Sburban Spectators

A Homestuck Book Club

> Lexia Velika: Summarize Homestuck Thus Far

Episode 01: Pages 1 to 80

Our journey begins with a thirteen year-old boy standing alone in his bedroom on his birthday - the 13th of April 2009. After failing to name him Zoosmell Pooplord, he is given the name John Egbert and we are introduced to some facts about this young lad as we examine his cake-filled room. Following a game-like structure, John is commanded to retrieve his arms from his chest where he uses his real arms to pick up his fake arms which he then captchalogues into his sylladex. This is his inventory system and the management of this inventory will be a major part of this act for better or for worse. As he captalogues more items from his chest, we learn his sylladex uses a stack data structure fetch modus which inevitably causes him some grief. He messes around in his room for a while learning how to use his sylladex. He has a conversation with one of his internet friends under the username turntechGodhead who asks what he got for his birthday and if he got the Sburb beta yet that came out three days prior. TG suggests John go check his mail to see if it’s arrived. After messing around in his room some more after realizing his Dad beat him to the mail, John continues to message TG who suggests he allocate his strife specibus i.e. pick a weapon. He allocates hammers as his strife specibus and thinks it won’t matter that much. After more inventory shenanigans, He prepares a disguise to leave his room without having to face his father as himself. John explores his living room and ends up accidentally mishandling the urn containing his Nanna’s ashes. He discovers a large present gifted to him by his father and is horrified to learn that it’s a large harlequin doll, harlequins and clowns being something his father is obsessed with. Upon returning to his room, John is messaged by another one of his friends, tentacleTherapist. TT asks John about the game. He goes back downstairs and engages in more antics, including exploring his father’s study. Afterwards he finally exits his house and is no longer Home Stuck.

Episode 02: Pages 81 to 247

John attempts to get the mail only to realize the mailbox is empty. Instead, John discovers a green package sitting on a slip of paper on the passenger’s seat of his Dad’s car. Through the kitchen window, he can see the rest of the mail including a red package and an envelope with the Sburb logo. He enters the kitchen to confront his father, his disguise fails him, resulting in a STRIFE scene, our first interactive panel in the comic. After mischief engineers circumstances wherein John’s smoke pellets go off, he snatches the mail and absconds from the kitchen. Upon returning to his room, he gets birthday well wishes from his third friend named gardenGnostic. He attempts to install the Sburb beta, but is confused by the window that pops up waiting for a server player to establish a connection. After some sylladex antics culminating in John finally opening his gift from TG, the Sburb client connects with a server player, TT. TT now has server control and can manipulate John’s surroundings. She builds an expansion on John’s room and deploys a totem lathe. John realizes that he was supposed to get two envelopes, one containing his server copy of the game. TT deploys two more game objects: a cruxtruder and an alchemiter in different places in John’s house. TT continues to manipulate different objects around John’s house when her connection is disrupted and she drops his bathtub in his upstairs hallway. She reconnects and helps him hit the top of the cruxtruder with a hammer releasing a flashing kernelsprite and initiating a countdown. John collects cruxite from the cruxtruder. Following a walkthrough, TT prototypes the kernelsprite with the harlequin doll. John and the sprite go upstairs to mess with the alchemiter and realizes that a meteor is heading directly towards the house. He uses the lathe to carve into the cruxite dowel producing a totem. TT fully loses connection, dropping the tub in front of John’s door, and we switch to her perspective. Her name is Rose and we get a little information about her interests. Rose sneaks out of her house, avoiding her mother, and goes to the observatory where she can get a better internet connection. She touches base with John and frees him from his room so he can alchemize the totem he carved. A large tree sprouts with an apple on it. John takes a bite of the apple just as the meteor hits and act 1 ends.

Episode 03: Pages 248 to 495

Years in the future, but not many, a curious Wayward Vagabond stumbles across a hatch with the Sburb spirograph logo on it. Presently, Act 2 begins with the start of Rose’s GameFAQs walkthrough she’s writing. John begins receiving cryptic all caps commands from an unknown source and wanders around his house which has been transported into a strange, dark realm atop a tall pillar. John is commanded to retrieve his PDA as suggested by Rose. It is then revealed that the all caps commands are from WV of the future typing from a command console. Rose attempts to lift John’s Dad’s car up to a walkway she created so John can retrieve the server copy of Sburb only for Rose to lose connection and drop the car, causing it to fall to the dark cloudy realm below. We switch to Rose who is determined to seek out a better power source for her laptop and allocates needles as her strife specibus. Suddenly, the perspective shifts to TG. TG is named Dave and we learn about his abundance of interests. We follow Dave through some events that occurred prior to the present moment with John and Rose. Sylladex misadventures cause Dave to spill apple juice over his turntables and copies of Sburb that he then hangs up to dry. A crow attempts to steal Dave’s copies of the game and in response Dave yells “Stop,” causing his sylladex to launch his sword through the bird and out the window. Back to Rose, we learn about her convoluted passive aggressive relationship with her mother as she moves through the house. Rose confronts her mother in a Strife sequence and is gifted a pony she names Maplehoof. John, meanwhile, faces an imp donning a jester costume that he tries to bludgeon with a hammer only for his hammer to fall apart. Rose makes the trek to her cat’s mausoleum whilst John finally bests the imp with sylladex-based attacks. Rose reconnects just in time to see John get pranked by Nannasprite. Nannasprite introduces herself as John’s guide through The Medium and reveals that John’s Dad was kidnapped. She explains that above The Medium past The Seven Gates is a place called Skaia which embodies creative potential. At the center of Skaia, a duel in eternal stalemate takes place until John prototyped his sprite and imbued the combatants with the essence of that which it was prototyped with. A war between forces of dark and light broke out, one wherein light was destined to lose. John is tasked to take the journey of The Ultimate Riddle and build onto his house to reach the gates towards Skaia. John believes that at the end the Earth can be saved, but Nannasprite informs him this is not the case. In the future, WV slips when typing and discovers a hidden hatch full of canned food and a book on human etiquette. Dave explores his house looking for his older Bro’s copies of Sburb. Rose drops a Punch Designix in John’s Dad’s study. Rose begins building stairs up off of John’s house in pursuit of the First Gate. We end this reading with John mounting his slimer pogo about to bash some imps on the way down the stairs.