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This is what those of us in the business call an “establishing shot”. To establish that we are indeed back in space, and that there is something truly stupid on the horizon. The choice was made to deliberately call back to the opening panels of HS^2 here. This is what those of us in the business call “the refrance”.
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Pip brought this to the rest of us and said something like “i just made something terrible and we probably can’t use it.” Unfortunately, the worse something is, the more likely it is that we will use it. I’ve told everyone that works with us again and again: don’t make a joke if you don’t want to risk it becoming reality.
(I think I actually said something along the lines of, “this is stupid, so we’re using it.” I know my Homestuck history. For those interested, the ship is modelled after a schooner, and continues the Homestuck tradition of spaceships that look like regular sea-faring vessels, only with additional stuff bolted on. - Pip)
I’m not really sure how this ship is achieving combustion in space. Don’t worry about it. This is Jake’s “second best” ship. It makes me really nervous to think about what the third-best looks like.
(I mentioned this on Twitter, but I imagine the ship is actually propelled using solar sails, which are a real thing. The smoke is more like the stuff they put in parade airplanes to make fun shapes in the sky and stuff. Jake wanted to do cloud writing in space, I guess?? The answer, as always, is that things are even stupider than they first appear. - Pip)
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We got to play around with color palettes in this update, in a way that I’m sure the original homestuck did at some point, but I can’t conjure anything to mind. One of my favorite things about hs^2 is the different styles that get utilized depending on the storyline. That’s only gonna get clearer as the story goes on.
99
Again, the colors here. Xam, killing it as usual. The stream of green as Jade comes in, her silhouette. It’s all just extremely good. Karkat isn’t really in a position to appreciate the artistry of this particular series of panels, since he’s too busy getting startled out of bed by the spooky possessed version of his friend.
100
This is so sad.
Thinking about it, Callie!Jade absolutely did not have to impart any of this information, and definitely not at ass o’clock. They’re pretty much fully present and aware of what they’re doing. They’re even narrating. So I think this was probably just Karkat getting owned. It happens.
101
Boy, there’s a lot to unpack here. First off, Jade’s outfit. It rules. Alt!Callie may have violently forced her consciousness inside of this innocent girl’s brain, but damn these threads are sweet. She’s managed to keep Jade pretty on brand, while throwing in a couple embellishments of her own. That’s what we call “making it work”.
We also get a return to sprite style, which is always fun, as well as a classic Karkat Tantrum Moment.
And lest any of you forget—Dave’s eyes. I think this is the first time we’ve ever seen a full-frontal shot of him without his shades on. If I’m remembering my lore right, we caught a glimpse of his red eyes during a flash early on, and then once when he was asleep on LOHAC. That was adorable. I saw a couple people commenting how anticlimactic it was to just have Dave in there chilling with his shades off. As if it needed to be some big moment where we see him bare his soul. But I think that after a certain point, this is what recovery means. Progress isn’t a big moment. It’s waking up one day and realizing you’ve dropped one of your defense mechanisms without even meaning to.
Holding out for the morning Dave gets out of bed and walks out for breakfast without remembering to grab his shades.
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More great stuff with color going on here. The dissonance of this creepy floating girl and these very tired boys really gets me. There’s a lot you can ignore when you’re on a mission for coffee.
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Dave and Karkat are wearing each other’s shirts, which is traditionally a very gay thing to do. Even more notably perhaps is the fact that Karkat is wearing crimson without a hint of complaint. Again, I doubt this was an intentional move on his part. Just, sometimes you’re coming out of the shower, it’s chilly, and your boyfriend’s shirt fits. Busting through mental blocks should typically come across as whispers to me, rather than shouts.
Karkat is being pretty mean to Possessed Jade. Which sucks, but this situation is incredibly stressful, and Karkat tends to react to stress by being mean. Treating Jade like an irritant allows him to put some distance between himself and the reality that he may have lost another friend.
104
If it wasn’t already pretty obvious, Dirk is catastrophically straight edge. And this includes caffeine. Not that I think the dude actually needs a stimulant. Somebody should probably alchemize him a vape pen, though.
This scene is a call-back to the lounge scene in the meteor, during the auspiciously named Penis Ouija arc. Dave making coffee while a Lalonde sits and reads a book. Except instead of mumbling to himself this time he’s mumbling to his friends. One of those friends is a silently floating possessed goddess, but life is all about give and take.
Initially the panel directions here were “everybody pauses to contemplate Dirk fucking Strider”
105
Roxy wants you to know that he got up early to make all you guys these fucking pancakes. Wow, I love these sprites. Roxy’s heart-shaped sunglasses have become such a thing in the fandom that I kind of can’t imagine him without them at this point, so we decided to make it settled law.
Much chatter and discussion has sprung up around the bowl of red stuff on the table. I’m not actually sure what that’s supposed to be. Cherries? Cranberries? Licorice scottie dogs but red? I guess this is the new “troll blood in the coffee” conspiracy that will last for years and destroy friendships.
Oh, and I guess there’s the Dave and Karkat sex reference too. So. There you go. Davekat is canon. Although if you ask me it has been canon since the vriskagram, when they were holding hands and cuddling on the couch. It felt like they were together even while they were doing their best to pretend they weren’t together in the epilogue, you know what I’m saying? Anyway. Yeah. Davekat. It’s a thing.
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This whole ship is just incredibly silly looking. It looks like Jake had no idea what a sailing ship actually looked like, and he just pulled from pirate movies and Treasure Island. The green is also very eighties—a nice avocado color. Like, why is there netting up on the ceiling? And a luxurious curtain? I hate Jake Engish.
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If you’re looking for your missing friend, it’s pretty handy if they glow. And I guess Kanaya wasn’t technically “missing”.
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Sometimes I feel like it should be Xam who does these commentaries, since there’s so much incredible shit going on with the art here that I’m really only equipped to comment on with shit like “oh wow, look at these colors. Green and purple huh. Wild. There’s also some light.”
Note Dave’s tendency to have to slide into a room with an entering monologue in order to forestall any awkwardness, thereby creating even more awkwardness.
109
I love Kanaya’s new outfit. One of the most fun things about the stage-setting sections of all of this is getting looks at everybody’s fresh fits. Kanaya wins for this update, I’m pretty sure. As usual, she’s hitting peak drama here. This is a mourning outfit of sorts, and the rose and Rose’s scarf really got me fucked up.
Here we see that Dave is truly treading the path of the wokeboy. I.e. attempting to be sensitive but in the process actually being incredibly insensitive at the same time. Doesn’t he know that true intersectionality has to leave room for aliens, vampires, and vampire aliens? I guess it stands to reason that when you talk as much as Dave does, you’re liable to have a couple misfires.
We also get a little bit of rainbow drinker lore. Kanaya doesn’t actually need to feed that often, which makes sense, since nobody would have survived the meteor trip if she did. I’m not sure if she can feed on human blood or not, and if she can’t, well, I’m not sure if Karkat has enough blood in him for a hungry vampire. He’s too petite.
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Kanaya’s nursery story is, of course, The Little Prince, a French fairytale from the 1940’s. It tells the story, rather appropriately, of a young Prince traveling through space looking for something he believes he has lost.
“And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
I’m not sure why I keep thinking about this quote. Probably some shit that has to do with “themes” or something.
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Is this the only time we’ve ever seen a conversation between just Dave and Kanaya? I think it might be. Rose or Karkat have always been there before.
God, Dave is just losing family members left and right, isn’t he? Really makes you think.
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That feel when some nerd tells you that you haven’t changed in the ten years he’s known you.
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Kanaya’s fond little look here speaks for all of us, I think, as we watch Dave stuff his foot in his mouth again. I’m just glad he didn’t say any of this to Roxy’s face. But he is right in saying that change is hard. Even positive change. In general, we are a species built for inertia.
114
MFW someone asks me how my feelings are. Especially when I’ve been deeply betrayed by the people closest to me. Kind of sucks when you the thing you’re most afraid of actually ends up coming true.
“Maybe it was naive to think a bunch of twenty something trauma victims could run a society.”
There it is. That’s the whole Epilogue.
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I love space in homestuck. It’s always so pretty.
116
This is my favorite panel in the whole update. Huge “hanging out with your bf’s brother who you don’t know very well” energy. Karkat is extremely stressed because stressed is Karkat’s default state, while “vibing” is Roxy’s.
Wow. There really are just a whole lot of feelings in this chapter, aren’t there? It’s very aptly named. And it’s also actually the first part of HS^2 that got drafted; at least the first part that actually made it into the final draft. I wrote it earlier in 2019 when we were still kicking around ideas of what an Epilogue follow-up would actually look like.
I do really think Karkat would have been a great president. He would have hated it, but he would have been good at it.
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Did you guys know that Karkat still feels immense survivor’s guilt for murderstuck? I mean, I get it, fundamentally. Of course, it’s not his fault. At least not more than anyone else’s. But Karkat’s self-loathing is both incredibly vicious and incredibly self-obsessed. It’s not enough for good or bad things to happen, all of those things have to spin around the fulcrum of Karkat Vantas.
I guess when you live in a universe like the one our heroes do, it’s really easy to ask yourself “why am I this person and not a different person”? Why did this Karkat end up where he is now? I don’t know, Karkat. That’s a damn good question.
Oh yeah, the metal gear reference. I kind of showed my ass in this update, huh. But fuck it, it’s 2020. We go ass out.
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Eat the fucking pancakes, dude.
