I want people who don’t read homestuck to theorize what is going on in this panel 1 2 3 go
I’m just behind a handful of updates and even I have no idea
The Lollipop Guild is trying to convert a cool punk to their terrifying, fixed-grin, eternal-sugar-high Happiness Is Mandatory totalitarian culture. He’s not buying it. (He’s actin’ all tough, but they are prepared to stick a brain-sucking foodstuff into his hair whether he wants it or not. This could come to blows.)
The Cool Teenage Grim Reaper watches with interest. He supposes he wants the punk fellow to win, but he is simply here to carry the losers away to Teenage Hell when the inevitable violence ensues. His robot sidekick, who has had too many Red Bulls possibly laced with crack, is trying to get him to bet cash (or drugs) on the outcome. The Cool Teenage Grim Reaper is silent, and abstains.
A small black parasitic demonchild has attached himself to the Lollipop Guild’s contingent, content to observe with childlike ignorance and to feed on the invisible despair that leaks like thick tar from the candy-colored crew. They ignore its presence and do not shoo him; it consumes sadness and they are well-taught that Sadness Spoils the Fun.
The ghosts of the cool punk’s fallen hipster friends float above, appearing to him in his time of need. He does not know if they are real, like Jedi force ghosts from beyond, or if they are only the hallucinations of his desperate mind as he faces the ultimate foe of his Keepin’ It Real. His angry friend, still bearing the cracked horn and wounds of his violent passing, hisses, “Get ‘em.” His sweetest friend, the motherly one, who cared for him and who he loved like a sister, whispers comfortingly, “You can do it.” His best bro? His best bro who died covering the cool punk’s escape, whose 3D glasses are whole again in his apparition of death? He hangs back, silent, his intense bi-colored gaze solemnly upon his last living friend. I saved you for this, his eyes seem to say. Make me proud, dude.
The cool punk flexes in his shoes, pumped up kicks that were a boon from the Cool Teenage Grim Reaper long ago, at the start of his quest, kicks that will allow him to run fast and fleet to escape the cold talons of mortality. Maybe, just maybe, they will allow him to outmaneuver the sugar-rush speedforce of the trio before him.
Each one’s stiff rictus widens another stretched millimeter as they see the defiance burning behind his cool shades.
“Let’s do this.”