with any of the kids or trolls just got a billion times creepier in retrospect.
One of the ongoing jokes, the flammability of shaving cream, takes a considerably dark turn in the 10/25/11 updates, when CD uses Dad's shaving cream hooked up to a bomb to kill Jade's realself. However, in the following flash, it's revealed that Jade can still go God Tier with her dream self turned into a sprite, so she comes back to life.
John's enmity towards Betty Crocker seems silly at first. Then it turns out that Betty Crocker is an evil alien empress who has massacred hundreds of planets, working for a Humanoid Abomination, and in an alternate timeline her corporation has branched into virtually everything, and is brainwashing humanity. "The heinous batterwitch has her gnarled claws in everything", indeed.
Dave's Hilariously Abusive Childhood at the hands of Bro (including but not limited to unnervingly sexual puppets left everywhere, swords that regularly fall out of the fridge or cabinets, and regular fights with Dave that send him falling down the stairs) may have become this now that we've met Bro's Beta universe counterpart Dirk and not only is he a really nice guy deep down, if every bit as weird as Bro always was, but he's very wary at even the idea of having children because he's convinced he would be a terrible parent.
