#skaianet arg

[dingodad]

do homestuck fans still care about calamity jane from the skaianet thing that got cancelled because it was accidentally pretty antisemetic or whatever. like is that still "canon"

there are obvious references to it in the epilogues so the parts about obama are "canon" i guess. what's really gonna make it "canon" is if it gets referenced in more published work but the way it was presented it seemed more like a list of hussie's headcanons than an actual roadmap for future spinoffs and with the brand being so far removed from rigidly sticking to hussie's vision at this point i doubt there are creatives on the team who are like, champing at the bit to include more references to charlie chaplin or whatever. that being said if one thing from the arg does come back up it's gonna be calamity

[sistervirtue]

Homestuck fans talking about how progressive homestuck is while directly ignoring the skaianet arg drop:

[rosemary-is-in-pesterquest]

Feels like the reason they went with 2 instead of other side content (you know besides grand story bs) is just because they needed a hail mary. Like because hs was out of the public eye, stuff like the extended zodiac were largely ignored. Meanwhile, Viz is already livid cause in less than a months or two hs caused two public tire fires with the skaianet arg and the epilogues. Kind of put in a corner there.

Yeah probably

[crappy-homestuck-confessions]

you say that mod anu, but hussie is guilty of coasting on absurdity as well, given the skaianet arg and how people would actually react to it.

.

[im-the-antonymph-of-your-mom]

So...

Did this age horribly or perfectly?

Because he was right, we never should have gotten to read that lol

[cursed-cephalopod-blog]

I just realized something about the new Homestuck ARG (Skaianet Systems)

So, the map with the red dots reminded me of a similar map in Mom Lalonde”s lab (also owned by Skaianet). So, I went back to the page it was shown on and I found out something interesting:

The Skaianet Systems map shows landed meteors that may be from Sburb sessions.

[sofialily440]

Hey remember when Andrew Hussie said this like a sort of prophecy? Yeah I think it became true sadly.

[damienhasmoved]

homestuck has been the biggest blight on our society since 2009

[homestuckhomestuckhomestuck]

 Interesting timeline facts I can get from the Skaianet ARG draft papers- 

- Jane’s Dad was a clone of John’s Dad. John’s Dad was Jane Crocker (Nanna) and Stan Laurel’s (don’t even ask :v) genetic son on pre-scratch Earth (beta session). The surname “Egbert” comes from a man Nanna later married after fleeing the Condesce. The cloning happened when HIC was ensuring post-scratch Earth (alpha session) had functionally similar conditions to pre-scratch Earth- she impregnated Alpha John’s future wife with a Sburb ectobiology machine with Nanna’s son’s DNA, which is why Jane’s Dad and John’s Dad look identical through two different universes and parentage. Ectobiologically speaking, this would make Dad and John half-brothers. 

- when HIC was first on pre-scratch Earth just after Alternia was destroyed she cut off her hair and sawed off her horns to blend in and ran a bordello in the US Wild West, among other things????? I just mention this because apparently troll horns grow back. 

(beta session/pre-scratch Earth)

- Rose’s Mom and Dave’s Bro got recruited into Skaianet by Jade’s Grandpa at a young age and lived off of trust funds Jade’s Grandpa set up for them in the 1980s. This is why they have money, and probably how Roxy babysat Joey. 

- Nanna (Jane) is named after Calamity Jane, Calliope/Caliborn’s Cherub mom who “kept [HIC] on the rails of her designated global conquest to secure the future birthplace of her son and daughter” by opposing her from pre-scratch Earth onwards. Grandpa was just named Jake because “it sounded kind of like Jane, human names are stupid, and HIC doesn’t actually care.” 

- Skaianet was a front company used to speed along the development of technology on Earth by releasing Alternian and hoarded Sburb tech from meteor sites to eventually support the running of Sburb to end the universe and scratch into a new one by HIC. She planned to use the post scratch earth (alpha session) as a home planet for the rebirth of the troll empire in Universe C, which the kids were supposed to win for her and hand over, which was going just as planned until John’s Retcon. 

- Jade’s Grandpa is ridiculously irresponsible and doesn’t have strong character, there is a lot about Jake..... as puppet head of Skaianet, anyway the most relevant thing I could find is Hiveswap Joey Claire is born in 1980 and Hiveswap is in 1994 and Jade’s meteor hits the island in 1995, and Grandpa was totally oblivious to Skaianet’s sinister purpose until he finally found “the mysterious island in the pacific,” i.e. Hellmurder Island, ditched his newest wife (A. Claire) and children (Joey Claire and Jude Harley) and presumably did his sburb exploration shenanigans to save John and pick up Jade’s dead dreamself after discovering the frog temple and eventually died when Jade was young because of Tavros mind controlling Bec to redirect a bullet she fired as a baby. We got Grandpa’s full timeline, and man is it weird. 

Homestuck Storyline

- John’s Retcon signifigance in story is a little more explained. 

- HIC’s master plan was to get Roxy to revive the matriorb, take over post-scratch Earth and Universe C, groom Jane as Heiress, and Jake as Jane’s slave, and restart the troll empire in Universe C. John’s retcon “disrupted the course of events, breaking HIC's mental grip on her powerful servants, and turning the tide in their favor.” Epilogue indicates this probably means Jade and Jane. Other possibilities: Gamzee and Kurloz, just because clowns are frequently referred to as HIC’s powerful servants, and a large part of John’s retcons involved Gamzee looking completely baffled and stopping him from manipulating Terezi to kill Vriska. Implied this is what stopped HIC. Not sure how Aranea in [S] Game Over fit in.  

- It’s also implied John’s retcon power had something to do with Calliope predominating in an alternate timeline, which was said to be impossible barring “a highly improbable glitch in causality” aka exactly how the retcon power is described. This Calliope destroys the green sun and renders LE vulnerable to attack by Vriska w the masterpiece juju (i.e. what gives out the retcon power in the first place.) so ???? good job john, whatever this implies. 

- Gamzee’s timeline remains kind of unexplained. Already known: Calliope/Caliborn was born on a dying Earth C in Universe C, that means Universe C had to be created in order for Lord English to be born. Not known if Gamzee going around gathering stuff for Lord English only happened in the pre-retcon timeline where he was eventually killed in Game Over, and the post-retcon iteration of him stuffed in a fridge came back once Caliborn started in his null session and then eventually got killed by being combo smashed into Lil Cal by nebulous future/alternate human kids, who ALSO made their way there via the retcon power? Also implies the retcon power begins and ends circularly with the ‘Masterpiece’ juju- but since it’s already proved John doesn’t have to make stable time loops and can literally just have a clone of himself with the retcon power running around, I don’t know..... what happened............ still......... 

- Anyway Cherub mythology gets tied back into the beginning, same time HIC hits Earth so does Calamity Jane, to drive home the entire plot of Homestuck is a cascade of unfortunate events made to ensure Lord English’s existence, Calamity Jane’s son. She kept HIC in check to make sure she didn’t go too crazy but took over both Earths in a way to ensure Sburb would happen so Calamity Jane could meet her mate, and said “we both fulfilled our use” as HIC bled out stabbed through with an anime sword, and flew off into Skaia, to sometime after Earth C was next to a dying sun.

- Jake may never maintain a responsible relationship.

(alpha session/post-scratch Earth)

- Guy Fieri and Insane Clown Posse’s unexpectedly in-depth absurdist backstory as horrifying genetic experiment of HIC. Don’t even ask?? Implication Steve Bannon is deformed clone of Guy Fieri. Also implication “Guy Fieri” is a mispronunciation of “Guy Feferi” this just made me double take so.  

- I didn’t know if the files were implying Jake’s Grandma (alpha Jade) somehow also was involved in WWII like Jade’s Grandpa (beta Jake) was, or if the Condesce forced WWII to happen the same way to keep the timeline similar to pre-scratch Earth, but it definitely implied Alpha Jade had an affair with Charlie Chaplin-as-a-trained-assassin which implies Calamity Jane founded that on post-scratch Earth too, which is weird. Anyway that’s why HIC waits so long to kill Alpha Jade, to let events play out as identically as possible until Jane and Jake were in the medium. 

- Not gonna touch, and besides, not relevant to HS- WWII, Jesse James, Mark Twain, Charlie Chaplin, Jake’s relationships, lethally trained slapstick vaudeville performer assassinations, double crosses, and dueling between the forces of Calamity Jane and HIC, i.e. a significant portion of text devoted to the underground army of notable comics and performers vs Betty Crocker and the forces of scientific advancement (for purposes of ending the world.) Well now we have an incredibly convoluted explanation for why Colonel Sassacre and Mark Twain are the same person. 

- It just occurred to me this underground network of writers, entertainers, and comics is probably the word of god reason on how Alpha Rose and Alpha Dave got the backing, info, and into contact to start their anti-HIC campaign on post-scratch Earth- didn’t Alpha John also become a comedian later? Nothing much on him at all, though.  

- Just this: Alpha John fleed the Crocker compound when he saw Hitler’s severed head lying on a desk. This is apparently a carefully HIC arranged constant between pre-scratch and post-scratch Earth. Nanna (Jane) didn’t really seem to notice the head when she finally left. 

- Obama escaped to post-scratch Earth from pre-scratch Earth, which also the implies we are living on Post-scratch Earth and the meteor Apophis is going to deliver some kind of sburb technology and/or accelerate the demise of the Earth in 4/13/2029. Mentioned a lot, but curiously little info on Apophis, seemingly irrelevant to rest of story. 

Conclusion: I have no idea what the Homestuck epilogue is going to be, except  Aphophis might be involved, somehow. I hope the retcon power timeline to the masterpiece juju gets explained? I hope Vriska, Sollux, and Aradia’s fate is explained? Gamzee timeline? What did the masterpiece actually do?? MYSTERY

[emcapi]

here’s my take on the Skaianet ARG

i would say the text files do read as Hussie-esque. but it strikes me more as "extremely early Hussie," like, possibly even pre-Homestuck, back when he was doing dumb offensive shit like Humanimals, whatever that thing i can't remember that was named something like "Special Olympics" was, etc. does this seem like the sort of dumb shit he would write? ABSOLUTELY. is it dumb shit that he actually intended to become public/canon? VERY UNLIKELY. dude's smart. i would think he would be smart enough, especially with all the past controversies that have cropped up, to realize this is in the category of dumb shit that would be extremely bad PR. which begs the question: if he was responsible for this, could it have been INTENTIONALLY bad PR? is he sufficiently fed up with maintaining the Homestuck/Hiveswap empire that he wanted to intentionally tank it? my conclusion: maybe??? ~15% chance. perhaps this was "dumb shit that Hussie wrote" that he shared with some of his co-conspirators for shits and giggles, and one of them thought it would be funny to include as part of this whole ARG thing, and he absolutely never intended it to become public. my conclusion: possible. ~55% chance.

[bananonbinary]

The Story so far

here’s the condesce’s story, as revealed through the new skaianet ARG:

01-1863-Calamity.txt 

1863 - Calamity HIC's race has been wiped out by a psychic shockwave, leaving her with no empire left to rule. On orders from her new master, she uses her ship to navigate a circuitous route to another universe, the one that is home to planet Earth. She disembarks somewhere in the American western frontier in 1863. She hides her ship, and begins exploring. She wanders about the wilderness in Wyoming. She encounters families of migrant settlers from the east. She kills and eats them, and burns down their houses. She encounters bands of Native Americans. She kills them too. She's in the middle of a major skirmish with natives she seems to be enjoying, when she gets shot by a rifle. It wounds her more than an ordinary rifle should. In the distance, she can see a green, muscular woman, even taller than she is. She's dressed like a frontierswoman, holding the rifle. It is an adult female cherub named Calamity. Her nickname as a notorious figure in the west is Calamity Jane. HIC and Calamity engage in combat. The natives all get the hell out of there. It seems like an even match, but Calamity gets the upper hand. She beats the crap out of HIC. She strongly advises HIC to stop fooling around and get to work. Calamity then climbs onto an absolutely massive horse, and gallops away. HIC develops begrudging sense of admiration for whoever this woman is. HIC staggers, still injured, to the wreckage of a nearby settlement. Looks around for tools. The green alien woman dressed as a very large human had the right idea. She needs to blend in with this primitive alien race if she's going to make any progress here. She finds a sturdy hacksaw, and cuts off both her horns, so the stumps are buried in her hair. She takes a sickle, and dramatically shortens her hair. She finds tattered lengths of cloth, wraps herself up in a disdainful approximation of primitive human garb. She walks away to begin her long term schemes of conquest, as demanded by the terms of service to her master.

02-1864-Centralia.txt

  1864 - Centralia HIC wanders the land in "disguise", and makes her way down to Missouri. She listens and learns things about humanity, and current state of world. Hears the nation is in midst of a civil war. As she understands it, a rebellious uprising against the current regime to defend the caste order. She considers caste-based social order and slavery to be important parts of society. But rebellious insurrection makes her blood boil. So she is torn, chooses no affiliation. She seeks only to further embed herself. She settles in the town of Centralia, operating a bordello for a while. A major clash between union soldiers and confederate guerrillas breaks out. Large number of union soldiers are slaughtered. Confederates are drunk, revelrous bastards. They disgust her. Her contempt for sedition overrides her neutrality, and she goes on rampage, killing all confederates in town. Union soldiers are horrified by her power. They attack her too, but she kills them as well. The union major runs up behind her with a bayonet. Before he can stab her in the back, a confederate shoots him, "saving" her. The man is a young Jesse James (17). He is enamored with her. She decides she could use a loyal human ally, and recruits him as her right hand man.

03-1873-TrainRobbery.txt 

1873 - Train Robbery Almost a decade later, HIC and the James brothers (Jesse and Frank) have formed a crime gang. HIC leads the gang from the shadows, posing as their mother, with the alias Zerelda. However, she keeps them as lovers as well. She has begun to amass a significant fortune from their criminal enterprises. They decide to rob a train in Iowa. Jesse and Frank, without assistance of HIC, board the train to rob it. They shoot most people on the train, and steal a bunch of things. They're interrupted by some complete drunken fool, a "southern gentleman" type with a mustache. It's Mark Twain (38), or one of his many aliases. He completely bamboozles them with a sort of drunken master performance that he has perfected over his many years as a successful con man and steamboat gambler. By the time he's done smooth-talking them, he has them genuinely believing some tall tale. He's ushered them into the caboose, locks them in, then separates the train which leaves them behind. He makes off with all their stolen loot, and leaves behind his card, which says "Colonel Sassacre". Back at their headquarters, HIC has taken up Earth baking as an obsessive hobby. Bizarre cakes are everywhere. Jesse and Frank think it's weird, but just go along with it. HIC is furious at the incompetence of her cowboy subordinates. Good help isn't easy to come by on this planet. She pines for the days of having a good supply of clown muscle to boss around. She examines Sassacre's card. She's impressed by his feats of guile and buffoonery. She puts it in her drawer.

Links that presumably have something at some point but are currently just 404s:

04-1876-RIPJamesBros.txt   05-1881-Crocker.txt   06-1889-Skaianet.txt   07-1895-Einstein.txt   08-1896-FredKarnosArmy.txt   09-1903-PatentOffice.txt   10-1910-JaneAndJake.txt   11-1923-JakeLeaves.txt   12-1926-RIPHoudini.txt   13-1927-PuttingPantsOnPhilip.txt   14-1931-JakeReturns.txt   15-1933-HitlersPromotion.txt   16-1942-AnnDunham.txt   17-1945-WWII.txt   18-1955-RIPEinstein.txt   19-1957-RIPHardy.txt   20-1961-NextPhase.txt   21-1964-TheFieriClones.txt   22-1965-LaurelsLastStand.txt   23-1965-2009-SkipToTheEnd.txt   24-1863-1965-PostScratchTimeline.txt   25-1965-HarryAdoptsFieriAgain.txt   26-1977-ChaplinsLastStand.txt   27-1989-ICP.txt   28-1996-JaneAndJake.txt   29-2008-Obama.txt   30-2011-Rebranding.txt   31-2016-Trump.txt   32-2024-TheDoubleJuggaloPresidency.txt   33-2029-Apophis.txt   34-2050-Flooding.txt   35-2040-2424-PreparingAlterniaC.txt   36-RIPHIC.txt  

[splicerthedicer]

I finally read the skaianet ARG back story logs last night and like

Grandpa Harley was a fuckin dick, jesus christ.

[the-condesce-did-nothing-wrong]

I read through all the cursed history texts to see what everyone was discoursing about and all i can think is

"That's it?"

[hiveswap]

I never thought I would say "Homestuck was simpler" to anything, but...

[r0semultiverse]

Andrew Hussie: Here’s new Homestuck conten-

Homestucks:

Edit/Clarification: This is about the site being murked as soon as it went up btw! The content was bad, I completely agree!

[homestuckhiveswap]

The Bear E from the Skaianet ARG is confirmed as a dead end. Someone planted the bear to fool Homestucks, or maybe they thought it would be fun. In any case, please don’t visit any more coordinates, they’re confirmed unrelated to the game.