Homestuck: This page was changed when Act 6 started. Originally, it only said 'the 13th of April' without specifying the year (even though it's always taken place in 2009). This was presumably done to highlight the different time in which Act 6 takes place. And of course, 413 is the fundamental meme date of Homestuck."

Enter name.: Many lines of humor in Homestuck are recycled (or expanded, if you want to look at it that way) versions of older jokes. There will be many small throwbacks to Hussie's pre-MSPA days as part of 'Team Special Olympics' where he drew a bunch of really stupid crap (his username used to be 'S_O', presumably for 'Special Olympics'). You can enjoy his older stuff here: https://mrcheeze.github.io/andrewhussie/ as well as the Zoosmells in question.

Try again.: I'd love to show you the relevant MSPA Forum threads, but... The forums went down several years ago. They weren't properly archived. You can pick at the remains here: https://mrcheeze.github.io/detritus/mspaforums.html and I'll occassionally link to the relevant threads is available.

I don't want to talk about it.

Examine room.: "Examine room." would become standard command fare when being introduced to a character for the first time.
"Pooplord" of course being an intensely subtle reference to John's fake name from three pages ago. Well, maybe not subtle, but a sign of how jokes are going to get handled around here.

Remove CAKE from MAGIC CHEST.: The Homestuck Beta can be found at http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=5 which featured a slightly different, more vector-based art style. Give it a read, it's extremely short. As you may notice, in the Beta, John is ten years old, instead of thirteen, due to the different start date. The increased shipping potential of a thirteen-year-old ended up becoming CRUCIAL to the Homestuck brand as a whole. Here's what Hussie had to say about the Beta:

"Because I didn't actually know what I was doing.

I was either not aware of the low quality setting which displayed vectors as aliased, or I didn't think it looked that great. I don't remember. I was also not even remotely aware of how much easier it would be, as well as aesthetically preferable, to just import loads of GIF graphics and animate those in Flash.

This speaks volumes about how all of HS has been approached. There I was, preparing to embark on something I knew would last at least a year, planning to do every page in an application I knew practically nothing about. Adjustments were made, as they have been the whole way through.

Launching into HS has been like partaking in an extreme wilderness survival challenge. I parachuted into the middle of the jungle with no equipment except for Picasso's stupid blank-loaded pistol. The beta was me unloading all the useless rounds into an angry tiger on the first night."

John: Quickly retrieve arms from MAGIC CHEST.: "Sylladex" is a portmanteau of 'syllabus' and 'index', "captchalogue" is a portmanteau of the words 'captcha' and 'catalogue'. Hussie holds a computer science degree, and a lot of it ended up vaguely seeping into the story, which of course supposedly revolves around a video game, and more directly into the story's inventory system. Note that as a first-time reader there isn't really any indication of what the 'syllabus' or 'captcha' in those terms mean.

John: Examine contents of chest.: The only one of these objects that is 100% never referenced again are the blood capsules. Yes, even the stunt sword gets a couple more appearances. "Harry Anderson: Wise Guy from the Street to the Screen" is actually a real book, and "Harry Anderson" is actually a real person, who starred in a sitcom called "Night Court" and spent some time as a street magician in his youth. That's him in the photo attacked to the lid of the chest. Chests as containers, as well as the photographs of varying people attacked to the insides of their lids, would become another wholly unimportant Homestuck tradition.

John: Equip fake arms.: You'd think "copasetic" would be the first of Homestuck's many typos, but it's actually an accepted alternate spelling. Here we see more of how Homestuck starts out CAPITALIZING NOUNS, a tendency that is dropped later on, as well as just how much the inventory system was initially conceived as parodying computer stuff.

John: Examine Problem Sleuth Poster.: Read Problem Sleuth. If you're here, you've already read Homestuck. And you're going to miss out on a lot of references otherwise. I mean A LOT. The art used for the print also became the cover of the first PS book.

John: Squawk like an imbecile and shit on your desk.: This fan adventure being of course BIRD WIZARD, remnants of which can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20130131003408/http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?24282-BIRD-WIZARD-THE-FIRST-FAN-ADVENTURE

John: Nail poster to wall. Most of the movies on John's wall end up being related to Homestuck in some way, for various reasons.

John: Examine Con Air poster.: Con Air really was just treated as a huge meme by the entire story. It doesn't foreshadow anything, instead being a trusty well of joke material.

John: Examine Deep Impact poster.: Given the meteor-themed influence of Sburb, it's almost certain that Hussie picked this movie purposefully.

John: Eat cake.: The extremely pixelated 'speech bubble' coming from the computer to indicate and open Pesterchum conversation would recur throughout basically the entire story.

John: Open Pesterchum.: All the kid's internet browsers are named after their respective denizens for some unfathomable reason. Also: the first appearance of ~ATH, as a total joke, ages before it was recycled as an actual thing.

John: Open message.: You'll notice that while Hussie was happy to let readers decide the character's names, their chumhandles were always of his own choosing. However, their significance wasn't conceived until much later. This includes the DNA-themed chumhandle initials (a total coincidence) as well as John breaking away from said theme (also a coincidence). Also:Godhead is an obscure way of saying 'godhood' as well as a reference to Godhead Pickle Inspector from PS, who also wears shades.

Moe was referenced more directly as a one-off gag in PS. Actually a pretty funny comic. Michael Firman was one of Hussie's 'Gangbunch' internet pals, many of whom influenced his works in a variety of somewhat inconsequential ways."

John: Examine games on CD rack.: Homestuck proper's first ever Flash page! Ghostbusters II MMORPG of course becomes a thing much, much later for no real reason. Also shown: Caper Havers, a comic made with longtime collaborator Betelgeuse about a very English, very cute dog detective, and And It Don't Stop, created with also-longtime collaborator Tauhid. The latter especially provides some other inspirations for Homestuck. Both are on the Special Olympics archive.

John: Read COLONEL SASSACRE'S DAUNTING TEXT.: "It could kill a cat if you dropped it." -- and it eventually does. But was that really what Hussie was foreshadowing when he wrote that sentence in 2009??!? Almost certainly not. Hussie often employs what he calls 'retroactive foreshadowing', where he ties a story beat he just came up with with something originally unrelated to make it feel as if it was all planned out. Sometimes he even adds things to later use as foreshadowing if he comes up with something that fits.

John: Set Pesterchum status to "bully".: I don't know why Pesterchum is the 6.0 version. We see a couple other versions of Pesterchum throughout the story. Let's just call it the one number in the entire comic that isn't coopted as a shitty vehicle for fake significance.

John: Allocate hammer to strife specibus.: A lot of these strife specibi show up later in the story, but just as many don't.

John: Read article.: The first of many highly enjoyable divergences from the story proper in lieu of fake texts, usually presented through the comic images instead of as actual text. I believe the picture of the reviewer is from a Ray-Ban ad.

John: Leave room.: "HALLOWED TOMBS" is a reference to a newspost made at the end of Problem Sleuth (barely a month ago from this page), where among other statistics about the comic's one-year run, Hussie noted that there were 0 sacred urns toppled, mystic ruins desecrated, or hallowed tombs defiled. All of these would happen during Homestuck's first year.

John: Examine fireplace.: "Catagorically" is a typo. House or hearth gods existed in many ancient myths, some if which you may know: Hestia from Greek mythology, Frigg from Norse mythology, Kobolds from Germanic mythology and also video games. The Shakespeare quote is from "Timon of Athens". One of the things I don't understand about Hussie is where he gets his quotes from, as he's never expressed an interest in the classic literature he seems to so frequently draw from.

John: Fondly regard cremation.: The command is a reference to Problem Sleuth, where Godhead Pickle Inspector would only respond to commands that were similar enough to "Fondly regard creation." We later find out Nanna's death also involves a meteor obliterating a joke shop.

John: Topple urn.: +1 SACRED URNS TOPPLED

John: Examine 3rd and 4th walls of room.: Both "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon", about giant meteors crashing into Earth, released in the same summer.

John: Check message.: "insufferable prick" later comes back as Dave's wrong name.

John: Read Colonel Sassacre's text.: The border of the page is taken from "Wizardology", a book that Hussie once humorously defiled. It's possible that the use of "octoroon" here inspired the song "Octoroon Rangoon" from Vol. 5?

John: Examine father's desk.: Of course, the peanut allergy would come back much later, and for a completely different character.

[S] John: Play haunting piano refrain.: Our first ever [S] page!

Music: "Showtime (Piano Refrain)" by Kevin Regamey in Homestuck Vol. 1
Remix of ""Showtime (Original Mix)"

Kevin Regamey now runs Power Up Audio. Trivia: the gurgling blocks in ""Celeste"" are named 'Kevins' by the fans because a recording of his voice was used for them.

John: Exit.: Proving that the comic's title is truly irrelevant.

[S] ==>: The meaning of this page is never quite expanded upon, but it abstractly ties in a few themes of Homestuck. Every kid is seemingly associated with a specific classical element, and so are their lands. John's relationship to the wind, first seen here, is more direct than the others. It doesn't really MEAN anything, though. ""The Note Desolation Plays"" is the title of Act 1 in the map page.

RETCON WATCH: A rare in-flash retcon: an arm flying towards the Homestuck text.

Music: Foley by Clark ""Plazmataz"" Powell (unreleased)

Plazmataz has made several independent albums as well as soundtracks for games such as Battle Chasers: Nightwar. Unreleased music tracks can be found on the unofficial "Homestuck Sound Test".

==>: This page, as well as the previous one, are the first instances of the "==>" command. It's essentially a replacement for the "Next." command in Problem Sleuth for when Hussie went more than one page without taking a command, eventually turning into the default title for unnamed pages.

[S] John: Enter.: The book commentary of course referring to the specific printed medium of the product.

Music: "Harlequin" by Mark Hadley in Homestuck Vol. 1
Foley by Clark "Plazmataz" Powell

Mark Hadley is best known as the developer of the indie game Slender: the Eight Pages, as well as being involved in its sequel Slender: The Arrival.

[S] STRIFE!: "AGGRIEVE" and "ABSCOND" would later find other uses in Homestuck, but "ABJURE" kind of fell by the wayside. "AUTO-PASRTY" also became a running gag in the form of 'auto-' actions during Strifes. I also believe this is the first and one of the few times a guardian is referred to as a guardian.

Music: ""Showtime (Original Mix)"" by Malcolm Brown

Showtime would become a recurring musical motif for John.

John: Take the cake!: The quote is actually by Lao Tzu.

John: Admire "Failure to Launch" poster.: The Matthew McConaughey movies didn't really end up affecting Homestuck at all. Weirdly, he now seems to be a pretty respected actor. Oh well.

[S] John: Check Pesterchum.: While Homestuck does seem to include scores of references to various entities in Gnosticism, Jade's handle of "gardenGnostic" simply appears to mean 'knowledgeable about gardening'.

==>: Say goodbye to the fourth wall. If you go to the URL featured in the page (https://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=3) you'll find a placeholder page for the Midnight Crew adventure the Homestuck characters see when they visit the page, known as 'Blood Spade'.

==>: Discrete mathematics and automata are also related to programming and programming concepts.

John: Read Data Structures book.: 'for Assholes' of course being a parody of the 'for Idiots' series of books.