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You fashion a pretty nice pair of stilts. But you don't know how you're going to get up on them. If only you hadn't broken the other half-ladder in half, you might have been able to climb onto the stilts with it.
You are a little bummed out that you missed grabbing the key by inches. In an attempt to drown your sorrows, you gush forth with melody, an enchanting rendition of Malaguena.
In an attempt to silence your racket, the man above begins drilling noisily.
You sing so hard you topple backwards over the pumpkin. As you lie on the floor looking up, you see the tip of the drill penetrating the ceiling. It looks just big enough for a key to fit through!
With a hefty mouthful of the other guy's urine, you decide to get revenge on the man below for botching the key situation.
But as you're about to spit the pee, the man above takes a huge shit on your head from his window. The surprise unfortunately causes you to swallow the pee.
Overcome with nausea from the foul chain of events, you vomit.
The man below has almost completely reconstructed the ladder using the same method he used to build the stilts. He is nearly up to your cell when he is met with a face full of regurgitated urine.
You start to feel sorry for abusing the guard so badly, and mumble an apology.
But then a mere apology doesn't seem to do justice to the poor man. You decide he needs a proper funeral. You sever his head with your trusty pocket knife.
And place the head in the pumpkin, which you just hollowed out.
Using your handy spoon, you dig a hole and bury the pumpkin.
You say a few prayers. He's in a better place now.
You are putting the finishing touches on a robot you have built from ladder pieces. You are soaked in regurgitated urine, and this activity has been a nice diversion. You call him "Logorg".
You're really excited about the advent of Drillgorg! You have no choice but to totally get down. Festivities and gyrations may or may not continue into the evening.
You decide do climb the intestine from which your new mate descended. He thinks, "what the heck, might as well follow". You both begin a perilous, smelly climb.
The added weight causes a sudden jerk from the other end.
You make it through...
But your partner is not so lucky.
With a great sense of accomplishment, you survey the room. Wow, what happened in here!
You firmly resolve to eat whatever you unearth from the hole, no matter how unsavory, when suddenly the dirt collapses! A void in the floor is left behind. You'll have to make other dinner plans.
You start to dig, hoping there will be valuables belonging to important people. But your oversized head becomes stuck. There is something oddly familiar about the situation.
You remember this guy. You murdered him when you smashed his face against the door! And then you decapitated him because it was the only decent thing to do!
Of course! You forgot about your get out of jail free card!
This is not a get out of jail free card.
You are suddenly this guy. You are taking a strong interest in this door, and what's inside. You think to yourself, "I will probably go through this door no matter what other stupid idea pops into my mind!"
You step through the door, which instantly slams behind you and makes a locking noise. You have a feeling it is locked. In the room is a wall which has 3 pumpkin shaped recesses. One has a happy face, another sad, the other, scared or surprised or something. There is a fresh pumpkin on a pedistal, and a carving knife next to it.
The room seems to extend very high up. It might even go all the way to the roof up there.
You are not deterred by any theoretical discrepancies between your handywork and the pumpkin spec. Nor do you feel you have to put the pumpkin in the correct recess.
Fits like a glove.
Removing the pumpkin from the pedestal may have triggered some event, however.
Maybe it's the surging, cruel water rising inexorably, but you're suddenly much more inspired to put concerted effort into refining your craft. You hone your willpower into that of a master sculptor. Each slice, each contor of the knife bends to your will. Yes. Yes!
The results are breath taking. The expressions are human emotion incarnate. Why, are these pumpkins, or fellow men rapt within the human condition?
No time for reflection, though.
As you wait for something to happen, you think at the very least, maybe you could float to the opening in the ceiling, even though you're not a great swimmer.
As the water engulfs your head, you hear another distant mechanical sound.
There is quite a panoramic view up here. Surrounding you mostly is other prison buildings. Who knows how many poor souls are trapped in this idiotic facility.
Directly in front of you is another building. You hear water gurgling from it. Just beyond are some mountains, which might be a nice place to escape to, if possible.
You're not really sure what ambergris is, but you have a feeling it will be essential. You grab a liberal dollop and stick it on your pumkin.
You tie the harpoon tether around the crank so it doesn't go anywhere. You then get down on your knees in preparation for one of your most sincere sounding apologies, when something distracts you.
A 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle on the floor, partially completed! It looks like it's a picture of kittens! This looks like so much fun!
It might be the blood loss, but you've definitely gone bonkers! You load the gun and fire it backwards through your torso, while reciting the play "Henry V". You clearly don't know a single line from this play.
You act fast with your trusty knife to free yourself before the impending collision.
Though the victory is bitersweet. Your friend has died of blood loss.
This is no victory. The feeling is vast emptiness. You are no longer bound by bars or concrete, but you feel more incarcerated than ever. You come to the heartwrenching conclusion that the only true prison... is loneliness.
You crawl out of the mouth covered in viscuous horse-slobber. You don't know any fireball spells, but you think maybe there's something useful in the runes on your belly.
You flip open the stump easily, revealing a hole. There is a gun in the hole.
You figure the gun was placed there in case you need to off yourself at some point. There seems to be some powerful cosmic magnetism towards suicide which surrounds the stump.
You don't know the spell for summoning elves - Russian or otherwise - and the only known spell is carved on the belly of that lunatic. And you're not getting close enough to read it!
The only spells carved on your bellies have nothing to do with elves. From what you can decipher of the runes, you think one has something to do with summoning vegetables.
The other one may give you an elevated mystical communion with animals or something. What a lame-ass spell.
I'm heading out for the weekend. I had planned on putting something up before I left, but guess I'm running late with it. Wasn't planning on a break of such length, but looks like there'll be nothing to see until next week, due to *mishaps*.
The first, an Exile-centric album brought to you by a collection of artists. The second, a solo album composed by Tyler Dever and performed by Erik Scheele. Both are great!
Are you running out of room on your ipod yet? You might have to start deleting some of that crappy non-HS music soon.
Two points of business to trouble you with. ONE: The What Pumpkin store has, mostly, been restocked. TWO: There's a good chance that the Bandcamp page will have new content some time next week.
I'll be out of town for a week, from 6/21 to 6/27. I will try to get some work done while I'm on the road, but updates will most likely be sparse til then. I am just doing you the service of liberating you from this extremely engaging web comic for a short period of time, so that you are free to go do other things, like play volleyball on the beach, and give high fives to your coolest friends.
I also feel that it is important to make an annual tradition of announcing a week long hiatus after sequences culminating in sloppy makeouts. What makeouts will be happening next year? How sloppy will they be? This is how I keep people hooked.
Volume 7 is pretty self explanatory. Contains many songs from the story, plus a bunch of other great new ones. I say this every time, but this is now the best HS volume. AND IT KEEPS BEING TRUE EVERY TIME I SAY IT.
On the solo album: M.G. Bowman has done a lot to shape the sound of Homestuck. Among his contributions were Explore and Sburban Jungle (end of acts 2 and 3 music). He is also a mastermind behind the ambitious Hare Force One project (people ship Con Air bunnies to each other all over the globe). For his album, he has created two characters whose names are featured in the title. They exist somewhere in the Homestuck universe, playing their own session, and each song captures something about their adventure. See his website for what he has to say about it personally. I think it's a really fun and creative album with a fantastic sound.
If you ordered something from the WP store earlier in the month, those items have either been shipped already or will be very soon.
Also, all of the charity squiddles have shipped too. If you ordered one, and it doesn't arrive in the next week or two, let me know and I will look into it. As for the charity sketches, those I will be completing and mailing shortly as well.
Music: Albums incoming. Hang in there. I estimate they will drop within a week. They will contain songs you have heard, and many you haven't. They are great.
Nine days without a new page is a pretty long time! What was even UP with me? 5 days in Toronto + 4 days animating I guess is what was up. Ok that sounds reasonable. Everyone agrees with that and holds the creator exempt from charges of gross dereliction. We all smile pretty hard and our faces begin to hurt a little.
Speaking of which, there will be more music on Bandcamp some time this month, won't there? Yes. Let me go talk it over with the music guys and see what we can put together for you over the next week or two. Hold on, let me go do that now, don't go anywhere.
Only John's and Vriska's are available for now. There are more planned for the near future. (i.e. Aradia's) Note that there are t-shirt versions of the hoodies too, at different shades for a little variety (the tee colors actually correspond to the darker color of the hoods in the comic). Also take a look at the new long sleeve Jade shirt, with her vintage atom symbol. I think it's a nice complement to Dave's broken record shirt, which has the same raglan sleeve style.
Also: PRINTS! There are many great HS fan artists out there, in the art team and otherwise. For a while I have have the idea to offer prints of selected works here and there. For now there are some by art team members Lexxy and SA. I hope to add more to this page gradually.
And one last point on the store. Please take notice of the new support system. If you have a question or a problem with an order, please go through that! The old What Pumpkin email address has gotten swamped with so many different types of correspondence, it's become very difficult to field support cases through it. If you use the new system, rapid satisfaction is considerably more likely!
I should also mention that soon I will be attending TCAF! If you can make it to Canada, you should come. If you happen to already be in Canada, then you really have no excuse not to go.
FACT: You will navigate the latest pages in different ways depending on your browser conditions.
At the end of Insert disc 2, on many browsers (e.g. mine), you will automatically be redirected to the next page when it finishes "loading", or you may get there by clicking the link to "[S] Seer: Ascend" inside the Flash panel. These features will not work for some browsers, and instead you will see this message. Accessing that url will redirect you to the next page, [S] Seer: Ascend.
Note that there is no hyperlink to the next page below the disc 2 panel, and never will be. You must venture into disc 2 through one of the ways described above! I probably wouldn't have even bothered mentioning this if not for the browser compatibility hiccup.
The SbaHJ shirts.....: it is turning into a proud tradition that several weeks after releasing any SBaHJ product I must inform you that they all do in fact glow in the dark, in case you didn't realize. Please suspend this alarming reality in your thoughts as you urgently scramble to use your dollars to make them become your property.
Speaking of scrambling, dollars, and your ludicrous zeal for all the insanely rad things I advise you to drape over your body, there will be lots of cool new things in the WP store, very, very soon.
But before we talk about that, let's carefully examine this fine new album by Clark Powell, who is responsible for such HS scores as Three in the Morning, and the Gate 1 Doctor remix, as well as a plethora of other album songs.
This one's very cool. Clark has a great ambient sound, and his idea for the album was to musically express the Medium's planets, through both their elements and themes. I think he nailed it. Cover art was tag-teamed by me and Cindy (the lady who touches all your WP shirts).
Also: New Topatoco items!
First of all, you will notice there are two new Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff shirts. People are always coming up to me and saying "we NEED more insanely shitty looking shirts to wear to places like church and stuff." What choice to I have but to serve these rowdy individuals with dollars in their hands and outstanding taste in their opinions???
In truth, Jeffrey and I cannot help ourselves from attempting to capitalize on this nonsense, because we both need aggressive psychiatric examination. But if you don't buy these shirts, we will both feel ashamed and foolish. Please buy these shirts. I'm begging you. If you don't, we will probably weep in each others arms, swaddled in an orange heap of 3000 dunking Big Men. As an incentive, I will make this solemn pledge. If I sell out of all of these SBaHJ shirts within a week, you are guaranteed to discover that I have permanently emblazoned SBaHJ iconography on my body somewhere, with real, honest to gog foreverink. You'll wonder how high I even will have had to have been. Fact. 8^y
Also note the classy Sepulchritude hoodie, perfect complement to your Sepulchritude tee. I will be coming out with HS god tier hoodies soon through What Pumpkin, and I thought that as long as such garments were being offered, it would be nice to have a Problem Sleuth one in the mix too. Plus, the godhoods won't have zipper fronts, and this one does. So if you like to zip up, like if that's your thing, then this is for you.
4/13/11
The two year anniversary of HS has come and gone. Not as much fanfare in-story about it as I'd hoped, but at least it got a nod. Remember when games came on multiple disks? You always were asked to swap during a kind of peculiar and underwhelming moment, like walking through a thing, or talking to a guy. Sometimes it was shortly after you got an airship, or something.
I had plans to do something a little more mesmerizing, like last year, but started running out of time. So I revised the plans, then ran out of time for THOSE too. And so on, til I said screw it. Disc 1 probably wouldn't have been able to fit another hefty animation in it anyway. Those discs are only like what, 700 MB??
It takes a lot to meet a deadline coming up fast, when the thing you are planning is meant to be a BIG DEAL, by definition. First you must come up with an animation idea, and that itself will take a long time to make. Then you must move the story along to the exact precipice of that moment, which also takes time, and must do so with enough time left to animate! Plenty of ways to blow it. Making this story on the fly requires not just a lot of drawing and writing, but the sensibilities of a producer. Knowing when to appropriate large amounts of effort for what purposes given various time constraints. I make adjustments to plans all the time, just like I did with the last 4/13 milestone (was originally scheduling end of act 4 for that). Hence this milestone was less jaw dropping, but then if you recall, the original 4/13 celebration was pretty underwhelming too. What will next 4/13 bring? Guess we'll see.
If I'm taking the time to reflect on two years of Homestuck as an achievement I'll do so here only as a gesture of gratitude to the steadfast readers, new and old. I am humbled by your devotion. This is not any sort of platitude to be dismissed as quasi-sincere acceptance speech fodder, or a dispatch from my PR department because sometimes you guys give me money for stuff. This is sincerely true. I look around and still cannot quite believe the magnitude of the enthusiasm that surrounds this story. I stopped being able to keep track of all the fan art for it more than a year ago, and even then there were thousands of fan-made images I would diligently attempt to pore through. I have honestly never seen so much fan art created for anything, anywhere, ever. Even things which have millions of dollars backing their production budgets. Maybe Harry Potter has more? (Alright let's get real. HS fan art is probably just now beginning to approach the subset of drawings that involve Harry being naked with somebody.) Greater and greater hordes of troll cosplayers can be spotted taking over the floors of conventions. You could have pressed me on the subject, but I never would have guessed anyone could be quite so tickled to be slathered in messy gray makeup and crowned by a homemade pair of horns. There is this seething passion for HS that is a self-organizing, autonomous entity unto itself, which is practically inaccessible to my understanding or involvement, even though I'm responsible for the content driving it. I've kept Homestuck's fire hot; its gaping furnace was hungry for coal so I got goddamn shoveling. But you have been responsible for breathing life into this monstrous organism which surrounds me, and now in its breadth transcends my work entirely. To thank you as a whole for this phenomenon almost doesn't sound rational. It's like thanking a furious thunderstorm for the deluge of rain it gave to your thirsty little box of poseys. My paltry utterance dissipates in the far deep rumbling. The clouds don't even notice I'm there because they're too busy swapping fan fiction. Maybe instead I'll offer something more significant than gratitude. Something more personal and experiential. I'll submit my amazement. You can't see me now, but it is a look of wonder and discovery. A boyish look of astonishment at something remarkable beyond words, like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon, but on a more cosmic scale and more viscerally shocking. Like a squealing horrorterror's gruesome Cesarean birth. That is the look I have every time I disrupt the tunnel vision that keeps the work's bright sun searing my eyes. When they adjust to the dark, I see the silhouette in soft black focus of the young planet sized monster, chirping its affections. I offer it this look because it is all I have to give, with the exception of the tears streaming down my face. Its hunger is piqued at the fluid and my only regret is I can never possibly provide enough to nourish the orphan, now that it can never know the taste of its dead mother's heinous teatbrine.
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