> APPRAISE LIST OF SHOCKING DEVELOPMENTS
You cannot hope to defeat Homestuck in a wham-off. It is simply the best there is.
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.
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.
In another notable but more minor moment, it also revealed WV's Dark and Troubled Past, i.e., being the sole survivor of his army.
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 kills her.
Actually, she doesn't KILL HER, but brutally maims her and causes blood loss that isn't immediately fatal. It seems to us she is dead, but she is later revealed alive, for the mean time. Aradia didn't directly kill her, she just stopped at the right moment.
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.
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.
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 breaks out of the Medium by breaking the fourth wall, just as the session is Scratched.
Doc Scratch is revealed to have played Rose all along: she was creating the Green Sun. Scratch himself is now dead, his purpose achieved.
Sollux pilots the meteor the trolls are on, to the Green Sun, while blind, and then bleeds to death.
EOA. That pretty much sums it up nicely.
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 then we meet Grandpa Harley's counterpart, and he's later revealed to be Jade's penpal. His name is Jake...ENGLISH?
And yet, the single line of dialogue actually IS dramatic enough to make the reader pause. Not so much the content, but its singleness, together with the image.
Roxy somehow sleepwalks into a dreambubble and we see some of the dead characters mingling with the living ones. Roxy floats past Nepeta, and beside her is a Karkat who reached the God Tiers and died. It's later implied to be a Karkat from an Alternate Timeline. *
Additional smaller surprises - Nepeta is in her Dersite dream self outfit for some reason, Dirk's dream self is seen splattered with blood from an unknown source, and Rose and Roxy catch a glimpse of each other for a split second before Roxy awakens.
In a Mind Screw of an update GCat 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.
She is confirmed to be the Pre-Scratch Mindfang, and is later shown to be 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.
Also, 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.
Plus, although not plot related, the Genre Shift gameplay is sure to surprise people.
Guess who's waiting at Jane's house immediately afterwards? God Tier Gamzee Makara. And no, it's not a dead Gamzee. It's a very much alive Gamzee Makara. With Aradia's music box time machines.
He proceeds to sell the blood of his friends to her under the guise of "magic potions", and then 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 let's 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.
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. There appears to be a connection between Lord English and a WHOSTHISDOUCHEBAG code. Roxy and Dirk are fighting Crockerdrones. The Condesce is revealed to be controlling G Cat.
Turns out that the Red Miles attack isn't exclusive to Bec Noir.
Nor will being in a different universe save you from it.
Meanwhile, something is SERIOUSLY WRONG with their session: Skaia is pitch black, leaving everything in total darkness, all Prospitians are dressed in black, while Jack (and possibly all Dersites) wear white. What the hell is going on?
At least two pre-Scratch trolls are working together with the surviving post-Scratch trolls.
