Homestuck Re-read Part 11: JACK NOIR

Another day, another upd8, another 91 pages of Homestuck.

I'm feeling better after yesterday. I've seen the ending of Marble Hornets: Rosswood which absolutely stuck the landing. The slenderman can still be as terrifying in 2025 as it was back in 2010; and the boys behind it still have it, even with everything that happened between them. Looking over the subreddit for it after I saw a frame from the ending that I want to try and turn into a cyanotype or something. I've been meaning to get back into using my cyanotype and suminagashi setup so I think it might be an ideal thing to try and combine them with.

I also watched A Better Tomorrow which was just the most old school cool thing I've ever seen. The bleached colours give it a beautiful aesthetic and all the actors had an incredible on-screen charisma. I'm planning on watching The Killer next and then Hard Boiled..

But thats all for later. For now is Homestuck?

PEREGRINE MENDICANT

You are now The Peregrine Mendicant. Moving westward in some kind of flying structure. We're introduced to the thing this exile has a hangup about: The Mail.

Unlike Wayward Vagabond however, Things are not going so well with PM's terminal.

DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR PARENTS

John is going into his father's bedroom for the first time. I started a new section header and everything just for the story to start turning like it's lost it's nerve on a round-a-bout. Great.

Jade experiences a sudden 'narcolepsy' moment and falls asleep in front of her grandfather. Who, it appears, is stuffed and mounted on a stand. I don't remember for how much of Jade's life her grandfather was dead and preserved for, as clearly he was alive at some point, but it's a bit upsetting to imagine her growing up alone on that island.

Rose creates a paradox imprint of Jaspers leading us to our first instance of ECTOBIOLOGY. According to wiktionary ecto as a prefix means either 'outside' or 'ghost related' and considering that the imprint was described as a ghost, I'm going with the second one. Ectobiology is one part of the homestuck universe that's never really interested me too much, I'm not sure why? Too green, probably.

LETS TRY AGAIN

John is now in his dad's room. There are no clowns. This is deeply concerning, because surely with the amount his father adorns the home with, this should be a shrine of devotion to them. But his briefcase only contains business documents and the room is full of business clothing. In a previous post I mentioned that one of the themes of Homestuck was having a weird relationship with your parents and this is definitely a major part of it. John's dad was not at all what John thought he was. He doesn't seem to like clowns or Harlequins and only put them around the house in an attempt to bond with his son. It's depressingly realistic in my experience, and I don't think anything other then Homestuck has ever really showed this kind of mistake.

ARCHAGENT JACK NOIR

Yeah lets stop thinking about that for a minute.

Here we get to meet him properly and learn his name. The first 'big bad' of Homestuck, though he isn't quite there yet. He also dislikes clowns, but the uniform is forced on him by his superior; The Black Queen.

Even just the title ARCHAGENT is a bit intimidating, putting him firmly above the imps and ogre's John has faced so far, and now he's on his way to deal with John's father personally.

John gets a new fetch modi called 'Array'. It lets him access items in the sylladex at will. This is without a doubt the most useful fetch modus outside of certain niche applications we see later. We then get to see him start combining them, getting a deque and then an array of dequeues.

FIRST GUARDIAN

Good Dog. Best Friend. We get to see Jade play with and feed her pet, Becquerel. A white dog-like creature that describing as "lazily plays fetch with bullets" would be underselling. Bec has immense power, they're one of the strongest creatures in Homestuck, able to manipulate space and time in extraordinary ways. They're tricky and a bit overpowering when it comes to keeping Jade safe if I remember correctly, but they ultimately mean well.

Jade falls asleep and is teleported back home by Bec, bringing this upd8 to a close. Thank you all for reading.