The Artifice of Homestucking

sesquipunzel reads homestuck

[tetrafelino]

I'm noticing some interesting choices with regards to pronouns in Laura Pohl's translation of All Systems Red. See, in Portuguese we don't have object pronouns like "it/its" and neutral neopronouns like "elu/delu" are considered more analogous to the English "they/them", so gendering Murderbot the way that it is gendered in the original was always going to be tricky. There's also the other difficulty that adjectives are gendered in Portuguese, so whenever Murderbot describes itself or it's emotional state or anything, necessarily it was going to gender itself grammatically in some way. What this translation does at first is that the Murderbot's internal dialogue it genders itself in the masculine which I assumed to be just sort of defaulting Murderbot to be a masculine character, but in reflection of a different detail, I think it's just defaulting to this formal almost archaic notion of the masculine as neutral. Now, the detail that made me rethink this is this line that I just came upon of Dr Mensah's:

"UniSeg, preciso que você fique parada aí até eu chegar."

[SecUnit, I need you to stay still (female form) until I arrive]

The reason that Mensah is referring to Murderbot in the feminine in this case is that it's referring to it as a security unit, right, and the word Unidade, Unit, in Portuguese, is a feminine word. So I just went back now and I found one other previous instance in which characters refer to Murderbot in the third person and, Ratthi, he calls Murderbot by masculine pronouns but that's when it's being referred to as a robô, robot, which in Portuguese is a masculine word. So I guess the way that Pohl found to express Murderbot's object pronouns is by just using whatever pronouns are in agreement with the word being used to describe it. Which to be fair makes a lot of sense for treating objects in Portuguese. If you call something a cadeira, chair, you're going to refer to it with feminine pronouns, but if you call the exact same object a sofá, sofa, you will be using the masculine pronouns.

[tetrafelino]

okay I just realized the reason Murderbot refers to itself with masculine pronouns in its internal dialogue all the time is because it's referring to itself as a robô assasino, murderer robot, which is masculine okay this is kind of genius actually

[tetrafelino]

okay okay this is so cool actually literally the next page and Murderbot is talking about other SecUnits right and it says this

"Elas não eram os robôs-assassinos mais astutos, (...)"

[They (feminine plural) weren't the (masculine plural) most astute murder robots, (...)]

...feminine pronouns for Unidades de Segurança, SecUnits, and masculine pronouns for robôs-assassinos, murder robots...

so yeah it's it's literally exactly as I understood it we are simply using our own grammatical gender rules for objects... it's so cool

[onlybylaura]

hey, translator here! (: this was absolutely done on purpose. gendering Murderbot would always be a problem, so I, the copyeditors and the brazilian editors worked together to make sure that bots/constructs could be referred with both masculine/feminine pronouns, sometimes even in the same paragraph. same goes for ART in the second novella, who's also an It in english, but varies between nave (ship, femine) and transporte (transporte, masculine). it's an important detail and i'm happy it was noticed!

[allthingslinguistic]

I read this post first like a month or two ago and it absolutely rewired how I thought about gender pronouns in French so thank you for that brazilian translator/editors.

That's not what the French translation of Murderbot does though, it uses "iel" which, while the most common gender-neutral neopronoun used by nonbinary French speakers I know, is also exclusively used by people. Like, a chair, table, etc can't be "iel", it has to be "il/elle". So "iel" preserves the gender-neutrality, but it's much less dehumanizing than "it" in English, something that I think the Portuguese solution does a particularly good job at.

The Japanese one is still really good and more people need to appreciate it:

In the Japanese translation of the books, Murderbot uses the genderless neopronoun 弊機 (heiki), which means through its characters "both “bad/evil robot” and “this second-rate, humble company machine"." It's also a homophone for 兵器 (heiki), meaning "weapon." The Japanese translator is Naoya Nakahara, and her translation of the first four Murderbot novellas won a translation award in Japan in 2021. 

(From this long Reddit thread comparing Murderbot translations.)

[pistachi0n-deactivated20170826]

Sometimes when I go hundreds pages deep into people’s Tumblr archives, I find really funny posts and I weigh the pros and cons of liking/reblogging them.

Pros: I’ll have access to them later because they’re fucking hilarious

Cons: They might think I’m creepy. Despite the fact that it’s public and on the Internet, it is not socially acceptable to let anyone know the extent that you creeped their archives.

[taymonbeal]

I hereby extend blanket permission for anyone to creep on my archive, and to like and reblog posts from it if they want to. It’s really quite flattering.

[brennacedria]

“it is not socially acceptable”

Wrong. It is not only acceptable but expected here. Adhere to whatever “etiquette” you will on other sites. Share and be shared here.

[alarajrogers]

Yeah, this isn’t a Tumblr thing. Everyone here loves it when they wake up to 97 notifications and they’re all likes and reblogs from the same person of shit you posted five years ago.

[awesomebutunpractical]

I love it when someone is obviously going through a specific tag of mine.

[nights-at-crystarium]

User that exhibits the actively curious, reblog-spamming, tag-digging behavior is an endangered species that must be preserved at all costs. No seriously I view this kinda stuff as a big, massive, yuuuuuge compliment. Please don’t let this culture die.

[red-swimmerz-deactivated2021082]

Hey guys! :) I just want you all to remember that SOCIAL DISTANCING is IMPORTANT in order to minimize the contraction of COVID-19. :) So make sure to STAY in your HOMES. :) Even if you are at a YOUNG AGE and have NO PRIOR HEALTH ISSUES, it’s still important to be MINDFUL of those who are of OLDER AGE and have HEALTH ISSUES that could potentially INTERFERE with their RECOVERY if they contract the CORONAVIRUS. :) So as a SERVICE to your COMMUNITY, it’s important to remain ENCLOSED in your HOME. :) STUCK, if you will. :) Now go do something FUN from the CONFINES of your HOUSE. :) Perhaps play some VIDEO GAMES with your ONLINE FRIENDS? :) :) :)

[calware]

i’m bringing this back because i don’t think enough of you were forced to look at this

[calware]

[literature-license-please-deact]

Jesus Christ you tumblr users will start screaming over the smallest things. Distance, dickheads. Don’t be selfish.

[calware]

oh you sweet summer child, that is not why they’re mad

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (411-420)

Pleased to meet you Hope you guess my name, oh yeah Ah, what's puzzling you Is the nature of my game, oh yeah

Page 411 - FINE. NOW WHAT

411.  Dave is pestering John. Not the Dave who just picked up his phone in his bedroom, but the Dave who is already in the living room trying to avoid his ninja brother. (A fine and early intro to dealing with Dave at multiple places on the timeline, I guess.) But how could John possibly think something is amiss in his bedroom? Aside from murdering a monster that he didn't think existed, splattering oily gunk everywhere, bursting the box that the bunny can no longer inhabit, leaving broken pieces of hammer and harlequin everywhere… is it that his bedroom door is back on its hinges?

412-413.  And back to Rose again. Every rose has its whiplash made of thorns, I guess… and this one knows how to run a generator, too; the fumes go outside, the power goes inside.

414.  Apologies to dear Jaspers — whose postmortem treatment by MOM was indeed ghoulishly mocking. Serious ew.  

415.  Laptop extractage, predictable sylladex fallout that Rose barely even notices, and that lab's wifi signal is apparently locked in cos she has no trouble getting connected right back up to John — thankfully their stories are still in sync, time-wise, so she sees John just as we left him a few pages ago.  (Yknow, assuming they've been in sync at all, time-wise, since John got transported to this place.)  And Dave pesters her like ceaselessly turning clockwork.

416.  "THE DOOR, JOHN. LOOK AT THE DOOR." Hey, I was right, about something other than captchananigans!  It could be a hopeful sign — fixing broken household items is a DAD-like activity, isn't it?

417.  I even got my hopes up for a second when the bucket fell — a classic prank is an incredibly DAD-like activity, too. But the HOO-HOO (which I'm suddenly hearing as the backing vocals for "Sympathy for the Devil") and the prank-o-meter thingie make it look more like Nannasprite's work.

418.  Yep, there she is, in all her bucktoothed, out-of-tune-carnival glory. Just hovering there waiting for applause or something. The question is, can Rose see her? Did we ever get an indication whether she could see the Harmesprite after it was prototyped?

419.  Rose is supposed to pester John, but Dave (living-room Dave, that is) gets to her first and, agh, lots o' text. Dave's working on getting the beta to save her, only says 'that's a relief' ironically on learning she's now closer to the fire, and babbles a lot about how creepy puppets actually are (don't tell John), for someone in the middle of an apocalypse. And John isn't answering her, but she suspects "he is preoccupied with the fact that he just had a bucket of water dumped on his head by the ghost of his dead grandmother, who also happens to be dressed like a clown."  So I guess that answers that.

Dave has no idea what to take seriously from them anymore.

420.  Nanna communicates through a....Spritelog? Well, John's internet has to be connected to something strange to be functioning at all, but...weirder and weirder.

She apparently has her memories from life, and claims to be here to help: more specifically, she claims to have "come back to help you," which indicates some intent on her part, rather than the happenstance of the sprite getting prototyped with her ashes. Is she putting her own interpretation on why she's here, or was that Happening less Stance than it appeared?

And she calls this place The Medium. Which could have something to do with middle, midline, median. Or could have something to do with spiritualism — we're talking to a ghost after all. One or the other. Maybe both. 

I started to say it's not to be confused with The Medium Place on The Good Place TV show, which post-dates Homestuck by several years...but that Medium Place is halfway between Heaven and Hell, and the only thing I have to go on about John's locale outside of this house and promontory is the halves of the kernel going different directions: light side up, dark side down. Scant clues, but suggestive of heaven and hell, at least, so who knows?

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (405-410)

Disappointment is a feather in your cap You want the truth Not when it's unplanned

Page 405 - NOW EXULT. VICTORY, SPOILS ARE YOURS.

405.  Vagabond is fierce warrior, all about fight and spoils. John is happy camper, delighted by...ladder title and...boondollars and...cache limit and….gel viscosity? Okee dokee with the new SBURB lingo.

406.  New types of grist? New types of headaches.

407.  So the imp had Bunnykind as its strife specibus? So all my speculations about using it as a hostage instead of a weapon were pointless?  Well, at least John has his Bunny back. (And the connecty part of my brain says when is a Bunnykind like a Hammerkind, and the answer is only at Eastertime. Sorry.)

408.  Only it's not Hammertime any more, it's Handlekind?  O, cos the sledgehammer broke?  And yay, strife portfolio, for all your strifing needs. Hope you’ll eventually be more diversified than this, boyo.

409.  Shenanidex: Both his hammers lost their heads, because apparently forced data validation is a thing.  Sledgehandle in, harley out. 

410.  And...repairing the sledgehammer repairs the specibus and spits out the other hammer handle. Sigh.  And if he tries to pick up Smallhandle and Smallhammerhead to repair them, he’ll lose something else useful in his captchalogue. Poor John. Poor us.

[sesquipunzel]

sorry for the mini pause

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks in real life, but I also shot myself in the foot by getting halfway through the Musings I had gathered, and promising a Part 2. Picking up my train of thought again wasn’t as simple as just continuing to react page by page, and combined with all the other schtuff in my life, I kept throwing my hands up in stressful wtfery, and putting off getting back to working on the blog at all.

However, real life is settling down again -- different, but no longer in chaotic transition -- and I’ve decided to get back to reacting and will finish/polish my half-written Rose & Dave thoughts when the Muse and the Spoons are in alignment. So look for daily reaction posts to resume tomorrow!

[sesquipunzel]

I’m sorry I sometimes forget to check whether I’m on my main or Homestuck blog when I’m browsing and reblogging stuff -- I’m so used to only having one blog that I’m not in the habit of looking. So apologies for the occasional random glimpses you get into my other brains before I realize and transfer/delete the reblogs from here.

(My main blog at “shinychimera” is mostly used for sharing stuff with a handful of longtime friends who share my fandom-y interests, and is thus a trash heap of untagged multifandom random play, with a few pinches of interesting science, social awareness, cute animals, silliness and smut, with very little original content from me. I have no objection to anyone here following me there if you  detect shared interests beyond Homestuck, or wanna chat -- just giving fair warning that the blog is essentially the version of me lying around in my pajamas eating junk food, not the version actually trying to achieve things in other areas of my life. Cheers!)  

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (A)musings, part 1

K, that was fun, but nao onto longer and meatier stuff, methinkies.

Tryin' to keep movin' forward with the narrative, especially after a couple of days off, but my meandering brainstorms have watered a lot of Supposies that aren't really fitting in to the page-by-page commentary, so if y'all don't mind I'm gonna kick back in my lawn chair and excogitate on the Matter of Terra Devastata for a bit, see if I can slowly lure in some these wild skittish thoughts.

(It’s on my lawn, I can sit on it, it’s a lawn chair.)

What do I think of the kids so far?

I'm probably overusing the word "adorable" — they are adorable in the literal sense, of being someone I can adore even on brief acquaintance, but the word has a whole baggage cart of connotations: of young childhood innocence; of being patronized; of being called adorable not just despite what you don't know, but often because of it. Maybe I even mean it that way to a small degree [omg pretending to be an adult was never supposed to lead me to that!!!] — these kids are so much more complex than young children, with rich inner lives and emerging strengths and passionate interests and psychological disadvantages based on their upbringing, and… they are still kids. Impulsive, dramatic, imaginative, dismissive, earnest, self-absorbed, ambitious, pretentious, sarcastic, short-attention span kids, just as they're supposed to be at that age. Capable of much, and still ignorant of much, but they are waking to the alarm clock of sudden challenges, and finding that they are strong. Lacking experience and perspective does not hamper their good hearts or their ability to apply skills learned in play to situations of deadly import.

I identify with them, I empathize with them, and I admit I do find it adorable to watch them put foot in mouth (or cake in yard, or car in chasm) because of what they do not know. If that's a tad patronizing, then perhaps it's tempered by my eagerness to watch them grow and learn and master. I want to watch these uncertain, easily embarrassed saplings begin to add layers of experience to their trunks, to send roots seeking deep after wisdom, to spread branches in new directions, to fill up time and space with the leaves of new skills...without ever losing hold of the place of their birth, or the immutable central shape of their first stretch into sunlight, or the consistent colors of their snarky wits and whimsies.

What do I think of John?

John seems very straightforward to me, the happiest and most normal of the kids I've met so far — as our first gateway and gauge of just how weird this universe is, it's important that he himself be fairly easy to understand. "Most normal" doesn't exactly mean normal, of course — he still has geekish enthusiasms that aren't average for a young teen (so he's easy for an outsider like me to identify with), but he seems to accept who he is, in the context we're given. At the school he theoretically attends he might present himself differently, but online he's very comfortable with his friends knowing his bizarre movie obsessions and his attempts at programming and so on. John's relationship with his dad is odd but loving (I'll get to that more in a bit), and he doesn't seem to have any big strains in his life or worries for the future beyond avoiding a pie to the face and clumsiness with his sylladex.

John fundamentally believes that with practice he can get better at things. Is he good at programming? No. Does he admit this? Freely — he doesn't pretend to be a master of it like Dave does with his mixing and rapping. Does being bad at it bother him? Only in the sense of being exasperated at himself for not putting enough work into it. But his tinkering with it is play — it's self-motivated and not on a class schedule or deadline; when he tinkers it's because he wants to learn it, wants to get better at it. Of course it's easy to get distracted by things like playing video games, that are more channeled and therefore less frustrating and more rewarding, in the short term. But there are multiple programming language books on John's shelf, and multiple experiments on his desktop — he keeps coming back to it. Maybe he's attracted to the logic and the puzzle of it, or the open-endedness of it, or maybe even by the frustration of it because it's solvable but not easy, so when he finally gets it right he gains proof that he actually has gotten better at things, and gains experience and confidence at the same time.

I also mentioned before that I think Dave likes John because he is both straightforward and happy; I think Rose is probably similar. John is not particularly trying to be anything — he is not calculating how to be cool, he is not trying to impress with his vocabulary and education, he is not trying to "grow up" in his father's or anyone else's eyes. By contrast, John is trying to do things — to enjoy himself with games and movies, to learn magic tricks, to study programming and data structures, to make his friends laugh, to evade his father's pranks or outprank him in return. Of course I'm not saying that he's anything close to perfect or consistent about this, or that he has any sort of plan to be this way; he gets embarrassed about things, he wants to be liked, sometimes wishes he was cool...and he's more or less bumbling his way through my list of the Things He Do, without pouring deep energy into any one of them. But he has a baseline sense of security that the other two seem to lack, and therefore doesn't have a perpetual haunting need to prove himself, to earn attention or gratitude or love. I think Dave and Rose both gravitate to that sense of security, and to his unhindered enjoyment of things that they feel the need to act detached or defensive about.

Up next...attempting to lure feral thoughts about Dave, Rose, and the kids’ guardians into my pen.

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (401-404)

“Silflay hraka, u embleer rah!” — John Egbert, channeling Nic Cage.

401-404 - YOU SAID PUT THE BUNNY BACK IN THE BOX!!!!!!

Yeah! Why couldn't you just do that?

Oh. That’s why.

[sesquipunzel]

          same energy?

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (394-400)

It’s been a long week, and I feel a little chewed, but I’m back at the keyboard, and in a weird mood.

I only wanted to see you Underneath the purple rain

Now that it's raining more than ever Know that we still have each other You can stand under my umbrella

394 - Rose: Exit.

394.  (Firstly, if I lived on top of a river, I would absolutely have an underground generator taking advantage of it.) So the transformer was struck by lightning while Rose was trying to play SBURB….that's almost as suspiciously coincidental as the RAMBUNCTIOUS CROW. Y's'pose the spooky lab next door coulda had anything to do with it? 

And we're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Maus(oleum). 

395-396.  Predicted umbrella fail. Sigh. But gather up the sog (except for the W clinging to the transformer) and keep on trekking.

397.  Quoth the raven(-black vagabond), GET UP JOHN, THIS IS NO TIME FOR SLUMBER. Ooo, a lil game! After speckelating that the Imp wasn't really attacking John, I feel bad for smacking it with the space bar, I mean sledgehammer handle. 

Mean face or no, it still seems reluctant until its health drops low enough...but it finally does counterattack, knocking John on his ass, where he looks like a wailing toddler as the Bunny is brandished in his face some more. John's health does drop but it still looks like "the Bunny gets it" more than he does.

398-399. Okay, that was a quick John interlude; back to Rose draggling toward her goal, come hell or high water. Literally, in this case.

400.  Okay, that was a quick Rose interlude, back to John fighting the Shale Imp.  Or me fighting the Shale Imp. 

I guess John didn't need the Assholes book — he's been practicing the weaponization of his SYLLADEX all along!  Surprisingly competent pew-pewing, my boy, with a little bit of stylish nyoom for good measure! And you managed to hold onto the PDA and your other more-or-less useful items too. Not to mention acquiring a bunch of Build Grist and….Shale? Let's hope that's useful for something in this game when (if?) Rose gets back to you.

All of which is to say...I transitioned damn quick from looking at the Imp as a character in a story (with potentially complex motivations that might belie its frightful features) to looking at it as a generic game opponent (with no motivations at all; just an obstacle to overcome).

I mean, attacking it was the only way forward, for me as reader — I could have pacifically gone on to the next page but then I'd have missed some of the story. So instead I gave up the open mind I try to keep about characters/NPCs I know nothing about, and ended the fight pleased to have acquired more grist, and smiling right along with John.

I'm a monstah!

And now that John and I know there are resources to be gained, which may be important to being able to continue using the game as a tool to escape his predicament and/or save his friends… attacking the next Imp will be even easier.

Yknow, I grinds my grinds with the best of 'em, without overthinking the sillyphosical implications of the mindless killing sprees of all my avatar-babies and murder-hoboes. But occasionally I look at what I'm doing and…

Sorry, Mom!

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (391-393)

You're a mean one, Mr. Grinch, you really are a heel You're as cuddly as a cactus, you're as charming as an eel Mr. Grinch — you're a bad banana with a greasy black peel!

Page 391 - JOHN TURN AROUND!!!!!

391.  Who the hell bought this book for John to learn from? Dad? Dave? John himself? Yeesh. It's not even telling us anything John hasn't already learned by accident. 

John really wants to believe that there's no such thing as monsters; Dave told him so and his brain latched on to it even though Dave took it back in, like, the next sentence.

However, more interesting still:  With "you're TRYING to read" — "you" is clearly John (or John as the reader/player's avatar). But... "I thought we already agreed..."  

Who da heck is "I"?  It's not John talking to the voices in his head —  that'd be "You thought you had already agreed," right? Or perhaps "You thought you had come to an agreement." So is it our protective narrator, or what? And exactly what grouping, then, does "we" point to?

[Am I overanalyzing something that might just be an authorial shortcut past the headaches of conjuncting second person, plurals, and various poorly revealed identity levels? Mebbe, mebbe not.]

392.  "you don't see what could possibly be so oh my god it's a monster." Why is this so funny?

Dear, dear John….may you never change so drastically that I can't recognize this ador(k)able part of you.

I could write paragraphs and paragraphs about clinging to norms in response to trauma, the potentially tragic ironies of defending your belief systems rather than your physical well-being, of bargaining with fate that real danger won't come to you until you've read All The Books and you Feel Ready. And none of it would touch on why this is so fucking funny.

393.  [S] ==>==>==>!!!!!!!!!

𝅘𝅥𝅮 "You'd better call the sledgehammer, put your mind at rest..."  Woops!

Oh, John. It's Showtime again, and the advice to "break a leg" (or head) really isn't meant to be taken literally. [Fie, who spake the name Macbeth in this house!?]

Please don't die, you've got a lotta story left to participate in.

So the Tar Baby is a Shale Imp? Not too far wrong, with oil shale and tar sands bein' close cousins. And the Imp stole the bunny, and I'd say perhaps the Jester hat from one of DAD's closets or chests, but where did the rest of the clothes come from? Unless — gasp! — DAD used to dress up little junior John as a pint-sized Pierrot? [John might be more traumatized than I thought!!!]

The Imp doesn't attack John directly, though — it only demands "don't move," holding the Bunny hostage. What does it want? I mean: what is it, where did it come from, is it linked to the KERNEL-/NANNA-SPRITE, does it have a will of its own; all those other questions underneath the first, too, but right this moment? Why did it reveal itself to John, why did it take a defensive/evasive posture using the bunny to prevent attack and ensure its own safety? John was clearly trying to Aggrieve it and it did not counterattack other than brandishing the Bunny over his blacked-out body. So…. what does it want?

And is the Vagabond a Shale Imp too?

The few clues we have about Vagga match up — small stature, black claw-like hands, white eyes in apparently black skin. Certainly not definitive, and certainly too suggestive to rule out a connection. Vagga does seem to regard the imps in John's house as a threat, which could point to the imps being as individual and contradictory as humans. Or, depending on what sort of time-woogying we're actually seeing with Vagga and John, Vagga could be a more evolved/educated future Imp, worrying about what the "wild" ones will do to their hapless plaything. So little to go on so far, but so many possibilities.

John, John, John; I hope you haven't hurt your noggin too badly, because The Show Must Go On.

And WTF, universe — I went hunting for an image from the gloriously strange Queen video for that song, and came up with bassist John Deacon in a hat:

Yeah, me too, John.

[sesquipunzel]

The chiptune from Rose vs. Mom strife is called "Aggrieve", and the violin refrain is eloquently named "Aggrieve (Violin Refrain)". Similarly, John's strife and refrain are called "Showtime" and "Showtime (Piano Refrain)". The only other pieces I think you've encountered so far are "Harlequin" from the creation of the Harmesprite and "Sburban Jungle" from Sburb's installation screen. All can be found at Homestuck's bandcamp page if you so desire, although the site does contain spoilers aplenty.

Ah, thank you! I’d have felt even more silly if I was wrong about them being close kin. “Sburban Jungle” is also used for the meteor strike Flash on page 246, isn’t it? A different mix maybe? Which makes sense, actually, as the meteor impact is just the culmination of the process that the SBURB installation launched…I just can’t tell how much of the cranked-up tension I feel in the music is merely the story context; what I’m bringing to the music, rather than what the music is bringing to me.

If future song titles or artwork on the Bandcamp site will spoil me too much, I’d like to find some other ways to listen to these pieces repeatedly (amongst my other stuff) until they’re more a part of my musical consciousness.

I don’t see any of the canon Homestuck music on Spotify. Maybe you can put together a slow-growing Youtube (or other) playlist of videos/music without spoilers? Or I’ll happily pay for my own copy of all the HS music if you, as my screener, can help me navigate the spoiler minefield and send the downloads to me one drip at a time as I reach new bits of the story. :)

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (385-390)

"And even meanerwhile..." heh, Hussie sounds like me. Or I guess I sound like him. Or we both in-derp-endently developed a similar way with the English manglage.  

Page 385 - JOHN, PURSUE ADVERSARY INTO THAT ROOM.

385.  More oily sludge — what the heck are these little terrors up to while John's not looking? Can't worry about it now, that might be Rose in the chat!

386.  Hopes dashed — no Rose Red, only Red Text. [Hope they never have a Red Wedding.] 

Longish Pesterlog, cos it's Dave; what's important here? Dave doesn't yet have the game, and isn't admitting to having lost the sword; swords are indeed awesome; Dave is genre savvy and believes John about monsters and being in another dimension; John has to be curt with him again to ask for actual advice; Dave thinks John needs to "weaponize his sylladex" (is that what Dave was doing with verbs?); Bro is a mindfucker, and has a favorite creepy ventriloquist's dummy named Cal.

And Dave avers that "john egbert blows". And John may be a dork, but he's a confident dork (and doesn't take Dave too seriously).

387.  John retrieves Data Structures for Assholes to learn about weaponizing (things other than his asshole, one hopes). And despite Vagga telling him to "STAY WARY OF THESE FOES", John is not, himself, genre savvy enough to see the icky Jes-Tar Baby right in front of him which is...chewing on the ectobedding? twivering in fear? jiggling in antici—?

I thought John felt compelled by this inner voice? Can he not see the Tar Baby somehow?  [And I know "retarded" was once a choice insult for thirteen-year olds who didn't want to be mistaken for babies, but it's been so successfully removed from my particular online communisphere in the last ten years that it's really jarring to see it here. I get the storytelling context and am not offended, just commenting on how what's acceptable changes as a person (and society) grows up.]

Ack, John's in danger but we're back to Rollin' Rose…!

388.  Ah, now the STRIFE, full of irony and spite (if only we were dealing with the Fae, where iron and spit are excellent weapons…).

The music is sweet/sad, underneath all the chiptunification — is it…. wait!  ::goes back to Rose's intro:: yes, it IS close kin to Rose's violin piece. Anyone want to fill me in on what this piece is called?

And wait again — does this mean John's STRIFE music was the same as his piano refrain?  

(I'm sorry, this probably seems a silly thing to miss to those more musically sensitive or more familiar with HS music — I love music of all kinds, but it takes it a while to sink into my brain. I have a "Getting To Know" playlist that I use to collect new music with a favorable first impression, for the express purpose of repeating the new stuff often enough for it to become "my music" and migrate to other playlists, or to devolve to "meh music" and get deleted. Add in the fact that in Homestuck's case I'm focused on noticing all the animation's visual details, thinking through and writing my reactions, and...yeah, on first exposure the music fades to a backdrop of impressions for me, not a melody contained in my soul and instantly identifiable [yet!].)

389.  Okay... MOM performs ironic, obligatory STRIFE, like obligatory ironic housework? (where the irony is obligatory, not the work.) And now she's not an obstacle anymore? Bizarre.

390.  The readers are lobbing experimental stupid absurdities again: "Rose: First, be the pony. Second, trample Mom." Predictably, Rose says "nah." (But gives the Prancing Pony a name and a pat anyway, because there's still a kid under all that refusing to be a kid.)

Next up, JOHN TURN AROUND!!!!! — see? Danger!!

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (370-384)

If “moustache” were pronounced like “heartache” it would be a moustake.

Page 370 - Rose: Attach a W to face as a fake moustache.

370-371.  Oh Rose, you adorable little creature. Your thorny facade is just as thin as Dave's ironic veneer, and you are just as lovable underneath. By all means, take the 'W' with you.

372-374.  But really, taking the time to find and deposit twelve cents in exchange, and then ponder further one-upsets via velvet pillow, when your life, John's life, and potentially all human life is hanging in the balance…?

375.  And the SYLLADEX rebalances with the UMBRELLA as the root. But doesn't that mean when she wants to use the umbrella, all her other stuff will fall out in the rain again?

376-380.  Yup, wasted too much time, it's MOMZILLA. Do we get more STRIFE? If evasion counts, then yes. A YOUTH ROLL (which I am forcibly reminding myself is not related to an EGG ROLL or a TUNA ROLL) over counter and couch and coffee table, scattering wizards wildly.

MEANWHILE, in the past:

381.  Dave patched the hole in his window with Everything Tape, but didn't clean up the shards of glass on his desk? Those things can be vicious, just ask the HARLEQUIN DOLL.

382.  Well. Finally learning more about GG beyond her basic sunny personality and wow, that's a lot to digest. Firstly, it appears there's not an ounce of irony in her soul, and she completely mangles Dave’s coolness by embracing it so hard, and Dave appears unable to protest or dislike. 

Secondly, her modus is migraine-inducing? Even more than STACK, TREE, or HASHMAP?

Thirdly...well, thirdly, GG either knows the future or is communicating from the future, which is super-weird when all of our time-mucking-about is happening due to SBURB/Skaia, which she hasn't touched as far as we know.

Except...I'm falling into the time's arrow trap again: one-way cause-and-effect is so deeply ingrained that this is like the fifth time I've had to remind myself that just because future events haven't happened yet for me (via the characters I'm following) doesn't mean that they aren't reaching back into their past and affecting the story right now. (I recognized that after the fact, in my earlier post about it being a while before Dave gets the ability to muck with time… the "while" doesn't matter because once he has the ability, any time period can be mucked with. But I won't go back in time to edit then-me's ignorance. :P )  [And yes, I'm spoiled for him having time powers, and no, I have zero context of when or how or why he has them.]

Fourth, "bec" is not her guardian in the sense that DAD and MOM and BRO are, but a...pet? Guard dog/devilbeast? Unkillable creature? Then maybe her equally intimidating GRANDFATHER is her guardian who collects awful oddities?

So there are a few new wrinkles to Jade's story, to add to the getting-to-know template we've variated three times now.

383.   I am not sure I'm keeping up with Dave’s red-and-blue syllalect when he's not actively using the 'DEX — is he saying that because the noun PHONE and the verb TEXT MESSAGE are both coded "8" that he can text without removing his phone from the SYLLADEX?

But good idea, Dave, to bring your portable plot-loaf along, instead of being tied to the one on your desk. Try to handle yours more wisely than John handled the PDA, k?

[My friends and I have used ‘plot-loaf’ for years — it's any object that keeps the story moving, sometimes handed off from character to character. It's not the same as the MacGuffin, which is the object everybody in the story wants but which doesn't affect the story itself, or the Idiot Ball, which dictates who has to do something stupid or out-of-character to make the next bit happen; maybe the TV Tropes site has invented a name for the concept since I last visited, but I barely got out of that swamp full of quicksand alive the last time, I'm not wading back in today without an evacuation plan.]

384.  But every time I think Dave knows what he's doing better than the others (and he think's he's cool), I find out otherwise (and so does he).

No one must ever know about this.

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (358-369)

INTERIOR: ROSE’S MOODY MODERN MANSION OF MERETRICIOUS MAGI

Page 358 ==>

358.  The Purple Princess of Prolixity and her Poison Prose are at it again. Methinx the girl doth lay it on a little thick, dothn't she? (I would know, wouldn’t I?)

359.  Ah, the Death Glare, one step up from the Death Stare, which is where you end up if you do not wisely retreat at the first Glance of Doom.

360.  And Rose refuses to psychoanalyze the wizard collection; refuses to believe her mother could have a deep reason for anything. Or that her reasons for doing things could have nothing to do with Rose. This is...very thirteen. (The intended irony/reverse psychology, perhaps, is that despite her aversion to everything wizardly, Rose is still toting around a Grimoire, and is apparently destined to be the Party Mage in some way, shape or form.)

361.  The house has a river — a whole goddamn waterfall — flowing underneath it. Yeesh. Girl is fuckin' rich. You need to just send Dave a fuckin' desk, Rose. Or a bed frame.

On the other hand, I get the knitting now, and whatever gift she was in the process of making for John. Surrounded by expensive but meaningless (or bad-meaningful) purchasable things, Rose yearns for the cathexis of the unique and handmade; the impalpable auspices woven in between the strands of yarn that anyone can buy.

At least, amongst all these gray old men, there's one inanimate young lady of dainty fashion and delicate purple face-tendrils, sitting upon the couch. My guess-hazard for this post is... this is either a birthday present from one of Rose's friends (catering to her interests and much detested by her mother), or something Rose knitted for herself (and also much detested by her mother). Trust me, knitting a life-size squidalian doll would have been a channel days or weeks of passive aggression.

The umbrella perhaps indicates that Mom has been outside recently — although dropping a wet umbrella on the couch doesn't seem like a rich bitch move. If Rose is at all correct about her mom's spite, perhaps it's left there as a move of ironic caring, demonstrating the knowledge that Rose will soon be going out in the rain despite "common sense," and Mom's "love" and "obligation to protect" and all those other things the bad daughter who "should know better" will trample without a thought. (No, I don't know anyone who deals with narcissistic/borderline parents, why would you ever think that?)

No idea what to make of the vacuum cleaner on a pedestal, though; apparently neither do the other readers.

362.  Ah, the vacuum is a passive-aggressive gift from Rose to mom, I see. Returned in kind. Ouch, this relationship.

"It never leaves the pedestal" is another one of those phrases that could have so many dimensions, psychologically, as is the fact that Rose sometimes hears the vacuum "wailing in the night".

363.  Ah, it's a PRETTY PRINCESS DOLL, an equally grotesque counterpart to the HARLEQUIN DOLL of yore, and I wasn't completely right or completely wrong: it's a gift from mom rather than friends, because it originally catered to none of her interests, but altered by Rose to suit herself, because that's what a mage does with the universe they're given.

364.  She captchas the UMBRELLA on one of the lower leaves of her SYLLADEX, with no commentary on why it's been left on the couch.  :/

365-366.  The kitchen contains more spite, in the form of chintzy enchanters, liquor bottles, and mockingly ostentatious display of extra-ordinary things.

367-369. And oh, the poker-faced grandiosity of the one-ups-woman-ship over the magnetic letters…

Didn’t get as much time as I would have liked to work on my own things today, so just one post this time, but we’ll be back at it tomorrow!

[sesquipunzel]

Act 2 (345-357)

So on with Mission Creep!

Page 345 ==>

345.  Just what the world needed: gangsta marionettes.

346-348.  So there is something to this SYLLADEX naming game, if he can turn it from a DAMP TOWEL into a TOWEL to make it fit.

349.  "You CLEAN (2+2+1+1+2 = 8) up the juice" — uh, what? Did he just sylladize a verb to absorb the juice into the same slot as the towel? Doesn't that make it a DAMP TOWEL again? I mean, I can accept just makin' shit up to move the story along, but previously these Sylly things have at least appeared to work on some sorta consistent nounish basis.

Either that or learning to Adult in this universe involves learning how to use your language creatively to escape the limitations of one's abstractions. And why limit yourself to one language? If you don't have a free slot for your TOWEL (8), maybe you have one for LA TOALLA (12 -> 2)  or LA SERVIETTE (17 -> 7).

350. Window. Fan. Dangling Betas. Here's the windup…..*

[*Citizens of the World, pls substitute your own favo(u)rite local sportsball phrases for the following brief USian bezball metaphor.]

351. ...and the pitch. Ball One. "The crisis is easily averted. You can't imagine it will ever resurface later in any way, shape, or form. That beta is as good as yours, forever."

352.  "You wonder if he is anywhere near as smooth with his sylladex as you are. Probably not. It's probably not even humanly possi…" Another pitch on the way and iiiiit's…

353.  ….a STRIKE!  

Caw caw, motherfucker.

This is a suspiciously well-aimed random plot diversion. Since the atmospheric scenery-framing crows in one of my other obsessions ended up being Significant (and also brought bad luck), I'm gonna speculate on very little evidence that this RAMBUNCTIOUS CROW is meddling at the behest of some other Plot Force to be Reckoned With.

But Dave, if you have Verbs at your disposal, why don't you just FLIP THE BIRD (2+2+1+2+2+2+1+2+1+2+2 = 19 % 10 = 9)?

354. Oh, see, now that's thinking on your feet. Or cheating. Or cheating on your feet? He can use a verb with the correct hash to launch the corresponding stored object? Katana vs. Crow looks very badass, and could be very effective, but since Dave still doesn't have the beta when John needs it later… I think not.

355. "You accidentally launch your NINJA SWORD." Smooth, Dave, very smooth. Or woulda been if youda done it on purpose. But there you go: blade, bird and beta, gone in one fowl swipe.

Getting (or keeping) hands on this wee piece of software seems to be the Bêta Noire for these kids, doesn't it?

356. It's an embarrassing story, yo.

   The very model of sardonic hipster nonchalance

357.  Say goodbye to all of this, Dave.  "Goodbye, all of this!"  

But wait — OH SNAP! It's a super-fugly wizard in extreme close-up. Guess we're whiplashing back to our favorite watery tart, our beleaguered Rose.

Yonward we go!