(From MS Paint Adventures: Homestuck. Click for full-sized nanowatch.)
I stopped reading Homestuck for the past two weeks while my computer was down. As my posting prowess in the interim should suffice to show, this was not a result of my inability to post, but rather an inability to couple my Homestuck-reading with another, related project. I still shouldn’t be posting; I have too much to do to wrap up the quarter at school.
In the interim, the post-Scratch session has gotten weeeeeird.
It’s become apparent that the effects of the Scratch, for whatever reason, are not limited to simply switching the places of the kids and guardians. Elements of the trolls’ universe are seeping in, and not just the “thirteenth troll”. There are the lusii on Jake’s island, and there’s Lalonde’s repeated references to “wiggling day” in her last conversation with Jake. And the two characters we haven’t gotten proper introductions to seem to have taken the lead; they seem to know a lot more about the session they’re entering than Jane and Jake, even though the latter two have gotten plenty of information from the “thirteenth troll”, to the point of dictating the order of entry.
It seems rather odd that Lalonde and Strider would know so much about the game that Jane and Jake don’t. Couple that with Lalonde’s aforementioned “wriggling day” reference, and it’s easy to wonder whether they’re entirely what they seem – which would make Lalonde’s suspicion of Betty Crocker’s nature rather suspect.
Oh yeah, and then there’s the part where Jane just freaking exploded.
I imagine that, when this happened, all sorts of questions ran through the fandom’s heads, questions like how the story could continue with the equivalent of John dead (after Jake’s death had been foreshadowed in Jane’s dreams). As we’ve heard, Jane has been the subject of assassination attempts before, so she could conceivably survive this one. But the impression I’ve gotten from the latest interlude is that this entire post-Scratch session may well have been a red herring, allowing Hussie to toy with the fans with various bits of “fan-canon”, only to serve as a long-winded introduction to “Hussiebot” and his schtick.
That schtick, if we are to take this panel at face value, may well involve every piece of misfortune that has befallen this story so far. If Hussiebot is, somehow, the invisible hand behind every major death in the story, truly Andrew Hussie’s “evil twin”, then perhaps he is the true villain of the story, more supreme even than Noir, Scratch, maybe even Lord English – if he doesn’t have some sort of tight-knit connection with English somehow.
I won’t be able to remark on whatever happens next with Hussiebot, John, and Jade until Sunday at the earliest, leaving open the possibility that there will be some sort of major development on Saturday that will be immediately followed up on and leave any reaction I might have in the dust. It’s not entirely out of the question that the universe we just spent nearly a month getting acquainted with will still have some impact on the story, but I do have to admit: it is refreshing to get back to the main plot again.