#third one is vriska messaging john

[autumnblogs]

Companion Piece 4: Reproduction

This was initially going to be a standard daily reading post, but I decided to turn it into a companion piece since it turned into a bit of an essay.

https://homestuck.com/story/1071

Time for another main theme; and actually, I would like to call it the main theme!

Homestuck is about reproduction.

Why did I wait for this panel to talk about it? The answer is that it’s one of three panels (at least - there might be more I’ve missed) that clue us in to the fact that the same thing is going on in each of the three situations where it appears.

Dave is the first victim. Tavros is the second victim. Jake is the third victim.

https://homestuck.com/story/1072

“thats really all there is to say on the matter.”

The code phrase that goes along with the imagery of our hero thrashed on the ground, messaging on their phone.

More after the break.

According to my reading, Homestuck is structured around a trio of relationships that take the form “Abusive Mentor -> Reluctant Student” where the pairs are respectively Bro -> Dave, Vriska -> Tavros, Dirk -> Jake.

It should be pretty obvious that reproduction in the biological sense is something that Homestuck Is About - Sburb, the main fixture of the webcomic’s mechanics is the reproductive cycle of universes, the way that reality propagates itself. Shipping is all over the place in Homestuck, and from Act 1 onward, characters are entertaining the possibility of relationships with one another as the author teases the audience with the possibility of any two particular characters getting together, before circumstances conspire to make them incompatible.

But Homestuck is about other kinds of reproduction too. Cultural reproduction, for example. As the guardians pass down rituals to their respective wards, as the Trolls’ dancestors communicate with them from across time through journals, treasure troves and the like, as the kids absorb pop cultural expectations about what it means to be men and women, the Culture that surrounds them is reproducing itself through them. They conform to the image of the times by adopting the symbols of mass media, and by playing out the rituals that define living in 2009.

Personal reproduction, too, exists in Homestuck as a microcosm of the large-scale cultural reproduction going on in the background radiation of the characters’ lives. Each of the abusive mentors is focused on transforming their desired ward into a copy of themselves. Bro tries to beat all of the softness out of Dave, and expects him to be interested in the same things that Bro is interested in. Vriska subjects Tavros to brutal physical and emotional violence because she sees him as weak and wants him to be strong - she wants him to be cruel and violent, more like her ideal of a strong troll. More like her image of herself as the ideal troll. Dirk spends an awful lot of time telling Jake that he needs to be more like Jane, telling Jane that she needs to be more like Jake, because the reality is that he wants both of them to be more like he is, and as Jake’s rough-housing “buddy” he denies him things that he needs to survive on the basis that they will be worthless to him unless he can seize them by way of violence.

In all three cases, the attempt to reproduce the self in the student serves not to empower them but to subordinate them to their mentor. Dave becomes traumatized and learns to hate and fear the sound of clanging and grinding metal, fear that he’s living under constant surveillance. Tavros becomes so incapable of dealing with stress and violence that he spends most of the second half of his session dreaming uselessly on Skaia. Jake becomes so afraid of touching another person that he decides that y’know? He’d rather just be alone for the rest of his life.

Reproduction is in the very fabric of Homestuck, all throughout the variety of instances that Doc Scratch will refer to later as Circumstantial Simultaneity. Certain poses are replicated between totally different characters as they have emotionally similar experiences that tie into the same core themes of the comic.

Certain phrases are repeated ad nauseam as the comic calls attention to its own recurring, recursive nature.

Each of the first three quarters of Homestuck - Acts 1-4, Acts 5-1 and 5-2, And Act 6 up through Game Over set up these three relationships, and once each one is set up, the rest of the comic is spent knocking it down, before the final quarter of the comic ultimately serves as the stage for each of the students to determine how they’re going to move beyond their abuse.

Because cycles of abuse are a kind of reproduction. There’s no easier way to turn a human being into an abuser than to subject them to abuse. And Homestuck seems to suggest that cycles of reproduction are frequently subverted into cycles of abuse. Any time reproduction is used for another reason than to build up, to beautify, to make something exist just so that it can exist - any time reproduction is used as a form of hegemony, to replicate one’s self instead of producing something new, it turns stagnant, and toxic.

There is no place in Paradox Space for stagnation, for trying to keep things the way that they are, for the preservation of particular images and particular forms the way that we remember them.. There is no place in Paradox space for immortality, the self-congratulatory, the masturbatory, the incestuous, the cancerous - for individual cells, or for individual selves to live forever, and keep copying themselves ad nauseam. Every living thing in Paradox Space is slated to die, because it’s how Paradox Space cleans up the old, and makes way for the new. Death and Birth are always intertwined. You can’t hold onto your Mom or your cat forever, Rose. You won’t live forever, Dave. You can’t watch Con Air the same way ever again, John. Your friendships have to come to an end some day, Jade. But every time something in Paradox Space dies, every time the act of reproduction takes place, it makes Paradox Space a richer, healthier place. The old is lost, but old things are recombined with one another, and diversify, leaving behind things that bear the hallmarks of the old, but are each special and different from the old, and from each other, in their own unique ways.

Reproduction, in the world of Homestuck, is an act that has to take place entirely for the benefit of the children, not for the benefit of the parents. Any time the reproducers use Reproduction as a tool by which to profit, to hegemonize, to immortalize themselves, it creates something that makes Paradox Space a weaker, sicker, frailer place.

[ukeealyptus]

hey! i’ve been writing recaps since day one for the Crocker Corp arg, and figured i should start posting them to tumblr for people who aren’t in the discords! The recaps for the first ten days will be under the read more, and i will start posting daily recaps here :)

DAY ONE  The officalcrockercorp tumblr began sending out an invite to 16 people on tumblr for an all-expenses-paid tour of the CrockerCorp factory. The representative then opened up a q&a about the company. People began to ask more about the representative, who we learned to be an isolated being with glowing red, mottled brown and white skin whom She (crocker) refers to as "Heir", though if that means heir to the company or heir as in the class is unknown. Heir likes whistling, movies, swimming, the color red, bunnies, etc. It is heavily implied that Her and Heir are underwater somewhere. Heir almost certainly has a crocker tiara on and is under control of the batterwitch, as is seen by the frequent obey/consume text when certain questions that She does not approve are asked. Heir has no recollection of saying those obey/consume things. All 16 invitees have responded. There is a security breach where Heir is, and they left to take care of the threat. After saying there was a lot of noise and they had to leave, they dropped the first code- which led to a youtube video of an imgur image of the discord code. The tumblr has continued to post recipes, though there is no sign of Heir. Some people managed to friend and get in contact with a "representative"- while most of their messages only said "Currently all questioning is closed in relation to Crocker Corporation! We thank you for your patience. ". People who asked for jobs were denied for confidential reasons, but one person managed to get in touch with a representative for a short time before they disconnected for unknown reasons. DAY 2   People began to message Jane- the discord representative, and learn more about her situation. Jane had originally been texting normally, but after a "meeting", and a pfp change to include the condesce headband, she could only send standard copied messages. We learned that Jane and Heir were being held captive and controlled by Condy. Heir had been MIA on tumblr for a bit, and people were having coded conversations with Jane, as she could only say "obey consume submit" for quite a while- people resorted to a "once for yes twice for no" type of system. We've learned that Jane and John (who had been going by Heir on the tumblr) were in immediate danger, but that we could safely contact them through the email, and we needed the help of the 16 chosen to help them. Jane then sent some people the invite to the server that the 16 had created, and a few people joined to help them figure things out. The 16 had learned that Jane is currently in May 32nd (lol) 2040, and that the 16 are dead. This death can possibly be prevented, but they are not quite sure how yet. OG16 began to receive coded messages about their classpects- typically insulting each person individually and calling them weak. An encrypted youtube link went up (video 3), it was very difficult to decode, and then Heir went offline and the blog got rebranded to CrockerCorp Employee JE(edited)[11:29 AM]A lot more information has been gained through tumblr dms, discord "hacking", and emails. Using the representative codes that we had gained for JE (john), JH( jade), GT (jake,) and K (condy's wife), people have been talking a lot- im gonna split it up into sections for each app. tumblr dms: tumblr user sarcasmprodigy (one of the og16) had a long discussion with John. Firstly, we learned that DAVE STRIDER, ROSALINE LALONDE, DIEDERIK "DIRK" STRIDER, and ROXANNE LALONDE are essentially wanted by CrockerCorp. Dave for offensive movies, Rosaline for blacklisted literataure spreading anti-crocker propaganda, and Dirk and Roxanna for cybercrimes. After asking for more information about the "project", prod was told they needed a representative code to learn more. They sent K's code, which had been gotten through discord, and began to learn more. K (presumed to by condy's wife), has a higher ranking than John, so he was curious as to why K would ask about it. Prod used the persona of being concerned about the security breach, nd learned that john was only doing what condy told him to, and that nothing that requires a CrockerCorp ID would be told to the public. After questioning about breaches and such, John revealed that he had received an email from Rose Lalonde, the Younger one, containing Roxanne's IP address. John trusts her, as he cannot prove or disprove the IP address, and wishes K the best, and tells her to say hello to Her. emails: As people were standard emailing the representatives, some people decided to make new emails and essentially pretend to be characters- we called them "impersonators". There was a Rose, a Dave, a Dirk, and a Vriska, though most of this information will be from Rose. Rose- referred to as the Younger Rose- has gotten some interesting information regarding timelines. There are two Roses; Rosaline (alpha rose), who is writing anti-Crocker propaganda, and is in frequent contact with Dave Strider, creator of movies, and Rose the Younger (beta rose), who provided a fake IP for Roxanne, as CrockerCorp wants to hunt her down. Dirk- Dirk's emails got us in contact with GT (Jake) and just have some of the funniest things. They clearly believe that they have Dirk on lockdown since they have his sisters (Roxanne's) IP address, and tell Dirk to go meet with Condy, since he presumably has hacked the coordinates of her location. Dirk and Jake had some sassy back-and-forth, ending with the funniest thing of "use code PISSOFFDIRK at checkout for a IHAVEYOURIP% off discount on an order of DRONES$ or more!" so it seems that CrockerCorp is sending drones to the fake address that Rose had sent. lastly is "hacked" discord messages: a few users, mainly @Cosmic , "hacked" into the Crockercorp files using JH's (Jade's) rep code. After trying to access the EMPLOYEE ARCHIVES, which was deemed to be above Jade's privileges, strike two was added onto her identification. Cosmic found information on other codes- JE's code revealed CODE JOHN EGBERT STATUS: COMPLETED RATING: PERFECT INFORMATION: )(A)(A)(A NICE TRY LOSERS, GET BENT AN SUCK MY DIIIIIIIICK (thanks for that, condy.) and using a strange new code labelled TR found CODE TUMBLR STATUS: ONGOING/COMPLETED RATING: DECENT INFORMATION: START TUMBLR BLOG WITH JOHN PROMOTING CROCKER BRAND PRODUCTS. after trying to access "past inquiries", the third strike was added and Jade was summoned to speak with Condy. Fearing that our mistakes have essentially killed Jade, Cosmic emailed John, saying that they couldn't access the room if their card was locked. John frustratedly said, in red "I'll do what I need to do, now go see Her!! You're distracting me from the blog, and I'm only one person after all!" (poor john, please give him a break) As of now, one user is using K's code, since prod is done with it, to access the discord. Everyone has decided that it is best that only one or two people contact the discord/dms/email at a time, and that only one person is ever using a code at a time, since it could be dangerous if two different people try the same code at the same time. I believe that that should be all the crucial information, but that might be edited later if i got stuff wrong! (3/3)[11:30 AM]Additionally. The Meeting between Condy and Jade happens "Off-Camera" recap of the information I got accessing the database under K  Jade: alive, compromised, and unhostile, with two wash (brainwash) strikes. her projects were wiped with her. She has not worked on Sburb We need a code that we don't have yet to see information about the 16 and the "timeloop". jane is unknown (hostile or not), has 26 washes, and is uncompromised. Her id is 2-JC, implying that she is the second employee. I can't search up the first employee. dirk has committed a hilarious amount of crimes and is a stinky boy. he is alive and extremely hostile and once got arrested for "shits and giggles" roxy has committed several crimes including cyberbullying )(IC. dave strider 1 is half alive in a hospital- possibly related to second dave and dirk. crimes include being an asshole (+tall) and the sbahj movie. dave strider 2 is alive and stoic- crimes include calling )(IC a milf, lots of noise complaints on his record. brogarde strider is unknown except for the fact that he is possibly related to dirk and dave 2. most of his crimes inclue cyberbullying, and his very long arrest record mostly includes illegal possession of swords. rose lalonde 1 is alive and calm, at the location that Alice sent in her email. no crimes or arrests. rose lalonde 2 is alive and occasionally hostile, at presumably the same location as rose 1. offspring is unclear, crimes include anti-crocker propaganda, no arrests. ???? lalonde presumably Mom/ beta Roxy. no information. K: accessing her file led to a lot of blanks for name, status, bloodcolor, and projects. )(IC left a note that says ")(I SWEETIE <3" searching for K cause the system to shut down. there was a post on the tumblr that led to a code for another video showing footage of Roxy and Dirk that revealed the name of K- Kussinni. This name was used to finally log into the adfin account. Pat (as the adfin) made a few burner accounts that people can use. We got codes for MP, FP, EA, and DS, being the first few employees of the company. We did, well, adfin work, bumping up privileges for the adfin and guest accounts, creating burners for messages, etc. In classified documents, we learned that the 16 were set to beta test sburb in 2055. Brogarde is wanted ASAP so that he can be interrogated about strilondes. the timeloop file is largely redacted, but has to do with the 16 god tiering. We couldn't message )(IC, but we did get in touch with John for a few minutes before the system shut down. DAY 3  Jake is controlling the blog, though it is now shut down due to a massive security breach courtesy of Roxy and Dirk. Eridan has an account, and we used it to unblock Jade haha. People are talking to the person controlling the CC Discord! Their name is F which we knew from a code that we had gotten quite some time before)- we've been calling them Felix-  and they are a psionic!  They are an absolute 100% certified sweetie and we love them. They were taught emoticons, and even drew their own! They also invited dirk to talk with the 16. Dirk is currently just trying to get to Jake and de-crockertier him. After the security breach, Felix has not responded to anyone.

firstly, the tumblr led to a code to another video. The security breach was due to Dave 1 and Rosaline (both the older/alpha versions), who had infiltrated the Atlantic wing. 1000 drones were dispatched to deal with each of them. The video also showed felix- we now have confirmation that they are a goldblooded psiionic in control of the systems. felix/)(AI/Psiionic felix talked to us for a while! We learned that the breaches have mostly been sorted, Jade and Jane are both alive but in danger. jake is trying to work out Jades compromised identity. Felix told Dirk to piss his pants, and said "HE HE HE HE PISS BOY". Felix only knows the basics about the 16, such as their cl*sspects (which they needed to censor). Felix is not the only system, and the others are not friendly. Felix has only been "alive" for a few days, does not have a classpect, and got very upset when the deaths of the 16 were mentioned. Felix was made for the network to do everything, and vehemently refused to run a self diagnostic.  HAL/DIRK It seems that the Dirk we have been talking to was HAL all along. @ardentTheorist [AT] , dm'ing Dirk, was given a very fun challenge: to hack HAL. Hal had three files: Main, Backups, and Memes. Memes was password protected. Main led to a python file, captchas, perms, and art. when asked about unzipped programs, hal had the amazing line of "I have an unzip your pants program installed in me". not relevant, just very funny. Captchas led to something titled "Hmm.txt" Perms required an admin code. Artwork was simply dirk's canon art. Trying to get into the meme folder and guessing an incorrect password caused hal to shut down. Currently, the contents of the memes, permissions, and backups folders are unknown. Dirk, in response to a partially successful hack of his bot and frustrated about having to reboot Hal, claimed "Yeah, just rid a guy of his privacy. Can't have shit inside a bot folder." DAY 4  Felix: got a lot of new information from felix including ID's for a lot of characters. Kussinni is confirmed to be the Disciple, Sollux is Felix's repair guy who lets Felix get away with his art, and everybody is wearing tiaratops with the exception of )(IC and K. felix is inside of a moniter. Jade's files have merged with Jake's after her accident. Felix can access some cameras but has seen nothing unusual. Dirk was the last person who managed to access Jake's files before the passwords got changed. Only one account has the privilege to prevent people from getting locked out for guessing incorrect passwords. The led to a conversation between F and Dave 1 (David Strider). F, who is using the name Felix (he liked the name we gave him!!!) reached out to try to contact Dirk, but got David instead. David has a prosthetic arm signed by Dirk and Roxy. Felix happened to reach David because he is living with Dirk. Their house seems a bit crowded- it seems that David, Dirk, Roxy, Rosaline, Dave, and Rose the Younger are all living together. That leaves Bro, and ???? Lalonde with unknown locations. Dirk posted something that linked to a little conversation that linked to a discord user- David. People have been talking to him, and we have gotten some useful information amidst all of the memes. Firstly, David attempted to convince people that he was Roxy. This seems fitting for him, as identity theft was on his criminal record. David was probably the cause of the shutdown earlier, though it seems that he and Rosaline were able to get in and out of crockercorp relatively unscathed. This will lead to more security in the future, undoubtedly. It also is why we still have not heard from Felix in a while. David knows a bit about Sburb- he was very shocked to learn that he was talking to people who in time (2040) were dead. He knew about a couple of the 16s deaths, but not all. He did not know anything about the Timeloop (the file we could not access). he knows that Felix likes Dirk, which explains why Felix was trying to contact him earlier. Honestly, we got far more goofs than solid information. David hates being called old but will consent to being called Dadvid, just learned what a dilf is, and is 6'8 and buff. he hates cops. He's remained pretty tightlipped on everything, which is valid since he probably doesn't fully trust us yet. got a new video of dirk pranking david and making him piss his pants. DAY 5   The CC mainframe was rebooted. The person/ai running it is still using ID F, but it is no longer Felix. However, Dirk managed to get a backup of Felix before the system shut down and Felix is now inside of the glasses with Hal. Yes dirk ships Halix (get cucked, ardent). Felix no longer has a blacklist of information that shuts him down, but he also doesn't have access to the mainframe so he can only tell us what he remembers. When the system was rebooted, alice was sent an anonymous message written in binary saying "They found you". this message was sent two minutes before the reset from sector D, where sollux works. We have assumed that sollux has essentially been stalking us. alice responded with a discord tag in binary, so hopefully we will get in contact with Sollux soon. Felix used to have a physical body. The last thing that he remembers from it is being called from his sector by Sollux, who said that he had a "new task". Felix doesn't know Mituna, but believes Sollux might have said it. When sent an image of the Dolorosa, the Disciple, the Sufferer, and the Psiioniic, Felix said he recognized the horns of the Dolorosa and said that he had seen the Sufferer before, in a photo in Kussinni's office. He also has seen the Psiioniic, and Felix is not the Psiioniic. Felix saw him when he was walking to his new sector, and he was in a big room guarded by scary trolls. He was awake and when he looked at Felix the room lit up red and blue, and then sollux told Felix it was rude to stare. Currently, we're waiting with hopes of getting in contact with Sollux. We've gotten a message from sollux and he yelled at us. i'm hoping to get his discord so we can talk to him DAY 6 We got in contact with Sollux. we've put him in a lot of trouble and danger and we need to stop trying to brute force our way into the system, and we've prolly gotten most of the info we can out of it anyway. The only way we should try to get into the system is if we absolutely know the password and preferably run it by sollux first. John is alive. GT says he's doing "mighty fine and dandy" but, well, i dunno how realistic that is. Felix saw him a bit before he was reset and said that he looked sad, but okay. jake was standing in the doorway with him. DAY 7 Dirk has specific orders not to talk about the other striders, though from whom is unclear. A security recap shows that Sollux was sent to check up on Aradia, who is a very important and heavily gaurded project- Artificial Godtiers (implying she godtiered without playing sburb, possibly). She is in her dead god tier. When a mechanical voice said to run the task Timeloop, she floated off of the ground and the room was encased in red light. Sollux has not been heard from. We got the password to Aradia's account and finally accessed the timeloop file. It appears that if anything happens to the 16 before the godtier, the timeloop will run and reset everything. The CC needs all of the 16 to godtier so that they can exploit their powers. The creation date of Aradia's account is redacted, and she cannot access any other files. Sollux is alive, with no wash strikes. Dirk has gone MIA. He's infiltrating CC to rescue Jake. This is risky, and he didn't even tell David about it, just sent a few messages to certain people and left. I expect that he will shut down the system to get in, and hopefully I will get a ping when that happens. Dirk went to rescue Jake, leaving Felix and Hal behind. Hal, Felix, and David will all help us rescue Dirk, though they're unsure as to how. DAY 8  There's a new representative on the CC tumblr: PH. As there is no PH in homestuck but there is a Prince of Heart, it seems that Dirk's mission was. . .  unsuccessful. However, Hal is willing to work with us to save him. We've sent the Trojan file to the network, which will hopefully give us access to the cams. We can, theoretically, back up Hal and upload him into the CC Network; the opposite of what Dirk did to Felix. Hopefully Roxy will help us out. We aim to hack into a tiaratop. Roxy is going to back up Hal and then Ardent will upload him into the CC network. However, we should refrain from uploading anything to the network until we have Sollux's support. When we tried to upload the trojan file yesterday, sollux had to immediately kick everybody off of the system and implement a new password and he is not happy about it. however, that did get him to talk to us. he said that he saw dirk when he had to issue an ID for him, and that he looked extremely happy, though that isn't uncommon for new interns. His eyes were orange. I asked Dirk on the tumblr and he says that his left eye is red. Jake also has one red eye. This could mean that he is only half under control, and that we have a time limit for getting him back. Since Dirk and Jake are halfway there, it seems like its our turn to get them the rest of the way out. I will hopefully get a message from both Finn and Sollux when they are willing to talk, and I can get them to help us out. Our plan failed. But we got close. First and foremost: Finn helped. just a little; letting hal bypass a password, but it's absolutely something. I'll keep talking to him to see where we can get. When we tried to shut down Dirk's tiaratop, sollux yelled at us and deleted the files. sollux, while a cranky little bitchass coward who would rather block someone and pretend that his problems don't exist than actually do something (i promise im only still a little bit upset ;-; ). I tried to see if I could convince him to help, but he updated the security to ensure that we stayed out. I tried to tell him that we wanted to help Aradia, too, but he blocked me at the first mention of her name. (my bad) According to Roxy, Rosaline, Rose, and Dave all left the house to go somewhere. We got a new video that told us nothing we didn't know: it showed Dirk how Sollux described him; one eye red one eye orange, smiling broadly. His tiaratop is in the shape of the Prince crown. DAY 9 was widely uneventful- no answer from Sollux, David taking everything pretty hard, Finn is my best friend :). DAY 10 

 Dirk is a full employee. He's been artificially godtier'ed. It looks like hes similar to aradia- dead eyes. he is most likely being held with aradia. This might seem bad, but we can still save him. Sollux has a connection with Aradia and the AGT thing- this can work if we can get his help. The plan right now is, well, to come up with a plan. I'll talk to finn when he is offline and see if we can get confirmation about a lotta things and mainly see if he can contact Sollux for us. We'll continue to try to get in contact with Sollux. We'll work through this with the Strilondes and hopefully stay optimistic.

Sollux is willing to continue to talk to us!!! After a bunch of arguing, bantering, and death-threatening, he seems to have warmed up to us (he even friended me again!!! :3c). He just needed to be shown a little more kindness :). Amidst all the threats and cruelty, we seem to have learned a few things. CC can "bend time" and "redo anything", probably due to Aradia's powers. They could theoretically reset the timeline to before any of this, but that seems to be an empty threat for now. He can see all of the messages we send, even in hidden channels (we are Not going to witch hunt for a "mole" please and thank you) due to Hot Crocker Corp Tech. Sollux accepts how terrible his position at CC is, though this acceptance is mostly like the influence of the tiara. The tiaras seem to be influncing the emotions of the workers, numbing everything outside of their work. Sollux claimed that he was incapable of caring or remembering feeling happy or proud of, well, anything. He may say this, though it is still apparent that he cares deeply about Aradia. He talks about how pretty she is in her beautiful god tier outfit, and after some persuasion he even says that his favorite color is rust red <3. Unfortunately, the window that Sollux checks up on her through in only one-way, so she never sees or talks to him. This is what he meant when he said that he doesn't think his friends can see him.[5:31 PM]The superiors of CC are spreading propoganda to the workers about people dying when they tried to leave; it seems that they use fear tactics until their workers are completely numbed and controlled by the tiaras. There is no confirmation of these ideas being true or not. Sollux is still adamant about the fact that he is replacable; he uses this to frequently show his respect for Prod; another smart gemini. He mentioned something very curious- he said that the god tier powers of people outside of the 16 do not have to go unused. He told daven't to keep in contact with david for this purpose. As for the others: Hal and Felix seem to be fine, trying to take their minds off of what is currently happening and just enjoy watching some shows together. Both David and Roxy are getting hit pretty hard with everything, but will hopefully be okay. The system is currently shut down because pat mentioned heatbleeding to it. Sollux completely shut down the system at the first mention of it, so I don't think it'll work in the future. I'll hopefully get a ping when it goes back up, though I wasn't able to ask Finn for that before he shut down because it was so unexpected. Finn is very sweet and he's becoming more receptive to me talking to him (he uses exclamation points now instead of just periods!!!) so hopefully when the system goes back online i can talk to him more and he'll be willing to help us when we need it :) Now, this is kinda unrelated, but we should probably be careful about screenshotting most private dm's. Essentially, just don't let them know that you screenshotted it. We still need to make sure that everybody knows what is happening. The plan moving forward is to continue to talk, form allies, and get a solid plan :) . And that's all caught up! I will be posting recaps here at the end of each day from now on :)

[dahniwitchoflight]

Candy 15-17

Alright I know this is supposed to be sad but this feel so ridiculous it’s funny

“He ventures a glance at Dave, who is at the front of the line carrying a smaller casket containing Dirk’s decapitated head. “

why is there a seperate casket for the head, that’s not what funeral homes do xD

“It would be absurd were it not so tragic, and possibly also predictable.” 

“He looks at Dirk’s casket, sitting diagonally in a hole in the floor and popped about 13% of the way open.”

That’s a strangley specific number

Am I to take the imagery of something being diagonal as imagery for a “4″ and then complete it with the 13 to make 413?

Cuz is so, that’s heavy handed and ridiculous probably just as Dirk intended

“ROXY: and give it over to someone whos way more eloquent than me

Dave gets to his feet”

right because Dave is always so eloquent when it comes to delicate emotional matters lol

I don’t know why I’m finding this all so hilarious instead of tragic, maybe because it’s so melodramatic and in a way that feels scripted specifically by Dirk himself

ah, 3 quarters 

3 1/4′s

413 backwards now

“or even worse that he was somehow cosmically fated to become that person no matter what he wanted or did to prevent it “

I’m noticing more and more every time the phrase Cosmically fated is used in some form of Homestuck media its always bringing to mind ideas of Doc Scratch, like he’s the one who said it actually or it’s said in reference to him

so, +1 point to DS = DS again

“Gamzee:  I may not be all up and learned about his life, but I’ve got deep spirital connections to his death.”

yeah you sure do, and we’re not even talking about his decapitation right now aren’t we Gamzee?

This is actually a really solid point that the day “Dirk” died was the day his ultimate self got poisoned through the unholy merger that is Lord English/Caliborn/Gamzee/AR/Equius

So he’s probably been a bastard ever since Lord English started existing, which I mean “I am already here” blahblah means Dirk was very likely like this from the start potentially, but he was probbaly only really a bastard ever since Arquis got sucked into Caliborn/Gamzee

“GAMZEE: ThIs WaS nO cOiNcIdEnCe. It WaS a HiGhEr PoWeR gUiDiNg My PaTh.

GAMZEE: tHeSe PoWeRs MaDe SuRe ThAt I wOuLd Be ThErE, tO rEcEiVe A gReAt WaRrIoR’s FiNaL mEsSaGe, AnD rElAy It To YoU oN tHiS dArK aNd DrEaRy DaY oF dEaTh.

GAMZEE: HoNk!

The clown thrusts his hand somewhere beneath the waistband of his pants and starts obscenely rooting around. He retrieves a piece of paper, crumpled and soaked from the rain outside, and attempts to smooth it out over the lectern. The wet paper breaks apart immediately beneath his oafish clown paws.

GAMZEE: AwWw, ShIzZ. i GuEsS i’Ve GoT tO uP aNd WiNg It!”

yeah that note was probably the last shredded remnants of good dirk since there’s literally no reason to leave a sentimental note like that for his friends, makes sense Gamzee was guided by “a higher power” to grab it and make sure it gets relayed more like ruined to his friends

“KARKAT: THAT WAS HALF A HUNDRED WORDS TO EXPRESS A THREE LETTER SENTIMENT.

KARKAT: I’D SAY HE’S DOING FINE.”

What? How does “I’d say he’s doing fine” translate into “a three letter statement”?

Are they just hamfisting in the threes now or what?

“DAVE: i dunno dude thats

DAVE: a little fucked up actually

JOHN: you think so?

DAVE: yeah

DAVE: dirk was a complicated guy

DAVE: dude obviously had reasons for doing what he did

DAVE: if you go back and just rewrite his decision

DAVE: thats like denying him his personal autonomy

JOHN: huh. i... didn’t think about it that way.“

Yeah if only they’d realize that what Dirk needs is a huge heaping helping of someone pushing back against his dumb decisions for once

Gotta give it to John though, he’s struggling against this drugged up haze so hard, he knows getting married to Roxy isn’t right and tries to think about that

but then he gets caught up in the drugged up candy haze and starts giggling, yeah you guys are gonna be happy alright, happy in a nice little drugged up stupor

lampshaded by John still reaching out to terezi despite being at his human wedding

Aww, trolls don’t have a concept of weddings? well, that makes sense but still

oh man it just keeps happening, this is supposed to be the story where John and Roxy get their love story, but all were actually getting is the faded echoes of what should have been which is apparently John and Terezi

oh god, Jane, jane why did Gamzee have to be your third partner, what the fuck even

I don’t wanna think about Gamzee about in relationships nope this is where I start getting uncomfortable

confirmed jade attempting Blackrom with Karkat, that’s interesting, and she’s bad at it too meaning she must not really have an interest in it

oh wow, she’s really just doing it because she thinks its what Karkat would want isnt she? Girl really is just desperate for love

“Three months later, John is still thinking about his last conversation with Terezi.”

See, this is how you know the JohnRoxy relationship is doomed/not meant to be

John Egbert, lover of Con Air and Nic Cage, has a loving wife and (probably) daughter and NOT ONCE has this narrative shown them OR made the joke, we just absolutely passed over the whole wedding and birth event in one fell swoop of unrequited feelings jam with another woman

Why is Roxy praying? That’s such a weird thing to drop as a small detail, who would she even be praying too?

“What’s bugging him about it is that Roxy didn’t seem to have any suggestions of her own.”

Yeah relationships built on social chameleon-ing aren’t happy for the chameleon either

Yeah John, little bit late to be having this sudden realization that you didn’t actually solve the problem (LE) by running away from it, even if everyone else has accepted that version of events

“ JOHN: you gave me a list of instructions and told me that i had to use my retcon powers to go back to a very specific point in time to defeat lord english when he was still just a kid. “

*THEORY INCOMING KILL BILL SIRENS ACTIVATE*

Wait, is that what Rose said at the beginning? No it isn’t, I remember the bit about John has to go back inside canon and defeat Lord English, I don’t think the method was ever fully explained though, nor the idea that he had to defeat him as a kid, it was never said he had to go back in time, just go back to canon

and that’s not what happened in the Meat timeline either! Nobody went back in time to defeat Caliborn when he was a kid, they just had the big showdown with LE exactly the way Rose is describing that went horribly wrong

this is practically screaming NEITHER Meat or Candy is the true version of events 

Actually yeah, defeating Caliborn really IS the way this should be settled, because it’s also the way that Dirk get saved as well, can’t get his ultimate self tainted if the taint is destroyed before it ever comes into contact with him

also im rereading the prologue now, it’s is NEVER explicitly said that John has to go and defeat lord english’s child form!

She said “you have to go back to canon to defeat LE” NOT go back in time to defeat caliborn

and “you can’t recklessly attack his hulking adult form without the house juju”

not “you can’t attack him as an adult at all” but “you can do that WITHOUT the juju” and describes it being used in the same way that Vriska ended up doing in Meat

yeah, she never mentions any plan to defeat him as a child in the prologue, which probably means Rose only saw a vision of his defeat as an adult as well

It’s gonna be JOHN who gets the idea to go back and kill him as a kid, because that’s how he understood Rose’s instructions!

But this is great, everything is vaguely worded enough that it COULD be applied to a fight against a young caliborn too! but just hasn’t yet!

What if you take the empty cursor and fill it with a young caliborn? instead of unleashing a full one against an adult LE? which proves to be pretty useless in the long run despite Rose’s apparent clouded vision?

Rose even says herself its only purpose is as an empty vessel meant to be filled by something, talk about totally understanding yet missing the point, this is probably what she meant by being unable to see any path beyond the meat or candy routes, she couldnt see the possibility of using the juju on caliborn before everything goes down just like how it was used on John and friends to trap them in there in Meat!

It’s Caliborn’s destined time out spot! Removing him from Canon and from being able to influence it without needing to kill someone who technically hasnt done bad things yet but absolutely will in the future solving the baby adolf problem with Caliborn

Oh man, what if they even trick Caliborn on using it against himself? talk about an earthbound reference, defeat Gigyas (LE) by tricking Pokey (Caliborn)  to trap himself in the "Absolutely Safe Capsule” (House JuJu)

Oh man back on the Candy train though John’s having an absolute breakdown, being infused with that canon retcon power seems to be the only thing preserving his ability to care about stuff beyond this happy drugged up paradise

Earth C has become Homestuck’s Ba Sing Se

“ He braces himself, as if splashing an imaginary glass of cold water in his own face, and reminds himself once again that he has a wonderful life. A perfect life. He’s HAPPY, god damn it.”

You really aren’t John, this is very clear, dousing yourself with some more Void to try and drown that out ain’t helping

[abundantchewtoys]

HS Epi: Meat p16 reaction

Reaction under the cut!

Still in the process of, well, processing the defeat of Lord English and all those deaths.

I wonder if, through some esoteric means, Jade's body would be used by Caliborn to try and escape his fate. She's an ex-First Guardian, so he might have a connection to her body. Plus, if that would happen, that would be the final time the wolf head could be connected to LE - since Jade's half dog.

Blaperile thought also of the server representing LE's DNA, running somewhere in the Furthest Ring. Maybe that fell into the Black Hole too, though?

I wonder what is even going to happen to John now. I mean, he still has the Ring of Life, someone could find him and put it on his finger. Someone like Terezi. It could be Meenah as well, in an ultimate sacrifice - she once said she'd run him through again to steal his ring, but maybe she'll sacrifice her chance at life for him. Some form of ultimate redemption for the Condesce, in a way.

If Terezi finds him, odds are she'll have found out about Vriska somehow. :/ I doubt any ghosts are left in the Furthest Ring on the one hand. On the other hand, we haven't seen any mention of any of the other trolls mentioned in the character list. Nor of GO Vriska & Terezi, though they might have double died through the cracks that encroached on them.

A third option to find John is Aradia - since she was so intent on witnessing the end of Paradox Space and seeing what'd happen if the place came falling apart.

Or maybe John will have some sort of vision, like a special afterlife, with his Dad there, before he wakes up / revives? I can only hope.

I doubt the Ring is multi-use, but if it were, it would sure be something if Meenah could be revived as well as John! And for Aradia and Terezi (and Meenah?) to come back with him to Earth C, now there's nothing left in the Furthest Ring for them. If Meenah came to Earth C, the Crocker run for president would have some serious competition! :P Not that I'd really root for Meenah to win, though, since she's quite clearly unfit to lead a country, only a strike force.

I've also got to wonder how long Andrew has been planning to have Davesprite be the one to kill Lord English? I'm sure much of what Davepeta became grew organically, as well as the other components of Lord English, but it seems to me the Davesprite part was always planned. But he sure is a master of tying in later details into the evolving story.

Like, for instance, LE biting Dave's head off reminds me of Hearts Boxcars doing the same for Eggs. Dave and eggs...

So, it was all doomed and retconned selves that were instrumental in bringing down Lord English, you know. John is pre-retcon, the other B2 kids came from a temporary offshoot. Tavros was also pre-retcon. Meenah came from a scratched session. Davesprite was doomed. All those troll ghosts were doomed. Alternate Calliope was doomed. The only exception is the Nepeta part of Davepeta, and she was so irrelevant to the timeline's major events before her prototyping as to almost not count. These were the glitches in spacetime that could kill Lord English. It's fitting, since Lord English was so focused on the main timeline and being the 'alpha', that he couldn't see where his 'doom' would come from.

Anyway. The page ended with a command to John, so I'm rather convinced the next page will continue from John's perspective.

---

"ROSE: When I was a child, I wrote a novel." Well, never mind!

Well, okay, I guess that, even though John's perspective has just ended in what could have been the ending of Homestuck, I would very much like to learn more about Complacency of the Learned and its potential ramifications as to the rest of the plot! Guess now's the moment to find out why the story isn't ending just yet.

"She has both hands resting on the chassis of his recent project, Sawtooth 3.1." Soooo... Was Sawhoo supposed to be Sawtooth 2.0? :P I wonder what improvements Dirk could be implementing. Also, whether he ever intends to use the rapbot on his show. I get a feeling most of the robots there never leave novice mode, actually.

"DIRK: Another one of those Lalonde childhood wizard fics, I presume?" Yeah, now I'm reminded of Wizardy Herbert, Roxy's supposed work. I never did get through that draft of it Andrew wrote all those years prior, I got to admit.

I'm guessing Rose has found a way to connect her old fic to the grander context of canon, realizing some of the stuff she put into the story came from her aspect?

"With the sunset behind her she’s a shadow ringed in yellow light that turns white at the tips of her hair." Pfff, circumstantial simultaneity strikes again! That's just like how Reload Rose looked. Alternatively, she has a bit of a halo right now.

"ROSE: It’s more raw. It betrays considerably more sincerity than my young self was surely ever aware of stitching into the prose." Hah, guess Rose was not as good at hiding her own feelings as she tried back then, hiding behind that passive-aggressiveness.

I wonder if this is Andrew talking about how some of his early work, maybe even early Homestuck, was a lot closer to his heart than the epic story it grew into, despite said level of epicness.

"ROSE: It meant something." Maybe adult Rose's work was too polished, too betraying of her literacy and a bit removed from the essence of what she was trying to say. That could be due to its nature as anti-propaganda aimed against Condesce.

"DIRK: Hmm." There Dirk goes again, with the autoresponder-enabling short responses.

"ROSE: For all its plainly evident amateurism as the literary product of a child, I’ve come to believe it’s a much stronger work standing alone as a single volume, its meaning and symbolism potently compressed, and its message shining through more nakedly, undisguised by the cleverness of a more seasoned writer." Again, Andrew comparing Team Special Olympics and such things to his later work?

"The plot concerns the machinations of twelve wizard children." Oh, I thought it was focused on twelve adult wizards, including Zazzerpan?

"ROSE: It isn’t their intent to commit atrocities, or within their nature to do so originally. They become corrupted by an overabundance of knowledge. The kind never meant for the mortal mind to grasp." They went grimdark. :P Also, I suppose this leads into Rose's misgivings regarding the ultimate self.

"ROSE: It certainly wasn’t the most fucked up thing I’ve ever written." ... Oh right, the MEOW code. Yeah, that must take 1st place.

"as if I were pulling inspiration from beyond myself—channeling the story, rather than writing it." Almost as if she got it from the Void more even than her then-latent aspect!

"spiderwebs of gold that dissolve into dust" ... Really, sure, go ahead, keep rubbing salt into that wound. :P

"ROSE: You could almost call the process... [...] She’s smirking now, just a little." Brace for pun-pact!

"ROSE: ...enlightened." Eyyyyy!

"

DIRK: It also sounds like it’s the opposite of what was going on?" Dirk also thinks it sounds more like a Void thing?

"DIRK: Sounds more like you were trapped in a sort of dire creative fugue state causing you to chart your own mental profile using metaphor revolving around murderous, omniscient children." ... So that's where the locquacious genes came from. Also in-deep-analysis.

"ROSE: Well, consider the playful pun rescinded.

ROSE: Apologies for diminishing your presence with my suboptimal health and the toll it has taken on my wordplay.

DIRK: Thanks. It’s been very difficult for me.

ROSE: You’ve been a real trouper." These two, are the best.

"ROSE: Anyway, my point is that I’ve long suspected my story was a pre-manifestation of my Seer of Light powers. I was seeing beyond my universe into another." Yyyeah, but, the analogy with the trolls doesn't hold up after the first glance, and she (or her adult self) also incorporated things from other timelines and universes. The genderqueer Cal... I forgot what the full name was..., for instance.

Meanwhile, Dave has been well aware his subconcsiousness is influencing him, and he has been looking and found the "least psychologically revealing" SBaHJ comic, as a result.

"ROSE: My original thesis was that the children represented the twelve trolls who created our universe." Ooh, so she noticed it too. Guess she might now be thinking the twelve are representations of the B2 kids, Karkat, Kanaya, Calliope and... someone else?

"DIRK: Twelve. That’s how many players went through the door at the end of our game." Riiiight, Terezi went through as well!

"When she finds herself leaning against him—probably without thinking about it, Dirk imagines, because neither of them really “do” that—he doesn’t pull away. If it’s her, it’s all right." That just shows the difference in how he and Rose behave versus he and Dave, where the distance or proximity is always a tangible thing.

"DIRK: You describe this as a fact of numerological significance.

DIRK: Which makes it seem you suspect these correlations are something less than utterly providential. As if there is a part of you holding on to the belief that certain figures are coincidental. That their significance and repetition smacks of bullshit." Heheh, there are a LOT of repeating numbers in the story though, bullshit or not. Twelve is just one of them: 4 6 10 11 12 13 25 ... Seems like Dirk holds them in higher esteem than Rose, though. If he's sincere.

"It’s unclear exactly which things are smacking, just as it’s unclear that when it comes to bullshit, whether or not smacking accurately describes what is being done per se." This metaphor has gone off track again.

"DIRK: I’m just saying it’s all evidence of a grand design. An immortal, metatextual apparatus beyond our ken that we can only catch glimpses of when we’re proverbially shitting our brains out through our nose." They can almost see Andrew. :P In-canon, the closest to such a reveal were John and Jade, but they let the moment of epiphany pass them by as they started their 3-year-long journey. :P

"ROSE: They were filled with the light of knowledge and one by one they succumbed to it, turning insane or evil or, most often, both." Ah, right, like the guy that filled that tome with knowledge and was crushed by it, that Roxy named Jaspers after.

"ROSE: If this is the effect unchecked powers have on players living in a post-canon victory state, then why isn’t it affecting any of our other friends?" Let the theories about evil power-hungry Jane commence! Though, what other effects could we even see right now, not much. Plus, Kanaya, Karkat, Terezi and Calliope won't feel the effects of an ultimate self ascension, at least.

"DIRK: Well." Don't say "now you mention it", Dirk. Please.

"some of us have stopped using our powers completely." Oh, he thinks that it's not so much power that corrupts, but the continued use of it?

"emergency resurrections" But he also doesn't seem to think then that what Jane is planning reeks of her getting slowly corrupted, huh.

"sportsball riot" I wouldn't be surprised if sportsball is an actual thing on this planet, courtesy of Dave's influence in shaping society.

"ROSE: In that case...

Rose sways suddenly." Eesh, she's starting to get woozy.

"ROSE: Maybe I was a fool for imagining I could settle down here." :/ It would be shitty for Paradox Space to do this to the players for no good reason, though. Then again, Sburb.

"occasional banter about adoption with her wife" Ooh, cool. Well, yeah, it would stand to reason Maryams like to become mothers. :)

"ROSE: I assumed it was just that feigned Strider Stoicism, but you seem to be taking this...

DIRK: In stride?" Awww-yeah. Sorry Rose, you have nothing to top Strider Dad jokes.

"

DIRK: But I’ve got more practice at this than you do. I spent most of my life before the game multitasking my entire fucking subconscious. I’ve had several times my age on paper to contemplate these mysteries.

DIRK: Years of prying open can after can of worms filled with answers I don’t like.

DIRK: Cut yourself on the edge more than once and you stop getting surprised by all the blood.

ROSE: I see." So it's as if, due to Dirk already having such an extensive memory from juggling dream and awake selves, he's handling all the input better. Maybe, relatively speaking, it's less that's coming in for him, too. I mean, his dream selves mustn't have gone through many different things. Plus, maybe merging with Lil' Hal does something for you to be able to handle big data. :O

"ROSE: In fact, I don’t think it’s the expansion of my powers that is causing the headaches, but rather my own resistance to it.

ROSE: Sometimes I get this feeling that I could, if I really wanted to, just let go." I think Rose might prefer to keep to her current self, if she could. Like the narration said, she's basically still a solitary creature. The expansion of experiences is proving too jarring.

"ROSE: I’m forcing myself to stumble through my life as a sleepwalker. All this pain and sorrow could go away if I would just allow myself to wake up." Between this and "letting go", it seems like an ultimate self ascension is perhaps even going to go further than the psychologically, maybe even physically. If that's so, Dirk might be further ahead but not there yet. But once they'd ascend, there wouldn't be coming back from it, I would think, and they'd leave their old lives and Earth C behind, to go to another plane of existence, maybe?

"ROSE: Because I’m not sure that the person opening her eyes will be me." ... Now I'm thinking about how the last command aimed at John was for him to close his eyes. :/ Could that mean he's about to go through a sped-up ascension?

Rose has the unfortunate occasion to compare her ascension to Jasprosesprite^2, so I very much understand she has very grave misgivings about "expanding her mental horizons", so to speak.

"Then, in a deliberate motion, he pulls off his shades." ... Say, would his eyes have changed if he merged with Lil' Hal, even just psychologically? I know the autoresponder was a pair of shades without eyes, but the Hal monitor had that red buzzing light which represented his eyeballs on at least one occasion.

"DIRK: I know I sound pretty nonchalant most of the time, but actually I’m scared shitless of myself.

DIRK: I’ve always had this uncanny ability to chart a course from A to Z and not give a fuck about any of the letters in between.

DIRK: I’m not sure anyone should be allowed to have that much foresight. Especially a guy like me." Well, that's a healthy self-assessment and fear. Though, foresight? It would be more akin to intuition, right, knowing how people responded in different situations? ... Which sounds like Mind powers, actually, come to think of it.

"ROSE: The farther above the board you fly, the harder it gets to care about the pieces." Is that part of the reason Terezi left, if she forced an ultimate self ascension on her with her Remem8er act?

"DIRK: And yes, I may be a shitty human being, but,

DIRK: As a mechanic, I’m off the fucking charts." Well, that certainly are points to Dirk being at least marginally better as an adult than Bro, if only out of self-awareness. Speaking of, does he have access to Bro's memories now, too? Also, the mechanic part is leading into the Soulbot I theorized about? Wait, mechanic... Dirk and Darkleer should have a build-off.

"Rose’s eyes have grown distant, almost mirrorlike. Dirk can see himself reflected in her vacant stare.

ROSE: All the pieces in their place.

ROSE: The mechanisms all running smoothly." Has Dirk... hypnotized her?

"She says this in a hollow tone. It’s the disarming voice a puppeteer ventriloquizes for a marionette. Her head falls toward her shoulder slowly. Dirk catches her cheek as she slides into sleep. It’s difficult for the untrained ear to spot the exact moment in their conversation when the words she was saying stopped being hers and started being his." ... What did I just watch. ... How. Why? ... Did Dirk use any Heart powers here? I can't...

"Does it really matter? In many respects, they’re basically the same person, aren’t they?" Kind of creepy to say that about your hypnotized daughter, though.

"Kindred spirits in blood and perspective, the puppet masters of the respective games they like to believe they’re playing." ... Puppets. Puppets and games. ... This is building up into a Saw reference and I don't like it one bit. "I want to play a game." ... I do hope Dirk's ascension hasn't seen him get influenced by Lord English.

... You know, though, maybe Dirk was able to influence Rose because of their strong connection, since she's so close to his self she's almost like another shard of him, more so than other people that contain shards of his essence, like Brain Ghost Dirk for Jake.

"But you already knew that, right?" Aaaaaaah, he took over the narration! ... He took over Andrew??? Is that a power for ultimate selves, to get access to the narrative prompt?? If so, then Caliborn was not an exception, just the primary example.

... He's pulled a Doc Scratch on us.

Dear god.

What to make of this. I think Dirk might be the hidden antagonist of Earth C. His Heart powers might be able to influence and even control people.

I just hope he isn't going to absorb them all.

... Man, this started baring on innocuous and look at how chilling the ending of the page is.

I think through his influence, people might start behaving exactly as he predicted, enforcing him being right and securing influence at the same time. I mean, if he merged with memories from Lil Hal, Doc Scratch and perhaps even LE... He's become a master manipulator.

... This is basically "shh, only dreams now" D:

[pika-kip]

I can understand why so many people are angry about the homestuck epilogues, especially when some of their favorite characters seemed to get thrown totally out of whack and were perceived as ooc.

The problem is most of those characters have reasons for being who they turned into. That’s not to say if things happened differently that they would have turned out more well rounded and less.... unhinged.... but the fact of the matter is that if you look at everything that has happened to any specific character from the beginning of homestuck through the context of each epilogue, it’s possible to see how they ended up the way they did- ESPECIALLY if you start with Dirk. You know, the guy who has only really ever had one version of himself wind up not being a total piece of shit? The guy who has part of his personality manifested in a psychopathic AI, which then was used in the creation of Doc scratch, and thus existed partially in Lord english? The Dirk Strider who explains that he has achieved his Ultimate Self- which is then explained AS HAVING EVERY EXISTENCE OF YOU MANIFESTED IN THE SAME CONSCIOUSNESS AT ONE POINT, EFFECTIVELY RENDERING YOU A TOTALLY DIFFERENT PERSON? That’s not the same Dirk. It’s Dirk, Bro, Hal, Scratch, Lord English- and every other splinter or alternate version amalgamated into one singular consciousness. So of all the Dirks, only one of which was close to being a decent person or having any sense of redemption- are now one person. all that bad is going to overwrite the good. So now to Jane right. The character raised by the Condesce. The character who- from a young age- used technology that was deliberately designed to indoctrinate her and install subliminal messages in her brain? Who was later shown to be fully controlled by the condesce via that technology? In the Epilogues Jane doesn’t see what she’s doing as being wrong. She is initially TERRIFIED at people thinking of her being a bad person. She wants everyone to love her. She doesn’t think the Trolls are bad, but she was literally raised by a witch who was trying to groom her into ruling via subjugation and domination by FUCKING WITH HER BRAIN. Jane starts out as doing what she legitimately believes is the right action from a logical perspective. She knows her people are terrified of the Trolls, she knows that if she doesn’t do SOMETHING the situation is going to get worse. so she does what she (mistakenly) believes to be a merciful compromise. Limit their breeding until they can prove as a race that they aren’t the violent race they once were. That way the humans can feel at ease, and the Trolls have a chance to thrive once tensions are settled. But Jane is so concerned with how she’s being seen by her people as an Heiress that she doesn’t understand how she’s being Xenophobic. She starts out misguided and then falls for her own psychologically suppressed lie. Add in the fact that Dirk has been fucking with the narrative offscreen for fuck knows how long and has likely been manipulating her as well, and it’s not hard to see how she became so twisted. Add in the power of control and rule for a few years and we see it corrupts her completely. The Jade one is a reach, but she grew up alone and isolated on an island and suddenly has her own freedoms and wants to explore the world and see everything. surprise surprise along the way she discovers sex. The Caveat, as (disgustingly) implied in the Candy route is that her having Parts of Bec extended to other parts of her as well.. I’m not going to sugarcoat it they imply she has a dog dick. It’s weird. And then I guess they took the Male dogs humping everything trope, added in a sheltered girl who finally gets to experience a world without the apocalypse looming and swings for a bit? Jade... didn’t necessarily deserve the way she was written, but I can see how it would have been possible to arrive at this point which was the purpose of this original word vomit. Take this girl who travels around the world experiencing red(and black) purely-sexual relationships, who doesn’t know how a real relationship works, how actual love and romance works and inject her in between the two people she cares about the most. She’s promiscuous, she’s flirty, she uses all the things she’s learned from her world experiences(including her blackrom flings) and tries to apply it to these two- not understanding that she’s being manipulative and selfish. It was bound to be disastrous. Karkat and Dave don’t know how to stand up to someone they care about in a way that would hurt. So they say nothing. It sucks. DaveJadekat sucks. Shit ain’t healthy. John’s Depression isn’t exactly unexpected or unrealistic, so we’ll skip that. (though if you want my thoughts on the characters I skip just ask and I’ll word vomit some more) John’s Candy route is so ridiculous and tough to deal with in a lot of ways. Vriska implies that he has way more control over this black hole bubble than he seems to think- which implies that Muse!Callie doesn’t have complete control. When he chooses Candy the world seems to adapt itself to the happiness he THINKS he and everyone else wants. The people still have their own thoughts and volition, but everything is saccharine and off to John. He basically has a mental breakdown and ignores the people around him and how they’re changing in this ‘inconsequential’ world, because he starts to believe there’s not a point. That none of this exists. Dude has an existential crisis in the midst of the readers’ third existential crisis (or like, 7th if you read meat first I guess) Meat Rose gets Mindfucked by Dirk and doesn’t have much of a character, but is otherwise on point in Candy. Kanaya is probably the most normal character here.  Roxy, in spite of being closeted as a trans individual in Candy, finds their own definition of self that sheds the concept of Gender. He’s also probably the most well grown character in Meat (Since Dirk can’t affect him) Terezi Is pretty on brand, definitely struggling with Vriska though... Vriska is of an undetermined age and admittedly it’s kind of creepy in human terms with what happens with Gamzee- but I have no idea how old Vriska is after her whole journey leading the ghosts to find the Juju to kill LE so.... I’m not gonna touch it with a 50 foot pole. Calliope sadly doesn’t get enough time to shine in either route. Dave is Pretty much how I’d expect him to be Same with Karkat. and Honestly? Jake has always been a somewhat dull pushover. It isn’t offbrand, but I do hate everything that happens to him in both routes. He doesn’t deserve it on either end :/ And that’s everyone really worth talking about.