| abstract
| - Act 6 Intermission 5 of Homestuck, part of Act 6, is titled I'M PUTTING YOU ON SPEAKER CRAB. This Intermission follows the actions of several characters, including Caliborn on his journey through his session, John and a few of the dead trolls as they search for the ultimate weapon, the meteor crew as they hurtle towards the new session, and even Spades Slick. Click the "File:Sburb Logo.svg" to open the page from Homestuck.
* The intermission opens with a view of year three on the meteor. Karkat pesters Dave on what appears to be a wrist-mounted crab-shaped communication device.
* After getting no response from Dave, Karkat continues talking and says that they have a problem: the B2 Skaia is visible, indicating that they will be arriving there in the next few hours, and they still aren't ready to face what awaits them in the new session, let alone stop the meteor. He then turns his attention to Terezi, who is lying on the floor asleep, pantsless, and clutching a bottle of Faygo.
* Dave answers Karkat who tells him they need to hold an intervention, with Dave mistaking it as being for Rose's alleged alcoholism. Karkat corrects him, explaining how they need to have a talk about Terezi's relationship with Gamzee, but Dave believes Terezi should be free to make her own choices. They continue to discuss about how Dave ended up breaking up with Terezi and how Gamzee eventually became more distant and eventually ended his moirallegiance with Karkat. Karkat begins to wonder what will happen to them all when everything is over and if he and Dave will continue to be friends and how John and Jade will feel about him. Dave reassures Karkat about their friendship and claims that John and Jade would likely want to be friends with him. Terezi begins to awaken, so Karkat wakes her up with one of Gamzee's horns.
* Act 6 Intermission 5 Intermission 1: In the cherub session, Caliborn asks Andrew Hussie to give him more information about the game. He has unlocked several new planets and acquired some new minions with numbered, color-coded hats. Hussie advises him to give his new leprechauns henchmen mobster names. On LOMAX, the battleship lies next to the ruins of Jake's house.
* Jaspersprite and Nannasprite begin exploring around the battleship as Davesprite attempts to wake up John. Davesprite decides to let John sleep while wondering to himself where Jade went, suspecting her of getting away from him, Davesprite continues talking about how no one deserves to have to deal with himself and continuing his belief he isn't as good as the "real" Dave. He continues to wonder about John's ring but decides he should have asked earlier and decides to leave John a note before flying off to be alone.
* Act 6 Intermission 5 Intermission 2: In the cherub session, Caliborn has unlocked more leprechauns gnomes minions and complains to Hussie about how useless their powers are. Hussie tells him that he has to use their various powers together to make them more useful. Meanwhile, John is still asleep.
* Out in the Furthest Ring, the cracks created by [[Lord English|LFile:EnglishO.gifrd English]] have begun to encircle the Green Sun.
* John is seen looking at the destruction from within a dream bubble. Aranea, Meenah, Tavros, Vriska, Aradia, and Sollux are nearby on a pirate ship bearing Mindfang's symbol, and they call John over.
* Vriska greets John and informs him of the progress of her treasure hunt. English has taken their bait and pursued them across the Ring, but they have learned that the treasure was very close to their starting location and have traveled in a circle to get there. John greets the rest of Vriska's crew and is introduced to Aradia and Sollux, who have been recruited by Vriska because their powers will be useful once she has the treasure. Sollux explains his unique status and bemoans the fact that his corpse is sharing a sprite with Eridan. He and Vriska get into an argument over whether doomed timeline ghosts should be treated as real people or mere copies of their alpha timeline equivalents.
* Vriska reveals that several thousand ghosts are in ships slightly ahead of theirs, drawing LFile:EnglishO.gifrd English's fire in order to fill out the maps. She is accomplishing this feat by mind controlling some of them, with Aranea's help, while the rest are simply drawn to the controlled group. Aranea and Vriska have bonded really well, and Meenah laments that while she does like Feferi, her royal blood induces murderous urges directed at anyone sharing her blood color. Under his breath, John says that "trolls are so weird".
* Tavros overhears the comment and tries to call John out. Aranea remarks that all species would invariably seem alien to each other (while implying that there are more species throughout paradox space apart from humans, trolls, and cherubs). This reminds her that she was in the middle of telling a story about the cherubs, and she decides to start over while the others display varying degrees of vexation.
* Aranea begins telling the story of the cherubs, focusing on one in particular: an adult female with a benevolent personality. The female cherub has predominated over her brother and now searches for an adult male to mate with. She follows the "scent" of a notably violent male who leaves a trail of death and destruction in his wake and eventually locates him near a black hole, where they will begin the violent duel that serves as their mating ritual. The winner will claim the other's territory as their own, while the loser must retreat and give birth to the new child. (The canon fan trolls make their cameo appearance in this update, appearing on one page and then immediately dying on the next.)
* The cherubs meet, turn into giant serpents, and begin their duel. After several sweeps of combat, the female cherub proves victorious and fertilizes the male. He leaves to locate a dead planet suitable for depositing his egg and finds future post-scratch Earth, where he leaves the egg and then vanishes back into paradox space (possibly to lay more eggs on other dead planets). From this egg, Calliope and Caliborn will be born. Gamzee finds the egg and Aranea changes the story's focus to its villain, Caliborn.
* As Feferi and Nepeta's ghosts return to the afterlife and begin donning pirate costumes, Meenah attempts to leave to use the bathroom, so Aranea decides to wait until she returns so everyone can hear the tale in its entirety. John briefly comments on the strangeness of ghosts having to pee and asks Aranea to continue the story. She decides to instead have a brief intermission to allow her listeners to process the new revelations. Meenah complains because this means that Aranea will just tell another story-within-a-story, but allows it once Aranea calls the intermission an "interfishin".
* While Meenah uses the bathroom, the other trolls produce musical instruments and begin playing "Elevatorstuck ♫". Meenah returns and informs them that Sollux has fallen down the stairs, then goes below deck again when she notices what the others are doing.
* Aranea continues the story, noting how cherub hatching and raising works. She notes that the difficult task of raising this creature was undertaken by multiple acolytes as we see visuals of Gamzee doing so alongside the text. He uses an extra codpiece as a cherub diaper.
* The cherubs are left chained inside their room, and their story jumps ahead to Caliborn's entry and his meeting with Yaldabaoth. Caliborn is offered The Choice: he can either take the martyr's path by dying, with the promise that his sacrifice will let him later contribute to the end of a great evil, or he can take the conqueror's path and attempt to take over and destroy multiple planets. Once this is done, he will unlock his true land and have one final challenge - face Yaldabaoth in combat and win. If Caliborn succeeds, he will be given unconditional immortality and unlimited power to destroy anything he wants.
* After Caliborn chooses to take the path of the conqueror, Skaia turns into a solid sphere and explodes, scattering fifteen new planets across the Medium. The leftover Skaian matter turns into a black hole that sucks up three of the planets (specifically the seventh, eleventh and fourteenth planets), leaving only twelve for Caliborn to conquer. He begins his quest: on each planet, he must crush all resistance and defeat the powerful underling that rules the world, then retrieve a bomb inside the planet's core and use the force from the bomb's detonation to push the subjugated world into the black hole. He has to skip the eighth planet initially, returning to destroy it after he has sunk the others. After sinking his eighth planet, his original dead planet becomes his true land, where he and his minions must prepare to face Yaldabaoth.
* Aranea begins to talk about the leprechauns, the species that the Felt are members of. John is confused by the sudden addition of leprechauns to the story, but Aranea is fascinated by the species and launches into a lengthy discussion of the leprechaun romance system, which uses nine "charms" instead of four quadrants. The lecture is fortunately cut off by Vriska before Aranea can begin talking about how leprechauns reproduce.
* Vriska tells Aranea how much she has helped her get in touch with her inner storyteller, and proceeds to hug her. However, Vriska and Meenah silently make a series of disparaging gestures and high-five behind Aranea's back. Aranea scowls at the insincerity.
* On the meteor, a surprised Karkat notices that Terezi is no longer blind.
* Terezi reveals to Karkat that Aranea healed her eyes nearly one year earlier, but she immediately regretted the decision and has been hiding it from the others. She even considered re-blinding herself, but decided not to because it wouldn't be the same. Karkat says that he knows about Terezi and Gamzee's kismesissitude and she expresses a desire to end the relationship, as it has given her nothing but severe self-loathing and an addiction to Faygo. Specifically, she wants to end it herself, as she would feel pathetic if Gamzee ditched her. She and Dave then criticize Karkat for sitting backwards in a chair throughout the entire conversation, causing him to throw a tantrum.
* Dave and Karkat continue arguing over the chair, with Dave accusing Karkat of being a communist for stealing public furniture for his own use. Karkat returns the topic of conversation to Terezi's issues, noting how many of her problems seem to be rooted in a lack of self-esteem. She says that she won't be very useful during the battle against Jack, and when Karkat brings up her Mind powers she dismisses them as merely giving her the illusion of controlling fate. She brings up Vriska's death and how she still feels guilty about killing her, even if doing so really was demanded by paradox space. The speaker crab suddenly latches onto her toe and Dave denies having any control over it.
* Act 6 Intermission 5 Intermission 3: Caliborn has conquered the sixth planet, gaining Die and Crowbar. On the eighth planet (which is confirmed not to provide a minion), Caliborn speaks at length with Crowbar and decides he is highly intelligent and to give him important duties later on. Meanwhile, Clover tries to get in a star-heart-horseshoe relationship with Caliborn while Lil Seb tries to get into a heart-clover relationship with Clover.
* The circle of cracks in paradox space around the Green Sun is completed, and the pirate crew arrives at their destination: an island with a green skull-shaped cave entrance.
* As Vriska's crew enters the cave, John asks Aradia if she believes Vriska's methods are ethical. She says that in her opinion, the morally questionable acts are necessary for stopping English, an action she views as cosmic housekeeping rather than the defeat of an evil force. John asks what she hopes to get out of the conflict and is disturbed to learn that she wants to see "what happens when this whole place breaks apart".
* John runs over to the others as Aranea begins to tell one last tale before they reach the treasure. She tells of two rings, the Rings of Life and Void, which look identical but possess different powers and origins. The Ring of Void has the power to let its wearer "vanish into the void" (indicating that it is the same ring Roxy used to escape from prison), while the Ring of Life is capable of bringing any ghost that wears it back to life. Before Aranea can retell a fable about the rings, Vriska realizes that the Ring of Life is the ring Hussie used when he proposed to her.
* Vriska lets out an enraged scream while two Cronus ghosts under her mind control "slampora" into each other.
* Vriska reveals that she knew John and Tavros were fighting over the ring Hussie attempted to give her, and demands Tavros tell her where it is. After Tavros reveals he doesn't know, Vriska demands that after recovering the weapon, Tavros lead her back to the location where he lost the ring. He refuses, saying that Vriska's meanness has made him reconsider helping her, and flies away. Sollux, not wanting to be upstaged by Tavros in terms of confidence, decides that helping Vriska was a mistake, and also leaves with Feferi and Nepeta in tow.
* John reveals that he is in possession of the ring, but says that as its owner he must choose the most responsible way to use it, even if that means not giving it to Vriska. He decides that it's time for him to wake up and tells Vriska that while they can still be friends, after observing her actions and the other trolls' reactions to them he is concerned that she may too dangerous to resurrect. Vriska is upset and angry but tells John to stay a bit longer so he can see what the treasure is.
* Vriska points to the treasure's location - a flaming X at the bottom of a cliff - and explains its backstory: LFile:EnglishO.gifrd English once found a weapon he could only use once and proceeded to do so. The weapon could then only be used one more time, to defeat him, so he hid it away inside the Furthest Ring. Vriska justifies leading the ghosts to their death by arguing that their continued existence was the only obstacle preventing the treasure from being found, and that the Horrorterrors probably intended to use them as bait anyway, and once she uses the weapon and ends English's threat forever, her actions will be vindicated after they lead to a reality where universes are no longer threatened with annihilation. She also tries to explain that she's only ever tried to do what was right, in the only way she knew how: "8y 8eing me." She jumps down to the X.
* On the meteor, Rose sits in the middle of Can Town with a book while Kanaya watches her silently.
* Kanaya attempts to tell Rose that the meteor is about to arrive in the new session, but the heavily intoxicated Rose says that she is busy serving as the Mayor's assistant and documenting the layout of Can Town so that it can be taken apart and rebuilt on the new planet they will create. She rambles about their "duty" as the last members of their species to keep democracy alive while an annoyed Kanaya rolls her eyes.
* Kanaya is furious because Rose had promised that she would be sober when the meteor arrived in the session. She says that Rose is the smartest one on the meteor and her intelligence is greatly needed, but her addiction has resulted in her neglecting her responsibilities; as a result, they have made no progress on finding a way to make a new matriorb and the auspisticism she started with Gamzee and Terezi fell apart. Rose acknowledges the criticism but asks Kanaya to help document Can Town; enraged, Kanaya kicks over some of the cans and Rose mourns the destroyed "Bubbles Von Salamancer Memorial Library".
* Rose worriedly asks if Kanaya will break up with her. Kanaya frustratedly shouts "NO".
* Act 6 Intermission 5 Intermission 4: Caliborn talks to Hussie yet again as he prepares to conquer the twelfth planet in his session. Hussie is angry that Caliborn keeps demanding spoilers but proceeds to give him information on Sawbuck, Matchsticks, and Stitch. Caliborn doesn't understand why he needs Stitch to be his tailor, saying that he will wear his suspenders for the rest of his life. Hussie tells him to hurry up and conquer the planet, accidentally revealing that the next minion is named Eggs. The various members of the Felt appear to be in many complex relationships.
* Kurloz picks up Vriska's discarded pirate overcoat.
* Vriska and her crew walk down a Yaldabaoth-shaped path. Meenah quietly tells John to come over to her.
* Meenah says that, now that she knows that John has the Ring of Life, it is inevitable that she will one day steal it from him, resurrect herself and enslave everyone in the real world. However, she doesn't actually want to do any of that because she would miss her friends too much. She begins to cry while mentioning all the things she likes about Aranea and Vriska, including their stories, then grabs John and shakes him until he promises to never let her get the ring. Meenah hugs him and thanks him.
* John runs over to Vriska and Aranea, and the pillar of Yaldabaoth's head starts descending, at which point Meenah and Aradia float down. At the bottom, Caliborn's Juju chest comes up through the hole.
* Vriska explains that the treasure is a powerful juju that was given to English as a boon for killing Yaldabaoth. She opens the chest, but the juju is not shown (though Vriska's confused reaction is); instead, the story shifts focus to Viceroy Bubbles Von Salamancer, who is standing next to the battleship on LOMAX.
* Viceroy Bubbles Von Salamancer's journey begins with a lively jig, and Hussie dismisses the earlier statement that Salamanders only live for a few days, confirming that this is indeed the same one.
* The Viceroy proceeds to cast a spell that summons an army of skeletal consorts. Hussie speculates that the army will be used later in the story to help the heroes. Vriska attempts to interrupt the subplot, but Hussie dismisses her and continues to focus on the Viceroy, who is trying to give one of the skeletons a name.
* The skeleton is named Bonebone, and Hussie states that each will be named individually. Vriska gets enraged as Hussie taunts her about giving up her one chance at becoming relevant again. She shifts the plot focus back to herself through sheer force of will and tactlessly dumps the treasure (an intangible, transparent Sburb symbol) on the ground. She screams at Hussie while yelling the rest of the information she knows about the weapon: it was turned intangible when English used it, Aradia was brought along because she can use her powers to levitate it, and it will supposedly reactivate in English's presence. After telling Hussie to "SUCK IT!", she falls onto the ground. Everyone else expresses confusion at her outburst towards, from their perspective, nobody. Aradia, however, continues to silently grin.
* John decides to ignore Vriska's outburst and wonders what would happen if he tried to touch the Sburb symbol. He reaches his arm through the symbol, causing several copies of his hand to emerge from portals above him. He pulls his hand out after inadvertently jabbing it on the sharp end of Vriska's horn, then reaches back in and his arm appears near what is revealed to be the Homestuck title card. Copies of his arm appear in multiple locations throughout time and space, indicated by their appearance in several previous scenes from the story. Accordingly, every previous image that is shown in this update has been replaced by a version altered to include John's arm reaching through a portal somewhere in the scene.
* John's arm is shown reaching into a total of 52 past scenes, which are arranged over four pages with thirteen scenes on each.
* While the original [S] Wake has been retconned, Nepeta's dream death lacks John's arm during its brief showing in Cascade, in addition to the scenes flashing past as seen in the Fenestrated Plane at the end of the Flash. Also not retconned are his arm in the background of Spades, Crowbar, and Stitch here, and John waving off the Dersite battleship in [S] Terry: Fast Forward to Liv.
* John turns blurry and the dream bubble begins to shake. As Vriska warns him to pull his hand out, and as Meenah throws her trident at him, John vanishes in a flash of white. The trident lands harmlessly on the ground.
* Act 6 Intermission 5 Intermission 5: Caliborn contacts Hussie yet again to complain about Eggs and Biscuits' annoying powers. Though Caliborn does not want further clarification of their abilities, Hussie provides it anyway and accidentally calls them both by their future names. Hussie begins to complain about Vriska's rejection of his love and how he should be allowed to ignore her efforts to become relevant again in favor of watching Bubbles name skeletons for hours. Caliborn angrily ends the conversation and Hussie wonders what Spades Slick is doing.
* The story switches focus to Spades Slick, and he proceeds to stare off at the green Act 6 curtains (among them, END OF YEAR 3, END OF YEAR 4, and a mysterious black circle between the latter and Act 6 Act 6) in the distance as the sun sets.
* Slick examines Hussie's body and takes the horns as a trophy. He then examines the gold machine gun which English used to kill Hussie and apparently left behind. In Slick's robotic grasp, the machine gun transforms into its innocuous double, the Golden Cuestaff.
* As Slick starts searching for English, he comes across Ms. Paint and proceeds to stomp the horns to pieces out of embarrassment. After entering Hussie's horse-plagued mansion, he starts talking to her and expresses anger at English having struck her, and tries to ask her out. Hussie begins to interject but then says his girl troubles shouldn't be interfering, and officially declares their ship to be canon. Ms. Paint begins to lead Slick to the location of his personal belongings.
* Ms. Paint retrieves the box of Slick's items from a pantry and hands it to him. Slick puts on his hat, then notices that Die's voodoo doll is also in the box. He pulls out all the pins (except for Snowman's), resurrecting the Felt, and announces that he is their new leader. The members of the Felt notice that Slick has the Cuestaff and agree that he is now their boss. Slick asks Ms. Paint to be the new 8-ball member.
* Slick consults with Crowbar as to where a good hideout is. Crowbar leads the group past the Yellow Yard and through the fifth wall into Doc Scratch's apartment, now located in the core of the Green Sun.
* After learning where the apartment is located and noticing the plasma surrounding it, Slick decides that hiding out inside a sun isn't a viable proposition, so Crowbar explains that Doc Scratch installed an emergency exit in his suite to allow the gang to escape in events like this. Slick gets annoyed with Crowbar and attempts to lead instead but ends up in the room with the wolf head, causing him to reluctantly let Crowbar lead again.
* Crowbar leads the Felt to Doc Scratch's study. Some of the members get distracted by a pool table and start to play table stickball pool table stickball, a game they made up based on their hats. Slick tells them to stop playing and continue following him.
* Crowbar explains that the grandfather clock in Scratch's study is the exit and the front must be pried open to escape. Slick decides to punch the clock instead and it works, opening the secret exit. Realizing that some of the gangsters are too big to fit inside the clock, Slick orders everyone except himself to get inside Biscuits' oven.
* Slick takes the oven, which becomes a thirteen of stars playing card. He then sets the mansion on fire.
* After Slick exits through the grandfather clock, he is shown to be inside the server that contains and activates the ~ATH program to summon LFile:EnglishO.gifrd English. He then looks up, where he sees Skaia in the post-scratch kids' Incipisphere. Calling it the "jackpot", he proceeds to fly towards it using a built-in rocket. The other Jack and Dirk Strider can be seen still floating in the Furthest Ring.
* On the battleship, John turns blurry and vanishes just like his dream bubble self did. He appears atop a building in the 2422 ruins of B1 Earth and witnesses the Skyship Base flying overhead, then gets zapped again. He next appears on the Land of Wind and Shade and watches his past self walk by, then vanishes once more just as his past self begins to notice him.
* The original "Years in the future, but not many..." page is now retconned to include John standing atop the building, and "John: Search for your father's car." now has the top of John's head slightly visible behind some rocks.
* John jumps to the cue ball blowing up in Vriska's face, to which he reacts awkwardly, and then to the scene of Jake kissing Dirk's head, which he seems disgusted by.
* The original "======>" page is now retconned to include John standing just behind Vriska, and "==>" now has John's glow barely visible behind the volcano. [S] Make her pay. was not retconned.
* John appears next to the wiggler Signless in the arms of the Dolorosa, who hisses loudly at him; at the Strife between Dirk's Bro and Presidents Jay and Dope, to which he rolls his eyes; and in the film Con Air being watched by himself on his fifteenth birthday. The power of Nicolas Cage's acting renders him tearful.
* Further retcons involving John's glow are applied to pages "[o] ==>", "==>" and "[A6I3] ==>" (interestingly, the filename of the last one ends in "retconheir", rather than just "retcon" as all the others do, as a pun on Con Air).
* Act 6 Intermission 5 Intermission 6: Caliborn conquers the fifteenth planet and unlocks Cans and Quarters. He is now on the eighth planet, which is ruled by the Black Queen, and intends to overthrow her with the help of his session's Jack Noir, then find a way to get rid of Jack once his usefulness is over. Caliborn realizes that Hussie isn't responding to his messages and throws down his caltop in anger. John suddenly appears next to Caliborn, who turns to look at the new arrival.
* Caliborn and John engage in an intense staredown that ends with Cans punching John out of the panel.
* John appears on a blank page and briefly serves as the reader's mouse cursor before vanishing again.
* John appears on LOMAX in the present. He picks up the 4th wall, which has already been crashed through. He finally becomes aware of the fact that he and Jade have arrived in the new session.
* John wanders around LOMAX looking for his friends. After finding none of them, he sits down on one of the stone slabs (the same one Jake was sitting on at the start of Act 6 Act 5). Meanwhile, as shown on the session map, the meteor has entered the Incipisphere and is about to pass through the Veil, with Bec Noir and PM still following it.
* Rose, Dave, the trolls and WV observe the Land of Tombs and Krypton as the meteor flies next to it.
* Karkat begins to freak out about having no way off the meteor, while Dave suggests he and Rose simply fly off and carry the trolls and WV off it. Jade appears, still under the influence of the Condesce. Gamzee is seen watching from the background.
* John sits around bored, staring at the fourth wall and sighing (mirroring the opening of Act 6 Act 5), then performs a number of activities to keep himself occupied, including playing solitare, watching Con Air, and ironing his pants. After he finishes making a house of cards in the shape of the Sburb logo, the meteor crew (except Gamzee) is teleported by Jade onto the ground next to him.
* John becomes overjoyed by the arrival of his friends as the curtains close on Act 6 Intermission 5.
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