There’s a good deal of japery today. Starting with John chatting with a new character TentacleTherapist [TT]. She seemed to already be aware of all John’s antics. She was also aware of TurntableGodhands [TG] claiming she was “making on him”. Her response to this was a scathing amount of sarcasm. TT pushed John to focus on getting the game from his dad, getting him back to the living room.

I loved the bit about this conversion about John wearing a “dumb disguise”. TT calls John out, John denies wearing a disguise in an attempted jape. Only when john reveals his jape to TT it’s clear she has not at all fallen for it.

John, Now back downstairs, gives his fake arms to the giant creepy harlequin doll. He puts the arms on backwards which is so very annoying. But he does also clean up the living room a bit by burning all the gift wrapper and an errant Brobrolone ad. So at least that was considerate, though not very safe.

We also get a look at what's actually in Colonels Sassacre’s a page with a portrait of the Colonel himself. He appears to be a modified image of Mark Twain. I don't know much about Mark Twain, other than his work get taught in American schools. Does anyone know if the guy was a prankster? I’m curious on who the Colonel Sassacre is.

I’ll point out that the page John is reading talking about using a fishing line to make “the creepy-crawlers” to life. Given the images on the page this implies that its a prank to make harlequins move in a life-like way to prank people.

We end today in dads study. It seems Dad isn’t in there, and likely in the kitchen baking more cakes. I assume we will be getting a very detailed description of every nook and cranny of this place. So I’ll leave it till tomorrow.

So we are admiring more stuff around John's living room now. With all the things the audience of Homestuck could do, did they seem to want to check stuff out? This brings me back to my college days and playing D&D. Our DM had put a great level of detail into the environments they had made. But, we players were too busy faffing about over tiny details to ever explore much of the world built for us.

Anyway, it's hinted that Nana got squished under the UNABRIDGED version of Colonels Sassacre’s Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery. Which I can only assume is the size of a Volvo and twice the weight.

Anyway, John somehow manages to knock the urn over causing the contents to spill out. This was chaotic in a bad comedy movie trope way. It is fortunate John doesn't have a cat to use the ashes as a litter box.

John, reaction is slow to do something about his dear grandmother's ashes being all over the floor. He instead decides to open a second gift from his father adorned with another wholesome note. The gift was of course a giant creepy harlequin doll which John was not on board with.

Anyway, after doing a terrible job cleaning up Nana's ashes he goes back to his room. We can't seem to get out of John's room. But at least we get an alternative angle revealing more posters! Including one of many Bill Cosby references… oh those didn't age well did they, we won't mention that one.

But look at these other posters

• Contact, which was in the Homestuck Beta mentioned in log 3. I also mentioned it was second fiddle to Amageddon. So of course another poster we now see is…
• Armageddon now there are a few things in this movie which are critical to Homestuck. One being a song used in this movie also appearing later in the story at a particularly stupid moment. But it's actually a good movie that did pretty well at the box office.
• Face Off I’m not going to research this one. I’ve been seeing memes and clips of it for years and I am taking this as a sign that I must see it. I have no idea how I haven't yet.
• A Time to Kill I saw this one far too young. It is unpleasant dealing with some VERY dark topics. This has nothing to do with the Homestuck story unless I've missed something. Since this poster is smaller, Maybe Andrew needed some 90’s movie to toss on the wall?
• Failure to Launch A romcom? I’ve seen very few of these as neither romance or comedy movies are appealing to me. This is an odd thing to see on John's wall though it is a comedy and it was bad according to wikipedia. Perhaps he has a soft spot for it? Even more odd is that this movie is from 2006. Weirdly enough the main male lead in this movie is in some sense homestuck. Seems to be living with his parents dealing with grief issues. So in that sense it's a bit related.

Let's take a look at this tripe of an article from GameBro Magazine. This review of the SBURB by a guy who was too wasted to actually play the game. They seem to instead review the game based on its logo. They gave it a low rating because it doesn't seem like you get the “Thrash” anything. This might be a reference to a bizarre over-marketing of first person shooters and action games in the 90’s. I've always found this odd choice of the industry. I know more recent studies around Bartle's Taxonomy show “killer” players are a minority. But, maybe this wasn't known at the time.

John dons a disguise using a Beagle puss (or Groucho glasses) and a “wizard cap”. Then, finally after 47 pages we leave John's bedroom. I’d say the pace of this journey will get faster, but it varies a lot.

Anyway, we began to get more hints about the character of John's Dad. It’s clear John gets his oldschool prankster vibes from his dad. His father also has an affinity for ~~clowns ~~ harlequins as his home has many creepy images of them. This stuff looks like it was AI generated but this was around long before the AI imaging. Someone made these arts, and they ended up in Homestuck. I appreciate art but whoever made these things, I’d like to avoid them for the rest of my years.

There is also a mention of Betty Crocker, but we’ll get into that later. Know that if you haven't read this before Betty Crocker has a role in all this.

Also John quotes "The moon's an arrant thief, and her pale fire she snatches from the sun." as Mark Twain. But, that was Shakespeare if we can trust the Internet about anything some old dead person said. Anyway, this ends with John putting the GameBro magazine burning in fire. This is certainly where it belongs.

John is holding a huge book Colonels Sassacre’s Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery If the Colonel was based on a real person I’m totally unable to find them. The pure Scope of Homestuck has overwhelmed the internet so now they are only a Homestuck related character. I’d like to imagine he was a real and particularly annoying member of some military force known for being a practical joker. Anyway John opts to not take this gigantic tome of wisdom but again takes his arms again.

Reporting back to TurntechGodhand [TG] we learn of another of Johns who we have not yet met who we can assume has the handle tentcleTherapist [TT]. TG feels that TT is “mackin on him hard”, TG is a bit cringe.

TG also gives more of an explanation of how Johns stack _SYLLADEX _ thing works and how to actually arm himself for combat. Using the STRIFE SPECIBUS John decides to spec himself as a hammer user given that he has a hammer for hanging that poster.

We do get a peek at the full STRIFE SPECIBUS and there’s a lot of neat choices on there. I found a more detailed/readable version on the fandom wiki . I think I'd be a ladlekind, serve up some sweet justice soup.

If you're following along tell me what your strife spec would be and why?

TG informs John that his choice is permanent. But with some inventory space cleared John can now take the gigantic Colonels Sassacre’s Daunting Text into his inventory. Apparently this is necessary to read the book which is a bit weird because he can read other things just fine. Perhaps this is a result of its size and John's perceived lack of arms.

John also wants to get and read the Game Bro magazine on his desk. I’m not sure if GameBro is meant to represent a specific game magazine but for those not old enough to be functional in those years Game Magazines were a big deal in the 90’s. This was also the time of Nintendo's “play it loud” campaign and the great Nintendo-Sega Console wars. Things were very “in your face” and “cool”.

So we’ll see what GameBro has to say tomorrow…

We’re back with John examining stuff on his own bedroom walls. We are now looking at a calendar. We learn it's the 13th of April (year not mentioned) John's birthday as previously mentioned and a few days after the release of SBURB Beta.

Neatly, there’s a link to actually play SBURB it’s… familiar. It’s Homestuck? But with some minor differences. The linked version of the game looks essentially the same, slightly different, more freehand art style but is more animated and interactive with sounds.

Now for those not from the olden days, Flash had a unique vector graphic editor. The flash editor worked pretty decently with a stylus so this art style was pretty common. The SBURB version of John’s room has the magic chest at the foot of John's bed, the hammer and nails are on the desk, there is now a poster for the movie Contact, is where the Deep impact poster was and the deep impact poster was moved next to a now smaller Con Air Poster. Also weirdly the view outside the “SBURB John” window is just blank. But, John has a view of a tree branch in front of a blue sky.

The beta ends with John receiving his “arms” page 7 of Homestuck. Now I point this out because I believe this was my initial reaction as well. I was wondering if SUBURB was the “endgame” of this Homestuck thing. Was Andrew Hussie building a point and click game based on the audience generated content being generated from Homestuck the webcomic? I was really curious on what changes were being made and what assuming the flash game would grow into a huge thing.

Off of this Beta tangent, let's look at John computer.

He has some .^cake files. Possibly some kind of in-story language. I kinda wish I could actually see his “terrible” attempts to code, as my own code was probably about as bad in those days.

Anyway, someone is trying to pester John. Page 26 “John: Open message.” is the first example of a “pesterlog”. A prettier significant chunk of Homestuck is written through these. You can actually download it though it does not provide friends for you so good luck with that.

Pesterchum has some weird rules, these will be very annoying but also help us identify characters as we go through these. I’ll break this down as briefly as possible as these rules are explained organically. Other than the rules though Pesterchum is pretty similar to AOL messenger.

• usernames consist of 2 words
• users have a unique assigned colour
• all character in Homestuck have a unique typing quirk

Johns handle is EctoBiologist [EB] and He’s chatting with a TurntechGodhand [TG]. It’s revealed in this conversation that John has not actually received his copy of the SBURB beta yet. TG suggests that John go check his mailbox. Resulting in John looking out his window. Finally we acknowledge there is in fact a world beyond John’s Bedroom and since the “Arm-swingy-dealy thing” of his mailbox is up, he indeed has mail (It’s called a “flag” by the way). But John’s father has just pulled into the driveway in his car, and John doesn't want to have his dad chat him up.

That’s a bit sad, the man probably just got home from work, maybe he just wanted to chat with his son after a long day. Also, as this is a re-read I can never look at that car the same again.

John takes a moment to perform his favourite hobby of examining stuff in his room (it’s like its his first time in there). He has a fun video game collection. 3 games being links to other MSPA projects, one is a Ghostbusters MMORPG (yes this will come up later), A little monsters video game by Konimi, which definitely did not exist but if it had I could only assume it was made by Hideo Kojima and it was his worst game of all time. Also something called Harry Anderson’s Call my Bluff.

I guess I need to research who that is and why he’s relevant… According to wiki he was a comedian/actor/magician who frequently appeared on SNL and “Call my Bluff” is a british TV show. I can't be certain this is what the reference is about. But given the guy is a magician/comedian I can see why John may have liked them.

John observes a note from his father, stating he is proud of John and wishing him a happy birthday. Damn that's just an injection of wholesome into the soul. It also mentions the card itself smells of “fatherly aftershave”. Mr. Pooplord seems like a classy guy.

The next few pages are just a challenge of picking up a hammer and some nails like 3 feet away. It seems Andrew was showing the audience how John stack SYLLADEX will cause stuff to violently fly out of his inventory when too many items are collected. Though I did enjoy poor John getting slapped out by a pair of fake arms. It also demonstrates the item merging ability.

Finally we hang the poster gift from Johns father for the 1989 film little monsters. I would have been about 2 years old when that one came out so I have no idea what this is about.

So let’s take a quick peek at that. I won’t actually be watching this movie, I don't know how to do piracy. But let's just look at the plot on wiki for relevant parawells.

> Brian Stevenson, an 11-year-old boy, and his family has just moved to suburban Boston, and he feels isolated in his new neighborhood.

> Brian sets booby traps, and leaves cheese Doritos as bait to attract the alleged "monster."

> Maurice and Brian have fun making mischief in other people's homes (you might say he’s a “prankster”)

Some interesting parawells If anyone has bothered to actually watch this please share anything I am missing here?

Then we look at the Con Air Poster. Now this one I know, it’s a masterpiece. Is it related to the plot of Homestuck? Well It DAMN WELL WILL BE! At least the bunny in the box scene. Fortunately, this newer system links the relevant scene from the movie for us. And that is probably the only part of the move you actually need to know.

(Though I still recommend watching Con Air, it beautiful)

Ok last page for today John: Examine Deep Impact poster. Clearly John is a man of amazing taste. I think I've only seen this one once as it came out too close to Armageddon which had a similar plot and was just better. But John provides us with some FOREBODING message about “Films about impending apocalypse fascinate you” real subtle.

So again we leave off with John looking at posters in his room.

We meet a young man named ZooSmell PoopLord John Eggbert. I found it smart to immediately set us in his bedroom. I never considered just how much our bedrooms are just visual profiles of who we are. We learn a tonne about John just in this image.

This was also sadly relatable, I grew up near a novelty shop, I was learning coding in college when this came out, I had fond memories of watching terrible movies with my dad, and of course I enjoy games. Damn Pooplord is a relatable loser.

“Remove CAKE from MAGIC CHEST”. Does an interesting thing. It shows that we as the reader have direct control over John’s world. I weirdly don't remember this being used frequently.

The Items management thing though, the CAPTCHALOGUE CARDS and _SYLLADEX _ stuff was a bit of a headache. Johns Stack method is easy enough I had just learned about in college around the time I was reading this so it was actually educational.

The last page I’m looking at is “John: Examine Problem Sleuth Poster.” which is an ad to go buy the poster to Problem Sleuth. Which is still available! If only I had walls, or money.