[S] ACT 5 ACT 2 ==>: A postmortem of Hivebent:

"Hivebent definitely went at a faster clip than usual for MSPA, in both image and word output. The word count spike seems especially pronounced.

But this was a deliberate effort, and not really just for the sake of a more compressed, sweeping story.

A while ago, months before Hivebent, I had the thought that I wanted to allow words to tow more of the load in what has been mostly a visual format (MSPA as a whole I mean). The trend had already been present in HS, with increasing importance given to pesterlogs to drive the story, and I've found the consequences to be interesting, and not really expected from the onset of HS.

So Hivebent represents more of a verbal push, I guess in part as a media exploration. It's not too inaccurate to describe it as a very vividly illustrated e-novel. I understand of course this is not what 100% of all readers have a strong appetite for, and that's fine with me. Reading through HS and then hitting Hivebent is a little like suddenly encountering thicker atmosphere in flight. The rate of progress slows, it demands a little more attention, and then when you get through it, the pace picks back up. (Probably!) Overall, I'm satisfied with how it turned out, and it reads pretty much how I thought it would. It just lasted a couple months longer than I projected, because I will absolutely never be able to pin down an accurate time estimate on a story arc. I have resolved to stop trying, ever.

Text-heavy visual storytelling is something I've thought about recently beyond the scope of this arc, and I think there are some interesting possibilities to explore. Perhaps I will, but I doubt what I'd have in mind would be compatible with the MSPA format. Perhaps after HS. We'll see."

Also, about the spade t-shirt John is wearing:

"In his letter to Jade, he said he got her the blue ghost shirt for her birthday, at the same time as when he got his own green ghost shirt. So he was wearing a different shirt before that. We just didn't know what it was.

Turns out it was a spade shirt. There is not a huge amount of significance to this other than 1) he likes magic and card tricks, and all the Harry Anderson stuff in his room reminds of this, 2) it is the symbol favored by Jack Noir, the bad guy he's destined to face in this game, and 3) it is taken by Karkat as an omen that this kid he just discovered was meant to be his kismesis. Hate at first sight."

Music: "Homestuck" by Mark Hadley in Homestuck Vol. 5
Remix of "Homestuck Anthem" by Clark "Plazmataz" Powell

Karkat: Troll this worthless human.: Obviously, this page is just a huge teaser set-up. We see John decked in mysterious new gear (this page provides the header image for Act 5 Act 2), with an unspoken plan (notice how he just glosses over Karkat's misconception about the rift, to confuse readers). Unfortunately, his expectation of seeing Karkat soon would not come to pass. As for Karkat, who is leaning pretty hard on the creator god shtick here, Hussie had this to say:

"The trolls probably wouldn't answer your prayers even if they presided over us unfettered.

But they aren't literally gods. They would certainly feel like it, having made the universe and then going wherever they wanted, existing as very powerful warriors from all their battle experience and high grade gear.

There are other entities and forces in this multiverse reality that could be seen as more god-like. The many instances of Skaia, for one. Whatever it is, exactly. The more sinister outer gods. Omnipotent beings like English, Scratch, Snowman, Bec. The mysterious frog god briefly mentioned, "Bilious Slick". All this stuff alludes to a pretty lively scene beyond the grasp of mortals. Players of the game appear to be just more pawns in the process of perpetuating reality. They're heroes, sure. And their stories likely wind up being the most interesting in this reality. But they're still just a bunch of mortal kids.

But we do see evidence that their story elevates them to godhood in the mythology of the people who eventually populate the universe they create. The constellations in our zodiac are just arbitrary looking star clusters, but people in our history saw them as symbols of the 12 creators, and built a whole mystical framework around their story. The specifics of the story may have been lost over time, or may never have been known. It could just be that the way our universe was created is imprinted in their subconscious, and it surfaces symbolically in their stories.

This was actually my line of thinking in writing Rose's wizardfic. If you sift through that dense excerpt, you find it's about 12 evil kids who played a role in influencing every dark event in history. My intent was that this was her subconsciously echoing the creation story of her own universe.

You could also extend their influence to the personality profiles of the characters. There are a lot of similarities between the profiles of many of the trolls and the kids. Some trolls seem to share traits with more than one kid. This is to be expected to some extent, since some of the profile elements are pretty broad. But in some cases the crossover is harder to ignore, and this could be attributed to the Alternian heroes laying the psychological tracks for the heroes that arise in the universe they create. But that said, I didn't want to get too carried away with this idea, and just make the "Dave version" of the trolls, and so on. So I drew similarities at times, and exaggerated differences at others, hoping to strike a balance."

Terezi: Open memo.: Terezi did previously threaten to open a Rainbow Rumpus Partytown memo. We never get to see Karkat's famous leader speech. In fact, given the Trollian timestamps, it can't possibly have been more than a minute long. And although Gamzee replies from 420 hours in the past, there's a more important meme number going on here: the 6:12 hours in the future Karkat and Terezi replying to the memo at the end. At this point in the story we don't have a total understanding of what this means, but as more timestamps start to slot into place, readers realized this meant that Karkat and Terezi were chatting from AFTER the end of the mysterious countdown. Which has certain implications about their overall probability of surviving, obviously.

==> (2641): Tiny little BUNP by Liv Tyler there.

==> (2644): Callback to Tavros flying around on Prospit.

==> (2647): Re: Dream selves poofing out like that: We've seen it happen before this (with Rose).

==> (2656): That one shot from [S] Descend is reused a few times before Jade's meteor hits.

Jade: Land already.: The command references an identically titled command for John a few pages ago.

WV?: Survey casualties.: WV just decided to throw away his clothes and use John's bedsheets instead for no reason.

==> (2662): Sometimes if you follow the relative timeline of Homestuck conversations, you can see the cyclical nature of how some terms originate. Such as 'candlelight hate date'. Since the Reckoning is a 24 hour event, that means that the entirety of the kid's side of Act 5 Act 2 takes less than that.

==> (2663): You can see one of the salamanders bears a crumpled heat object. Perhaps it is the fabled Crumplehat themselves. But more importantly, there's the giclops that stole John's Telescopic Sassacrusher!

==> (2666): This pose is reused from when John shook his fist at the imps pulling awesome tricks on his backyard pogo ride.

==> (2671): Sneaky reference to the recurring line 'A familiar face. A friendly face.'

Vriska: What's his deal????????: This page links again to the removed Youtube video of the Con Air ending scene, with the bunny and whatnot. As per my previous note, you can look it up on the Wayback Machine.

==> (2673): FEDORAFREAK RIDES AGAIN. His family no longer does, apparently :c.

==> (2674): Of course, trolls associate buckets with the imperial drone's filial pails. That's the whole reason this idiotic bucket thing started.

John: Pester someone's server player.: 'I suddenly don't understand anything.' was a line used by Kanaya in one of her Act 4 conversations with Rose.

==> (2683): It is at this time that you realize that we'd only seen salamanders up to this point, and tutrtle/crocodile/iguana consorts were hinted at in Act 5 Act 1 before ever being shown in the flesh.

Kanaya: Confer with leader.: A variety of callbacks here. First, Karkat's refusal to contemplate an acrobatic fucking pirouette. Second, an obvious subversion of the statements about John's leadership qualities in his last conversation. Lastly, Kanaya's comment about her personal mythology is borrowed from a comment from Rose about the Con Air bunny... from way back in Act 1.

Kanaya: Troll the John human.: John does, in fact, get a sweet Little Monsters poster for his 13th birthday.

RETCON WATCH: Oil on the Mac & Me poster.

==> (2706): This is John's initial conversation with Vriska that was recently mentioned. We see it happen much later.

==> (2707): Clear reference to Kanaya's very first line in the story.

==> (2720): Possibly described the snowcat as a 'snowlusus' because it is white, same as the lusii.

==> (2720): THIS pose. We're gonna get some mileage out of it.

==> (2722): This pose is notable. It will start getting reused in mini-flash pages of people flying away from planets. Partway through it gets replaced by another base pose, but the concept is identical.

John: Reunite with loving fatherly comedian themed laptop.: Callback to John smooching Liv Tyler on his Armageddon movie poster.

==> (2725): Contradicting a previous statement about trolls never caring about fashion. The reference to The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is not only appropriate because John more closely resembles Toon Link than Link's regular design (especially in sprite mode), but also when taking into account his role as the Hero of Breath.

==> (2729): RETCON WATCH: If you caught this one, you deserve a god damn prize. Arm in the lower right corner of the page, in the distance.

==> (2731): The Green Sun appearing on a large slab in the shape of a captchalogue card fueled fan theories about it actually being captchalogued at some point for an unspecified reason by our heroes. And of course, while at the moment we know nothing of it, the image being used here is the exact same one that could be seen in Bec's random phasings, in his strife with Jade.

John: Empty sylladex.: This is all the crap John picked up when we were dicking around in [S] ACT 4 ==>.

John: Hurry up!: Basically dressing him in exactly her clothes. His shoes seem to have used a rocket component in their creation, although they don't seem to have any rocket features.

==> (2736): Mr. Anderson is probably a Matrix reference.

==> (2740): Among Dave's disguises are Dad's hat, Terezi's sunglasses, and our old chum the Beagle Aegis from Act 1.

Dave: Answer.: Obvious 413 and 612s here. Terezi references the blind prophets again, but as Hussie's commentary has noted, he doesn't even really know what that means either.

==> (2748): That's one of Jade's weird talking fruits! Except recolored green.

Terezi: Return to party.: Reusing art of Vriska walking down the stairs of her hive.

Terezi: Open memo.: Pretty clear-cut reference to SBaHJ #1, here. And a variety of 413s posing as 314s.

Terezi: Accept transfer.: Another preemptive countdown puzzle: Terezi told Dave to wire the money 6 hours and 12 minutes into the past. Kanaya cut off Tavros' legs 6 hours and 12 minutes before the Critical Event. Which means Terezi was talking to Dave from the very end of her Act 5 Act 2 timeline.

==> (2758): There's the 'wide eyes' pose again.

Terezi: Confer with network administrator.: Quick 'Who's this douchebag?'.

Terezi: Observe coolkid.: Dave has a bib made from Maplehoof's hide. The heart on it ends up matching John's spade shirt. For no real reason.

==> (2768): This panel is a callback to a shot of John playing the piano in [S] ACT 5 ACT 2. We can also see that Dave continues to use heart-themed garments.

Terezi: Troll this awesome coolkid.: This is the time Dave was referring to back in Act 4 when one of the trolls thought he was a girl. Also, it turns out that in-comic, Terezi serves as the inspiration for Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.

The other comic though, Cool Dude and Stoner Lou... It's another Team Special Olympics classic that obviously served as a building block for SBaHJ, albeit with a much more aggressively offensive tone. Read it here: https://mrcheeze.github.io/andrewhussie/comic.html?comic=cdasl

If you noticed the Delirious Biznasty pose at the end of the first page there, then I have bonus content for you: if you look at the Game Bro cover to the right of Dave, you can see the original photo that Delirious Biznasty was based on: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/184908151185866752/550868974523514880/1287531809101.jpg

John: Pester Vriska.: This page actually reuses/redraws a shot of Terezi chatting with Karkat while high above her land.

==> (2786): Check out that blurry Gamzee in the back. For a while people would complain that we'd never seen Gamzee in hero mode style art, unlike every other troll. You now suddenly realize that Gamzee's never been drawn in hero mode so far. You also now wonder why anyone gave a shit.

[S] Vriska: Watch street tough maverick with nothing to lose: This flash is really just a barrage of references. There's a view of that Con Air Youtube link that keeps getting used in the story. Then there's the wide-eyed pose again. THEN Vriska is drawn in the same adoring pose Jade made when thinking about furry art. And to top it all of, an echo of Karkat's lovestruck pose at the end of [S] ACT 5 ACT 2, with hearts instead of spades.

Music: "How Do I Live (Bunny Back in the Box Version)" by Michael Guy Bowman, guitar solo by Nick Smalley in Homestuck Vol. 5
Remix of "How Do I Live" by Trisha Yearwood, written by Dianne Warren

Dave: Answer Karkat.: "Fruity rumpus asshole factory" is Karkat's derogatory term for Terezi's Rainbow Rumpus Partytown in Act 5 Act 1.
John and Dave: Respond to memo.: For starters, Karkat drops a small 'insufferable prick' there to refer to Dave. In addition, by saying that the Scourge sisters had gotten each of them killed at least once, he's essentially telling the savvy reader that Dave will get killed at some point. Finally, the highly touted 'TROLL/HUMAN SLOPPY MAKEOUTS' will make a conceptual return later on.

Karkat: Be Past Karkat.: While directly descended from that shot of Dave lying on the ground after getting his ass whooped by Bro, it's more similar to the Tavros version of the callback at this point. In addition, the phrase 'You cannot be Past/Future [character], because in the past/future, Past/Future [character] is ____!" originates here, although it clearly bears relation to the Intermission gag of being confused about which character you are be-ing.

[S] Past Karkat: Wake up.: There's a variety of referential humor and phrasing in this walkaround, the first in this new style. The chest items alone would bankrupt my time. I'll point out the secrets instead, and deal with that load later. Also, keep in mind the story threads at this point. There are two main things at this point: being as vague as possible about the 'rift' and the 'demon' to fuck with fans (who argued endlessly about it maybe being Lord English), and amping up the mystery about what was it that people were seeing in their sleep after the dream moons' destructions (Karkat being scared to go back to sleep, the secret game over screen for sleeping, Future Feferi sleeping with a black 'chat bubble').

If you manage to pull the camera back by playing the flash through an external program, you can find writing just out of  view, claiming 'Resizing = bad aesthetics!'. This is the same as in previous walkarounds.

As Karkat, you can interact with the computer in the top left of the initial room to finish a memo with Kanaya that we've already seen. Travel all the way to the end of his path to find the ectobiology room where the trolls were cloned, and trigger a short scene. Oh, if you open the chest in the northwest corner here, you'll get a closeup of a Fruit Trollups box. But Karkat actually has a secret room as well! If you transportalize back to Karkat's long hallway from here and walk into the first little alcove to the north, you can interact with the wall to trigger a switch. Walking back towards the west from here, you'll find that another of the alcoves has transformed into a path to a secret room with several of Kanaya's dresses, a beehive mainframe, and Horsaroni in it.

As Vriska, travelling to the end of your path involves killing some chess monster (in an artstyle shift that homages Paul Robertson's recognizable pixel stylings) and creating a broken path that looks suspiciously similar to where she kills Tavros in [S] Wake. In her private room, you can interact with the computers to gain access to her secret Nic Cage future stash (while "Nic Cage Romance" plays) and view a short animation (ripped from the flash of her falling in love with Cage) set to "Nic Cage Song".

As Terezi, after completing the shitty puzzle, interacting with the computer at the beginning of the next room will open several doors that lead to previously inaccessible platforms with chests in them. And in the telescope room at the very end, you can become Future Terezi, learn about Derse's destruction, wear a dragon suit, and find that Terezi's wall drawings have changed.

If you walk ALL the way back to the zodiac transportalizer room as Future Terezi, you'll find Nepeta waiting for you! She'll lead you through a secret path  directly to the west of the room to a chest with her drawing tablet and a pile of wands in it. Prompting Terezi to sleep in the wand pile will show a game over screen while "A Tender Moment" plays. Now that you know this path is there, you can actually visit it as any playable character. Nepeta and the chest will be absent, but you can trigger the game over screen with any character you please.

Trickster Mode returns! Press Ctrl-Shift-T (or equivalent in other browsers/operating systems) to trigger a strange animation that plays a few notes of "Totaka's Song", a famous easter egg that Kazumi Totaka has hidden in the many games he's worked on (featuring Karkat doing the 'THIS IS STUPID' pose, a special John sprite based on Vriska's sprite, and several 413s hidden in the jumble of numbers in the background) that takes you to a secret room (the Jidoor Relic shop from Final Fantasy VI). Inside are Ness, Jeff, Paula, and Poo from Earthbound, Gamzee dancing again (his animation is actually a reference to the shopkeeper's animation in Secret of Mana), and access to a variety of songs you can play as background music while you explore. Additionally, the animation for using transportalizers changes to the 'time gate' effect from Chrono Trigger. Inputting the Trickster Mode key combo resets this.

Hussie's thoughts on this walkaround:

"Believe it or not, this was supposed to be an "easy one". It got a little out of hand with feature sprawl, as should be painfully predictable to me by now.

The primary purpose of this idea initially was to create a simple, fun format emulating RPG gameplay, particularly the sort of moments where you explore a village, talk to as many people as you can, and start piecing together clues for the game's story bit by bit. I thought it would be a good way to load up on a lot of cross-interaction between many different characters without resorting to a huge linear dump of extensive pesterlogs. And it was successful in this sense. I just thought it would be easier, involving a few character sprites, a few room tiles, a simple adaptation of Alexis's existing Flash engine, and a whole lot of writing by me (that part still turned out to be true).

But in the end I think it was worth it to go a little extra further with it and come closer to capturing a more immersive feel to playing an RPG like this. Learning about story details in this manner is something so many people are very familiar with. Anyone who's ever even casually played RPGs has spent many hours doing it. And yet it feels strikingly novel to me in this context, encountering a page like this and switching your mindset on how you're being fed information necessary to advance the story. Suddenly the burden is on you to take action and piece the full picture together yourself. It's a little like doing detective work. Which is exactly what it's like exploring a village in an RPG. The various NPCs lurking around town are always alluding to things, rarely being all that explicit. Alluding to some peril in another town which might ring a bell if you've already visited that town, or will ring a bell later when you eventually do. Or talking to a person on one side of town whose story connects with a person on the other side. It's a pretty interesting angle on storytelling, that is to say, having to account for the reader's free will over data intake, which is a complete non-issue outside of interactive media, and one we probably take for granted as a story building method because we're not really thinking of it that way when playing a game. The purpose is to explore and advance, not to be led through narrative as we're accustomed to in other formats. And yet, after fully exploring a town, the end result is similar to having read a coherent story. You proceed armed with details and references which will prepare you for later story events.

And it does seem to be a pretty effective way to paint a portrait of a situation. Even more so when you aren't mining information from flat, monologuing NPCs, but established characters having back and forth conversations. It's probably hard for me to be objective about this since I'm up to my neck in it, but after playing all the way through, I get the feeling that even someone who knew nothing about the story or the characters would have a pretty good sense for what was going on after running through it all. They're aliens, stranded on a meteor, hiding from a demon, discovering another race called humans with their computers, conversing with their past/future selves, each with allusions to a distinct backstory, many characters with clear types of preexisting relationships with each other, and so on. There's really a ton of information conveyed through this, directly and through inference, without any exposition, and all absorbed very rapidly through a universally friendly, accessible format. "

Music:

"Karkat's Theme" in Alterniabound
Remix of "Crustacean" by Toby "Radiation" Fox

"Terezi's Theme" in Alterniabound
Remix of "The Lemonsnout Turnabout" by Toby "Radiation" Fox
Remixes "Theme" by Toby "Radiation" Fox

"Vriska's Theme" in Alterniabound
Remix of "Spider's Claw" by Toby "Radiation" Fox
References "Theme" by Toby "Radiation" Fox

"Spider's Claw" in Alternia

"Nic Cage Romance"

"Nic Cage Song" in Homestuck Vol. 6: Heir Transparent
Samples "Drop It Like It's Hot" by Snoop Dogg
References "Ah! vous dirai-je, maman" by Unknown
References "Nic Cage Romance" by Toby "Radiation" Fox

"A Tender Moment" in Homestuck Vol. 6: Heir Transparent
References "Atomyk Ebonpyre" by Toby "Radiation" Fox

all by Toby "Radiation" Fox

Trickster Mode music:

"ERROR" by Unknown music team member
Remix of "Totaka's Song" by Kazumi Totaka

"Secret ROM" by Toby "Radiation" Fox
Remix of "The Little Sprite" from Secret of Mana
References "Wind Scene" from Chrono Trigger
References "Terra's Theme" from Final Fantasy VI
References "Chrono Trigger" from Chrono Trigger

"Alterniabound" by Toby "Radiation" Fox in Alterniabound
Remix of "Theme" by Toby "Radiation" Fox

"MeGaLoVania" by Toby "Radiation" Fox in Homestuck Vol. 6: Heir Transparent
Remix of "Megalovania" by Toby "Radiation" Fox
References "Spider's Claw" by Toby "Radiation" Fox
References "Sunsetter" by Toby "Radiation" Fox
References "The La2t Frontiier" by Toby "Radiation" Fox

"Boy Skylark (Brief)" by Robert J! Lake in Homestuck Vol. 6: Heir Transparent

"Hero's Growth" by Jeremy "Solatrus" Iamurri

"Phrenic Phever" by Clark "Plazmataz" Powell in Homestuck Vol. 6: Heir Transparent
Remix of "Doctor" by George Buzinkai

"Walk-Stab-Walk (R&E)" by Erik "Jit" Scheele in Homestuck Vol. 6: Heir Transparent
Remix of "Walk-Smash-Walk" by Ray "Sakupen" Pencil

"Horschestra" by Alexander Rossetti in Homestuck Vol. 6: Heir Transparent

Art contributions from Brett Muller, Eyes5, Jessica Allison, M Thomas Harding, Paige Turner, Richard Gung, SaffronScarf, Vivus