Homestuck update, eeeeee!!!

[edenfalling]

Aaaaaaaaaaaah, end of A6A3 flash! Hussie, you absolute bastard!!!

Where to even start?

Well, to start with it is now canon that uu becomes Lord English. Not that this was really in doubt before, but here we see uu gnaw off his own leg (source of LE's peg leg), lose a tooth in the process (source of LE's gold fang), and use an assault rifle/pimp cane as a weapon (which is pretty much what LE uses, only in different colors). We also see LE use what I am pretty sure is Calliope's wand/pistol. So yeah, they are the same person.

I am curious why he used his sister's wand to destroy the dreambubble instead of his own Green Sun cane thingy. Can he somehow access her Space player powers when he uses her equipment? What exactly IS he doing when he kills the dead alternate (or not alternate?) trolls and humans? It looks like he's frying them with an energy beam -- they blacken, then their flesh disintegrates from around their bones, and then their bones crumble. How is that a Time player power? Is it just increasing the process of decay to ludicrous speed? Or is something else involved?

Tumblr informs me that the ~U on the cruxtruder is a reference to a kind of computer code specifying the destruction of "U" -- and in Homestuck, "U" generally means a universe. So uu's entry to the Medium happens when his universe dies... and said condition is promptly fulfilled when the kernelsprite (which is flashing between red and green in apparent distress, probably because Calliope is not also an active player) turns into a black hole, holy jegus fuck. How many destroyed universes have we seen now? The trolls' (at least once, in the post-Scratch iteration), the humans' (twice!), and now the cherubs'. Which can't be the same as the humans', despite the jpeg artifacts hinting that Dave was stuck there at some point, because all iterations of the humans' universe go boom around the same relative time courtesy of Jack Noir's attack on Bilious Slick.

I am very curious what Lord English is doing. First we see his Cairo Overcoat/Sarcophagus thingy floating between the Act gears-with-curtains (probably leaving Andrew Hussie's "house" after shooting him), then spirographing away to float through the Furthest Ring, then entering a dreambubble, which alters to reflect his life (the Felt Mansion, a Time player quest bed), and then destroying the dreambubble and all its inhabitants. The destruction itself is weird. It looks almost like the effect that created the Green Sun, but instead of drawing in and exploding back outward, the bubble draws in and then shatters. Literally -- it looks like shattered glass, as if reality itself buckled and cracked under impact. We know something or someone is killing horrorterrors, but how exactly does the destruction of a dreambubble affect them? Are they injured by the shards? There seem to be injured tentacles bleeding purple on the edges of the frame when PM and Jack are looking at the destruction... *ponders*

Other things, other things...

Okay, uu's name is Caliborn. This makes me immediately think of A) Caliban, from The Tempest, and B) Caliburn, which is an archaic name for Excalibur, King Arthur's sword. Caliban is probably a base for some of Caliborn's personality, but I'm not sure what Caliburn has to do with anything... except we know the Royal Deringer (and Caledscratch) are based on a sword named Caledfwlch, and the flash is very insistent that Dave watches the destruction of the dreambubble, while standing on top of a meteor lab tower that is a dead ringer for the tower Caliborn and Calliope live in. Also, recall the presence of Dave's terrible jpeg sense of humor on the cherubs' planet. Clearly something is significant about all that. Weird Time Shit (TM) is doubtless involved.

Also! Jack Noir and PM stopped fighting when they ran across the shattered dreambubble. This interests me, because neither of them is a static archetype, like a lot of other game constructs. They learn, they grow, and they change. If they start working together, things could get very interesting very fast.

So those are my thoughts, superficial though they are. What are yours?

Comments

[lexicology]

I think the severed horrorterror tentacles were possibly damaged by the fallout of PM & Jack's running battle. I'm pretty sure they are staring at the newly emerged (and possibly still rapidly-growing) black hole that just burst out of nowhere.

I'm...still not quite sold on Caliborn actually being Lord English, simply because it now is obvious, and this is Hussie we're talking about. Given that I'm pretty sure whatever LE was doing was not simultaneous to Caliborn's actions (except in the timey-wimey sense where everything in Sburb is arguably simultaneous, especially if you're a time player), it's possible that LE is the progenitor or offspring of Caliborn/Calliope. I certainly think that the cherub's planet might be the ruins on that dream bubble LE toasted, which would explain the remains of jpeg artifacts all over. On the other hand, the incompetent Caliborn actually being LE would also suit Hussie's fondness for misleading people about the nature of a character, so I honestly don't know. He definitely seems to know something about Li'l Cal, at the least, and I got cold shivers a while ago when I noticed he called Calliope Cal too.

I suppose we'll all see what just happened in a moth or so (..or longer, if Hussie feels like dicking with us for a while first).

[edenfalling]

I don't think what LE did to the dreambubble created a black hole. The shattering pattern is static while PM and Jack watch it, and the central white impact point does not darken. It really looks to me as if reality itself just fractured, like a broken win... dow... Hey. We know Lord English can cross fourth walls, and apparently also cross fifth walls. Is he warping that power into a weapon?

Obviously Lord English and Caliborn do not occupy the same timeframe, except via circumstantial simultaneity. I also tend to doubt that the cherubs' planet is from the dreambubble, firstly because I don't think objects created within dreambubbles can cross out of them -- note that while Roxy could just pass right through on her way back to Derse, dream!Dirk was blocked by a barrier and had to wake up into a physical body to get out -- and secondarily because I'm pretty sure whatever LE did there completely wiped out the bubble and its contents.

How is Caliborn incompetent? I mean, he's awful at drawing and he's bad at interpersonal relationships, but then, so is Karkat. Furthermore Caliborn masterminded his sister's assassination pretty effectively, and he obviously had been planning to escape his chains for a good while, given that he had a robot leg ready and waiting. He's quite competent at killing and destroying things... which is all we've really seen Lord English do, to this point. (Well. We've also seen Lord English terrify an abused girl and make her into his slave, then do something similar to another woman... and Caliborn has a thing for "bitches" and for ordering people around, so. Not incongruent there either.)

I am really looking forward to finding out what Lil' Cal has to do with Lord English! (Along with all the countless other things I'm looking forward to finding out, of course.) I hope Hussie comes back from his break focused on plot, but yeah, he'll probably go off and play with something that looks completely irrelevant for a while, because he can. :-/

[lexicology]

*facepalm* I misremembered what PM and Jack were looking at. Serves me right for commenting before rewatching.

You may well also be right about the dreambubble. I kinda hate trying to interpret the animations sometimes, I'm not sure if I'm just not good at it or if Hussie is just not as good at conveying things textlessly as he thinks.

I mean that Caliborn has seemed kinda pathetic and incompetent up until this animation. There's the drawing, but also the occasional comedic misspeaking (e.g., when he revealed his attraction to Calliope to Dirk via Freudian slip), the thinking he's being totally badass and evil when he's really not (the chess game with Calliope, getting Dirk to draw him "porn"), and his gloating over the alpha kids' "deaths" when it was in at least some cases pretty evident that they weren't nearly down for the count yet. Of course, in reality it's pretty obvious that he is quite competent, and anyone who expected otherwise hasn't been reading very long seeing as John is about the only major character who isn't at least significantly different than the first impression they give. It's also entirely possible (well, probable) that Caliborn is LE, it's just that I can't put it past Hussie to surprise us again, just because it is so obvious to long-time readers that Caliborn should turn out to be Lord English. I know I'm probably just overthinking this.

[iponly.livejournal.com]

I am so excited for the possibility of Jack Noir and PM talking in the intermission, I am almost jumping up and down in my seat every time I think about it.

I didn't think about dave seeing the bubble ~ his sword breaking thing, that is a good one. I think it was also broken glass reflected in glasses-- we know uu is Lord English, but he obviously has some steps to go to get to giant green space pimp. Those steps may or may not involve the AR (broken glasses, over 9000) and Jake English (named after someone named after him is pretty classic homestuck timefuckery.)

I am pretty sure the laser was his sprite powers. He did prototype himself as well as the rest of his universe, yeah? Such an incredibly hax way to get into the medium. I admire that. And then he still has a viable dreamself to go god tier with as opposed to the alpha kids who lost theirs to get into the medium. And a potential second prototyping.

I don't have any more idea why LE is doing than you though. Following the kids? Why? How? What?

I wonder if he kills his own universe.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, the whole reflection of the shattered bubble in glasses happened... twice, I think? First with Equius, then with Dave. So that's probably significant somehow. But since the same effect is there when PM and Jack are floating in the Furthest Ring watching the aftermath, and they don't have glasses, I think it's not just a reflection gimmick.

Jake definitely has something to do with LE, given that his entry tree included a little hanged voodoo doll of Caliborn! And he probably is the source of the name, because Hussie loves temporal loops. :-)

Caliborn did NOT prototype himself. Instead, he enters about one second before the crashed meteor would have torn free from the ground and flown into the black hole -- you can see it shake and tremble right before it flashes white and blips into the Medium. But! I have seen a Tumblr theory that what the kernelsprite actually did (beyond destroy a universe) was prototype itself with the Red Sun, which Calliope told us was dying... and we know kernelsprites have an affinity for the dead and the doomed. Which makes for an interesting counterpart to the Green Sun. Here is the post in question.

I don't know why he's following the kids and trolls either. Of course, I also don't know why he goes around destroying universes in the first place, but it's not a huge stretch from uu's general displayed personality -- I guess he just likes breaking things. And presumably he doesn't want to be stopped. *shrug*

[iponly.livejournal.com]

hm, you're right, that white flash is probably him entering the medium. At the end of the universe.

Maybe he's following the kids to get to the universe frog the cherubs are in, to kill it, to start his own temporal loop?

His beam attack still really reminds me of sprites though.

[edenfalling]

His beam attack still really reminds me of sprites though.

It does, you're right, and the way his jaw unhinges is particularly reminiscent of Calsprite. Then again, Lord English formed his current body out of Doc Scratch (you can tell because he's still wearing the torn white trousers), and Scratch was prototyped from Lil' Cal, among other things... but Caliborn kind of did the unhinging jaw when he chewed off his leg, so who even knows. *hands*