MILES, if he were purple: One small tumble for Ly’ly, one giant leap for the comic. Welcome back to Derse, motherfuckers.
HAVEN, Purple Reign: This princess of the moon ate purple go-gurt for 10 years of her life and this is what happened. Get ready this is a long one.
MILES: This update is a pretty visuals-heavy one, so commentary may be a bit light (and I’m also gonna dabble a bit in art-comm), but let’s see what we can’t cook up for you all. First of all, OBVIOUSLY we were going back to Derse. I saw some speculation that we’d skip it but as Homestuck Geeks first and also Authors first... that just ain’t happening. And who better to christen its reappearance than one of our many purple childlings?
MILES: Horrible. Terrible even.
MILES: I will never forget being like 16 and reading Homestuck for the first time and getting those incredible zoomed out shots of Prospit and Derse and being just blown away by the majesty of it. Andrew’s genius with this kind of shit is hard to overstate. Getting to do our own moment, even if it’s exactly the same, was so cool not only for us, but because when this update dropped everyone’s reaction was basically exactly the same.
Panel 918 1 & 2 by Annie “Chumi” Lee and Haven
Haven: Looks like someone tried to get inside Ly’lac’s room. Probably someone with nefarious intent. As I type this I realize this is coming out after the point at which you’d know it was CD. Yeah it was CD. He serendipitously blew up her room at the same time she blew up her own room. Shout out to the readers that guessed that the explosion guy was the one that went to the explosion girls room.
MILES: Yes! Getting into the dreamself/moon shenanigans is one of the things we’ve been the most excited for since the new session was settled on and starting off with a bang sounds like an appropriate beginning. Prospit and Derse provide such incredible... I guess to put it in video game terms, Questline potential, in the context of SBURB/SHURB as a game. So much of the action within a session takes place on the players’ Lands and the Battlefield, but there’s an endless potential for intrigue on the moons that we really want to take advantage of because it’s one of the most iconic parts of doing a Game session in the first place. We’ll get more into that in the commentary for the CD update.
MILES: Some buddies! Ly’lac begins snooping around and taking a peek at the digs of her new neighbors, getting a glimpse at a dynamic duo that have been taking the fandom by storm lately. We see a hoofie leg, and a poster of iconique drag queen Divine, which poses the interesting question of what drag, or whatever it is Divine here represents, might actually mean to a species that doesn’t really have gender within itself.
HAVEN: Aw so happy to see her friend
MILES: She also peeps some truly statuesque statues, and it’s like, yeah, I’d be rubbernecking too. God damn.
HAVEN: Ly’lac looks and sees a myriad of lovely things. In front of her eyes is Vrissy (The omegas have arrived! Or were they already here?), Some delightful Outer Gods, and a single sheltered bubble. The horn appears behind her, and she doesn’t have the chance to turn and face it’s owner.
Floral: [S] Ly’lac: Look was boarded and drawn by Haven and it was a flash we were all pretty excited, in a way it signified the end of the “Deltritus Planet Introduction” by crossing the threshold into the game. It also tested our new workflow for small flashes like this, which exclusively includes animate now.
MILES: This one’s a mysterious doozy, isn’t it? It introduces a few key details worth getting into, the first and most obviously shocking one being the presence of Vrissy on Ly’lac’s Derse. The implications are astounding. Amongst other things, it seems to confirm the fact that the Omega kids are going to be joining in on the Delta session, and is the first appearance of any of the Omegas at all since Vriska whisked them away at the end of Act 1. I wonder what’s happened to them since then? How are they here? We’ll keep you guessing for now.
MILES: There’s also the ominous presence of Horrorterrors to consider, out in the far reaches of the Furthest Ring where they belong. Apparently, Lord English didn’t manage to get ‘em all! They murmur rather incomprehensibly (although Ly’lac later reveals that she can make out at least some of their whispering) and one nestles around a mysterious glowing bauble.
MILES: Finally, Ly’lac’s night terrors are punctuated by the looming presence of a spire and an almost... equine murmur. What could that mean? Then she wakes up in front of THE HORN, which probably doesn’t have all that much to do with the aforementioned spire. Why would it? Synchronicity between the circumstances of your dreamself and your awakeyself is kind of a tired bit. We probably won’t use it.
HAVEN: An odd horn in her dream has awoken her to the odd horn in her reality. Going from looking at all those ancient alien creatures to waking up surrounded by all these similarly ancient grandmas. What fun synchronicity.
MILES: Now here’s a bit we finally DID use. It took us a while, but it was yet another Classic Homestuck Bit too luscious to pass up so it was bound to happen eventually.
Floral: All these talk of arcs, I love how this passage makes you wonder what exactly we are referencing. It would be crazy if it wasn’t even something that has happened yet? Right? Too crazy.
MILES: The stunning appearance of Vriska, rendered here as a nymph alongside some unnamed satyr who could be who the fuck knows who, gets Ly’lac’s terminal prompter all tizzied up. Something really funny about this that I’m only just now realizing is that Terezi’s uh I mean the terminal prompter’s immediate shock at the appearance of Vriska, while totally warranted, completely ignores her own presence within this comic within a comic.
Floral: Ly’lac showing off her alchemizing skills here was Haven’s idea and I appreciate all the opportunities it opens up for us, that with a couple items and a tiny alchemist circle Ly’lac has the world in her hands.
MILES: While Terezi I mean the terminal prompter begins shouting at Ly’lac to go back and read more comics online, Ly’lac decides to put down the medias for once and engage in some good old fashioned socializing.
Floral: Enter CC, who is one of my favorite of the Delta kids! Why? Because CC is freakin awesome. There’s something so charming about this dialogue and it was so much fun to have the entire team look back at their old internet chats to remember what specific quirks we all had the overlapped with this time period of netspeak. But besides that CC is just such a fun little ragebaiter.
HAVEN: They are so fucking cute. You can tell that Ly’lac wishes she was on CC’s level.
MILES: CC’s impish playfulness is so fun to read and write and just... REMEMBER. We got some relative oldheads on the writing team and tapping back into those halcyon days on Neopets and Tegaki and all the other glorious stomping grounds of the early/adolescent 2000’s internet ecosphere is a delight already somewhat represented in Homestuck but not, perhaps, quite like this.
HAVEN: The Ly’lac bowl has begun.
MILES: CC then wastes no time at all getting to salacious ship suggestions in like nine different directions. A good half the possible cast are rapidfire paired off in this one.
Floral: The team is obsessed with me lovely guppi. CC you are iconic. But seriously this was such a fun introduction to the character, and so desperately needed! As I’m always screaming and hissing, bring in the green characters.
MILES: Lock in people, AA’s back. And apparently she’s not even mad. In this conversation, Ly’lac goes over a bit of what she was able to glean from her little trip to slumberland, and presents to Ly’lac one of her morphday presents.
HAVEN: Ha ha she said “I come in peace” ii em hotep.
HAVEN: She is so funny. Honestly they all are, Ly’lac saying “ok i got something to tell you but don’t tell AA about it” and CC immediately telling AA within seconds of hearing it in the middle of their conversation and then AA acting as if anyone else could have possibly told her this in an attempt to protect CC.
HAVEN: AA is so kind.
HAVEN: Ly’lac’s glib ass response to AA’s genuine excitement at this information in contrast to her getting all worked up when CC didn’t really care. She’s so damn fickle.
HAVEN: Trolling this kind soul and for what.
HAVEN: ...?
HAVEN: I just love this whole exchange so much.
HAVEN: I’m basically just pasting this whole conversation in here because it’s just so good. So we have a bit of Ly’lac’s taste in cartoons and also that AA has sisters? And they’re mad at her? Who could be upset with this sweet innocent kind soul?
MILES: We loved writing the user’s manual for THE LATCHKEY.
HAVEN: Ly’lac, like a certain blue pajama wearing old friend of ours struggles with finding meaning in her life. It manifests through her apathy and general ennui, she feels as though she’s spent her entire life in the waiting room and suddenly it looks like her number is coming up soon. With this key Ly’lac inches closer to some “truth”. Though her time here has been short, she’s now become a symbol for the new era and has been granted one as such.
HAVEN: Violent as shit. New wand and immediately starts thinking about who to destroy with it.
HAVEN: In the midst of all this Terezi is being mentally tortured. Denied her delicious snab mukbang, denied her mysterious Vriska comic explanation, can you give her a break please.
Floral: Putting a nursery ward next to a senior home is almost as funny as putting a mortuary building.
HAVEN: I think Floral compared this to going outside and shooting a squirrel with a gun.
HAVEN: And everybody clapped. They love her. She is the people's princess.
HAVEN: How odd.
HAVEN: Once again Terezi clamors for violence and is denied, immediately starts trying to skip ahead. She’s done with this shit. Unfortunately for her our beloved Ly’lac is attracting nothing but unwanted good will.
HAVEN: When it comes to others getting close to what is owed to Ly’lac AA is always here to bring down the hammer, even from afar. She’s here to make sure everything's in its right place.
HAVEN: And with change comes progress! Hopefully at least. I’m not too worried though, she is Lucky Ly’lac after all.