This rant is really funny. And also,

AH, the character, as the cartoon avatar for The Creator, has a sort of arc, I guess you could call it. There are many facets to the psychological profile of the creative individual. One of them is this preposterously megalomaniacal, self-absorbed, power-drunk persona which, arguably, is often the motivating force behind an individual's desire to create certain things in the first place. A being supremely enamored of art's ability to let them conjure anything out of thin air, manipulate people's emotions in any direction on a whim, and to revel in this whole process as some sort of innate celebration of their ingenuity. In this grand farce called Homestuck, we introduce the AH author-god in this way to set him on a path to reveal different qualities of the creative psyche. More to the point, he is set upon a long-term trajectory from being the supreme goofball-savant in absolute command of his craft to gradually becoming a victim of his creation, as much at the mercy of the forces it unleashes as he was the original architect of their unleashing.

I really do think this (and AH as a character) is rather clever.

Apparently a fan gifted Hussie-the-author the Cal shown in this panel. I almost said fic instead of panel, so I think that's my cue to liveblog in the morning instead of now.

This page was actually REALLY useful for me, poor lost reader unable to view Flashes, on my first reading attempt - and even on my first full read, I thought it was really neat. Hussie also handily links every panel referenced, making this page (1674) double as an easy resource for the first few acts. It's nice. Also, commentary!

But also note that the orange fingers (and the guy attached to them) reappear right after Jack's ascension, and when we first saw them they were typing Jack's name. I'll repeat this: villainy, and the extent to which a character can be considered villainous, is directly tied to how close they are to the surface of the story's metabubble—that is, how closely they are associated with the general awareness and acknowledgement that this is, in fact, a story they exist inside of. Jack, by his proximity to me here, establishes himself as such a character, but this is only a start. There are others much higher up the metaladder than he, but it's important to establish a baseline here, before the idea really means anything.

I admit, I find the meta-villain stuff really interesting. The author and the authority is the villain - as is the abusive/neglectful/immature-in-specific-ways parent/adult, as I'll talk about later. Probably when Doc Scratch pops up. I think the villains of Homestuck are all strokes of genius, not going to lie.

The first proper appearance of the only author avatar I can stand, Hussie himself. I'll...get into why he's cool and interesting later, because I'm liveblogging while tired.

[S] Jack: Ascend.

Finally we're here! And I'm back, after an unplanned absence that had a lot to do with not having much time to watch a Flash without being interrupted. What a fucking Flash, amiright? It marks the point where Jack became more 'threat' than 'obstacle' or 'amusement', all because of a silly hat. Also, some commentary! Below the cut because it's loooong.

I think this one marks the start of Homestuck's trend thereafter of dropping exceptionally violent, high-octane, game-changing animations out of nowhere. There are so many like this from here on, right up to the end of Act 5. Only then does the number sort of taper off. But from this point on I just sorta started shoveling more and more red meat into the story's maw. This stretch is where I was starting to get a feel for this type of sensationalistic storytelling content as something I'd later code (mostly for my own internal purposes) as "meat," in the meat/candy binary of storycraft theory. 

Oh no. Not already. I'm not getting into the issue here. But yeah, there were a LOT of Flashes that were crazy sensational at this point.

Jack is so pissed at his queen. These two getting testy with each other is built into their relationship across all sessions. No matter what the specific situation, she's probably always finding ways to needle him. Dress code, paperwork, it doesn't matter. This is programmed into them as game constructs to guarantee that there will always be friction between them, which allows for more interesting variations in how any given game of Sburb can play out. There's always a powder keg of mutiny waiting to go off, and depending on the actions of the heroes, there are many, many ways this can play out over a session. We see one way right here, in this animation, and another in the troll session, with totally different results. But what remains constant is Jack's inclination to betray his queen.

This is also interesting - Jack is a game mechanic to make the session more interesting, which he certainly does in all versions of him we see.

Even though it lasts only about a second or two, this dress-up montage is kind of incredible when you think about what it implies. They're actually spending...hours, maybe?...trying out different clothes that Jack might like better. Think of what this means, and of all the actual conversations that have to take place between them to facilitate this. It shows the queen is actually willing to exercise some lenience and let Jack's taste determine the garb so long as it's sufficiently clown-princess themed. Jack also displays a surprising degree of patience in trying on so many variations. It also suggests that somewhere the queen has an entire wardrobe of this stuff ready to go.

As funny as all this is, my favorite details are the spades behind her (great foreshadowing at work once more) and the laughter in the song timed to her being shown. She's having entirely too much fun with all this and we all know it.

This brief interlude in the animation shows that Rose's dream self has finally woken up, due to her future doomed self going to sleep and "ceasing to exist." She has inherited some hazy memories from that version of her self, or if not all her memories per se, at least some of her perceptual faculty. Now she can see the graffiti she wrote on her walls, which previously was invisible to her due to some psychological block. This is the secret Jaspers once whispered to her, which was simply, "Meow." This word didn't really tell Rose's younger self anything informative so much as it unlocked information already in her brain, which was an important genetic sequence. She uses the letters of MEOW in place of the usual letters for genetic codes, GCAT.

This is definitely one of the wilder timeloop bullshit orchestrations, of which there are a good few. The engineering of Bec was a fantastic mystery to slowly figure out as the story went on. Also, we get to see the Guardians being cool, which is certainly neat.

Jack's mutiny, along with his ridiculous transformation, is complete. What a devil's bargain he just struck. In order to claim supreme power, he must agree to have the absurd attire he so vehemently resisted actually become physically inseparable from himself. Yet the choice he has made is clear. Power prevails over dignity. That said, being forced to look like a clown in exchange for this boon isn't exactly going to keep him in a good mood.

Also, this is funny. To rise up against the tyranny of being made to wear silly clothes...he has to wear the silly clothes and make them part of himself.

John getting the idea of how to prank Past Karkat FROM present Karkat is super fucking funny. Also, Karkat calling John "perverse" for enjoying the trolling is several extra layers of funny in context. Karkat thinks the trolls are going to hate the kids forever, which is especially funny considering the entire rest of the comic...and Karkat in particular. This guy crushes on three different humans and seemingly canonically dates one, even outright ignoring post-canon which 100% confirms this. Karkat is also rather helpful, telling us about the Reckoning and what's going on.

Some long and interesting Hussie commentary is below the cut.

The first four lines Karkat says here literally sound like they could be a disgruntled Homestuck fan talking smack about me as they scan backwards through the story. Which sounds like a funny thing for me to say—and it is—but it's also not that remarkable, since at any given moment Homestuck is full of surrogates for various factions of the readership. Basically any character who is viewing the actions of other characters on a screen can be seen as a consumer of that story through some form of in-canon digital media. Whether they type in character commands like the exiles, or use Trollian to skip around the "archive" in a nonlinear way like the trolls do, for the sake of "adventure analysis" or to heap scorn on those involved, every narrative-viewing character is temporarily filling the role of the Homestuck reader from a certain angle. Later, cherubs become the ultimate distillation of the idea.

There's something kind of eerie about these stable time loops when it comes to the absurd, bitchy conversations the characters have with each other. There is literally no discernible origin to this prank John is playing. It's pasted to him from the future, he thinks it's a great prank, and he decides to play the prank in the future because of it, exactly as typed here. And yet, the whole exchange appears to be perfectly in character and in full alignment with their personalities. So entire exchanges between two individuals can be totally without origin, yet still sound exactly like them. This opens up a whole bunch of creepy possibilities. Ghosts or afterimages of their personalities seemingly can emerge from pure void in a convincing way, like bodiless simulacra. Echoing time loop mimic-wraiths, intruding on their conversations.

While I know about the Cherubs as a reflection of readership (Callie being a parody of Homestuck lovers and Caliborn of Homestuck haters), and the Alpha Trolls as a caricature of people (Porrim of feminists, Kankri of Tumblrinas, Horuss of systems, etc - a writing choice I'm not a fan of), I admittedly never thought of the Beta Trolls and exiles as fulfilling a similar purpose, albeit more subtly. The trolls often echo or mock our thoughts on what's going on in the story, and provide meta-commentary while still being IN the story.

And then there's commentation on the unsettling nature of time loops and, seemingly, dream bubbles. Stable time loops police characters into having perfectly replicated conversations with no origin, a deviation from which would get them all killed. Creepy shit.

Also, apparently, the concepts of Ancestors and the hemospectrum weren't present/fleshed out at this point. Also, this:

From my perspective, the great thing about this stupid backwards conversation was that any time someone wanted to know the answer to an obvious question, like "What's the point of the game?", and I didn't think it was time to reveal that info yet, I could just have this jerk say "I ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT" and justifiably be reluctant to repeat himself. But he would indulge in other details of lesser importance, like the material here about the Veil. He hasn't mentioned that yet, so he can take some time to cover it now. It's a totally organic and logical way of concealing critical story information so that it flows in an order of least critical to most critical.

This is genuinely clever. Hussie figured out how to prevent a forthcoming and helpful guy (Karkat) from simply revealing everything right away, and then also made it a fun gag.

I like how John isn't sure he believes Dave about Davesprite and the severity of the warning, but trusts Dave's judgment enough to not do it anyway.

LOWAS epic moment.

And here we see that despite his earlier decision to blow off Davesprite's warning, a good memory (from earlier that day) of his friendship with Dave convinces him to reconsider. While as I mentioned earlier, I kinda wish we'd gotten a follow-through on the 'track you down through time' threat, this is also genuinely sweet.

Right after having a test of friendship between John and Dave (and Davesprite), we cut to actually getting to see the letter Dave wrote to John. Similar to John's caring about Dave and briefly dropping the typical ribbing, Dave shows that he cares about John and briefly admits that he really does think John is cool, no bullshit involved. He also alludes to getting John out of jams, which is hilariously on the nose given what just went down.

Also, if Hussie is telling the truth, they currently own the Con Air bunny and bought it in 2013. This is an excellent fun fact.

Davesprite immediately being straightforward (and also silly) is great stuff. Uncharacteristically for splinters (as we'll see later), Dave and Davesprite also immediately hit it off and, as Hussie claims, show mutual trust through their silly "why are we so awesome" rather than asking anything else, a motif repeated with Dirk. Whether that deeper meaning was actually planned/a thing or not, it's still fun to behold.

Davesprite immediately going to bat for John and being protective over him is great. He also roasts Terezi quite effectively. Terezi even feels bad when it clicks for her that she actually caused deaths rather than just messing with things. We see elements of what would lead to Terezi and Dave's friendship later, which is a bit surprising considering what just went down. He seems to get that it wasn't her intent. I think a Davesprite-Terezi friendship could've been fun to see, but unfortunately, the ship/meteor divide mostly prevented that.

This is a sad panel, but it's cute that future Mutini is so big.

John, despite seeing sense moments earlier, blasts off. This time, he DEFINITELY knows he's being stupid.

And here we see Davesprite! An all-time favorite character of mine, even though he missed out on most of the character development Dave got, and even if the resolution to his arc (framed as the one way he could've been happy) was to be combined with another person...

And here we see the culmination of Dave's plan - he hands over his future loot and leaps into the Sprite, prototyping himself instead of Cal.

John getting bugged by two Daves at once is funny, as is his immediate assumption that Dave is fucking with him. I kinda wish Hussie had followed up on the 'track you down through time and stop you in person' thing, it could've been really fun. That said, it's nice how despite his initial assumption, John still trusts Dave enough to not do anything stupid.