Ok I'm glad other people have issues with the narrator I thought I might have been overreacting.

I think as readers we spend so much time with the narrative voice of Homestuck that it's much more firmly set in my mind than any of the actual kids who I can leave up to interpretation. But the Narrator should be a serious deadpan and not some wacky parody of annoying narration. It's self-important and authoritative even about the most inane topics. Wouldn't the jokes just obviously land much better if John was wackily interrupting a serious narrator who is trying to give tutorial advice (not to mention the iconic title prose)?

And not to get ahead of myself here, but establishing the narrator at a serious baseline is important for when moments when the narration gets TRULY unhinged