The game begins with the MSPA Reader trying to escape Doc Scratch's place after seeing that Spades Slick has arrived and will soon set fire to everything. They go through the fenestrated wall ready to return to all their friends on Alternia, only for the other end to stop working, leaving them stranded. And then, when they gain the Retcon powers from the white logo they discover, they lose their memories.
The fact that they haven't even fully lost their memories. There are things that are familiar to them for reasons they don't know or understand, the main one being the hoodie they're wearing, which they don't know why they have, but have a powerful desire to not let go of.
In Volume 1, the MSPA Reader accidentally loses John's copy of Sburb when they retrieve the mail for him, only to panic when Dad shows up. John gets upset that now he can't play the game with his friends, and mentions that he often feels lonely and doesn't really have any other friends.
Dave also gets upset at not being able to play the game despite having previously claimed that he didn't care that much about it. He's sad that his gift for John was lost as well. He also claims that none of the four kids have any friends outside of each other.
If the Reader suggests hanging out with John in the yard, they'll eventually end up telling him about how they get their powers, and mention that they've died many times before realizing that can't be true. When John wants to know more about these powers, they demonstrate by taking him back in time by a week. However, this also happens to be the time that adult John from the Meat part of The Homestuck Epilogues took the 16-year-old kids back to before preparing to fight Caliborn. Present John witnesses this, and though he can't hear most of the conversation, realizes that this is an adult version of him, and some of those figures are his friends. When the Reader takes him back to the present, he says he needs some time alone to think about it, leading to one of the bad endings.
Even worse is that despite his existential crisis, he expresses happiness that he's going to become that John some day; talking with such authority, obtaining such cool powers, and going on adventures with his friends, both the ones he knows now, and the ones he'll know later in his life. Which only further twists the knife in the player about the fact that, since the Reader dumped this John's Sburb into the sewer, he's never going to become this version of John.
Volume 2 gives some more details to Rose's life as a result of her mother being an alcoholic. She mentions that she often eats the same meals every day since they don't have a lot of other food in the house, and doesn't really talk to Mom Lalonde that much. In one path, she lets the Reader read some of her wizard fiction, only to get defensive when they suggest that she likes wizards more than she claims to, and tell them to leave. Outright telling the Reader to"fuck off". During a livestream featuring the writer of Volume 2, Aysha, once this bad ending is achieved, she succinctly states: "Some people draw wizards to cope!", which explains her reaction.
Volume 3 makes it clear how bad Dave's life is. He tells the MSPA Reader that he's often on guard for anything that could happen at any moment, only for it not to happen after all. He also has to wash clothes in the shower either because he can't use the washing machine, or because he doesn't have one at all, and doesn't seem to be able to keep food and drink in the fridge either.
Dave's first bad ending has him get stressed over the possibility of liking John when he'd previously thought he was straight. It says a lot about what he was brought up to believe.
In his second bad ending, the Reader brings up how out of the ordinary his living situation is and he tries to deny it. When the Reader thinks they've lost their chance at befriending him, they think they can make it better by teleporting him to somewhere safe, only for Bro to show up and throw them out of the window as they're about to do it.
Even the good ending is rather sad. The Reader lets Dave think of anywhere he would like to go and their teleportation will take them there. They end up at an Olive Garden, where Dave is happy about getting to eat their free breadsticks. Word of God even confirmed that he doesn't get to eat much at home.
In Volume 4, Jade threatens the MSPA Reader with a gun, thinking that they ruined her and the other kid's chances of playing Sburb on purpose, and tells them that she no longer dreams on Prospit or gets messages from the Trolls. She becomes friendlier when the Reader tells them it was an accident, but eventually gets angry at them again because she feels like she no longer has a destiny, and then hides in her bed, crying.
Jade says that she's been very lonely on the island with only Bec to keep her company, and that she was looking forward to playing Sburb because then that would all change. She also mentions that her Grandpa did a lot of travelling and never took her with him. Joey and Jude weren't the only ones he neglected.
When the Reader tries to teleport Jade away from the island, Bec immediately teleports them back. Jade says she knew that would happen, and shows the Reader that she'd tried setting the transportalizers to take her away from the island, only for Bec to stop her.
Jade and the MSPA Reader find their way into the temple, and end up on Prospit when they use one of the transportalizers there. Jade is excited at first, but then the guards won't let her see the Queen. Then she and the Reader are forced to leave when the place gets under attack, and it's implied that Prospit was destroyed after they left, leaving them unable to go back.
Karkat's route in Volume 5 shows just what he has to struggle with as a mutantblood. He has an early warning system that deliberately warns him when someone is approaching his hive. When he claws the MSPA Reader's arm, and they show him the blood, his first reaction is horrified panic, immediately thinking he somehow got cut, exposing his mutant blood color to what he thinks is a blueblood, and that it's all over for him. He even stops the Reader from leaving, and willingly shows them his blood color by cutting his hand and saying how they can't leave because "it isn't safe for people like us", and at one point a drone appears in the neighborhood and he takes himself and the Reader into a hole to hide, where he panics about what is currently happening.
If the Reader stays with Karkat when they're hiding from the drone, it will find them anyway, resulting in his hive being burned down, his lusus dying trying to save him, and him being on the drone's list of trolls to cull immediately. Anywhere the Reader teleports him to, they show up. Even worse, he realises that the drone discovered them specifically because they were hiding together, and blames the Reader for it before leaving and implies that he doesn't like to get too close to people in case anything like this happens, and it's very likely that the drones will soon find him and cull him.
The first place they teleport to after escaping the hive is just outside of Sollux's place. Karkat's messages with him reveal that he knows about his blood colour, and he tells Karkat to come inside to try to protect him while he figures out a way out of this. Karkat refuses, not wanting Sollux to get killed too. He even starts to cry.
Kanaya's route shows us what would happen if she were to become Matesprits with Vriska - if the MSPA Reader tries to help her, Kanaya will message Vriska and the two will enter a relationship. Kanaya is happy at first, but when the Reader zaps a few days ahead, they find that the relationship has become toxic, and Kanaya breaks up with her before telling the Reader that it's their fault she's now unhappy. The ending card even shows her crying.
Vriska's route shows us what Vriska's life is like past the persona of the cool badass she puts on, a miserable existence where she's constantly forced to kill other kids to avoid her lusus's wrath, a lusus who is constantly inside her head screaming to feed her, and while she tries to have fun during the FLARP campaigns it's very clear when we see the actual feeding part that she hates every second of it and is a miserable broken shell of a girl, most of her friends have left her, the few friends she has left she has very rocky relationships with, so she has very little support to help her through this emotionally, and that's all before you take into account that she is still a child, and has been doing this for a while meaning it's very likely her first kill was before she was even the equivalent of ten years old.
At the beginning of Vriska's route, the MSPA Reader gets grossed out by the grubs used to play the game, and if they decide to leave, the ending card shows Vriska looking sad, as if she really wanted to play with them.
Equius' route opens with the MSPA Reader teleporting to different Hiveswap places without knowing their significance, just that for some reason teleporting to "a garden" takes him to Boldir's, ect. After a little bit, they try teleporting "home." Cue Reader's place from Hiveswap popping up, showing that over the course of their time in Alternia, they started to think of it as their home. Cue them not remembering it at all.
The MSPA Reader still has amnesia during Terezi's route, but her comments about how messed up the Alternian system is and believing the best bet is to change it from the inside remind them of another tealblood law student who felt the same way: Tyzias, their old friend from Friendsim. The Reader can't remember her name or many other details yet, but the same Ascended Fridge Horror that players have likely already realized hits them too: since the Alternia of this game and the original Homestuck seems to be quite a ways in the future (by at least several generations) from the Alternia of Hiveswap and Friendsim that they visited, and isn't any better at all (in fact, it's probably even worse), that must mean their friends who were trying to improve the system and enact real change failed to accomplish anything meaningful in the end. The Reader is overcome with incredible sadness that everything Tyzias and those like her (which would have included people like Dammek and Xefros, too) were working for turned out to be All for Nothing, and many players probably feel the same.
Nepeta's second bad ending is one of the saddest in the game, and it's even worse because it's entirely the Reader's fault (read: your fault) it happens. When they try to return Nepeta to her cave, they accidentally bring along Dave and Jade as well thanks to Power Incontinence, causing Pounce de Leon, Nepeta's lusus, to see them as intruders and attack them. You must then actively choose to not be able to get between Jade and Pounce in time, and if you do pick this option, Jade has no choice but to shoot and kill Pounce in self-defense. Nepeta furiously scratches her arm in return, and Jade, injured and very upset about being forced to kill a living creature, runs out of the cave in tears while a horrified Dave rushes after her. The Reader leaves to go after them, but not before seeing a heartbroken Nepeta cradling her lusus's body. The Reader can't find Jade or Dave no matter how hard they try, and return to Nepeta's cave to find no light coming from inside, making it clear they aren't welcome. They reflect on how all of this is their fault, and the ending card shows them looking completely devastated at all the harm they caused.
Eridan's route has Sollux throwing an entire mall at Eridan - the same mall that the MSPA Reader and Daraya go to in her bad ending, where she begs them to take her to Earth away from Alternia only to set the place on fire in an implied suicide when they're unable to. The MSPA Reader laments that they'd been unable to do that at the time, when now it would be easy to.
Jane's route begins with the MSPA Reader having organized a picnic for all the friends they've made so far, only for it to be All Just a Dream. They're sad that they feel like not much has changed on Alternia even if some of their friends are getting on with each other a bit better. And then when they try to visit John, who they notice was absent from the dream, they unknowingly end up on Post-Scratch Earth instead, and after going inside Jane's house, believe that the stuffed corpse of her grandfather is actually John himself rather than the alternate version of him that the audience knows.
Roxy's route has easily one of the most heartbreaking Bad Ends in the game; Upon picking the choice for MSPAR to take Roxy to see her mother, Alpha Rose from before she died, it ends in a tearful meeting, where Rose thanks for the opportunity to see Roxy, but tells them they need to leave before Condesce notices. As if on cue, the location is attacked and Rose tells MSPAR and Roxy to leave while they can with Rose fighting them back to give them an escape. But when they return, the timeline has totally changed. The house is sparsely decorated, poorly stocked, and badly damaged. Because their arrival caused Alpha Rose to die there, because she bought them time to escape. And because she died far earlier than she was supposed to, she wasn't able to prepare the house for Roxy to live in. Roxy realizes what this all means, and from the revelation of what just happened, appears to be in a hair's breadth of breaking down. MSPAR upon seeing the timeline damage and her current state, thinks about leaving due to the remorse and regret that they caused this. But then Roxy, smiling but on the verge of tears, pleads and begs MSPAR to not leave, saying that it was all her fault and not theirs, and how she shouldn't have asked in the first place. She then frantically searches the place, and succeeds in finding alcohol, making it clear that she's going to immediately retreat into her alcoholism to cope with her current emotions. Roxy hands them a bottle, and once again pleads that they stay. They agree to stay and drink with her, if only because more for them means less for her, musing that it would've been better if she just hated them.
Even if it's sudden arrival is intense nightmare fuel, there's something deeply tragic about Ultimate!Dirk's "commentary" about himself in his introduction into Chapter 14. Dirk's self-loathing was only indirectly alluded to through subtext and subtle cues in the writing, but with Ultimate!Dirk's words, it's laid completely bare and raw.
Holy shit this is excruciating. I keep telling myself if I ignore this bullshit it will sort itself out, but christ.(Drawn arrow pointing at himself)I don't need to see this.(Another arrow is drawn)No one needs to see this.(Draws a slash over his own face)I can't believe I was ever this pathetic.(Another slash is drawn)Dirk, you had all day every day to do nothing but get swole in body and mind, and this is how you spent your time? Looking wistfully out into the sky?(His face gets entirely scribbled out)No wonder you're out here falling for this friendsimp's weak shit overtures.
, once this bad ending is achieved, she succinctly states: "Some people draw wizards to cope!", which explains her reaction.