Homestuck 2 Liveblog: Part 3

by Daniel Kelly on December 25, 2019 at 6:18 am

Homestuck 2 has updated. It’s a Christmas Miracle! As always, this liveblog is tagged “Homestuck 2 Liveblog” is you want to filter it out. Today, we’re still in Candlyland, and it’s time to meet the Vriskas!

For those who blocked out the epilogues, the one in the stripes is Vriska Maryam-Lalonde, who was adopted by Rose and Kanaya, and the shadowed Vriska is Vriska Serket, the post-retcon version who went to defeat Lord English. She definitely just fucked and killed Gamzee, despite the fact that she is 16 and he is middle-aged. Since having two characters named “Vriska” is confusing, Vriska Serket is getting referred to as (Vriska), in parenthesis, but just to make sure we don’t get any less confused, the pre-retcon Vriska Serket was also called (Vriska) and is presumably out in space somewhere with pre-Retcon Terezi since those two were last seen cuddling in the Furthest Ring watching the universe collapse from a safe distance in what is arguably the “end” of Homestuck’s alpha timeline, but could very plausibly also have gotten sucked into the Black Hole and landed on Candyland Earth.

Okay, everyone understand what’s going on? No? Fuck you, it’s Homestuck.

Minutes in the past, but not many, (Vriska) pockets John’s phone before she can worry too much about waiting for a reply from Terezi.

Oh, right, Vriska has John’s phone and thus can communicate with the alive Terezi on Dirk’s ship, the one remaining connection between Candyland and Meatspace.

Oh man, if Homestuck was still popular you’d see this cosplay at anime conventions a lot, wouldn’t you?

VRISKA: That’s the Right Call.
VRISKA: So, Nickname me, 8itch. And make it Cute.

Okay, disregard my entire opening Paragraph. Vriska Serket is now back to being Vriska with no parenthesis, and Vriska Maryan-Lalonde is now nicknamed “Vrissy” so that everyone gets a unique-ish name. Hooray, we’re all caught up. Also there’s like an 80% chance these two are going to get together at some point. Also also, what’s up with Vriska’s eyepatch?

She didn’t have that in Act 7, and she didn’t get it in the epilogues, I just checked, and there’s no space in-between Act 7 and the epilogues or the epilogues or now for her to have gotten it off-screen. These panels are going out of their way to hide her eyes, but since the epilogues explicitly confirmed she has normal eyes (and thus is still alive), I don’t know what they’re hiding.

VRISSY: Yeah, but Vrissy is a Thing now. Roll with it.
TAVROS: Okay, uh,, Vrissy,
VRISSY: We kinda Need a Ride

Speaking of mysteries, why does Tavros Crocker have a troll typing quirk if he’s the son of two humans, and thus presumably a human himself, with no relation whatsoever to the original Tavros? I can’t help but notice Tavros is typing in Gamzee purple instead of Tavros’s original bronze color, so I have a terrifying feeling that Tavros is going to be the biological son of Jane and Gamzee somehow and the epilogues just danced around that. Maybe I’m being too pessimistic.

Oh thank Christ. Also there is absolutely nothing interesting on Vriska’s face, so I’m not sure why there were hiding it. Maybe they figured some people would forget Vriska’s alive and wanted to milk a little drama from the casual readers? I dunno. Maybe I’m over-thinking this as well as pessimistic. Still wondering where that eyepatch came from, though.

Aww, he’s cute. I like his snazzy suit jacket. Also: This is the first named character in the entirety of Homestuck to have come out of a vagina like a normal person instead of being a an ecto-clone.

I don’t think white pants are a great idea in an artstyle where the humans aren’t colored in, though. He looks like he’s Donald Ducking it.

There’s a Pulp Fiction joke to be made here but I’m not gonna say it

This is very obviously Harry Anderson Egbert. He is a bit less cute. It is very weird to see unimportant background humans in Homestuck. None of the kids in the original comic ever interacted with another human, or mourned the deaths of a single person when the earth was destroyed. Which, conservation of detail and all that, but it still makes it weird to see just Bob Fedorafreak or whoever walking by.

HARRY ANDERSON: yo.
VRISSY: Hey
HARRY ANDERSON: hey babe, what’s up?

Hm, Harry Anderson (Never just Harry?) refers to Vriska as “babe”, which is rather friendly (Edit from the future: Harry and Vrissy are dating, Vrissy and Tavros are kismesis). Gives me the vibe of like a Hollywood agent, and I suppose his always being “Harry Anderson” backs that up.

I do like this character, or what little we’ve seen of him so far in literally two pages. As the child of the two main families, he’s got the Strilonde “Must be cool at all times” thing mixed in with the Harleybert “Kind of heart, dumb of ass” thing. I also can’t help but notice that Homestuck 2 has almost immediately set up a team of four teenagers, two boys and two girls, two humans and two trolls. If John/Jade/Rose/Dave are the Beta Kids, and Jane/Jake/Roxy/Dirk are the alpha kids, these are, what, the pre-release kids? The Delta Kids? I like the Delta Kids.

VRISKA: You said this was a schoolhive, yeah?
VRISKA: We can just dump it in the inciner8or. That’s pro8a8ly what his plan was to 8egin with.
VRISSY: The what????????
VRISKA: The inciner8or. Like, for 8odies??
VRISSY: At SCHOOL????????
VRISKA: Yes?

Okay,this got a laugh out of me. A big complaint of Homestuck was that we never got the original four kids all in a room interacting with each other, and now we have a new quartet and they’re immediately in a car together. I’m digging this dynamic of them all being wildly incompetent but in different ways, and if Homestuck 2 is going to have a lot of this kind of thing I’m down for it.

Vriska and Tavros have, through some tortured logic and misunderstanding, decided that the best way to hide Gamzee’s corpse is to carry it into school with them to meet Harry Anderson because they think he has a plan and don’t know he thinks they were joking and has no plan at all. This is legitimately great. Look how confident Vriska is! She thinks this is an amazing plan! And why wouldn’t she? She’s the Thief of Light and she literally has Superpowers that make her super-lucky.