caligvlasaqvarivm - Tumblr blog

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

You mentioned being a roleplayer, out of curiosity is there a certain site you use, or is it just in DMs with your friends? I was big into MSPARP back in the day and I really miss it, so I'd love to hear about an alternative if it exists! Thank you for your time!

I was on disgrub for a bit (search for it on tumblr, you'll find it) but have since left. VERY rarely I go on dreambubble (you won't be able to see it if you're using a vpn), which from what i understand is like an MSPARP replacement? i'm also open to doing private RP if you ask/dm me off anon :)

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

If you were to try create a human au version of Eridan who still acts Like That and has similar responsibilities and anxieties, what pieces of human society would you want to pull on to mirror his Alternian relationship to society?

sorry, but i don't like to speculate about AUs as wildly divested from canon as humanstuck

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

just a lil' eridan playlist

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

DND night. Bonus:

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

I love when you describe Karkat as the Friendship Troll bc it makes him sound like a character from a whimsical children's cartoon. a Friendship Troll does not seem out of place in Fairyland having picnics with Care Bears.

Yes! Karkat is the Friendship Troll, Nepeta is the Feelings Troll, and Eridan is their friend, the Genocide Troll! 🤗

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

ik you mentioned interest in writing out how you'd prefer homestuck ended (though obviously time and money makes that impossible lol), and you touched on it in your big eridan essay at the end, but would you ever consider maybe a more detailed outline? i really enjoy your thoughts on the characters and the abandoned plotlines, i'd love to get a little more of an in depth look at how you wish it went down.

Yeah sure!

For those who aren't sure what the hell I'm talking 'bout, please check out my blog and the various essays I've been writing.

Some of it is contingent on stuff I kind of still need to reread so I'm really sorry to the alpha kid likers but I'm still not totally 100% sure where I want to take them. I'm also going to include quite a few personal preference ships; I'm not interested in arguing what other people should ship or about arguing about the course of action for my dumb fanfic in general. I also tend to discover the plot I want while I'm writing it, which I don't have the luxury of here, so... some of it is going to be kind of sloppy. I'm also a big troll stan so unfortunately the kids are a little bit neglected (sorry!!!!). That said.

So the changes would take place directly after GAME OVER, which is personally the point at which I think the truncation/turning on the fanbase really starts - ships start to get turbo-sped at that point. I'm not even saying I dislike JohnRoxy or JohnRezi, but they just feel oddly rushed the way they're handled in the comic itself. IMO, anyway.

There's not too much I would rearrange during this interstitial segment; I think it's important for Jade to have the experience of loneliness, for Terezi to kick off the retcons by only feeling comfortable fixing her own mistakes. Moreover, there's no reason why other characters can't use her mind beacon abilities to ask John to rearrange the timeline, though their attempts, because they aren't backed by Seer of Mind abilities, are a lot sloppier and come with a lot more unforseen consequences.

But something I would change is that Roxy's deal with Nyx is not to just kind of... sit back and chill in non-space while John does all the work; instead, like Rose in Davesprite's timeline, Nyx puts her to sleep, and when the timeline ceases to be, GameOver!Roxy's memories get transferred to Past!Roxy via her dreamself (which wakes up early), fulfilling a "stealing from void for others" aspect of her abilities, and leads to some important interactions later on down the line.

Also, this timeline's ARquiussprite and Gamzee's corpse (heretofore referred to as (ARquiussprite) and (Gamzee)) need to come along for the ride somehow. Maybe they fall through the sky after LOLAR crashes into LOFAF.

This kicks off a series of retcons, as each troll that gets brought back successively asks for another troll/set of trolls to be brought back. This absolutely RIDDLES Act 5 with password pages, can't go two steps without running into a password page, there are password pages within password pages (which IMO is very funny and very Homestuck).

Meanwhile, a couple other plots are running concurrently - the GameOver!crew (heretofore referred to as (Name)) are now in the dream bubbles, completing their character arcs and preparing to defeat LE. Because time and space are weird in the Furthest Ring, every successive meteor trip that occurs as a result of John's retcons is the first time from the point of view of the meteor, but is a repeating event from the point of view of the people in the bubbles - eg those dead god tier Eridan and Feferi wind up healing the Mayor like seven times from their perspective.

(Aradia) is fluttering her ASS off to make sure everyone is in the right "place" at the right "time" for this, lmfao.

Roxy gaining future memories also means that the Alpha kids get to complete their arcs in a way they weren't able to prior to Game Over. Because what John's retcons are doing are functionally whiting out and redrawing the past, the Alpha kids are also only seeing a single linear timeline.

One last arc, which is running concurrent to the retconned!trolls and their new meteor trips, is that bringing back each successive character allows them ALL to grow a little more. So it is NOT like they bring back Vriska, and now everyone's problem are fixed and everything is fine; Vriska's still kind of awful, but she gets better after Tavros gets brought back and they have to character develop alongside each other, and same when Aradia and Sollux get brought back, so on and so on. Because it's about BEING FRIENDS and BEING A TEAM. They're all still having interpersonal problems right up until ALL of them get brought back.

But as a side effect of this and the questing done by the GameOver!crew, the Dancestors get more fully utilized as foils, and get their problems addressed. As the retcon!team goes through their character development, they start to tear the Dancestors apart, because the Dancestors represent shitty parents who force their kids to clean up after their messes, and refuting them works both literally and symbolically as rejecting their irresponsible way of being in lieu of responsibility, accountability, empathy, and compassion.

So here's the series of retcons, and the absolute bullshit that accompanies each decision:

Terezi asks John to save Vriska, and prevent herself from getting too spades with Gamzee, as these are her two greatest regrets.

Pretty much just what her canon iteration asked for; I don't see any problems with the actions she asks John to do for her.

HOWEVER, we'd get more than just a montage of Vriska's time on the meteor, because in this version of events, we're taking our time and letting plot points breathe. Neither does she magically fix everything just by being around when she's very much herself still going thru it by the time the Meteor trip pops off. In any case, she brings with her some new complications:

Karkat still winds up having to play moirail and keep Gamzee calm. This still ends up breaking down by the halfway point of the comic, because they're kind of just not good for each other, but Karkat's personal shitty relationships are going to become A Theme, so it's important to make note of it here.

Vriska and Terezi don't fully make up on this iteration of the trip, since from Terezi's point of view, she was still actively about to kill Vriska before John intervened; however, we get more hints, now that they have to spend three years together, that not only does Vriska really miss Terezi (which is pretty well-established, given how she can't seem to leave Terezi alone), but Terezi actually misses Vriska, too - she's just really bad at separating her own feelings and desires from her instinctive grasp of karma and justice, a very Mind player-type problem to have.

At least with Vriska around, Terezi's able to nip her Gamzee habit in the bud, but this kind of leads to Gamzee feeling worse and more alone.

Something Really Messy happens between Vriska, Rose, and Kanaya when Rose starts her drinking habit, and it's pretty toxic for all involved, and Karkat is kind of stuck playing auspice. Vriska already expresses not liking Rose much and develops some flushed feelings for Kanaya after being watching her murder Eridan, so "It's Really Messy" is kind of all I can say on the matter. The girls are fightiiinnnnggggg

Dave and Terezi get close again, but given the weirdo vibes he notices between her and Vriska, and the fact that he's really not down with quadrants (YET.), means they still end up not getting together.

Sorry DaveKat likers but I am not one. They do not ever get together, so if you are hoping for that, I am sorry and you don't have to keep reading if you don't want to, it's OK.

On a note about Vriska and Terezi - personally, I do think their moirallegiance is endgame; Vriska clearly misses her terribly, constantly trying to bug her into making the Scourge Sisters a Thing again, and she even expresses feeling really bad about the Team Charge Debacle to Terezi explicitly, before directly foreshadowing how awful Terezi will feel after killing Vriska:

AG: Cause even though you got all these highfalutin morals and fancy reserv8tions, you know as well as me that a killer is a killer is a killer! AG: There 8n't no ch8nging your ways for good, and one d8y you're going to flail that silly l8ttle cane of yours and not find n8thin to 8ump into, and fall f8ce first into the shit ag8in. AG: And you're going to do something t8rri8le to some8ody and wish you could t8ke it 8ack 8ut you c8n't!!!!!!!! AG: And then you'll work hard to win 8ack their trust, and you'll try and try and tr8, and you'll see how hard it is! AG: You'll seeeeeeee!

We know that she starts using 8's where they don't make sense phonetically when she gets really agitated, so it's pretty safe to say that she's displaying genuine emotional distress here. When combined with the way she tells John about feeling absolutely horri8le about killing Tavros, it's pretty clear she's genuine about feeling really bad about the Team Charge debacle, and sincere about wanting to somehow make amends and get back into Terezi's good graces, at times trying rivalry, at times trying to prove that she's trying to fix her mistakes.

Terezi also vehemently denies them having a kismesistude and directly mirrors Vriska's hesitance about all the murder:

GC: W3 4R3 SUPPOS3D TO R3V3L 1N BLOODSH3D 4S W3 GROW UP GC: 4ND SH3 S33MS TO B3 3MBR4C1NG H3R R1T3 OF P4SS4G3 W1TH R3CKL3SS 4B4NDON, 4S 1 WOULD 3XP3CT GC: GR4BB1NG TH3 BULL BY TH3 HORNS, SO TO SP34K GC: 1TS 4 L1TTL3 1NT1M1D4T1NG GC: B3C4US3 1M NOT SUR3 1F 1M R34DY FOR TH4T

AG: On my world, I would 8e completely vindic8ed for killing him! He is far lower on the hemospectrum than me. He managed to disrespect me time and time again, 8ut I kept letting him live! In fact, the amount of slack I cut him would 8e considered scandalous 8y those in my class. AG: I had every reason to kill him. And yet... AG: I feel 8ad a8out it like a lame weak fudge8lood, just like he was. AG: And the fact that I feel 8ad is why I'm sort of freaking out right now!

They're basically two toxic girls who CANNOT be honest with their real feelings, and wind up hurting each other. They need therapy badly, but given the fact that they also mirror each other positively - Terezi feels grateful to Vriska for blinding her, and Vriska mentions she ought to thank Terezi for killing her, which set her up on a date with the dead John Terezi also killed - I think they have a lot of potential to be genuinely kind to each other once they work through their individual issues.

Anyway. We're keeping the Roxy stuff under wraps for now - last we saw of her, she went to go see her denizen, and her planet exploded, and John was really bummed about it. HOWEVER, we are going to check in with our GameOver!crew, although only lightly for now:

Meenah and (Vriska) have fully disappeared, and (Tavros), (Nepeta), and (Feferi) are looking for them because they've got the FUCKING TREASURE???

Everyone else from the Game Over timeline has landed in the afterlife, to varying degrees.

Shortly after entering the afterlife, (Eridan) fucked off somewhere to be alone. Last anyone heard from him was (ghost!Sollux) and him being Erisolsprite, but neither (ghost!Sollux) nor (alive!Sollux) have seen him since Erisolsprite died in Game Over.

(Karkat) is also brooding off on his own, feeling really shitty and sorry for himself. He's always felt personally responsible for everything going wrong for his team, and now that his team is basically entirely dead, he feels extra shitty.

Mostly just setting up that these guys are still relevant to the story, despite now being (irrelevant).

That brings us to the second retcon. Vriska obviously had great regrets about killing Tavros, both pre- and post-retcon, so she asks for his death to be prevented.

Tavros is back.

Vriska's requested fix is a very simple one - after all, Karkat makes mention about how Vriska's always had a competitive streak with Terezi, admiring/being jealous of her ability to manipul8 people; I think an ultimate culmination of that is her insisting that insisting to John that he do a retcon to stop her from killing Tavros - which, as covered above, she regrets greatly - but to do a much sloppier job of it, simply having John pop into [S] Wake and knock Tavros the fuck out.

Vriska herself doesn't believe this will have any unintended side effects, because her opinion of Tavros is still really low despite her genuine desire to make amends, and she's wrong.

Tavros's stay on the meteor has a major effect on Gamzee. I'm not entirely sure how it would pan out exactly, but I think Gamzee would step in between Dave and Tavros, into a situation none of them are happy with. This starts Tavros on a path of realizing that his inability to stand up for himself not only hurts him, but people he cares about (Gamzee, whom he ghosted).

Vriska is mostly uninterested in Tavros now, as the moment has kind of passed, and Terezi keeps getting on her ass about going after him (which brings the two of them closer).

Previous Messy romantic situations are still active. Karkat is going thru it.

Dave feels bad about tormenting Tavros but he kind of can't help himself, especially because Tavros keeps going up to him for some reason. The fact that he gets trapped in an auspice with Tavros and Gamzee kind of reinforces that he does NOT vibe with troll quadrants. Dave becomes MORE xenophobic.

On a note regarding Gamzee and Tavros: while I generally try to avoid relying on Hussie's commentary too much, as he likes to play his cards close to his chest, his note about Gamzee in the Act 5 book is actually significant enough to me to include:

The best explanation for why Gamzee says he's scared of Vriska, in my opinion, is this: he's flat-out lying. It's a good way for him to maintain his cover as 'Soft Gamzee.' It also provides some ammunition for those who, against all sense of good taste and judgment, want to continue to believe and assert that Gamzee is a decent guy with sensitive emotions and vulnerabilities before he undergoes his Muderstuck awakening. He was none of those things, ever.

Hussie likes to play coy, and you can't really trust anything he says after Act 6 because he's fed up with the fandom, but I think this comment comes early enough, and is made assertively enough, that it can be taken at face value. I know that "Soft Gamzee" is actually extremely popular in the fandom, so this may be controversial, but I do think there's more evidence for him being kind of nasty and manipulative than not, and having that always be a part of him brings more cohesiveness to his character. For example, he seems to have a pale crush on Karkat, trying to assert that Karkat is his best friend and changing the topic when Sollux gets brought up and he recognizes Karkat is closer to Sollux than him, and if you read his first log with Terezi as if he's hiding being nasty under a soft veneer, then his comments do read as pretty passive-aggressive.

TC: yOu KnOw HoW iT iS wItH fAmIlY. GC: NO, NOT R34LLY! GC: 4DURRRR DURR DURP TC: Oh YeAh... ... TC: I sPaCeD oUt, DiD yOu KnOw HoW bEaTuFuL tHe SoUnD oF tHe OcEaN iS? TC: hAvE yOu EvEr EvEn SeEn ThE oCeAn? TC: oR i MeAn SmElLeD iT... TC: SoRrY. GC: >:[

Maybe most damningly, his narration calls dealing with Eridan's genuine emotional distress "indulge emotional theatrics," an implication of his true feelings. Karkat and Eridan are heavily foreshadowed to be moirails, and Gamzee seems to have a pale crush on Karkat. What does Gamzee do in this conversation? He chases Eridan away from comforting Karkat - using the same excuse as he uses to avoid dealing with Vriska.

CA: put kar on TC: UuUuH, i cAn't rEaLlY ThInK AbOuT InTeRvEnInG, tHe bLaCk fRoWnInG MoThErFuCkEr kInDa sCaReS Me

Moreover, he does NOT seem to like Jack comforting Karkat instead, either.

THIS IS NOT TO SAY I DON'T THINK GAMZEE ALSO DESERVES A SHOT AT KINDNESS AND REDEMPTION. Gamzee is clearly a very troubled youth, between his absentee lusus, his indoctrination into a fundie doomsday cult, and his sopor usage. The fact that having his faith shattered by Dave makes him snap implies that, one, he was already unstable and teetering on the edge, and having his faith fucked with was the last straw, and two, that until he lost that last shred of hope, he was still pretending to be nicer than he was for a reason, and given that his LE worship doesn't start up until after the snappage, I think it can be extrapolated that that reason is that he genuinely wants to get along with his friends.

Given that Gamzee's issues largely stem from his neglectful lusus, it's not a stretch to say that Gamzee does not take well to abandonment and isolation. So here's kind of where Tavros comes in:

Gamzee mentions that he feels "So aT ChIlL WiTh yOu" while talking to Tavros, and Tavros reciprocates the friendship and also - interestingly - acknowledges Gamzee's religion, calling it beautiful even if he doesn't necessarily believe in it. I call it interesting because Karkat's inability to do so is explicitly one of the reasons their moirallegiance broke down. Moreover, in their first conversation together, Gamzee explicitly praises Tavros for his "gumption" for stealing his clown nose, when Tavros's avoidance of his problems is one of his biggest personal issues. So yeah, personally, I'm all for moirallegiance.

But Tavros started ghosting him after Gamzee offered to make out a little, another symptom of his avoidance issues. I'm sure that, even in this meteor trip, the fact that Gamzee killed Equius and Nepeta really scares him. In his conversation with Terezi, Terezi outright says "NO WOND3R V4NT4S C4NT ST4ND YOU"; Equius is constantly yelling at him; lots of people on their team seem to genuinely just sort of dislike him.

CG: MIRACLES ARE LIKE POOP STAINS ON GOD'S UNDERWEAR. TA: eheheh makiing fun of people2 reliigiion2 i2 the be2t thiing two do.

So having one of the few people he does really like also ghost him probably did... bad things to his mental health. Especially so when said person wound up dead. But now that he isn't dead, I think they have a shot - they just need to address their personal problems. Tavros with his avoidance, and Gamzee with his resentment toward the world, and reliance on substances and religion to take the edge off. In this meteor iteration, that doesn't quite happen - their toxic auspicetism succeeds in letting them air out their dirty laundry to the audience, but doesn't bring full reconciliation.

In any case, this meteor trip is fairly short, and uneventful from the dream bubbles side, although I do think Tavros should get a talking-to from (Tavros) about real self-esteem and self-worth.

Still, being back in contact with Tavros again, even if in kind of a messed-up way, does make Gamzee start to reconsider some of his past actions. This brings us to:

Gamzee Asks for Equius and Nepeta back.

Gamzee's not as nice as he lets on, but he does genuinely care about his teammates, and for the people he really cares about, like Karkat or Tavros, I think he's willing to stick his neck out. Bringing back Nepeta and Equius is more for Tavros than himself, really, because Tavros is scared of him for doing that, and he motherfuckin' misses Tavros, okay? John mostly agrees because he's kind of scared of Gamzee.

Some really fun stuff starts happening this go around.

The Gamzee-Tavros situation becomes resolved because this time, Equius steps in as an auspice between Tavros and Dave, and this auspicetism is COMPLETELY HEALTHY (with the bonus of being extremely funny, and what is the point of a Homestuck ship if it is not deeply funny).

Gamzee and Tavros are able to enter into a totally healthy moirallegiance once the auspicetism builds up Tavros's self-confidence, much to Karkat's relief.

Being stuck in the auspicetism makes Dave go crawling back to Terezi on his hands and knees. I'm sorry, Terezi. I'll do anything if you take me back. Just don't let me die as the guy stuck in a threesome with the two worst trolls. Dave has overcome his xenophobia.

Dave and Terezi becoming official does make Karkat sad, however, so when Nepeta finally works up the courage to confess to him, he accepts the offer to date her, thus fulfilling Jaspersprite's musing that she might only be able to date him after she dies.

They also break up. We're keeping up this trend of Karkat and his disastrous relationships. He's still involved in the Rose/Kanaya/Vriska drama, too.

With GamTav and Dave/Tavros/Equius cinched, Tavros and Vriska reach a sort of truce with each other. Not really friends, since they kind of still dislike each other, but Vriska would genuinely be glad to see Tavros getting more actually confident, and muster up the energy to genuinely apologize for almost killing him, so there's a sort of mutual respect there now. Vriska and Terezi are even closer because of this, but still not fully over their problems.

On the topic of the Dave/Tavros/Equius auspicetism: Dave still can't stop bothering Tavros, but the lewdness of it sets Equius off, so he feels like he has to intervene. Dave also can't stop himself from bothering Equius, which ALWAYS BACKFIRES, and since Tavros has a weird fondness/rivalry with Dave, he'd find it within himself to ask Equius to back off (which would work, because of Equius's... Equius). And every time Equius gets too overbearing toward Tavros, Dave feels COMPELLED to intervene, because he's like, my fucking god, you are the two worst trolls, why must weirdos fight. Dave desperately wants out, but he can't stop staring at these two.

And weirdly enough, it's beneficial for all of them. With two people to yell at him for being weird, Equius becomes less weird. With a rival in Dave and more contact with Equius, Tavros becomes more confident. And Dave has two people to rap against and feel good about his art with, something he more or less had to deal with alone during previous trips.

On the topic of Karkat and Nepeta, there are quite a few implications that they wouldn't necessarily work out. For citations, let me just link my Nepeta essay, where I go over what the comic says about their relationship from a storytelling perspective; here, I'll talk about their relationship from a more interpersonal perspective.

Karkat's signals are mixed as fuuuuuuck. While I don't necessarily think this will be an issue for Nepeta, as - as a Heart player - she's preternatually gifted at understanding motivations, the thing is... I think Nepeta can do better, and deserves better, a sentiment echoed by Jasprosesprite^2. She certainly deserves better than being second to Terezi, at the very least, even if she states she likes his outbursts.

And the thing is, Karkat is pretty explicit about saying that he doesn't return her feelings; in a world where they date, there's always going to be a sense that she's his second choice. And, just... my girl deserves better, okay? Moreover, while he respects her personhood, he's also pretty nasty to her when he DOES talk to her, implying he doesn't necessarily respect her choices. And also, she's actually really bad at shipping, so there will be this extremely weird tension of like... a hobbyist vs. a professional. I don't think Karkat would be able to stop himself from mocking some of her shipping choices if she ever opened up to him about that.

But I think them getting together is important for Nepeta, developmentally - I talk about this in my essay for her, but shipping is something I think she does need to outgrow, since it's kind of a replacement she's using for her loneliness. Moreover, I say in that essay that the issues she has in her moirallegiance with Equius warrant relationship counselling - and that's what Karkat is uniquely qualified to dispense, as the team's Blood player. Although they end up not working out, Nepeta would take several valuable lessons from this relationship - that she's kind of bad at shipping, that Equius is being kind of a shithead to her, and that she needs to start making friends with other people.

Now then. We're finally getting into some drama in the bubbles.

Please imagine for me Equius and Horuss talking, and Equius being aghast at the way Horuss is so derisive towards his matesprit and moirail. Now imagine him pulling a mic out of nowhere and rapping at him about how his problem is that he does not respect his partners. Now imagine Tavros and Dave joining in, also out of nowhere, with Tavros adding bars about how the hemospectrum is, not a good thing, he thinks. And Dave adding bars about how he does not have a fucking dog in this race. He's not even a troll. He doesn't understand their hemospectrum. Let him out of here. The fine fucking art of Alternian slam poetry. I think Horuss would start crying. So would I if three people including my grandkid started rapping at me.

Nepeta's uncanny emotional acumen leads to her wanting to befriend Damara, but being unable to speak her language.

GameOver!crew is up to something, IDK, probably showing (Tavros) inspiring people and rebuilding the ghost army, to tell a parallel story to Tavros becoming more genuinely self-confident.

We check in with the Alpha kids, too, who have some group therapy sessions led by Roxy.

Vriska and Tavros confront Rufioh together, a final culmination of their no-longer-enemiesship, and together, they steal Rufioh's ones. Like, Tavros starts speak1ng w1th ones, something he always had in him, and they also roast Rufioh so badly that he stops speaking in ones. But the way it's presented to the audience, Vriska outright just says that Tavros should steal his ones. And Tavros does. This carries over to successive retcons, as it's implied that Tavros just kind of starts naturally being more confident as healthy relationships are established sooner and sooner.

Anyway, a final note about Equius - his problems are mostly due to being sheltered. Although he is probably the most casteist highblood, he's not really that casteist, as what's really going on is just that he's got a BDSM kink. But because he's sheltered, he does not realize that it's a kink. And a fetishist who does not realize that they're a fetishist has more power than God.

His protectiveness of Nepeta does come from a good place; preventing her from playing FLARP was actually in her best interest, given what happens to people who play FLARP. But he's very much going overboard with it, likely an extension of his own lack of understanding of how much sheltering is good and how much becomes detrimental. What he really needs is for someone to point it out to him, which I think he gets via Nepeta or via Karkat, and then have a reaaaaally long think about it. He's genuinely a polite and helpful soul, who doesn't WANT to make people uncomfortable. The auspicetism is very good for him in this regard, as is his moirallegiance once Karkat talks him and Nepeta through their issues.

The point is, once he's forced to reckon with the fact that the degeneracy is coming from inside the house, I think he'd have a LOT of regrets about the way he treated Aradia. Which leads us to:

Whoops That Robot Thing Was Really Inappropriate Huh

Equius approaches John to ask him to make Past!Equius reconsider the Aradiabot Thing. John's getting kind of impatient with all these trolls who keep asking him to go back through time, but given that everyone seems a little happier each time, he can't help but agree.

So he goes back to the past, before Equius can give Aradia her robot body with the love chip in it, and something really fun gets to happen here: first of all, Equius's Void status makes him really hard to place, so John winds up missing by a bit, time-wise, so Aradia's already in the body. This is the first time that retconning!John and Aradia have been in the same place together, and when she meets him and finds out that he can time travel without causing paradoxes, she demands (with her Aradiabot deathmurderkill intensity) to be taken back in time to before she died.

John's retcon powers explicitly ignore the usual rules of paradox space - he describes it as a "fresh start". Given that Breath is associated with choices and freedom, his retcon powers are kind of the ultimate culmination of his abilities as a breath player. Although doomed timelines can and will still result from paradoxes caused by players when John isn't there, anything he directly interferes with is totally a-okay.

So all Aradiabot asks him for is passage back in time, in order to sanction her interference in the past. After she dismisses him, she still more or less has to adhere to events in the original timeline, for two reasons - the first being that she doesn't want to risk a new doomed timeline, and the second so she can keep the timeline predictable.

So even though she's basically asked for passage to the time period before SGRUB, it's basically outright stated that the progression of events has to be more or less the same, up until the point where John's other retcons take place. So here are the cascading effects of Aradiabot preventing her own death:

Aradiabot takes Aradia's place in the Team Charge debacle, being blown up/"killed" (as a sprite) by Sollux's eye beams, so that she can take Aradia's place as Doc Scratch/the Handmaiden's servant and "carry out" their orders.

Meanwhile, Aradia seeks refuge with Equius, whose void powers keep her hidden from Doc Scratch's omnipotence.

Because Sollux never actually killed Aradia, and Aradia communicates with him via Equius's account, Sollux is less depressed and self-loathing. He no longer predicts a future where all of them die and he has to be blinded. It's left deliberately vague whether this future comes to pass because he's less pessimistic, so his Mage powers are calling a happier future into being, or if his future changed, so his Mage powers are prophesying something new.

Nepeta starts regaining memories of alternate timelines and past retcons, as an extension of her Rogue of Heart powers. This includes the relationship counselling she received from Karkat.

Between Nepeta and Aradia yelling at him, Equius's character development starts sooner, so he's squared away for future events, and ends up not making the creepy Aradiabot, making a non-creepy one instead.

Aradia and Equius do not strike up a relationship, and become uneasy enemies/friends.

Aradia secretly god tiers well in advance of Jack's arrival, and meets him at Derse rather than awakening on her crypt there.

Aradia and Sollux continue a loving matespritship, leading to Sollux settling into a moirallegiance with Feferi. He's devastated when she dies, which still happens along with the rest of Eridan's freakout; Aradiabot doesn't intervene because she's needed for:

Aradiabot winds up being the one to sacrifice herself piloting the meteor, allowing Sollux to stay with the rest of the team when he meets up with Aradia, (Aradia), and (Sollux) at the Green Sun. Aradiabot winds up with the GameOver!crew.

With the 1337 hackers back in commission, Sollux and Roxy are able to establish a server connection with each other, allowing them to communicate during the 3-year meteor trip.

Aradia involves herself in the Rose/Kanaya/Vriska Mess, and I kind of can't decide what I like better - a vascillatory pitch/flush threeway between Rose, Kanaya, and Vriska, now that Vriska's near the end of her character development, with Aradia serving as a stabilizing force as Kanaya's on-again off-again moirail, or Aradia stepping in as an auspice. Either way, it's out of Karkat's hands.

This has a knock-on effect of finally giving Vriska the chance to fully make amends with Aradia, which winds up cinching the Vriska/Terezi moirallegiance. The scourge sisters are back baybee. And between a healthy moirallegiance for Terezi and a healthy moirallegiance for Gamzee, I think pitch Terezi/Gamzee could work as a healthy ship this time around. I'm not married to it, but they did always seem to hate each other well before SGRUB.

Nepeta has LEARNED HER LESSON regarding dating Karkat, so that does not happen.

Karkat now has no quadrants. He winds up desperately throwing himself at Sadstuck Sollux to try and help him get over his breakup. It's not a good look. Sadkat. He also takes up talking to the alpha kids for emotional support, which puts them off, too. Still gives really good relationship advice. He's clearly one of the more unstable members of the retcon!crew at this point.

We're light on the dream bubble drama this time around because of how MUCH is happening for the retcon!crew, but there's going to be a reference in there of Nepeta learning East Beforan.

SO. NOTES TIME.

Aradia expresses outright that she hated the feeling that she was set up and that she wishes someone would have stopped her from being so reckless. And although she seems to find some satisfaction in being the stewardess of the afterlife, there's clearly some resentment there that she's been forced into that role, as she expresses that what she's really looking forward to is watching it all break apart. There's also kind of an orphaned plot thread where Aradia is spending a lot of time in the afterlife putting knowledge together, which never really directly pays off except to the audience, and I think a really good way to bring that back in would be for her to be communing with (Aradia) in the dream bubbles in order to make sure the timeline flows as smoothly as possible.

As for Aradia/Kanaya - they're actually really good friends, and Aradia expresses that she's flattered that Kanaya wants to talk to her so much. There is a tone here that matches the way Vriska thinks about Kanaya when Kanaya is still ostensibly Vriska's moirail, and Kanaya herself admits to being attracted to people who are reckless. In fact...

AA: i just wish AA: back when i was behaving recklessly AA: i had s0me0ne t0 tell me t0 st0p listening AA: even if i ended up ign0ring their advice AA: it w0uld have been nice

GA: It Must Be A Certain Madness Im Afflicted By GA: To Orbit Those More Reckless And Dangerous Than I And More Daring For It GA: I Guess I Want To Help Them But They Never Can Be Helped It Seems

So I'm just kind of saying... Aradia and Kanaya moirallegiance... is not entirely unfounded. And a moirail stabilizes a troll's other relationships; if we have a moirail for Kanaya and a moirail for Vriska, then the Mess that is whatever's going on with Kanaya, Vriska, and Rose would probably resolve itself, I think. Either way, Rose is surrounded by SUCH a girl's night of emotional support to help her with sobriety now.

As for whatever's going on between her and Equius, I tend to believe the comic when it tells me relationships don't work out, and Aradia expresses regret for kissing him during the Ministrife. I think they could be good vitriolic frenemies, though.

Okay, onto Sollux.

In the same panel where Eridan and Karkat are implied to be "hatched for each other" pale-wise, Feferi and Sollux are foreshadowed in the same way:

They also spend a LOT OF TIME curled up in a pile together talking about their feelings, which we don't see with matesprits, but we DO see with moirails. Nepeta and Equius do the same thing, and they are kind of THE moirails. So I think Sollux and Feferi were always meant to be pale, but because Aradia died, Sollux wound up taking Feferi on as a matesprit instead. Between EriFef, SolFef, and GamTav, people getting flushed and pale feelings entangled is like, a Running Thing, so it's not really surprising to me.

Now, here's the thing. We already know that Sollux likes to cope with a rebound, since he went flushed with Feferi after Aradiabot exploded and was presumed dead. And Karkat cares very fucking much about Sollux, to the point where Gamzee speculates that he's actually Karkat's best friend, and Karkat even calls him that (although Karkat also kind of just calls anyone his best friend, lol).

CG: GAMZEE WAS MY VERY GOOD FRIEND, WHO WAS THIS GOOFY LOVEABLE BULLSHIT CLOWN UNTIL HE WENT PSYCHO AND KILLED SOME PEOPLE. I LIKED HIM A LOT. CG: I DON'T KNOW, I GUESS MY BEST FRIEND IS REALLY JUST THE GUY WHO I HAPPEN TO BE FEELING MOST SENTIMENTAL TO AT THE MOMENT, IS THAT A FUCKING CRIME.

This crab's got so much love in him. In any case, I mostly just want to keep sticking Karkat in these extremely unhealthy relationships for a while. It makes it sweeter when he finally winds up with Eridan LIKE HE WAS ALWAYS MEANT TO... but yeah.

Cross-session communication is also entirely possible, as Sollux set up chat clients between the trolls and the kids in the first place, and even without that, Kanaya found Rose's old GameFAQs on a server in the Furthest Ring. With both Sollux and Roxy on the case, there's no way they can't somehow establish communications way sooner.

Regarding Nepeta regaining her memories, let me once more point you towards the Nepeta essay. She's on track to become the one who attains Ultimate Selfhood, and comforts people like Jade and John about not really knowing their friends or being lonely.

But yeah, obviously Sollux asks for Feferi to be brought back.

F-EF-ERI!!!! 38D

Mostly Sollux just asks to be prevented from provoking Eridan so harshly. Eridan still winds up blowing up the matriorb, and thus, still getting killed by Kanaya in retribution, but this means that Eridan is now the only member of the team left dead.

PITCH FEFNEP. PITCH FEFNEP. PITCH FEFNEP

Pitch FefNep leads to Feferi letting slip something casteist where Sollux can hear; he doesn't personally care because he's heard much worse, but puts them on a break while she sorts herself out. They get back together after that.

Karkat alone :'( he's mostly just talking to the alpha kids at this point, trying to hide from all the happy fucking relationships happening all around him.

If the last retcon was really heavy on the retcon!crew, then this one is much more about what's happening in the bubbles. We get most of our dancestor development this go around. Do not read if you like the dancestors! I go very in-depth about how most of them are horrible people on purpose here, so their arcs are mostly about them being pulled up on their abject awfulness.

Nepeta, who has learned East Beforan, is able to talk to Damara and have an earnest heart-to-heart with her about how awfully she was treated. They hug and cry. Damara, finally validated, gives everyone a big middle finger.

Feferi heals Mituna's brain injury, because literally why the FUCK has nobody else done that. Now once more in control of his faculties, he breaks up with Latula, pissed off that she took advantage of him all those eons to boost her own ego. He also gives everyone a big middle finger. Damara steals her skateboard and high fives Mituna.

Porrim's basically the only dancestor who grew as a person so I think she mostly escapes unscathed.

Latula gets chased around by Sollux and Aradia, who basically just bully her for being bad at games. This is a date to them.

Gamzee completely refutes Kurloz, with his newfound clarity about the real miracle being friendship and the real dark carnival being the world he and his friends will build, not that LE noise.

In a double team between Terezi and Rose, Meulin gets eviscerated for the way her own Issues have made her ships deliberately awful, that she could have simply Not, and she has a bit of a breakdown.

As Feferi is grappling with her privilege and internalized casteism, Cronus wanders up to try and hit on her, and she goes "oh my god... when people look at me, are you what they see? A friendless loser that nobody likes? A total waste of seawater who's only pretending to be cool with the lower castes? A totally fake poser? 38(" Cronus just goes "..." and starts crying and Feferi ends the convo oblivious to that, just going "wow... thanks for talking with me! really gave me a lot to think about" imagine how funny it would be -

Karkat finds and talks to (Eridan), where he fully admits to missing the guy. His mopiness is so extreme that (Eridan) takes issue with it and punches him, before basically yelling at him to get his shit together. Karkat then yells at HIM for him to get HIS shit together, and they both leave, intent on getting their shit together.

We also get an update on Vriska and Meenah at this point, where Meenah is starting to seem more into how they totally ditched their responsibilities than Vriska is.

So the thing with this update is that most of the trolls have sorted their shit out; even Karkat has had a lot of introspection about how he really just fucking loves his friends and should have been more honest about it, not worried so much about appearing weak or lame. With the double Aradias in play to kind of handwave that the timeline will be stable because they're ensuring all loops get completed and all necessary conversations happen, and with everyone's successful relationships on display, we can kind of truncate the next leg of the journey:

Karkat Fixes Everything

Karkat is the Friendship Troll. Karkat is the Romance Troll. Karkat is the Bonds troll. He is their team's Blood player, and as the Blood player, he's been shown to deeply love all of his fucking friends - yes, even the assholes. Maybe even especially them.

As such, it's vitally important for the last push - last leg of the journey - to belong to Karkat. Where would our Blood player be without his bonds? Well, we actually have the answer to that. It's knocked out and prevented from joining in any of the important boss battles. LAME!

So in the last retcon, Karkat hears from Nepeta about the retcons that have been happening, and he really starts digging through his own past. If every retcon so far has been each troll only feeling comfortable undoing their own personal mistakes, then what of the guy who feels personally responsible for everything, all the time, forever?

Look, I'm not saying that a shipping chart saves Homestuck, but... by the time this last retcon is through, every Alternian troll is alive and god tiered. And he is dating Eridan.

If you have any questions about him dating Eridan, please refer to the link above. That essay is nearly as long as this one. There's SO MUCH FUCKING FORESHADOWING.

I don't think the god tiering needs to be explained, because if we hear that Karkat basically made his past self a shipping chart, and we've seen everybody's character development as they've gone through this journey, and we have Aradias on timeline duty and Nepeta with memories of past retcons and her alternate selves, I think we can more or less gloss over exactly how they go about earning their wings while maintaining timeline integrity. The important thing is that Karkat is dating Eridan now.

Because that leads to the last few bits of dream bubble stuff, but before we get into that...

Miscellaneous Plot Things That Need To Happen But I Don't Know Where To Put Them

Yeah there's just some ideas that I have floating around that need to be placed somewhere but IDK exactly where, or exactly how they shake out.

Hal becomes a real boy. And by that I mean as part of their character development, Jake makes Hal "real" a la brain ghost Dirk, and then the rest of them have to scramble against the clock (Jake's ability to maintain Hal's realness) to god tier him and make his existence permanent. He's a Sylph of Mind, which allows him to negate Condy's mind control. And maybe a GCATboy?

(Tavros) becomes the new leader of the ghost army.

Davesprite winds up dead at some point in the bubbles and doesn't explain how he died, but he and (Dave) get to fight each other and hash out their Realness and Relevance issues, before facing their final boss fight as bros once more.

Jade and Nepeta get to talk, and Nepeta gives Jade the reassuring speech about Ultimate Selfhood and how she won't be lonely forever. Maybe it's flushed. Might leave it ambiguous.

Somebody needs to auspicetize Dirk and Jake holy shit. Dunno who. Maybe Karkat, but I kind of like him pitch with Dirk, so IDK really.

Dad needs to die. Sorry Dad. If I can find a way to kill off all of the sprites besides ARquiusprite, I will. It's explicitly stated that sprites are drawn to the battlefield during the Reckoning, presumably to die, as part of the coming-of-age themes - losing one's guardians. It's sad but it's gotta happen.

All the Godtier!Calliope stuff basically happens as-is.

Can you tell I need to do more research on the alpha kids...

Ok Back To Karkat And Eridan

I think I'm going to leave their moirallegiance fairly ambiguous, but when Eridan is brought back, he and Karkat are basically together all the time. Karkat's signals are mixed even on the best of days, so I don't know how easy it'll be to tell that these two assholes slinging death threats at each other are pale, but *I* will know, and that's what matters.

This leads to the last two dancestor takedowns:

Karkat and Eridan (mostly Eridan) round on Kankri. Eridan calls him SO MANY SLURS. The fact that Karkat not only condones this, but is DATING ERIDAN, kind of makes Kankri lose it a bit.

(Karkat) and (Eridan), who have reconciled in the bubbles, finally find (Vriska) and Meenah. (Karkat) gives the two of them the speech that retcon!Vriska gave (Vriska) in the comic's original ending, but this time around, (Vriska) actually agrees with him. This serves as a conclusion to (Karkat) and Meenah's arc, and causes Meenah to feel so bad that she walks back to the other dancestors in shame, as (Vriska) leaves with him with the treasure to finally fight LE.

When Meenah returns to the dancestors, the first one she finds is Aranea, who's really sad about her own little escapade, blaming herself for the way Game Over went. This prompts Meenah to go, no, it was probably my fault, shouldn't have let you run off like that. And this would, from all the sobbing dancestors, prompt a string of "no, I'm the reason we failed"s, eventually culminating in Meenah rallying them together to do one last good thing before everyone gets sucked into the black hole and go join the fight against LE. Everyone agrees.

(Gamzee) is revived by the life players and cursed with immortality, so he can go on to become LE and complete that time loop. He is immediately locked in the fridge. This is also why he can't fucking die no matter what you do to him.

This also leads us into the final boss fights.

VS. CONDY

The twelve trolls. The Condesce represents tyranny, the worst aspects of the trolls' old society, and as such, is most thematically taken down by them. While she did fuck up the alpha kids' lives, too, I just personally think it's so much more thematic and satisfying to watch her be beaten down by the trolls.

VS. THE THREE JACKS

The eight kids plus Hal plus Davesprite. With Bec Noir specifically, it's fucking PERSONAL, as this guy killed their parents. This is where Dave fulfils his destiny of killing an iteration of English with his sword, when he decapitates Jack English; the person in the middle of that sandwich is Davesprite, which is how he dies and winds up in the bubbles. The iteration of Jack that survives to date Ms. Paint is Spades Slick, as he's the most sympathetic out of all of them and didn't kill anybody's parents.

At some point during this fight, I like the idea that they get zapped away by Jack English, John zaps them to the Godtier!Caliborn fight where he gets sealed in the juju, and then we cut back to the fight with Jack English, where, inexplicably, they all zap right back in.

VS. THE FELT

The spares - ARquiussprite, (Gamzee) in the fridge (who has since been revived by the life players and blessed/cursed with eternal life so he can go on to fulfill his role in the timelines and become part of LE), Dad, and the other sprites (if any of them are left alive).

VS. LORD ENGLISH

The GameOver!crew, the ghost army, the dancestors (they have a Big Damn Heroes moment right near the end, buying Jake time to deploy the Weapon), Aradiabot, and Davesprite.

Jake fulfills his destiny to defeat the Lord of all Angels by being the one to deploy the weapon, which deposits the beta kids, who knock LE in to the black hole. They then zap out of there, collecting the alpha kids from after the Caliborn fight, and zap back to the fight with the Jacks.

This specific configuration of boss battles winds up leaving Lord English entirely up to dead characters, who are then implied to all eventually get sucked into the black hole - their memories to live on through the living characters via Ultimate Selfhood, which only Nepeta achieves on screen, but implies that they will all achieve eventually.

It's important to me that the GameOver!crew is the one leading the fight against Lord English, as they're the ones who were the most screwed over by LE and his machinations - manipulated into killing each other, used as servants of his will, dying ignobly in a doomed timeline filled with special stardust. Meanwhile, the retcon!kids and trolls prove what they've learned - about compassion, kindness, equality, and forgiveness - by beating the shit out of the Condesce, who represents the horrors of Alternia, and the Jacks, especially Bec Noir and Jack English - the latter of which is a shadow of what Lord English represents - immaturity, cruelty, hatred - and the former of which is a culmination of all the failures they committed to get to this point, a symptom of their universal cancer.

I wrote a little snippet of Aradia once, and I think I'll use that to end this essay:

(ARADIA): ok now that we are all done being stupid (ARADIA): im sure enough people here remember the plan that i dont need to explain it again (ARADIA): so instead i just wanted to say (ARADIA): leave your backs to us and face forward without fear (ARADIA): the dead and irrelevant will slay the demon of double death while you unmake the threats of the living (ARADIA): and personally i think it's very fitting that he will perish here as nothing more than a bad dream (ARADIA): this will be the last time we see each other (ARADIA): so on behalf of everyone that you are going to be leaving behind (ARADIA): live (ARADIA): and be happy!

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Not to be uhhhh annoying, but Karkat's theme and Eridan's theme from Alterniabound at the very least have to do with each other.

Both of them start off with a melody, but switch it up at around 0:06 seconds. Then once again another switch at 0:52 (almost perfectly in sync).

At around 1:06, Eridan's theme goes slow and sad, and on the other end? Sounds of tediousness(TM). Barking, Super Mario ghost oooohing that sounds like rolling your eyes, and vaguely digital soundbites.

And THEN, at around 1:23, Karkat's waltz resumes, and Eridan's theme also becomes a waltz (more or less at 1.25x Karkat's speed).

Karkat's music ends at 1:57, WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT Eridan's theme kicks up. And then a "Hey!" is heard at 2:03/2:04, a couple of seconds after Karkat's theme actually ends. Quite literally: "Karkat pay attention to me. Hey. Karkat. Karkat. Karkat." lmao.

And guess which theme also loosely follows this pattern? Terezi's. A canonical crush of Karkat's (A lot more out of sync, though). Kanaya's theme doesn't, however. Much less Vriska's, or any other theme in Alterniabound's album.

Of course all of these songs follow a pattern, and they're made for the same [S] Pages. Karkat and Eridan's, though? Almost completely in sync.

I dunno, maybe I'm trying to fit triangles into square holes, but it seemed worth mentioning. I genuinely tried listening to both at the same time in two different tabs but I couldn't get much out of it.

(This is nosyDetective btw, I just can't send asks from this blog bc it's not my main 😔)

Unfortunately, the similarities seem pretty superficial - eridan's theme is mostly in 4/4 (2/2 technically because its a march) and karkat's is in 3/4 the whole time - but still, here's the two 3/4 parts mashed together for your listening pleasure, hahah.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Granted the possibility that Eridan, Vriska and Aradia could be friends, by extension, could Eridan have the possibility to become friends with Tavros?

Unfortunately, no 😔 and what it comes down to is this: Eridan is REALLY STRESSFUL to be around if you aren't Karkat (even for people who like him, which is why such an important quality in his platonic friend group is an ability to set and maintain hard boundaries), and Tavros is REALLY BAD at dealing with stress.

Tavros often gets mischaracterized as being really sweet and kind, and I think that's a little south of where he actually is. His main character trait is avoidance, not acceptance. When the going gets tough, Tavros gets going, either physically (leaving Vriska to bleed out, or ghosting Gamzee after being put off by his offer to make out a little, or blocking Dave after getting scared by his sexual remarks) or mentally (his reliance on his imaginary friend, and the way he turns to them for comfort while being tormented by Vriska). He doesn't actually LIKE Vriska at all, and is actually pretty vocal about DISliking her, but he's too afraid of real confrontation to actually mount a resistance until well after it's too late, resulting in his death.

He's still a lot nicer than most of the trolls, but it's a low bar. And he deserved to be treated better, but that's also all of them. Let's not forget that once he really grows a spine after being combined with Vriska for a little bit, he flips her off. Even then, however, his response to things he doesn't like is still, like. Leaving. Growing a spine just lets him actually do that, instead of meekly expressing that he would like to, and then getting bullied into not.

And Eridan is just stressful to be around. He's basically a weeping geyser of emotional sincerity and neediness 24/7. Even the people in his life that like him need to set and maintain hard boundaries with him so they don't exhaust themselves, and this is even true of his romantic interests (with the exception of Karkat). Even Roxy gets stressed by him, even if it's good stress (excitement, fun).

And the thing is, even at his absolute best, most therapized, Eridan is still going to be the team's Murder Advocate. More intimately than anybody else, he understands the connection between sacrifice, duty, and the greater good. A lot of people seem to think Eridan's ultimate character arc should lead to him refuting violence, but I disagree; there are times where violence, and even murder, are necessary (for an easy example, killing Condy, and for a very personal example, killing lusii/trolls so his species/friends could stay alive). He's the teammate that reminds the rest of the team that violence and murder are viable, and sometimes the only, option; who offers to do the dirty work himself and shoulder that burden; and who has a powerful driving force of duty, responsibility, and - that most hopeful of qualities - CONVICTION.

His character arc doesn't lead to him refuting his prior beliefs, but gaining clarity on them: exactly what he believes in and why, disentangling it from his shitty society and the expectations it placed upon him. This inevitably leads to him having a very strong personality that clashes with a lot of his teammates, even post-character development, and unfortunately, Tavros is one of them.

So if we're talking Tavros before he grows a spine - they would definitely not be friends. Eridan would be able to trap Tavros into conversation, but if Tavros already doesn't like Vriska for being an asshole with empathy problems, there's no way he'd like Eridan, who's that turned up to eleven. I mean, let's be real, do you think Eridan "refuses to have fun and is also a hipster and also phrases things in a hostile and aggressive way as a default" Ampora would not wind up 1) insulting fiduspawn, 2) insulting tinkerbull/bringing up that he kills lusii regularly and that Tavros is really lucky tinkerbull is so small because it made them not a target, and/or 3) insulting Tavros for his spinelessness in an effort to pitch flirt, or even just as a factual observation?

And if we're talking Tavros after he grows a spine, all that would change is that he'd voice outright that he doesn't really like Eridan and doesn't want to talk to him. And then leave, probably.

And that'd be a problem for Eridan, before or after his character development, because he desperately craves attention, and Tavros's whole thing is avoiding the stuff he doesn't like. This is also why he wouldn't get along particularly well with people like Sollux or Equius; they don't really give him attention, good OR bad, and either tell him to fuck off, or fuck off themselves. Let's remember how Vriska ghosting him on accident led to him having an anxiety episode where he beats himself up for being SO STUPID!!!!!!! People who don't really like him and simply withhold attention from him are the people he feels the worst interacting with.

And that's BEFORE Gamzee gets added to the mix LOL

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

I don't even CARE about Karkat but after seeing your endgame ships I absolutely need to hear your opinion on Karezi since..Kalliope (???) is so far out there. (We don't talk about Davekat)

LOL ok good i also don't want to talk about davekat

but yeah karezi... interesting! I don't mind it, i think it could work, but I kind of can't help but feel like they deserve better, y'know? (which is incidentally how i feel about davekat too, to a greater extent).

Like, i don't think they're BAD for each other, and before Terezi met Dave, she and karkat definitely had mutual crushes - karkat's most obviously, but eridan's "whoa, did she really say that, can you copy exactly what she said" about feferi is actually an echo of terezi's line about karkat. so, mutual flushed crushes: confirmed.

i guess what i mean by deserving better is just that, like... terezi deserves someone who thinks she's fucking hilarious, and is willing to play along with her little games. as much as she likes karkat's overblown reactions, he's not exactly a good sport, and that's not even getting into his mixed signals. Despite the two having interest in each other since at least the beginning of sgrub, by the time they're talking to the kids, Terezi's surprise when John jokes that Karkat said he was in love with her indicates that he's managed to send such mixed messages that she genuinely isn't sure how he feels about her, and he later berates his own past self on the meteor for the exact same, and of wanting her in every quadrant, his "spirited platonic contention" objectively construable as pitch flirting.

Meanwhile, on Karkat's end, he fucking loves romance. Cheesy, corny, sappy romance. Soul mates and destiny. If you want to understand Karkat, watch Serendipity, one of his favorite movies. My god. If he showed that to terezi she would never let him live it down.

He laments to Vriska that nobody listens to him talk about quadrant shit, even though it's incredibly fascinating to him. This is a lie; ERIDAN listens to him. But this means that Terezi doesn't, and neither have we ever seen them discussing it, so that's kind of what i mean by both of them deserving better? Terezi deserves someone who can play along with her jokes and mind games and karkat deserves someone who is interested in his quadrant discussions; she deserves someone who can put their whole ass into saying they dig her and he deserves someone who doesn't mind his vacillatory mixed signal nonsense. idk. i dont think they're bad for each other, i just think they can do better, lmao. again these opinions are just opinions and idfc what you (general you) ship

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Personally, the most surprising thing is Karkat <3 Calliope here. I personally HC Calliope as not really fully capable/interested in <3 spectrum of relationship (which would make her on aro spectrum in a way) but this kind of relationship it seems like a cool idea to consider.

yeah, the way i have it, the Only reason she's able to do a flushed relationship at all is because it's with karkat "mixed signals" vantas. people watching from the outside think it sometimes looks more pitch than calliope's relationship with her actual kismesis LOL

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

ok im not going to tag this but i need you guys to know that my endgame ships for eridan and karkat are

eridan ♦️ karkat

eridan ♥️ roxy

roxy ♦️ calliope

eridan ♠️ calliope

karkat ♥️ calliope

i call it "the polycule only a blood player could love" and although it manages to be perfectly healthy, from the outside, everyone looks like they're cheating on everyone else. nepeta is staring at it going ":33 < dodged a fucking bullet!!!"

Eridan ♦️ Karkat

the ship with the most canon backing. this ship needs to be true before all other ships can be true because it keeps the two of them normal enough to have a shot at romancing anybody else. nobody realized they were pale for each other for an embarrasingly long time because their regular day to day conversations feature slurs and death threats. sometimes looks pitch or flushed from the outside because karkat is a mess who can't stop yelling at people he's trying to romance in the red quads, and because eridan gets really needy sometimes.

Eridan ♥️ Roxy

They get together within five minutes of knowing each other and, despite Rose's protests, never ever break up. Eridan is into cute, pink, bubbly, nice girls, and Roxy is into eccentric troubled princes. Not to mention she fucking loves wizards, and Eridan is a wizard, and that they're both hipsters who use rifles. Also Eridan is weird as hell and Roxy thinks he's hilarious for it. Despite the fact that he puts on this unpleasant, nasty act, he'll pretty much do anything Roxy tells him to, and she likes that. She thinks he has himbo energy. Everyone else thinks she's deranged. Like girl that guy is an insane murderer. Girl he will not stop saying slurs

also their specific abilities are diametrically opposed in an interesting way? prince of hope = can destroy anything he believes he can destroy, rogue of void = can create anything by stealing away its nonexistence. neat!

Roxy ♦️ Calliope

since they aren't trolls and don't need to calm each other down, it's not really a proper moirallegiance, but they're bffffffs and the kinds of silly fun-loving gals who would call their friendship a moirallegiance even if it doesn't have the biological components or serve the social function of one. Two girls that just love each other.

Eridan ♠️ Calliope

biologically, cherubs only engage in pitch romances and are attracted to other cherubs that remind them of the other half they lost in predomination. what i'm saying is that calliope - unfortunately for her - has brother issues. initially put off by eridan's superficial similarities to caliborn - his bluster, his riflekind, his insane logic and thick skull, and how damn often he talks about murder - as they get to know each other, the feeling becomes mutual. eridan is generally totally ok with outright hostility, but calliope's faux-nice smugness when taunting an opponent would drive him nuts, as would the earnestness with which she approaches magic (what kind of POSER needs to RELOAD their WAND), and in general, i think he'd take her genuine well-wishes toward other people as a personal affront, a la "i didn't ever need anybody to look after me!"

they somehow have a 50/50 win ratio at the board games they play, which drives calliope nuts. "believing in your pieces" is not a valid chess strategy!!!!!!!!!

also i think it's fun and thematic, the angel killer and the cherub, whose adult form features hope-shaped wings.

Karkat ♥️ Calliope

We know two things from his crush on terezi: the first is that karkat is into clever, cunning gals, and the second is that he's really fucking messy, the kind of guy who would tell his flushed crush to "set the table on his bone bulge for their candle light hate date." Fortunately, or unfortunately??? for calliope, the fact that he will scream obscenities at her is kind of what she's into. everybody, please, a moment of silence for calliope, who somehow manages to have worse taste in men than roxy.

but yeah more seriously, karkat has a big and loving heart, and so does calliope, while calliope maintains a cleverness and intellect that karkat would be into.

normally, it would be a huge problem for your moirail to be pitch for your matesprit, and we have that both ways here. however, a few factors are mitigating that here. first, eridan will always prioritize karkat or roxy over calliope when they're around. this actually does kind of piss her off, although she feels annoyed that it does. second, calliope is generally mature enough to compartmentalize. third, karkat WILL auspicetize if they aren't careful, and nobody wants that. and fourth, everybody wants to keep roxy happy.

but yeah everyone else watching it is like. are you guys okay? blink if you need help

ofc ship what you want to ship this is not at all me telling you what you should be into. im just saying that these ships have been calculated for Maximum Funnyness, which as we know, is the only objective measure for what makes a good homestuck ship

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Hello resident Eridan expert! 0u0 I was wondering if you thought he might get on well with Aradia? Thank you for your time!

Actually yes! In moderate doses. After Eridan's character development. The list I like to keep of his platonic friends, from most to least close to him, is like.

Nepeta -> Dirk -> Feferi -> Vriska -> Aradia -> Other

So I already talked about how he and Nepeta seem like they'd actually make for really good friends - the Heart player who can't help but see the good in him, and Eridan liking nice people and the fact that the two of them have a lot in common. I've also made mention before about how I think he and Dirk would have an extremely lethargic, almost transactional bro-ship where they sometimes beat each other to death. A completely neutral friendship, where they do not make each other better OR worse, they just help each other take the edge off the Prince Ennui. Using extreme violence.

He and Feferi are also not so different, and, honestly, they're childhood friends. She's pretty fond of him, and he's TOO fond of her, but after his character development and he fully gets over her, I think they'd be perfectly decent friends. He and Vriska have much the same deal, but I think their personalities mesh slightly worse than his and Feferi's.

If you're wondering why Kanaya isn't on this list, it's because she hates his dumb ass and always has. I think Eridan thinks he's really good friends with Kanaya. Kanaya has literally never respected Eridan even a little bit. Same with Rose. It's really funny.

So Aradia is kind of the last person out of the characters that I think I'd emphatically call "Eridan's Friend." Everyone covered in "other" tends to be people who are everybody's friend (like John) or basically tolerant of his behavior in small doses (like Dave).

With Aradia specifically, there's a few factors to consider; first of all, she has a pretty negative view of highbloods in general, calling them "hateful sn0bs" at one point. She's a lot more tolerant as the stewardess of the afterlife, because Alternia's gone and everyone else is dead, but I think it should still stand that she'd be sensitive to anti-casteist sentiment, since casteism colored so much of her life back when she was, y'know, alive.

But the reason I think they'd work as friends is because Aradia has a bluntness and straightforwardness about her that happens to mesh well with Eridan's suite of issues. He's actually fairly easy to manage if you're fully honest with him and set and maintain very clear boundaries, because he doesn't catch social cues, but also doesn't really see naked hostility, bluntness, or aggression as bad things.

And Aradia can be viciously sarcastic, but her natural tendency is to be very blunt and honest and call things the way she sees them. This means that if she's ever too annoyed by Eridan, she will let him know that as bluntly as humanly possible, and then happily fuck off, with Eridan generally no worse for the wear (although he may have a negative reaction in the moment. But Aradia's self-possessed enough to not really give a shit as long as she's not in the wrong).

The main issue between them is that I think Aradia would believe Eridan IS a nasty, casteist highblood, unless somehow given reason to interact with him for an extended period of time. Eridan didn't really talk to the lowbloods, and the two generally had no reason to interact, so she'd basically have no reason NOT to believe him when he starts spewing bullshit. Moreover, Eridan's the type of aggressive idiot that would outright admit that if they'd FLARPed together, there was every chance she'd wind up orphaned or dead (this is just a neutral fact to him), and then comment that maybe it wouldn't have mattered because she wound up dead anyway (again, just a neutral observation to him). Writing Eridan mostly consists of coming up with words that make you cringe.

Aradia is smart enough that I think any extensive conversation or time spent with him would make her realize how performative his casteist stuff is, and how little he actually cares about blood color. Since she generally never had reason to interact or care about him before (not even her friends are friends with him), this would pretty much shift her opinion from "idgaf about him, seems like a snob like the rest of the highbloods" to "oh... he's funny as hell. what's wrong with him".

Once she figures out that he genuinely doesn't mean any harm or offense by the awful dumb shit he says, I think she'd be willing to engage with him on mutual interests (they both FLARPed, so they're presumably both roleplayers, and they could probably bond over death - something Eridan is unfortunately obsessed with and Aradia doesn't have many discussion partners over). Emotionally, she'd probably keep him at arm's length - he has a lot of Issues and Problems, and she's not really interested in helping him handle them (she doesn't really bother with trying to cheer people up on the bubbles so much as just explaining what they can do now that they're dead, and letting them make their own decisions). Not that she isn't a nice person, but I do think it'd just be kind of difficult for her to have too much sympathy for a guy whose problems were largely caused by being too aristocratic.

But, like, she would also pretty happily call him "her friend," because she always cuts it short when it gets too real for her, minimizing her negative experiences with him. I think eventually, like training a dog, Eridan would figure out that Aradia is just Not The Friend For That, so it'd become less of a problem as time goes on.

She thinks he's ridiculous and funny, calls him up when she wants to infodump on someone and her usual buddies aren't around, and I think they'd play good DnD together with Nepeta and Vriska. Yeah I know Vriska killed her but she killed Vriska so they're even. The energy at the table is deeply weird but Eridan wouldn't notice and Aradia would get a kick out of it, leaing poor Nepeta to suffer it alone.

Anyway, I love that Eridan's assortment of platonic friendships is so haphazard. Nepeta AND Feferi, who hate each other. Vriska AND Aradia, who killed each other. And also Dirk is there. He's the DM.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

I really hope this doesn't come off as antagonistic, but you have a lot of (really good) ideas for how homestuck should have handled itself differently at the end, have you ever considered... writing that yourself? like as a fic or even a mspfa? i would honestly love to see your interpretations for the ending we should have gotten

I would love to, and I noodle on it often, but I don't have the time to commit to such a large project. Which is probably why Hussie didn't, either, LOL

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Putting this under a cut because it got really long. Please don't read if you're sensitive to me saying mean things about fandom and fandom activities, it's kind of unavoidable territory because the dancestors are kind of directly commenting on these tendencies. Uh, or if you like the dancestors. I'm 'boutta be REALLY mean to them.

IDK maybe my real controversial opinion is that I'm willing to go to bat for Hussie? It's likely true he hated his fandom, and it's definitely true that the dancestors are partially based on the fandom interpretation of the Alternian trolls. It's also very true that many of them are fairly flat...

But I wouldn't call the dancestors "bad faith" mirrors to the fandom's mischaracterizations. As someone who runs an Eridan blog, fanon!Eridan is so utterly far removed from canon!Eridan that they basically have nothing in common but the design. Not to mention other characters, like nobody knowing the first thing about Gamzee, or the Discourse that surrounds Vriska despite her having such a clearly foreshadowed arc. Moreover, ALL the characters were based on internet culture, the trolls most of all. I mean, they're literally called trolls because they were originally conceived of as different types of internet troll.

So having the dancestors be a parody or commentary on internet culture - this time Tumblr culture, if the Alternian trolls were more of a commentary on forum culture, where Hussie got his start - is actually ENTIRELY in-line with what the trolls have always been. As deconstructions of those archetypes, they're actually quite competently done, and as a counterpoint to the comic's themes, they're excellently done.

To the point of them being flatter and more one-note than the Alternian trolls and the kids, this is also entirely intentional, and not a sign of bad writing. They're like that because they have less significance to the story, and you aren't supposed to find them sympathetic on the whole. Their purpose is to illustrate "why it's a bad thing to not mature." I'd say they're quite successful at this, if you engage with them on their own terms. And also...

They DO have complexity. There are actually a lot of really important, interesting things happening within the dancestors, but the fandom as a whole either wrote them off, or did to them what they did to the other characters, and created gross caricatures and mischaracterizations, treating them as blank canvases for projection.

Here's just a quick rundown of some stuff you can glean from the dancestors if you engage with them a bit more critically:

If Homestuck as a whole is about the creation of a new world, and children maturing into adults who are responsible and compassionate enough to make it a good one, then the dancestors as a whole represent an older generation that failed their children, forcing their kids to clean up after their messes.

The specific choice Echidna gave them to Scratch their session had the alternate offer of "dying and letting their species die with them, and letting no more harm come of them," which really hammers this point home. Given that LE is implied to have been created by the dancestors' failures, this is likely the "harm" Echidna is alluding to - if the dancestors had chosen to not pass on their problems to the later generations, then LE would not have come into being. On that note:

LE is heavily implied to have been a result of the dancestors' sessions.

This requires a bit of explanation on how time in Homestuck works. It is ultimately free will that determines the path of events. Imagine a blank sheet of paper, which represents all possible outcomes in all possible points in time. Now imagine putting a pencil to the page - this is the power of individual decisions, which collapse infinite possibilities into a single series of events.

However, PERSPECTIVE is a malleable thing. If you put your PERSPECTIVE at some point in the middle of the line, rather than the point at which future events are being determined, then suddenly, it seems as though all events in the future are predetermined.

In this way, things become "retroactively predetermined". We see this in the way that Trollian works - they can all see the future logs until the time comes to write them, whereupon they magically vanish. We also know that Skaia itself is constantly accounting for player actions via the carapacians, described as "the cogs of paradox space," who are instinctively drawn to completing time loops for the players.

The dancestors' session contains a glitch in it whereby they did not perform their own ectobiology, and such glitches are stated to be "LE's calling cards, reserving his place in universes he intends to visit," and renders their game unwinnable from the start.

HOWEVER, it is also explicitly stated that after Damara snapped and went beast mode on her team, she started performing a bunch of timeline sabotage; getting rid of their ectobiology lab sounds like exactly what you'd imagine "timeline sabotage" to be - especially as it's shown that, at some point in her life, Damara became a follower of Lord English, and explicitly wishes to serve him and help him destroy fucking everything. So in this way, the dancestors' session became retroactively predetermined to be unwinnable, because Damara went nuts, and Damara went nuts as a result of the dancestors' greatest cohesive failure, which brings us to:

Damara is fully sympathetic, a complex character, and IMO good representation (I'm Chinese diaspora), you guys are just looking for reasons to be mean to Hussie.

Damara's always a point of contention when people critique the dancestors, and I think that's really unfair. Yes, she's crass, and sexual, and calls to mind uncomfortable stereotypes, but - speaking as someone who is East Asian - I think the fact that she has such a complex characterization, AND that many of the struggles she faces are very near to those faced by East Asian diaspora, actually kind of makes her... just representation? Like actually just representation?

Let me explain.

So here's Damara's backstory - she's an immigrant from "East Beforus," who never learned to speak English particularly well, and was in a relationship with Rufioh, the only person on the team who could communicate fluently with her. Rufioh then cheated on her for a LONG TIME with Horuss. While this was happening, Damara is being subjected to horrific bullying from Meenah, while the rest of the team did nothing to stop her; when the affair came out, Meenah actually used it AGAINST DAMARA. This eventually drove Damara to snap, and she crippled Rufioh, killed Meenah, and started a long campaign of sabotage, only becoming cooperative again when it came time to Scratch their session.

And here's the thing... STILL, nobody on her team treats her well. Most of them don't speak shitty Google-translate Japanese, so they just think of her as a psycho bitch who went crazy for no reason and just yell at her that if she gets too close to their friends, they'll kill her. There's literally a point where Meenah talks to her, doesn't apologize, and decides "man, it's too hard to try to figure out what you're saying" and just assumes they're cool now, even though Damara is literally telling her to go fuck herself. And Rufioh has the fucking audacity to go "wow... damz... she's crazy... haha... the jealousy... so crazy... wow..." and ask her for advice on his relationship with Horuss.

So what we have is, functionally, an immigrant who can't speak English, at the bottom of the caste system (which BTW still exists), being bullied like fuck by the richest, most privileged member of the team, whose boyfriend cheats on her and then calls HER crazy and jealous, whose team doesn't care enough to intervene in the bullying OR even fucking understand what she's saying. The fact that she can't communicate in the language everyone else speaks, and the fact that her culture has raised her to be less assertive, makes her less of a person to them.

Like... this is kind of just... what a lot of diaspora face. Not even exclusively East Asian diaspora. Her snapping and going crazy is actually entirely reasonable. Her resorting to sexual language is a form of taking power back. You guys don't care what I have to say? Well, I don't give a shit what you have to listen to, then. She's nice to the humans, who have never done anything wrong to her, and she has a normal conversation with Rufioh, who actually knows how to speak her language. Her dialogue being shitty Google-translate Japanese is actually a commentary on this very dynamic - that nobody gave a shit about what she was saying. Like, yeah, girl, no fucking WONDER you decided you wanted everything destroyed.

Rufioh fucking sucks.

See above.

The team is keeping Mituna brain damaged on purpose.

Aranea says that before his injury, Mituna was constantly trying to warn his team about some oncoming doom he saw (and it came true, so, like, Mituna was right). So here's the thing. Even if they can't heal him now that they're all ghosts, they spent roughly SIX FUCKING YEARS in the Medium. Aranea explicitly has the ability to heal mind stuff, and they have a life player if Mituna's injury falls more along the physical side. There are indications that, as unpleasant as he is to be around now, the team prefers him this way because he can't pull them up on their personal problems anymore. Otherwise, why would they have just left him injured?

And before people argue that neurodivergence is not a "problem" that always needs to be "fixed," I completely agree. The thing is, however, that Mituna's injury is always framed as that - an injury. An unfortunate incident with some sort of physical component that happened after he overtaxed his psionics. Something that his team had the ability to fix, whether by sylph healing, life healing, or even just killing him on his quest bed. And they just left him like that for SIX YEARS. MINIMUM.

Kankri

Kankri.

Actually, let me just say one thing about Kankri, and let that be representational about all the problems with Kankri.

At one point, he scolds Mituna for being brain-damaged in a way that makes other brain-damaged people look bad.

MITUNA: W4LT5 WR00NG W17H MY H4ML37 8( KANKRI: N9thing, friend, it's a really c99l helmet and it's a g99d l99k f9r y9u. 6ut are we n9w t9 assume that all th9se wh9 are stricken with y9ur particular disadvantage9n will 6e similarly pr9ne t9 require such headgear, due t9 falling d9wn and hitting their heads frequently? MITUNA: 8U7H 1 D0 F4LL D0WN 4ND H157 MY H34D FR3QUN3UN74NY KANKRI: 9h, I kn9w y9u d9, and I think y9u sh9uld c9ntinue wearing it f9r y9ur safety, particularly if y9u c9ntinue t9 insist 9n fl9undering a69ut 9n y9ur danger9us t9y. It's m9re a69ut the unf9rtunate message y9u are sending 9verall, with certain aspects 9f y9ur pers9nality and existence, that's all. MITUNA: 1M 50RRY KANKRI: As a friend, I w9uldn't want t9 change anything a69ut y9u, well, n9t m9st things. I just think y9u may n9t 6e d9ing y9urself 9r th9se wh9 are similarly disadvantaged any fav9rs with, what I'm h9ping, is a perfectly inn9cent array 9f traits and mannerisms. 8ut again, I say this with all due sensitivity.

Meulin is actively fucking over her team's romances, and is deeply unhappy in her own.

There's an implication when Terezi is talking to Sollux that a mage's visions of the future are heavily influenced by the mage's own pessimism - that their own negative feelings toward themselves and the world muddle their visions and lead to worse outcomes.

Meulin's ships are horrible. Leaving aside the fact that she offered to set Meenah up with Karkat, who is like 5 years younger than her (not counting the millenia spent in the bubbles), basically every established romantic relationship between the dancestors is, uh... awful. Rufioh's affair with Horuss, which he wants to end but doesn't have the spine to. Damara's with Rufioh. More on Latula and Mituna later. And, like... Meulin and Horuss?

HORUSS: 8=D < E%actly. Whoof would have thought? If you a%ed me before we all died whether I would consider romantically pairing with a r*d*culous midb100d, let alone Ms. Leijon of all people, I'd probably have died regardless, due to laughter-induced asphy%iation.

THIS IS NOT SOMETHING YOU SAY ABOUT THE GIRL YOU ARE CURRENTLY DATING HOLY SHIT???

Moreover, the one who gave Horuss the advice to smile through all unpleasant things in his life and ignore them completely, was Meulin. Combined with the fact that Vriska at one point mentions that she has a "fascinatingly dark history," there's an implication here that Meulin gave that advice because she's doing it herself. Meulin is not actually happy, she's depressed as fuck, and she's covering it up by being hyper and annoying; as a result, when she uses her mage powers to set up her friends, she's incapable of setting them up in happy relationships.

Porrim was a bra-burning feminist who entirely shirked the game in the pursuit of social justice.

They explicitly never made much progress in frog breeding because Porrim was too busy fighting the patriarchy. She got better after she died, being one of the only dancestors who ever grew as a person, but, like. That was a not good thing she did. Also, however nice Porrim is, she still did not stop Meenah's bullying, implying a link between her and Kanaya's worst traits - Kanaya was totally willing to excuse Vriska's bad behavior because she liked Vriska, after all.

Latula is so insecure that she's explicitly dating Mituna because he's dependent on her.

LATULA: 1dk, th3r3z w4y mor3 to h1m th4n. w3ll, 4ll th3 t3rr1bl3 4nd stup1d sh1t h3 s4ys 4ll th3 t1m3. LATULA: 4nd 1ts 4lw4yz f3lt l1k3 h3 n33ds m3 1f th4t m4k3s s3ns3, 3v3n 4ft3r dy1ng. so th3r3z th4t!!!!

Why are they all so awful to each other LMAO

Aranea... well, we see what's going on with Aranea. But did you also know that she's a huge fucking 8itch with a massive "fuck you, got mine" attitude towards her teammates?

ARANEA: [...] She was truly an inspiration, and proved 8eyond a shadow of a dou8t that any handicap can 8e overcome, and doesn't have to stop you from 8eing as rad as you can truly 8e. MEENAH: wuuut MEENAH: serket are you whistlin through my blowhole with his idiotic shit ARANEA: Yes, that last part was a joke. Lighten up, Peixes!

Yep, just making fun of something Latula is sensitive about.

ARANEA: Or, if one is to 8elieve [Cronus's] fantasy held any water, perhaps someone who was in league with the evil magician. Whatever the case, it was pro8a8ly for the 8est, since pretty much everyone who had half a think pan thought it was all a 8unch of ridiculous nonsense. MEENAH: serket why do you got to hate on other peoples religions MEENAH: dont you kno they just as much a load of crackpotty bunk as all your spiritual bullfuck ARANEA: 8ut I…….. ARANEA: Yes, I guess I was out of line. ARANEA: Sorry, I was just trying to riff with you little on a mutually disliked acquaintance. Is that really so 8ad? Why do you have to take every opportunity to knock my personal 8eliefs? ARANEA: You can really 8e so mean sometimes.

Mhm, shitting on Cronus. And like, shitting on Cronus is deserved, but, like, not for specifically this?

ARANEA: It was almost a little eerie how happily [Damara] complied with our plan. What did Rufioh say she said? Something a8out how we would all finally get what we deserved… ARANEA: Which at the time, I thought sounded chilling. 8ut there's really two ways of looking at it. One is how the Scratch re8ooted our world into a state of pure chaos, culminating in the annihilation of our universe. 8ut on the other hand, we all got the chance to live out our wildest fantasies as adults on Alternia! ARANEA: At least you and I sure did. And I wouldn't dou8t she feels the same way.

Yeah, sure, Aranea. Mituna sure got to live out his wildest fantasies by being turned into a fucking battleship. Damara being abused by Doc Scratch to the point of attempting suicide turned out to be something she wanted. Uh-huh.

She also completely shits on Kurloz and the clown cult as harmless and ridiculous superstition, despite... y'know... it all being. Very relevant. So.

Horuss is somehow more casteist than all the Alternian highbloods combined?

Already mentioned a lot of this in Meulin's section but... yeah. He's so incredibly derogatory to both Meulin AND Rufioh, apologizing to Meenah for letting himself be seen with those two (especially Rufioh), while at the same time refusing to let Rufioh break up with him by constantly changing the subject and refusing to acknowledge any sadness.

Kurloz is fully evil and was directly involved in Mituna's injury and Cronus's loss of faith, is mind controlling/brainwashing Meulin into his cult, and probably had something to do with Damara snapping.

Kind of can't blame him, his friends do all suck majorly.

Cronus is the worst character in Homestuck by a nautical mile but it is kind of sad that he used to believe so much in becoming a wizard and his friends bullied his hope out of him.

He's still fucking awful but, like, there's that.

Meenah is really fucking horrible, her friends enable her, and she is constantly shirking responsibility.

Three times she's shirked responsibility - the first when she decided she didn't want to be princess, and fled to her moon palace; the second when she didn't want to face her teammates after blowing them up, and fled to her dream bubble moon palace; and the third when her ghost army plan failed after Aranea deserted, and she agreed to just fuck off completely with Vriska.

MEENAH: hell the best choice i ever made involved givin up MEENAH: one day i said MEENAH: fuck da throne MEENAH: ran off to the moon MEENAH: thats how this whole crazy mess kicked off

And let's not forget, she's kind of the main driving impetus of a lot of their problems - her bullying, which NOBODY STOPPED, was directly responsible for Damara's freakout, which was in turn directly responsible for LE's entry into their universe.

Like... Meenah is not supposed to be a good guy, and her change to one right at the end of the comic is, I believe, a symptom of Hussie's truncation of plotlines, and his actual middle finger to the fandom (which the dancestors aren't). The ENTIRE comic, Meenah's opinion that the Condesce is cool and badass and awesome never changes. She's DIRECTLY responsible for the worst of the bad shit that befalls the Beforans and never takes responsibility or apologizes for any of it. And she's kind of set up to be somebody that Karkat needs to refute in order to complete his arc - his offer to jump off the meteor and go on a suicide mission to fight LE with her is an attempt to shirk his responsibilities, to his team and to his species, what Meenah represents.

THIS IS NOT TO SAY I DON'T THINK THE DANCESTORS DESERVE SOME REDEMPTION.

Even when they aren't exactly complex characters, they are all still written as if they're real people, and real people have the capacity to change. The fact that Porrim did get better after death, that Meenah and Aranea are so complex and deeply explored, that Damara and Mituna are so sympathetic, and that there's so much to unravel with all the other dancestors, says to me that while they probably wouldn't have served as important characters to the ultimate story, they would have at least been recurring, and potentially utilized more strongly as foils against the Alternian trolls, assuming the latter were going to be revived and allowed to finish their arcs.

Personally, I like the idea that as the Alternian trolls self-actualize more and more, they wind up tearing into the Beforus trolls for their failures, which culminates in the Beforus trolls having a kind of "oh crap, we really did suck for most of our lives and then die" moment, which allows them to decide to actually do something good and useful for once, and ALL participate in the LE fight of their own volition.

But within the framework of the story's themes, the reason they don't get to make it to the end is because they failed to grow up. It's important that they're physically adults by the time they die because that's the "finish line" of a coming-of-age, the genre whose themes pervade Homestuck. They became adults without growing up at all. If the theme of Homestuck is that children should mature, become kind, and one day be responsible for a new world, then the dancestors represent children who did not mature, who were terrible and cruel to each other, and who irresponsibly passed their problems down to those that would come after them, forcing them to clean up their mess.

So, uh. Yeah.

I used to despise Eridan and think he was the absolute worst character (barring Cronus ig) but you have shown me the light and completely turned my opinion around and now I think he is such an endearing little freak <3 I read your whole blog already but if you've got any more thoughts on eri or anyone else then I hope you post them bc I'd love to hear more abt it!

i have sooo many controversial opinions about the dancestors you have noooooo idea

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

I used to despise Eridan and think he was the absolute worst character (barring Cronus ig) but you have shown me the light and completely turned my opinion around and now I think he is such an endearing little freak <3 I read your whole blog already but if you've got any more thoughts on eri or anyone else then I hope you post them bc I'd love to hear more abt it!

i have sooo many controversial opinions about the dancestors you have noooooo idea

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Has anyone asked you about erisol?

If no, then what's your opinion on them! :-)

I feel like people will be upset at me for this, but a completely platonic and completely lukewarm mutual dislike... they don't really like each other, but take no great issue with each other either. The boys are not fightingggg

So like. A common thing in fandoms is taking things at face value and not really reading any deeper into them. You see this a shitton with Eridan in general - lots of people take it 100% at face value that he's a casteist genocide liker, when it's pretty clear upon further examination that he's pretty much lying about being casteist and doesn't actually want to murder his friends. So, at face value, Eridan hates Sollux, and either wants to do spadesies with him, or go ashen with him. And so this has become a really popular ship, but the thing is... at basically every turn, the story kind of goes out of its way to point out that there's actually nothing between them. At least romantically.

See, Eridan does not actually hate Sollux, at least not to the level of pitch/ashen. TWICE before Sollux and Feferi start hanging out all the time, we see Eridan commenting on Sollux in a fairly neutral-negative way - the first time calling him "a drama machine" and noting that "it is fuckin pathetic," and the second time as "the dead guy who saved [Feferi]". And let's be clear about the former, Eridan is just kind of Like That, he's rude as fuck even about people he LIKES (calling his BFF Karkat an "assblood" and sarcastically referring to Feferi by her royal titles), so that's actually one of the less nasty things he's said about someone.

Meanwhile, on Sollux's end, he LITERALLY says "not interested" to what he perceives as pitch/ashen advances from Eridan. Like, actually just says those words out loud. Not even in a pesterlog, he actually just says those words with his mouth.

So it seems to me that there's a pretty clear case to be made here that Eridan and Sollux kind of just... don't really give a shit about each other, and probably wouldn't have interacted in any substantial way if not for Feferi's involvement. Especially because Eridan's chosen method of hitting on Sollux is with casteism, something he's already faking in the first place.

If we really want to dig into this, though, it's kind of - in my eyes - a lukewarm case of the hedgehog dilemma. They're a bit too similar, and it winds up causing them both mild pain to get too close.

They're both nihilists that kind of hate themselves. Sollux's mutated brain causes him a not-insignificant amount of discomfort, his visions of the future and of the "imminently doomed" have made him lose a lot of hope, and he blames himself for killing Aradia, something so painful that he didn't tell anyone else she died, to the point where most of the team - including Terezi and Tavros - had to find out after entering the game. Meanwhile, Eridan struggles with the perceived inevitability of a lifestyle that causes him nothing but distress, and his constant, overwhelming anxiety about it leads to constant stressing over whether or not he's "good enough"; whenever he's in severe emotional distress, he starts beating up on himself.

They also both front at being more okay with their problems than they actually are. Sollux has his 1337 hacker, two cool for you persona that he puts on, and Eridan is always trying to be the big bad sea dweller. For example, Sollux goes "I'm not trolling the humans, it's beneath me," but he's in Jade's trollslum, so the implication there is that he totally did try trolling, it went badly for him, and now he's pretending that he was always better than that. And I don't think I need to tell you how hard Eridan works to try and present himself as badass and scary and totally not deep in the throes of emotional anguish at all times.

And these are the similarities that ultimately make Erisolsprite so stable. Erisolsprite speculates that maybe the reason he hasn't exploded yet is that deep down, he loves to suffer. The truth is, there's nothing between the two that's really so objectionable that they would ACTUALLY hate each other; Eridan isn't actually casteist, and Eridan never really hated Sollux in the first place.

Neither would they bring each other any comfort or joy - Eridan doesn't have any sympathy for Sollux's baggage, since, like, what, he only killed ONE person, and was even under mind control, so it's not like it was really his fault. He's a drama machine. And Sollux wouldn't have sympathy for Eridan's problems, partially because they manifest in such cringeworthy, embarrassing ways (and Sollux is highly sensitive to not being cringe, seeing as he's always commenting on other people being embarrassing or overly earnest), and partially because - I mean, fuck it, he's a rich-ass sea dweller who doesn't need to worry about being harvested to be a battery for a living ship. And also he's an idiot.

That's kind of what their relationship is to me, you know? A tepid and lukewarm dislike. They're just similar enough to each other to understand the other, and just different enough to be like "ugh, but that guy suuuuuuuucks". It's very funny, but not really a ship, hahaha.

So what you really get from that is two guys that just kind of dislike each other. Not vehemently or diametrically enough for pitch or ashen, and not a trace of the requisite pity for flushed or pale. When you throw the two together into one sprite, it won't shut up about how much it hates itself, how each part of itself is flabberghasted by the other, and how much practically the only reason it doesn't explode is a resounding "meh."

Eridan likes to validate his despair; ironically, since it's all he's ever known, it's where he feels comfortable - and nobody would provide better doomscrolling material than the doom player. Similarly, Sollux likes to torment himself, suffering his guilt in silence, and Eridan has SO MUCH to feel guilty over. Combine them into one entity, and you have a guy who can reach SUCH levels of revelling in his own misery, you don't even KNOW.

Not that it's healthy or positive for either of them... just that it would be incredibly stable. It's their worst tendencies being satisfied by each other. Maybe that's a form of leprechaun romance, but it's certainly not a quadrant.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

opinions on erivris? (canon + potential)

Friendship! This one's a bit weird to answer because I personally feel like canon pretty much shows us what's up with their relationship, but I can still talk about it!

So we know that Vriska initially got Mindfang's journal from following a meteor she saw shortly after leaving the caverns. This journal eventually led her to a ghost ship, where she found the Flourite Octet during a roleplaying campaign. Eridan mentions getting his crosshairs from a ghost ship too, implying that the two found it together while FLARPing. Since Vriska was explicitly led there by the writings of her ancestor, and she always wished to be like Mindfang, and Eridan also believes that his inheritance of the gun was a sign that he was meant to follow in his ancestor's footsteps/finish their unfinished business, it's heavily implied that the two's kismesistude was largely the result of both of them feeling obligated to pick things up where their ancestors left off.

Now, Karkat's speculated before about Vriska's fucked-up psyche from all the murders. I'll probably just post that, because, to be honest, I trust Karkat's opinion:

CG: OK, MOST PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T HAD THEIR LOBE STEM CAUTERIZED ARE CAPABLE OF FEELING THE TWO PRIMARY EMOTIONS, HATE AND PITY. CG: PITY IS OF COURSE JUST THE TONED DOWN VERSION OF THE CENTRAL EMOTION, HATE. CG: AND ALL THE NUANCES OF PITY MANIFEST AS VARIOUS OTHER KINDS OF FEELINGS LIKE WHATEVER CHEMICAL REACTIONS TRIGGER MATING FONDESS OR THE MYSTERIOUS FORCES THAT ARE BEHIND MOIRALLEGIANCE. ... CG: A WELL BALANCED PERSON IS IS GOING TO HAVE A GOOD DISTRIBUTION BETWEEN HATE AND THE VARIOUS PITY HUMORS. CG: HAVING A GOOD BALANCE KEEPS ALL THE EMOTIONS SHARPER, SEE I THINK THAT'S YOUR PROBLEM. ... CG: BUT SEE, YOU'RE TOO HEAVY ON THE HATE SIDE, OR AT LEAST YOU PRETEND TO BE WHICH IS MAYBE WORSE. ... CG: AND YOU THINK YOU'RE HATING UP EVERYONE HARD WHEN YOU'RE REALLY JUST BURNING OUT THAT ENTIRE EMOTIONAL HEMISPHERE. CG: IT'S LIKE LUKEWARM HATE. PRETENDER'S HATE, WITH NO COUNTERPOINT AT ALL. CG: AS SUCH THERE'S NO REAL SUBSTANCE TO YOUR HATE, IT'S LIKE A CARDBOARD MOVIE PROP. CG: WHICH IS WHY YOUR BRAIN IS BROKEN, KIND OF LIKE TAVROS'S BUT ON THE OPPOSITE HEMISPHERE I GUESS. CG: OR MAYBE YOUR BROKEN BRAIN LED TO THE IMBALANCE IN THE FIRST PLACE, I DON'T KNOW. CG: WHATEVER THE CASE IS, YOU'RE KIND OF EMOTIONALLY SCREWED, SORRY TO SAY. CG: YOUR HATE'S TOO DULL FOR A PROPER KISMESIS, IN MY OPINION. CG: AND I DON'T SEE ANYONE CHOMPING AT THE BIT TO BE YOUR MOIRAIL HONESTLY, UNLESS THERE'S SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO WOULD ACTUALLY BOTHER PITYING YOU. CG: AND LANDING A MATESPRIT? HAHAHAHA! CG: SERIOUSLY, LIKE THAT WOULD EVEN INTEREST YOU. CG: BASICALLY ANY FEATURE OF YOUR EMOTIONAL PROFILE THAT USUALLY MAKES SOMEONE VIABLE IN THE REDROM DEPARTMENT MUST BE TOTALLY FRIED. CG: YOUR BLACKROM POTENTIAL'S PROBABLY TOAST TOO.

So basically, what Karkat is saying is that Vriska's a sloppy mess. Because of her personal suite of issues, caused by a demanding and "intense" "sym8iotic" relationship with her lusis and all the child murders she's had to do (many thousands), she functionally doesn't have enough emotional effort to muster up for pretty much anybody.

And this all makes sense, because Vriska's entire suite of problems stems from having to be tough as nails and justifying her actions. No weakness, no kindness, no mercy, no pity. And since she's closing herself off from the rest of her emotions, all she has left is a "dull" hate, insufficient for a proper kismesistude. Frankly, according to Karkat, she just can't hate anybody hard enough.

Now, Vriska and Eridan have a lot of parallels, between their ancestors' shared history and the similar demands made by the lusii in their lives. However, Vriska is far more successful at fitting into the highblood mold; since she's better at closing herself off from feelings of guilt or pity, and - Team Charge debacle nonwithstanding - capable of forming and maintaining friendly relations, if not friendship, with other trolls (Equius, Kanaya).

In contrast, because the two kind of serve as foils for each other, Eridan is really bad at managing his feelings. Between expressing guilt about the kid he just orphaned:

That should keep her happy for a while. And make a freshly orphaned troll somewhere pretty sad.

And the fact that he's generally known for his "exaggerated emotional theatrics," which generally stem from genuine deep-seated anxieties he holds towards his position in society and the weight of a seemingly inescapable future (check out my Eridan essay for more), I think it's safe to say that he kind of represents the opposite of Vriska's personal suite of issues: where she closes herself off from her feelings too much, and is thus constantly projecting an air of being tough and mean and scary, Eridan expresses his emotions too much, and is thus seen as cringe and overbearing and attention-seeking.

And this equal-but-opposites kind of thing crops up in other facets of their life - Vriska's murders are motivated primarily by self-preservation, as her lusus dying means she dies, too; meanwhile, Eridan's murders carry with them the survival of the entire species, as well as his friends specifically. Vriska's lusus is described as intensely demanding, and their relationship symbiotic (read: codependent); Eridan's is described (by proxy, via Cronus's lusus) as "stern and fatherly," with an implication that he's provides pretty much no emotional support whatsoever (which I expand upon here).

So, if Vriska's relationship problems are caused by the fact that she's so removed from her own feelings that she has no emotional effort to spare, then it stands to reason - and indeed seems to be the case - that Eridan's emotional problems are that he's far too emotional, and thus, going in too hard, and in too messy a direction, no matter who he's attempting to pursue. (Nepeta calls his flushed advances "cr33py and insincere," Kanaya finds his ashen advances "indecent," and Equius expresses feeling uncomfortable with his flirting.)

Indeed, Eridan strikes up flirting astonishingly quickly, as seen when he shares only a few words with Rose before asking if she wants to go pitch with him. There's several factors involved here.

The first is that his emotions run fever-hot at all times, to the point that he has difficulty parsing both their origins and their aims; if you asked him point-blank if he was really in love/hate with whomever he was flirting with, he would answer you with a firm "yes," even if it's obvious to everyone around him that he probably isn't.

The second is that he's desperately lonely, and likely sees a relationship as a form of alleviation from that loneliness, so he's over-eager to get into one. A romantic partner isn't supposed to leave you alone, after all, and we can see from Vriska accidentally ghosting him to mercy kill her lusus that he tends to assume people ignore him on purpose. Because he has anxiety. The boy just craves attention.

And finally, establishing a relationship, especially a pitch one, is tied up in his general problems regarding duty and obligation. Not only is there pressure from the empire to fill both concupiscent quadrants by adulthood, but Dualscar had a kismesis, so Eridan ought to have one, too. We see from the way he treats killing angels as a duty he has to undertake, the same as killing lusii, that he has great difficulty divorcing his current situation from the anxiety that motivates him to complete his work, so it's likely that he's still moving according to this feeling that he "has to" fill these quadrants or else Something Bad Will Happen.

And, with Vriska specifically, here's the thing - there's never a point where he genuinely describes hatred for her. The most we get is him using some colorful slurs to describe her to Kanaya, but he never goes into specifics, like "I hate her for X". So the question that all of this begs is, did Eridan ever hate Vriska at all?

And the answer is probably no. Personally, I don't think their kismesistude was ever really serious, nor did they ever actually hate each other. Both of them, feeling obligated by their bloodlines, entered into the kismesistude on the grounds that it was their duty, an obligation, and at some point, Vriska realized she wasn't really into it, and Eridan got the rejection through his thick, woeful skull. Their interaction in [S] Past Karkat: Wake up. pretty much says it all.

VRISKA: Hey. ERIDAN: hey VRISKA: So........ ERIDAN: wwhats up VRISKA: Nothing. VRISKA: Standing by the old horn pile I see. ERIDAN: yup VRISKA: Yeah........ VRISKA: Ok then. Carry on I guess. ERIDAN: god damn vvris wwhys it still got to be so flippin awwkwward like this come on ERIDAN: wwe used to havve a good thing goin remember our campaigns ERIDAN: that shit wwas epic wwhere are you evven goin to find a rivvalry like that VRISKA: It was fun, Eridan. While it lasted. VRISKA: 8ut it ran its course! I don't know what else to tell you. ERIDAN: oh as if im not so ovver it please spare me your disdain mindfang ERIDAN: im wworkin on findin a neww rivvalry wwhichll make ours look like a kiddie game ERIDAN: wwhich oh by the wway IT WWAS VRISKA: If you say so, Dualscar! 8est of luck with that. VRISKA: Too 8ad the luck's all mine now! Hahahaha.

To paraphrase:

-Awkward foot shuffling- ERIDAN: I really enjoyed what we had, when you paid attention to me. Are you sure you don't want to go back to that? VRISKA: I guess it was fun, but I'm not interested, like I've told you a bajillion times already. ERIDAN: Yeah, I know, I just figured I'd ask. ALSO I'M TOTALLY EMOTIONALLY FINE AND NOT SAD AT ALL BECAUSE SADNESS IS WEAKNESS AND I'M NOT WEAK, SEE? I CAN BANTER. I'M NORMAL ABOUT THIS. I'M TOTALLY OVER YOU. VRISKA: Hahaha. Yikes. Good luck, dude. Genuinely no hard feelings on my end.

And there really aren't hard feelings. Before the retcon, Vriska mentions on the ghost pirate ship that she wishes Eridan was there; post-retcon, she's the one who's willing to go to bat for him a little when she and Terezi are discussing who to bring back with their extra kernelsprites. Eridan is doing his usual thing of "well, I've accepted their rejection... but am open to them changing their minds, crazier things have happened" thing with her, but that DOES mean that he has accepted the rejection. (More about the way he handles rejection and flirting here.)

So pitch is toast for them; they've been there, done that, and probably never even hated each other in the first place. On the other quadrants:

The thing with pale is that it's about keeping each other calm. Given that Eridan seems to puff up whenever Vriska is involved - because, even if he never hated her, the fact that she could do the Highblood Thing more naturally than he could probably fuels his general insecurities about his inability to meet that ideal - I don't think it would be successful on that count alone. Even without that, I highly doubt Eridan would be capable of reining Vriska in, nor would he even particularly care to (and vice versa) - the two of them both struggle with empathy for other people.

Flushed is, hmmm... well, the thing is, both of them have been shown having flushed tastes of "nice" - Vriska's weird vascillatory thing with Tavros, and then her fond feelings for John, and Eridan's interest in an idealized version of Feferi. In fact, Karkat outright says he thinks Tavros is broken in such a way that he doesn't feel hatred for anybody, and Eridan says to Feferi that he thinks she's too nice to hate anybody; whether or not that's true, we can extrapolate that the two of them tend to be interested in people who are just really really nice. And unfortunately, the two of them are not particularly nice at all.

So personally, I think the best possible ending for these two is friendship. The incompatible aspects of their personalities - Eridan's desperate need for attention and emotional support, and Vriska's difficulty with providing it - wouldn't be a problem in a casual friendship, and they clearly hold each other in fairly positive regard. For their own sakes, I don't think they should be in too much contact - Eridan is painfully sincere and emotional even at his best, and Vriska is tough and badass even at her best, and I think she'd wind up hurting him, and he'd wind up exhausting her - but as, like, casual buddies that see a movie with each other or do extreme sports or something every so often? Not bad!