#let me know if i fucked up badly w the alt text as well . i went over it w a screen reader just to check but i am inexperienced in describi

[girlsonic]

short thing abt silver having asthma :] set in 06 so if the characters are a bit odd it's bc nobody in that game acts nromal . happy disability pride i love you

#ask to tag #sth #silver the hedgehog #amy rose #let me know if i fucked up badly w the alt text as well . i went over it w a screen reader just to check but i am inexperienced in describi #g comics #frogart

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ upd8 2020-01-17

Alright, morningblogging yesterday’s 2020-01-17 upd8 to Homestuck^2 let’s go!  Spoiler-free again.  I kinda don’t want even the next chapter names image-spoiled above the cut anymore so I’m going to have to figure out WHAT to put above the cut in these liveblog posts for visual reinforcement... a unique silly icon?  Going back once I’m done with the upd8 and posting something non-spoilery but weird-looking out of context?

Eh, can’t be assed.  Just know that after this I’m going to pony up for the Patreon commentary and skim it for anything plot-useful to y’all (in a separate post).  Let’s get started.

Okay, what’s next:  Any bonuses?  Oh, none!  Phew.  Unless those are coming faster too and just staggered differently, which would mean I gotta overcome my irrational pre-Homestuck-reading anxiety even MORE often.  :T

No Homestuck you don’t GET to ask how my-- ah, right.  :P

(FYI, HS^2 has been good to my emotions so far, quite a balm for the epilogues, so once I START reading I’m usually fine; but after being hurt so badly how could I possibly convince my lizard brain to trust it until it’s right in front of me?  Seriously, just hearing that the upd8 has landed messes me up a bit until I come fix it by reading w/ y’all here.)

Okay, so whose feelings?  As much as I’ve been waiting for Jade, I hope this isn’t about Jade.

> ==>

Ah fuck, we’re finally with the Pursuit Crew.  Bracing myself.  That means we get to see probably sleeping Jade ( :C ), full-swing DaveKat (approving nod), the first canon onscreen look at masculine-mode Roxy (<3), a probably pretty pissed off Kanaya (possibly either the feelings target, the one Saying How Are Your Feelings, or both), and uh... did they drag Callie along?  Or leave her back there with her meta freakout?  Probably left her back there, but... hm.

Let me turn up the brightness on this screen to sear these next pages into my retinas.  (Also, it feels odd to still be using a four-person “==>” for these, although if Jade is still asleep the numbers might fit on both ends... :c )

> ==>

I don’t think Dad is in the spacefaring business, so this is probably one of Jake’s shittier spaceship designs.

> ==>

...well that’s a touch disturbing.  Is that a Jade-occupied bed or are those just pillows?

Oh what the fresh fanfic’y heck is this command.

> i enter.

Okay that’s great.  I got a kick out of that.

JADE [in calliope red]: the prince’s power grows.

--but that’s not.  That explains the narrative command text, it’s alt!callie talking through a still conked-out Jade.  Please let her wake up between speak-throughs, please tell me you’ve learned that trick??  I already know you’re gonna pull an ��oh she was asleep pretty much all of those THREE YEARS OF TRAVEL” thing on me and that’s hard fucking enough to deal with.

KARKAT: JESUS CHRIST!

He’s actually using the full curse correctly, huh?

...These commands.  Guess part of the puzzle is how much alt!Callie is being typically morbid and how much she might actually be wising up enough to get a kick out of this.

> the knight of blood falls.

DAVE: dude can you chill for like even a single fucking second DAVE: also are you ok

Has CallieJade chilled for even a single second this entire trip??  Is he asking just if Karkat’s okay or Jade too???

--yeah I’m overblowing things out of nervousness.  Just wait and see a bit, boots.

Alt!Callie has at least learned to be more of a smartass:

> karkat is characteristically appreciative of the alarm call.

Shirt trade Karkat, nice.  And uh, Jade’s dress sure is a... dress.  Hm.

(Did alt!Callie alchemize adjustments to did she just luck out to have a red-symbol’d Bec belt and accent leggings?  I’d prefer the former, because as much as it would be acceptable within Homestuck proper, using the transition between the epilogues and this new-author’d work to just HAPPEN to give her a fitting outfit without an excuse via providence is kind of lazy.)

KARKAT: OH, PARDON THE FUCK OUT OF ME FOR OVERREACTING A LITTLE WHEN MY GOOD FRIEND "POSSESSED JADE" BUSTS INTO MY RESPITEBLOCK AT 5 AM! KARKAT: NEXT TIME I’LL JUST PULL THE COVERS BACK AND LET HER CLIMB IN! JADE: i am uninterested in that scenario. KARKAT: GREAT! POSSESSED JADE ISN’T EVEN HORNY! HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT?

...please let that mean he’s not used to her being possessed all the time and she wakes up sometimes.  PLEASE.

DAVE: but im pretty sure i locked that door JADE: i unlocked it with my mind. DAVE: fuck KARKAT: FANTASTIC. JADE: the prince’s powers are growing, but so are mine.

Dave, I’m pretty sure regular-ass no-Green-Sun Space powers can flip a few lock tumblers too.  (--though, I guess from context this was a Jakeship technolock.  Confirmation on the ship’s bad taste in design.  --I think I’m foggily remembering it said in the Epilogues that they took one of Jake’s ships just like Dirk did, too... man, being depressed so much by the Epilogues sure took a lot out of my ability to recall them decently.)

KARKAT: LIKE YOU DON’T FLOAT AROUND LIKE A CREEPY PIECE OF SHIT ALL DAY AS IT IS?

God DAMN IT she’s been asleep and possessed the whole fucking time.

> sleep is abandoned, coffee sought.

More obligatory DaveKat being cute, somehow only emphasized by the embarrassing glowing-with-power observer who doesn’t really get any of it.

Ah, here we go:

> the rogue is also awake.

Oh huh.  Cool!

Hero outfit, understated...  her his choice of heart-shades color-coded to stand out from Dave more to avoid further mistaken identity cases.  Works well!  (Holy shit I only JUST remembered at the end to go back and correctly gender Roxy as him, that was close. I blame the epilogues for a lack of visual reinforcement; I shouldn’t have as much trouble soon enough.  Seriously, I don’t remember ANYTHING without visual reinforcement, I think that’s why I remember so much of Homestuck proper so clearly.)

KARKAT: OH SHIT, THERE SHE IS! I DIDN’T EVEN HEAR HER FOLLOW US! ROXY: sometimes a girls just got to get her drift on i guess ROXY: it be like that

ilu roxy.

I missed Roxy so much, you guys.  I need more of him remarking on all this crazy shit if I’m gonna stay sane though all this.  (And I need more of him and AWAKE JADE kicking ass independently or together if I’m going to continue to believe there’s justice in the world.)

> ==>

We rarely saw Rose drinking anything but the rare coffee in canon, but I think Kanaya would have gotten her plenty into tea, yes.  Or at the very least, wanting the aesthetic of drinking tea with Kanaya would have gotten Rose into tea even if it never crossed Kanaya’s mind to try the stuff.

ROXY: well i mean who knows what she drinks now ROXY: dirk probs tossed the coffee machine out the space window right away ROXY: dude doesnt "believe" in "substances" > the prince is contemplated for a moment in silence.

FUCK, Dirk can see the narrative all the way out here???  No wonder alt!Callie’s forced to have possession turned on 24/7.  That’s fucking disappointing.  How the hell are we going to get any proper Jade time with THAT hanging over our heads?  She’d only be able to do anything when Dirk’s knocked out, and maybe not even THEN!

I was virtually promised more of actual non-asleep Jade getting shit done in HS^2.  Now there’s an even longer wait on it than I expected.  This sucks.

(EDIT: BOY did I misread that link line. Thinking “is contemplated” meant is sitting contemplating, when it meant "is being contemplated by everyone here". That was dumb of me.)

*clicks that next link*

Oh my goodness, Roxy joined the Bird Hair Crew.  It makes him look like a fucking asshole but I kind of love it.

KARKAT: IS THERE MILK?

I can’t believe Karkat is okay with drinking milk.  --yes, culturally Trolls are more comfortable with animal excretions than we are, but you would’ve thought years of railing against Equius would have purged any tolerance the idea of milk from his psyche.

I guess Dave introduced him to cereal, and it was all over from there.

DAVE: this is more like a castle DAVE: a castle of idk DAVE: twenty something ennui

Sounds like a relatable mood.  Especially considering Dirk probably decided to conquer reality out of almost nothing but twenty-something ennui.

Alright.  You aren’t going to turn Kanaya into an alcoholic or anything on us are you?

> the knight of time seeks a sylph...

--this is the shittiest shipboard starship aesthetic.

> ...and finds her, momentarily.

WOW that looks fucking depressed.  :(

> ==>

...okay you know what?  Never mind.  That outfit has wrapped straight back around into Trying Too Hard and is now hilarious.

DAVE: you ever feel like our whole lives are eventually gonna end up like this DAVE: just blasting through space on a sweeps long journey to ""somewhere"" chasing after or running from some vague enemy thats sometimes a god modded pet dog and sometimes your dad DAVE: without the faintest fucking idea of whats going to happen when we get there DAVE: thats a little specific but you know what i mean

Why do you think the epilogues upset us so much?  We thought we’d won free of that bullshit.

> ==>

Oh jesus christ that’s the most depressingly sad I’ve ever seen Kanaya drawn.  :C

--Karkat got you to watch Serendipity?  That’s amazing, Dave.

KANAYA: You Arent Reminding Me Of Her As I Rarely Think Of Anything Else KANAYA: I Close My Eyes And I See Her KANAYA: I Keep Them Open And I See Her

Fuck.

Y’know how little showing these two in love and actually HAPPY together we’ve seen in this entire comic and its subworks?  Despite them having spent at least a few happy years together we only saw in tiny screenclips?  And how Candy alluded super hard that they most likely couldn’t get that in this real timeline where shit’s going down?

Seriously, FUCK.  You could at least pretend to give us some hope, here.

Oh no, don’t ask for the nursery story, Dave.  Unless it turns out to be a funny one or a Rose twist on an old story or something.  Which it probably is, I should stop worrying.

> ==>

KANAYA: Oh Its A Wriggler Story About A Young Prince And The Beloved Flower He Loved And Lost DAVE: flower DAVE: like a plant KANAYA: Its A Fairytale Dave DAVE: right KANAYA: A Singular Wild Rose He Failed To Cherish When He Had Her KANAYA: And His Journey Of Discovering What She Meant To Him All Along KANAYA: Culminating In A New Quest To Find Her And Win Her Back

Dirk you PIECE OF SHIT did you rewrite the narrative of the fucking STORIES SHE TOLD CHILDREN?!??  Does the fact that alt!Callie is only in the present mean he can rewrite ANY past event we didn’t literally SEE???  FUCK you.  Seriously fuck all of this.

Please tell me she was kidding just then, or realizes there’s fucking something wrong with what she’s saying and getting angry or.

(EDIT: shoutyourporpoise replied: "Hey, idk If you picked up on this, but the 'nursery story' Rose told to the wigglers is just The Little Prince, which is maybe a BIT early for them to read, but I don't think that's a case of Dirk changing the narrative; its just Rose being Too Adult as usual." Oh, damn, I didn't even CATCH that it was that story. That makes all of this a lot more forgivable, even if pretty unforgivably leaning into the fiction that Dirk used to brainwash and kidnap her. Maybe that's exactly why it worked -- fiction, a story so blazed into the public consciousness? Hm. Thanks, shoutyourporpoise.)

KANAYA: But In A Way I Feel As If It Is the Greater Universe Trying To Tell Me Something

Mother fuck I’m even going to have to see our protagonists warped by Dirk when they’re ostensibly FULLY SHIELDED aren’t I.  There’s only so much of that I would be able to take, you know.

KANAYA: It May Simply Stem From My Longing To See Her Again And How Much Is Indicative Of Something More Sinister KANAYA: She Is A Goddess Of Light And The Only Of Her Kind We Know Is Alive After All KANAYA: Maybe Shes Wrested Dominion Of The Entire Concept In All Its Appearances Within This Frame Of Reference

Hm.  Well, it being a product of Rose’s ascension instead of Dirk’s is possibly a more charitable take, with Ultimate Rose projecting the delusion enforced on her backward, visible to past Rose’s Sight when she isn’t paying attention and thus paving the way for Dirk to paradoxically exploit that “ideal” as something Lighty and Important and “Perfect”.  I still don’t fucking like it though.

> ==>

DAVE: sorry i know you say you got your badass monster powers but kanaya you look tired as hell DAVE: not that im tryna psyche you or whatever but youre waxing poetic in the dark which i guess is maybe on brand but still

Yyyep.

DAVE: unless terezi is lurking in the vents somewhere and now that i bring that up its actually not out of the question so im kind of gonna be thinking about that one for a while

Pffff.

DAVE: youre the only person i know whos still basically the same as when i met you

--Which is kind of going to have to change, right?  She’s got some other cosmic purpose ready to change her a little more than she changed pre-human-troll-meetup, you’d think.

> ==>

Cute as hell.

> ==>

KANAYA: How Are Your Feelings

There’s the title drop.  I’d think Dave’s doing pretty well, considering?  Still fucked over by Dirk betraying and tricking Rose away who he’s been close with all his life, but.

> ==>

DAVE: except sometimes your best friend disappears and your other best friend goes into a ghost coma and your third best friend fucks off to space with your dad DAVE: the dude youve spent the last 7 years convincing yourself isnt an egomaniacal anime villain DAVE: and who isnt actually lying in wait to completely decimate your life and your emotions and shit

Ah... yeah.  A little worse than my casual list, huh?  Forgot that Jade vanishing into a possession-coma for THREE FUCKING YEARS is going to be hard on people inside the comic too, fuck.

DAVE: maybe it was naive to think that a bunch of twenty something trauma victims could run a society

I was honestly surprised they TRIED to run society at all.  Jasp even just highlighted a big reason why not in the bonuses.

DAVE: cool how earth c existed for centuries then we show up and manage to ruin society in seven fucking years

:(

Well, the trolls got THEIR lesson on why they didn’t deserve to rule over their new universe like gods; I guess some of y’all needed that lesson too?

DAVE: every serious conversation i have inevitably falls apart into riffing on a casual acquaintances ass

True.

Dammit, Dave didn’t feel like he could just be Some Guy even on Earth C.  :(

> ==>

...don’t think I’ve forgotten that nursery story, though.  I don’t want to think that it was something that ACTUALLY past happened, especially not without manipulation.  Like maybe past Rose was foreseeing the false purpose that Dirk wrote for her or the like, a cooperative misunderstanding between the two instead of Dirk or Rose literally reaching back in time.

> meanwhile...

KARKAT: WAIT, WHY THE FUCK AM I EVEN ASKING? HE’S OBVIOUSLY NOT FINE. KARKAT: ARE ANY OF US? ARE YOU? ROXY: not rly KARKAT: EXACTLY.

:(

--Oh right.  I remember that Callie and Roxy were going reasonably steady in Meat even though it was only alluded to, she didn’t freak out and stay awol or what have you.  That’s good to remember.  But it means Roxy deliberately left her behind to go on this dangerous quest, for years.  :C

KARKAT: KANAYA BARELY EVEN TALKS, CALLIOPE WON’T LEAVE THEIR CABIN, JADE JUST FLOATS AROUND LIKE A CREEPY BALLOON THAT’S MOSTLY MADE OF HAIR.

Oh, SHIT.  I should have read one line further.  They DID bring her.  Alt!Callie being here too must really FUCK with her.  ...maybe she can actually learn to accept that alternate way her life might’ve played out, though?

KARKAT: THE REALLY FUCKED UP THING IS I MIGHT BE THE MOST OKAY OUT OF ALL OF US, WHICH IS HOW YOU KNOW SHIT HAS REALLY GONE GLOBES UP.

Quite true.

ROXY: ur kinda an intense dude anybody ever tell u that KARKAT: NO.

Pff.

> ==>

KARKAT: AGAINST PRETTY MUCH ALL ODDS, AND DESPITE ME NOT DESERVING ANY OF IT, I ENDED UP GETTING PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING I WANTED. KARKAT: OVER AND OVER AGAIN. KARKAT: SOMETIMES IT ALMOST FEELS LIKE WHATEVER SLATHERING MONSTROSITY OF A COSMIC HELLBEAST THAT PUT ALL THIS SHIT INTO MOTION...ACTUALLY LIKES ME?

Well, if you want to blame Lord English for instance... we never saw Caliborn and Karkat interact much, but the parallels between the two were drawn so severely that Caliborn was basically the idealized, multiverse-threatening Ultimate Kismesis that he’d always dreamed of.  And operated against him without him even ever quite realizing it.

If a level of “respect” went from Caliborn to Karkat, too, from his Lord-Englishy vision nigh-omnipresent, then this outcome isn’t very surprising at all.

> ==>

(I don’t quite feel I get why Roxy shifted to this exasperated-Dave expression, but I get logically that he’d been waiting for Karkat to make a breakfast choice... Homestuck proper rarely pulled a “last line said corresponds to next-panel’s expression” without either leaving the conversation blank or having the NEXT lines of the conversation reinforce it, to prevent this inelegant misunderstanding.  Andrew was really damned talented in getting his point across visually, in that regard.  Just like, that careful visual intent delivery.)

Alright, I guess that’s it for this short upd8!  Meeting the pursuit crew was both more and less difficult than I expected.  Hopefully I get desensitized a bit as the characters continue to feel semi-almost-sorta-fine.

I have NO idea how this group is gonna work as a proper crew when we get to whatever weird other-players’ session this shit is going down in, though.

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #upd8 #bladekindeyewear #blastyoboots #spoiler #spoilers #shoutyourporpoise