#homestuck act divergent reality

[jonayariley]

My Thoughts on Homestuck^2

I say this as someone who has been fairly critical of the Epilogues and Homestuck^2 - I think that HS2 (or Homestuck: Beyond Canon as it's properly called now) has the potential to be something positive again. I was really excited for HS2 at first (after not super loving the direction the Epilogues went in) but got really burned out on it. But I'll say a few things on why I think this can work:

Greater transparency in terms of what's going on with it. I think that James Roach and crew are in a position to be really up-front about what's going on and what's to come, and I think they've done that. James has always struck me as being a pretty even-keeled guy, and having worked with him in the past on both Friendsim 2 stuff and when he presents at SAHCon, yeah - definitely a solid choice in terms of organization and being willing to communicate.

I think there's a lot of room to bring the plot around. I'll admit I wasn't a huge fan of everything that was happening in HS2 (weird pacing, focus on Vriska stuff, weird cucking plotline, out of character stuff) - but I really think there's a way to judo throw that shit around into something good. My take has always been "meat and candy are two divergent, slightly-unreal timelines and there's something else going on here" and some of what I saw in the last couple upd8s seems to confirm this. Personally I think that could work well, and the theme of collapsing reality in on itself could work. The fact that the new upd8 starts off with some stuff I thought they'd forgotten about bodes well.

Writing so far is good - feels balanced, good character writing. It feels Homestuck-y but also it feels like its own thing, which I think is a good thing. Also, solid choices for writers - seeing @floralmarsupial on the list alone has me very excited about what's to come!

Art is good too! Very nice balance of styles and some really solid panel work! Nice use of limited motion in classic Homestuck style combined with a good combination of Act 6 bean style and sprite style.

So far, reactions seem to be pretty positive. In the past, some people were profoundly NOT NORMAL about HS2 - going so far as to harass and attack the folks working on it. I can't express how profoundly not okay this is! So far, I see folks being pretty positive about it overall, and I think that's good. The folks who don't like it are not liking it in a normal, not-harassing-the-crew way, which is good.

I trust the team involved - I've worked with several of the people involved on my own projects (Chumi, Kim, James) and I have a tremendous amount of respect for the other folks involved. Like, this is a solid core to build a team around. Kim doing art direction is a good thing.

On a related note, hearing that this is a truly independent thing with creative control in the hands of the current team is a big thing. I have good reason to believe that this is 100% genuine, and that the direction "Homestuck community involvement" is going in is a positive one. It's a process, but it seems to be moving in a positive direction.

Good community involvement, less adversarial feeling - James has been reaching out to the community at large in a way that feels much more open than HS2 was doing before. HS2 got to the point where it felt like it had this contentious relationship with the fandom where it wasn't just challenging readers within the context of the text, but challenging them as readers and fans of the work (if that makes sense).

There seems to be a real commitment to doing this thing in a way that isn't exploiting the artists, writers, and other creatives involved. To working with people in a fair and open way and allowing them to guide the creative vision of the work. And tbh that's one of the most positive signs I've seen from this whole process.

Remains to be seen how things shake out in the long term - especially with stuff like the upd8-to-upd8 pacing (something I felt like was really broken in HS2) and how some of the more contentious aspects are handled.

But I feel hopeful about this, and I would absolutely not have said that two or three years ago. Like, ngl - the whole thing with Jade/Rose/Kanaya hit me hard enough to make a whole divergent post-canon AU

(read Negotiated Consent and its sequels Ways of Being and This Sudden State of Mind, btw - I'm still quite happy with them)

but I've had time to think on this a lot and time to become significantly more involved in well-known Homestuck stuff (specifically Friendsim 2 and co-directing Stuck at Home Con) and, like... idk I feel like the annoyance got replaced with a kind of "I really wish things could be better" bittersweet feeling, because at the end of the day this whole thing is important to me, and there's a lot of folks in this fandom who aren't shit-ass individuals who harass creators, and I think the relationship between author(s) and work can be something good and positive.

So yeah, I would describe myself as "cautiously optimistic" about this whole situation. Homestuck is a work with a lot of baggage - both textually and in terms of fandom/creation history. I don't think that can just be wiped away, but also I do believe it can move in a better direction, and there's clearly still a lot of folks who would like to see that happen.

And yeah, I guess in my heart I'm still one of those people too.

[homestuckexamination]

Currently rereading hs! I'm not that far along, I'm around the beginning of Act 5 act 2. I'm having a hard time understanding if the message and themes of hs are "free will exists" or "free will doesnt exist" and if "luck is real" or if it's just up to your own perceptions. I think luck exists within the concept of SBURB but otherwise... lol. Or are these sort of things up to interpretation?

With free will at least, Hiveswap and Friendsim talk about going against the river which I think means not following the alpha timeline and ultimately rebelling against fate. Thoughts?

Homestuck is a story about a story, in which the characters are characters. Fate categorically exists, thanks to the Alpha Timeline, and the fact there's a literal, God-like author that determines the direction of the story. Think of Rose, breaking the game, even as she's manipulated by Doc Scratch, for example. Homestuck's definitely about people trying to break free from fate and exert their will on the story, while still being bound to the cruel rules of said fate. It's not one or the other- It's about how it affects people, these characters, to have their wills overwritten by the powers that be, the struggle to find a way where they can even survive what seems like a predetermined outcome.

The characters have free will, but they're still held to limitations within their reality. Does luck Matter when the outcome is predetermined? Is the outcome predetermined when you can still choose your own actions, and this predetermination is a result of what you'd chosen regardless? What about those who realize what the outcome needs to be, and challenge it? How much can these divergent outcomes, fated to die off, influence the path of the Alpha Timeline?

It's not one or the other, it's the interplay of the two and the constant struggle of the characters, and I have more thoughts about it but it'd get into late Act 6 content, and I'd rather let you keep rereading in peace. X3

[knightimehopes]

The Beta Kids are together, the shenanigans can ensue. I honestly put a lot more time into these than i thought, but i love the end result!

[divergenthomebound]

Note to self;

When you blimey fucking wish to have people submit commands here, TURN ON THE GOD FORSAKEN ASKS.

-A Ghost From The Past

[theorynexus]

116:  Jane Seems Very Stressed

This is a question we should all probably be asking. Specifically of Jane, not ourselves, mind.   She simply seems very, very sensitive and prone to negative emotions, right now.

Ah. Yes, well, that’ll do it to you.  She’s pushing herself beyond the limits of what a single person reasonably can do; whereas she should be relieving pressure from herself by allowing at least one of these to drop to a level of lesser interest for a while.   Not that such a situation cannot be properly managed, mind you. It is certainly possible to juggle all of the aforementioned responsibilities at once: just not good for one’s health (mental or physical). 

A difficult time, but not an impossible time of it, eh?    Also:   Ears are indeed quite important, though humans can also bite them off.  Not quite so young, though; certainly, the excessive physicality of trolls does indeed give non-Player versions of them a significant advantage.   I do wonder why humans have not inherited player-like excesses in capabilities in this world, though~   Shouldn’t all the available gene samples have been from Players and their direct relatives (with little dilution possibly coming from Dad Crocker)?   Strength, at the very least, should be something that even babies are more capable of expressing in this world (making me think of Bam Bam from The Flintstones). 

Has the light of faded Relevance a blinding effect on the Seer?   Or is it simply that the two stories have diverged too much for a version of Rose whose expression of her Ultimate Self has been halted (and thus, whose individuality is more intact, but whose powers are presumably less--- if we buy into Dirk’s description of such matters in the first place)?

Oh, hey, looks like it’s a combination of the intense Void of the battleground where the fight with Lord English was fought at and the intensity of his Master of Time powers (which, honestly speaking, work quite well together to amplify the Death aspect [pun intended; connection made; no reference to “sub-aspects” or anything of the sort intended] of both).

I am indeed quite sure that the extra-canon nature of Jade’s present life does indeed act as a source of mitigating potential for this Jade’s life expression, but it is not quite strong enough to represent a well of erasure on its own:   as shown by Alt!Calliope’s coexistence with Our!Calliope in the Meat side of the coin, while there may be some sort of metaphysical oomph forcing one version to take the back seat to the other while two are present (in a way very similar to the DOOMed Self mechanic which was partially emergent from Lord English’s Will), it is entirely possible for two individuals of the same greater Self to live out lives in the same timeline (and given Calliope’s art, likely for both to have a great importance to the propagation of the story/reality, as well).    Mind you, Alt!Calliope sortof cheated in a similar way to Lord English’s cheat using Jack Noir to put a version of himself in the 8-Ball Session (Jack English), but I think that the matter/example still “counts,” regardless. Also, I’d just like to say that both of these are very intense examples of the two halves of the Cal/Call coin being very Cherub-like, as far as Homestuck-style Cherubs are concerned.

Partly true and partly false in her statement, obfuscating the nature of the situation, but attempting to help by doing so. Very Rogue of Void-y.

Life’s too short, so let’s have a Corpse Party! (Man, not entirely dead, but still going to be buried. What an interesting-awkward-sad fate.   On a related note:  This Jade is in a very similar situation to Meat!John.   I wonder if she’ll end up [probably] being revived somehow too.) Aaaaannnnd that’s all the time we have for this program, folks. Tune in next time to see how things might go then!   (And perhaps you’ll be just as entertained [or not] as you were this time!)

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 10 - Candy Part 1 again

I was told that finishing the epilogue MAY make me feel better by some with opinions, with some vague hints that the ridiculous start of Candy may have underlying reasons, so now that I’m awake again (though my stomach is roiling a bit again) I’m gonna take another crack at it.

Alright, so I was also hinted that this Candy part ends with a different cliffhanger, so maybe those two will cancel out?  That’s my hope anyway.

Reading page 1 again since I didn’t finish the very tail end of it... alright, so WHY IS ROXY CRYING again????  Was she just PRETENDING that she didn’t know it might turn out bad for John if he went at the end of the last one?  Was there some weird mind-rewriting going on?  Is the crying a symptom of this whole thing potentially being an our!Callie fanfic and she knows what’s being dodged??  Don’t know.

Alright, let’s have him save Gamzee and... is Vriska going to get saved in this version?  Or is that descent into the black hole without seeing what happens her well-deserved comeuppance while only the ghost version of Vriska truly figured out how to be happy?

==>

Dirk acknowledges him when he zaps back, but it’s YOUNG Dirk so hopefully there isn’t any stupid Meat stuff going on.

...Yeah, Gamzee immediately being repentant is weird as shit.  Maybe he Chucklevoodoo’d Callie into escaping him into this whole candied mess so he could start shit, I dunno.  That or this isn’t really Gamzee or someone’s manipulating him or etc etc etc.  The hint I got earlier was that if I thought Calliope wanting to bring Gamzee back and everyone just rolling with it was a little out of character, there are “reasons”, so I’m just going through all of this under the assumption that some emotion-manipulating weirdness is going on regardless.

Oh shit, Gamzee’s going to start recounting his character reasons for doing bad stuff in a surface-hope of justification and understanding.  All the characters immediately recognize how painfully groanworthy this is going to be.

GAMZEE: AnD sUcH iS wHy I’m GrAbBiNg HoLd Of My RePeNtAnCe As FiRm AnD sErIoUs As I wOuLd A wHoRe’S tItTy!

Yeah, that really encapsulates how “serious” all of this is.  And of course, John’s not having any of it.

Yeah, Terezi wouldn’t have any of it either, remotely.

Something feels different, but he can’t put his finger on it.

Hm.  The aforementioned manipulation-weirdness?

==>

Okay, so it’s kind of Dirk who notices something different and is cancelling his stupid villain plans, got it.

Volatility of causality, huh?

(I’m going to be going through these parts a little faster than the Meat section, unsurprisingly.)

==>

Okay, Rose and Kanaya, are we gonna cure her substance abuse or--

With all the distance between them lately,

God damnit, have Dirk’s manipulations extended that far OFFSCREEN or is this legitimate character distancing???? Because either is BAD.  >:(

Right, now that the plot and “relevance” has been sidelined over to a different timeline, Rose can now breathe easy free of her condition.  And whichever parts of her condition were, perhaps, IMPOSED on her.  Fuck.

I’m going to try my fucking best to cling to this, hope I can carry on a memory after this is over that DOESN’T imagine Rose trapped in a fucking existential dying villain coma with a hard fucking cutoff that promises nothing is ever coming to resolve it ever.  (Or Jade in a somewhat-similar sidelined situation, or Jane doomed to fuck herself over and everyone else too, or...)

What’s slipping away instead is the feeling that any of it mattered at all. Was she insane to be so consumed by such lofty concerns, and is she only beginning to experience clarity today, for the first time in ages?

Yeah, you’re no longer in a timeline of Light and relevance.  And that’s not so bad, which is something you never expected to be true given your derision of the concept.  Void is pretty goddamn alright.

--Oh right, the illness and substance abuse probably caused plenty of distance between them.

KANAYA: There Was A Feeling I Couldnt Shake That Something Terrible Was Going To Happen To Us KANAYA: Something That Neither Of Us Could Stop KANAYA: A Powerful Outside Force That Would Take You Away From Me KANAYA: And I Couldnt Stop Myself From Thinking That Maybe KANAYA: Maybe That It Would Be For The Best ROSE: Kanaya... KANAYA: I Can Now See That This Is Completely Ridiculous

For some reason, this doesn’t settle my stomach much?  It’s clear Andrew wove this in here so that if you read Meat first, you’d be able to acknowledge readily how this diverged in a way the characters kind of recognize, and... I’m not sure what I’m even saying.  It’s like there’s hope that this is TRYING to take the bad taste out of my mouth, but I don’t believe it overly much.

ROSE: What a relief, considering that we are both going to be young and magically fit literally forever.

Wait, so they DID find a way to extend their non-ascended friends’ lifespans to practical immortality?  Jane’s Life powers?  Something else?

==>

yay jade.  more extended dave metaphors.  calm down stomach.

JADE: i never thought id be thinking of you as my weird nerd friend by the time we were in our twenties

Heheheh.

DAVE: yeah well i never thought youd be like the premiere woo girl on the planet

Had to look up what a “woo girl” was.

Yes Jade go flirt them to death

What she’s planning isn’t a seduction. It’s a public service.

Pff

(And yeah, she’s being pushy but at least she doesn’t go DIRK FAR about it.)

DAVE: its incredible hes driven at least ten people off the site by creating thinly veiled parody accounts of their usernames

Oh my gosh, Karkat’s good enough to ANDREW HUSSIE them?!???  :D

That’s incredible.

Karkat knows damned well what a husband is. He’s been force-fed enough bad movies from Dave to pick up any human euphemism you could name. He still plays dumb sometimes, for comedic effect, to irritate his friends, or simply to avoid a topic of conversation altogether.

Yeah, it was always pretty clear that about HALF of the trolls pretended not to understand something human that they knew about just for comedic effect and they knew it.  :)

It would be pretty easy to mistake his reaction for arousal, so it’s understandable that Jade is extremely surprised when Karkat snaps his jaw shut and chomps down on her hand.

PFFFFHahahahah :D

And yep, Jane cancelled her run at Dirk’s direction.

DAVE: lets all just thank whichever christ was responsible for making whatever decision resulted in her deciding not to do that

*nod nod*

JADE: well i hope she gets a better hobby JADE: there are a lot of less ominous things she could do with her time KARKAT: WHAT, LIKE FUCKING HER WAY THROUGH HALF THE POPULATION OF EARTH C?

Jade pinches his ear and twists hard, smiling pleasantly.

JADE: get fucked karkat

Yeah, this is about the level of violence/threat I’d expect from Jade when anyone slut-shames her for perfectly acceptable behavior.

==>

There is almost no crime on Earth C, and so almost no one locks their door.

Huh.  I guess post-scarcity might do that.

Alright, we get to see Jane being less of a fuckass.

Dirk was the one person on Earth C who took the state of the locksmith industry with the seriousness it deserved.

Pffff

JAKE: Thats my theory at least. Maybe its tommyrot but i have faith that dirk will be back. After all where is he going to go?

Good question that wasn’t answered in Meat, so of course Jake says it here obliviously.

JAKE: I must admit i am rather half rats at the moment. JANE: You’re what? JAKE: Haha sorry that was a pretty obtuse way of putting it wasnt it. JAKE: What i mean to say is that ive been powdering my hair quite a bit today.

Andrew is SO good at making Jake sound completely incomprehensible.

...Ouch, Jane, don’t drink so hard! D:

The “morbs”??

JAKE: Dirk has that manner about him does he not? JAKE: A way about him that makes you feel like whatever you do as long as it does not involve him it doesnt count for dick.

Yeah, fuck Dirk.

Hm... is the absence of relevance affecting them, or some other manipulation? It’s not just the LACK of Dirk’s manipulation.

JAKE: Except of course for that time when you were under mind control and had me trussed up in your lair as you pontificated villainously about using me as a breeding stud to create a blood lineage for your incumbent corporate space empire.

A fate Dirk seems to agree with, judging by Meat.  Let’s sidestep that fucking entirely, thank you.

...yeah, I didn’t expect Jake’s response to be any less oblivious than exactly that.

==>

So why DID Callie bring Gamzee back, anyway?  Is there some secret use for him in mind?  Was she manipulated into it?  Maybe BY Gamzee?  Hm.

...alright, priestly with followings.  That ain’t good.  Is he aiming for Clown President MK2?

Everything Callie and Roxy have done and said in this Candy section so far seems creepily contrived, possibly by design.

...okay did they have some kind of weird agreement? Like, “okay John is gonna make his choice, and if he chooses to stay i try dating him instead of you, Callie”???  That’s... no that can’t be it.  Roxy’s NEVER acted THIS oblivious before.  What’s she playing at?

GAMZEE: mY fUcKiN *gUy*. :o) JOHN: ... GAMZEE: My DuDe AnD mY nInJa AlIkE. GAMZEE: mY *hOrN* dOoOoG. JOHN: ... GAMZEE: mY hOrN tO tHa MoThErFuCkIn DoG. ;o) JOHN: waiter! help!

I’m imagining Gamzee now as a sweaty and homeless, unkempt Guy Fieri.

Yeah, this doesn’t look like it’ll be fun.

==>

...Swifer Eggmop.  ¬_¬”

There’s a third member of their social group who definitely hasn’t arrived at the conclusion that his power and influence should be meted out responsibly either. Neither of them speak his name, however. For some reason, it feels like a shadow passing over the sun. A brief spike of pain flickers through Rose’s head, a bolt that strikes between her eyes and splinters out. There is color and light behind it. A vision that tears through the material reality in front of her and gives her a brief glimpse into a parallel reality where things are very different.

Yeah, fuck Dirk.

...Pff. Yeah, Rose WOULD mimic the record-scratch gesture.

Don’t invoke “never seeing Vriska again” like that, you’re really tempting fate.

Heh, Rose is finding some Light in the darkness, wanting to do something that’s meaningful on an expressive level with this Vriskgrub business.

Hm... why is my stomach a little less uneasy?

I sure hope it stays that way.

==>

KARKAT: OH MY GOD, ARE THE MECHANICAL GLUTES ON THAT BILLBOARD ACTUALLY PADDED WITH PLUSH TO MAKE THEM MORE LIFELIKE?

Heck Yes

...Yes, touch the butt, Karkat.

Jade, pouting a bit, glides in between them and uses her Space powers to teleport Dave’s phone out from the center of his traumatized palm and into the pocket of her sweater.

Hm!  So she still has teleportation abilities over a limited range even without her Green Sun boost, that’s nice.  :D

After all, where would these two pitiful beta boys be without her?

Oh my fucking god stop being Dirk, Jade.  And never use that narrative language again, even in your head.  Heck, even if Dirk’s the one WRITING this still, don’t even think CLOSE enough to think those words.

...yeah this sounds like an Active player class taking things slightly too far.

Thank you, Karkat, for drawing the consent-line in the sand.  Looks like Jade’s backing off a little.

--hold on, wait, Dave kissed him? He did, so why is-- let me read back up--

Dave doesn’t answer. She answers for him by leaning down and planting a dry, affectionate kiss on Karkat’s cheek.

Okay I misread this line earlier.  Jade kissed Karkat when neither of them were looking and is BLAMING Dave.  Hmm.

Alright, Dave ollies outie.  Karkat tumbles down some hillstairs.

Jade could probably catch him. Actually, she could easily do it, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of favor you should do in a fledgling kismesissitude.

Thaaaat’s a little presumptuous??

JADE: well i guess im eating grub spaghetti alone JADE: *again*!!!

:C

I’d be sadder if you didn’t bring it down hard upon yourself but

:C

==>

Yeah, John, better clear up this Callie business because it’s muddy as heck why Roxy would just drop everything to try things out with you.

Ah, we’re bringing up the gender identity thing on this side too, hm?

More serious talk, this is good, reading reading...

The glasses clink together clumsily, and water gets all over the complimentary breadsticks.

Oh no.  This had better not be Olive Garden.

ROXY: no one else has ever made me feel like this

--not Calliope???

What the heck is even going on.

Dave’s coming for some bro help it looks like.

==>

It’s hilarious how much Dave is freaking out about this, and how completely in-character it is.

JOHN: holy fucking shit. JOHN: there’s a gay snooze button? DAVE: yeah man theres a gay snooze button JOHN: wow.

I love these two’s conversations

......wait, Dave’s been holding off on kissing Karkat because of what he thinks JADE might think???? D:

JOHN: i almost managed to forget that she was trying to fuck you and karkat.

Pfffffffff  :D

Yep.  I love it being put so bluntly.

Reading on... yeah, for some reason I also always figured that the end result of a nice three-way relationship between those three people would be Jade and Dave essentially both just glomming onto Karkat more than each other?  Hm.

JOHN: i mean... it doesn’t sound... JOHN: *canon*?

...I hope you’re just talking about his coin flip explanation and not DaveKatJade.  >:(

John wonders when talking to Dirk has fixed anything for anyone.

Nod nod.

She grins up at John with shimmering, adoring eyes. They’re reflecting every star in the sky, all for him.

Seriously, what the hell.  Is Roxy hypnotized?  Putting on an act?  A voidy act??

I’m not doubting that Roxy COULD feel that way about John, I’m doubting the suddenness and the way Calliope is being deliberately ignored in the situation, which is so goddamn obvious that JOHN is uncomfortable about it.  There’s something seriously strange going on.

It itches at the back of his head, the idea that he might have just fucked up Dave’s entire life.

D:

Alright next post after a bit of breakfast.

[clonerightsagenda]

Oh, when u have the finger energy for it, calliope VS skaia-muse-Callie VS alpha-lord-Caliborn VS directors’ cut alt!caliborn dvd commentary discussion sometime? 

I am dictating this entire DVD commentary.  We are going to see how that goes.  To prevent the computer from getting upset at me for weird words, I am giving all the characters code names. So let’s talk about the adventures of Carl and Cindy, and I will use find replace later.

Calliope ends up being more of a McGuffin than a character in canon.  Sure, she’s nice and sweet and provides a lot of the exposition near the beginning of Act six, but after that she is mostly something to rescue.  Once she is rescued, she doesn’t do much in the story.  I know there is something said within canon about not having to do anything to be worth saving or worthwhile as a person, and that IS important!  However, I also thought that after being victimized by her brother, she should be allowed to play some part in taking him down.  She has stakes! More than Vriska, for sure. We haven’t gotten there yet, but you may recall her being told she will have to help defeat him in the end.  Something to look forward to.  Calliope also ends up being very sweet and good, which she is.  However, she does have some faults, the biggest of which is that she admits a few times that she sometimes views her friends as characters.  Those faults are shown most dramatically in her other self, but she does get snappy toward Alt Caliborn in the director’s cut portions.  A lot of her development, which you haven’t seen much of yet, is going to involve learning from the mistakes of her other itself.

That seems like a good transition.  Alt Calliope isn’t exactly a villain in this story, but she is an antagonist.  She doesn’t have negative intentions.  In fact, her concern is the perpetuation of reality.  However, she is most interested in defeating her brother, because she sees him as a dangerous instability against good order. The little people don’t matter so much. Now, I actually thought canon would establish that she was behind the game. So much of the comic is about things that seemed mysterious or eternal (the demon, the universe, the Green Sun) secretly having an origin.  After all, the whole thing is a creation myth.  So when I started writing this, I honestly thought it would be stated in Homestuck proper that she was behind the game.  That did not happen, but that is what I went with.  So in our version, she used her powers to inspire the game, and the consciousness behind it.  She is the value system behind Skaia.

And that is where we get into Calliope’s faults.  Because Calliope, watching from a distance, was tempted to see her friends as characters. This version has never interacted with people directly.  She had only herself, her thoughts, and what she could see. It was easy for her to dehumanize them. They are the pawns on the chessboard of the game she is playing with her brother, and she will move them and sacrifice them in whatever ways she thinks will lead to the greater good.  Which is not so great if you are one of those pawns.  I have gotten into my issues with Skaia before, so I will just link you over if you want to look at them. But she is definitely a lesson in what not to do, and how space can become just as terrible as time.

So let’s move on to her adversary.  Lord English is not really a person anymore.  He is actually several technically, but all of them have degraded into a cosmic force. If Alt Calliope is a creation at the expense of individuals, Lord English is destruction at the whim of one individual.  He’s searching for his sister to consolidate his power, but he also just likes wrecking stuff.  Much as Calliope is behind Skaia, one oppressive force, LE is behind the alpha timeline.  Both constrain the possible actions of the other characters, punishing them for any divergence.  Anyone who writes a different story than the privileged alpha is doomed and killed.  (I talked a fair bit about the tyranny of the author here.) I’m not sure this is even what Caliborn wanted really.  Yes, it is a final manifestation of his self absorption and determination, but at the cost of his own personality.  I kind of see both of these “fully realized” master Classes as a sign that too much of your role can overcome you.  They are pure time and space in the worst ways possible. Overly clinical, heartless creation and overly aimless, heartless destruction.

Speaking of how Caliborn wouldn’t like it, enter Alt Caliborn.  I didn’t want to do some pat ‘he becomes pure good’ thing.  He’s still a deck.  Man, it really doesn’t want me to swear.  Anyway, he is still a jerk.  That is just his personality.  However, I find strict binaries too simplistic.  Saying every type of this species is 100% evil all of the time is dumb.  So yes, he is still spiteful and rude.  If he was given the opportunity to sell his sister out to his own advantage, he totally would.  However, he is not mindlessly destructive.  He sees that cooperating is advantageous.  Also, this gave me a chance to highlight some character traits that disappeared later in the story as he was absorbed into the final boss.  He is insecure, has trouble learning, and sometimes feels abandoned.  All those come out much more clearly in this version.  Is he a good person?  No. But I didn’t feel like one note villains, and since Lord English kind of is inevitably one note by virtue of being a force of nature, I decided to flesh this one out instead.

In conclusion, I'm not wild about pure good or pure evil. The cherubs’ “realized” selves demonstrate how too much conviction to any ideal can become horrible and oppressive to those living in the world you are trying to create. No one person should be allowed to determine everyone's narratives. That is the danger of the master classes I think, and perhaps why their species was never supposed to play this game. It is a lesson Calliope will take to heart. 

[blues-sevenfold]

World Building: Sapient Birds

I have quite a few universes, now, that contain sapient birds. Some of the less magical verses - such as Steampunk Universe, Clockpunk+Solarpunk Universe, and ISOT Multiverse (1507, 1957, and 2007) - don’t really contain any sapient non-human species.

I’ve been very big on planning out Daemon Universe (something new for 2018), the past few days. It is largely inspired by Philip Pullman’s series (specifically Lyra’s world), but also has distinct differences. Aside from daemons, which act largely as spiritual companions for humans - there are also sapient bears, sapient monkeys, sapient lemurs, and sapient birds (called parrots, but have more passerine in physical form).

Then there’s also Candy Land, which remains my favourite - and, the more that I plan out Daemon Universe, I feel as if I’m neglecting Candy Land. Candy Land also is home to many sapient non-human animals. Dragons are really the only ones who evolved that way naturally. Gnomes and fairies are both considered part of the “homo” family, even if fairies are somewhat insectoid in form.

However, plenty of sapient animals in Candy Land have been formed via MGM (magical genetic modification) - of which birds happen to be one of them. Most of the sapient birds are passerines, but some are also actual parrots. Sapient ducks also exist - which are passerine-sized, but have duck-shaped bodies and webbed feet.

Troll Universe (Troll Planet with Rose Moon and Jade Moon) is largely inspired by Homestuck, but have some divergences. Native to the planet are trolls (grey humanoids with candy corn horns) with mother grubs and many lusus species. There are also gnomes and dicephalas - which are, essentially, heavily mutated trolls. Leprechauns (based loosely on the Felt, but are not inherently evil) and Gems (based on Steven Universe) reside on Jade Moon - and both are largely humanoid in nature. Nymphs are humanoid beings who reside on Rose Moon, and Parrots are the sapient birds (which are actually passerine in form). No sapient birds are native to Troll Planet, but plenty of Parrots have migrated to Troll Planet and Jade Moon.

There is actually a species of sapient birds that exist in Vampire Universe (and, by extension, Lunarpunk Universe), but I haven’t explored too much with that. I posted about it awhile back, on my old blog - so I’ll need to look for that. Until the subsequent worlds are unmasqued, they are mindful to not allow themselves to discovered by mundane mortals. They are common as witch familiars. Maybe I should switch “witch” with “mage”, as with Daemon Universe.

As for Cyber/Bio/Solarpunk Universe, cyber worlds will add another layer of dimension to reality. The endonet is where you visit a cyber world via dreaming. The exonet is where you communicate with a cyber world via monitor and keyboard (or maybe voice). Biotech could be helpful in species preservation, and even reviving some extinct species. I don’t really like robots, but I do like the idea of AI. If sapient non-human animals can’t exist on the physical plane, then they would exist in cyber worlds. Nintendo (a few decades earlier) managed to bring Mushroom Kingdom (Mario series) and Hyrule (Zelda series) to life, but not really creating the characters exactly. I think it would be unethical to try to bring Bowser and Ganondorf to life.

[betweengenesisfrogs]

OFF-THE-CUFF HOMESTUCK THOUGHTS #4: ALL THAT WACKY GNOSTIC STUFF AND THE ENDING OF HOMESTUCK, OR: THE YOLOBRO PRINCIPLE

DISCLAIMER       FRAMEWORK

[CHECK THE TAG FOR MORE THOUGHTS]

All right! I’ve finally had a night free, I’m hyped up on friends and good feelings, and I’m ready to continue. Let’s make shit transpire. B)

So, one thing a lot of folks were talking about near the end of Homestuck’s run was Gnosticism. Gnostic themes and references (referances) were everywhere in Act 6 Homestuck. A lot of folks were predicting these themes would be heavily involved in the ending. Then, when Act 7 came out, I saw a lot of disappointment and confusion. The major Gnostic revelations they’d predicted hadn’t taken place! Had Hussie dropped Gnostic themes like they were hot and the pimp was in the crib?

I don’t think so. I think, far from being dropped, the Gnostic themes and ideas are KEY to Homestuck’s ending. They’re vital to understanding massive parts of it, and, for me, at least, one of the things that make it so enjoyable for me. The trick, though, is to understand what kind of Gnostic story we’re looking at. So let’s see if we can crack this cueball open.

This is going under a cut, because it’s going to be an essay in itself.

GNOSTICISM, OR: SOPHIA, YALDABAOTH, AND YOU

Okay, first off: what even is Gnosticism and what themes are we even talking about? Many of you may be familiar with this stuff already from the aforementioned posts, but I’m sure there’s plenty of you out there who aren’t, so let’s do a quick recap.

Gnosticism was an early breakaway movement in Christianity back when the new religion was first finding its feet, and in fact it still has some adherents today. This is pre-Bible, pre-general acceptance of Christianity stuff. Think 100s and 200s CE. It was generally a lot more focused on individual experience of the divine than the hierarchy of the developing Church—which, sadly, was probably the main reason it was outcompeted by the hierarchy. It just didn’t have as much unified social or political power. So we’re mostly forced to reconstruct it (like so many alt Christianities) from the texts of the people who were arguing against it.

But, as far as we can tell, its beliefs were and are pretty interesting compared to the Christianity most of us are more familiar with. Basically, the God of the Old Testament, the God of Judaism, was not the God to worship according to Gnostic Christianity. He’s actually the villain. (Which was a pretty huge divergence from Christianity’s Jewish roots, so you can see how that might not have sat too well with some folks.)

Among many different texts, there’s a common mythic story that goes something like this. We live in a realm which is fallen and contains evil, but the true reality is different. The true reality is a perfect realm of perfect goodness, created by the true (very abstract) Creator. This state is called the pleroma, Greek for “fullness.” The pleroma emanates forth perfect worlds with the help of beings called aeons, angel-like beings who exist in male-female pairs, each of which is called a syzygy.

The fall occurred when the pairs became unbalanced. One of these aeons, Sophia (“wisdom” in Greek), broke away from her partner, and went off to explore the void. While she remained perfect, she accidentally emanated a being that was not paired with anyone: a masculine, flawed being known as Yaldabaoth or the Demiurge. Some folks will tell you this means “half-creator,” but that’s a mistranslation. Demiurge in Greek really means, literally, “worker from/of the people,” but less literally it means something like “artist” or “craftsman.” Usually it’s a guy who makes pretty stuff like jewelry or decoration or something like that. (Can you tell I took Greek?)   This being created our world, our whole flawed material plane, believing himself to be the creator, and became the God of the Old Testament. The task of the Gnostic is to transcend Yaldabaoth through self-knowledge, or gnosis. By understanding oneself, one realizes one’s unity with Sophia, the true source of our divinity, and ultimately, with the pleroma and the true Creator.  

All in all, it’s a pretty cool concept, whether you believe in it or not. And already, if you weren’t familiar with Gnosticsm before, I imagine you’re spotting things from Homestuck.  Names like Yaldabaoth and Abraxas (a name used sometimes for the true Creator.) The aeons, who resemble Homestuck’s cherubs in their perfect pairing.  It’s pretty clear that Hussie was familiar with this story, at least enough to draw on it for some references and motifs. So why might he have wanted to bring Gnostic stuff into his story? What might he have wanted to convey?

Let’s find out.

CHERUBS CHERUBS CHERUBS

It all begins, of course, with the aeons. I mean cherubs. OK, so I make no secret of the fact that I love cherubs. God I love cherubs. I’m a sucker for the whole cherub loredump Aranea provides, even if it had to be lampshaded to hell and back as a loredump. I think the thing that makes cherubs so interesting to me is the place that they occupy in Homestuck’s enormous, builds-on-itself-Powers-of-Ten-style cosmos. They’re not just another alien race. They don’t operate on the ordinary scale we’re used to, like trolls and humans do (the microcosm of ordinary life), but they don’t operate on the gigantic universe-spawning scale, either (the macrocosm.) They’re in between, in the “mezzocosm,” to steal a phrase from Joseph Campbell.

Cherubs act on the scale of say, galaxies. They operate within universes, many cherubs existing within each individual Billious Slick. Destructive cherubs cause huge waves of death, wiping out solar system after solar system and species after species of poor innocent aliens and fantrolls along the way. But good cherubs are protectors, defending said species from their cousins’ rampages. While cherubs resemble individual aliens traveling through the void, they also operate like much larger beings, claiming huge swaths of territory as their own, either to defend or to destroy. When they mate, their large-scale nature becomes much more evident, as they transform into AU-long serpents that wrestle for dominance in perfect pairs.

Cherubs fit the idea of the aeons really nicely. Dualities up the wazoo, obviously. (I haven’t even mentioned their inherent bodysharing stuff, where they already have to wrestle for dominance within themselves.) And a cherub, after all, in Abrahamic myth, is another kind of angel. And by being part of the natural processes of universes, they echo the aeons in being a natural aspect of reality that—as we’ll see—gets subverted with disastrous results.

They also fit really well into Homestuck’s running theme of cosmology as biology. Universes are literally frogs, whose DNA has to be combined to create the next generation, and they reproduce with massive amounts of redundancy and failure, like real spawning animals who produce hundreds of eggs.  Doomed timelines are compared to capillaries, which all feed back into the central artery of the Alpha timeline (and maybe they’re literal capillaries within the universe-frog?) I gave your universe cancer, etc., etc. Cherubs, meanwhile, are compared to bacteria and cells: the destructive cherubs to viruses or germs, and the protective cherubs to white blood cells, defending the universe from disease.

Cherubs also make a really nice parallel with the events of the Game. (I’m pretty sure this insight came out of conversations between agenderarcee and zenosanalytic and other such awesome folks, so credit where credit is due.) In the Game, one party supports creation: Prospit, backed by Skaia, while the other doesn’t so much support destruction so much as oppose creation: the armies of Derse, backed possibly by the Horrorterrors. Creation vs Nullification. It’s hard to get a universe going; there’s too much inertia in the way. Meanwhile, Cherubs are an inversion—the wicked ones support Destruction, the good ones oppose it. Creation vs Nullification. Destruction vs Protection. It’s pretty cool, and maybe suggests that Skaia doesn’t just contain cherubs, but relies on them, too, working them into its system as aeons are part of the system of Gnosticism. I’m super stoked that cherubs seem to play a role in Hiveswap somehow, and curious what more we might learn about them when it finally comes out. They’re super cool.

All of which is to say: yeah, cherubs are definitely aeons, and they’re a pretty rad take on them, too.

So…what would happen if your cherubs got fucked up?

But you knew that would happen. The upfuckery was already here.

Enter *our* cherubs, Calliope and Caliborn.

THE MANCHILD DEMIURGE

Caliborn and Calliope are born into a weird code of life (set up ultimately by Caliborn, interestingly) that privileges their more down to earth side, rather than their cosmic side. Ordinary cherubs aren’t supposed to live in rooms and type on computers, but here they do. This is a problem, as I’ll explain later, but the obvious problems are that A) Caliborn and Calliope decide to play a game meant for other, less cosmic species B) Caliborn uses the game to kill his sister through artificial means rather than grappling for dominance the ordinary way and thus dooms himself to being a stunted immature tool forever C) As a solo player, he plays a very different game, with enormous and disastrous cosmic results. Namely, he becomes Lord English, an unstoppable being with incredible power over the timeline and the opportunity to devour world after world at a whim. Note that inflicting destruction is exactly what he would have done as an ordinary cherub…but here he’s able to do it on a much larger scale.

Caliborn/Lord English is pretty clearly modeled on the Gnostic Demiurge. Not only does he control a reality that our heroes are ultimately meant to escape, he also has some other familiar traits. He’s a self-described artist, obsessed with his creation, a terrible and insipid imitation of the story we know as Homestuck. A craft’s man, as he says. The irony being, of course, that the events of Homestuck are also his creation, but indirectly, as the much more powerful and manipulative English.

It’s easy to see LE’s entrance into a universe at the end of its life as an event. But in some ways it’s better to think of it as a kind of territory, marked for his possession. After all, from an outside perspective or from Skaia’s perspective, all universes are already here. Think of how the trolls are able to communicate with the universe they created at any point in its history. Think of how the Furthest Ring—the weird space-time outside of universes and sessions—is inconsistent and an event necessary to LE’s powers, the creation of the Green Sun, can take place within one of the universes marked by his predation. It’s Mobius Double Reacharounds all the way down, is what I’m saying. So really, from a perspective outside of time it’s less a chronological set of events and more a place, a set of universes that LE is able to inhabit.

Actually, I made a couple maps in past posts of what such a territory might look like. Tumblr frequently won’t let me fit images into a long post like this, but here’s two  links instead.

So, just like the Demiurge, LE has a whole realm to his own. A false realm, carved out within the reality of SBURB. LE is Homestuck’s Demiurge.

Wait a minute. Wasn’t the Demiurge’s name Yaldabaoth? Isn’t that the name of a Denizen? More specifically, Caliborn’s denizen? Huh?

Let’s back up a bit. LE’s progression through the universes isn’t a surprise to Skaia. We knew early on, actually, that his actions were “sanctioned by Paradox Space.” And really, how could it be otherwise? If all universes coexist simultaneously, even during the process of their creation, the forces that create reality would be well aware of divergences from their normal pattern.  The Game itself offers him his power!

Now, it’s hard to say how much of what goes on in Paradox Space is Skaia’s will. Skaia itself seems to want to make universes, but most of these efforts fail, and will definitely fail without player intervention. And it’s implied that there are forces acting against Creation. Maybe just inertia. Or maybe these are the Horrorterrors, who seem to advance their own agenda through Derse Dreamers. Maybe they’re just creatures that naturally inhabit the weird tangled space-time of the Furthest Ring. If so, it’s not surprising that they would be opposed to the creation of new universes in their midst. So whatever LE is, like everything else within Paradox Space, he’s hashed out between Creation and Nullification.

Denizens are weird and interesting in this regard. They’re the closest thing the Game has to intelligent cosmic entities that you could actually talk to. They’re like the public face of Skaia. They seem to communicate information to themselves through different realities, and they manipulate events to ensure certain results in the timeline. Their goals, though, are as inscrutable as Skaia’s and the Horrorterrors’ always are. They’re associated with the Game and therefore with Skaia. But they seem to me to be part of the ever-ongoing process of negotiation between Creation and Nullification.

So, when Caliborn finds himself in a dead session where his Denizen simultaneously promises to punish him for his hubris with a grueling challenge AND offers him incredible, godlike power if he succeeds, it probably indicates that these perspectives are once again at play. Skaia likes to figure out who will win its ongoing argument with the void through a Game. Why not offer a different Game as a way of resolving a different question?

I’m not sure if I borrowed this theory from someone, but one idea that I remember thinking about earlier in Homestuck’s run was that LE’s existence was the result of a failed coup by the Horrorterrors that totally backfired. If they really did represent the forces of Nullification, suppose they got tired (non-temporally speaking) of losing matches and seeing new frogs pop up in their precious space-time over and over again. Say they decided to switch from Nullification to outright Destruction, to make a weapon that destroys universes. But their weapon blew up in their face once it started attacking them right back.

Or, maybe let’s turn it around: say Skaia thought, hey, let’s get a leg up on these void-loving bastards for once, and make a weapon that, yeah, sure, fucks up a bunch of universes and some of our player’s lives (not that we really care), but also lets us really stick it to those tentacley motherfuckers for a change.

Both possibilities seem worth considering, depending on how much you think Skaia is willing to sacrifice.

So when Yaldabaoth offers LE the Choice and the chance to play the ultimate game of table stickball, he’s really doing a whole lot more: he’s offering the major parties involved in anything going on in Paradox Space the chance to score points in their own Game.

Denizens sometimes seem to me to represent different aspects of Skaia, or different aspects of this negotiation process. It’s even possible that they could be in competition. So what could a Denizen named Yaldabaoth represent?

The power to make and break certain players. The power to make a Demiurge.

Yaldabaoth is associated with power, and, interestingly, with the Light aspect through his shape. He can’t be easily classified as belonging to a particular aspect like some Denizens can, though, because he manifests to both Dirk and Caliborn. What do they have in common? An interest in power and a considerable amount of it, yes. But also toxic masculinity, arrogance, and an obsession with being the best.

If Skaia loves games, how does it feel about winners? Maybe Yaldabaoth represents the principle of the conqueror. The one who defies even the onslaught and punishment of the dead session. The one who’s good enough at games to become part of the game itself. Maybe Yaldabaoth is the part of Skaia that finds someone like Caliborn deserving of a certain honor. Or at least allows its opponents to make use of such a person. The part of Skaia that says, power comes to the one who overcomes it all, through sheer brutal obsession. To the bro who is the most hardcore of all the bros. Who by throwing himself into his game more than any reasonable person would…somehow succeeds.

You might call it the Yaldabaoth Principle, or maybe…

The Yolobro Principle.

So that’s how you make a demiurge. How do you break one?

With a syzygy.

THE ARTIST, THE MUSE

Ah, dear, sweet, sweet, precious Calliope, I’m sorry to have held off talking about you for so long. Your brother ruins everything. But we all know you’re leagues, no, AUs better than that guy.

There isn’t anyone named Sophia in Homestuck, but Calliope is a pretty close analogue. She’s the other half of Caliborn’s cherub pair or syzygy, and it’s her separation from him that’s the catalyst for LE’s. Much of the personality Caliborn crafts for himself is in opposition to her: she’s a passionate and skilled artist, so he becomes an artist too in order to mock her work. Even his cartoonish misogyny seems to arise mostly out of his hatred for her and everything she enjoys. Even after he becomes LE, he’s still obsessing over her, just as cherubs generally obsess over their defeated halves and seek out mates similar to them in adulthood—creating crafting a parody of her in Doc Scratch, killing limeblood trolls because she’s fond of them, and so on. Honestly, Calliope is a great and wonderful character whom a lot of the fandom can empathize with (indeed, she’s crafted as a celebration of Homestuck fandom), and so it’s a shame that we’re going to spend most of this post talking about her stupid brother. Let’s just acknowledge that she deserves better, but her dumb bro has to go make it all about himself, as usual.

But let’s talk about Calliope as the Gnostic Sophia. Like Sophia, she can kind of be described as an inherently good being who made a mistake. In her case, that was believing that she could play a cosmic game with her brother and reconcile with him, rather than defeating him in cherub puberty as cherubs usually do. This ultimately led to her death, Caliborn’s dead session challenge round, and his Yaldabothification into LE.

It wouldn’t really be fair to be mad at her, though! It was an innocent mistake born out of good intentions, and it cost her her life. Also, the warring forces of the Game totally set that situation up, as did LE himself. The cherubs’ unusual living situation encouraged them to think of themselves as the type of species that would play the Game, and thus LE was born.

But there are two Calliopes: the one who was killed by her brother, yes, but also another from an alternate timeline, who defeated her brother in the normal cherub way. Part of the difference in her timeline was that she never learned to think of herself the way humans do, never followed their adventures as a fan, and thus never believed that they could reconcile in their game. Alt-Calliope is much closer to Paradox Space’s idea of a traditional cherub. She’s much more cosmic, much more like an aeon. But also much less human. She’s a force for good, but, like Skaia, she can only see individual beings as abstractions. From a certain perspective, she’s much more empowered and much more important

And yet the game is rigged against her. The challenges of her dead session are designed for her Lord of Time brother, and it seems to be implied that hers is a doomed timeline. When she consults with her Denizen—interestingly, not Yaldabaoth, but Echidna—she is given the Choice to wait out an eternity to become someone who could bring an end to a Yaldabaoth-like tyrant. And she accepts that destiny, committing herself fully to a cosmic purpose. Like LE, the ascended Muse of Space is happy to be part of Skaia’s machinations—if for a very different reasons.

If the Denizens represent different aspects of Skaia or the Game, then maybe there’s a countervailing force to Yalda that we could describe as the Echidna Principle. A dedication to protecting and preserving life within Skaia’s system. Or at least, an acknowledgement that the reign of any false god needs to come to an end.  The Echidna principle employs Alt-Calliope as a counterpart to Caliborn, bringing the two cherubs back into symmetry.

This symmetry is INTEGRAL to Homestuck’s ending. We’ll see how, once we establish some ending-related Homestuck Facts.

In the meantime don’t forget regular Calliope, either—she’s going to be important to the meaning of all this, too. We’ll catch up with her by the curtain call.

THE MAP HOMESTUCK AND THE TERRITORY ENGLISH

Okay! Homestuck Facts!

As I’ve discussed before, there’s a thing that keeps happening in Homestuck which we might call Map-Territory Confusion. This is a concept from literary studies and stuff. Basically, what we mean by Map and Territory is that representations of things are not the same as the things themselves. Like, a map of, say, Houston, is not the same thing as the actual city of Houston, right? One’s made of paper and the other’s made of, like, buildings and shit.

Except in Homestuck, the Map and the Territory blur together all the dang time. The labels for Prospit and Derse float in front of their respective planetoids. Jack knows how to flip his sprite. Terezi’s scratching the game disc glitches Homestuck the webcomic. Caliborn’s sabatoge of the expansion pack causes significant glitches in the Game Over session. Sooo many examples going on here that it would take forever to list them all. Even the way that the omniscient narration (which is sometimes the same as the character of Andrew Hussie and sometimes argues with him) blurs together with the subjective experiences of individual characters contributes to the confusion. Even though, on some level, we tend to believe that Homestuck is a representation of a set of events going on in a number of universes that all exist out in some conceptual space, we’re forced to question constantly whether what we’re witnessing is part of those events, or part of the frame we witness them through, or whether that question even makes sense.

By the time we reach Act 6, and even possibly earlier, I’d argue this confusion is being used very deliberately.

Remember how we talked about LE’s territory earlier?

In Homestuck, Map-Territory Confusion is used to draw an explicit link between the Map that is Homestuck the webcomic and the Territory that is the set of universes and sessions over which LE is able to hold sway.

This is a big part of the reason for Hussie and Caliborn’s conversation. Caliborn is arguing with the theoretical author of the map Homestuck, screeching at how his choices have affected him, and trying to put forward his own version of the narrative.  Meanwhile the author is literally dead, killed by LE. And after this conversation, Caliborn takes over the narrative prompt by entering his text into the same space where he had conversations with Hussie. He tries to rewrite Homestuck in his own bad-fandom image, while simultaneously A) his sabotage of the the Homestuck narrative cause glitches, confusion, and GAME OVER for the kids and B) his future-self LE’s power over the timeline becomes even more of a concern for both the living and the dead. This, mind you, is all on the heels of us finding out through the last few acts how LE and his agent Doc Scratch have been manipulating every disaster, and indeed, everything that has happened within the narrative Homestuck from the very beginning.

An large set of universes and sessions are LE’s playground.

Homestuck itself is LE’s playground.

The two are one and the same.

The other piece of the LE’s Domain = Homestuck puzzle is of course the house-shaped Juju, and the weird powers John gets from touching it. Now, the weird timeline retcon stuff that the Juju allows John to enact is its own weird, often frustrating subject that probably deserves its own post, and if we were to discuss it here, we’d get more derailed than we already are. What’s important for our purposes is that the Juju is even more associated with the narrative than LE is. When we first see it, it looks grey but is actually transparent, by which I mean it bleeds into the grey background of the base website. This grey background is also the place John ends up when he’s testing his powers and dragging LOWAS between realities. We know that LE used it in the very beginning of his reign to trap his opponents, and we know that afterward it passed out of his control, and became something that could only be used against him. It’s shaped like the logo for the Game, in the kids’ version, which is the closest thing we have to a symbol of Homestuck.

We don’t know much about what Jujus actually are, but one thing that’s frequently true about them is that they have strong effects on time. Well, what has a greater affect on time than a story that shapes all the different universes and timelines into a coherent progression?

I’m pretty sure that what Yaldabaoth gives Caliborn and what Caliborn traps our heroes inside to ensure his ascension is Homestuck itself.

So, when I say that the ending of Homestuck is about escaping Homestuck, please believe that it’s not just some weird meta bs that dismisses the story and says it doesn’t mean anything. It’s an actual plot point. Once we learn to see the link between Homestuck the narrative and Homestuck the events, we can see that to escape Homestuck the webcomic has a deeply metaphorical meaning. To escape Homestuck is to escape the hidden conductor behind all events and enter into a domain he cannot control.

With all that in mind, we’re now ready to interpret Act 7.

ACT 7: COSMIC SYMMETRY

We see two main things happen in Act 7. Alt-Calliope makes her move, and Vriska (oh Vriska, you’re your own post and a half) activates the house Juju against Lord English, which is to say, she weaponizes Homestuck against him. The result is a black hole where the Green Sun used to be. Which of the two are responsible? Wrong question, I think. Alt-Calliope, our Sophia, is serving as the conductor of the orchestra and by implication, the guiding hand of the narrative, while Vriska is bringing the narrative to bear against him. The Juju undeniably has power, but so, too, does a Muse of Space showing that this has been her domain all along. The physical destruction they cause is inextricably linked.

Thought the timeline stuff is knotty and confusing as hell, the actual mechanics of LE’s destruction are secretly fairly simple. As others have noted, the defeat of this pool-themed villain evokes the rules of table stickball. We see the Juju/weapon/narrative briefly resemble a ball of light, like a cue ball. We see LE’s eyes become eight balls. And we see the light from the juju charging toward him, like something about to knock him into a dark hole.

Click.

The symbolic meaning of the eight ball is important to keep in mind, and in fact was evoked earlier in Homestuck. In many games of billiards, you can’t pocket the eight ball until the last shot. With Snowman, that meant that you couldn’t kill her without destroying the universe. But in fact, Snowman did get taken out—when Scratch wanted someone to destroy the universe and bring in LE. The meaning of the eight ball, then, is: the time has finally come. The rules permit victory. The right timeline has been found. Everything necessary to make the final move has already taken place.

That’s exactly what Alt-Calliope represents in the eyes of Skaia or the Game. From the beginning of LE’s power trip, the Game knew that his power trip wouldn’t last forever. It would have limits both in time and in space. For Skaia, Alt-Calliope is those limitations being enacted. She is LE’s end.

Think back to the tangled spacetime of the Furthest Ring. Scratch enlisted Dave and Rose to create the Green sun long before the chronology of their session. Thus he achieved, in one sense, LE’s beginning. The destruction of the Green Sun (which unites all of LE’s universes as an ordinary star unites its planets) achieves LE’s end. It doesn’t matter that this end has to come, chronologically, after his long reign of terror. It still ends it.

It’s an end spatially as well as temporally. LE’s rampage through the furthest ring led him opponents around in a great circle of ravaged space-time. (Like a sucker.) Which by the time of the final confrontation makes a complete loop. Imagine what effect a star collapsing into a black hole might have on that ruined space. Imagine how a fully-realized Muse of Space might be able to manipulate the fabric of the Furthest Ring to achieve exactly that effect. Now recall that the universes and sessions LE’s able to influence are part of the Green Sun’s orbit. Yeah, they’re not going to make it out of that collapse intact. Nor are the army of ghost selves that echo the twisting progression of all the universes and alternate timelines we’ve seen going to escape. They’re going to be caught up in the extinction of the domain, swept up in its wake.

That’s the physical side of things. Looking at the Juju itself lets us talk about the narrative side of things. When Vriska activates the Juju, it takes shape as the familiar house symbol of Homestuck. But that same symbol has another meaning—it’s the shape of the Exit Gate for the Game. At the exact same moment (remember, things that are juxtaposed in Homestuck are circumstantially simultaneous, meaning that they’re somehow associated or related to each other) the Juju becomes the Exit Gate, we also see the kids’ (previously red and doorless) Exit gate flip turnways, turn white, and feature a door. The two look so similar that for a moment I thought the kids were going to walk through and end up in the Furthest Ring. But no—the two aren’t two sides of the same door. They’re the same side of the same door.

Down in front of LE crashes a white door. The same white door appears to the kids at the same moment. The difference is, the kids will walk through, and LE will not. He won’t escape the end of his own ambitions. Where does the door lead from? From LE’s domain, also known as Homestuck. Where does it lead to? A new universe outside of LE’s domain, and outside the canon of Homestuck. So outside the canon that it’s only glimpsed as a flash-forward to the future, unable to be directly shown onscreen before the End of Act 7.

And—whatever interpretation we want to assign to the bizarre timeline questions that surround the retcon, Caliborn’s vision of trapping the kids, and the Juju—one thing stands out clearly. This is the right timeline. This is no longer the timeline trapped under LE’s sway. As the eight ball tells us, everything has finally lined up the way it should. Time to take that shot.

One more thing worth noting—in Homestuck, specific colors have long stood for specific timelines and universes. The curtains of the Beta kids’ acts are red, and the Alphas’ green, and their game logos invert this. Meanwhile the trolls’ curtains are blue. As was foreshadowed in Rose’s walkaround, the three colors of curtains eventually fuse to make, in Act 7, white. The color of everything coming together. The color of the Juju in its final form.

What better way to represent everything from the whole history of LE’s domain coming together? What better way to represent everything from the whole history of Homestuck combining into one victory?

In the ending of Homestuck, weird time shit, cosmic destruction, and the culminating power of the narrative all fuse together into one white-hot path toward victory. And even as all this happens, we see Caliborn smashing his clock, see LE gaining his terrifying time powers in the first place. The end is the beginning, and the beginning is also the end.

For a Demiurge and for Skaia, that’s the same thing. The Game has granted Caliborn unfathomable power. But it’s also trapped him in a false, limited world of his own devising. Forever. His obsession means power, but his obsession is also his greatest weakness. He will never know freedom from the loop he set himself in, has become the loop itself. He will never know the freedom the kids know. His ignorance of anything but himself makes him, in a way, a deeply tragic figure. Tragic because Skaia knows how limited he really is, and he never will.

Skaia, or whatever power is at work in the symmetrical ballad of the twin cherubs, is satisfied. Alt-Calliope has fulfilled her cosmic purpose. The circle is complete. The cosmos is satisfied. And our heroes have left the old world behind forever

…But what does that mean? What does it mean to escape?

A GIRL WHO LIVED

What surprised a lot of people who’d been following the Gnostic themes of Homestuck was that the kids didn’t ultimately escape the game. A lot of folks, I remember, felt sure that the kids were going to leave the Game behind forever by escaping into a limitless realm, the pleroma of Gnostic myth.

Here’s the thing. They did.

What I’ve been trying to show here is that the Demiurge to escape, as figured in Homestuck, isn’t Skaia, but Lord English. And the pleroma, the realm of freedom we’re trying to get to? That’s not some place outside Skaia and its cycle of universe after universe being born.

The pleroma is Skaia itself.

This is deeply weird and it’s easy to see why it would catch a lot of people off guard. After all, the pleroma in Gnostic myth is a deeply positive thing, a realm of perfection and joy. It’s the home of the perfectly good God, as Christians tend to view him. Skaia, however, is depicted as amoral, uncaring, even cruel.

But I think this ties into Homestuck’s major themes. The amoral, almost animal-minded cosmos Homestuck depicts is fascinating precisely because it offers no caring God. Cherubs are part of the ordinary progression of things, just as aeons are, but reconnecting with that progression simply means the continued perpetuation of reality through an infinite frog machine. The deep meaningfulness of mythology clashes, quite deliberately with the deep meaninglessness of perpetual motion.  God is a video game that doesn’t care about you as a person, but as a tool it can use to keep the whole show running. And yet, like a video game, it offers grand, mythic narratives and archetypes you can invest yourself in, to the point where you can lose sight of the fact that they don’t necessarily mean anything for your life. Skaia will always exist, even after the story is done, as the Spirograph at the end of Act 7 suggests. It’s up to us human beings to make sense of that.

I’ve talked before about the difference between huge, archetypal narratives and actual personal experiences. Within the context of Sburb, that usually means the difference between the game and your experience of it. But it can also be the difference between Dave and the toxic masculine narratives he inherited. The difference between your archetype and yourself. Or the difference between Calliope and her doppleganger.

To Skaia, Alt-Calliope is the important one, because she enacts its mythic narrative and brings the ballad of Lord English to an end. To Skaia, the Calliope we know is a footnote, an accident, an irrelevant detail. It doesn’t care whether she lives or dies.

But we do. Because we know her. We’ve seen her suffer and struggle, just as we’ve seen all the heroes suffer and struggle. We’ve seen her yearn to be part of something important, celebrated fandom with her, and wanted to defend her against her horrible brother. We’ve seen her dream of something better than a limited life locked to a monster with a chain. We’ve been rooting for her to achieve it.

There’s no reason, from Skaia’s perspective, that Calliope needed to be brought back to life with the ring of life. The ring allowed Aranea to cause Game Over, which was important to the retcon and thus to its grand plan. Calliope is irrelevant.

But she gets brought back to life anyway. Why? Because her friends care about her. Because we do.

Because our Calliope isn’t part of the construction of a grand cosmic architecture. She’s a person.

She has the right to exist. Not because she fulfils some time loop or causes some outcome. But because she’s a person. She doesn’t exist for the cosmos. She exists for herself.

In our Calliope, what was formerly godlike, angel-like, beyond mortal comprehension, gets a chance to be something more human. Calliope expects her doppelganger to be superior to her. She fears her friendships, her peacefulness, her history make her weak. But it’s just the opposite. She’s strong in a way that has nothing to do with what Skaia values, but everything to do with what we value as readers. She matters in dreaming and striving. In herself.

As Alt-Calliope says, recognizing this truth about her counterpart, even as she lives out an entirely different story:

CALLIOPE: you don't need to do anything.

CALLIOPE: be who you've become, and who i didn't.

CALLIOPE: consume the fruits of an existence i could never understand.  

CALLIOPE: live.

The kids escape Lord English, but at the expense of all their past and possible selves, and are left to wrestle with the meaning of their victory: is it divinely ordained, or just an accident, just Skaia’s whim? Is it truly victory when they’re not sure if they’re the same selves, or have they lost something along the way? Caliborn and Calliope embody a similar dichotomy. Caliborn will forever be archetypal, larger than life. But he’s doomed to live out a foolish, self-indulgent story in a bubble of space-time he will never escape. Calliope will never have the glorious, cosmic importance Skaia granted to her brother and to the ghost of her it conjured up to defeat him. But she has a freedom that neither of them will never be able to possess. Freedom to live.

Ultimately, Homestuck uses Gnosticism, a mythic framework all about the relationship between human and the divine, to show the difference between the two. It suggests that the divine, the archetypal, the stuff of grand heroic stories is ultimately limited. In the end, Homestuck argues, there’s great strength and freedom in being mortal. Being human.

I think that’s a pretty cool story to tell.

Next time: other ways of thinking about the ending.

(PS: This essay turned out to be 11 pages in Word. The first mention of Vriska is on page 8. Of fucking course.)

[EDIT 5/21: A previous version of this post claimed that Abraxas was the name of Sophia’s syzygy counterpart, but looking around, that appears to be unsubstantiated. Instead, Abraxas appears to be used as the name of the Ur-God who created the Pleroma or of another Aeon within the Gnostic system. This is pretty cool, as it ties the Denizen Abraxas and the Hope aspect even more fully into the normal functioning of the Sburban cosmos/pleroma. Pretty cool stuff! Thanks to @revolutionaryduelist for pointing it out!]

[zackdaemon]

Exploring Paradox Space (Homestuck/Hiveswap AU) open to all

Default story: Just as there are many timelines, alternate and doomed including, there are also a few parallel universes out there too. Zack is a traveler from one of these realities, he doesn’t know what his purpose is or how he ended up in another universe but a new place to explore and new and familiar faces to meet. He travels across the universe on his ship, which occasionally jumps across random points in the timeline both in the pre and post-scratch and of course the dream bubbles. 

In a Canon-Divergent route, Zack wakes up on the new Earth (Post ACT 7) not knowing where he is, he then meets Dave, Karkat and the others with no memories of who he is...

Story 2: Like the Beta Kids, he and his friends received their own universe’s version of Sburb, and they got pretty far in their session, but something happened, and when Zack awakened he was in a new universe, confused and thinking he was still in his own session he tried to continue on when he encounters the others.

Lost on Alternia (Hiveswap AU) with @rustbloodtrxsh  

Zack awakens in a crater on a now wasteland Alternia, when he is rescued by Xefros, only with some supplies, a high tech scanner, and a mission that he does not yet understand, but little by he begins to process of piecing back his memories while helping out his new friend...

Notes: Zack is a Light player and he’s a knight class as well. So he would be a Knight of Light once he reached God Tier, info on this classpect I used for Zack is here. Characters he’d be close with would be Dave, Dirk, Vriska, Terezi, Rose, Karkat. (His age can vary from being a teenager to a young adult in this Verse).

[ao3feed-rosekan]

Act I: Ascendance

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Zlpwp9

by Lopadopalis

Every timeline of Homestuck that takes place before, during, or after Homestuck and/or the Homestuck Epilogues has a specific way it is supposed to act out. However, it is entirely possible for entities from beyond these timelines to compromise them and change their narratives.

Post-Meat, John Egbert wakes up.

Words: 5052, Chapters: 2/11, Language: English

Series: Part 4 of Yggdrasil

Fandoms: Homestuck

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Categories: Multi

Characters: John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, Jade Harley, Roxy Lalonde, Dirk Strider, Jake English, Karkat Vantas, Kanaya Maryam, Terezi Pyrope, Calliope, Davebot (Homestuck), Aradia Megido, Original Characters

Relationships: John Egbert/Terezi Pyrope, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Jake English/Dirk Strider, Calliope/Roxy Lalonde

Additional Tags: The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat, Reality Affecting Program, Plotline Duplication, movies - Freeform, Interviews, Metaphysical Conversations, Mind Manipulation, questioning free will, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pretend the Universe is a Program, Agony, Attempted Mimicry, God From the Machine, Confusing Explanations, Questions, Breaking the Fourth Wall, (technically) - Freeform, Ship of Theseus, As in the ship and the thought question, Roko's Basilisk, Decapitation

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Zlpwp9

[homestuckexamination]

What is Time in Homestuck? What is its function, its purpose, what are timelines, what defines the Alpha and doomed timelines. How do timeloops work?

Time in Homestuck takes from a couple of theories about the workings of Time and Parallel Timelines. So, Time itself doesn’t have any Function, much like in real life, instead, Space and Time are treated as the two main building frames of a physical reality, to the point where the Universe Frog requires a Space and Time players to actually even be possible to be created.

Going in detail though, according to Homestuck’s Interpretation, there’s an Alpha Timeline that marks a path that must be followed, but there are alternate realities, sometimes required by the demands of the Alpha Timeline itself, where divergent Choices and Actions from the various characters have led to a deviation from this path that needs to be followed. A Time Loop is nothing more than ensuring no Paradoxes are created while following this Alpha. For example, according to the Alpha Timeline, Lil Cal ends up in Jack Noir’s possession, and eventually is shot through a meteor portal into Alternia. This is a stipulation that must be followed, so in the Timeline where John dies because Terezi sent him to see Typheus early? We learn with John’s ghost, that Typheus didn’t actually just insta-murder him, he gave him a Choice, to Die for the benefit of the Timeline. The thing that doomed the Timeline wasn’t John dying- It was Dave prototyping Lil Cal. Davesprite needed to exist, because without Dave preventing Lil Cal from being prototyped, Lil Cal would become a sprite, and thus never get to Alternia. This is the kind of Paradoxes Stable Timeloops want to avoid, and the reason this Timeline leaves behind a Doomed Rose. We see in a couple of occasions, Daves dying when a Time Loop is broken- When Dave screws up Time-Travelling, he creates an offshot Dave that doesn’t become ‘future Dave’, instead it’s its own iteration of Dave unrelated to the Alpha Timeline, and as such, Doomed to die. Davesprite manages to become un-Doomed by Prototyping himself into Davesprite, and thus becoming an integral part of the Alpha Timeline, rather than a Doomed Version.

Of course this still leaves the question of what the Alpha Timeline itself is. After all, we see dead God Tier Trolls, implying that actually becoming god-like is somehow not Alpha, and thus rendering the explanation of the Alpha Timeline being the ‘best’ or ‘most beneficial’ path impossible. No, in fact, the entirety of the Alpha Timeline is filled with Death and Suffering and awful things and characters being erased off the story.

This is because the Alpha Timeline is, in reality, a Time Loop that favors the Lord of Time, Caliborn. All the Alpha Timeline does is ensure Lord English is created and does what he does in the story, after all, he IS the Lord of Time, and he Commands Time itself. Paradox Space bends to his will.

[S] MSPA Reader: Mental Breakdown is a quick example of one of the Alpha Timeline’s most important devices- Lil Cal. A Juju which contains the Essence of Lord English, and needs to follow an EXTREMELY specific path to reach where it needs to reach, dividing in two at one point to become an Entry in Caliborn’s Land, through which he spreads his influence, and in which he eventually becomes trapped, and an Exit in the Lil Cal Dave has, which eventually ends in Gamzee’s Possession, and is ultimately used to convert Jack Noir into a Proxy for Lord English.

Everything in Alpha Timeline is delicately crafted to eventually lead to Caliborn’s Rise. Lil Cal is not just the Entry and the Exit, the Vessel for His Soul, it’s also the only reason why Caliborn manages to achieve full, unconditional Immortality. When he reaches Yaldabaoth’s Boon, he uses the Juju Breaker Crowbar to obtain Inconditional Immortality. Crowbar which he’s had since before he actually met ‘Crowbar’ from the Felt. Crowbar which was gifted to him by Gamzee of all people, the Troll who raised Calliope and Caliborn. Gamzee needed to be there to raise the twins, and he offered the tool that would eventually grant him Immortality. And how did both Gamzee and the Crowbar get to Caliborn? Through the Black Hole created after killing the Jack Noir possessed by Lord English through Lil Cal. Black hole which ALSO absorbed a majority of LOTAK, including its core, where the Denizen Yaldabaoth himself was, making it seem like everything relevant to Caliborn’s Session arrived there in the first place only thanks to Lil Cal.

Similarly, even the God Damn Retcon favors Lord English, even though it seems like a Canon-Breaking tool, even though it seems like something meant to bypass the Alpha Timeline in the first place, it’s actually a necessary tool for Lord English’ creation- Without the Retcon Powers, John would’ve never reached Caliborn’s Masterpiece, becoming stuck in the House Juju with the other three Betas. He wouldn’t have led the Kids that would, in turn, defeat Caliborn and suck his Soul, ARquius’ Soul and half of Gamzee’s into Lil Cal to create the amalgam known as Lord English. And without the Beta Kids stuck in the House, it would’ve never been filled in, and thus become the double-edged sword that would eventually cast Lord English into the Breach.

But of course even the Retcon favors Lord English- After all, he kills the Author. Caliborn interacts with Hussie through the Command Prompt, and physically smacks the website around on several occasions, as well as glitches the cartridge containing the data to continue the story. Doc Scratch and Vriska seem to be the only other characters in the comic to even be aware of the existence of Hussie as the Narrator- With Scratch being part Lord English, and Vriska literally getting angry at Hussie for switching the narrative just as she was about to reveal the House Juju, and tearing it back from him to show everyone what was in the Juju Chest. A Villain that messes with the Narrative itself would definitely still benefit from a tool meant to break the narrative. And in the same way, when the Villain of the Story has control over not just Reality, but the direction of the Narrative, the only two that can oppose it are a Character who Knows they are in a Story and Wants to be the Protagonist, and a Protagonist who Can Alter the Narrative and just wants to be Happy.

As such, Homestuck takes the idea of ‘parallel timelines’, and throws us a scenario in which an evil entity has basically overwritten Free Will through imposing himself in a very specific path, so if I had to give a short answer to the question of what “Time” and “The Alpha Timeline” is? I’d have to answer, The Alpha Timeline is Homestuck in itself, both the story and the struggle of the characters as they navigate through it.

( From this point downwards, these are my THOUGHTS and opinions, and may not reflect what’s strictly Canon or what may happen in the future )

This ties in to my thoughts on why I think Act 7 is good, contrary to what many in the Fandom seem to believe. We’re shown Caliborn’s rise to immortality, the beginning of his journey towards becoming Lord English, and eventually becoming the big villain of the story, contrasted with Vriska inserting herself in the role of the Heroine, even though everything was already set in the story for this exact same culmination and all she did was take the spotlight by opening the Juju Chest, and the Release of the Kids from the Alpha Timeline to live in Earth-C, free of the influence of Lord English, of the grasp he’s had on their choices and their existence.

Already at the very beginning, John himself states it clearly. 

It is your thirteenth birthday, and as with all twelve preceding it, something feels missing from your life. The game presently eluding you is only the latest sleight of hand in the repertoire of an unseen riddler, one to engender a sense not of mirth, but of lack. His coarse schemes are those less of a prankster than a common pickpocket. His riddle is Absence itself. It is a mystery dispersing altogether, like the moon’s faint reflection, with even one pebble of inquiry dropped in its black well. It is the most diabolical riddle of all.

When the Kids cross the threshold of the Door to the new Universe, the story ends canonically, because they’ve escaped the Time Loop known as the Alpha Timeline, they’re beyond English’ Realm. They are no longer Stuck, and they’re free to make their choices without fearing the creation of an offshot Timeline or worrying about what may happen in the future.

It’s my belief that the fact we see Caliborn with the Ring of Life Calliope has, that two Nannasprites exist without one dying, and a few other details such as Caliborn stating seeing himself surprised at the Kids appearing to face him using John’s Retcon Powers, means that this is not following the Alpha Timeline at all by the ending. John’s ‘I’ll do it’ has sparked many theories about this being the conflict that sparks John to want to go back to fight Caliborn, but it has always seemed nonsensical to me. John is depressed, Terezi is looking for Vriska, but for most of the part, they’re happy. They’re content with having gone through the hardships of the Game, and now being able to just live their lives. I could maybe see John using a fight with Caliborn to mask his emotions, but I can’t see him convincing Rose, happily married to Kanaya, that they should go back to beat up the stupid asshole that keeps Trolling him through Snapchat, using his highly dangerous Retcon Powers.

To me, it always felt that this was the result of a Timeline we didn’t see, but may see in the Epilogue, and even though there are ways to make it work, it ties perfectly well to this theme of breaking out of the Alpha Timeline, that by the end of the comic, we wouldn’t even be following the Timeline that spawns Lord English, and rather, the one the John we’re following, seeing master these Retcon Powers, creates following Terezi’s Instructions.

Ironically enough, this Timeline ends as an empty victory for both John and Terezi. John, with his adventure over, and having never seen inclined to even think what he may want to do after it’s over, is now left alone with his thoughts, the trauma he’s went through, and missing his father, while Terezi, who in the Game Over Timeline thought all she needed to be happy was Vriska, realizes that even that is more of a patch for some deeper self-steem issues, and yet continues to try to chase after her around the crumbling Paradox Space for no avail for years.

It’s my belief, when the Epilogue comes out, that we will see a distinction between the Timeline in which John reaches Earth-C, and the one in which they all go to Caliborn’s Masterpiece, as well as have Terezi return to Earth, not with Vriska, but with Davepeta, Sollux and Aradia, who are still potentially alive and out there. But that’s mostly because I don’t think Vriska should survive the encounter with Lord English.

Vriska herself, in this case, climatically becomes what she’s always wanted to be, the protagonist, only by her desire to be as such. She treats the Game of SBURB like a Game, and similarly, she treats Homestuck like a Story, a Story in which she wants to be seen as the Heroine. Not for Noble or Heroic reasons, but merely for the hell of it. She becomes the perfect Counterpoint to Lord English- The man who set the Alpha Timeline, whose existence jeopardizes the entirety of Paradox Space, the unseen, mysterious hand behind every event. Lord English becomes the Villain of the story, and Vriska takes advantage of it. A story needs a Villain and a Protagonist, and with John more focused in his Friends than the Big Bad, she steals the role for herself, which would make seeing her never actually return, all the more fitting. Act 7 is the Finale. It’s the End of the Alpha Timeline, the End of the Story that is Homestuck. So of course, once the curtains are drawn, both Villain and Protagonist are out of the picture entirely.

[knightimehopes]

i’m a bit under the weather at the moment mood-wise, but i have this fluffy jade.

so we shall get this fluffy jade.

[divergenthomebound]

Apologies for my silence as of late! The writer I have typing the escepades of these childish gods is awfully slow at his task. Especially with his unnecessary insistence on adding “panels”! Really, it slows my progress. In any case, he might need some help spreading around the word of his work, so I shall take it upon myself to help a fellow in need!

But that is sadly all. Until we meet again!

-A Ghost From The Past

[ao3feed-davekat]

Act I: Ascendance

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Zlpwp9

by Lopadopalis

Every timeline of Homestuck that takes place before, during, or after Homestuck and/or the Homestuck Epilogues has a specific way it is supposed to act out. However, it is entirely possible for entities from beyond these timelines to compromise them and change their narratives.

Post-Meat, John Egbert wakes up.

Words: 5052, Chapters: 2/11, Language: English

Series: Part 4 of Yggdrasil

Fandoms: Homestuck

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Categories: Multi

Characters: John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, Jade Harley, Roxy Lalonde, Dirk Strider, Jake English, Karkat Vantas, Kanaya Maryam, Terezi Pyrope, Calliope, Davebot (Homestuck), Aradia Megido, Original Characters

Relationships: John Egbert/Terezi Pyrope, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Jake English/Dirk Strider, Calliope/Roxy Lalonde

Additional Tags: The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat, Reality Affecting Program, Plotline Duplication, movies - Freeform, Interviews, Metaphysical Conversations, Mind Manipulation, questioning free will, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pretend the Universe is a Program, Agony, Attempted Mimicry, God From the Machine, Confusing Explanations, Questions, Breaking the Fourth Wall, (technically) - Freeform, Ship of Theseus, As in the ship and the thought question, Roko's Basilisk, Decapitation

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Zlpwp9

[ao3feed-dirkjake]

Act I: Ascendance

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Zlpwp9

by Lopadopalis

Every timeline of Homestuck that takes place before, during, or after Homestuck and/or the Homestuck Epilogues has a specific way it is supposed to act out. However, it is entirely possible for entities from beyond these timelines to compromise them and change their narratives.

Post-Meat, John Egbert wakes up.

Words: 5052, Chapters: 2/11, Language: English

Series: Part 4 of Yggdrasil

Fandoms: Homestuck

Rating: Not Rated

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Categories: Multi

Characters: John Egbert, Rose Lalonde, Dave Strider, Jade Harley, Roxy Lalonde, Dirk Strider, Jake English, Karkat Vantas, Kanaya Maryam, Terezi Pyrope, Calliope, Davebot (Homestuck), Aradia Megido, Original Characters

Relationships: John Egbert/Terezi Pyrope, Rose Lalonde/Kanaya Maryam, Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas, Jake English/Dirk Strider, Calliope/Roxy Lalonde

Additional Tags: The Homestuck Epilogues: Meat, Reality Affecting Program, Plotline Duplication, movies - Freeform, Interviews, Metaphysical Conversations, Mind Manipulation, questioning free will, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pretend the Universe is a Program, Agony, Attempted Mimicry, God From the Machine, Confusing Explanations, Questions, Breaking the Fourth Wall, (technically) - Freeform, Ship of Theseus, As in the ship and the thought question, Roko's Basilisk, Decapitation

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/2Zlpwp9