Jack Noir is a pretty cool guy. He is remarkably similar to certain 60’s mob boss and killing machine Spades Slick. What Jack absolutely is not is a bureaucratic pencil pusher, and definitely not a dress up doll. So In the animation we are starting with we see Jack being all these things by his Queen. The black queen of dark (mostly purple) planet Derse.

Before we get into the meat of this is the first time Derse gets identified. We’ve seen it a few times though. The Mayor painted Derse, on the walls of his ship. We’ve seen plenty of Prospit as the land where Jade goes when she is sleeping. Though Prospit is very close to Skaia, it actually touches the cloudy sky. Derse is far. Derse is beyond the veil, at the edge of the medium. We’ve learned the story of SBURB as a game. The players need to prevent the black kingdom from taking over, and destroying the battlefield. The battlefield is the center of Skaia, between two kingdoms. And we can assume Prospit is the location of the white kingdom. We also know the 2 queens are on these planets.

The Peregrine Mendicant (PM) was asked to assassinate the black queen and king by Jack Noir. At that time, the Kings were said to be on the battlefield. This means the battle for Skaia is already on. I’ll point out that these are anthropomorphized chess pieces. Some have suggested this is potentially a racial thing, I’m not going to open that can of worms.

Back to this animation. This is a critical scene. We see Jack finally snap. The black queen showed up in his office forcing him to wear ridiculous outfits. We never actually see what is in the green package that PM had been trying to get from him. We can see Jack is able to use it. This item had the ability to cut the ring off of the queen, and apparently make her explode. I can assume this would not be possible with any conventional weapon. The ring is also the source of power and it seems only the queens have them. With this ring no longer on the queen Jack takes it for himself. He seems to gain the powers of every active Sprite in the game. Nannaquin, Tentacle cat princess, and an overpowered time traveling player of the game. A character of the game having this power could be a huge friggin problem.

It also messes up some things. Does this mean Jack is now the black queen, and does this void his deal with PM?

We see other important things in this animation. Rose awakens in Derse. Mewtini also seems to be there. She’s now able to see the messages she had scrawled all over her walls. It’s “meow meow meow meow” and “cat cat cat”.

We also get a glimpse of what the guardian’s up to. Roses mom, John’s dad and Saves bro are all fighting huge monsters in their respective lands. They are all very confident fighters. We also see John’s dad carve the mini tablet for his fedora that we saw way back in the beginning of this act. This means John was delivering his dads stuff to him with the Parcel Pyxides. But John had no idea he was doing this. Also Maplehoof is with Roses mom for some reason.

This animation also marks the end of year 1 of the comic. Because of this Andrew Hussie proceeds to break the fourth wall for a bit to do, pretty much what I am doing, but better. Page 1674 is a good recap of everything up to this point in a written format with lots of links to important events.

I’m not going to attempt to recap a recap. I should have read this sooner to help with my own understanding on my second read-through. But I forgot this existed and I probably didn’t read it the first time. And I’ll admit I am only skimming through it now (I am very tired). But I’ll point out a few segments that are interesting though.

After conversing with GA, Rose found Jaspersprite and interrogated him about the secret which she found so maddeningly mysterious years ago. He explained elements of the mythos of her land, and how she’d need to learn to play the rain to produce the musical analogue of a genetic code to reintroduce life into the ocean. In response to her question about his secret, he simply replied “Meow.” She mistook this for more nonsense, but it was in fact the secret he told her years ago. The four letter sequence MEOW unlocked a genetic code in her subconscious, which she would spend years scrawling on her wall using those letters in place of the typically used GCAT letters, while completely oblivious to the scrawlings and their meaning just as John was. As Jaspers said, she would understand their meaning when her dream self wakes up.

The genetics stuff hadn’t really popped up much yet. So this may have been easy to miss or I assumed it would get explained more later… But I guess that’s what happened.

The relation between Jack Noir and Spades Slick is also explained a little more here. We know that since the Trolls are in a different session that have many of the same elements of the game of their own. It would make sense they also have some of the same characters. This is like a game using the same NPC for different roles. Spades Slick is an Exile in the Trolls session. Spades is like the Wayward Vegabond (WV) is to John but for carcinoGeneticist [CG]. This is why at the end of the intermission Spades sees and recognizes CG on a monitor. Spades slick is the Exile guide for CG. Jack however, is not an exile in the session with the kids. Though the same character he is playing a different role in the story.

Feel free to let me know if I got anything else wrong.

We also get a small sense here that maybe Andrew has some contempt for his readers. And he has a creep plush version of Cal.