Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 4 of Homestuck is a section of Act 6 Act 6. It focuses on John fixing the catastrophe of the previous intermission by changing up the timeline, while we learn about the events of the new timeline through Jade and Jane.
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- A wide view of the ruined B2 session is shown, with all the affected planets in a rough line, and LOWAS and LOPAN unmoved and undamaged, along with Prospit, Derse, and Skaia. John is shown to be floating right next to a large piece of candy corn, which was thrown into the cartridge by Caliborn, apparently actually exists like the glitches, and is helpful for scale. It is quite large. Over a series of several vertical and horizontal lengthy images, John flies past the planets and their debris in order: LOFAF, LOLAR, LOCAH, LOHAC, and LOMAX, after which he reaches the final planet in the line, LOTAK. He flies closer to this one, closing in on the damaged temple of Yaldabaoth, where he sees Dirk floating just in front of it. Yaldabaoth's statue appears to have been sliced through, rays are falling away from its face, and the once illuminated head is now a dull, brassy color.
- John tries to talk to Dirk, but he just wants to be alone. When John asks if he knows what happened, all he can say is “I failed.” before the artifacts consume him, along with the entire session. Momentarily unsettled, John then notices Roxy flying away with a wounded Rose, and he approaches them.
- John follows Roxy as she carries Rose to LOPAN. She sets Rose down in front of what appears to be a statue of Nix. Roxy urges Rose to wake up, and she briefly does. She asks what happened, and when Roxy tells her, Rose expresses regret that she never told Kanaya she loved her. Kanaya, and her mother all those years ago. She then dies a heroic death, and Roxy is overtaken by grief.
- John consoles Roxy in her grieving, and remarks that Dirk was wrong about everything being his fault. Rather, John blames himself. Roxy asks about him seeing Dirk, and he tells her the glitches are getting too out of hand, and he asked to be left alone anyway. They sit down, resigned, and discuss what a horrible situation they're in. Roxy becomes convinced that it's a doomed timeline and suggests they simply accept their fate. At a loss for words, John turns away from her, only to see something in the sky. It's Terezi, rocketing towards LOPAN with her rocket wings. She crash lands in front of them, walking out of the wreckage unphased. She walks over to John, immediately headbutts him with enough force to knock him to the ground, and orders him to “F1X TH1S”.
- We return to the dream bubble scene with Calliope, where they are on the stage, Jade is dressed up in her own trollsona, and they are discussing Jade's home life. This soon transitions into a discussion of Calliope's own childhood. The bubble switches to Calliope and Caliborn's room, and Jade is surprised by the familiarity. She recounts to Calliope how she saw another version of the cherub once who had ascended to god tier and defeated her brother, Caliborn. She said this version of Calliope told her stories, and definitely seemed different from the Calliope we're familiar with. As they set up to have Calliope illustrate the stories while Jade recounts them, she begins on one particular tale: the story of how John died.
- We return to the scene on LOPAN. After an initial near-argument, John notices that Terezi appears to be wearing Jade's shoes. After some denial, Terezi admits that they are Jade's shoes, that Jade (along with “3V3RYON3”) is dead, and that she took them because “1 4M ONLY FL3SH 4ND BLOOD”. Terezi is visibly upset when John reminds her of Karkat's death, and she insists again that John figure out how to fix the timeline and undo this whole mess. Roxy interrupts, staring up at the statue of Nix and inquiring if John ever saw his denizen.
- John recounts the time he almost went to see Typheus on the advice of “a blind prankster who shall remain nameless.” “>:/” That is, before Davesprite stopped him. Roxy suggests that now might finally be the time when he's ready to see his denizen. He and Roxy debate for a while whether Typheus would even be able to help in such a hopelessly dire situation, before Terezi interrupts, essentially calling John out as a hypocrite for categorizing the male trolls as weenies, accurate though he may have been. She demands that he see his denizen immediately and accept his offer regardless of the cost. John concedes and asks what they will do in the meantime, and they both essentially respond that they'll simply do nothing and wait for the end. John becomes upset by this portion of the conversation, and insists that Roxy do something productive too, like seeing her own denizen. She asks what the point is, and he suggests a number of theoretical benefits, like learning how to do some sort of “voidey thing” so she can preserve herself in the void through John's retcon. She calls it pointless, but ultimately agrees (with Terezi's urging) to see Nix when John insists he won't visit his denizen unless she visits hers. John and Roxy awkwardly attempt to say their goodbyes, and Terezi becomes immensely frustrated with the “P41NFULLY 3V1D3NT ROM4NT1C T3NS1ON”. She makes them say goodbye, return when they fail to give proper goodbye hugs, “NO, NOT M3! DON'T TOUCH M3”, and after the goodbye is secured, Roxy expresses that she'd like to meet Terezi again sometime, and phases down to the core of her planet to see Nix. As John says goodbye to them both and begins to leave, Terezi calls him back over, as she apparently has some final things to say to him.
- Terezi tells John that he should have a plan first, for what to do after he meets Typheus. Specifically, what to change with his retcon powers. Both of them are at a loss for what to do, but John convinces her to attempt to use her Seer of Mind powers to figure out where everything went wrong. After a moment of thought, Terezi proposes in vague wording an idea, and she is unsure if there is “3V3N 4NY TH3OR3T1C4L B4S1S FOR 1T WORK1NG”. She asks John to assist by thinking of a phrase, something he can remember later on. After looking around for a bit, he sees
Jade'sTerezi's shoes and settles on “there's no place like home.” Terezi then focuses a noticeable amount of effort into performing some sort of Mind power, before it apparently fizzles out. John asks if it worked, to which Terezi concedes it didn't. John attempts to keep thinking of ways she can do something important, but Terezi angrily points out to him that there's literally nothing left for her to do, and that he should just go. At a loss for a counterpoint, John agrees to leave, and then promises her that he'll “make sure none of this ever happens” as he flies off to his planet. - Jade begins to tell the story of how John died to Calliope. Not long after the three year trip on the Prospitian Battleship began, Jade shrunk down John and Davesprite on LOWAS so they could catch up and reconnect. She was relaxing in the living room while this happened, until LOWAS exploded. They both died, John had even died a permanent death, and Jade spent the next three years on her trip utterly alone. Near the end of her trip, she fell asleep and met an alternate god tier version of Calliope, the one who told Jade all of these stories. She explained that LOWAS exploded all those years ago because of Typheus, who destroyed the land and killed John because it was necessary for this John to be erased in this reality. Jade said it's related to players taking similar Choices from their denizens in different timelines. She then went on to tell the story of another John, the one who made a deal with Typheus. Jade said this Calliope described the session as glitchy, which lines up with the events in the current timeline. Jade then pauses and begins drawing a silly consort intermission, which frustrates Calliope to the point where her hand momentarily reverts to a cherubic appearance. Jade agrees to go back to the story.
- Jade finishes up the god tier Calliope's story about how she defeated her brother, ascended, and lived out the rest of her life in a doomed timeline before she died. Jade mentioned that Calliope made a clever transition from that story to the one about John, and begins to tell it herself. John had to return to his planet, and complete his quest. He had to “journey to the place where "constellations danced beneath the clouds"”, and “it was said the heir of breath was to free the stars from the shade and release them into heaven”. What this really means, riddles aside, is that John has to free the fireflies trapped beneath the overcast sky of his planet. To do this, he has to play a special song that will summon the breeze through LOWAS's pipes. In order for that to happen, said pipes need to be freed of the oil clogging them. Ultimately, this meant facing Typheus. Calliope makes a big deal about having to draw a giant green snake, which makes sense given her species' biology, so Jade does it instead. Ultimately, John is given The Choice and accepts the terms given to him.
- Typheus flooded the core with oil, rendering John unable to transform into wind to escape. Essentially, he had to figure out his abilities or drown. But zapping away to somewhere else wouldn't help him: his planet quest would be left unfinished, he wouldn't be able to move forward. So John thought of a third option, which according to Jade “gave him the first glimpse of how to control the power” - instead of himself, he zapped all of the oil away, leaving it in various places throughout the story, “leaving a little mark for anyone who might notice, signifying his final mastery over his confining reality”. More importantly, his planet was clean, and he was able to play his song.
- John begins to play Pipeorgankind ♫, and the clouds part. Massive gusts of wind cover his entire planet, more so than when he initially did the windy thing three years ago, culminating in the Act 6 Act 6 Supercartridge Expansion Pack being ejected and cleared of the stardust. At the same time as the wind, his whole planet is engulfed in the glow of his retcon powers as he zaps LOWAS elsewhere.
- Lil Seb puts the cartridge back in the slot. John walks for a long time across his planet, which was zapped into a gray blankness that seems to be outside of the story, even integrated with the site background. On the way to his house, he encounters Roxy on the path. He asks her what she's doing here, and she merely replies “sup”.
- As they walk back away from his house, John asks Roxy about seeing her denizen and explains her Choice; to remain in the session and cease to exist or to follow John to LOWAS and be taken along with the planet by John's power but with the caveat that those she loved in the new timeline would know the loss that she had felt in the timeline they had left. John notes that he was given a similar Choice in regards to accepting Typheus's challenge, both agree despite the ominous nature of their Choices that having both of them remember the previous events and loss together is better then having to remember it alone. The discussion turns to the current location and its "blankness", remarking it to be the home of the fireflies, with John believing it to be nowhere and with no relation to any timeline and suggests to Roxy that Nix knew Roxy would be inspired by the location and help her into mastering her Void powers and creating the matriorb.
- Roxy and John make their way to the top of a mesa, the very one where Dave's Bro was killed by Jack Noir. As they make their way up there, they discuss what events to change in the timeline, focusing namely on John preventing Aranea from obtaining the Ring of Life, and John recounts his recent run-in with Caliborn. As they reach the top, Roxy examines the sword, still stuck in the ground where Bro died. John explains that he, Jade, and Davesprite had an informal funeral for him, wherein she “made his body disappear to bury him”, and Davesprite said a number of things about his brother. Roxy pulls his sword out of the ground using Void powers. John tells her that he has to go take on his responsibility, while she stays there to practice her powers more. They have another awkward goodbye, and then John flies away from LOWAS, zapping off somewhere else in the process.
- Right off the bat, John zaps into a critical moment - the end of Act 1. Recognizing that this moment is too fundamental to mess with, John zaps away as fast as possible. Trying again, he zaps into the scene in the intermission where Hearts Boxcars eats Eggs, although John is off-screen. Disgusted and deeming it completely useless to history, he tries to focus more. He decides to focus on Dave, in order to bring him closer to landing in a relevant moment. He ends up in the LOHAC sequence from A6A6I1, where he tackles his past self to prevent him from screwing anything up. As before, John tells his past self to “find roxy”, then bops him on the head to zap him away. After the past version of John leaves, John reflects on his past naivete, and resolves to be more careful with his powers.
- John considers that he should find someone who would be able to help him focus his powers. After brief deliberation, he realizes Terezi is the perfect person for the job. Using the phrase she gave him before, “there's no place like home”, John zaps into the scene where her powers "failed to work" before. This time, the second option is accessible, using the password "HOME" that was provided within the pages of this update. Without the password, readers at the previous point in the story would not have been able to proceed. Now, however, this second John shows up next to John and Terezi, prompting her to exclaim “1 C4N'T B3L13V3 TH4T 4CTU4LLY WORK3D”.
- The narrative focus shifts to a dream bubble. Inside, Vriska and Meenah enter what looks like a sprawling carnival. They discuss its origins briefly, with Vriska questioning whether it's the “"Dark Carnival"”, and Meenah doubting the notion that it could be real entirely. They debate going on rides, and after Vriska declines their first option of a merry-go-round for obvious reasons, Meenah isn't interested in seeking out any more rides. They come across a tattoo parlor, and after a brief discussion, Vriska agrees to get one.
- The John who just appeared talks to (John), the one who was already in the scene. He explains to (John) that, since he - John - is the one who is “learning to use his flashy powers to reconstruct the time line”, (John) is probably irrelevant now. John suggests that (John) might have important things to do regardless, and sends him off to see Typheus. After (John) leaves, John and Terezi resume discussion of what points in the timeline to change. Terezi notes the hypocrisy of her listing other people's mistakes, and John lists some of his own as she responds only briefly and disinterestedly. As it turns out, this is due to the fact she was writing on her scarf: using her powers, she compiled a list of specific phrases that will take John to certain points in her life, with specific instructions of what to do for each event. She then draws a crime scene style outline of herself in blue chalk, tosses the chalk to John, says her final words of encouragement to him, and promptly keels over and dies perfectly within the outline.
- Jane enters Jade and Calliope's dream bubble. She approaches them rather disoriented, asking the two politely where she is, and Calliope is excited to see her. After some initial confusion, seeing the symbol on Calliope's shirt reminds Jane who she is, and they exchange a hug. After that, they briefly discuss the amnesia typical of the recently deceased, and Jane (upon discovering the two are not in fact real trolls) asks if she can make a trollsona as well. Calliope and Jade look delighted.
- John looks at Terezi's list of instructions. The first item is marked R3UN1ON / GO G3T R1NG. We are taken back to the tail end A6I5, where the meteor crew has just been dropped on the ground in front of John on LOMAX. After clicking [???????], and entering "R3UN1ON", the John we are following appears in the scene. He talks to everyone at length, reminiscing on events that his mere presence will alter from ever having happened. Everyone else stands speechless as bids them all fond farewells, and after a number of embraces and well-wishings, he returns to the Prospitian battleship elsewhere on the planet, where he finds the ring still on the couch where he left it as he disappeared, and he pockets it immediately.
- Vriska and Meenah have returned to the bubble with Meenah's castle, with Aradia still sitting on the roof. They're sitting on the edge of the floating landmass, watching the destruction of bubbles as though they were fireworks. They're sitting in front of the red Juju chest, with the Treasure presumably still inside. Vriska has a new rather punkish look that matches Meenah's, complete with an undercut on the left side of her head, short shorts, blue tights, red shin-high converse, piercings, red studded blue bracelets like Meenah's, and an anchor tattoo. Meenah talks about how she'd always lived without fearing death, and came to disregard it even more after entering the afterlife, unlike “all those spook eyed souls up there scared to death of double dyin”, who she thus felt deserved to be killed. They both talk about what a sad existence Lord English must be leading, agreeing that “it's 8etter to just try and 8e happy.” They smile at each other and hold hands.
- The next item on the list is "FR4M3D", and John returns to the trial scene in Terezi's introduction. His mission is to R3SCU3 TH3 W1TN3SS B3FOR3 H3 1S MURD3R3D! (DONT G3T C4UGHT). This refers to the green scalemate that stands as a witness in Terezi's trial. Terezi is about to frame Senator Lemonsnout, the accused, for his murder, but John follows her instructions and escapes with him out the window, despite immediately afterwards questioning the relevance of this. Terezi looks around confusedly and snifs at the window, presumably looking for the scalemate, as John sits on the roof.
- While he's up there, John looks at the next item on the list: MOM3NT. John complains about the vagueness of this, and then zaps back to a rather flirtatious conversation between Terezi and Karkat (during which she reveals that she'd smelled his blood color during a "moment" that they'd shared). Following the instructions to "L34V3 M3SS4G3 ON W4LL:", John writes you don't need him. and, underneath that, (this is john by the way, ha ha.) Terezi reads it and looks mildly dejected. After patting himself on the back for being such a great prankster, John ponders that the "him" probably means Karkat, and gripes about Terezi “send[ing him] on a time travel quest just to fix her fucking boyfriend problems.”
- Jade, Jane, and Calliope are all sitting around the book at the edge of the stage. Jane, like the other two, has her own colored writing utensil now, and more importantly is dressed up in her trollsona costume. They ask Jane what she remembers, but like Jade her memory is hazy, and this proves difficult. Interestingly, she recalls her trickster shenanigans crystal clear, but Jade insists that she stops describing it, much to the disappointment of both Calliope. Jade reminds her that they were both turned into “bad guys”, and upon coercing by Calliope, Jane figures she can at least recall the circumstances of her death. In her timeline, everything went the same up through the end of A6A5. After that, Jane still at least started to build up the houses, but then something happened not even the Condesce was ready for. Jade never intercepted the meteor and redistributed everyone, because she disappeared without a trace. This allowed everyone on the meteor to avoid the Condesce's clutches and form a plan. After luring the Condesce away with a number of decoys, they assaulted Derse in hopes of enacting a prison break. Rose fired a particularly strong spell at Jane, but she dodged it. In her altered moral state, Jane was “enraged by [Rose's] claim on [Jane's] beloved Bffsy”, and threw her Skaia fork at Rose, only for Roxy to intercept it. Fatally, and Heroically.
- Switching back to the canonspace scene, Roxy is on a cliffside on LOWAS, a mound of dirt dug out of the ground in front of her, holding a bottle from her modus and surrounded by salamanders. She breaks the bottle, and Rose's corpse falls out of it into the hole. Roxy buries her, unties her own Rogue mask, and ties it around the hilt of Dave's Bro's sword, which is at the head of the grave. One of the fireflies settles on her head, and she holds hands with some visibly sad salamanders. Jaspersprite then appears, and gives her a hug.
- John reads the next item on Terezi's list, as Dragonsprite sniffs at him: MURD3R. Drangonsprite says “bye” as he zaps away, showing up right behind Terezi in Tavros's murder scene. The scarf instructs him to D3PLOY TH3 W1TN3SS, which he does, as H3 1S CR1T1C4L TO TH3 1NV3ST1G4T1ON!!!!!!! Terezi is interrupted in kiss-reviving Tavros, and finds the green scalemate behind her. She stares for a long time at the long staircase above her, where John has hidden. John once more complains about the apparent irrelevance of his progress, and wonders whether indeed he is the one being pranked here.
- JUST1C3. John zaps to late Act 5 Act 2, while Terezi is talking to Dave about Vriska's injustices, just before she finds Nepeta's body. John expresses sorrow that Nepeta is dead, and adds a note to the Nicolas Cage poster quickly before Terezi arrives on the scene. She interrupts her previously intact conversation with Dave upon noticing the note, which says "it was gamzee you idiot!!! um... over", and on the back "hey terezi... when you told me to say 'you don't need him', did you mean karkat or dave? maybe you shouldn't date dave either. the way you and he described it, it sounds like it got weird. i dunno, just offering some friendly dating advice! man, this caper we're doing is so crazy. anyway, later!" Terezi stares at the note as Dave asks her what's going on, and John can be seen watching in anticipation from the vent above.
- John consults the scarf of stupidity once more, the next keyword being HONK. John reappears a mere dozen pages from his last jump, when Terezi was exploring the secret room, with Gamzee covertly stalking her. John appears in the room, and Gamzee stares at him wide-eyed, clearly taken off guard by his presence. John, not noticing this, follows the directions on the scarf in a resigned manner, honking a bike horn on the ground. This causes Terezi to spin around and spot Gamzee, who is still in a mild state of shock. Terezi points accusingly at him, in a more acute state of shock and surprise. John, who is standing outside the door, notes there is one more item on the list, and hopes that heand Terezi “at least TRIED to change something important here.” The door is then promptly kicked in his face, slamming him against the wall, as Terezi comes out, in full Redglare attire, with a bound and horn-gagged Gamzee on her back.
- In the dream bubbles, Vriska and Meenah run through a horse-laden field while laughing. They trip over a rock, causing them to start rolling off a cliff and land on the ground below, laughing the entire way. As they roll to a stop, the two, embracing, gradually stop laughing and kiss. Unbeknownst to them, Hussie is dejectedly watching them from behind a nearby rock.
- Jane continues her story, saying that she attempted to use her powers to resurrect Roxy, but in doing so let her guard down, resulting in her being killed by the meteor crew. Calliope wonders if Roxy's ghost will be joining them, and Jade advises Jane to start making up a trollsona for Roxy as an apologetic gesture. Calliope asks who Jane's killer was; Jane suspects that it was the leader of the group, a strong-willed figure who was supposed to have been made irrelevant but, through “some inscrutable gambit of circumstance”, defied the judgment of paradox space and became part of the story once more. John reads Terezi's final keyword: FL1P, instructing him to go to the moment just before Terezi killed Vriska and knock Vriska out. He arrives, tells Terezi not to kill Vriska, and sends Vriska flying with a punch to the face. Terezi, confused, asks what and why John is doing on the meteor; he tells her that they did it and that everything will be OK now, though he admits that he isn't entirely sure what it was they did. After he explains her older self's plan to her, Terezi demands to see the scarf, but John repeatedly refuses to let her read it. He notices that there is one last command on the scarf, telling him to give Terezi his wallet, but he points out that he lost the wallet years ago and decides to write off the discrepancy as the one flaw in the plan. As he and Terezi continue arguing, Karkat arrives and sees John.
- Karkat, freaking out, demands to know how John got there, how Gamzee got tied up, and why Vriska is lying unconscious on the ground. John tries to offer Karkat the scarf to serve as an explanation, but he rejects it. Kanaya and Sollux arrive as John, talking to himself, attempts to figure out what effects Vriska's remaining alive will have on the timeline and realizes that he has just retconned his acquisition of the retconning powers out of existence. Deciding that he has meddled with the timeline enough, he announces to the trolls that he is leaving and will be seeing them all again in three years, ignoring a screaming Karkat's demands that he stay and explain things. John zaps away, Vriska regains consciousness, and, in response to Kanaya saying that she no longer understands anything, Sollux explains that everything they just saw was the result of “mutha. fuckin. shenanigans. ”
- John returns to LOWAS and gives an overjoyed Roxy the Ring of Life. As they hold hands, John touches a nearby tree and teleports himself, Roxy, and the entirety of LOWAS out of the blank.
- Her memory jogged by Jane's story, Jade recalls that she arrived aboard the meteor, intending to hijack it, when she was caught off guard by the unexpected presence of Vriska. She now realizes that she and Jane didn't die after all; Vriska used her powers to make them fall asleep. As Vriska stands over Jade's sleeping form, the curtains close on Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 4.
Trivia[]
- A dialoglog was added to the last page of the 11/07/14 update when the 11/10/14 update was posted.
- As with the previous retcons, the oil was actually edited in to the 100 previous panels in the story, and Hussie was so kind as to list and link them all for us.
- With John's jump back to the end of Act 1, the corresponding Flash was retconned to show (the current) John subtly zapping away just before the meteor hits.
- The first update of this sub-sub-act to focus on Vriska, on 12/12/14, consisted of 8 pages.
- Hussie can be seen in the background here, riding the
merry-go-roundhorse-a-whirl.- He is seen again here when Vriska, Meenah, and Aradia are watching English's "fireworks".
- Vriska's anchor tattoo has Serket horn shaped tips. Additionally, the eye of the anchor is reminiscent of the sevenfold eye Vriska had while alive.
- Jane's trollsona has horns shaped like a spoon and a fork, calling back to her fetch modus and overarching baking theme. This design was originally created by Calliope's artist, Shelby.
- A large portion of this act revolved around Vriska's return to the story, and this is the 8th subdivision of Act 6 Act 6.