==> (facepalm x2): Combos of varying multipliers, particularly of the facepalm variety, become yet another running gag.

[S] John: Wake up.: So, there was a fairly long period of time until Jade was finally revealed. Here, we're only getting a tease of her silhouette. So, since before being named fans would have no way of referring to a character other than their chumhandle, Jade was known for a while as "Gigi", for her handle "GG".

Music: "John Sleeps / Skaian Magicant" by Toby "Radiation" Fox in Homestuck Vol. 1-4
Remix of "Showtime (Original Mix)"" by Malcolm Brown and "Skies of Skaia" by Mark Hadley

This flash originally had different music:

Music: "Skaian Dreams (Remix)" by Bill Bolin in Homestuck Vol. 2 (removed)
Remix of "Showtime (Original Mix)" by Malcolm Brown and "Skies of Skaia" by Mark Hadley

John: Be the imp.: A further twist on "Be the other guy" was be-ing random minor characters or even inanimate objects.

[S] Dave: Ascend to the highest point of the building.: The image of Dave dramatically silhouetted in red is probably the foundation to the art style that would become known as Hero Mode. Of course, it's still hewing to the more chibi proportions of their sprites.

A flurry of callbacks at play here. "OH WAIT" based on the smash cut from Dave to that closeup of the Zazzerpan statue. The "x2 combo" from a few pages ago, and the all-new "PSYCHE/PSYCHEOUT" that readers would come to fear.

Also, of course, a glimpse of Jade. While she didn't have a definitive shirt icon like basically everyone else, the atom was generally considered her 'default' before the Bec silhouette took over. Vol. 4 (and Vol. 1-4) use the atom to represent her. The atom design was originally seen on the walls of WV's command station room.

Music: "Upward Movement (Dave Owns)" by Robert "Kalibration" Blaker in Homestuck Vol. 2

Kali has released several independent albums.

WV: Retri...: See, the atom design is right there. Also, another "retrieve arms" gag.

WV: Examine rotten pumpkin.: In the Homestuck universe, while pumpkins continue to disappear, they do so through actual in-universe methods, instead of actually vanishing like in Jailbreak. Such as through being eaten, for example.

==> (677): The tattoo was cleverly shown to the reader when WV held them up as part of the "Retrieve arms" thing. It was never visible (and possibly hadn't existed yet) in any previous appearance. It's supposed to be a sort of factory tattoo from being mass-produced in a Veil laboratory or something. They never really go anywhere with this.

WV: Be the imp.: Odd for a Dersite to have no idea what an imp is. Explanation: Underlings were never used on the Battlefield, only mutated chess monsters. If WV never left the Battlefield previously, he probably would have never come across underlings.

==> (687): Using a chess piece motif for the king, just to drive home the relationship to the Battlefield.

WV: Use glowing green rock to open cans.: Eating the uranium has CONSEQUENCES. Consequences even unhealthier than the usual ones associated from eating a huge chunk of radioactive material.

==> (691): WV only eats the green chalk. He's very infatuated with the color green, as someone who's been living a considerable amount of time in an arid desert tends to be.

WV: Examine contents of yellow container.: The gear on the oil container looks astonishingly similar to the Time symbol, but it has a different amount of spokes. Still, the narrative continues to tie Dave to gears and clockwork.

WV: Use your own pee for the commercial zones.: Pee is kind of a Jailbreak thing.

WV: Use motor oil to designate commercial zones.: All of the chalk drawings surrounding Can Town as supposed to represent the cosmology of the Incipisphere. The chessboard obviously represents the Battlefield in Skaia, the center of the 'solar system' of the Medium.

WV: Peel label from can of MAYO and affix to sash.: Having a can of mayo on hand to use for a mayoral sash is one of Homestuck's happy coincidences.

==> (703): Hussie made sure to include an active volcano on Jade's planet. It's a funny way to draw LOFAF for WV, since the volcano only became active (and the snow covering the planet only melted) a few hours before he was exiled from the session, at the most. And of course this gave the fans a lot of questions if they were to, say, see a volcano somewhere else.

WV: Turn on the other 3 screens.: There's a pumpkin on the Ctrl key. It wasn't there before.

WV: Press Tab.: There is no longer a pumpkin on the Ctrl key. What I said about pumpkins in Homestuck disappearing for in-story reasons, this is the one exception.

WV: Hit escape.: A reader probably thought hitting this key would allow WV to escape the station.

WV: Type => SWITCH 2.: Typo: "And" improperly capitalized. It's fixed in the books, though.

WV: Type => SWITCH 3.: Odd that screen 2 was locked, since the command history only shows screen 3 being locked. Also, on word on what the password was.

WV: Type => HOME.: Another 413.

WV: Type => REBOOT.: There's the pumpkin on the Ctrl key again.

WV: Be the mayor.: All of the objects in WV's fantasy cans are green. Except the radishes, but there is apparently such a thing as green radishes.

[S] WV: Lead your men to victory!: A direct analogue to the chess battle on Skaia. Particularly, how white ends up losing. And obviously, another 413 on the timer there.

Music: "Vagabounce" by David Ko on Homestuck Vol. 2

David Ko is an arranger and composer, mainly of acapella music.

Minutes in the future...: Our first time seeing a Prospitian.

==> (729): Sburb house: Command station room.
'Triangley fractal': Appearifier room.
Sburb spirograph: Trans-universe transporter room (not seen until much later)

WV: Select the triangley fractal.: About the triangley fractals: this symbol shows up in a lot of places. It's an alteration of the symbol drawn on the alchemiter pedestal (they have 4 'spokes' instead of 3), and a variety of different ones are seen associated with different warping pedestals, such as appearifiers (the fractal seen here), sendificators (2 spokes), transportalizers (3 spokes but an altered pattern), and transmaterializers (the appearifier and sendificator patterns overlaid, befitting a device that can both appearify and sendificate).

==> (733): There's a lock here identical to the one in the spirograph room (the famous 'frog switch'). What it seems to do is allow the appearifier to target either Earth or the Medium.

Also, our first look at the standard diagram of the Incipisphere.

Also, there's a spiral pattern behind the Earth there that looks very familiar. It doesn't line up with the spiral used on the cherub's cheeks, though, and in my opinion it's almost certainly a watermark from whatever stock image of the Earth Hussie used for this page.

WV: Press green button on right.: Of course, you can see the value for latitude change, and have some clue as to where the station is.

WV: Fiddle with the dials.: We only get to see the decimal digits for the longitude. As well as a 413 in both the altitude and the current time.

WV: Deappearify the pumpkin.: (It's called a sendificator).

WV: Use trusty knife to carve spook schema in pumpkin.: Spook schemas were a Halloween-themed powerup in Problem Sleuth.

WV: Adjust time dial to appearify rotten pumpkin.: Serenity is the name of the spaceship in the TV show "Firefly", hence the name (as well as the title of its movie).

==> (752): Obtaining the slime of various objects by causing time paradoxes becomes a central tenet of ectobiology, both baby and frog-related.

WV: Appearify the grate over the entrance to the facility.: Serenity: Let's go!!!

[S] WV: Hasten to the exit post-haste!: Not apparent to the archival reader, but the fanbase at the time would have had two days to notice the location (and more importantly, current time) of WV's exile station being revealed before the EOA2 flash. And two days to discuss its implications...

Music: "Sburban Reversal" by Mark Hadley in Homestuck Vol. 7: At the Price of Oblivion (bonus track)
Remix of "Sburban Countdown" by Mark Hadley

oh wait: Another 'oh wait', another psyche, another combo.

[S] WV: Ascend: There's a LOT to unpack here. Much more than any archival reader would understand, because the normal thing to do would be to just keep reading instead of analyzing everything while waiting for more content. So here it is:

First, Zazzerpan's hand there, combined with noticing that Zazzerpan as briefly seen in WV's command terminal is missing a hand, shows you that WV's station is located at the site of Rose's house. This is of course also supported by the flash showing PM's station 'growing' from where John's house was (sidenote: this gives us GPS coordinates for John's house).

Also for archival readers, the segment of John's house is supposed to tie in with the meteor crater in the suggestion box changing over time. An extremely neat storytelling connection. Plus the previously mentioned fakeout of the light in the sky above PM not being a meteor but rather WV's station flying overhead.

This is the specific confirmation that Sburb is somehow directly involved with the meteors crashing everywhere. Whereas before there was always room for speculation, of you were a reader at the time.

About the recurring "[Time units] in the past/future, but not many..." line: it's a way to play with reader expectations, when we let context fill in the blanks of vague information. How many time units qualify as 'many'? It depends. WV being 413 years in the future SEEMS like it qualifies for 'many' but then it's compared to the frog temple meteor ACTUALLY being 'many' years in the past (having a dinosaur show up helps us gauge the timeframe more accurately). A more specific examples is when PM is shown immediately after showing WV having 4 minutes on his timer, but then insisting that 'not many' minutes in the future is not as few as implied by the story's circumstances. i.e.: Just another way to mess with us.

Showing a spirograph on the laboratory, as well as showing Mom having a secret tunnel to the laboratory under Jasper's grave, is a real double whammy. Also, the same imps that took the trick handcuffs took John's precious dunce cap and stage magic sword. And by the time WV arrives at the site of the frog temple, the volcano being gone, as well as the presence of a volcano in one of the planets WV drew, is supposed to plant some ideas in the heads of readers at the time.

The flash ends with what I call the 'spirograph flower' design that is used for the lotus time capsule and the frog temple 'seed' sent by meteor. It's just the standard Sburb spirograph with most of the 'outer' lines removed.

Music: "Explore" by George Buzinkai and Michael Guy Bowman in Homestuck Vol. 2