Homestuck: The Novel
Andrew Hussie: The Author (everything belongs to him)
Morn: The Adaptor (I claim none of this story as my own)
TOC
Book 1: The Note Desolation Plays
Book 2: Insane Corkscrew Haymakers
Book 3: Flight of the Paradox Clones
Book 4: Hivebent
Book 5: The Scratch
Book 6: Alterniabound
Book 7: God Tier
Book 8: Trolls and Ancestors
Book 8.5: Doc Scratch
Cascade
Book 9: Through Broken Glass
Book 10: Your Shit is Wrecked
Book 11: Nobles
Book 12: Cherubs and Dream Bubbles
Book 13: Void
Book 14: Dead
Book 15: Of Gods and Tricksters
Book 16: ACT 6. ACT 6.
Book 16 (continued): Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 1
Book 17: ACT 6 ACT 6 ACT 2
Book 17 (continued): Act 6 Act 6 Intermission 2
Book 17 (continued): ACT 6 ACT 6 ACT 3
GAME OVER
Note: This story has been discontinued as of 5/6/16.
Book 1: The Note Desolation Plays
Chapter 1: John Egbert
A young boy stood in his room, looking around contentedly and with an expression of pure excitement apparent upon his face. It was his birthday, April 13th, and, although he had been given life 13 years before, it was only today that he would receive a name. On his door was a poster that read "SBURB Beta" and had a logo of a green house of some sort on it. He squinted at it through his glasses. Hmm…
The boy stood and awaited his name. Zoosmell Pooplord? No, too ornery. John Egbert? Sure. The boy smiled in appreciation at his new name and looked around his room.
The first thing he noted was the sheer number of cakes in his room. Well, there really only were two, but John made a big deal of the cakes and made it seem as though there were more than there were in reality. Putting the cakes out of his mind for the moment, John thought about his interests. He liked really terrible movies, programming computers (although he wasn't very good at it), paranormal lore, and magic. In fact, he was an aspiring magician. And he liked to play games.
John attempted to remove his arms from his dresser drawer before realizing that his arms were in his magic chest. He turned to look at the chest. It was white, and covered in yellow stars and a crescent moon. One of the cakes was on it; the other was on his dresser.
John opened the chest and, using his real arms, took out his fake arms that he used for hilarious antics. He then promptly captchalogued them in his sylladex, a thing that he didn't understand just yet. I mean, what's a "sylladex"? And how do you "captchalogue" something?
In any case, John looked into his chest and inspected the contents. He kept an array of humorous and mystical artifacts, each one a devastating weapon in the hands of a skilled magician or a cunning prankster. …John was neither of those things.
The so-called "artifacts" included: a pair of fake arms (captchalogued in John's sylladex), a pair of trick handcuffs, a stunt sword, a magician's hat, a pair of beagle puss glasses, several smoke pellets and blood capsules, and a copy of Colonel Sassacre's Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery as well as a copy of Wise Guy by Harry Anderson. John stowed the smoke pellets on one of the captchalogue cards in his sylladex. He still didn't understand what that meant, but at least he was getting the hang of the vernacular. It was at this point that John realized that he still had two empty captchalogue cards left.
John decided to equip the fake arms. It wasn't certain if the verb "equip" was exactly copasetic with the abstract behavioral medium in which John dwelled, but it didn't seem to matter anyway, seeing as John couldn't equip the fake arms. They were stuck under the card with the smoke pellets in it. That would mean that John would have had to use the smoke pellets first in order to gain access to the arms, which was something that he wasn't exactly keen on doing, as that would have filled up his room with smoke. The reason that John couldn't just equip the arms was that his sylladex's fetch modus was dictated by the logic of a stack structure. He wasn't really ever good at dealing with data structures, finding the concept puzzling and mildly irritating. Maybe in the future, he could advance more practical fetch modi for his sylladex with a bit more experience, but for the time being, he had to settle with the obnoxious stack data structure in use.
John examined his Problem Sleuth poster, wondering if it was at all possible to get any more hard boiled than this. He doubted it. On the right of the poster was an empty space for another one to go. John simply hadn't received the perfect one yet. There was a note on the dresser, which John read eagerly.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SON.
I AM SO PROUD OF YOU.
It was from his father, smelling of the rich aromas of fatherly aftershave and cologne. The note was sitting next to a rolled-up poster. John was sure it was perfect for his wall, especially because it was from his Dad. John captchalogued the poster, wondering what could possibly be on it. He first needed a way to hang it up on the wall. Otherwise he wouldn't be able to see it.
Thus, John looked around for a hammer and some nails. He mysteriously found them in a place they hadn't been before, taking the hammer. This filled up his sylladex, which consisted of the fake arms, the smoke pellets, the poster, and now the hammer. That meant that John couldn't captchalogue the nails… or could he? He figured it couldn't hurt to try.
John captchalogued the four nails into the top card of his sylladex. The fake arms were pushed out of his sylladex, landing unceremoniously in a heap on the ground.
"Oh well," he said. "I guess it doesn't really matter. They're probably completely useless anyway and I don't want to do that again." The reason for this was that, of course, the smoke pellets were in the last card. In any case, John felt that he had gathered enough things to get down to business and do some really important stuff. The next thing he did, whatever it was, would certainly be exceptionally meaningful.
Except for the fact that the next thing that John considered doing was not exceptionally meaningful, nor could it ever be construed as exceptionally meaningful in any way. He decided to squawk like an imbecile and shit on his desk. The only problem would be that that would be a stupid idea - the most stupid idea John had had all week, in fact. STUPID STUPID STUPID! And yet he looked at the polished surface of his desk. It beckoned to him.
As a distraction, John merged the top two cards of his sylladex. He didn't know he could do that! However, that allowed them to be used together, for what it was worth. And it was worth quite a lot apparently, because now John could hang up the poster. He used the hammer and nails in conjunction with the card beneath it to hang the poster to the wall. The Little Monsters poster was glorious. Exactly what John had wanted. His old man had really come through this time.
John looked over at his Con Air poster. Put the bunny back in the box. I said, put the bunny back in the box. Why couldn't you put the bunny back in the box? Greatest, fucking movie of all time! John looked at his next poster, which was of Deep Impact. Wonderful movie. Morgan Freeman's genteel, homespun mannerisms were perfect qualities for a president residing over a crisis. OCEANS RISE. CITIES FALL. HOPE SURVIVES. Wow. Films about impending apocalypse fascinated John. Plus, a black president? Now he'd seen everything. Next to the Deep Impact poster was John's calendar. He'd marked the 13th of April, today, and also the 10th of April, the purported arrival of the highly touted SBURB Beta Launch. But it had already been three days, and it was starting to become a sore subject with him.
John looked over at the cake on his dresser, wondering if he should eat it. Nah, he was sick of cake. And he had no intention of clogging his sylladex with it either. The cake stayed put for now.
Suddenly, John's computer started to go off. Someone was messaging him. He pulled up to his computer, where he spent most of his time.
The desktop background he had made himself. It consisted of a strange green ghost slime, much like the one on his shirt, popping out of a blurry real-life still. On his desktop sat the computer System, his web browser Typheus, his chat client Pesterchum 6.0, and three programs labeled: pff. ^CAKE, FUCK FUCK FUCK. ^CAKE, and AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH ~ATH.
John's Pesterchum application was flashing. Someone was trying to get in touch with him. John pulled up the application window and saw that only one of his chums was online. He'd sent John a message.
John opened the message. It read:
- turntechGodhead [TG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] at 16:13 -
TG: hey so what sort of insane loot did you rake in today
EB: i got a little monsters poster, it's so awesome. i'm going to watch it again today, the applejuice scene was so funny.
TG: oh hell that is such a coincidence i just found an unopened container of apple juice in my closet it is like fucking christmas up in here
EB: ok thats fine, but i just have one question and then a word of caution. have you ever seen a movie called little monsters starring howie mandel and fred savage?
TG: but
TG: the seal on the bottle is unbroken
TG: are you suggesting someone put piss in my apple juice at the factory
EB: all im saying is don't you think monster howie mandel has the power to do something as simple as reseal a bottle?
EB: try using your brain numbnuts.
TG: why did the fat kid or whoever drank it know what piss tasted like
TG: i mean his reaction was nigh instantaneous
EB: it was the 15th day in a row howie mandel peed in his juice.
TG: ok i can accept that
TG: monster B-list celebrity douchebags are cunning and persistent pranksters
TG: also fred savage has a really punchable face
TG: but who cares about this lets stop talking about it
TG: did you get the beta yet
EB: no.
EB: did you?
TG: man i got two copies already
TG: but i dont care im not going to play it or anything the game sounds boring
TG: did you see how it got slammed in game bro?
EB: game bro is a joke and we both know it.
TG: yeah
TG: why dont you go check your mail maybe its there now
EB: alright.
John peeked out his window, admiring the view of his yard. Hanging from the tree in front of his house was his tire swing. In a kid's yard, a tree without a tire swing was like a proper gentleman without a monocle. That is to say, he could hardly be considered a terribly proper gentleman at all. Over by John's driveway sat his mailbox. Looking closer, John saw that the little red arm-swingy-dealy thing or whatever it was called was flipped up. What the hell was that thing called anyway? But, in any case, John didn't have time for semantics. The red flippy-lever thing meant that he had new mail. And that meant that the Beta could be there!
John was about to go out and retrieve the mail when his Dad appeared in the driveway. He'd returned from the grocery and was now beating him to the mail. John forgot about retrieving the mail and decided to check it later. If he went downstairs to get it, it was likely that his Dad would monopolize hours of his time. John decided to chill in his room for a while and wait for the dust to settle.
Sometimes John felt like he was trapped in his room. Stuck, if you will, in a sense that perhaps bordered on the titular. John's computer began to go off again, signifying that TG was pestering him again. The clockwork of friendship turned ceaselessly, operating the swing-lever-dealies of harassment in perpetuity. But he could hold his damn horses. John wanted to look at the CD's on his rack.
On his rack were an assortment of video games that John loved to play on his computer. Among them were Bard Quest, The Caper Havens: The Video Game, Problem Sleuth, And It Don't Stop, Jailbreak, Ghostbusters II MMORPG, Little Monsters: The Video Game, and Harry Anderson's Call My Bluff game. John had put countless manhours into acquiring this assortment of quality titles.
Upon having inspected the CD's on his rack, John decided that he wanted to read Colonel Sassacre's Daunting Text of Magical Frivolity and Practical Japery. He wanted to consult the Colonel's bottomless wisdom and… good god that book is huge. It could kill a cat if John dropped it. But in order to really dig into the book, John would have to captchalogue it. He was not sure he was ready to logjam all of the other captchalogued items beneath it just yet.
John thought about captchaloguing the fake arms again, and then realized that it wasn't worth the… Oh, Jesus. In a momentary lapse of concentration, John captchalogued the fake arms again. In anger, John hopped onto his computer, pulled up the Pesterchum client and set his mood to Bully. He didn't quite want to go as far as setting it to Rancorous as the situation was not exactly dire.
The mood system on Pesterchum went from Chummy to Rancorous in this order: Chummy, Palsy, Chipper, Bully, Peppy, Rancorous. The logo, a yellow smiley face, was the same for all of them but for Rancorous, whose logo was a red angry face. Bully would have to do, John supposed. Unsurprisingly, his logo didn't change. Oh, right, John had forgotten about TG pestering him again.
TG: is it there
TG: plz say yes
TG: maybe you can play with TT shes been pestering me all day about it
TG: shes mackin on me so hard all the time i start to feel embarrassed for her
TG: i mean not that i can blame her or anything
EB: yes, it is understandable because you are really attractive. i am attracted to you.
TG: thank you
EB: jk haha.
EB: no, i don't have it yet.
EB: my dad has the mail and i guess i have to go get it from him and see if it's there.
EB: and i've been busy spending all afternoon shitting around with my stupid sylladex.
EB: it's so frustrating.
TG: whats your modus
EB: what?
TG: how do you retrieve artifacts from it
EB: oh. like one at a time i guess. and if i put too much in, something falls out.
TG: stack? hahahahahaha
EB: what is yours?
TG: hash map
TG: my bro taught me a few tricks he basically knows everything and is awesome
EB: what the hell is that?
TG: you should probably brush up on your data structures
EB: i guess.
TG: did you at least allocate your strife specibus
EB: no.
TG: it could free up a card for you
TG: plus let you attack stuff whenever things get too hot to handle
TG: which is never
TG: what have you got
EB: well, i've got a hammer but it's trapped under some arms.
TG: wow you really suck at this dont you
TG: just get rid of the arms and then allocate the hammer to the specibus
EB: how?
TG: i dont know just use the arms on any old thing and see if it works
John thought about the best course of action, finally deciding to stick the arms in the cake on his bed. He did so, making the cake at least 300% more hilarious. He wasn't sure of the exact amount, but he was sure that Colonel Sassacre would have.
John then proceeded to check the back of his strife specibus for the kind abstratus he had in mind for it. Wow! So much to choose from. There was pizzactrkind, batkind, rollpinkind, bookkind, razorkind, peprmillkind… but John had a hammer, so he selected hammerkind.
Suddenly, John's strife specibus was allocated with the hammerkind abstratus. The hammer in his inventory was moved from his captchalogue deck to his strife deck.
EB: ok, i did it.
TG: hammerkind?
EB: yeah.
TG: ok that will be the permanent allocation for your specibus
TG: i guess i should have mentioned that
EB: uh...
TG: hope you like hammers dude!
EB: yeah, that's fine i guess. i can't imagine it's going to be all that relevant.
Finally, John captchalogued the Colonel's book, deciding that with all the free space in his sylladex, he should start squandering it immediately. Ordinarily, the book would be way too heavy to carry around in a practical way. John supposed that this was one respect in which the cards presented some convenience.
John began to look around for some more stuff to fill up his sylladex with. On his desk sat GameBro Magazine, a game review magazine. The front was entitled: SBURB: Why the "Game of the Year" or whatever isn't as good as some other stuff I like better. John opened the book and read the main article within.
So ok.
SBURB is this game that a lot of cats seem hella pumped of. And this beta is sitting on my desk for review, so I'm like, yeah man I'll write something.
But I don't know. I'm like, so is this about houses or some noise? That's fine, I'm sure that's like fucking dynamite in a handbag for some brosephs. But all I'm saying is, when do you get to thrash anything? While you're playing house or some shit, are you ever in jeopardy of getting mud on your doll's dress or whatever from busting out, and I quote, "the mad stunts all wicked up-ins"?
Know what I'm saying, Bro-Yo Ma? I didn't actually play this game, but I gave it 1.5 hats out of 5 hats to keep it real.
At this point I'd like to give a shout out to my boy Dennis who was over the other day. We were going to chill in front of the Dark Knight and he was so psyched of it y'all.
So this one time he was leaning against the screen door and the shit popped open, and the back deck was wet and he slipped down the steps and broke his thumb on the lawn. It wasn't a long fall, but hey I guess a thumb bone wasn't meant for supporting the brunt of a huge useless tool against wet grass. We never did watch Dark Knight on account of Ron trucking his bawling candy-ass girth to the hospital.
But it's cool, I still got another watch in me, Brotel Rwanda.
(BRO-NOTES: Dennis was so wasted, ha ha. I mean damn.)
Rating for SBURB: 1.5 hats
John captchalogued the magazine, figuring that it might come in handy if he ever needed something that burned easily. John then turned and captchalogued his magician's hat to wear and fool his father when he went downstairs. Except the hat alone wouldn't do it. John almost captchalogued the beagle puss as well, before remembering that if he did so, the smoke pellets would get expelled from his sylladex and fill his room with smoke. However, he was able to merge the beagle puss with the hat, producing the Clever Disguise.
John donned the Clever Disguise, thus temporarily removing the card containing the disguise from his sylladex and freeing up the card beneath it. In this case, the freed card contained GameBro Magazine.
"John? Who is this John you speak of? I am quite certain there never has been, nor ever will be…" John trailed off. "Yeah, this disguise is pretty shitty. Whatever."
John exited his room and entered the hallway. On one wall hung a picture of a man who sure knew how to have a laugh, a man after John's own heart. He looked a bit like Michael Cera, but John's Dad swore on the many hallowed tombs of Egypt that it wasn't. On the other wall was one of John's Dad's stupid clowns. Or harlequins, as he was quick to correct anyone who would venture such a brazen assumption.
John proceeded down the stairs, the accursed odor of fresh baking wafting into the large nostrils of the Clever Disguise. Something was very obviously brewing in the kitchen. It must have been the connivings of John's arch nemesis, Betty Crocker, and the rich, buttery aroma of her plot stank to high heaven. John's mission to retrieve the beta was going to be a bit more difficult than he had imagined.