Jack Noir among three of the four fenestrated walls that make up his Cubicle of Vigilance.
Fenestrated planes, sometimes simply and more literally referred to as windows, are flat planes that connect one place to another. While they are most conventionally used for the purpose of surveillance, a more intrepid hero may break the plane's glass surface and travel physically through them, at their own peril. The use or study of fenestrated planes in such a way is seemingly called “FENESTROLOGY”.
Concept and creation[]
To be fenestrated, from Latin fenestra, 'window', is simply to have a window; a "fenestrated plane" is literally any plane (i.e. flat surface) with a window in it. For the purposes of MS Paint Adventures, the name refers to the strange portal-like "windows" which first appeared in Problem Sleuth and then reappeared as "fenestrated" walls or planes in Homestuck.
In Homestuck, many fenestrated planes are split into four panes of equal size, much like the window inspired Sburb logo[image?]; while much is similar on Alternia, where windows are commonly split into twelve panes, no fenestrated plane has yet been encountered in this shape.
Description[]
A power source, usually a wall socket but sometimes a portable generator
, is essential to the operation of any fenestrated plane; a window with its power cord cut will stop operating immediately, and anything so unlucky as to be caught between two planes when this happens will be unceremoniously split into pieces.
While, from an outside perspective, travel between two fenestrated planes is instantaneous, the traveller actually experiences a distance between the two openings; “the more significant the journey between the planes is, the wider the gap.” The dimension between two windows is a mysterious place; in Problem Sleuth it is called the imaginary universe, while in Homestuck it is the Furthest Ring - possibly indicating a connection between the two - and anyone located entirely within this border dimension when a window's power is cut will become subject to the dangers of these dimensions, such as frightening beasts or unruly ghosts.
As long as it is still within reach of a power source and one possesses the strength or inventory necessary to pick it up, a fenestrated plane can be moved independently of any other windows or surrounding upholstery, allowing them to be set up for easy travel from one place to another.
Space oddities[]
Because of their bizarre spatial properties, windows can potentially be pushed through each other to such a point that they become an infinitely recurring fractal, though this ultimately leads to the release of a devastating amount of energy.
In a case where two planes are connected but are of differing sizes, the traveller may find their relative dimensions altered when they emerge through some planes. For example:
- Entering a mirror-sized plane in one room and emerging from a skyscraper-sized portal on the other side will cause the traveller to become a giant
on their way out. - Inversely, entering a large portal and emerging through a miniature jacuzzi on the other side will shrink the traveller to the width of the novelty pool.
- Emerging from the tall and thin bread truck window will render one similarly tall and thin, while the stout ham truck window will greatly decrease one's height relative to their width.
- When Jade Harley expanded a window to an immense size so that a Prospitian battleship could fit through, the ship emerged on the other side incredibly small. Seemingly this leads not just to spatial warping, but temporal warping too; what seems like three nanoseconds in Andrew Hussie's residence is experienced as three years to the passengers of the ship.
The similar dimension-altering properties of the Gutterpipe Projects and their associated ladieswear can be used to either rectify or enhance many of these spatial mutations.
In Problem Sleuth[]
Many windows were seemingly used by Mobster Kingpin to observe his captives within the office building and dollhouse.
- A small sliding window was situated on the east wall of Problem Sleuth's office. It was hung over a large safe, with the power cord hidden behind it.
- The south face of Ace Dick's office had a large panoramic window powered by portable generator.
- A skylight on the ceiling of Pickle Inspector's office obscured a smoke-activated sprinkler. Dick and Sleuth used this to perform Fair Shake at long range; it was later attached to a battery pack and, after being knotted into a recursive fractal, incorporated into the massively powerful Jawbreaker Skylight Bomb.
- A Death Star window could be found outside and inside the Cathedral of Syndetic Ascension's central room, which the beast Fluthlu used to attack the heroes inside. When the power was cut to the indoor window, Fluthlu was sliced in half and slain.
- The mirror in the Hysterical Dame's room, while not actually connected to another mirror in the imaginary universe, opens a like-shaped vertical portal in the Imaginary City Streets.
- Not all sides of a fenestrated plane must necessarily resemble windows outwardly; ship's portholes lining each side of Mobster Kingpin's own office - which included internal batteries and could be charged for portable use - were connected to a set of traffic lights on the Imaginary City Streets. These were arranged around Demonhead Mobster Kingpin to form an additional layer of defense; however they also allowed for easy access to some of his more vulnerable armor. They were again used to the heroes' advantage as part of Pickle Inspector's Large Hadron Anti-Part-Pickle Acceleration.
- Each of the Imaginary City's food trucks contains a window in the back through which one of the dollhouse's private booths can be viewed.
Many other planes can be found throughout the world of Problem Sleuth which, while not resembling windows physically, exhibit identical portal-like properties.
- Similarly to the Hysterical Dame's mirror, the jacuzzi in the dollhouse opens a horizontal portal in the Imaginary City.
- The special ladieswear also found in the dollhouse is linked to the Gutterpipe Projects and Mount Saint Lardass, though in a slightly different way to most fenestrated planes; the wearer's lower body and legs actually exist within the garment and the Gutterpipe simultaneously.
- The view through the sextant sniper rifle's telescope is the same as the view through the clock face of the Clock Tower of Cartesian Alignment.
Through a Trickster Mode easter egg, John Egbert is able to visit Problem Sleuth's office; though the Wayward Vagabond seems to understand that he should unplug and pick up the window there, John understands neither of these commands.[image?]
In Homestuck[]
Fenestrated walls[]
Jake English with a shrunken fourth wall.
The Archagent of Derse finds similar use for a set of four fenestrated walls forming a “CUBICLE OF VIGILANCE”, allowing them to observe important goings-on throughout the Incipisphere. The fourth wall, however, as its name cheekily suggests, is actually connected to another window within the residence of Homestuck's author Andrew Hussie.
In two known cases, Archagent Jack Noir had his fourth wall stolen; in the B1 session, a marauding Grandpa Harley relocated it to the very upper laboratory of his Pacific island home, next to the stuffed corpse of his granddaughter Jade Harley's dream self.[image?] Similarly in the B2 session, Jake English's Grandma pinched one of the walls “on one of her daring expeditions”, which was later shrunk along with the rest of the laboratory's disembodied head by Terry Kiser's shrink ray. Perhaps uncoincidentally, we first find out Noir's 4th fenestrated wall was stolen just two pages after the author interferes in the comic for the first time.
In the latter case, after Jack's arrest, the Draconian Dignitary took over as Archagent, but had the rest of the Cubicle sliced apart by a rebellious Prince of Heart. These three destroyed walls were replaced with bright green frames, suggesting that they are now nuclearly self-powered, almost certainly through the technological intervention of Betty Crocker.
Because both of these fourth walls are connected to windows in Hussie's house, Hussie is able to set "Jade's" and "Jake's" windows to face each other, allowing travel from Jade's session to Jake's. Hussie has also on occasion used fenestrated walls to observe events within Homestuck: though it is not always clear if these are the same set of two walls, this suggests the frame through which we, the reader view MS Paint Adventures is, so to speak, through this same fourth wall.
Scratch's fenestrated walls[]
At least two fenestrated walls are also curiously in Doc Scratch's possession. Similarly to Hussie's fourth wall/s, one narrow fenestrated wall was used to view events through the banner at the top of web page.
The “fifth wall” was located in Damara's room, though she was under strict instructions not to turn it on. Like the fourth wall/s, the fifth wall gave a view directly into Hussie's residence, but unlike the fourth wall, its exact origins, such as whether it was of Doc Scratch's creation or was likewise looted from the trolls' session - perhaps having 12 walls rather than four, matching its player count - are not known. Though in more traditional theater terms, the fifth wall is the division between the creator/s of a work (such as the actors in a stage play or the author of a comic) and their audience, as described on Hussie's Formspring, in Homestuck the fifth wall is "a partition separating two omniscient narrators". In any case, Hussie takes advantage of the link between his home and Doc Scratch's to break through and assail the malevolent puppet/eer.
Smaller fenestrated planes[]
Jade Harley possessed a “broad, flat gizmo” apparently borrowed from one of her Grandpa's designs, but more than likely based on the fourth wall he acquired from Derse. Though plugged into a nuclear power source, she was unable to get it to work properly.
Roxy Lalonde's room, on the other hand, is littered with a number of fenestrated planes in perfect working condition; one such window has been placed over the top of the room's real window, depicting a healthy tree right outside even though such organisms had in reality been long since eradicated from her planet. These windows are all similarly powered by nuclear hubs no doubt pilfered from the Skaianet laboratory beneath her home; she frequently travelled to and from this lab and other locations through a conveniently placed network of windows.
One fenestrated plane acted as the screen for Act 6's recurring character select, seemingly keeping track of each of the four Alpha kids on four of its panes; it seems unlikely, though, that Roxy was aware of or used this functionality.
Roxy and her friends all later used bright green fenestrated planes[image?], presumably having their nuclear power sources alchemically integrated into them, to travel throughout the session. Much later, her original grey windows were looted from her home by Vriska Serket and used as part of their tactics leading up to and during Collide. As part of her spritely ability to summon household effects, Jasprosesprite^2 was also able to create many ghostly fenestrated planes during this conflict.[image?]