#apparently there cant be plot without someone being a jackass | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

abundantchewtoys · 5 years

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HS Epi: Meat p11 reaction

Is the resolution of the Masterpiece really going to fall in between pages about Jane & Jake's fake date?

Maybe not. Maybe we'll see something from John's perspective first, inside the house juju. Giving himself the retcon powers. Coming to terms about some things. But I suspect he won't be able to contact anyone. At least, it would surprise (and entice!) me if someone contacted him while he's hidden away so remotely in there... Speaking of contact, how did John intend to have read anything inside the juju without his glasses or contacts? You can only spend so much time squinting.

I also wonder what they'll do when they're let out. I mean, they haven't become any better at fighting, and LE has. John won't zap his friends, Vriska and Davepetasprite^2 away to confer in a more secure location, right? Assuming he still has his retcon powers by the end of his stay in the house juju.

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"That’s that, you think. Your glasses are broken forever, and you totally fucked up and underestimated young Lord English. Rose should have known better than to trust this to you alone." Well, I guess having a mental breakdown is one way to pass the time. I'd rather he had some sort of breakthrough instead, though. As for the glasses... Maybe a non-final death will restore them? Or by ascending to his Ultimate Self god tier. Whatever that'd do to his personality...

"Rose, Rose... your smart, amazing friend Rose, you can almost hear her voice now.

> Listen closer, jackass." ... Ah, so Reload Rose and the others can still talk. Their jails neighbour each other after all - they represent the four blocks of the house - but I didn't think it'd be enough for them to confer. Though, I rather think they're limited in what they can do in here, right? Unless... Unless by being in the house juju, they can influence some things inside the plot, still put some things in place so some time loops are fulfilled and stuff is prepared for bringing down LE!

Pretty sure they're barred, narratively, from performing a jail break, though. :P

Ya know, I've talked about the sentiments behind the narrative prompts before, and I just now realized that the kind of intruisive, inflammable language they use are a throwback to Homestuck's narration, since now that we have this POV-type story, the language there in is more shaped towards the person in question.

"You’ve only realized right now that your cell has walls, because it’s awfully bright in here. It’s so white that nothing in the cell is casting a shadow. Looking around, you realize there is no apparent source to all this bright light, making it hard to tell where the floor ends and the walls begin." Oh, I figured it was dark for him, but yeah, the house is white. Maybe the jail cell looks to each as what their idea of being imprisoned in a house-shaped object should be like, and proportions of the space go to match that? Hence why John can't yet tell the floor from the walls, he's got only an inkling of an idea. :P

"JOHN: yeah, i’m here. ROSE: Oh, thank goodness. Everyone’s accounted for then." Hah, John spaced out while the others reconnected. Nice. I'm interested to see what ideas Rose will bring to the table.

So it all comes back to four kids, standing idly in separate rooms, huh. :P

"Are you okay? JOHN: what? ROSE: Are you OKAY?" Okay, either the walls muffle the sound of John is like "this situation does not warrant the use of the word 'okay', rose. 'okay' is definitely not how i would describe us being right now."

"JOHN: i think so. i can barely hear you though.

You can hear a thud from Rose’s corner, like someone slumping against the wall in relief. Well, that’s what you’re doing at least." That's pretty much all she needed to hear right now.

"DAVE: this is kinda dorky to say out loud but i dont DAVE: feel... time" ... They're cut off from all their aspects now, are they? That'd just make them ordinary people. :/ Or maybe it's in reference to time outside of the juju passing way faster, relatively.

"DAVE: thats not just me right you guys feel it too DAVE: or dont JADE: yeah JADE: i mean theres obviously space inside this box but i cant do ANYTHING JADE: its like im blind" ... Okay, so I'm left to wonder. Would the egg sword and Jade's First Guardian powers still be usable? I'm assuming Dave had it out, so even if their sylladexes are inaccessible they might be able to do something.

"The noise outside the juju grows. Something sharp and metallic splinters above and rains down on the top of the chest." That isn't something to do with the pirate party finding the chest in the dreambubbles... So then, what? Did the B2 kids do something with the chest after exiling (excorcising? ... INcorcising?) Caliborn into Lil Cal?

Blaperile has a good point. Do all the soul splices inside Lil Cal experience this in the same way? ... Do all the soul splices in LORD ENGLISH experience this in the same way?? In the sense that the mobster is just a prison they can't escape or influence?

"ROSE: What did my future self say it was we had to do? JOHN: erm... she never rea—" Oh this is going to be so embarrassing.

"The metallic noises rain down harder, drowning out Rose’s attempt at being loud." ... It's that the noises are metallic, otherwise I was almost beginning to think it was more like the white noise. And that would have made me think of the Scratch. That would sure be something though, if the B2 kids initiated a Scratch of Caliborn's session. Actually, what if that was how Alternate Calliope's timeline came to be...

"JOHN: NOW I CAN’T HEAR YOU! JADE: TRY USING LESS WORDS

The length of the silence coming from Rose’s corner communicates just how difficult a task that is for her." Pfffffffff. Incoming character development for Rose: being concise.

"JADE: WHAT????? JOHN: I KNOW IT’S ALL A BIT ABSTRACT, BUT... JADE: NO, I JUST CAN’T HEAR YOU! DAVE: JOHN YOU SUCK AT YELLING JOHN: UGH!" Pfffff, I thought John would be better at yelling coherently, being Karkat's counterpole. ... Blaperile points out the similarity with Karkat sucking at whispering. XD

"Now you understand defeating young Lord English was never supposed to happen. Not the way Adult Rose was implying it would. You surmise the other four teens remaining outside the juju were the ones meant to be tasked with his defeat." It just sucks that John has to come to these admittedly wrong decisions by himself and couldn't have been given more information to work with.

"And judging from the cacophony still emanating from beyond the walls of this house and its confining chest, they are taking the task seriously." Okay, so the B2 kids' fight is still going on. Still unsure what the metal sounds could be about though. Aside from Dirk hacking at the chest with his unbreakable katana.

"But what does this mean for the four of you?" John, don't lose hope, you said it yourself, you'll be unloaded... some time.

"You try to picture what’s going on in the battle outside, but it’s not easy.

> Use your imagination." Of course, the house juju's powers run on imagination! :P No, wait, he's just going to give us his idea of the proceedings of the rest of the Masterpiece. Sadly, he doesn't have any clay at hand. :P

"The coolness of the action in your mind’s eye is belied by the actual sound effects booming all around you, which you can only describe as vaguely stupid." Welp, guess the bar of wedgies is still being cleared only marginally.

"There’s a lot of hysterical screaming, which, if you’re not mistaken, is coming exclusively from the male combatants. ... Well, Dirk IS living and breathing anime. :P

"Almost as if an outrageous bubble of pure Hope were enveloping the stage, is how you would describe it if you didn’t mind sounding ridiculous." Hah, John still doesn't believe in the application of Hope.

"Then you hear... it can’t be. Horses?? No, not simple horses of flesh and bone. These horses are metal, if we’re to believe they’re horses at all." Oh! Right, Arquiusprite summoned those Metalhoofs. Well, that's what I picture they were, Caliborn represented them with metal horse figures... But perhaps he even created robo-centaur butlers and the like. *shivers*

"You figure no one will ever truly know what’s happening out there. You doubt anyone would even be able to handle how incredible the raw, unfiltered account of this teen brawl actually was, so it’s probably for the best." Welp, and we were doing so well just now. :P Eh, it seems the battle unfolded pretty much exactly as foretold, only with some of the more stupid details removed, curtousy of Caliborn's impatience with stupidity. Which in this case might not have been entirely bad. :P

"you overhear Dave from one of the rooms below you, raising his voice to speak to either you or someone else." Right, they are not all on the same level, since it's a house-shaped prison. Uh, but wasn't Dave supposed to be in the part of the house with the extra window? It's been too long, I probably misremember. Oh, wait, yeah, they went through the fourth wall via one of the bottom panes, and it stood for Dave. Never mind.

"Once more you ruefully reflect on these teen versions of your friends, and all the questions they must have for you. For each other. What would you even say to them?" The responsibilities of an adult, John never expected they'd be this hard. He must be growing more appreciative of what his Dad went through with him without even knowing it.

"You’re not even sure you could handle it, if you were Teen John. You’d have too many follow-up questions, which Adult John is in no way prepared to answer." Still, I wouldn't mind a little one-on-one between Johns. A John-on-John, I suppose. In a serious way, nothing from the animes.

"Would you tell them about Terezi..." Oooh, does he suddenly get an idea, thinking of Terezi? Can't say I think they can do anything to contact her from inside here. Hmm, but earlier, Blaperile thought about what the B2 kids could do with the juju chest, whether they might try to get the others out. That's assuming Caliborn didn't captchalogue the thing, though. Still, it would be something if they could defy what's been foretold and unload the house early, maybe load it with a real surprise for LE.

"For some reason her name feels like nails in your heart. Makes sense, you guess, cause there’s a lot of sharp letters in it. She had sharp teeth too, and sharp elbows. Sharp words." Ahhhh, so we get to see what black romance feels like to John. Looking pretty sharp, apparently. Still, her sharp intellect could've come in handy here. It's a good thing chances are good they'll meet again, I'm sure post-victory Terezi has an important role to play yet.

"Terezi Pyrope was a sharp girl, and maybe what these sharp feelings are trying to tell you is you miss her more than you realized." Well, John has already acknowledged his feelings about Roxy, guess it's time for the other side of the two-headed coin now.

"She wouldn’t have let you neglect relationships with certain friends for so long that you missed whole chapters of their lives. She wouldn’t have put up with you moping around with the salamanders for so long. She would have kicked your ass for being such a loser about everything. She would have poked you in the forehead and called you insufferably lame and told you to pick up the damn phone. You would have called her a weirdo and pretended you hated it, and maybe you would even have believed you hated it. But now, sitting here in this little white cubicle, contemplating your regrets, you don’t think you’d have hated it much at all.

Would you tell the teens that?" Oooh. Very good point, actually. Even if John really only knows that version of Terezi from talking to her on two separate days separate by three years, she had a real impact on him. Granted, they also kept contact on WhatsApp as well in Universe C, but during the session was when their interactions bloomed. It'd probably be a stretch for Meat to end with John retconning the post-victory timeline to include Terezi on Earth, with him, right? After they defeat Lord English first, of course. Oh, right, she was there for two years before leaving... somehow. I kind of forgot. Still, five years would've made a difference in where John ended up by the start of the epilogues.

"JOHN: am i... depressed??" ... Well. Well, as far as growing self-awareness goes, this might be a very big development! Yes, it does seem that John has become listless on Earth C. Mostly it seemed to have to do with the absence of his Dad. But maybe he'll have other ideas about that, like his misfortune in matters romantic.

"as it turns out, you are really fucking depressed. You’re just a giant, wet meat sack of self-involved misery, and all that big, wet, meaty ooze drips out your mouth every time you open it. All the time and space in the world isn’t making it better. It’s something you should have been doing for yourself, instead of waiting around for things to get better." Wow, John. I suppose things will get a little harder for him, now that he's realized this about himself, but I hope he'll find a way soon out of this mess. And so, that's what he's been doing on Earth C, just waiting for things to get better. And no-one picked up on it, not even the other people close to him that bordered on depression before? Like Jade? He really alienated himself...

"Well, screw waiting! It’s boring as hell! You are JOHN EGBERT, after all, immortal CREATOR OF WORLDS, the one and only man ever to completely transcend the partitions of CANON ITSELF. You’ve got these powers, remember?" Well THAT's a sudden surge of RESOLVE if I've ever seen one!

"You hold up your hands and form a rectangle with your fingers and reach outside yourself, outside canon, to the place your retcon powers come from. You focus. You strain. You contemplate with all your might a place you can zap to, any place but here." There's no place like home, there's no place like home! :p Kind of wondering if he'll succeed though. He might be cut off from his powers. But if not, canon is his oyster.

"You wait. And wait. And wait and...

Nothing happens.

You slump back down against the wall" Welp! He tried.

"JOHN: THE ONLY WAY OUT OF HERE... JOHN: IS FOR US TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE TO LET US OUT. JOHN: SORRY GUYS. ROSE: OH." Anyone up for a game of "I see I see what you can't see"?

"JOHN: ALSO... JOHN: I THINK I MIGHT HAVE DEPRESSION?" Well, at least they won't have a lack of stuff to be talking, sorry, yelling about. Rose might be partially delighted to pick at the brains of an adult John, in fact.

#homestuck #upd8 #homestuck epilogues #homestuck liveblog #reaction #spoiler alert #john egbert

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