#Kanaya’s like “But How Can I Be Sure She Wants To Take Things In A Red Direction?”

[offkilterkeys]

It sucks that Jane and Kanaya got shoved into the mommy friend roles cause they’ve got such potent exasperated older sister and bug eyed younger sister energy respectively

[thewertsearch]

GA: I Woke Up A Long Time Ago GA: I Had Trouble Sleeping When I Was Young [...] GA: And When I Was Supposed To Be In My Cocoon I Would Often Wander Out To The Desert GA: Where One Day I Was Visited By A Stranger Who Dressed And Spoke In White

Oh, for the love of peace. Is there anyone that this globe-headed chucklefuck doesn’t have in his pocket?

GA: He Put Me To Sleep And I Awoke On Prospit […] GA: He Said He Was My Guardian GA: And Though He Visited Rarely I Did Regard Him As That GA: Then Later He Stopped Coming

This one might not be so bad, actually. Scratch seems curiously uninterested in Kanaya, and she bears none of the telltale signs of his manipulation.

Maybe these visits were actually just part of his day job. As Alternia's First Guardian, Scratch might be obligated to protect the Frog Temple and its associated Player, just as Bec did on earth.

GA: In Time I Began To Believe He Was A Figment Of My Mind […] GA: But Then While Playing Our Game I Learned He Was Real […] GA: And Had Been Manipulating Us All To Advance His Schemes

Bad news like Scratch gets around - but not as much as I'd like it to. Kanaya views Scratch as a menace localized to Alternia, and seems unaware that he's involved in Rose's fall, too.

GA: It Was Saddening To Learn My Fortuitous Awakening Had Been The Product Of A Nefarious Ploy GA: Youre Lucky That Your Awakening Probably Had No Such Entanglements

No, Jade's awakening was part of Vriska’s nefarious ploy. She might be a bit of a loose cannon, but I'd take her over Scratch any day.

GA: I Feel A Bit Silly That It Took Me So Long To Engage With The One Corresponding Closely With My Role 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

GG: are you saying rose is reckless and dangerous? GA: Yes Definitely GA: We Have Our Share Of Dangerous Players Who Seem To Do Nothing But Cause Problems GA: I Believe She Is Yours

I think it’s a little unfair to tar Rose with the same brush as Vriska - or even Terezi, for that matter. It's not like Rose has actually killed anyone, and she's generally a lot more sensible than-

...alright, touché.

GA: And If Her Insane Plan Wasnt Alarming Enough GA: She Has Been Communicating With The Stranger I Mentioned GA: And Unsurprisingly She Has Not Been Forthright About The Nature Of Their Conversations

Wait, so she does know that Rose has been talking to Scratch?

That means that Rose is almost certainly aware of the mayhem Scratch caused on Alternia. It was probably the first thing Kanaya told her, when trying to warn her - and yet, Rose is completely unfazed. When questioned, Scratch undoubtedly provided the perfect excuse.

I’m coming to realize that we probably can’t outmaneuver Scratch -at least, not while we're playing by his rules. If we really want to pull ourselves out of the web he's woven, we should focus on exploiting his 'dark spots'. Both the Scourge Sisters are aware of them, but I don't know if they've told anyone else.

GA: And Hes Not Merely A Guardian GA: Im Very Sure He Is A First Guardian GA: Like Your Lusus Was […] GG: im not sure why, but the sound of that makes me really nervous GA: I Feel The Same Way About It

I hate to tell you this, guys, but First-Guardianing is just how he pays the bills.

It's his side hustle you need to worry about.

[nutzworth]

was on twitter (oops) and theres a ton of people going apeshit over kanaya in the upd8 (hs:bc upd8) right obviously and i saw one (1) post about "still hating hs2. jade would not fucking do this" and like. huff.

fosmf if youre there and youve read the hsbc update tell me your thoughts on this. im so curious

in MY opinion, i really like jade in postcanon in general. OBVIOUSLY, the stuff with davekat SUCKS + IS WEIRD + outb of character (i doubt jade would cross boundaries in such a weird way? like a girl can take a hint esp for the people she loves.) but in the update it goes over jade and why she did what she did and like a cute little summary of the yiffy situation. i never really hated yiffy? and i hate yiffy even less with the update. narration + backstory with reasoning did its job.

SUMMARY, AS I SEE IT: jade was dating around mortals but came to the conclusion that they dont want HER, they want to say they dated the GOD OF SPACE. they wanted clout and she hated it. and i dont know. i think she went a little crazy cus of it. she was like I am truly alone in this world. Im cursed to be alone. Im doomed because of my aspect. How can i fix this. solution: HAVE A BABY. and it needs to be one of her god friends. she cant have a baby with a random mortal. john and dave are boys; they cant bear children. she cant have a baby with roxy or jane because she doesnt know them well. that leaves: rose lalonde so jade has a baby with rose lalonde and keeps it a secret. she talks to jane, and this is fine because its largely professional, and she makes sure yiffany (the baby) doesnt become a celebrity. yiffy is normal. yiffy is a normal kid and she has a normal life. jade needs her to have a normal life. jade needs to feel that connection with normality that she never had, jade needs to make sure yiffy doesnt go through the same damn thing she did. and she keeps it a secret. she bonded with rose. if kanaya finds out, thatll tear all three of them apart. jade craves the company. jade craves friendship and closeness. but of course, shes a space player and shes doomed. so they find out. and yiffy gets on the news. and everything is torn

ANYWAY: i think thats so cool. i think thats a great explanation. i think jade WOULD do that is the thing. its a logical train of thought and she makes some stupid mistakes and bad decisions but overall its rational. if i was in her situation i would probably do the same thing. yiffany longstocking is like jade harleys' my love mine all mine by mitski you get me. jade harley yearns for the closeness and having a baby can fill that. what other option did she have? she was crazy

interested to hear other peoples thoughts on this. i may just be biased because i love jade harley

[terraco-07]

I find the posts claiming that Rose and Jade were in character for their current series of actions interesting to say the least. Personally I can't help but see them far and away out of their original characterization, but I'll focus primarily on Rose here. I think it's really easy for us to forget the original comic when looking at subsequent works and forget the foundational information that informs us of who a character is. I'm sorry but less than a thousand pages of Epilogues and HS2 isn't going to tell you as much as 8k and the writers SHOULD be looking at the original and plotting off of that even if they were teens in it. When writing a sequel (Whether canon or not) the original matters! That all said when I look back at Rose on the meteor I see someone who let her nerves and her fear of failure and being alone propel her forward at all times. This girl got so nervous about impressing Kanaya that she was wasted and missed their first date. She's insecure and fearful that Kanaya might break up with her on the meteor as well. The way that scene went down and Kanaya yelling no to me reads as this wasn't the first time Rose has asked that. Regardless you take all of that and you add the fact that candy Rose was talking to John about how happy she was and how much she loved her wife and kid and we go from that to well I knew you'd forgive me and honestly I just wanted to see what would happen while Kanaya is actively going "You do remember you said a kid between those three would be horrible and you didn't like Jade right?" We have no reason to believe that Kanaya is an unreliable narrator here, if anything Rose more than likely is. The idea that Rose just went oh man my good bestie Jade wants me to cheat on my loving wife of over 10 years and went yeah sure anything for my friend is laughably bad I'm sorry. If that's actually a course of action being taken by the writers I genuinely question if we're writing this for a 5th grade reading level. HS2 has at times been a series of flatting characters into their most basic forms and I'm so tired of seeing this parroted by fans who take the most surface level shit and run with it without thinking a little deeper. I feel like I've gone over this before but making Rose into this sort of cold emotionless villain type is so uninspired while we're at it. We're creating problems for her when she had ten other things she could have been shitty for. The knew you'd forgive me line is especially egregious for some shallow anime villain type. I will say Rose is bad at communication I agree with those points, but that ignores the main issue. She's bad at talking about her feelings but she isn't bad at caring about Kanaya's. The idea that she would throw away or risk her relationship EVEN with the visions is kind of insane to me. Her fear of losing Kanaya would overweigh the trust in her powers. I think that Rose like a handful of other characters is just chronically misread and people are excited about an evil plotline but this is so half baked and the idea that she was always like this or this makes sense with her previous characterization is just actually insane to me. Look HS2 fans you can have your new Rose, but that's a different person I think we can all play nice under that assumption.

[divineerdrick]

Homestuck: Beyond Canon Upd8 for March 23, 2024

As James promised, we've got a second post for this month. No news or anything to go along with it, so let's just jump straight in!

Jane is evidently not handling things well.

Ah, good! We've got a link to the previous conversation. This can be very helpful for dealing with timeline shenanigans in the middle of pesterlogs. I just hope they're not too worried about our ability to put together where we are in the story. I mean if we've stuck around this long . . .

Jane's paranoia is building, but she appears to have not noticed Jake is spying on her. Still she seems somewhat overconfident in her abilities. To be fair, she has been dodging and surviving assassination attempts since childhood.

Wait! Jane on the moon? I thought that wasn't canon! Well, if anything on Earth C past the credits are supposed to be canon at least. I wonder if that means we might return to some of the sprite shenanigans?

Oh wow! This is a tirade and a half! The worst part is a lot of it is true. We know Jake wasn't the best parent for Jade, and we know now about Joey and Jude. But still, I got the impression Jake was much more in Tavvy's life than Jane was. And seriously! Forcing a premature pregnancy with Life powers? The hell! Worst part is when it comes to Homestuck's worst guardians, I'm pretty sure that only barely breaks top 5.

I'm dying! Jake is doing a Gamzee impression and Dirk can't take it!

Well that's a sentence I just read.

Jegus, Tavvy is still very much definitely in the running for worst childhood though . . .

Of all the things to say . . . No! No Jane! You don't get to claim any LGBTQ+ Allyship!

Still, although the Candy timeline is pushing things to an extreme, this is a side of Jane I don't think ever got considered. Jane has been training all her life to be a public figure, to be an Empress really. And as much as I love them, a bunch of idiot teenagers created a civilization and then just let it build for 5,000 years. From the previous iteration of beyond Canon, it seems the Exiles were the true guides until the kids returned.

And Jane saw a group of adoring, worshipful people greet them and knew she needed to step up. It just sucks she couldn't bring herself to truly include the Trolls in that.

Yeah, I'm with Dirk on this one. Wow! Jane blamed Jake for Dirk's death. Just, wow . . . And here I thought Jake was the one who never truly understood their friends.

All and all this was a really painful conversation. I think this one might have been worse than the one between Jade, Rose, and Kanaya. Why do some of the worst conversations in this story take place between Jake and Jane. From reading this, I'm really getting the impression they've always been more codependent than actually in love.

Oh fuck! That really fucking sells it!

I'm at a loss for words. I don't know if this is going to actually stick, or what Jake will actually do when I press, "Page of Hope: Rise up." but that was one hell of a way to realize an epiphany.

Wait, no! That's it! Like I get the reference but really! We're just going to open the door and leave it there!

Oh who am I kidding! How can I be in this fandom and honestly complain about an ending to an upd8 like this. Yes, I want it to keep going! Yes, I wanted a flash video to start! But how many times has this story kept me waiting? Let's just hope we don't have too much longer.

[kitkat-the-muffin]

For a while I rationalized the existence of the Homestuck Epilogues just cause I like Davekat and I just wanted to accept them being canon even if it also meant accepting tons and tons of character assassination and a terrible storyline

But honestly it’s time I take off the shipping goggles and acknowledge that all of the Epilogues is a mess, including my favorite ship content. They, like everyone else, are out of character and are making decisions that they’d never do

Roxy, who once threw a whole funeral for a cat, would never show disrespect at the death of one of her best friends

Jade would never prioritize invading other peoples relationships when she could be enjoying the company of her family and friends

John would never sit back and accept his fate, whether it be straight up dying or living a life of mundanity, if it meant he’d be miserable with it

Jake would never let people use him for their own gain (again), Dirk would never manipulate people (not after his character arc geez guys), Rose would never give up the chance to fix a problem herself, Kanaya would never leave her wife to suffer alone, Jane would never become the next Condesce, etc, etc.

And despite my rationalization of the Davekat scene through my shipping goggles, I have to admit that Dave would never jump headfirst into both a crush and relationship, especially when you account for his trauma. At the very least, he wouldn’t confess to having a crush without blabbering on about his anxieties first, likely coming out in the middle of a rant on accident (don’t deny it, you know he would) in the same way he accidentally calls Jane “John’s hot grandma.” He’d probably say something like “I’m going through a bisexual crisis, a bi-sis if you will- oh yeah I’m bi by the way, hahah bi-by like bye-bye which is what I should be doing before I embarrass myself further ok bye”

I can see him saying all that ^ more than I can see him downing a ton of alcohol and kissing his crush as if he was in some sort of romcom. Homestuck’s always been really good at deviating from tropes and making the characters feel more like real people, and real people don’t succumb to romcom scenarios. Karkat would smack the romcom out of Dave long before ever succumbing to his own romantic fantasies (It’s like, say you always wanted to be a fairy princess but once you actually turn into one you’re like “uhhh what this is so unrealistic and kind of uncomfortable...” Idk bad example). The point is that no one actually wants to be in a romcom, they just want some of those romantic events like singing songs and having deep emotional conversations, but not suddenly kissing each other after screaming at the fourth wall that’s for sure

Karkat is knowledgable enough in romcoms to know when he’s in one, and you know as hell he won’t give into a cheap narrative like that. Karkat’s never been one to let fate strangle him into submission, he wouldn’t have survived to 6 sweeps on Alternia if he had. Also, he has no interest in politics, not after the whole Gamzee thing anyway, and while I do think Karkat cares a lot for Dave and would want to make him happy, he surely wouldn’t do so by running for President. Karkat’s the kind of person who shows affection with little actions, like drawing with chalk or listening to music. You know, quality time

And I think it’s time that I woke up from my own romcom fantasy and realized that while I want these characters to have a happy ending, this just isn’t them in the first place

I’d like to hear some thoughts from non-davekat shippers on the subject. Nothing anti-davekat I mean, more like some opinions from people who are davekat-indifferent. How did this character development affect readers without red-tinted shipping goggles?

[classpectpokerap]

How do you feel about the portrayal of plurality in Homestuck? Because it’s not good.

Cherubs are “supposed” to predominate over their other personality. With Calliope being portrayed as naive for trying to co exist.

Horuss is mocked for being a system. But I’d say it was a king fun of people who pretend to be mentally Ill on social media for clicks.

Then their are the sprites

okay so

i guess we're doing this

HOMESTUCK AND PLURALITY: A PRIMER

BECAUSE JESUS CHRIST THERES SO MUCH

SO SO SO MUCH

okay. so

homestuck is one of the best pieces of media of all time for plurality and i fuckin mean it. no shot do not pass go i have NEVER seen anything that is more built from the ground up to Support plural reads. like, to the point where it feels impossible to read homestuck without it.

as a work dealing with two huge primary themes of a) finding yourself/identity/growing up, and b) ideas coming to life, plurality is pretty much the Perfect intersection between the two of them. like.

take rose for example.

rose is plural and it's great.

when the doomed timeline evaporates, future dream rose does not actually "cease to exist." she ceases to exist as her own person -- her memories, experiences, personality, thoughts (or, as shorthand, her selfstuff) all flows back into rose prime. and that experience is just something rose has to roll with. one becomes two -- that other rose is still in her mind.

jade's plural and it's great.

when her dream self awakens as jadesprite, jade has a horrific argument with her. if you're plural i'm sure you understand. fighting with an age-regressed version of you, stuck in a traumatic past, who WONT FUCKING LISTEN -- we've all . been there.

she has involuntary barks, she can't stop seeing images of fire, she wants to go back to nonexistence but she doesnt want to die and it's torture,

and then in cascade, jade fuses with her.

dream jade is still in there. that part of her she has to grapple with is still real. her dog who she loves is in there, too -- but, yknow. woof

then grimbark gets forcefully introjected into her. i've seen a few fics play with the idea that the grimbark personality is still residually there (read ygtpoasu), but it's not a huge thing that's explored in the text. more backgrounded. but still! her crisis of identity is in there.

wanna know what's NOT backgrounded

tavros's plurality is like, a pretty big factor in his character!!!! it's one of the bigger points vriska uses to bully him with (because she's projecting because she's projecting because she's projecting, because she's also plural and kins mindfang), it's like. a big thing that he has to cope with and figure out.

kanaya suggested tavros treat his self-confidence as his own brain guy, like, completely sincerely. she genuinely thought it would help, and it sorta did!!!!!

and like

it is FAR from the only positive example of plurality in the comic.

like. look at sollux and aradia defending "alternate reality copies" of characters -- which can be pretty easily extrapolated to them talking about fictives

like. !!!!

i dunno, man. i think that homestuck is a DEEPLY plural story. you should read mtm and kgtac for more exploration of these themes. read detective pony too while you're at it. like.

i havent even TOUCHED on horuss or dirk or karkat here because there is just so much. there's so much! like ultselves. oh my god i completely neglected to talk about ultselves or cherubs or --

augh

but anyway here's The Screenshots from mtm

homestuck is, like, the single most fictive compatible fictional work i've ever read.

"oh im being sent to another universe as a brain ghost? that happened to my buddy dirk"

"oh im one of many incarnations of myself, and perhaps not even the most 'canon compliant' one? haha dream bubbles moment"

"ive been isekai'd into another world? lol sburb"

it. yeah. god. i could literally talk about this all day. but instead im gonna direct you to my ao3.

check out no metaphors and then scroll through the "multiplicity/plurality" tag on my page

and if youve got more specific stuff, send in another ask!

[yanderes-galore]

Hey, I wasn't able to request a thing, may I request some hcs for yandere aranea with a human darling on the meteor?

Sure! I'm not going to mention 'GAME OVER' in this so this will just be her during the Dream Bubbles. I'm rusty with her so I hope I got her character right :( (I tried, I'm sorry-)

If anyone has tips on how to write her I'd love to hear them!

Yandere! Aranea Serket with Human! Darling

Pairing: Matesprit ❤️

Possible Trigger Warnings: Gender-Neutral Darling, Obsession, Manipulation, Mind control mention, Stalking, Thoughts of murder/Attempted murder, Violence, Jealousy, Possessive behavior, Forced relationship/Matespritship.

Aranea truly means well in her actions.

She's a Light player which leads her into long winded rants about information before eventually talking about herself.

She doesn't even mean to rant at times and many of her group aren't on the best of terms with her.

Meenah has been the closest troll she could call a friend.

Aranea serves as a guide like most Light players.

She's described to be a "nicer Vriska" by Terezi.

However she has shown she's more powerful in psychic abilities than Vriska.

Both Serkets have also been able to obtain God-Tier.

Aranea has potential to be dangerous yet she's very gentle, nice, and considerate.

Issues start to arise when she gives up morals to obtain her goals.

Aranea actually wouldn't be too bad if her darling was a human.

Despite her strength I don't believe she can use her mind control powers to control humans from what I remember.

She can control trolls but can only put humans to sleep.

She can still use this to her advantage.

You most likely met Aranea first in your dreams.

You're a human who has achieved God Tier similarly to your friends.

Which has allowed you to reside on the meteor with the surviving trolls.

When you could get rest you recall seeing Aranea.

When she speaks to you she's rather calm and nice.

As you speak with her through Dreams/Dream Bubbles she appears as a friend to you.

Honestly, Aranea most likely knows you longer than you do her.

A lot longer, actually.

Maybe she's yearned to befriend you for awhile now? Or maybe she's even felt a bit flushed for this human?

Either way, Aranea feels happy to speak and ramble to you while you visit the Bubbles.

Although her obsession doesn't entirely start until the meteor itself passes through the Dream Bubbles.

This way you can't blip out when you wake up as you're already awake.

Aranea finds it a shame she's contained to these Dream Bubbles and can't follow you around on your journey most of the time.

Aranea feels connected to you because you actually bother to listen to her lore dumping.

This may be because you're used to Rose and Kanaya explaining certain info to you.

Although you do make it known if she begins rambling too off topic.

Aranea is at least happy you look to her for info.

She wants to help you and the others take on Lord English.

That and she really does wonder if she feels some sort of attraction to you.

She's aware that Jake, another human, has flushed feelings for her.

Yet she isn't really interested in him in that way (other than manipulation potential).

She would rather try such a thing with you.

The biggest glaring issue is the fact she's dead and you aren't.

It's a thought that nags at her while she speaks with you.

Aranea's red flags are well hidden.

She never tells you more than she wants to let on.

She simply tries to play the role of "Dream Bubble Guide" and friend to you as you roam the confusing Dream Bubbles.

Yet what you don't know is she's stalking you... carefully seeing how to manipulate your friends into her goals and have you as her red love.

Aranea acts very curious about you.

She may already know a lot about you yet she loves to hear you talk about human culture.

Plus, if she wants you as her Matesprit, she needs to know how to treat you.

While she mostly acts as a guide for you to follow, she's also protective.

Aranea can heal as a Sylph, so she'll be sure you're always in a healthy condition.

Aranea may be irritated when you speak to others as I imagine she'd be jealous.

She doesn't want others being so close to you as she doesn't have many to talk to anyways.

Meenah most likely teases Aranea about her red love towards you.

Meanwhile Aranea is defensive because you're a human she has a crush on.

In terms of how she could keep you all to herself, I thought of three ways.

One is after her resurrection as she feels she can finally be with you since you'd both be alive.

Another is her putting you to sleep and dragging you deeper into the bubbles with her, since she can't mind control you.

Then there's the significantly darker one of... having you killed.

You can't leave her if you're a ghost!

Aranea is a yandere who doesn't show she is on until it's too late.

Although the fact you're God Tier makes it harder.

She seems like her love language would be ranting about her obsession.

She tells you thoughts and ideas she's had in long winded rants once she has you.

Meenah would actually be surprised Aranea had it in her to take what she wants, let alone a human Matesprit.

Perhaps she's rubbed off on her...

Or maybe Aranea was always secretly like this.

By the time you realize Aranea is bad news, she's already caught you in her web.

She tries to tell you she wasn't manipulating you!

She's just been... so lonely out here.

You'll get used to her, she's sure of it!

Just relax... and she'll find a way to be happy with you, even if you're a living human and she's a dead troll.

Just... don't think about leaving her.

She may need to put you to sleep again if you try to fight the plans she has in store for you and your friends.

[xeno-bio-sociology]

Would it even be possible for a Mother Grub-like creature to exist on a humanoid species scale without magic, considering the vast caloric intake it would need just to exist even without constant egg-laying? Speaking of, how fast do you think it could produce eggs? I'm trying to figure out numbers for the troll population and that's my starting point.

Woof, hmmm....

It's interesting because I have wondered some of these things myself before, wanting a place like Alternia or any other giant-animals & dragons world to be plausible, but I don't have the background to get into the actual science of it. But let's see how far I can get and then hope that someone else can fill in the gaps.

Okay, so the three major constraints we'd be working with here are: structural integrity vs gravity and square-cubed law, air intake and blood circulation vs square-cube law, and calorie intake vs food chains and square-cube law.

For those who don't know, the square-cube law is the principle that the mass/volume/weight of an object grows faster (x3) than its surface area (x2) or the measurement of its height/length/depth in one direction (x1). An ant, being much smaller than a human, needs proportionally less muscle to fight back against gravity. Its exoskeleton doesn't need to be made of a super-tough material to withstand most of the impacts it receives or to easily contain all the bodily tissues. It needs less oxygen and what oxygen it has can reach all its tissues even without a special tube system to pump it all over the place, and it can survive on a very small amount of calories. If you simply embiggened the ant to a human size it would collapse and be unable to breathe.

So let's take this one at a time: structural integrity Our mother grub needs to be made of much stronger material than an ant is. There is precedence for this, found in other animal kingdoms. Elephants manage to move around despite their size, as did the dinosaurs before them, with huge dense bones and similarly meaty muscles. And both the scaly-footed gastropod and some rodents integrate metals into their bodies to toughen their shells and teeth respectively.

This is an alien from a different planet and evolutionary tree after all, we do not have to stick to the traits we can observe in the insect kingdom on our own planet here. Calling trolls and mothergrubs insects or insectoid is simply a shorthand for convenience and we can decide that they've convergently evolved these adaptations or whatever else we might invent to allow them to work as we wish, we just have to make the actual function make scientific sense. So, the mother grub's exoskeleton is metal-infused, and she might have a secondary internal skeleton to hold her up as well, as a solid core to hand things on is more structurally sound and mobile than a can around it. Or perhaps a more honeycomb-like approach, with supports scattered throughout; like a building with rooms. Maybe it evolved in a kind of opposite way to how a turtle did, where it had an internal skeleton that then grew into a shell. Or perhaps it is a new structure that we do not have an equivalent for in our insects. Either way, that's the exoskeleton out of the way.

As for muscles, while I think it's possible for them to have evolved them to the point that they can have the typical thin limbs of an insect, since we can see that mechanical devices can operate under such contraints, I think it's likely that that the limbs in general and the weightbearing and locomoting legs especially are significantly chunkier than we would see on an ant.

I will say however, that it is entirely possible that the mother grub in particular is not especially expected to move around by herself, and typically relies on drones and jadebloods to do much of anything. Pretty sure that’s how termites do. Perhaps Kanaya's virgin mother grub is also smaller than she is depicted; though the opposite could be true and most mother grubs do not regularly attain such sizes and either the lusus fluke or her being unmated contribute to her being as large as she is. We simply do not see any other mother grubs, though the implication that the skull on Terezi's scale is from one would suggest that the inverse is true and mother grubs can be enormous indeed. Either way, she probably doesn’t fly unless she’s much lighter than she looks and maybe filled with helium. Perhaps the wings are decorative? Or maybe they function as part of a heat-dissipation system or even for oxygen exchange themselves?

In any case, onto the next issue: air and blood circulation

As you probably already know, insects have a much different respiratory system to vertebrates. Instead of a central hole or three to breathe from and a sac to breathe into, where it dissolves into the blood and then a bunch of tubes all around the body to take the blood to the tissues, they tend to have what are called "spiracles," a bunch of little holes in their skin big enough for the air to enter and a tube to take the air to the tissues directly. The problem with this on a large scale is 1: less surface area:volume means you have less space for spiracles, 2: more volume:size means it's harder to get the oxygen to all the tissues you've got packed in there. Letting the oxygen essentially just passively absorb just isn't very efficient.

In past eons some invertebrates have gotten around this to get much larger than they are today by the simple expedient of there being significantly more oxygen in the air than there is these days. We can also get a heck of a lot more leeway by updating our mother grubs to have a heart and blood and veins and such. Something more complex than the simple book lung that spiders and such have. For reference, while the largest terrestrial invertebrate that ever lived was a 110lb millipede we think that the blue whale is pretty much the largest an animal can get with a mammalian circulatory system before the heart just can't pump the blood through the body fast enough, and it comes in at 199 tons (two-hearted whale when).

So pump up the oxygen level (not too high or there's fire explosionsm especially under the alternial sun), and maybe decrease the gravity on the planet and things can grow pretty big. Maybe you could even switch out oxygen and carbon as the main elements we're looking at here and get a boost that way too. I’m not big on chemistry or how things work, so maybe oxygen and carbon are the only things that’ll work here, but for instance the atmosphere on earth is 78% nitrogen and only 21% oxygen and humans don’t even do anything with the nitrogen, so even assuming that humans have to breathe the same air as exists on alternia (not a safe bet, as each species would have some wiggle room in terms of air composition and all humans were godtiered and capable of surviving in the vacuum of space [or at least the medium] by the time they were face-to-face with the trolls, and Earth C is both dubiously canon and potentially contains species that are not quite the same as those on either earth or alternia) you’ve got plenty of space to fill with some alternate gas in there.

So we’ve got a metal-plated, well-muscled mother grub who maybe doesn’t move around so much and has anatamy containing lungs, pumped blood, and veins. Maybe she’s got spiracles still and they work like our own airways or maybe she’s got a big honker of a nose like humans do, but either way we’re cooking with fire here. We’ve made the planet lighter and changed the O2 content and maybe we’re working with a silico-hydrate base for all our flesh-building purposes and thicken up the air so it’s soupy and bouyant. Heck, maybe we shrink everything we see over on alternia and the trolls themselves a bit, and they’re only depicted as of equal size as humans for story reasons or maybe everything gets resized to a default setting once it enters the medium for convenience’s sake. Whatever, it’s not important cause now comes the problem that I keep running into headlong each time I try to tackle an alternia-like ecosphere. The food web.

Cause, see, the mother grub by her self and trolls as a whole, they’re not a problem. (Well, not until they start taking all those nutrients to space)

The problem is this: Lookit how many giant predators and hyper-predators there are. Lookit this dragon. That is canonically a newborn. She can fly and breathe fire. Lookit this horrorterror. She canonically eats a ton of land and surface dwelling meats and isn’t just subsisting off of chemical vents or something.

All that mass, the energy to go flying off into the sky with extra to (literally) burn? That’s gotta come from somewhere. And on the one hand, we have maybe a partial answer: the sun. Specifically, that it is implied to be extremely hot and strong and maybe close. Not explicit, since Trolls could be unusual in their being nocturnal and even looking at our sun for long will blind a person, but the implications are there and we can run with them to a big, hot, super energy source ripe for the taking. The problem with that is that energy typically doesn’t flow down the food chain very far. We like to think of the food web as being a self-sustaining perpetual motion machine, but that’s just not true. So much energy is lost at each step, often as heat. And then that heat dissipates into the atmosphere and then escapes out into the greater universe. Think about it; how many seeds does a bird have to eat to grow to its adult size, and then to sustain it every day? Then how many birds does a cat have to eat to do the same? And how many cats does a fisher eat, and how many of those does a puma need in its life? It’s a lot. It’s exponential at each step, since a creature must spend so much energy just maintining its daily life and can’t put it all on body growth. And then all of that big long chain has to be sustained on vast quantities of plant matter, who generate their own bodies from the sun. There is of course a secondary chain that “starts” with detrivores like fungus and flies, but is by necessity focused on a much smaller amount of resources than the main chain.

So we’re limited by the following:

- how much energy the sun makes

- the % of that energy that makes it to alternia

- the amount that bounces off alternia or its atmosphere before it can be harvested

- the % of that energy that photosynthesizers can harvest

- the % they can store

- the % they need to live and propegate until they are eaten

- how much the herbivore needs to grow and live and eat and reproduce

- the efficiency with which the herbivore stores the energy gain

- how much the creature that eats the herbivore needs to use

- how much ITS fat can store.

- and so on

We can mess with any and potentially all of the steps in the chain to increase potential length of it and allow more and more massive and widespread superpredators at the end of it. We’ve already started that by increasing the potency of the sun, but each change will have repercussions. For instance, if energy is so widely available then why bother to evolve anything more complicated than photosynthesis itself? I once heard an author say that one needs to have two levels of answers to worldbuild convincingly – to solve the first problem and then to solve the follow-up question. That after that people will be satisfied. Something about fighting nuns. Where did the nun learn to fight? In the sewers. Why was she in the sewers? To fight the crocodiles.

So: We amp up the sun. Why bother evolving herbivory? The sun is too hot and withstanding it is costly and resource-intense. Not everything can be a plant because not everything has the sun-blocking resources, and there is a niche for nocturnal herbivores who don’t have to invest in sun protection. Why carnivory? The sun-block also makes the plants tough and hard to eat and digest; eating meat is relatively quick and easy.

The same thing can be done at other steps. Maybe we make animal life on alternia more efficient: they can do all work of living without creating much waste-heat, and their versions of digestion and fat pack in more calories denser.

But again, the nitty gritty science is not my area of expertise, and these are the questions that can keep me awake at night. What kind of solutions could make the food chain more efficient? What kind of pressures would encourage long food chains, large fat stores, and giant hyper-predators? How can we engineer an environment that will predispose this planet to logically evolving dragons?

[pesterloglog]

Jade Harley, Karkat Vantas, Dave Strider, Roxy Lalonde

Page 99-105

JADE: the prince’s power grows.

KARKAT: JESUS CHRIST!

JADE: i feel him resonate through the void.

KARKAT: FUCKING GREAT.

DAVE: dude can you chill for like even a single fucking second

DAVE: also are you ok

KARKAT: OH, PARDON THE FUCK OUT OF ME FOR OVERREACTING A LITTLE WHEN MY GOOD FRIEND "POSSESSED JADE" BUSTS INTO MY RESPITEBLOCK AT 5 AM!

KARKAT: NEXT TIME I’LL JUST PULL THE COVERS BACK AND LET HER CLIMB IN!

JADE: i am uninterested in that scenario.

KARKAT: GREAT! POSSESSED JADE ISN’T EVEN HORNY! HOW FUCKED UP IS THAT?

KARKAT: HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?

DAVE: yeah i may be totally misunderstanding the intricacies of "next gen technology" designed by an idiot in microshorts

DAVE: but im pretty sure i locked that door

JADE: i unlocked it with my mind.

DAVE: fuck

KARKAT: FANTASTIC.

JADE: the prince’s powers are growing, but so are mine.

KARKAT: WOW? COOL? AND YOU HAD TO COME IN HERE AT THE ASSCRACK OF THE MORNING TO TELL US THIS?

KARKAT: LIKE YOU DON’T FLOAT AROUND LIKE A CREEPY PIECE OF SHIT ALL DAY AS IT IS?

JADE: ...

KARKAT: OH, IS THAT ALL? NOTHING ELSE TO SAY?

DAVE: karkat its fine

DAVE: who cares

KARKAT: YEAH. YOU’RE RIGHT.

KARKAT: IT’S NOT LIKE WE ACTUALLY HAVE ANYTHING TO WAKE UP FOR.

KARKAT: GO BACK TO BED.

DAVE: no dude im up fuck it

DAVE: i want coffee

KARKAT: FUCK! FINE! FUCK IT.

KARKAT: I NEED TO USE THE GAPER ANYWAY.

DAVE: oh me too

KARKAT: DON’T FOLLOW ME.

ROXY: oh what up

ROXY: its a whole ass pajama party up in here

ROXY: couldnt sleep??

KARKAT: JADE WOKE US UP BY BEING CREEPY.

ROXY: oh

ROXY: jade why did u do that

KARKAT: WHAT?

KARKAT: OH SHIT, THERE SHE IS! I DIDN’T EVEN HEAR HER FOLLOW US!

ROXY: sometimes a girls just got to get her drift on i guess

ROXY: it be like that

KARKAT: I PREFERRED WHEN ALL SHE DID WAS FLOAT AROUND AND POINT AT SHIT.

KARKAT: AT LEAST THAT WAS QUIET.

DAVE: yall want coffee

ROXY: sure

KARKAT: YEAH, THANKS.

DAVE: hate to give it up to venture capitalism but this coffee is EONS better than the garbage we had on the meteor

DAVE: this ship is maybe the dumbest thing ive ever looked at but its a give and take right

ROXY: maybe u just developed a taste for it

ROXY: i used to think coffee tasted like ass but drinkin it was another thing i felt like my mom woulda done

ROXY: turns out rose drinks tea and i stockholmed my own dumb butt into liking this addictive bean juice

ROXY: well i mean who knows what she drinks now

ROXY: dirk probs tossed the coffee machine out the space window right away

ROXY: dude doesnt "believe" in "substances"

KARKAT: WHY ARE YOU UP ANYWAY?

ROXY: well i wasnt but then somebody screamed like a rooster boned a teapot and had a noisy lovechild

DAVE: yeah thats basically accurate

KARKAT: FUCK YOU.

DAVE: maybe if youre lucky

KARKAT: THAT JOKE STOPS BEING FUNNY WHEN WE’VE ACTUALLY

KARKAT: UH

KARKAT: IS THERE MILK?

ROXY: lmao

ROXY: in the fridge

DAVE: wheres kanaya

ROXY: idk

ROXY: sleepin i hope

ROXY: last time i saw her she was on the second floor

ROXY: no

ROXY: the third floor observation deck

ROXY: this place is huge

KARKAT: PLEASE.

KARKAT: IT’S MAYBE A TENTH THE SIZE OF THE METEOR.

DAVE: yeah dude but that was basically a city

DAVE: this is more like a castle

DAVE: a castle of idk

DAVE: twenty something ennui

ROXY: anybody hungry

ROXY: i was thinkin about alchemizing some pancakes

ROXY: or maybe eggs

ROXY: they all basically taste the same at the end of the day i think alchemized food is like eighty percent imagination

ROXY: but both of you barely eat and its making me anxious

DAVE: damn thanks mom

DAVE: i mean

DAVE: shit

DAVE: dad

DAVE: roxy

DAVE: fuck sorry im tired

ROXY: haha its ok

ROXY: dont worry about it

DAVE: okay but just because our relatives turned evil doesnt mean we have to act like total animals

DAVE: we can still try to respect each others identities and shit

DAVE: anyway im gonna go check on kanaya

DAVE: possessed jade dont follow me

JADE: i am fine where i am.

DAVE: cool

[davekat-sucks]

As much as the postcanon kids are cool in design, I doubt people whenever anyone says “my favorite postcanon character is this kid” because in the epilogues Vrissy was basically a traumadump for Vriska to star her new character arc of escaping the fake and gay candy timeline while Tavros main feature was being timid and nervous, a flanderized version of Tavros Nitram. Harry had like 3 lines of dialigue through the whole story.

Now the sequel, Homestuck^2

The kids have actual dialogue and focus in different updates, Harry is the naïve but well mannered theatre kid with a crush on Vrissy, Tavros and Vrissy are hate dating, and Vrissy is generally a scene kid, and Tavros is the rich child who’s entire status is being a ransom bargain against Jane Crocker to get Yiffy back.

Sure they had some funny dialogue, but they are set pieces for Vriska to be the real main character.

Yiffy doesn’t even talk, she disrupts Gamzee’s funeral.

So it’s revealing why some Homestuck fans like HS2, they like the characters with pretty designs and dialogue that references new memes or has the character say something progressive and do anarchist praxis against Janeald Trumpcker like their hero Bernie Sanders.

Most of all they just want more Homestuck, quality is a second priority to the nostalgia and excitement of new Homestuck content, to regress in age just for a moment and feel what it was like to theorize, create, and read new content with an infinite potential of possible directions the story could go in! That’s why many fans saw the newest Beyond Canon update as “the best one yet!” Because it had their favorite characters doing new things

But what we have now does not have as much potential as people think it does, James Roach brags this story will be long, it will take longer than Homestuck 1 did to finish and may be as long as Homestuck, and the whole story is outlined, so we’re just waiting to see the inevitable disappointment that is Hussie’s plan for a final conclusion to Homestuck written when he was running out of ideas for handling Homestuck as a media franchise.

But it won’t matter, some people just want more Homestuck, regardless of quality.

If people want more Homestuck, they can just do stuff like make their own endings, fanart, fanfic, doujinshi, etc. Or commission someone to make said fanart or plushie. They don't need Andrew Hussie or WhatPumpkin after the webcomic was finished. Homestuck has made pop culture references and current Internet memes every now and then, but I don't think it became this excessive or wink at audience kind of deal. It gets annoying pretty fast. Worst is going Member Berries to old fans that are under Stockholm Syndrome, reading this comic.

Homestuck Beyond Canon being planned to be taking longer than the original base webcomic is very ambitious. Hussie and Whatpumpkin haven't even finished HIVESWAP after 10+ years since its original Kickstarter. If people who were in WhatPumpkin team that move onto the Homestuck Beyond Canon team under James Roach (who is even still working on the music for Hiveswap), couldn't even finish making a game that was paid in $2 million dollars full, how the fuck are they expecting to go OVER 9000 pages to beat the original? Also, aren't Vrissy and Harry cousins, technically? Sure Vrissy is not blood-blood related as she was adopted by Rose and Kanaya, but still being Rose's kid and Roxy being her Aunt, that would make her related to Harry. So troll incest of brother-sister is gross despite being a natural thing on Alternia, but human-troll cousin incest is okay? Talk about priorities on Earth C.

[chronicangelca]

Through Gold and Gloom

Link to this fic on AO3. Words: 4906 Date posted: April 30, 2019

Summary: "I just want her to have a perfect wedding," he sighs, hoping nobody calls him out for the sappiness of it.

"As long as she's marrying you, it'll feel perfect. I suppose you'll just have to make your best man fight off any potential suitors who have come to your wedding to steal your bride away 16th century style."

It's an hour before her wedding ceremony and Jade Harley has never wanted a drink before but God does she want one right now.

If her grandfather were still alive she thinks he'd have given her a glass of whiskey to steel her nerves and some speech about how proud he was of her for finally reaching this day. As it stands, the man died in a hunting accident eighteen years ago and she is stuck simply sitting still on the verge of tears while Kanaya pulls her mess of curls into something resembling an up-do and Rose frantically runs between the room where she is getting ready and the room where Dave is getting ready trying to make sure that everything is set for them to get married and holy shit, she's getting married.

"Are you alright? You look like you're... panicking, a little bit," Kanaya says when she steps in front of her to check her work only to see the tears beading up in the corners of Jade's eyes. She doesn't know how to explain that her answer is both I've never felt better in my life and I'd rather throw myself out that window than walk out that door. She's so, so excited to marry Dave, but at the same time every time she thinks about just what they are all here to do she just wants to burst into tears because it's all just a little too much to think about right now.

"Obviously she's overwhelmed," Nepeta says with a dismissive wave of her hand, and she wonders if that's all it is. Am I just overwhelmed? Is there just too much happening? Do I just need to take a step away from my thoughts and take a deep breath and then I'll feel better? Or what if I'm having second thoughts about this and I don't actually want to marry Dave? Is that even possible after everything? It's the last thing that leads her to scold herself because she has never wanted basically anything more than she wants to marry Dave Strider today. "Wouldn't you be?"

Finally she lets out a sob and buries her face in her hands and she's gonna mess up her make-up and Roxy's gonna have to completely redo it and she's gonna be so mad.

Rose slides into the room right after that and freezes, eyes going wide. She looks almost as panicked as Jade does. "Woah, woah, why is the bride crying? You're not having doubts about this, are you?" Jade sniffles and shakes her head, rubbing at her eyes. She swears she can actually feel her eyeliner smearing across her skin. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

She doesn't know how to voice her anxieties in a way that doesn't sound totally childish and dumb. She doesn't really know how to voice her anxieties at all, actually. "What if he decides he doesn't wanna marry me?" She eventually whispers, which she supposes is a concern but she doesn't think it's what's really wrong.

"Jade, he's been with you for six years. He plotted with my brother for three months on how to properly propose to you in a way that would, 'Make her heart melt, but not stress her out, you know?' He gushed in my DMs at three in the morning my time just three weeks ago because he woke up and you were cuddled up to him and he was debating calling into work because you were too cute to get out of bed. He's not going to change his mind about this," Nepeta tries to reassure.

She shakes her head and sobs again. "But he's too good. What if I'm locking him down for the rest of his life when he could be with somebody ten times as good as me?" And that, she suspects, is much closer to her actual insecurity. She has worried several times in the six years that she has been with Dave that he would regret choosing her of all the people he could have been with.

This time it is Rose who speaks up, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. "Are you actually stupid?" She snaps, and Jade looks up in surprise in time to catch the scolding look Kanaya sends her way. "No, she needs to hear it. I'm his twin sister, so I like to think I know him pretty well. And I remember when we were fourteen years old and he told me about how he'd just met John's little sister and he wasn't sure he'd ever seen someone so beautiful. He actually waxed poetic about how green your eyes were for a minute. I was almost proud. He used to call me at four in the morning my time when you two were in college because you were crying over how you were going to get a bad grade on your paper and you'd be forced to drop out of college and you couldn't live with the shame, and he was trying to proofread your papers for you but he couldn't understand a word of it because you were too smart for him. And he said that so many times that I would have punched him if I could have reached Texas from New York with some sort of mutant noodle arms.

"I think in Dave's mind, you're the most beautiful, intelligent, talented person in the entire world. Since we were 19, he's spent almost every day finding new ways to tell me about how in love with you he is. He's not going to change his mind, Jade."

She stares with wide eyes at Rose.

She remembers that day when she met Dave. He and John had been best friends since they were twelve, but she always hid out in her room when John had friends over or else was at her own friends' houses (Nepeta, in particular, was a frequent host when she felt too overwhelmed to deal with teenage boys). She had been getting ready to leave, and they'd been playing video games in the living room, and as she walked out of her room the two of them made eye contact and she felt her heart stutter in her chest. Foolishly, she'd thought to herself, I wanna marry that boy some day. And now, terrifyingly and amusingly, she really is.

It's an hour before his wedding ceremony and Dave Strider has never been so horrified by the idea of drinking.

"Dude, you're freaking out, just have one glass," Terezi says, holding out a glass to him again, and he swears to God if she offers him alcohol one more time he is going to take it and throw the thing across the room and he'll just deal with the consequences later. John, for his part, holds up a hand as though to silently signal to Terezi that she should stop, except she's completely blind so that's actually pretty fucking useless, Egbert. Still, a valiant effort. Karkat, apparently the only useful person in his entire wedding party, takes the glass from her hand, sets it on the nearest table, and rests his hands on her shoulders.

"I don't want a drink. I just need some fresh air or somethin'," he dismisses, though he knows this is not wholly accurate. Still, John immediately scoots over to the one window in the room that he is meant to be getting ready in and slides it open, and Dave promptly sticks his head out the thing and takes deep breaths of the cold air. It's surprisingly chilly for April, which kind of sucks since their actual wedding ceremony will be taking place in the garden outside, but it's great for right now.

"Are you... having doubts?" John asks, slowly, and Dave immediately snaps his head up to glare at him because what the fuck, no, of course he's not having doubts. John holds his hands up as though in surrender. "Okay, okay. Yeah, that was stupid. But... okay, I can't fix your problem unless you tell me what it is." Pretty sure you can't fix my problem either way.

There's a knock at the door and he straightens anxiously so fast he hits his head against the fucking window frame and he's rubbing the back of his head when Karkat says everybody's decent (technically Terezi says it first, little asshole that she is, but the door doesn't open until Karkat says it) and Rose slides into the room. "Little brother, what are you getting up to in here?" He wants to point out that not only are they twins, but he's the older twin, and he's almost an entire damn foot taller than her. Instead he just huffs and bends over to show her the top of his head without answering.

"Your wife is basically having a panic attack in the other room," she says in a tone like she is letting him in on a secret he isn't supposed to know about. Oh God, is she having doubts? "She says she's worried you're going to realize you could get better."

"That's ridiculous," he scoffs immediately. "Jade's the best it gets." And yet, he can still understand the anxiety. After all, he worries the same thing when it comes to her almost every day that they're together even though she has never shown any signs of regret or, in fact, anything other than love and affection for him in the years that they have been together. It can just be hard to believe that someone so amazing would choose you, and though he disagrees with her opinion on the matter on several grounds, he supposes he can see where she would be anxious about it.

"I told her you think that and she's breathing easier now, but I suspect she's still a little panicked about it." She hums after a moment and pushes him away to stand straight again. He rubs at his head and pouts even as she says, "No blood, no bump. Mom would have offered you a shot and then sent you off to play." Then she adds, "So, tell me what you're panicking about."

"I'm not panicking," he dismisses, glaring.

She just gives him a skeptical look, crossing her arms over her chest and raising a brow at him. It feels like she is staring deep into his soul with a challenging look. I'm starting to think that "twins are psychic" theory people have is true, and it's pretty fuckin' one-sided. "I'm just nervous that this is gonna go wrong somehow, I guess. I dunno how I'd even do it but what if I fuck it up?"

"Like you'll forget your vows or something?" She offers, and he stares at her in horror for a second because fuck, he didn't even think of that. He and Jade opted to write their own vows and he already struggled so much with just that. He ended up completely rewriting them four times before today, which is impressive being that he only proposed to her like five months ago. (140 days ago, actually, not that he's been counting down to this or anything.)

He's already scrambling to find a napkin or something now to write them down on again just to double check he has them memorized before she stops him with a cool hand on his shoulder. "Dave." He swallows and slowly turns to be facing her again. The groomsmen around him are all conveniently quiet for once in their lives. "Calm down. You're not going to ruin it. Even if you're a stuttering mess through improvised vows because you forgot what you actually wrote, Jade is still going to be in love with you and you're still going to be in love with her. That's all that matters." Then, after a moment, she adds, "Plus, it'll be more like the two of you that way."

He takes a shuddering deep breath and runs a hand through his hair. He'd be nervous about messing it up, except it's not like he's actually done that much with his hair for his wedding other than brushing it out for once. He just got a haircut for it a few days ago, but like every other haircut he's had in his life, it's not that easy to mess up. (Jade likes to run her hands through his hair when they're cuddling, though, and she somehow always manages to make it a total mess.) "I just want her to have a perfect wedding," he sighs, hoping nobody calls him out for the sappiness of it.

"As long as she's marrying you, it'll feel perfect. I suppose you'll just have to make your best man fight off any potential suitors who have come to your wedding to steal your bride away 16th century style." He laughs a little, his expression soft. Rose moves her hand from his shoulder to his cheek and he's so much taller than her it's almost comical. (Somehow, Jade is still shorter than her. He thinks it's sort of endearing, though.) "Your wedding is going to be perfect, Dave. You'll get up there and she'll come out and you'll see."

Dave is generally pretty anti-taking people's word for it (even Rose, who is right most of the time anyway, not that he would ever tell her that because it would go straight to her head), but he chooses just this once to believe that without asking for further proof.

Roxy finishes up her make-up again and grins at her. "You're so pretty," she says, cupping her cheeks to tilt her head at several angles to examine her work and then giving a satisfied little nod. Then she kisses her forehead right at the hairline, a dangerous game of lipstick versus very delicately done hair and make-up, and adds, "I wonder if Dave's gonna cry more or less than me when you're walking down that aisle." I don't think either of you can possibly cry more than I'm going to, she thinks, but she just laughs a little bit, breathy and wet as she almost starts to tear up again, though this time with happiness more than nerves. Just like she was hoping she would be crying on her wedding day. (Or rather, her preference if she absolutely has to cry on her wedding day.)

"It's a good thing that we've got waterproof mascara on, huh?" She says, sniffing, and Roxy laughs and nods a bit, hugging her one last time before going out to join the steadily growing crowd of people that are pushing to make sure everything is going smoothly and people are all about ready to head outside for the ceremony proper. Jade feels her nerves surge again at the thought that she's getting married in fifteen minutes but tries to tamp it down.

"The clouds are starting to clear up," Nepeta says from where she sits staring out the one window in the room. Jade walks over, careful not to trip over herself (she knew high heels were a bad idea when she's so clumsy), and then looks out.

She's right. The sun is starting to shine directly on the gazebo they're getting married in, and through the window she can see the very first people beginning to head outside and find seats along the little aisle down the middle that she's going to be walking down in practically no time at all. She and Dave had been worried it might be cold on their wedding day even though she'd wanted more than anything to do it outside. She smiles softly.

There's a knock on the door, and Kanaya steps inside. There's no Rose in sight which must mean that she's either still dealing with something with the boys (she wonders what they could possibly be struggling with that they're still holding her maid of honor hostage and she hopes it's nothing serious) or else is the one corralling people outside with Roxy. Can you corral something outside? She wonders.

"I have been told to give you a ten minute warning." She says it delicately, like she's worried it might set her off, and instead she just nods a little bit while her stomach does a little flip flop. There's only ten minutes before she's married. Ten minutes before she is supposed to make a commitment that will last the rest of her life. She is both excited and terrified. It feels stupid, since she basically already decided she was going to make this commitment when she was seventeen (and really, she made that commitment when she was eleven and saw him playing video games on her couch, but that wasn't real like the rest of this is-- like the rest of this has been for a long while now).

She continues to simply stare out the window as the people continue to go outside for the next eight minutes before there's another soft knock on the door and Rose enters the room, leading her uncle Jude behind her.

Jade looks over her shoulder at the both of them. Rose, for all of her wise words today, looks like she might be just as panicked as Jade was earlier (if she does hide it a little better). She has her hands folded and she's clenching her own fingers so tightly her knuckles are white. The part of Jade that always latches onto other peoples' negative emotions wants to panic and ask what's wrong. The part of her that knows she needs to walk down the aisle takes a deep breath and hooks her arm with her uncle's.

She walks down the aisle to Allegretto, which Dave knows as "That One Classical Song From X-Men: Apocalypse," but he can't even laugh about it because he's too busy just staring at her. God, she's so beautiful.

He's always thought the tradition that the groom isn't allowed to see the bride in her wedding dress until their wedding day was stupid, but now it is their wedding day and it's his first time seeing her in the dress and he wonders if the photographer will be able to capture just how enamored by her he is right now. How enamored by her he will be for the rest of their lives. (It is most striking because she is wearing a dress of white and gold and her hair is in an elaborate braid spiraling around a bun atop her head and she's wearing more makeup than she's probably ever worn before yet he thinks she looks just as lovely now as when she wakes up in the morning and her hair is a mess and there's a little bit of dried drool on her mouth and her eyes are all bleary and she's wearing only one of his t-shirts. The difference is everyone else would agree right now.)

He wants to take off his shades to see her better and curses his albinism because even though they're under the shade of a gazebo in her favorite little garden to help protect his skin, the sun is still too bright for his photosensitive eyes. (And, on a level, he still has a childish insecurity about all of the guests at his wedding seeing their unnatural pigment.) Still, it's not so dark through the lenses that he can't see her at all. He can even make out some of the detail work on her skirt, though he's sure once they're in the hotel room for their honeymoon and it's dark enough that he can take them off he'll be able to see it much better for as long as she's still wearing it.

All of the bridesmaids and groomsmen are lined up alongside him, with the girls behind the empty spot that she will be filling once she reaches the end of the aisle and his party lined up behind him. John is his best man and is thus positioned closest to him (after all, her wedding ring is in his pocket for when Dave is to slide it onto her finger) and he thinks he can hear his best man tearing up, which he's so going to make fun of him for later. (And so what if Dave is tearing up a little bit, too, it's not like anybody else can see that.)

When she reaches the end of the aisle, he can't even focus on what the officiant is saying to the two of them because everything in the world other than her is so completely unimportant when she's standing across from him at their wedding.

He only knows it's his time to say his vows when the white noise disappears and he blinks in surprise but it's fine because nobody can see his eyes. He feels like it's been hours that they've been up here, but he knows that it's only been minutes. Still, it feels like even more hours pass where he's just staring at her and her beautiful smile before he's finally able to open his mouth and speak.

"Jade," he starts, and it already feels so incredibly cheesy. "The day that I saw you for the first time when I was thirteen years old, I knew that you were the prettiest girl in the entire world." She laughs a little. It's silent, but he can see it in the way her smile grows and her eyes squeeze shut. "You weren't model pretty or actress pretty like the other guys my age were always talking about at lunch. You were real person pretty, which I think is a much harder standard to meet.

"Still, when I think of that day, it feels totally superficial. I could have talked for hours about how pretty your eyes were or how I wouldn't mind getting my fingers tangled up in your curls. Actually, if you ask Rose, I probably did talk for hours about those things." He pauses for a moment to let the people seated around them give a collective chuckle. "But I don't think that was the day I fell in love with you. How could it have been? I didn't even know how smart or kind or funny you were yet. I didn't know about the way your eyes light up any time you see someone walking their dog in public, or about how actually terrible you are at making coffee, or about how you love gardening so much you sneak hanging potted plants into our apartment when I'm at work like I won't notice the flowers when I get home."

She brings up a hand to her face to wipe at her tears quickly, as though if she moves fast enough nobody will see that she did it. He's always hated seeing her cry, but this one time, he supposes it's okay. "It's crazy to think we've been together for six years now. Six years of putting up with my rap. Six years of trying to understand a word that comes out of your mouth when you tell me about your papers or about how work was. Six years of taking turns making little choices like what we should have for dinner or what music we should play in the car.

"Vows are supposed to be promises. It was hard to think of what I could promise you that would be good enough. You deserve the world, and I can't give you that. But, I promise to try. I promise to spend every day of the rest of my life showing you the world. I promise to run out to get you coffee every morning because you can't make a cup to save your life. I promise to walk your hellbeast when you're too tired, and to walk the fifteen other hellbeasts you'll adopt over the course of the rest of our lives.

"I promise to love you. And I promise to tell you every single day, until we're old and grey and we're still being all mushy in public and embarrassing our grandkids. I love you. I can't wait to be married."

She's crying. It's embarrassing and she told herself that she wouldn't do this but even when she first said it she knew she was lying to herself and God, how can she not when he just listed every reason she's been in love with him for years in one go?

She can only take solace in the fact that she's not the only one crying. She can hear Nepeta sniffing behind her, trying not to cry dramatically and draw attention away from their wedding, and can see John's goofy face he makes when he's holding back tears, and when she looks out after his vows are done at all of the people watching them she can see her uncle nodding his approval and wiping at the tears streaming down his cheeks. She supposes her whole family has always been full of criers.

She only has time for one shaky deep breath and to turn back to look at Dave before she is being told to say her own vows.

"Even as I was writing my vows, I knew that I wouldn't be able to put everything that I felt for you and everything that I wanted to say to you properly into words. I almost commissioned Rose to write them for me just because I knew it would come out better but then I was scared that if I didn't write them myself I wouldn't be able to remember them and I'd come up here and just look like an idiot." She laughs a little at herself and their friends and family laugh a little bit with her. She's hardly twenty seconds into her vows and she's already got tears running down her face.

"So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I decided right away that I wanted to keep these short." She swallows. Her stomach twists with nerves. That was basically just the disclaimer-- the content warning before the real show-- and now she has to say her real vows and his were so beautiful and she knows that she's going to mess it up somehow and-- alright, Jade, stop. Deep breaths.

She lets out a shaky breath and starts again after a pause that probably lasted much shorter in the real world than it felt like in her head. "I can actually remember the moment that I realized that I loved you. I mean, really loved you and not just the 'I'm gonna marry him some day' crush of an eleven-year-old girl on her older brother's best friend.

"I was in college, and you'd just graduated a few months earlier. It was four in the morning and I'd just wrapped up a paper that was supposed to be turned in nine hours later and I had class in three and a half hours so I knew I couldn't get any real amount of sleep but I still wanted to lay down with you. To just be in bed with you. And I felt so ridiculous, like if I was going to be in bed then I should at least try to sleep. But I crawled into bed and you rolled over in your sleep and slung your arm over me and you smooshed your cheek against my shoulder and I thought, 'I could lay like this with him forever.' And now, in a way, I'm going to.

"I've been a notoriously heavy sleeper my whole life and yet I just stayed awake watching you. And I felt a little creepy about it, yeah." She laughs again, wiping at her eyes. "But then you woke up, and you asked me how long I'd been in bed. And I told you that it hadn't been very long, maybe an hour. And you apologized for not waking up sooner, and you always stayed up so late back then-- you still do if I let you-- so you couldn't have had more than five hours of sleep. But you stayed up for the rest of the night to talk to me about... all sorts of nonsense, really. You told me about this recurring dream you used to have of a giant purple city with a tower in the center, and when you looked up you could see the stars. And I remember, you told me you wished you could show me. And I just thought of how desperate I was to see it with you.

"You've shown me so many things since then. I'm sure you'll show me so many more. So, I promise to see the world with you." They hadn't discussed what was going in their vows before the wedding. How perfectly they go together makes her want to cry harder, but she has to at least stay composed until she's finished. "I promise to make you go to sleep before one in the morning. I promise to climb into bed with you every night even when neither of us are gonna get any sleep. I promise to have late night talks with you and remember what you said four years later even though you'll surely have forgotten by then. I promise to spend every night with you, and to cherish those nights forever, as your wife." And in just a few moments, they'll begin their first night as husband and wife. The first night to cherish.

[thewertsearch]

And now we have to deal with this motherfucker.

It’s probable that Scratch knew things would play out like this, which means this message was always intended for Karkat.

...it's probable that that's the case, but there's always a slight possibility that we're in one of his dark pockets. If so, then Karkat wasn't supposed to see this message, and might be about to learn something Scratch doesn't want him to know.

Mr. Vantas.

Dang it.

I'm delivering this message through the console of one of my numerous unwitting proteges to give you a word of advice, and then you will not hear from me again.

Characteristically unhelpful - and in fact, it might not refer to either of Eridan's victims. We still have Tavros's corpse to deal with, and I'm sure there'll be more bodies hitting the floor before the day is out.

All of the bodies in the room remain as they were. There is clearly nothing to be concerned about whatsoever.

Feferi has an eldritch connection through the Horrorterrrors, and they could probably pull some dark magical shenanigans to get her body moving again. I think that's unlikely, though, since Feferi's ghost is active in the Dream Bubbles, and I don't think she'd actually want to be revived. After all, she's go a job to do.

I'm still convinced that Kanaya's coming back, but it's hardly going to happen while our back is turned. We're out of Kernelsprites, so she can't be prototyped - and we can't use her Dream Moon Slab, if it even exists, because Prospit's been destroyed by Jack.

Frankly, I can't think of a single realistic way to revive her short of time travel, and that's not a road we want to go down. I'm really trying not to think about what that might mean.

I guess that leaves Tavros.

There's definitely something going on with him that we don't understand. He was about to smooch Vriska before she stopped him, and the Breath symbolism surrounding the act makes me think it was more than just a typical Dream Self revival kiss. He has a hidden power, and that power seems to kick in when someone's dying.

Could Tavros be a little less dead than we've been led to believe? It's possible - his arc doesn't scan as complete to me. He'd only obtained the merest shred of confidence before Vriska brought him fatally down to earth, and I think there are still many interesting places you could take his character.

CG: THERE YOU ARE, YOU HAD ME WORRIED DUDE […] CG: QUIT THE BULLSHIT PARTYCLOWN ANTICS AND GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE. […] TC: shut up. CG: WHAT… TC: I SAID SHUT THE MOTHERFUCK UP, MOTHERFUCKER. TC: honk honk honk :o)

Gamzee’s rocking a new quirk. He’s still swapping cases, but they’re alternating every message rather than every character, as though his mind is less scrambled than it used to be.

Could this be how he talks when he's off the slime? He already seems more aware than before, and his grumpiness evokes a hangover - but he's honking more than he used to, which is the opposite of what I'd expect if he was sober.

CG: SERIOUSLY, GET BACK HERE NOW, AND HAVE A SLIME PIE TO RELAX OR SOMETHING. TC: SLIME? TC: there is no more slime, brother. TC: AND ANYWAY. TC: shit was motherfuckin poison, didn't you know?

Yup. It looks like Gamzee’s gone cold featherbeast.

It's not a great time for this to happen, but it's not like we can stop it now. I highly doubt Gamzee was forward-thinking enough to reproduce his pies through alchemy, and things are a little too tense right now to try getting clever with an Appearifier. For better or worse, his supply has dried up for the foreseeable future.

So now, for the first time, we're interacting with a Gamzee who isn't out of his mind on soporifics. His shift in personality is already pretty drastic, and I'm interested in seeing what the real Gamzee is like.

[hspolls]

Well, there we have it! End of Round 1. Let’s to a little Round Roundup before moving onto Round 2!

The Dolorosa tried to scare our favourite Egbert off, but- Well, Dolorosa was left in the past and Egbert moved on. On to Round 2, at least!

It was a brutal battle between the great and mighty Nicolas Cage and the underdog fedorafreak, but fedorafreak and his support pulled through. A God Tier battle if I’ve ever seen one!

The forces of Light and Void came face to face in the battle between Roxy and Aranea. Dark beat Light in this valiant battle, congrats to our winner Roxy!

The battle between Erisolsprite and Tavrisprite was not so... bright. Erisolsprite has his torment prolonged for one more round.

A battle between... brothers? Lovers? It’s not clear what the relationship is between these two. But either way, Trace wins the vote and moves onto the next round!

Caliborn and The Condesce face off in our next matchup, but it seems Caliborn just can’t reach his full potential yet (Will he ever...?). The Condesce takes the win!

Our two gun (rifle?) slingers are up next in the next round. And...! Oh, how the mighty fall! Aimless Renegade wins this duel!

Kanaya faces off against ARquius sprite, two wholes put together to make a new whole! And. Uh. Well, he’s more two halves now. Kanaya wins!

Rose and Marquise Spinneret Mindfang face off, a battle so blindingly bright that... Well, we know how blindings go for Mindfang, historically. Rose progresses onwards!

I liked these tags and they deserve to go here. Seems like Die can't really hold his own in a rap battle. Unfortunate. He's always been a bit chicken.

GCATavrosprite is scheduled to face off against Jasprose...! But decides to take a little nap instead. You know what? He deserves it. Sleep well our sweet little meow meow. Jasprose wins by default.

Sollux and Terezi are pitted against each other. To every Sollux fan’s despair. Sorry guys. I really thought he had a chance. Interesting first round, though, right?

Davepeta and Fefeta face off in a matchup that, once again, was met with a lot of despair. Davepeta would never do a thing to harm their dear friend (and half paradoxical twin? alternate self? sister? Whatever they’d be...) And spares her, not only in the battle, but from the rest of her fights. Fefeta never wanted to fight anyway. A “win” for Davepeta!

Davesprite kicks Bro’s ass lol. (Talk about closure...!)

Two tallguys in this matchup! A battle between Crowbar and Sawtooth. Both are pretty powerful, but the felt fans are stronger. #feltsweep

The battle between Mom and Cans is less of a battle and more of a landslide. For Mom. She punches Cans into next week. Taste of his own medicine!

Jack Noir battles Becquerel, in a test of who will become BEST DOG. And. Well. Its the dog. Its the dog.

Meanwhile, Snowman and Ms. Paint battle... to see who wore it best! And Ms. Paints sweet charm is just pure unbeatable! Onto the next round she goes!

Meanwhile, in the Jade and Rufioh faceoff... It’s a win for Jade. No contest, really.

Elsewhere on the battlefield two revolutionaries battle, to change their worlds. The Signless inspires many, and does a lot to help his people... But still, the Warward Vagabond moves more. And moves onto the next round, too.

Nepeta and Stitch are our next matchup, and...! Well, dear number Nine might need some stitching himself after this ruthless battle.

Gamzee and Grandpa, two Gs. I... don’t have any smart comments for this battle actually. Just the G thing. And Gamzee takes the W. Which I guess would make him Wamzee? Yeah, sure. That’s what I’m, choosing to say.

PM and Meulin up next! And... Woah, that’s a twist! PM caught Meulin sending some nasty hate mail. And did what any good Postal Mistress would do. Seems Meulin may be down another life...

Jadesprite challenges Lil Hal, but Lil Hal is not relinquishing control to a sad dog girl. Sorry dog girl fans. Lil Hal goes ahead.

CASEY SWEEPS ROUND ONE LET’S GOOOOOOO (Yeah, no. Caliborn will never reach his full potential.)

The Handmaid, however, is very powerful. More powerful than even Darkleer, once a powerful figure himself. The Zahhak is put out of his misery... into the darkness of history he shall disappear. “History” is too restricting for the Handmaid, who moves ever forwards.

The Insane Clown Posse prepare for one of their famed demonstrations, miracles ready, face paint on... But wait, who let this fucking cat in here? What the hell? Oh my god, Holy--

The ICP are dead. The cat remains, paws bloodied, face adorable.

Itchy seems to have the advantage in his battle, moving faster than any eye can see- but the Summoner summons his own loyal fans, and... the battle’s over before either of them know it.

There’s a bit of infighting going on in the Midnight Crew’s side of the ring, with Hearts Boxcars and Clubs Deuce feuding between themselves. It seems like HB should win, being stronger, burlier, and capable of eating a mans head off in one fell bite. But Clubs has something the big guy doesn’t. Clubs has a hand full of penis. And he is not afraid to get swinging. Ultimately, HB bites the dust.

Next up is the Disciple and Horuss. With the Disciple on the other end of the indigo’s bow, he falters just as his universal counterpart did, so many sweeps ago. He doesn’t shoot. The Disciple survives for one more round.

Two of Egbert’s guardians battle in a fight for supremacy, but there can only be one winner. Dad continues on... but not without Nanna’s blessing. He is her son, after all. And perhaps all she really wants is to see him succeed...

Aradia and Tavros participate in a battle between friends, but Aradia’s bold plays give her an edge that Tavros simply doesn’t have. Aradia wins this battle - and Tavros surely comes along to cheer his friend along for the following ones!

Jake attempts to face off against this blue babe before she has the chance to gain momentum - the only chance anyone may have to truly strike her down. But he can’t. He’s stricken down... The first one to fall against Vriska’s pursuit of supremacy. If he can’t stop her......

Meenah, like Horuss, follows in the footsteps of her universal counterpart, harnessing the power of the Ψiioniic in the hopes their combined power could do what Jake couldn’t Vriska lurks in the distance of the next round. One goldblood is hardly anything in the face of victory.

Redglare battles against a child and loses. Unforunate. Well, she had a good run. Before the tournament. Her run in the tournament sucked. Unfortunately. Sorry Redglare. Jane wins this trial.

Feferi and Kankri face off in a debate for the ages -- Or rather, Kankri debates at her, but her joyful outlook is too powerful to be destroyed by the redbloods gift of gab. Feferi rules over this round!

Calliope and Cronus participate in a battle of music, something I just decided since I think Cronus canonically makes music and Calliope is the name of an instrument. Well, Cronus is the one getting played this round. Calliope dominates the soundscape in this battle!

Kurloz and Damara get into an argument, though its hard to tell exactly what they’re arguing about because nobody else speaks troll Japanese and Kurloz doesn’t really say much of anything. Well, either way, looks like Damara won that battle!

Battle of the Bronies! It’s Dirk against Equius in this battle of pride, to determine who the ultimate pony aficionado is. And what do you know, Dirk comes out on top.

A battle between Leprechauns is breaking out on this side of the field. And its not really clear how the battle is progressing at all. Doze is moving a metre an hour and Eggs is just... kinda there? As unclear as the whole thing is, Eggs apparently wins this one!

In the next matchup over we have another one of the Leprechauns, Quarters, up against Latula, who doesn’t doesn’t hesitate to annihilate our turtle-toothed friend. Latula 1, Quarters 0.

And right there next to him, Biscuits gets swept too, annihilated by the smooth Diamonds Droog. Effortlessly. At least, that’s how it looks, and what he wants you to think. Will his next round be as effortless, or will this Diamond be done for? Only time can tell.

In a repeat of troll history, Dualscar faces off and against the Grand Highblood, and. Well. Heads off too. (That’s a joke. About decapitation. If it wasn’t clear). Dualscar doesn’t survive this round, but the GHB marches on to the next.

Next is the battle between two big story influencers, the arrogant Doc Scratch and the, uh, controversial Andrew Hussie, to see who reigns supreme. And Doc Scratch takes the cake this time. Sorry Hussie. Maybe next time.

Clover distracts matchsticks with a jaunty little jig and then Matchsticks gets flustered and fucking dies. RIP matchsticks. Clover’s moves were just too fire.

Karkat faces off against Sawbuck, who... Well, I’m sorry Sawbuck. There weren’t many people left to match you up with at this point in the planning stage and you got fucking murdered the moment you stepped into the ring. Your fans still love you though. Poor guy.

Dave and Mituna faces off in what was perhaps THE most despaired of the matchups. I’m sorry guys! I was running out of matchups that would keep the game both initially interesting and interesting in the future! It’s just the way the turns tabled!

Dave wins the round, but Mituna fans everywhere are united in their love for this goldblooded boy. He may just be the most mourned of all this round’s losers, but he is a winner in all of our hearts.

And lastly, the battle between Madam Firefly and the dear Firefly herself, which... Wait. Hold on. What’s this? They both tied at 50%? Serenity technically won by a few votes but the poll-holder had a special even planned in the case of a 50/50 and is going to enact it anyway? Well, that’s certainly something! Props to these two lovely ladies for sharing the win this round! And in the distance...

A SPECIAL CHALLENGER APPROACHES...

[nintendont2502]

also these quadrant thoughts kinda fuck honestly

ID/transcription under cut!

[ID: a series of six google document screenshots. The first reads 'Speaking of blackrom I've been thinking about the troll relationships lately Like obviously they're gonna be hard/impossible to understand fully since they're literally alien, but I feel like approaching them with the knowledge that a. They're all explicitly romantic and b. They each serve a different function in troll society could be helpful Obviously the red (?) Half is easiest: redrom is literally just romantic love. Easy boring we already have it fuck it Moiraillegiance is more interesting imo - it's more of a platonic relationship from what I remember? But it's held to tje same standard as a redrom ship which I think a lot of people forget Your moirail isn't just your best friend they're basically your platonic boyfriend/girlfriend/nb equivalent. They're meant to serve as emotional support for each other so they're incredibly important in troll society (they're also supposed to be a dangerous troll + a pacifying troll to keep others safe but I feel like that's more of an alternian thing so we can probably ignore that when it comes to moirails as a whole) Kismesis is the one I struggle with tje most honeslty - it's a romantic relationship but based off of hate instead of love, so your kismesis wouldn't just be your friendly rival. Your kismesis is the person you hate *most* in tje world, the person that you literally enter into a committed relationship based on mutual hate which I think is beautifulI feel lile it'd be a different form of hate than your standard hate though? Like. You wouldn't want to kill your kismesis - from what we've seen they tend to like having each other around (if not just to have someone to hate) The only way I can think of it is comparing it to redrom In a redrom relationship, you love one person more than everyone else. Sure, you can love other people in different ways, but your love for that person is different. You care for them, you like spending time with them, you don't want them to die In a blackrom relationship, you hate one person more than everyone else. Sure, you can hate other people in different ways, but your hate for that person is different. You care for them, you like spending time with them, you don't want them to die I feel like blackrom relationships are a good way of getting aggression/negative feelings out, while redrom are more about gaining positive feelings. Both are mutually beneficial, and act in different ways towards the same end goal' The second reads ‘It's also one of two quadrants for reproductive purposes along with redrom so comparing it to redrom is probably accurate I think the issue with blackrom is, from a human perspective, hate is inherently negative, and we approach it differently to trolls. So when people interpret kismesis it's sometimes in a friendly rivalry/toned down/'human' way when it really shouldn't be. Kismesises fucking hate each other so much and that's the point. It's care built out of hatred instead of care built oit of love

Auspiticism is. Weird It's tje only relationship that isn't isn't inherently romantic at first glance? Like it seems like more of a job than anything - keeping two kismesis in check to ensure they don't hurt each other/otners too badly which sounds. Exhausting

But I feel like it could still be a type of romance? When you wax ashen for someone kts because you love one/both members of the black relationship in a way where you *want* to take care of them, *want* to make sure their relationship is stable and healthy and they don't get hurt ~~which means kanaya is an ash whore since she apparently can't stop auspiticising for people- just like how her dancestor is apparently just a red/black/pale (?) Whore who can't stop getting into other relationships~~ Actually fuck that's literally the first time I've thought of ashen relationships like that but it makes so much sense god damn go me Genuinely really proud of the black + ash interpretations since I struggled with those for a while fuck yeah’. The third reads ‘Idk I just think like. Overall more focus needs to be put on the fact that all tje quadrants are explicitly *romantic*. Like just because they don't fit into humans perceptions of romance (which they aren't supposed to!!) Doesn't mean that they aren't all their own forms of romance, or that redrom is more important than anything else (honestly redrom ships are the most boring to me im ngl) Like this isn't me getting annoyed at solely other people because I sometimes slip into going "oh moirails are your best friend basically and kismesis is just your enemy!" Which is wrong. I know that Bit like. Idk it might be the autism talking but the quadrant system is fascinating as jell and I love thinking about it/the possibilities Also I cant stop viewing relationships in other media through the quadrant system please help’. The fourth reads ‘ALSO I know in canon ash relationships are only for blackrom. I *know* that. BUT I also love tje idea of ash relationships being for any turbulent relationship (aka wildly vacillating one's aka vrisrezi c3< kanaya)

Speaking of vrisrezi - karkat, vriska and terezi are troll gay. 100% you cannot convince me otherwise Like sure they have relationships that *mostly* fit into one quadrant (mostly black junerezi, mostly pale vriskan, mostly red davekat) bjt it's only mostly yk? Aspects of other quadrants or shit entirely out of tje quadrants leak in sometimes (and honestly trying to categorise davekat and vrisrezi is damn near impossible - these bitches are all over the place)’. The fifth reads ‘Troll aromanticism Trolls who don't feel attraction in one or more quadrants (obviously they'd be culled for that if it black or red (or fuck maybe any quadrant) but still shh) Troll polyamory? Having multiple partners in one quadrant Actually iirc there's nothing that implies trolls are a monogamous society hm’. The sixth and final screenshot reads ‘Final thoughts but I am curious on how moirails and (more importantly) kismesises function on beforus Like blackrom relationships are based on hate/implied violence, but from what we've seen of beforus that seems very low/absent. Are blackrom relationships nore like mutual teasing/bullying than violence? Hmm Also palerom in canon was introduced as a dangerous troll and a weaker troll keeping each other in cjeck, but we can assume that there isn't much danger from other trolls on beforus so what did moirails do? Just emotional support maybe? Hmm.’ /End ID]

[divineerdrick]

Homestuck: Beyond Canon Upd8 for 2/10/24

We got our news post a little late and our upd8 a little early. I'm struggling today and behind on progress for everything, but I still want to read.

James is being a bit hammy, but he's teasing some good news. It looks like we'll be getting [S] pages in the future. Hopefully with more than one person and a slower upd8 schedule, they won't ever need to pause for them.

Kinda curious about the VTuber mentioned. I like watching people experiencing Homestuck stuff! It's the whole reason I started live blogging.

Now onto the upd8!

Looks like I might have been right about Yiffy potentially having something to do with that ominous red glow. Let's see what's going on.

Like all teens, the worst thing that can happen to her is public parental affection. Though Jade is laying it on thick! Where's Rose with a quip about contacting CPS? Although she'd be calling them on herself.

Not sure how I feel about the gag, honestly. It's pretty cliché, and Tavvy is right there. We don't know how badly Yiffy has suffered, but like Tavvy it's been real abuse and neglect. This comic does have a habit of trying to make child abuse a joke, though.

Kanaya is obviously still struggling, and I can't blame her. Yiffy is one of the most controversial aspects of this comic, supposedly handed down to us from on high by AH himself. One of the great complaints about the Epilogues is that it takes the characters in directions that were intended to challenge fans. But even then, the idea that even a Candy Rose would cheat with Jade to have a secret love child and hide it from her all this time is so fucking out there. Everything about it feels wrong.

And then, of course, they get into a silly dare and name her Yiffany Longstocking Lalonde Harley!

But I'm not saying things that haven't already been said a million times. It's always felt like one of AH's epic troll moments, like the ones I both love and hate in the original work. And I hoping it will eventually pay off to something.

Looking at the text here, Yiffy's color could definitely be the red. Hah! Pepis.

Yiffy's mind is also on Kanaya it seems. We're also getting a sense of her attitude much more clearly now. I'm kinda getting Susie vibes.

Oh wow! They're actually calling it "The Yiffy Reveal" in universe!

Wow! Wow! Fucking wow!

The fuck!

I think my jaw just splintered the floor at my feet!

Rose used her power. She actually used her fucking power! And not only does she believe this will all be fortuitous (it's practically fated since it gives us a set of four kids), but that fortune would dictate Kanaya's eventual forgiveness.

She didn't just decide on, "Easier to get forgiveness than permission." She believed it inevitable, so that made it okay!

The fuck!

We're digging a little into Jade's adult life now. And yeah, it's just as bad as we probably imagined it was. Doesn't justify them going behind Kanaya's back, but you can understand her yearning.

That . . . that oddly makes sense. It still seems wrong, but it's the kind of backward logic that might occur on Candy Earth C. I don't know if AH had this explanation as part of Yiffy's backstory, or if it's writing we can attribute to one team or the other. But it's an actual explanation for how we got here.

Still not enough to pay off the trolling yet.

How . . . Tavvy, what were you doing?

Yeah, no. I'm betting right now Kanaya is feeling a lot more forgiving towards Jade and a lot less forgiving towards Rose.

That's Meenah's symbol, so we know who to expect a call from next time at least.

Of course a lot of attention is payed to the captchalogued corpse in Jade's possession. Did she find Dave's body and is still not dealing with it? Has she considered her taxidermy tradition dealing with it enough? Is this somehow another corpse considered fitting for the Harley traditions?

Tune in next time!