#it’s the terezi that killed vriska and regretted it ever since

[mossflower]

ough. vrisrezi. if you even care

[fanonical]

also wild to me that terezi is like almost if not dead last in the poll last i checked given she is arguably as bad as vriska but the fandom loves to hold that weird double standard

well i wouldn’t go that far — Vriska did psychically command a legion of trillions of ghosts to double-death suicide themselves to slow down Lord English. though i personally think the reasoning & cause justified these actions, Terezi never commit anything close to the level of war crimes. plus, at least since they joined the session, the only really terrible thing Terezi did was kill Vriska after all the trouble she caused for everybody, specifically to present her from causing more troubl. like yes fucked up but remember also that Terezi’s Seer of Mind abilities also gave her the insight to know if she didn’t, the timeline would be doomed (Vriska’s death is a ‘canon event’ so to speak) — the knots and ties of paradox space forced her hand and she spends the rest of the comic regretting it until she eventually finds a way to circumvent even canon itself just to bring her back. i really think you’ve got things twisted here.

to be fair, Terezi did fucking explode Vriska’s eye and arm, but i think Terezi being blinded in return sort of flattens that out. net neutral morality between them; just two girl doing violent yuri on each other as ever. also Terezi never mind controlled somebody into killing his girlfriend. i really can’t agree that they have done similar levels of wrong. i think they ultimately both redeem themselves but that Vriska’s wrongdoings were greater and of greater severity

[doomsdaydicecascader]

explain why its bad besides it being the most basic thing possible

the thing about meat/candy is that it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what works in homestuck and also, stories in general?

i think hussie started developing the meat/candy ideal around the time karkat started writing memos - the first explicit mention of the binary is in the author commentary for [S] Make her pay, i believe? in which hussie says outright that he started “cramming the story full of red meat, but it’s too soon to talk about that” or something similar, but the ideas first start popping up around the end of hivebent. the imagery juxtaposition is there, between karkat running the Team Adorabloodthirsty memos, which are largely karkat doing plot things while things codified as “candy” (romantic issues) happen at him, and him banning all that shit because there’s IMPORTANT stuff to do, and terezi’s rainbow rumpus party town memos which are almost entirely her roleplaying with nepeta and goofing off, while karkat tells them to stop faffing the fuck about and do shit and gets banned. 

and i think it does both the concept of plot and the concept of characters as a whole a huge disservice, since it treats characteriz8ion as this sort of like. off-hand thing that you do when there’s not plot to do, instead of like. a core tool in an author’s toolbelt. but then again homestuck has never actually had anything insightful to say about the n8re of authorship that couldn’t be equally better understood by a wiki page on auteur theory, and this is no different 

but the thing that gets me most about the codific8ion of it is that the extended alchemy scenes, despite never really wearing thin in the same way that sbahj did, and is this really neat and unique tool for characterizing people that homestuck did, actually invent and definitely like. stakes its claim over, doesn’t really show up after act 5 act 2, and when it does take center stage again, it’s during the trickster arc, which is where we have the ideal of “candy” explicitly laid out for us - candy is characters being “artificially happy”, without going through the growth that necessarily justifies that happiness, and meat is the growth necessary to reach that happiness. but that’s bullshit. 

this goes off the rails by the time it reaches the epilogues, to the point where i think that the acknowledgement of the meat/candy binary in the epilogues is an example of what i’m going to call “the magic wand principle”, taken from stephen thecatamite’s notes on the development of their game magic wand (which is fantastic, btw): 

It may be misleading to put all this stuff up here as though I thought it through before I made the game. In fact I started making the game first and then developed an elaborate set of opinions to explain to myself that it was a good idea. In the beginning was the deed. The rest of this essay will cover the slow development and composting of the game proper and attempt to shew how anything that looks like an idea is in fact protective colouration for a bad decision that I would have made anyway.

it’s really, genuinely, extremely fucking condescending too - john is presented with the meat or candy choice, and we had to spend an entire week mulling over this fucking awful non-choice, and there’s this sense of like. everyone kind of expected the routes to be like. very simplistic metaphors (very funny i dont think most people have ever read homestuck nonliterally before the epilogues) where candy was gonna be sweet but not particularly fulfilling and meat was gonna be tough but satisfying (jokes on them though, neither were good, and jokes on me, because it was DELIBER8LY bad)

and since the candy route takes place entirely inside the black hole - which in homestuck proper is used as a karmic punishment for english and retcon-vriska, whose refusals to grow the fuck up resulted in them being stuck in a place where time has been dil8d to such an extent that they could never grow up. and by setting the candy route inside the black hole, it casts this judgment on the idea of wanting anything other than fucking abject misery and these perpetu8d cycles of violence out of homestuck, and while it’s getting more and more “woke” about it - the cycles of violence are now explicitly capitalist instead of just symbolically capitalist - it still fucking bites because we have spent so fucking long watching these characters grow the fuck up about things. 

the candy route is almost entirely cynical and h8ful regurgit8ions of fan tropes, and it is implicitly aligned with the desire to never grow the fuck up, but it’s presented as if it’s a fair and even-handed choice when the authors themselves clearly have a preference

and as a storytelling device it doesn’t work because like........ maybe this is a personal thing but the best shit in homestuck to me specifically is the process of recovering from [S] Game over., leading into shes8ack and vriskagram. legitim8ly, the span of pages from caliborn’s horrible deviantart to vriskagram is the best part, of the best thing i’ve ever read. and i like it specifically because of the way it overlaps a whole bunch of ideas in a really compelling way - jade, jane, and calliope, characters who tend to get a backseat are having extremely fluffy character moments where they design trollsonas and shit, and it’s juxtaposed against the gruesome fallout from [S] Game over, and you can watch in real time as game over terezi puts together the extent to which she regrets killing vriska which she mentions a lot during act 6 but never really has the chance to act on, and sends john on a quest to bring her back, outright changing the story itself to do that. and it’s this overlap of like. plot and character motiv8ions that make it so good - the delic8 dance of jade and jane recalling things from their timeline while terezi and john are in the process of saving vriska is like. it is the best shit. 

meat and candy as codified concepts are not opposed, they are not two things which can never touch, lest the streams be crossed and the rift to our world be closed or whatever, the best structure, to me, at least, is when plot beats and character beats are almost entirely indistinguishable from each other, since characters existing without a plot don’t necessarily change in compelling ways, and plot existing beyond the context of character beats loses its applicability and winds up feeling extremely hollow - what if homestuck was first and foremost about the demiurge being evil for cre8ing? what if everything people liked about homestuck - the rel8ionship dynamics, the themes about 8r8king cycles of violence and growing past them - was all at best, secondary to that, and at worst, a complete fluke? that sucks to think about. but here we are now

[analytic-chaoticism]

Who’s Going To Die In The Homestuck Epilogue Tomorrow?

Homestuck is finally ending for real now so, obviously, somebody is staring down the barrel of Hussie’s final Chekhov’s gun, except also for real now. After 10 years, the shed wall has more bullet holes than wood knots and the proverbial horse stands dutifully awaiting the next shot in a series of hundreds, but it might actually get put out of its misery forever this time, with John and Vriska - in my mind - the most obvious candidates for permadeath. I’ll briefly discuss the (de)merits of both outcomes - and how both could (maybe, hopefully, please?) be averted - under the cut.

For context, I’m assuming that John will meet Terezi and Vriska at the Green Sun/Black Hole before he goes gallivanting with them through time and space. 

We’ve known John Egbert for 10 years and for all the characters and perspective switching we’ve done since 4/13/2009, he is our protagonist. Homestuck is a story about breaking free from fated suffering - the will of Lord English - and becoming an independent agent, so it should only make sense that the main character is an embodiment of that freedom: the Heir of Breath.  

It’s for this reason that John dying forever at the end of it all - having survived the death of his dad, an omnicidal dog god, the reset of reality, misadventure in the bubbles, a solo retcon journey through Paradox Space, a fight with Caliborn and another on the horizon, killing the Condesce, and making it to Earth C - would be really bad narratively and philosophically! There are no merits! Let’s go over why it Just Won’t Happen. 

1. As the quintessential bildungsroman character (a story requiring the survival of its protagonist to gain experience of the world, find their place in it, and mature with hope for the future) and audience surrogate, killing him in the final act would just be bad writing. It goes against the story’s holistic narrative and philosophical arc and totally undermines Act 7 thematically. 

2. In a story about overcoming fated suffering, the depressed character with the most repressed trauma - who represents freedom and is working to help everyone escape that suffering - dying without coming to terms with sadness and reconciling with his friends and purpose to find happniness? It’s even worse writing. The only possible merit to his death is having to directly confront that trauma in a super sadstuck way; what stakes will it take for him to overcome his disaffected ennui, right? But killing him is a real shitty way of dealing with those problems. Dying with regret is just... super lame. It could be said many characters die with possible regret in HS but if a character doesn’t at some point get revived in one way or another and their death served a purpose, then, on word of God, they just weren’t that important. 

3. It defies the narrative of fantastical escapism. At one of its many cores, Homestuck is a story about kids playing a crazy game about wish fulfillment: bringing the dead back to life, meeting their friends, having an adventure, and becoming super heroes. As the Heir of Breath, especially with the retcon powers, John is ALL ABOUT fantastical escapism. John dying for suffering, subverting escapism, is 100% counterintuitive thematically. Super unsatisfying conclusion to his arc. 

4. People cite this scene with Scratch as evidence that John is going to have a permanent heroic death one day, but I would argue that the metaphysical way in which John would permanently be tying himself to the narrative to ‘maintain canonicity’ (whatever the FUCK that entails) would be a little bit more than a Just or Heroic thing. For me, this was more about Scratch acknowledging John as - though not infallible personally - a totally good guy. And note that reference to Vriska and her ‘Justness’ at the end there: 

Instead, I imagine the whole situation, despite the seeming distinction between Meat and Candy, COULD go something a little more like this - 

A story that is just meat - dense with exposition, action, violence, and tension (plotcentric) - is bad, and a story that is just candy - light with fluff, fanservice, frivolity, and comfort (charactercentric) - is bad. In isolation neither is of consequence to the reader, and reader investment is what this whole epilogue and the quest to avoid ‘dissipation’ is about. You need both to develop the other in a healthy and satisfying way, ultimately producing a well-developed set of characters. Homestuck is the best story of all time and it’s been meat and candy all the way, I don’t foresee that changing. For me, the ‘dual epilogue’ is a 1+1=3 situation. Typheus’ choice for John here was a practice for a metacosmic-scale third option regarding the meat/candy ‘binary’ he’s faced with now.  

The whole story, John - though he represents freedom - has never made his own choice besides in this moment. He’s gone on quests for prophets, just like he’s doing now, and done whatever people told him or expected him to do. Becoming a free agent is the capstone of his character arc and what better way to realize that than assuming control of the narrative and Doing Whatever You Want For Real - the Ultimate Riddle (as many people theorize) which I imagine we’ll see more of soon being ‘do as you will.’ 

But let’s imagine that John does become in every way a martyr for the narrative itself in a Christ-like sacrifice befitting of the Easter Sunday I will probably be reading this upd8 on. How could he get out of it because, trust me, John Is Not Dying Forever:

Transcendence. We’ve descended and ascended, so what comes next?

Juju nonsense. The house or something else, who knows?

Denizen nonsense. I’ll get into this in a second.

A second John takes his place and we get ours back. ‘2 endings,’ right?

The Ultimate Self is gearing up to be important. It’s Jesus 101 people. 

So I’m expecting Abraxas, Jake and possibly Karkat’s denizen, to make a significant appearance in the epilogue. The epilogue itself, as the rest of the story, is geared up (with it’s black and white symbolism) to basically revolve around the cherubs which I fully expect to get more lore on. As @revolutionaryduelist details in this video, Abraxas is “technically at the center of Paradox Space, as a deity that represents both everything in the multiverse that exists ever both physically and conceptually,and the very process which leads to the creation of those things.” Abraxas is, as the true god in enlightenment, the opposite of Yaldabaoth, the false god in ignorance: more relevant, truthful, and essential as a deity - representing the 3 pillars of canon. Yaldabaoth was Caliborn’s denizen, giving him the clock and juju he required to assume ultimate power in the first place. It makes sense that Abraxas would have a hand in his undoing. Abraxas also shares a connection with the cherubs physically and metaphorically, and considering the importance of the cherubs, I think it’s safe to assume this similarity will become relevant. In this way, Abraxas could Just Get Up To Some Nonsense to save John (who is related to Typheus, a potentially Christ-like figure within the denizen genealogy as John is to the story). Resurrection of Christ anybody? Our snakey parent who art above Paradox Space? As somebody connected to magic, it also makes sense that Abraxas could pull off the miracle of the century if needs be.

All in all, John’s not dying. So what about... 

Vriska?

Vriska dying forever is almost ALL merits. This is NOT because I hate Vriska: she is one of the best characters ever written, has never done anything wrong, if she dies I will weep, and I NEED Vrisrezi to become Earth C endgame, but I can’t deny the narrative quality of a potential sacrifice. 

Vriska has never had direct karmic comeuppance for anything she’s done besides Make Her Pay and getting killed by Terezi: all other forms of punishment for her actions were either problems with self-hatred or people she cares about suffering - there’s been little direct consequential action taken against her. Even when She’s 8ack with a second chance she gets to dominate and bully others and still be the leader. And look at what she did to Tavros. That was just mean (but will hopefully be relevant in the epilogue because I love GCATavros oops). Her character is also marred in the emulation of Mindfang, and being an inauthentic individual is a Great Crime in Paradox Space which you could say she has been punished for but we can always squeeze a few more drops out of the cloth. Key to understanding Vriska is knowing that she has little ill will. She said herself, she wants to be a hero. That’s why she’s obsessed with becoming the Most Important Person. She wants to save everyone. It just so happens this conflicts with her selfishness (coming in parts from Spidermom, Mindfang, and her caste) which sweeps people up as collateral damage. The important thing is that she feels really guilty about losing control to her ego/persona and hurting people. 

And she turns to John for absolution. For freedom from her circumstance and misery. 

EB: i guess i had no idea how different we really were.

EB: what i am hearing is seriously scaring the shit out of me!

AG: Yeah, I know. I wish we didn't have to 8e so different. I'm just trying to 8e honest with you, 8ecause like I said, I have nowhere else to go.

John is ignorant of her culture and her behaviour at large, and his kind, innocent disposition makes him the perfect person to tell her that she hasn’t done anything wrong, or - at least - can become a better person. That’s why his opinion matters so much to her when nobody else’s does. 

And even knowing that she’s not a flawless person, she still doesn’t think that she deserved to die. She has never been truly absolved of her guilt, and turning to a stranger - and an alien, whom you manipulate even though NOT doing that is the WHOLE point - to do that for her is cheating in the same way Tricksterism was for the alpha kids. 

That said, John does present a genuine avenue of character development and emotional vulnerability for the girl who would become (Vriska). (Vriska) became her own person free of Mindfang’s shadow, having overcome the trauma of her past and the need to be ‘the best,’ which is as close to well-adjusted as we could hope for Vriska to be. But this character arc - a form of redemption itself - ends with the death of (Vriska) with GO!Terezi as Paradox Space collapses around them in the most emotional and romantic moment in storytelling history. John’s effects have yet to take hold on post-retcon Vriska as they did on pre-retcon Vriska starting from the above interaction forward, as Vriska is still a 8ig 8itch. John has come to recognize this, and I’m sure it will come up at some point, perhaps inspiring some kind of change in our anti-heroine. 

Sacrificing herself for canonicity - maintaining all relevance EVER in a mostly selfless but still kind of selfish act that represents a major step in a redemption she would never get to complete but may not fully deserve besides - is the perfect end for her personally and thematically. Vriska saving John would be wild after their entire relationship including but not limited to the pivotal moments of their ghosts meeting and him saving her life so she could once again experience relevance in the first place; she’d basically be repaying him: something she has never done willingly for totally selfless reasons in good faith and karma before. Wouldn’t that be the most bittersweet character growth to end on? John would FINALLY be a mechanism for her absolution. It was cheating when John didn’t know her. Now it’s been earned after their relationship has evolved so thoroughly and John sees her for what she is, presumably removing his ability to absolve her from the equation entirely. What a 180 that would be. Her arc would technically be incomplete as a character who never fully matured, but what a beautiful step in that journey to end on. It would also be a form of direct recompense to John, having manipulated him in the past as Scratch alluded to! The (Just) master becomes the (Heroic) student! What a great fuck you to Scratch that would be after he ruined her life and fucked up her personality (so would her surviving to become a better person outside of Scratch’s narrative but we’ll get into that). 

Vriska has been primed to destroy the Green Sun for a loooooooong time. 

Within the scope of the story before we were introduced to serious meta like ‘dissipation,’ destroying the Green Sun would have been the most significant thing a person could ever do. But there’s a reality beyond Paradox Space and a wider ‘canon’ that needs to be maintained both within and outside of the Green Sun’s influence. Vriska never truly got to cash in on the Green Sun imagery. What if she got a second chance to do so?

Assume in some way that the most significant object within Paradox Space and its resulting black hole eating all of reality - which, as Terezi showed us in the Credits (making it still canon) has something strange at its centre - plays a role in maintaining canonicity. I know, a bit of a gimme, right? Presumably,we’re going to explore the confrontation with Lord English as part of the ‘unloading’ of the house juju. If the mechanism for canonicity lies in all this green mess, we’re killing 2 birds with 1 stone! Her relationship with John serves its original purpose in a newly genuine context and the green sun foreshadowing would finally amount to something. 

I think Vriska would be almost perfectly content to die like this. It fulfils her philosophy and places her in canonical lore as the most significant, undeniable hero. As Hussie discusses in the Viz book 4 author notes, one of the dynamics Homestuck revolves around is Vriska inserting herself into everything and the Scourge Sisters’ karmic cycle that arises from that, so wiping it all clean would be a fitting end. 

That said, I don’t want Vriska to die forever, because I love her with all my heart and I would never want to do that to Terezi, and Earth C would be way more fun if Vriska got to fully develop as a character with friends outside of canonical restraints/pressures. Let her enjoy candy after a life of meat! (Vriska) got to enjoy candy with Meenah and Terezi after she gave up on meat. Vriska has never had true candy comparatively. All of her relationships and romantic leads have had undertones of contention and manipulation that it would be fantastic to be free of in a new world where she can leave the burdens of ‘importance’ behind. This happening, I feel, is one of (if not the best ways) Hussie can further the commentary on candy being just as important as meat: making someone who has prioritized meat her whole life happy with candy once she learns to let it into her life. Meat is NOT the only important thing, Vriska. 

How could she escape dying forever if she wanted to sacrifice herself to save John from doing the same? Sounds pretty final. I can’t imagine the ultimate self is in her near future, she doesn’t have retcon powers, and unless she pulls a juju out of her ass (maybe auryn somehow???) then the only mechanism I can see working is denizen nonsense. Beyond this, we know Terezi would not be content to let Vriska be dead forever. I was thinking maybe, on Earth C once the dust has settled and canon is Gucci, the kids could use their god tier powers to recreate Vriska (Terezi/Dirk for memory and self, life from Jane, a body from Roxy/Jake/Jade etc.) but that might be a long shot. Who knows. But also resurrecting Vriska as a free person in a free world would be... really Cool. Like, wow... what a scene. Ultimately, I think both potentialities would be pretty rad and would make me weep like a baby. I’m open to anything here. 

In the end, we’ll see what happens tomorrow! I started Homestuck when I was 12 and its influence on me for the last 6 years as both a person and a creative is incomprehensible. I cannot imagine who I would be without it, and I don’t want to. Making analysis/theory posts and getting involved with community discussion has been one of the best things ever and I’m glad I could squeeze this one in before the end of everything. I’ll have plenty more to write about Homestuck and Hiveswap in the future, but it’s crazy to think this is the end of theorizing for Homestuck proper. Homestuck as a property has plenty more to give and I’ll be here with ideas for all of it :)

Thanks for reading!

[lususless]

im fixing the epilogue are yall ready okay were doing this

im inevitably gonna leave parts out because i want this to be well under 100k lol im gonna focus on the stuff that specifically broke my own heart, anything else yall will have to come up with yourselves (and tbh you probably already have)

·        John eats a handful of candy and one slab of meat. He asks Roxy to Void up some silverware for the meat because he’s not an animal, geez.

·        Defeating Lord English goes basically the same, except Jade dies right when the shard of space hits her, so John has no obligation to stay.

·        Before John returns he finds Terezi, who’s devastated after watching Vriska fall into the black hole. John’s able to convince Terezi to come back to Earth C with him, where she’s able to heal and slowly realize that nothing Vriska did was ever Terezi’s fault because she’s not ultimately responsible for someone else’s actions, no matter how close they’d been as children.

·        Jane keeps the golden tooth from killing John, and the close call startles her out of whatever egomaniac mindset she had going on. She remembers how important her friends are to her and regrets losing them.

·        The presidential election turns into a council of gods, which only intervenes in the kingdoms’ politics as a last resort. A picture of the mayor is placed at the head of the council’s table as a constant reminder of the kind of government they want to have.

·        Rose sees enough of Dirk’s plans in her visions that she decides to risk ascending in order to stop him. It works, maybe she goes blind to go with the seer theme idk, but she now has narrator powers like Dirk does. Her superior writing skills help her outmaneuver him, and she recruits Roxy to help in whatever she can’t do through narration since even Ultimate Dirk’s powers can’t see through the Void brain.

·        Eventually they find some way to oust the evil part of Ultimate Dirk’s personality so he can be just himself again. He’s embarrassed and self-loathing, but the loving support of his friends helps him recover.

·        Dave and Karkat finally man up and confront their own feelings. They have a jam with Jade and let her know exactly where all three of them stand. I don’t even care how this goes anymore as long as no one is forced into any sort of relationship due to feelings of obligation and everyone feels accepted and loved whether platonically or romantically. Maybe Terezi joins in somehow idk.

[july-angel]

Candy > Meat part 1

Candy > Meat

(I’m avoiding my homework. So I’m going to type my thoughts out here instead.)

So I read candy before meat and also, while I think both of them are great (don’t hate please) I think it really changed how I read meat.

In candy we saw 1. Dirk kill himself, 2. John’s sanity waste away, 3. John pining after Terezi, 4. Karkat leave Dave, because Dave hooks up with Jade 5. Jake get trapped in an abusive marriage with Jane 6. A shitty gamzee redemption arc, 7. Jane turn into a fascist and more large complaints I’m not mentioning here. 

However, I wanted to address some of these things in part one regarding how I read it.

It was hard to read and super fucked up really. I chose candy on accident, because I thought I would like meat more. And you know, save the best for last and all that. But honestly, A lot of what I loved of meat, was because of Candy. 

So the first thing I want to address is DaveKat. Some people are saying that they are disappointed with DaveKat in meat and I think that it’s because of how I read it in Candy that made me love how it happened. In Candy, Karkat leaves Dave, and Dave ends up marrying Jade and regretting it. He loves Jade, but not the way she wants him to and he loves Karkat, but couldn’t go through with the decision to chase after him. And he REGRETS. At the end, when he’s speaking to Obama (wtf.) he breaks down, he admits to himself everything that has happened. That he misses and loves Karkat, that he hurt and is still hurting Jade. When I read meat after this, I saw Dave finally, finally, after all of the pining and the heart break, get to be with the boy he loved. There was even someone rooting with me for it. Dirk. But we’ll get to that later. That being said, Dirk didn’t really put a damper on it for me, because after everything I saw in Candy, very little could put a damper on something so heart warming. 

Okay, the second thing is a little harder to explain. But basically I went through the existential crisis with John. John is depressing, but I liked it, because it really made me think about my own depression and how it ties to whether or not the things in my life matter. 

John has basically just got back from what will arguable be the biggest thing he ever thinks he’s going to do, since, well, he decides, fuck lord english. And it doesn’t sit right with him. How could it? He spent a good portion formative teen years, on some larger plan where he has to try beat a universe creating game and stop an evil guy and save the future. His identity is built on something bigger than him. But life for adult john, just like life for most of us, isn’t built on some universe breaking game. It’s about the little things like settling down, or running for president, or starting a rebellion, or having kids, or trying to fill that void deep inside of you, you know, the kind of drama that’s pointless in comparison. On top of that, it’s hard for anyone else to understand, and he doesn’t even try to talk to most people about it. In a sense I imagine this is probably how Dirk felt when he realized he’d lost relevance. You can definitely see Terezi also feels it. However, not opening up to people about his feelings, not connecting to others, that leaves him thinking that no one is real. To top it off, people change, and have changed since he spent years being a recluse. He’s grown distant and feels like he doesn’t understand the people around him anymore. The only person he understands is Terezi, but that’s because she’s the only person who’s emotionally open with him. However, by the end of Candy, he kind of, starts to change. He opens up to Roxy, and he’s about to go talk to his son. He’s finally making progress. He’s moving on this emotional point in the beginning where he seems to be almost stuck. For me, it’s beautiful, because it reaffirms something I feel about life, the people in life are what matters. People become more real one he can actually connect with them. People are what matters.  

I actually appreciated John’s character arc less in Meat, but also the scene he has with Terezi in the car, that’s the only scene in all the epilogue that almost left me crying. And it wouldn’t have if I hadn’t read Candy first. Their relationship would have felt less significant, if I didn’t know how lonely John had been in Candy and I didn’t know how badly Terezi wanted Vriska. Terezi spent all of the Candy epilogue looking for her, to the point of being willing to die. And to go back to the Meat Cannon, for John, speaks volumes. I think if I had read meat first, it would still have been poignant, but not to the extent that it would have been. Because John was so busy fighting setting off to perform his duty, that he never would have addressed that emotional hole he had. I think that his emotional break never really gets addressed and it only gets buried by the work that needs to be done. 

Moving on to another character we see with unaddressed mental health issues. In candy we saw Dirk kill himself. I don’t think anyone wants to see a character, that they love and care about, off themselves and to be reading that through his mind and having insight as to what he is going through... Well that hit hard. Meat Dirk, fights for relevance. He fights for what he wants, even if what he wants is terrible. Kill yourself or become a terrible person, I do acknowledge are bad options. However, until the epilogues are done, I refuse to believe that those are the options we actually picked from. Life is fluid, and things change, and people change. I’m not doing this explanation justice, so I’m going to link to a person who explained this shit better than me, but! What I want to say is depending on your life experience people can change for the worse, but they can also change again for the better. While Dirk is alive, he can change too. 

I was going to say something on Jane and Jake, but uh... I mean they were both interesting in meat and candy, but their respective meat and candy counter parts don’t really add anything to each other. They deserve their own kind of analysis, but I don’t think I’m going to get into it. Today anyways. Pip d, who I linked to down below basically summed up my feelings on it though, better than I could have said it. 

So in short what I’m trying to say, is that going from getting the heart in my chest ripped out of me, and watching almost all of the characters take passive roles in their own emotional lives, got me fucked up. 

Okay, in part 2 I’m going to address redemption and Gamzee and how I see it in relation to my bro Dirk. It could probably go in here too, but I think it’s very important, so i’m going to give it to part too. In that, I will also talk about Rose and Kanaya, and will also talk about the parts that I did not like, because while I love this to little bits and pieces, there are things that I do take issue with. 

https://twitter.com/pipd_/status/1120546426361085952

[homestuckhomestuckhomestuck]

So, is the clock what official determines whether or not a God Tier player's death is just or heroic, or is it simply something that shows the outcome, much like a regular clock simply tells time, and does not hold any actually bearing on time?

The story provides no conclusive answer to this, and I personally cannot provide the scoop either. Not that I am withholding it to be coy, but to take my word for it one way or another would be missing the point. The destruction of the clock is another element among many for you to weigh when considering these events. First, there's the consideration of whether her death was just, heroic, or neither. The clock appeared to be leaning toward "just", when it was interrupted by the crowbar. Maybe it would have landed there. Or if given the chance, maybe it would have swung back and settled somewhere else. We don't have a definitive ruling. All we know for sure is she's dead. So we can conclude that either: 1) The clock itself has no bearing on her life directly, much as clocks merely measure time without influencing it. Which would mean if given the chance it definitely would have landed on either just or heroic, but not in the middle. The proof is her death. or 2) The result of the clock does have direct bearing on her life, and by knocking the clock over so that it stuck on "just", Slick inadvertently killed her for good, regardless of where it may have landed. But to be fair, if he knew it was going to kill her, he might be hitting it harder. You could consider it delayed revenge for his exile, which Vriska and Snowman coordinated. It's safe to assume Slick would have found her death to be quite just, and may have been weighing in on the matter through circumstantial serendipity. If 2) is true, there is another wrinkle to consider. Recall that the crowbar he is using (from the intermission) has the property of being able to nullify the effect of whatever "enchanted" object it destroys. If the clock's power is to decide whether she resurrects, then by destroying it, he eliminates that power. Since there's no longer a force enabling her to resurrect, she remains dead. This is another way to look at it, but again, only if the clock itself has that power over her life. If not, then the destruction of the clock becomes more a violent gesture of punctuation to accompany this "divine ruling", like nails being driven into a coffin. Or, like a tolling bell. It's jarring, sudden, and carries finality. If you are convinced her actions are what decided her death, and not the destruction of the clock, then you are left to consider what outcome is most suitable, without having an absolute ruling on it. The clock did appear to lean "just" an instant before, and there are plenty of ways to argue in favor of a just death. There are many mitigating factors as well to supply a counter argument. It would not be that interesting if it were absolutely unambiguous, where everyone could all easily agree that her death was just. Or if everyone agreed there was no justice in it at all. There are enough factors in play where you have reason to think about it a bit, and such that it leaves plenty to discuss. You may consider the evidence and draw a conclusion. You may even feel very strongly about your conclusion! But for either the story, or me, to provide a categorically "right answer", immediately following the establishment of all the things that made it interesting to consider, shortchanges all that, I believe. For the clock to settle unceremoniously on "just" I feel would come across as a nonconstructive, compact ethical lecture, quickly nullifying all there was to evaluate and talk about. Was this comeuppance for all her past killing? For killing friends like Aradia and Tavros? Was there mitigation in her upbringing? In her remorse, and desire to change? Was it justice for insisting on playing a role in the creation of Jack so that she could beat him, to serve her ego? What of the ignored warning from Terezi? Flying off in spite of it, endangering them all, again in service of ego? What of the doomed timeline she creates by doing this? Is there justice alone in killing her to prevent not only the death of all her friends, but an offshoot reality that can only fail? Is human morality in play here? Troll morality?? Or is it a higher agency, like that permeating Skaia? In a framework of Skaian morality, is there justice in sacrificing one life to help ensure the creation of an entire universe? This paragraph has been a thumbnail sketch of all the discussion which has already taken place across the internet, minus all the notes ranging from fan fervor to outright dementia. Of all the arguments to make, it's difficult to come up with a solid rationale for a heroic result. Most people debating it would choose between "just" or "not just", i.e. die or live. Note that this means those who believe her death was not just are in fact arguing that the destruction of the clock is actually what killed her!!! There is nothing in the story which rules this out. Regardless, the result is the same. She's dead. Out of the story for good? Who knows. For now it's the culmination of a wide arc importing elements from classic tragedy. Blind seers, wanton hubris, unheeded warnings, regret and death. But with some MSPA twists. Systematized mortality conditions, doomed timeline offshoots, way too much dramatic irony, and Nic Cage. She was always a polarizing character. Shouldn't be too surprising she's more polarizing than ever in death. It's almost as if that polarity was given concrete expression through the rules dictating whether she lived or died. HM. :::;)

[mvsoleil]

yo, so im not usually the writter but this DaveTav fic right there by @mtjester inspired me so here comes nothing.

You couldn’t believe that you had just kidnapped your neighbor. This was definitely not what you had planned to do for your evening, not even remotely close.

Maybe all of this wouldn’t have happened if you had taken out your trash regularly instead of letting it stack up.

Well, “kidnapping” was a strong word, you think. After all, he hadn’t resisted when you took his hand in yours, and wheeled yourself down the corridor as fast as you could just after you knocked over his brother with a trash bag that could have been weighting forty pounds. You didn’t know why you suddenly got the impulse but before you had the time to regret it he freed himself from your grasp and started pushing you faster and faster, not slowing down even when you arrived at the old very creaky and not at all secure ramp, you remembered thinking that you were going to fall numerous time but he seemed to handle the sharp-turns perfectly. You hadn’t gone that fast since you last participated in the makeshift wheelchair racing competitions your brother would organize before you moved out. You hadn’t realized just how much you actually missed this sensation until earlier that day, although in your memories you were the one controlling the speed and direction of your wheelchair and you don’t remember being scared of falling to your death, needless to say it was way more fun in your memories.

As soon as you got out of the apartment complex, you pointed to him your brother’s car, hoping that he would be able to drive. You thought that maybe you should have planned your escape better. The car was unlocked as usual, it was so old and ramshackle that your brother didn’t have to worry about leaving his keys inside. You were still trying to decide how you would tell your brother that you would be borrowing his car for a while. You were sure that he wouldn’t mind that much, at least you hoped so.

With how much Dave had been glancing around nervously since he decided to run from his brother, you knew that you didn’t have much of time, you nearly threw your wheelchair inside, just to see that he was still fumbling with the key. He was panting and sweating, you were too. His hands where shaky, probably because of the adrenaline.

It was the first time that you saw him this disheveled, not in the sense that it was the first time that you saw him beaten up and bloodied, his clothes and skin dirty with dust, but his hair somehow still perfectly well-groomed. It was a habitual sight, if you believed what was said and, well, what you saw and heard through the paper-thin walls during the couple of weeks you started to live there. Still he always had this perfectly composed face which made it seem that it was normal that his brother beat him up on the rooftop at least twice a week. His poker face was so convincing that you almost started to believe it too. Now though you could read anxiousness and frustration on his face and you’re not really sure but, you think that adrenaline might not be the only reason he was shaking.  

You exited the parking lot. You didn’t say anything about him driving with his sunglasses on when it was night because it seemed like the kind of things he would do and somehow be able to pull off.

Now that you had had enough time to think you realized just how much you had to idea what to do, you could ask Gamzee to house you for sometimes or even to Aradia or even Terezi, although the prospect didn’t please you since it meant that you would have more chance to cross path with Vriska. You didn’t know if he would accept and even then he didn’t have any of his belongings with him.  You probably made things worse for him, this was probably why Vriska said that you should let other people do the thinking for you. You started nervously chewing on your nails and looked at him from the corner of your eye. He didn’t look angry, but his face never lets out any emotions so you couldn’t assume anything.

You couldn’t believe what you had just done, that you had just ran away from Bro. You couldn’t believe what your neighbor had done either, he just hit him with a fucking trash bag and knocked him over, just fucking knocked him over, something you hadn’t been able to do ever, you saw Bro fall on the ground for the first time in your entire life and you didn’t know how to react to that. You wouldn’t have thought that your neighbor, your own fucking neighbor, the one you can hear sing songs from Peter Pan every now and then would be the one to knock bro right on his ass, right in front of your own two eyes. And as if this situation wasn’t already crazy he then just fucking took your hand and escaped with you like some sort of Disney prince coming out of a dungeon, the princess in his arms ready to be taken to her new life without having to worry about the cruel and evil dragon or whatever. This had got to be the most and least cliché shit that ever happened to you and in the most ironic way possible.

You were driving to god knows where, with a dude you barely even knew, to do whoever the fuck knows and with no money. This had got to be the most piss poor plan you had ever seen, glancing at him you could see that he didn’t know what to do next either, you had to stifle a frustrated groan.

And yet you were still driving and you didn’t regret it one bit, even if you knew that it would be hell when you actually came back, Bro wouldn’t say anything (he never does), but you would feel it in his actions, hell maybe he’d decide to call you up to the roof every day or pull out the same stunt as today and decide that one dose of ass-whopping wasn’t enough anymore and that you needed to go to the process of getting your ass handed to you at least twice a day. Maybe you running away proved his point.

You waved the thought away and glanced at your neighbor, he was chewing on his nails nervously and you could easily read the anxiety and doubts in his face, his eyebrows were knitted together and you could tell that he was trying to find something to say. He would take sharp intakes of breath and open his mouth just to let the sentence die in his throat and leave room to a little sigh. He was like an open book. You don’t understand why this apparently harmless dude involved himself in your business like this, he probably didn’t even know you name, it annoyed you to no end. Right now neither of you could go back home, you’d probably have to go to a shitty motel and then have to build up enough courage to crawl back home and face Bro tomorrow, you knew that you were going to fucking destroyed on the roof later but you couldn’t imagine what would happen to him. The thought of bro killing him rapidly brushed the back of your mind, but you disregarded it, there was no way he would do that. You wished you had sounded more convincing in your head.

You kept a straight face. You weren’t thinking coherently. You looked at him again and he was still in deep thoughts, he met your gaze several but he probably didn’t know it because of the sunglasses. Finally his whole face lit up, his eyes widened and his mouth formed a little “o”. You guessed that he had found something to say. You were waiting for him to hit you with it.

“Uhh, Dave” he started, losing immediately any form or excitement when his voice cracked, you took note of the fact that he did know your name, and you felt shitty because you didn’t know his, “If we continue to go straight like this, we’ll pass in front of a bar, and uhh it belongs to a friend of mine, and, we could” he started stumbling through his words “we could probably go there for now, and talk about…” his voice trickled back to silence, your lack of reaction probably crushing any last bit of bravado he had.

He slumped back in his seat and you had the distinct impression that you had kicked a puppy. It was too late to respond now, though.

You remember that he introduced himself to you once, he started out cheery and you remember that his face quickly decomposed when he saw the numerous bruises on your face and arm and the sword on your shoulder, he looked at you for several second, confused before tentatively asking if you needed a band aid or something else, at this point you had already been subjected to his perfect reenacting of Peter Pan so like an asshole you responded that you weren’t the type of person who rocked Tinkerbell band aids and you left him blushing in embarrassment, having probably ruined this poor sap’s day, when all he did was saying hello and showing understandable concern for you. You probably left thinking that you were one of the coolest motherfucker alive too. You didn’t even bother to remember his name.

Still, why in the fuck did he decide to get his nose right into your business like that?

You both traveled in awkward silence.

“The Dolorosa’s Bite,” you heard Dave say, “is that the bar?”

His voice startled you.

You were still deep in thought, trying to find a way to somehow talk to him.

“Wha- oh! Yes! It’s the bar I’m talking about!” you said, your voice louder than you expected it to be.

He parked and you exited the car. He took the time to help you get in your wheelchair. As you were approaching the entrance, you got anxious but Dave walked without showing any kind of discomfort, and the anxiety disappeared, you followed right behind him.

As usual Porrim was at the bar, you could see her discuss with habitual customers. She greeted you with a warm smile and you felt all the tension in your body relax; this was a nice change of pace. You reciprocated her greeting with a smile of your own and a wave. She looked at Dave beside you and then back at you, sighed, probably making incorrect assumptions from the situation, but at least you knew that she would be able to provide shelter for the night.  You quickly went over and made the presentation, Dave only responded to Porrim’s greeting with a nod and a small hand motion.

You made yourself comfortable in one of the small, private booth. Dave was following behind you, his hands in his pocket. He plopped down on the opposite side of you and raised a single eyebrow.

You could see that he was trying to keep his face straight, to smooth out the wrinkles formed between his eyebrows, to keep his nose from flaring and his teeth from clenching.

“So?” he asked his neutral demeanor cracking.

You contemplated apologizing but you weren't sure if that was what he wanted to hear right now.

“Uh-,”

He did not let you finish.

“What now? We live happily ever after far from my daily life of rooftop ass-whooping, never to return to our awful, apartment lot or should I say the fucking Evil Queen’s castle in this motherfucking fairy tale you’ve decided to play the lead in by saving poor old me, the fucking damsel in distress now forever indebted to you and will fall right into your fucking arms like any good Disney princess and become free of all of my worries because our love is that fucking magical, because of course how could the poor princess not fall in love with the courageous prince? By slaying the beast, or I guess the evil fucking queen the prince also caught the worst fucking curse on him that will come and bite him in the ass later, as the fucking queen isn’t dead and he, too, lived in the evil castle and doesn’t have anywhere else to go; but sure for now let’s just enjoy ourselves in our temporary dwarf safe house and have mad, crazy passionate sex-”

“Uh, wha-”

“-That will leave completely breathless and my throat sore because of how much I screamed your name-”

“Okay, maybe you need to stop, this, I'm not comfortable with-”

“because it was the first time in my entire fucking life that I felt so loved, ignoring the fucking forest that is on fire and the looming threat of death in the near future but all because mister prince over here just couldn’t keep it in his pants when he saw my beautifully bruised face and was overcome with raw lust so strong that h-”

“Ok that, is not what happened, at all,”

“Then WHY? Why the motherfucking fuck would you do that?” He was shaking in real anger, he sneered, a fake smirk on his face “Because to me it seems to me that mister over there” he pointed at you, “have a fucking huge boner for me!”

“What? No! I, this isn’t, I’m not, I’m not trying to hit on you,” you say as you understood something, “I’m not the kind of person that hits on people already in a relationship! I have a-” thoughts of Vriska fill your mind and you quickly shake your head and try your best not to grimace, “ I had-, no yes I’m single but, I’m not, I mean I’m not hitting on you, that clearly isn’t how exactly you, so to speak, sweep someone off their feet” you say maintaining eye contact, hoping to clear the misunderstanding and to cut the tension with a little humor.

It didn’t go as you thought it would go, Dave’s poker face was completely obliterated to reveal pure and utter confusion. He just slumped down back on his chair suddenly drained. Finally he started laughing, slow and drained.

“ Whom am I even dating ? I’m genuinely curious.”

Hm. Maybe he wasn’t in a relationship.

“Uh, John? Or I don’t know if that’s his name but? Uh, maybe John not even a “he” and I didn’t try to spy on your conversations, um, it’s just that sometimes you just talk really loudly of your, uh-”

You couldn’t believe what you just heard, never mind that he still hadn't told you why he hit your brother with a trash bag nearly as big as a fucking car, nevermind that you would be thoroughly fucked when you came back, this was goddamn hilarious and you knew you couldn’t stop yourself from laughing, you needed to tell everything to John later, hell to Jade too, maybe not to Rose unless you wanted to give her more material to psycho-analyze you, today had been a fucking day, but this, this just won the fucking cake, you were searching in your mind for which of your conversations with John would have lead the guy into thinking that the two of you were fucking dating each other, or more like you already had several in mind, and every one of them are so fucking full of sexual innuendos that, taken out of context, would leave anyone thinking that you and John were dating or at least having crazy wild sex together, it explained the gay bar/restaurant.

You couldn’t stop laughing this guy (you were starting to low-key be bothered by the fact that you couldn’t remember his name, you thought it was maybe Trevor? You knew it started with a “T” but couldn’t for the life of you remember the rest) probably thought that your sex life was crazier than any of the protagonists of Rose’s library and god that’s saying a lot.

He was looking at you with something close to surprise but you knew he was embarrassed to have made this error, still you could see that he was trying very hard and failing to stop himself from smiling with you, he seemed like the kind of guy who smiled a lot and for nothing so this was probably going against his nature.

“Look,” you finally managed to say, “I'm not even-”

“Glad to see that the mood lightened here.” Porrim, the lesbian from before, said with a smile while putting two plates on the table.

You hadn’t seen her approach but her sudden appearance didn't startle you like it usually did with your brother, there was something reassuring about the way she looked at you, actually there was something reassuring with everything about this place, but fuck if you were about to admit it to yourself. Today had been a day and you were honestly tired of having to be confronted with things you were desperately trying to not think about.

“When you finish eating Tavros will show you where you can clean up,”

You immediately perked up at the name, stopping yourself from repeating it out loud, it was original but it fitted him.

“There is still an unoccupied room upstairs, you can stay there for a while.”

You just nodded and mouthed an embarrassed “thanks”, there shouldn't be any reason for you to be this intimidated by her, true she was hot in a MILF kind of way, but you weren't the type to get jittery around beautiful women, true she had arms that could probably crush a person's head like it was a mere egg, but then again you weren't scrawny, it wasn't the tattoos either, on her they looked classy and refined. You were sure that if you sent a picture of her to Rose she would instantly go into a coma, she would probably thank you too.

“Will you also be staying Tavros?”

“Oh! Yeah, uh, there are some, um, complications” he mumbled, his voice becoming higher at the end of the sentence as if asking a question, “where we currently live so, yeah.”

“Rufioh know you're here?”

You saw his face fall.

“Uh, not exactly? He isn't in the country right now, so he doesn't know, about our, our... situation.”

“I won't ask about this “situation” you do not seem to want to talk about,” she let out a small sigh, “but don't forget to call him later, if you're in any kind of danger you should talk to him. He'll be disappointed if you don't.”

“It's not, Porrim it's not like that, this is different.”

'Not like what?' you wanted to ask but you kept your mouth shut, just watching the scene.

“But, I'll call him later, promise. Maybe not tonight though.”

“Sure.” She said, patting his head.

She patted yours too before going back at the bar. You didn't know how you felt about it but you rolled with it. You picked up the fork you had in front of you and started eating while Tavros was making all kinds of faces, all conveyed indecision and despair. He wasn't paying attention to you anymore, he was completely stuck in his own head.

After the third bite of your steak, you finally had enough pity for him to get him out of his internal dilemma.

“So, you still haven't responded,”

“What?” he snapped back to reality.

“Why did you do it?” you said looking at your plate, fuck you were hungry, at this point you didn't care as much as earlier but you would still like to know.

“Oh, I don't really know, or, I mean, I know, but I don't think you'll like what I will say, maybe.”

You looked up, eyebrows lifting.

“Try me.”

“No? I, I could be wrong, and it could potentially make you angry, so maybe no?”

He was starting to get nervous and that made you even more curious

“What you're scared I'll cut you with my sword?”

“That, that has definitely been one of my concerns yes.” He confirmed, nodding.

“Wha-? Really?! Come on!” you say with a smirk “you see a guy sword-fighting with his brother a couple of times on the roof and you just assume that he just likes to stab people with it? That's just rude, man.”

“No, actually, I think that this is a pretty normal concern, if we take into consideration the situation as a whole.”

“Come on man, I don't even have my sword on me, also every single one of my swords are just shitty pieces of shit that couldn't even cut a fly in half, that's how bad they are. Just tell me why, I won't even get angry.” At least, you think you wouldn't, it might just be the curiosity talking.

“Yeah,” he says, dragging out the word, “I guess, it's not that big of a deal, but you looked, um, how to say this, like you were very scared?” he paused waiting for your reaction, as you didn't say anything, he continued, “it looked like you wanted to run away, so, I guess my body moved on its own.”

You didn't know what you were expecting, but in any case his answer did not please you to say the least, you felt your jaw clench at what you knew wasn't an insult per se but still stroke a very sensitive chord within you.

Tavros shot a glance towards the other clients when he saw your face fall, seemingly ready to get the fuck out of here if you became too threatening.

You didn't do anything, you kept your mouth stubbornly shut as you didn't trust what could accidentally get out of it.

After a little bit of time passed where he was just watching you fume with an unsure expression on his face, Tavros finally exhaled and relaxed, seemingly finding a way of defusing the situation.

“Look, I don't mean-, look, there is no reason to feel ashamed because you were scared,” he quickly added as you were about to open your mouth, “as a person who has also been in a situation where going to the rooftop was a source of extreme stress and, uh, not happy memories-”

You let out a very unamused laugh.

“Oh, yeah?” you said with much more poison in your voice than you intended.

“-I related to your situation and-” he interrupted himself after processing your question, “Oh yeah! I mean that's how I ended up in a wheelchair,” he said in a very matter-of-fact tone, “so, I related to your situation as, I, also, had a day where I wanted to run away but couldn't-”

“Wait what?”

“- of course I don't mean to say that our situations were exactly the same, as I didn't have, uh, sparring matches on the roof with my brother, it was with my ex-girlfriend, oh and I don't mean that we had sparring matches together, just that she was the source of my bad experience with rooftops or I guess falling off of them.”

You didn't know what to say, you didn't know what to think actually, was he actually fucking with you? Did he actually get thrown out of a roof by his crazy ex-girlfriend, and 'girlfriend'? You promised yourself to stop with the assumptions for today.

He looked into space, mouth open and eyebrows furrowed, seemingly searching for his next words.  

“Ok, just let me start over-”

“No need, just, jesus, what the fuck? You are really telling me that you were thrown off of a roof by your girlfriend? Dude!”

“Well saying it like that over-simplifies things a lot, but yes.”

“What do you mean “over-simplifies things”? Are you telling me somehow that she threw you off without meaning to?”

“Oh, no no, she did want to throw me off, that's why she did it. It's the reasons behind it that is complicated to explain.”

“Are you,” you started bewildered, “are you actually telling me that it was justified?”

“Not 'justified'... just, I guess, understandable.”

“Oh my god, you are actually defending the person who threw you off of a roof.”

“I'm not, look, I'm not defending her, it's just complicated,”

“What's so complicated about her throwing you off of a roof?”

“Well, first you don't know the whole story, and second, I mean, that was a long time ago, we were what? Thirteen or something like that?”

“You know that it's still pretty fucked up right? You really have shitty luck to go and fall on a psycho this young. God I can't even imagine what she grew up to be!”

“Well, she isn't that bad I guess? She could be worst, I think she might be better than when we were little.”

“Wait a minute, you saw her again? More importantly, you consciously decided to interact with her again? Dude, if I were you I would have fucking ran.” You shook your head in amused disbelief before taking a sip of your drink.

“I think I should have done that.” he snickered.

“Yeah, you should have, what if she still had pictured of you hidden under her bed that she used as target practice? Dude she could have stabbed you with a knife!”

You could feel your face becoming sour as soon as the sentence came out of Dave's mouth, you instantly reached for your stomach as bad memories filled your mind.

“Did, did she actually stab you? Christ!”

You didn't really want to explain your whole experience with LARPing, or the fact that you also had been charging at her with a lance so you said nothing. You averted your gaze and suddenly the decoration of the room seemed new and unfamiliar to you.

“And you still tried to defend her?!”

“I think you are misunderstanding somehow,  it's not that easy, and I'm not defending her.” you were growing more and more uncomfortable with this discussion, “look, it's, uh, it's like with your brother.”

“What about my brother?” he asked, on the defensive.

“Well, you know that what he does to you is objectively awful-”

“Okay, this is not the same thing-”

“Well, it's still pretty awful.”

“My brother never pushed me off the rooftop.” he protested weakly and not at all confidently which was uncharacteric of him.

“Vriska only stabbed me once, but (go off I guess) more importantly who's defending who now?”

He ignored your question.

“You can't put my brother on the same level of your psycho ex, he is training me, preparing me for the real world and all that shit.”

“Uh, Vriska used to say that she did a lot of things, to make me physically and mentally stronger too and also I'm pretty sure the 'real world' doesn't involve sword as much as you think it does, in fact, I don't think that the average person uses swords anymore.”

He opened his mouth and then closed it seemingly not able to think of a come back.

You felt a little bad, you didn't expect to hit bull's eye when you mentioned his brother. Actually, it was sad that he felt the same way about his brother than you feel about Vriska, you thought that maybe it was different, that maybe he did enjoy sword-fighting.

You remember when you first saw him, you had a normal reaction, you were concerned and worried, but as the weeks passed it nearly became routine to see him up there on the roof, like “hey, here are those strange brothers again, they sure are eccentric.” it made you feel bad, especially if he really felt like you felt, like you sometimes still feel whenever she is mentioned.

It was hard not to try to justify Vriska's action, you didn't know why, but it was a thing you just did, Aradia helped you a lot with that and now you could recognize yourself doing it but it was still hard to stop sometimes. Somehow trying to justify it lessened the shame.

The thought of calling Aradia later tonight crossed your mind but you knew she already had a lot to deal with since her accident, still it had been a while since the two of you last talked, maybe calling to see how she was doing was a good idea after all, you'd only mention what happened today in vague details and not talk about vague and distant menace your neighbor's brother could pose to you. You also really needed to call your bother.

You looked up at Dave and saw him in deep thoughts. He was frowning, and even thought you couldn't see his eyes, you knew that they weren't looking directly at you. He sighed, took off his glasses and started massaging both of his temples with one hand. His hand was still hiding most of his face but the gesture still startled you, you felt an abnormal rush of anticipation wash over you. Your breath caught up in your throat and you couldn't help but stare at Dave.

His head was resting in his hand, still hiding most of his face, finally he started moving it, slowly uncovering his face. Your gaze fell on a red iris, and then on a second. You met for the first time the tired red gaze of your neighbor. It was unusual but a lot of things about Dave were.

You were embarrassed but you truly wanted to take in the whole picture, after all Dave was objectively attractive and it would surely be the first and last time you would see him like this.

When your gaze fell on his bruised lips you quickly redirected it on his eyes not thinking that heavy eye contact after staring at someone's lips could be easily misunderstood.

“Look,” he started, sighing, “you are right.”

“Uh, I... am?”

“What my brother di- does to me is objectively awful.”

“Oh, yes, that is very true.”

He paused and sighed again. He looked so drained that it actually worried you.

“Tavros, you've lived through some shit,”

You smiled, that was one way to put it.

“but today you still helped me in a way I guess. Thanks.”

You weren't expecting that.

“Oh, really? Um, uhh are, are you sure? Oh wow, I meant, um, you're welcome?”

You continued to make a fool out of yourself but Dave thankfully decided to ignore it and continued.

“Hey who knows maybe one day I'll even repay you by chasing off this Vriska person with my cool sword-fighting tricks.” He said, smiling.

You chuckled at that, Vriska was good at sword-fighting too but you appreciated the feelings.

He looked at the ceiling for a while before putting back on his sunglasses. You didn't know what kind of face you made, but you earned a slow raise of the eyebrows from Dave. You looked at his plate and saw that he had finished eating. You suddenly remembered that you were supposed to show him where he was supposed to get cleaned up.

Tavros perked up when he heard you talk.

“What? Disapointed?” You said, your face was once again neutral but you were fighting off a smile.

He cocked his head to one side, a smile on his face.

“Yeah, a little bit,” he said looking at you fondly, “but anyways since you've finished eating I need to show you our room!”

You swallowed, hard, having expecting him to become an embarrassed mess and especially not being able to retaliate this hard.

Not only had he admitted being disappointed to not be able to look at your face, he had also mentioned the fact that the two of you would be sharing a room. Considering the literal adoration you saw on his face earlier as you removed your glasses, you were at a complete loss of words and worst of all you didn't actually know if he was indeed flirting.

He looked at you, still smiling, patiently expecting you to start following behind him.

You cleared your throat and cursed internally.

[homestuckexamination]

The End of Homestuck: Rapture

Alright then, as I’ve mentioned, I wanted to debate a few points I’ve heard about the Ending, consider it a sort of bonus celebrating over 2000 Posts and 1000 Followers!

But before I say anything, let me preface this by saying: This is not trying to make you like the Ending, rather it’s trying to make you realize why you dislike the Ending. There’s very valid criticisms to the Ending and the Story as a whole and you can just dislike the direction it took- But what I want is debunk a few things the Fandom seems to have really clung to that I think are extremely hollow and just, outright false at times.

So let’s begin, shall we?

The Retcon created a Timeline where everyone’s struggles had been solved, and the characters in it were vastly different from how they used to be.

This one is sincerely one of my biggest Pet Peeves, and I’ve talked about it partially before. A general consensus is that the Retconned Timeline solved every single key problem the Characters on the Meteor had, destroyed Character Development shown for those Characters, and thus, created versions of themselves that were vastly different. Vriska planted herself as a Miracle Solved and everyone lived Happily Ever After.

Except this really is not the case, at all. Vriska’s presence was ultimately extremely useful to disable Jade without killing her. For everyone else, no problems are fixed, and the conception that they do is, I feel, a heavy misunderstanding of what the characters actually struggle with. Let’s go one by one.

Rose and Alcoholism

This is a major one because we see Vriska literally smack a glass right off of Rose’s hand and slam it. Many people don’t even know why Vriska would do something like that, but they just straight up assume this deterred Rose from getting drunk, and instantly fixed every problem she ever had. This is an awful misreading of where Rose’s true problems lie.

“ROSE: And it was all mixed up with feelings of conflict and remorse over my mother.

ROSE: I sort of ran with it too? ROSE: The habit, I mean. For a while at least. ROSE: I was still distraught about losing her. And wanted to understand her. ROSE: To connect with her, in some way. And I guess that was the only idea I had.“

“ROSE: This almost makes it official. ROSE: I have no comprehensible path. There's nothing to overcome, no lesson to learn, no cathartic light at the end of this preposterous tunnel. ROSE: Not for me, at least! ROSE: I seriously have the DUMBEST arc anyone could conceivably imagine.“

“ROSE: I think my quest was fundamentally bound to the nature of this land, which was customized to the profile, needs, and potential for growth of a thirteen year-old girl. ROSE: But I'm not that person anymore. ROSE: What if I ROSE: What if I just ROSE: Didn't bother doing it? ROSE: Like, ever? ROSE: Would anyone notice my dereliction? ROSE: Would the powers that be strike me down where I loaf? ROSE: What if I just said fuck it?“

“DAVE: she sees this quest all neatly laid out for her wrapped in a bow DAVE: fuck it even looks like its made for little kids with like pink turtles and rainbows and shit DAVE: like here you go princess its babys first quest DAVE: almost like it was designed to piss her off DAVE: sburb says here, self improvement delineated and made comprehensible enjoy your cookie cutter odyssey DAVE: so because shes rose she goes no fuck my quest DAVE: literally starts wrecking shit DAVE: and maybe that itself was always her quest“

Rose’s problems aren’t with Alcoholism. They’re with her regret over her Mother, what she has Done up until this point, and her Purpose to the overall story she finds herself in. Alcohol is a way for her to ‘connect’ with her deceased mother, to prepare herself to meet Roxy, and at the same time, to take a weight off her shoulders, to not have to Think about what she’s supposed to do. She’s stressed, anxious and has severe doubts about her Self. Vriska just wanted a functional Seer for the Upcoming Battle, but this underlying unease that’s what drove her to Alcoholism in the first place is not gone.

Terezi and Gamzee

Post-Retcon, Terezi never gets together with Gamzee. Vriska keeps her in check as her Moirail, Gamzee is tied up and suppressed, she never falls for his abuse, nor does she unblind herself. However if you think this solves Terezi’s problems in the slightest I don’t know what to tell you, really.

“GC: 1 DON'T KNOW WH4T 1S WRONG W1TH M3 GC: TH4T 1 C4N'T JUST S4Y STUFF L1K3 TH4T, D1R3CTLY TO P3OPL3 GC: TH3Y C3RT41NLY DON'T 4PP34R TO H4V3 TH4T PROBL3M

GC: 1 W4S JUST P1SS3D 4BOUT YOUR 4TT1TUD3 OF C3RT41NTY GC: 4ND 4NGRY 4T MYS3LF FOR NOT H4V1NG 1T GC: 1 TH1NK 1T'S SOM3TH1NG 1 N33D3D 1N MY L1F3 GC: 3V3N 1F 1T C4M3 FROM SOM3ON3 3LS3

GC: 1 N3V3R F3LT WHOL3 GC: 1 ST1LL DON'T GC: 4ND YOU M4D3 1T SO 1 D1DN'T H4V3 TO F4C3 TH4T F33L1NG GC: FOR 4 WH1L3 4T L34ST GC: 4ND NOW TH4T 1 TH1NK 1 KNOW TH1S 4BOUT MYS3LF GC: 1 TH1NK 1 G3T 1T GC: TH3 F33L1NG W1LL PROB4BLY N3V3R GO 4W4Y GC: ONLY COV3R3D UP 4T MOST, M4YB3 GC: W3 COULD W1N TH1S F1GHT GC: CR34T3 4NOTH3R UN1V3RS3 GC: SUCC33D 1N 3V3RY W4Y POSS1BL3 GC: 4ND 1'LL ST1LL F33L 1NCOMPL3T3“

“TEREZI: OH PL34S3 TEREZI: WH4T COULD YOU POSS1BLY N33D M3 FOR?

TEREZI: 1 DONT TH1NK 1 W1LL B3 V3RY US3FUL

TEREZI: 1 DONT H4V3 MUCH TO OFF3R 3V3N ON MY B3ST D4Y”

Just like Rose’s issues, Terezi’s run deeper than just her getting together with Gamzee and ‘fixing’ her blindness. It’s a deep insecurity about herself, which exists there both Pre and Post Retcon, and being with Vriska is but a Temporary Fix. She needs to experience what Game Over Terezi did in order to even bring herself to join the final fight, and even after that, she still goes to track after Vriska, after everything is done.

Karkat, Relationships, Leadership.

So, Dave and Karkat get together in the Post Retcon Timeline, so there’s no Relationship Drama with Terezi, and Vriska takes over the Meteor’s leadership, leaving Karkat to chill. This seems uncharacteristic of him, even, except that, of course, he doesn’t just give up to his role as a Leader.

“KARKAT: WOW! HAHA, HA, HAHAHAHA! ME LEADER?? TOO FUNNY! KARKAT: I AM ENTIRELY AND SINGULARLY BAFFLED THAT IT COULD STILL EVEN *OCCUR* TO ANYONE TO ENTERTAIN THE NOTION THAT I MIGHT STILL BE PLAYING *ANY* ROLE EVEN WITHIN SNIFFING ORBIT OF A LEADERSHIP POSITION OF THIS RIDICULOUS PARTY. KARKAT: WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME I DID *ANYTHING* OF A LEADER-LIKE NATURE, WITHOUT BEING TRUMPED BY VRISKA'S MACHIAVELLIAN LIMELIGHT GLUTTONY? KARKAT: OR FOR THAT MATTER, WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME THERE WAS ACTUALLY ANYTHING LEADERY *TO* DO, THAT DIDN'T INVOLVE SNUGGLING UP ON THE COUCH TO WATCH "GOOD LUCK CHUCK" FOR THE FIVE HUNDREDTH TIME?! KARKAT: I HAVE SERIOUSLY JUST BEEN ASSUMING HER COMPLETE TAKEOVER OF ALL LEADERSHIP DUTIES WAS SOME FAIT ACCOMPLI SHIT FOR THREE SOLID YEARS, AND HAVE SINCE BEEN ENJOYING THE PEACE AND QUIET OF ZERO RESPONSIBILITIES, WHICH IS WHY QUITE FRANKLY, I HAVE BEEN ABLE TO KEEP MY BLOOD PRESSURE DOWN, AND NOW RESEMBLE THE LIVING EMBODIMENT OF PEACE AND FUCKING TRANQUILITY WHICH PRESENTLY BASKS BEFORE YOU IN A STATE OF FROTHING, EUPHORIA-HOBBLED TURDVANA!!!!!!!!“

He’s extremely obviously bitter about being left out of the loop, and hurt about not being the Leader anymore. He jumps at the opportunity to go beat Lord English up without a second thought, and leads the initial charge, which doesn’t end exactly well for him. Echidna does, however, imply that Karkat will have an important part in actually leading the new Troll Civilization. Karkat is not the best leader when it comes to a War-like battle scenario- But if his conversation with Terezi after finding her Unblinded is anything to go by, he’s a great Emotional Leader. Even Pre-Retcon where all the Problems Happened and there was Terezi Drama, he provided support to her and got along with Dave, even if it took a little while. Being cast from his position as a Leader Frustrates him heavily, and digs deeper into the Doubt he displayed after he started having the realization that the Cancer was his fault. He’s frustrated, more impulsive than before, and even though he has Dave to back him up, it’s still tough.

Dave. Just. Dave.

Honestly, there’s not much of a difference between Game Over and Post Retcon Dave, is there? He’s dating Karkat, sure, but there’s not much else. If anything, the major difference comes later on, with the Dogfight vs the Jackfight. We learn from his talk with Dirk about his hatred for Bro, his dislike for fighting, the sound of metal, the sight of blood. His hatred of Heroism because of him, and it ties well to him not wanting to use his Time Powers or Fight Jade- Training him to become stronger, Grimbark Jade basically wanted to do the same to him as Bro had been doing since he was born. But he does grab his weapon- When he knows he can bring Jade back, if he just snatches her away from the Dogs. This leads to his Death. On the other hand, though, when he fights the Jacks, he has managed to actually have a Heart-to-Heart with Dirk, and vent about everything that’s been tormenting him. This fight, too, ends with him breaking the Unbreakable Katana and Decapitating Dirk, before warping him away from the fight so he could be put back together by Jane afterwards. There’s a Catharsis for Dave, but as he tells Dirk, it’ll probably just keep building back up for a few years before needing a feels jam again. He got enough of a resolution, but his problems weren’t gone, and even if they were gone, they’re not gone by the nature of the Retcon, rather, by the nature of Meeting Dirk, which he was actively prevented from doing so in the Game Over Timeline. This is a development we also see on-screen, so there can’t be much of a complaint about it, right?

Kanaya

Without Rose Drunk and with Gamzee restrained, Kanaya’s focus post-Retcon returns to the Matriorb and rebuilding Troll Civilization. This is a tricky one, because you could say that Vriska did help Kanaya with this, and it is true that, by proxy, Kanaya didn’t have to do as much in the Meteor. But, these aren’t her Problems, rather they are things she helped with, and furthermore the presence of Vriska in general poses a problem for Kanaya. Still bitter about her old Red Crush on her, and with her being Meddlesome and butting in on her and Rose, she expresses explicit distaste when talking to her. Vriska is just up in everyone’s business and being a nuisance more than she’s an actual help. As for the Matriorb, well, with the issues leading up to Game Over they didn’t even have the possibility to focus on Troll Repopulation, so it’s a thing that’s brought up exclusively in the Post-Retcon Timeline. This is solved effortlessly, which actually brings new thoughts and issues to the table!

“KANAYA: So Instead Of All That KANAYA: Its Just KANAYA: Handed To Me KANAYA: Like A Nice Present ROXY: yes KANAYA: I Dont Know What To Say KANAYA: This Changes So Much KANAYA: About Everything I Thought I Had To Do”

Kanaya suddenly isn’t as sure about fighting, with the responsibility she suddenly has- Yet Roxy encourages her to go take down Condy. This is paralleled by Davepeta telling Jade to just do what she wants to do! But more on this later. 

Vriska vs (Vriska)

The hottest topic of the Retcon. Vriska’s Character Development is absolutely ruined by her being brought back, and you know what? I do agree with this! But that’s the thing though- I think this is good? Like. A lot of people complain about Vriska coming back and fixing everyone’s problems and being glorified, but as I’ve just displayed up above, Vriska is anything but Glorified. She’s forced everyone to do what she wants without actually solving any problem, she’s pushy, she’s cocky, and then we have a literal confrontation between her and (Vriska)...

“VRISKA: 8e quiet. I'm talking. VRISKA: Look at you. VRISKA: Just looooooook at you. VRISKA: How completely pathetic. (VRISKA): What? (VRISKA): What's your pro8lem?! VRISKA: My pro8lem is you make me fucking sick. “

“(VRISKA): I'm not a loser though! (VRISKA): I LIKE who I've 8ecome. (VRISKA): I actually feel happy and good a8out my life for the first time in... may8e forever?? (VRISKA): Like, ACTUALLY good a8out my life in a way that feels real, instead of forced. Don't you realize that's what it was like for us? VRISKA: You don't have a life! VRISKA: You're DEAD, remem8er?”

The Vriska vs (Vriska) interaction is one of my favorite parts of the entire Webcomic, because we have the Cocky Vriska that never actually developed positively, facing the Vriska that actually did have personal growth. Furthermore, neither the Plan to fight in the Session goes as she planned, nor does she gather the Army, or even lead it for most of the part, and ultimately her contribution to the Final Fight is to literally open the Juju Chest. She Steals the Spotlight, and the only ones to actually glorify this are the people in the Fandom. Everyone else within the story actually suffers more than they are actively helped by Vriska’s Actions, and that is what makes me absolutely love her leading towards the Ending. She’s the Savior Figure that comes back from the Dead to fix everything stereotype, except she actually barely fixes anything, and is an actively toxic force for most of the characters. Meanwhile (Vriska), after Aranea leaves them, actually does introspection about what she’d been doing and positively changes, culminating with a reunion with GO! Terezi. That is the culmination of Vriska’s Character Arc, Terezi Remem8er, and Vriska going for Lord English is ultimately detrimental for her Character. You can dislike that Vriska’s character ended up like that, but that’s the thing, saying that’s a bad part of the story is subjective, because it’s the obvious intention of the story to display this duality between Vriska and (Vriska)!

Not only that, but all I’ve said about these characters, about Pre vs Post Retcon, is entirely taken from canon statements by the Characters, straight up saying their problems in one way or another, and by the way their actions shape the stories. Both Pre and Post Scratch display the effects of the Characters’ deeper issues in different situations, how they cope with them and how they work towards solving them. You know why they all seem to fix their issues more Post-Retcon than Pre-Retcon? Because they don’t Die. It’s not that they’re even that differently developed, they simply get further. Rose was already talking to Kanaya about her issues before Game Over, Terezi was working towards fixing things and ultimately led to John’s Retcon Quest, they had different issues, stemming from the same main struggles, and that did not change at all.

I’d like to close this section with a quote by Hussie on Character Writing.

“I think writing in voice is pretty simple. It's mostly about consistency. Choosing a set of parameters and committing to them absolutely. [...] The advantage in being so obstinate with the profile you choose is then any deviation you make will be very noticeable. This is to your advantage, if you can control these deviations with purpose and precision."

And honestly? Dave still feels like Dave. Rose still feels like Rose. Terezi still feels like Terezi. The deviation from their core character is minor, and these deviations are, in turn, explored and talked about with their interactions, putting some context to what they’re doing and what they’re striving for. Honestly, I feel a lot of the issues with Game Over and the Post-Retcon Timeline come from the fact they were the... Post-Gigapause Updates, and a lot of people just forgot a lot of stuff. But let’s move on, this first section has gone on for WAY TOO LONG.

Act 7 wasn’t a satisfying conclusion to the story. Plot Threads and Character Arcs were dropped entirely, and everything was left incredibly ambiguous.

Let’s start this by pointing something out: Act 7 wasn’t actually the End of Homestuck. One of the reasons Act 7 might feel bad is the fact that a lot of things aren’t solved. And that’s alright, because Act 7 isn’t the Ending of the Characters’ Stories, nor is it the end of everything that happens. Act 7 is the culmination of Calliope’s purpose, the Finale brought to Lord English’ Alpha Timeline, and the Ending of the SBURB Session the Kids have played. Hell- The Credits, without even going to the Post-Canon Snapchat Updates, shows us that there’s still obviously more going on. Terezi is still looking for Vriska, Aradia, Sollux and Davepeta are missing too, John is depressed because he has nothing to do, Caliborn is being an asshole through Snapchat occasionally. 

The thing is that a lot of Plot Threads weren’t actually solved in Act 7, rather they were solved before Act 7, sometimes even extremely unceremoniously, like with Caliborn’s Masterpiece. And most important events in Homestuck? We’ve actually seen how they begin, and how they end. There’s ambiguity in the way you go from point A to point B, as well as some Timeline Weirdness with some things, again, like Caliborn’s Masterpiece.

Additionally, a few things about the Final Battle, the fate of Vriska and Lord English and Paradox Space, have been left ambiguous, and this is not unintentional. You may dislike ambiguous endings, and that’s honestly, perfectly okay? The ambiguity, or the ‘anticlimax’, you can dislike it, but the spite held against the Ending is, mostly, subjective tastes?

This however, doesn’t even touch one of the most important things about the Ending, and that is, that we don’t have the Epilogue yet. We’ve been left with nearly the whole picture, nearly the whole Puzzle of Homestuck, laid out before our eyes, and there are still some pieces missing that could come from the Epilogue! But even without it, I do believe we have enough pieces to put most of the picture together, enough that the rest of holes becomes sort of, obvious, or easy to interpret in different ways? The Epilogue could offer closure to the things we don’t know about, but what I’ve seen around, mostly, is that instead of trying to give closure to these open questions about the story, people have rather resorted to getting angry at the whole of the comic! This is, really, the aggravating attitude that’s made me make this post in the first place trying to debunk some of the more popular Ending Criticism. If you have any specific ‘We don’t know how this happened!’ question, feel free to send me an Ask and we can talk about it! In fact, let me answer to one of those Asks right now.

“What happened to LE?” Unless the Epilogue does pull a switcheroo, the Ending obviously assumes he has been defeated. The symbolism of the Treasure taking the shape of a Cueball and LE’s eyes becoming 8-Balls, with the Breach as the ‘Pocket’ certainly implies he’s been cast into the Black Hole, but there could’ve been more of a fight! Does the Treasure open to free the Souls of the Kids? Does it just Attack Him? That is something that’s left up to the imagination at the very least until the Epilogue happens, and instead we’re left with the image of the Kids Happy on Earth-C- It doesn’t quite matter how he’s defeated, because we know that he has been defeated, and the Kids are living happily post-ending. This could change in the Epilogue, yes, but if it does change, then we’ll have more of the story to go, which will mean that wasn’t the True Ending to begin with, yet still leaving us with the tools to build an actual Happy True Ending. That is the beauty of ambiguity in a story when you DO have the pieces to build what happens until the story continues post-canon!

“Does caliborn still turn into LE?” He needs to do so to become Lord English, however the Masterpiece also implies the possibility of our Caliborn and the Caliborn that becomes Lord English being two different Caliborns. This is, again, left ambiguous in the same way LE’s defeat is. We do know he HAS to become LE, and we also KNOW how he becomes LE. But then the seed of doubt is planted- Is it the same Caliborn? And that is how speculation, talk and theories about the Ending spark, still giving a satisfying conclusion because we know it has to happen somehow, but leaving us to ponder about the specifics, without holding back on important pieces of information that we NEED to know.

“Where’s Vriska?” That’s what Terezi is trying to find, and it’ll likely be one of the main points of the Epilogue. The fact she’s still looking for her however, implies that she’s been missing for over three years. She has accomplished what she went out to do, defeat Lord English. Now the question is, will she come back and redeem herself? Or did she fall with Lord English into the Breach, as a Karmic Retribution of all the bad things she has done? Does she deserve the same Fate as the Villain? Or is there still hope for her? For a character as controversial as Vriska, I honestly love that her fate has been left ambiguous so far.

As for Gamzee, I mean he’s extremely devout to LE and he’s fated to become part of him, granting him a Plot Shield. We do know why he’s so hard to kill, and we also know exactly in what way he ends up becoming part of LE. There’s some weird things left Ambiguous, like his Ghosts, but even that it’s speculation that doesn’t necessarily influence the Ending Result.

As I mentioned above? We have most of the Puzzle Pieces, and the ones we don’t have are intentionally left out for us to fill the hole with our own headcanons and theories. I can’t think of any important thing we don’t see the origin or result of, leaving just certain bits in between to the speculation.

But some of the Characters had their Arcs Dropped, didn’t have their problems solved, or were shafted entirely by the story.

Here we start to get into more messy territory with the Criticism Endings, because rather than misunderstanding, a lot of these are opinions! For example, I do agree I would’ve loved seeing some more Jane towards the ending. However I really don’t think anyone was ‘shafted’ by the story. In fact, I’ve heard people mention how Davepetasprite and Jasprosesprite were, somehow, attempts at reducing the amount of characters towards the ending, and like...

What? So you’re saying reducing the amount of characters towards the ending is accomplished... By making new Characters that present us with really interesting nuances and takes on the world of Homestuck? Are you sure about that? Hell, if Hussie really wanted to reduce the amount of characters, he would’ve killed off every Sprite Pre-Retcon, and not brought Rose back from where Roxy buried her. Were Davepeta and Jasprose afterthoughts that weren’t planned? Purrhaps. But they add onto the story, they are not an attempt to reduce anything. That being said, a lot of people that say this also call the Ending ‘rushed’, somehow. Listen buddy, you can’t simply. Rush something like the Ending of Homestuck. It took way too much time to make for it to not be completely premeditated.

A lot of characters, too, have more Depth to their Arcs than people give Hussie credit for, and while they do suffer or while they don’t interact with someone else as much as other people may, that doesn’t mean they are shafted by the story.

But let’s do this one at a time. Let’s begin with Dead Characters, and just let me say that, straight up, having everyone survive at the end wouldn’t have been as satisfying as you may think. Could Equius have learned to stand up for himself? Could Feferi have done more? Yeah, sure. Could the Dancestors have been more developed? That’s also true! But Death and Conflict happen in Homestuck, and you cannot give every character an equal amount of attention. Furthermore, expecting every character to develop positively is also unrealistic and, honestly, bad? The Trickster Arc is a parody of this, in fact, an accomplishment of the innermost desire of have your problems go away, share everything you want to share and just do everything you want! That problem-less happiness for everyone feels forced and uncanny, having everyone come back happily and develop positively would be worse than having some of them die off. The Dancestors, too, are precisely the way they are as examples of stagnant Character Development. Even Aranea and Meenah, which are the most developed of the Dancestors, follow this same tend. Meenah mentions how Aranea acting the way she did is not unlike the stuff she always did, and Meenah struggles with the fact that she cannot change the way she is, and follows after Vriska and not (Vriska) because it’s in her nature to Do Shit. It’s fun to write about further development and AUs! But in the canonical story of the magnitude and with the themes Homestuck touches, you simply can’t develop them all equally and positively. And while they could’ve been given more screen time, also, well. With so many characters it becomes hard to balance time and interactions.

Jade is another character that many feel was shafted by the story, but honestly this is not true? She suffered the 3 Years on the Prospit Ship and Struggled with her nature as a Space Player and what she was supposed to do- Just like most characters struggled with something. And in the end? Against what she thought Paradox Space had stored for her? She woke up happily to a letter by Dave about missing her. She tried to pacify her dogs and played with them the way she wanted rather than being put to sleep or fighting them. She did what she wanted to do, not what she thought she was ‘supposed’ to be doing.

Jake is also a very complex character towards the ending. His insecurities are pushed on him over and over until he nearly gives up his friends- Note, this is the boy that died to protect Jane without a second thought in the Game Over Timeline. Vriska pushes his insecurities and Tavros really doesn’t quite help at all. And in the End? He manages to prove himself to not be a useless fuck-up by defeating the most amount of villains in the Final Battle, rising victorious on top of a pile of defeated, Time-Warping, Meddlesome Felt Members. The task Vriska had given to him as she thought was the least important, and that happened to be one of the most difficult battles without a single doubt. Here, I would’ve personally liked to see more dialog about Jake finding out more self worth? But the sweet reunion with everyone else and with Dirk leading to Act 7, and the return of his Adventurer Persona by the Credits still expose development.

Jane is also mentioned to have been shafted at times. I would’ve loved to see her hug Dad when they reunited, but I’d say we got even more with her clinging to him in Earth-C during Act 7. Other than that, though? One of the things Jane has suffered for the most in the comic is being repressed and controlled. Condy, Jake shoving her in a more than desirable situation for her... However, her meeting with Jade and Callie bring some excitement and fun after being Mind-Controlled for a long time, and her encounter with Nannasprite reinvigorates her with confidence about being a Heroine herself, leading to the final Battle where she proves to be both a powerful healer and aggressor! And by the end, not only is she finally able to do what she wants, she takes over Crockercorp to make it her company as she wanted, and ends up with two lovely Girlfriends.

Indeed, there could be more to them, there could be more dialog, more is better after all! But I don’t think their Arcs are cut short, nor that they’re shafted by the story. Rather they showcase different struggles with reality and with themselves, that they  need to overcome? And as Dave told us, Humans don’t have Character Arcs. They build up confidence towards the Final Battle to finish everything, to win the game together, and then they reunite one last time before passing into the New World. And here they will still have problems, for sure. But at the very least, the Game is finished, and they can leave behind a very unpleasant stage in their lives. Jade was Isolated, Jane was Corrupted, Jake was shamed, but in the end they reunited again, made amends where they needed to, and continue their lives with their unique sets of nuances and problems. John and Terezi, which are given some of the most development, are the two that end the most unhappy, in fact, with John having no purpose anymore and falling to depression, and Terezi obsessively chasing after Vriska still, but this doesn’t mean John’s character was ‘shafted’. His friends still encourage him, Jade still wants to visit him for his Birthday, everyone misses Terezi, they have each other and they all love each other, but internal struggles continue. As the Trickster Arc taught us, it’s something to work on, progressively, not suddenly have it all be fixed, and going through a bit of suffering to reach a happy end doesn’t mean being shafted, either. 

The story conveys what it wants to convey with the characters. Whether you agree with what they convey, or if you’d want there to be more about them, now that’s an entirely different can of worms, and that’s why Fanfiction exists and why you’re not only allowed, but encouraged to give your take on the characters and the story!

The problem with the Ending is that it tried something the Story wasn’t. The ‘Meta’ elements, the ‘Symbolism’, it’s cool, but ultimately feels tacked on/Wasn’t conveyed properly through the story, and as such, made the ending feel bad.

This is honestly one of the criticisms I dislike the most about Homestuck when people talk about the Ending, when people say that Hussie didn’t convey his intent, and trying to make the Ending more Meta is detrimental to the Story as a whole and what ‘got the fans there in the first place’, or the thought that somehow more Meta elements and actual Storytelling can’t coexist.

You can definitely not enjoy thinking deeper about a story! If you just want to check out something different and not dig deeper into the content, that’s absolutely okay! However, I’m sorry, but that is not the kind of story Homestuck is. This is a story that’s been acclaimed by the Fandom for its complexity and its weirdness, and now you’re telling me that the thing you dislike about the ending is that it’s weird and makes you think about the story? That’s paradoxical on its own. But let’s leave that behind. Whether you enjoy the more Meta aspect of stories or if you prefer a story one way or another, it’s all subjective. Let’s go to the main point here.

Hussie. Didn’t convey the kind of story it was? And it’s a disservice to the Fandom to have the Ending be something you have to dig in deeper to understand? Honestly, I don’t even know what to say about this, because this is not even like subjective opinion or disliking the ending, this is a complete misreading of the Canon, of the way the story Explicitly tells us how things work. You can interpret a lot of things in Homestuck in different ways- But you cannot say that there’s nothing to interpret and the Ending is bad because it pretends there is.

This is the story that the Author himself has called both a Creation Myth- Explicitly telling us the point of the story is a tale about Reality and living in this Reality, with explicit in-comic talk about the place people have in a Universe with Predetermination, Existential Struggles of just about everyone. This is the story the Author called “A story that is also a Puzzle”- Inviting us to read through the story while providing some deeper bits of lore we could piece together to get a wider image of what truly is behind Homestuck. This is a story where the Author himself is a Character- Miss me with the ‘not Meta’ stuff, Hussie is a character, explicitly, in-comic, that affects the story extremely directly. Jade escapes literally through the Fourth Wall. Caliborn takes over the literal narrative of the setting. Homestuck acknowledges itself as a story multiple times.

You can dislike this. You can absolutely dislike this, it’s a preference, but call it what it is, you just not enjoying this kind of story, or not enjoying the direction the narrative took in general compared to your expectations. The intent and symbolism of the comic is exposed, canonically, pretty blatantly, and even more blatantly by word-of-god with Hussie’s old Formspring and Tumblr answers, and I bet it will be even more blatant as the new Books with Commentary come out.

By blaming Hussie and the Comic on your general interest in the deeper themes of the narrative, you’re outright misinterpreting Authorial Intent in order to make you feel better about not understanding a story, and at the same time, refusing to even give it a second thought! You’ve reached the Ending, so I’m assuming this a story you enjoyed. If you enjoy it, do you really want to just walk bitterly away without giving it a chance?

That’s yet ANOTHER thing I don’t quite understand about this kind of criticism, and it is... Okay, you get to the Ending, and are disappointed that a lot of stuff you wanted to see happen didn’t happen, but- And this is not as true anymore, but back during the Act 7 Days, there was militant dislike about the Ending to the point of saying it ruined the rest of the story? It honestly feels extremely childish that an Open End to a story as complex as Homestuck could make you hate the entire story instead of wanting to know more about it, to see if you missed something else!

I sincerely do believe that a lot of people just dragged themselves through the Ending because it was an old Fandom they were in and they wanted to see how it ended, but just weren’t invested in the story anymore at that point, so they went in remembering and taking the shallow details, leaving the depth behind, and then were disappointed when their own lack of interest sabotaged their view of the comic.

Homestuck is dense, it is a Story with a ton of Symbolism and a lot of weird themes, but it’s also incredibly charming with its narrative and its characters. And for that, I am not saying that ‘You SHOULD enjoy the Ending, god dammit!’. I’m not saying that at all. As I’ve said multiple times, you can dislike Symbology in Stories, you can dislike the directions the Story took, you can dislike anything about the comic itself!

But do understand, when you give criticism of the Ending, try not to tangle actual criticism about the Story or the Narrative with Subjective Opinions. You can say you dislike how dark Blade Runner is, but you can’t say Blade Runner is a bad movie because it’s dark.

So if you don’t like Act 7, more power to you. But if you prefer to have something you apparently enjoy enough to have gone through it to the ending, ruined by your headcanons, and leave you bitter instead of seeing if there’s something more to the story or if there was something you missed, well. I feel that’s a little bit silly?

But whether you enjoy the Ending and want to dig deeper into the story and what actually happens in Homestuck, or you think I’m just a dumb fangirl reading too much into a dumb Webcomic and would like to tell me, feel free to send me an ask! I sincerely do enjoy debating about the Comic and what happens in it as long as it’s done in a civilized manner.

Thanks for Playing.

[413-homestuck-headcanons]

Terezitavros?

I first read this as TavrosTavros and got really confused.

1. Terezi was torn when Vriska hurt Tavros. He was her moirail, but Vriska was her longest friend and she didn’t know what to do. She decided to side with Vriska, and she regretted it ever since.

2. Tavros was often Her sidekick when it came to roleplaying anything involving investigators.

3. Terezi threw Tavros the biggest wriggling day party ever. It wasn’t his ideal, to many noises and not enough food. But his favorite because it reminded him that she remembered his birthday.

4. Can’t kill a spider if the spider in question is still your friend. Some friction was made between them when Terezi decided to still keep in touch with Vriska.

5. Tavros made the mistake of thinking all chalk was edible and not just Terezi’s homemade stuff. It was an unpleasant call to Terezi’s hive that day. He had to drink 3 bottles of water before he felt his throat wasn’t a child’s sidewalk anymore.

Hope you like this!#71

[wakraya]

My problem with the "we're real people we don't have arcs" line is that they do in the post retcon timeline? However brief they are they still exist, but they are all solved by vriska. Rose still got drunk, dave still doesn't want to time travel, karkat struggles with his position of leadership and relationships, and terezi still gets into a black relationship with gamzee. Instead of trying to fix their flaws on their own they're done by vriska. 1/

Vriska knocks the drink out of rose’s hand, vriska captures gamzee before his and terezi’s relationship goes bad, vriska takes the role of leader from karkat and distracts terezi from dave leaving karkat not having to worry if she and dave are a thing and pursues dave, dave gets karkat who he can talk to about some of his issues. Someone else fixing everyone’s flaws doesn’t feel genuine. 2/

Sure vriska doesn’t fix every problem but the ones she did fix were ones we have seen characters struggle with for years. It still cheats us out of any resolution that many fans have been waiting for years. It also begs the question of how serious are these flaws if you can just knock a drink out of a hand to stop them. 3/3

———————————————————————————————————–

See, here’s where I have an opinion that differs drastically from the Fandom’s, and that is, I think most of Vriska’s involvement post-retcon is ultimately useless to the characters, and nothing she does actually fixes anything.

You see, Vriska is a very special brand of attention whore, she just LOVES being the center of attention, regardless of what it is. She wants to be the one to defeat the Villain, and so creates him, she wants to face English herself, she’s in the most literal sense, as her role indicates, stealing the spotlight from the story at any chance she gets. But while the focus shifts to her constantly? She doesn’t actually do shit.

Let me explain: I’ve heard this argument, that Vriska’s involvement was a Deux Ex Machina that just solved every single problem the people on the Meteor had and thus made them less relatable, but that’s just not true. Let’s go one by one:

Rose and her drinking addiction, what many people don’t get about this interaction is that Vriska doesn’t give a FUCK if Rose is an alcoholic or not. What she doesn’t want is a useless Seer. We only see her smacking the drink off her hand once, but by the descriptions by Karkat and Dave and the attitude Kanaya has towards her, it’s obvious that Vriska has been bossing them around for three entire years, which means at any moment she’s seen Rose fall into alcoholism, she’s stopped her, to keep a valuable asset for the fight that was to come. Now the thing to have in mind is that Rose getting drunk so often is bad, very bad for her. But she doesn’t just drink for the sake of it. She starts drinking because she’s nervous to go out with Kanaya. And she keeps drinking to mask the underlying fear of growing up. Her Development, her Mother, Rose has a TON of issues she masks with the alcohol, and we see it when we get to the Session and she fails to foresee the creation of Rosesprite and Jasprose. Rose struggles with her powers and her role in the group, and while the alcoholism is gone, her problems with her growth aren’t. That being said, post-credits, it seems marrying Kanaya and taking care of Grubs left her happy and complacent. But Vriska had nothing to do about that.

Terezi on the other hand is better off without Vriska than with her. Game Over Terezi had regrets about killing Vriska, and it fucked her up in the long run, getting together with Gamzee, fixing her eyesight, and eventually, leading her to forcing John to fix what she’d done. However, the catharsis of not having to kill Vriska doesn’t come without a cost. They become Moirails- And this Moirailship is absolutely one-sided. Vriska uses Terezi to feel better about herself, while Terezi dwells in the thoughts of this other Terezi that planned the trip back in time for John and did all the cool shit. She sticks with Vriska even though their relationship is toxic, to the point to bring herself to fight, she uses her powers to experience the catharsis of a version of herself who got together with the Vriska she wants. Terezi’s regrets about killing Vriska were the thought of changing her, of making her a better person. But post-Retcon? She’s more cocky than ever. She thinks she’s the center of the Universe! Terezi wants (Vriska) to be healthy and happy. But all she’s getting is an even worse Spiderbitch. And even though she knows it, she goes back into the broken Furthest Ring to try and get her.

Kanaya is happier with Rose being more healthy and not drunk all of the time, however with her complicated relationship with Vriska, things have turned around. Initially, Kanaya had red feelings for Vriska, but was stuck in a Moirailship with her, and eventually caught her making out with Tavros, which made her fall off with the jadeblood. And now that she’s back alive? It’s hard to say if Vriska’s red-flirting with Kanaya or just trying to get her attention, but she’s heavily getting on her nerves. Kanaya dislikes Vriska and feels nothing for her anymore, but now it’s her who wants the jadeblood, too, to pay her attention.

Gamzee, well. I mean. Vriska’s making his life impossible in the meteor and she ends up stuffing him in the fridge, but this is very much well deserved. Fuck the clown.

Karkat may not have Quadrant Issues with Terezi anymore post-retcon, but his leadership issues are shining more than ever. Vriska has replaced him at his job, she’s taken the spotlight and thrown him off the stage entirely. He mellows down and hangs out with Dave, but the way he acts when he falls asleep and leads the charge towards English? Echidna’s words about keeping him safe? The fight with Clover? Karkat wanted action, he wanted to be useful to his friends and actually lead them as a leader, even though he’s not really good at that and his eager, initial charges seem to only harm him in the longer run. Thankfully Dave and the Mayor seem to support him through it.

Dave, well… His catharsis comes later with Dirk and Vriska has nothing to do with any development he has or stops having. It’s obvious he dislikes Vriska too, though, and I bet along with the other things they have in common, seeing Karkat’s position of leadership fall upon Vriska aided get their relationship going. See, that’s the thing- Dave and Karkat, much like Kanaya and Rose, are happy together and show how happy they are together, but they don’t have their issues resolved. On Karkat’s side it’s the Leadership, on Dave’s it’s the Fighting itself. Confidence the Spiderbitch herself does nothing aid with.

And finally we get to the Session, where Vriska finally shines and puts Jade and Jane to sleep. Now that is the only thing she helps with, and yet, was it truly necessary on her part? You see, it did speed things up and left Condy without two immensely valuable assets, but even if she hadn’t done this, the Kids would’ve in the long run defeated Jade and Jane themselves. 

Now this isn’t explicitly canon, so take it with a grain of salt, but when Artist Caliborn sees his future on the screen and describes the Masterpiece, he explicitly states that he’s surprised by the Kids appearing in a retconny John flash. He also has the ring that Calliope gets to resurrect. That makes me think Artist Caliborn is not the Alpha Caliborn that will later become Lord English, tying with my thoughts that with the Retcon, by the end, we’re not even following the ‘Alpha Timeline’, since the Alpha Timeline is that which favors Lord English, and the point of the Retcon and finishing the game is to escape the clutches of Paradox Space and the Alpha Timeline. So thematically, this makes a lot of sense. And so if the Vriska is 8ack Timeline is not the Alpha, the most likely outcome is that the Alpha Timeline where the Kids have won and regrouped to take down Caliborn is one in which Vriska wasn’t brought back. Which means even then, against all odds, they won.

But even if she did help take those two down, okay, a small win for Vriska. Compared to what she does later it’s nothing at all, right? She makes up the entire plan to win the session, and she faces Lord English herself to defeat him! She ends up stealing the Spotlight! Except… That’s all she does. She inserts herself there, at the very front of the story… And does absolutely zilch for anyone but herself.

The plan she makes is an absolute failure, and going against everything she’s planned is what ends up happening in the Session. The Felt is the least troublesome bunch? They end up time-warping around, being extremely meddlesome and manage to kill Jake once and cause a bunch of mayhem around, have to be taken on by Jake, Karkat, Dad, and the Skeleton Army to stop them from messing everything up. The Healer can’t fall, if Jane falls they’re done for! And yet Jane falls and they still push through. If Jade wakes up it could jeopardise the entire mission, she must be kept asleep at all costs- But she wakes up anyway, and Condy is too busy in Derse to notice her and put her back under her control. The people she disregards the most seem to be the ones that ended up doing the most shit in the fight, because she’s an asshole. Vriska is an absolute and utter, self-centered asshole, and her entire existence from the Retcon onwards is to be there in the middle of everything without regard of what’s actually favorable and what isn’t.

She doesn’t even STICK with the gang to help them win the Session, instead she heads to the Furthest Ring… Where she finds (Vriska) and abuses her psychologically. (Vriska) is the antithesis of all Vriska is. (Vriska) is a Vriska that actually came to terms with the fact she’d done wrong, that she had paid the ultime price for her transgressions… And that, in death, had slowly realized the futility of trying to change things, that she was no longer relevant. This irks Vriska. (Vriska) has stopped acting like a Thief of Light. (Vriska) is no longer trying to seek the Spotlight, and she can simply not comprehend something like this.

Then she goes on to try and rebuild the Ghost Army to take English down- And again, she does nothing. Tavros, to rub it in her face, has built the army himself, and now proceeds to gift it to Meenah to rub it in. Tavros becoming subservient willingly to Meenah is the ultimate Fuck You to the Spider Troll. She wants to be relevant, she SHOULD BE THE ONE to lead the army! But Meenah and Karkat team up to lead the charge, while Vriska stays with the Juju.

Juju that (Vriska) and the previous Ghost Army found. Juju that Aradia carried along and guarded.

When the climax of Act 7 happens and she opens the crate? That’s it. That’s her moment. She steps in front of the army during the next charge, after Karkat charged in first, after Meenah attacked English first, after part of the army is already dead, after Davepeta had their chance to fight English. She steps in, as if she owned the place, and uses the weapon.

True to herself, Vriska works to benefit only herself towards the end of the comic, and if it helps anyone else at all, it’s only tangential casualty.

Does she solve some problems? Yeah she does, to advance her own agenda. But she ignores the root of most of them, and disregards a ton of other issues and some of the characters entirely as if they were useless. All Vriska wants is to shine. And in the end? I seriously hope she’s dead and re-dead with Lord English in that cozy pocket of a Black Hole torn in the middle of Paradox Space.

[paragonrobits]

Can I ask for some Eridan/Vriska teaming up in a pirate FLARP against some foes if possible?~

“'We invite anyone who has the courage, the nerve, and thesteel, to plumb our dungeon of doom!'” went the note sent to everynaval FLARPer in the region, signed with only two signs, in lightblue and violet; respectively, the signs of the scorpion and thewaterbearer. “'If you have the might to win, dare... the MAUSOLEUMOF NIGHTMARES!'”

And Vriska smirked as dozens of unsuspecting rivals, each of themcontesting for a highly ranked spot in the regional FLARPingcontests, went straight into the vast labyrinth floating upon thesea, assembled from dozens of ships sunk by Eridan and Vriska, andthen raised up and mashed together. Trolls went in and then...

Well, they wouldn't come out. Their bodies did, most of the time.Sometimes. The point was to get bodies to feed to Spidermom andisolate lusii to feed to Feferi's lusus, but in any case the dungeonworked amazingly. Lured by the promise of treasure, people delvedinto the dungeon and ran afoul of the many, many horrendouslyunfair traps.

Years later, those who survivedthe Mausoleum would speak in hushed whispers of the horrible trapsthere. A sphere of annihilating energy housed in the mouth of astatue in a room set up to make you think you were supposed to openup the statue to solve a puzzle. A host of puzzles, dozens of them,each of which Eridan had flawlessly calibrated to kill whoever didanything in them, leaving behind their loot. No one ever got morethan a few rooms in, ever.

It would go down in troll history(which, to be fair, was on borrowed time at this point) as the mosthideous unfair, horrifically unbalanced and just plain meanpuzzle dungeons ever conceived.Even worse than the creations of 'What A Jackass' Jolstoni, themeanest puzzlemaker in all Alternia, who had taken the creed of 'allpuzzles should be super murdery' to a logical extreme, at least untilsome unknown fuchsia got bit by a cube puzzle he made.

Vriska yawned, slouching down thesteps of the dungeon's secret inner workings, going through secretpassageways to the treasury where they kept all the sweetloot they'd accrued from theirmany fallen foes. “What's up, fishface,” she said, clapping himon the back with her kickass robot arm. “I was thinking that maybetonight we could-”

Eridan held an arm out.Dramatically. His cape fanned out, covering her view of the treasury.(He had to stand on a table to block her view, so he clearly had goneto some effort ahead of time.)

“Uhh,” she said.

He lowered his arm. Vriska gaspedin horror.

There are many unspeakablyhorrible sights on Alternia. The pits where the culled are sent todie in their trials. The courts where the doomed are sentenced. Anyplace remotely near a fuchsia, at least until Feferi was born. Emptyfood preparation blocks. But there is nothing worse than the sight ofan empty treasure chamber atleast to a pirate-themed FLARPer.

“Our treasure trove,” Eridanbegan. “Has been stolen!”

“...Uh, yeah, I worked thatout,” Vriska said, giving him a look.

“Look, I've been up here fortwo and a half hours waiting for your dumb ass to get up and see thistravesty! Least you could do is let me get out my cool dramaticspeech.”

“You were up here for two and ahalf hours and that's the most you came up with ahead of time?”

“OKAY SHUT THE HELL UP andlet's get going, we have a treasure to reclaim.”

“HELL YEAH,” Vriska said,running off into a completely different room, popping off her arm andthrowing it at Eridan. It incidentally managed to smack him in theback of the head. She came back a few minutes later, dressed in asuper cool pirate-themed outfit that so happened to look exactly likeher ancestor's favorite outfit. Eridan was already dressed in hisoutfit. Also, she'd swapped out her robot arm for a giant pirate hookwith a built in cannon.

They high fived. They immediatelyregretted this, because you really don't want to high five someonewhen your hand is now a giant hook/cannon.

A short while later, becauseEridan had also prepared a ship ahead of time, their ship set out.They tended to go through a few dozen every perigee, and simply stolenew ships from defeated foes; this one had been looted from an armadaof trolls all arising in response to inflammatory comments Eridan andVriska had made regarding the latest editions of FLARP's needlesschanges to rules they didn't care for. (This sort of thing was prettycommonplace on Alternia; an entire planet of children from a speciesprone to wild mood extremes, without any adult supervision and withmysterious interferences to make them more bloodthirsty? It wasunavoidable.) This ship was the only one to survive; Vriska blamedEridan for being too trigger-happy with his weird ancestral lightningthingy. Eridan blamed Vriska for mind controlling people intoblasting each other without even waiting for a sick cameraopportunity.

This one had been renamed theRevengence Rising, forreasons that Vriska was unclear on. Eridan would only say that he sawit in a dream, borne to him by the terrible things he saw in hisdreams, and swept off dramatically.

The Revengence didn'tso much float as it insinuated itself through the water, slicingthrough the tides and the occasional smaller ship that ran afoul ofthe giant underwater ramming blades beneath it, raising a pink-huedflag. The pink of tyranny had only one meaning; there would be noprisoners, just as a true heiress left no survivors. Both Eridan andVriska were considering changing the flag's color, because since theyknew Feferi so well, they couldn't quite reconcile that with... well,her. (They chose to decide that Feferi was just super weird.)

They soon came across theirquarry, a ship low in the water from the weight of its treasures, anda very big ship at that, too. It had to be, to hold all thattreasure. Vriska seethed at the sight of it, her one good eyenarrowed and her fangs scraping against her lower lip. “I am gonnakick their ass! I am gonna kick the boat's ass!”

“Boats don't have those,”Eridan pointed out.

“I am gonna build it an ass soI can kick it!”

“Use shitty wood, otherwiseyou're gonna make it look better than it really is.”

“Shit, I wouldn't have thoughtof that. Good save.”

“It's what I do,” Eridan saidsmugly.

“Hey!” Vriska yelled into amegaphone, directing it at the ship. “HEY, YOU! TREASURE STEALINGASSHOLES THAT STOLE THE TREASURE WE STOLE FIRST!”

There was a pause. The enemy shipwiggled with activity. “What?” A faint, reedy voice called back.

“I said HEY YOU!” Vriskayelled.

“WHAT?'

“I SAID... goddamit, are weeven close enough for them to hear us?” Vriska turned to thelowblooded troll closest to them on their crew. “I said, are weclose enough for that?”

Karkat Vantas, roped into thisarrangement as a result of a complicated bet involved a largepineapple and the world's second-nicest hat he was trying to barterwith Equius for reasons unknown, rolled his eyes. “I don't goddamnknow. If they're constantly yelling about what you said, GEE, I DON'TKNOW, that's probably a pretty solid indication, huh?!”

“You're the worst cabin boyever. I don't know why Terezi recommended you.”

“I thought Terezi swore to killyou and eat all your shoes,” Karkat said.

“Eh, inbetween vows to make mesuffer for my misdeeds or whatever, she yells at me about how greatyou are. It's weird and sickening.”

“Oh. Wait she did... she didwhat? She talks about... me?” Karkat fell to the ground, staring atthe moons. “Inbetween acts of vowing horrible revenge? Oh... that'sthe most romantic thing I ever heard... I need to write poetry aboutthis.”

“God, this is sickening,”Eridan said, wrinkling his snout.

“Hell yeah,” Vriska said,shaking her head and unconsciously putting her arm around Eridan'sshoulder.  “Just plain weird.”

Eridan put his arm around herwait, with no conscious thought on his part. “This flush pining isjust embarrassing.”

“Yeah.” A small pause. “Didwe forget something?”

They looked up, and saw the shipsignificantly closer. A purple blood waved to them; Vriska judged himthe leader of the crew, if only because he had the biggest andfanciest hat. In pirate terms, he was so obviously the Leader. “So,uh, you were trying to say something to us?”

“Yeah!” Vriska drew hersword, and with her other hand, extended her harpoon. She got backinto character, as Eridan did the same. “I, the dread MarquiseSpinneret Mindfang, demand that you return my stolen treasure hoard!”

“And I, the fearsome pirateDualscar, demand your land-cursed BLOOD!”Eridan shouted, drawing Ahab's Crosshairs and pointing it in a waythat indicated he had every intention of just driving it intopeople's chests like a spear.

The captain considered it. “No.”

“Give us the treasure,”Vriska threatened. “And then we'll kill you!”

The enemy crew stared across thedeck. From the floor, Karkat said, “Don't you mean, 'or'?”

“We know what we said!”Eridan snarled. “And get below decks, you could get hurt if there'sa fight!” He paused, and trying to save face, quickly added, “And!And, uh. If you get hurt or somethin', Terezi will wear my skin as afancy cape! I don't want to become a cosplay!”

Karkat groaned and rolled belowdecks. “I'm going, I'm going!”

The enemy captain shrugged. “So,it's a fight you want, huh? Then, it's a fight you'll-”

“DIE DIE DIE!” Vriskascreamed, catapulting herself across the two ships, heedless of apotential fall into the sea. She landed with a sword right in thecaptain's neck, her hook through the first mate, and she twistedaway. Purple and blue bloodrained down around her, and with a swish of her long coat, she raisedher robot arm as her arm cannon unfurled, blasting out a flurry ofshots that tore open the side of the ship.

“You shits stay here and trynot to be failures,” Eridan said to his crew, and dove into thesea. A moment later, he erupted out from the other side of the ship.In his native element he was far faster and stronger, and leaped highinto the air, landing with each, Crosshairs down and through thechest of the first unwary crewtroll. He twisted aside, putting thebody in the path of a sword blow coming his way, and a blast from theCrosshairs toppled the mast over, onto another grouping of enemycrewtrolls.

Vriska was laughing now, swordand cannon akimbo, and Eridan laughed too, the both of them moving ina fierce frenzy through the crew. Swords and shields clashedtogether, bows strung out and fired only to hit crewtrolls used asliving shields, and as soon as Eridan was able to aim (though hepreferred the thrill and martial honor of a melee), they were wipedfrom the world, along with several portions of the ship.

Cannon blasts, piercing lightfrom the Crosshairs and the sheer ferocity of the pair, fighting backto back, ended the first in short order. Most ship boardings are overfast, and this was done in a matter of minutes. When it was done, theship was listing, too many holes in its side to keep on from... well,taking on water. Vriska and Eridan stood, back to back, cape and coatflapping in the breeze as they posed with their weapons crossing. Oneof the enemy crewtrolls, in exchange for his life, took a photo ofthem.

“So, uh, are you gonna dosomething about the ship?” That crewtroll said.

Eridan blinked. “What aboutit?”

“It's sort of sinking. From allthe damage you did,” the crewtroll said, with just a hint ofreproach.

“...Oh shit~!”Eridan and Vriska said. Vriska ran to the side and called out to hership, “Towing cables! Ready the hooks, you know what to do!”

Several modified cannons, on thebroad side of the ship, opened up and fired; massive hooks slammedinto the side of the ship and chains reeled it in, towing the largership closer to them and supporting it. It wobbled ominously, butdidn't sink.

Vriska sighed in relief. “Ourtreasure, and more importantly, my reputation, are saved!”

Eridan checked a small watch.“And it's not even second breakfast. God, butthis is gonna be a slow day, isn't it?”

Vriska twirled him close to her.“Day's still young, fishface. Bet ya we can get into more trouble~”

[clonerightsagenda]

The final part of the Vriska arc commentary! Let's go.

Terezi and Vriska's conversation was a big ticket item and something we never got actual resolution on in canon, so I knew I wanted to do it right. I totally scrapped a first draft of this conversation and gutted my second one pretty hard before I was happy with anything.

Vriska has mellowed out at this point, because it's been a long time for her. However, time is weird out in the bubbles. If she'd fully lived thousands of years, someone she knew for thirteen of them shouldn't be a big deal. But bubble time is more stasis than much else, so even if she's chilled out in many ways, when Terezi shows up it brings a lot of stuff back to the surface. I kept hitting walls until I let Vriska get a little angry - I've found often character interactions go more smoothly if I let them get mad at each other.

VRISKA: You're the one who set the terms. You're the one who hemmed us into two 8inary options. VRISKA: Heads or scratch, stay or go. VRISKA: I might have agreed to those terms, 8ut you offered me the deal. VRISKA: Are you telling me, Seer, that you REALLY couldn't find any other way????????

TEREZI: 1 H4D TH3 CH4NC3 TEREZI: 1 4LMOST TOOK 1T TEREZI: 1 W4NT3D TO R3WR1T3 TH3 UN1V3RS3 FOR YOU TEREZI: BUT 1TS NOT 4LL 4BOUT YOU VR1SK4 TEREZI: 1T C4NT B3 4LL 4BOUT YOU

The spectre of the retcon hangs over a lot of Terezi's scenes, especially BAA and this one. We as readers know that in canon, postretcon Terezi remains miserable. This Terezi doesn't know that, but she has come to the conclusion that we have to live with the decisions we have made. Our mistakes define us as much as as our good choices. As she says, if we change that, we're not saving ourselves, we're saving someone else, and that's a big risk to take with everybody's lives. Canon GO!Terezi takes it, but I felt that considering she felt her judgment was so untrustworthy, and she regretted her past overindulgences in trying to puppeteer others, she wouldn't be willing to change so much for so many. As Vriska acknowledges, that act wouldn't have saved her. It would have spared some other iteration, and we've seen that this just makes Vriska dig deeper into her bad behavior.

VRISKA: May8e I should 8e thanking you. TEREZI: TH4NK1NG M3? TEREZI: FOR K1LL1NG YOU? VRISKA: Weird, huh?

At this point, as mentioned above, Vriska has chilled the fuck out considerably. She's aware of the way her behavior was shaped by her situation and is somewhat grateful to be away from the circumstances that made her act the way she did. Most of this happens offscreen, because it happens over a long period of time, and all of team dreaming dead is classified as secondary/minor character-wise. Hopefully her slow transition is believable. A lot of it simply came from being out of the environment that built her for thousands and thousands of years. After that long, it'd be weird if you *didn't* figure out some stuff about yourself. Her new attitude is something she can pass on to Terezi, who expresses anxiety about living without her sister there. I wanted to give that relationship some closure and express how important and formative it was to both of them, but at times Terezi in particular took it to some codependent extremes. Being able to exist without Vriska is something she needs to learn before they can meet again on an even footing.

I did want to get in at least one Vriska and Kanaya conversation, since they had that loose end going on. Don't have much to say about that re: Vriska's arc, but I did think it was worth touching on. As a side note, I was in Chicago for ALA during this update. Gill posted 'we're going to hit 2000 pages with this one' and I reblogged it going i think the mcfuck not since we were at 1200. She'd mixed up some numbers, but the thing is, I had left her unattended and while her drawing 800 pages of Vriska seemed unlikely, I couldn't rule it out.

VRISKA:  W8key w8key!!!!!!!! <33333333

I really liked the idea of having Vriska's dialog in the actual command prompt. Her psychic command is so powerful it's escaping the text box. It's fitting, too, because directly after this update Dave "wakes up" and then helps John "wake up" Calliope. As I mentioned before, all that stuff could've been lumped together into one flash, but I quickly decided not to do that.

On page 1213 Gill only has six 3s for the heart. Apparently the mspfa discord decided that's because she gave one each to Kanaya and Terezi. That's how we cover up our errors here folks. With style.

On page 1214 Vriska's literally stealing Lord English's light from Terezi and Kanaya which is a nice touch, I think.

On 1215 we can see Terezi's eyes starting to go, while Kanaya sensibly covers her face (and is more resistant to light damage in general.) Terezi's first blinding was done by Vriska and, despite it being done with negative intent, Terezi ended up associating it positively with their relationship. Her losing that blindness represented her failure to see justice as "blind". When she tried to do something because it was "right" even when it went against her heart, it destroyed her. This reblinding doesn't mean Terezi can be impartial again. You can't and shouldn't dispense justice that way. But it rebuilds her connection with her sister, and the last thing she ever sees is the last good thing Vriska Serket ever did.

Vriska's clock hits heroic and then explodes. The heroic/just thing is kinda pointless because she's already dead AND we've been told English can override that, but it was a nice touch and parallel, considering her initial death was a Just ruling followed by the clock being damaged.

So, about that sendoff. I've mentioned before that I dislike the heroic sacrifice trope. Ironically, in a juxtaposition I hadn't thought about until just now, Dave bitches about it at length in a conversation a few updates before this scene. I greenlit this one for a few reasons. First, it's not a redemption through death. Vriska doesn't suck up until this point and then this action alone is supposed to balance the scales. She's bettered herself as a person up to this point. Also, we've made it pretty clear by now that all the dreaming dead are on the way out, one way or another. Vriska isn't being singled out to die. She's being singled out to get a particularly dramatic exit because of her weight in the story. Even so, I felt bad about it. Still, as I talk about more extensively over here, I can't see an alternative that works. And maybe we're used to Homestuck not killing anyone for keeps, but sometimes stuff hurts, and it's supposed to. It says a lot for me that I actually felt bad about it, tbh. I really warmed up to her in the end. Even in the land of eternal children, she did grow up, and although TLC has no canon stance on what happens to the double-dead, and I haven't really developed an opinion, I like to think that one day after Terezi has a few more thousand years under her belt they'll meet up and she can tell her all about it.

There's probably more that could be said but this has been Very Long so I'm gonna leave it there.

[timeskip]

Memorizing Retribution

Terezi started dying the day she killed Vriska Serket.

Or; my unfinished take on a hanahaki au.

Karma has a funny way of coming back to get you. Justice, Terezi thinks, is like that, except instead of fate deciding for you, it’s another person.

Karma is the sickness that fills Terezi’s insides, the stomach twists and the need to puke as she remembers what she did to Vriska. It’s clear in her mind, smelling the coin flipping through the air, against the blueberry and orange smear that is Vriska Serket. The wind from the small metal disk barely ruffles Terezi’s hair, but she can feel it regardless.

She knows, of course, that the flip, the wind, it doesn’t matter in the long run, she knows that like she knows the sound of footsteps in the meteor, of quietly buzzing machinery under her feet, of people talking and typing, and the little honks from the horn pile. She takes the time given to her to think of her actions. Either she kills Vriska, or she doesn’t.

The coin will let Vriska go, because Vriska has infinite luck. She will wave as she leaves, maybe let out a laugh like she used to when the two of them were friends. Terezi can’t see the movements of the hand, but she knows that laugh. And she will leave a trail of sparkly blue fairy dust, blurry but bright against the darkness around them. It would smell of regret, because Terezi knows that in that timeline, she dies. All of them die, Jack Noir led to them, slashing at them, killing them.

It’s all just a matter of weighing her morals, and her hope, and her sense of justice. She doesn’t want to kill the person who used to be her best friend. She hopes that Vriska will change her mind about fighting, about being a hero, but she knows that that hope is futile. Vriska has always wanted to be a hero, since they were barely used to not being grubs.

Justice, Terezi finds, always wins, because it’s logic that overtakes everything.

So when the coin falls, clinking on the ground at Terezi’s feet, she doesn’t even stop to sniff at it. Both of them know. So Terezi grips her cane, still in the two pieces, still having the two blades drawn. And Vriska stands before her, lips pulled back into a grin, and she turns around, lifting her arm slightly. Terezi can smell the movement, but not the detail. Laughter pulls at Vriska’s smirk.

Justice always wins, Terezi thinks, adjusting her grip on her blade one last time before she shoves it forwards into that sunshine orange back. It’s right between her wings, through her completely. Terezi knows this is what has to be done. She pulls a sword out from her former friend, and she wants to drop it, but she doesn’t. The tip of it is stained blue.

The worst part should be the smell of it, hanging in the air, but it isn’t. No, it’s when Vriska get metal shoved into her ribs, and her laugh is cut off with a sharp, pained gasp. When Terezi pulls it out, she lets out a sound that’s not quite a gurgle. Maybe part of it is a growl, or a laugh, but it just sounds painful to Terezi’s ears. Vriska clutches herself as she falls onto her knees, to her hands, her elbows. Her blueberry blue blood spills, and Terezi can’t look away if she can’t see anything. If she could block out the smell, she would.

The scene plays out over and over in her head. A resounding clink, a painful sound, the feel of her blades in her hands. The weight of the blade going in and out of Vriska’s back. The fabric of her god outfit, torn.

Terezi killed a god, and it was ruled a just death. Redglare killed Mindfang, this time. Justice overrules everything, but Terezi feels sick as she replays the memory.

---

It started, really, with a game. Maybe everything important to Terezi’s life was a game, whether it be of luck, or roleplaying, or creating a universe.

But this particular game, the one that begins it all, is just a regular FLARP session. Vriska and Terezi play this together all the time, and they know the risks. It is, after all, a dangerous game, and Terezi likes it like that.

“Mindfang,” Terezi begins, grinning and looking at her friend, “what’re the spoils?”

Vriska looks vicious and beautiful. She’s small, and she’s dressed in the blue and black Mindfang costume. Her glasses reflect the dim light of Terezi’s screen, and behind them her yellow eyes glint. Her blue lips are pulled back to reveal her fangs, but she’s only smiling at Terezi. Terezi is filled with warmth, and it’s towards her friend alone.

It's before everything happened. Before Vriska paralyzed and killed and blinded other people. She's still deadly, but as Terezi remembers, she's still young. Vriska, at that point, will not hurt Terezi.

“Some gold, as usual, Redglare,” this Vriska of the past says, all eight pupils focused on Terezi. She holds a chest under her arm and runs a hand through her long hair, in between her horns.

Terezi gives her a sharp toothed grin and throws her arm over Vriska’s shoulders. They're highlighted by the husktop lighting, and the purple sky serves as a backdrop. Vriska is radiant, and Terezi feels the warmth inside her spread.

It was like that, back then. Their friendship was good, or so Terezi thought. Even if Vriska was difficult, sometimes, since the day with the purple sky and warm feelings, Terezi had that little thought in the back of her mind that maybe she loved Vriska. Except that love is not something that makes sense. Love is unbound by quadrants, and Terezi feels something that isn’t quite pale, isn’t quite flushed, isn’t quite pitch or ashen. It’s not as if she hates Vriska, after all.

It’s just… different. Maybe this is what happens when a troll lets another into their life so fully, as completely as Terezi has let Vriska find herself in their games. The feeling that bubbles inside Terezi turns dark when their friendship turns south, so that must be it.

So Terezi ignores it as she types too fast, trying to stop Vriska, then Aradia, because Tavros isn’t responding anymore. She knows that Tavros is injured, that he jumped off a cliff because of Vriska, but the thought makes dark things swirl inside her, so she ignores it. She stares at the husktop, bathes in it’s light as she furiously tries to stop what inevitably happens.

Everything goes to shit. Tavros is paralyzed. Aradia is dead. Vriska’s missing an arm and an eye. There’s no changing this. So Terezi shuts off her husktop as the sun starts to rise, stumbling slightly as she passes the window, getting too close to the floorboards of her treehouse hive. She doesn’t fall, though, and she simply collapses in her sopor slime, falling into a dreamless sleep despite all that happened. She’ll have to process it for real later, what she and the others did, but for now, she ignores the sinking in her bloodpusher.

It all started with a game, and Terezi didn’t expect it to get to this point. She didn’t expect for fire and red to be the last thing she ever sees, but she also didn’t expect her pulse to keep going faster when Vriska is mentioned. During the time before Vriska died, Terezi wasn’t sure if it was nervousness, or happiness, or anger. Now, Terezi thinks, it might have been shame at her inability to stop it all.

---

Terezi started dying the day she killed Vriska Serket.

Half of it is how one would expect. Terezi thinks about the problem again and again, her thoughts crumbling around her as she tries to rebuild trust in herself. She’s dying because she knows that even though what she did was just, she still feels sick, still feels terrible about it.

She spends a lot of time in Cantown with Dave and the Mayor, in the beginning. She surrounds herself with fortresses and colors and she draws chalk everywhere, and she jokes and eats the red colored sticks, even though Dave says not to. He’s laughing when he says it, though, so Terezi just says, “never will, Coolkid,” and Dave laughs harder. It’s not perfect, but it’s better.

Once, she switches up what she says to Dave’s request. “As Karkat would say,” she begins, grinning through the swarming feelings in her gut, putting on her best shouting, angry impression through sharp teeth, “suck it up, nookmunch.”

Dave sucks in a breath before laughing nearly as normal, this time. That’s when Terezi realizes that she’s close enough to Dave to hear that slight intake of air, and when he laughs, she feels the warmth of his breath on the side of her neck. They’re crouching together by the Cantown Library, adding another story to it upon the Mayor’s request.

It’s weird, to be so close to someone. Dave is a friend, probably, but they haven’t known each other for that long. Dave’s known her for longer, though, because of all the time travel he’s done, so maybe it’s not that strange. Terezi hasn’t been so close to someone in so, so long. It makes her heart ache. The last time, well, Terezi thinks it was probably Vriska. The thought is overwhelming, clawing up her throat and making it hard to breathe.

Dave was supposed to be a distraction from the repetition of blood and justice. Vriska Serket is dead. As much as Terezi wants to move on, she can’t.

She makes quick work on the library, and when she’s done she stands, stretching. Her back cracks, and she knows that Dave is looking up at her through his dark shades, even without seeing him.

“I’m gonna go, Coolkid. Lots of things to do, people to see!” Terezi’s voice is just a little strained. Her throat feels funny.

“Catch you later,” Dave says, slightly distant, but Terezi doesn’t pay attention to his tone before she’s rushing off. Just for a moment, she tells herself.

She listens to her footsteps, heavy on metal, and lets the buzzing fill her ears. She tries to clear her throat, but it doesn’t change the tickling she feels back there.

That’s when she starts coughing, and she ducks into a room, far enough away from Cantown that Dave won’t go looking. The buzzing seems quieter in here, but that might just be the sound of Terezi’s pulse in her ears drowning it out.

The coughing fit she has is more violent than it normally is. She’s not sure when, exactly, it became normal, but it is now. She’s been coughing so much, lately.

And that's when it happens. Terezi feels something lodged in her protein chute, as she coughs, and she brings her hand up, lets her sharp nails rest near her mouth. She can't stop coughing. She's still blind, but what vision she gets from smell is suddenly obscured by a scent that's sweet and blue and so powerful even as it is faint. It comes from within her, and when Terezi dislodges a single petal from her throat, she realizes why.

It's funny. Terezi might even laugh, if she wasn't so close to tears. The coughing dies out, her breathing returns, for the most part, to normal.

Terezi is dying, flowers taking root in her lungs and falling out through her throat. She holds the fragile, wet petal between her nails, and takes off her red glasses with her other hand because suddenly her eyes are burning.

The hanahaki disease, Nepeta had told Terezi, once, was about love that was not returned. It was rare, but it existed. Nepeta had told Terezi that she had known someone who had it, but she never told Terezi what happened to that person.

It doesn't sit well with her, but she crumples the petal, small and fragile and smelling sweet and blue. It's so frightening, lodging itself carefully inside her heart, and she feels sick. She is sick, and that will be her end.

[knight-of-heart-and-art]

all of them

D oh my fucking Gog

John Egbert: the time I was like nine and I hooked the chair out from under my sis when she sat down probably, I suck at pranks

Dave Strider: A car, a torch, a death and march to the sea by TØP and Bastille’s cover of basket case

Rose Lalonde: What’s your MBTI type? I. Don’t remember. 

Jade Harley: What’s your favorite celestial body? PILLARS OF CREATION I LOVE TEM SO MUCH

Jane Crocker: How good do you consider yourself to be at baking? keep me away from the fucking oven

Dirk Strider: What technological advancements are you hoping to be accomplished in the future? can I just learn enough about programming to know why my tumblr looks like it does p l e a s e 

Roxy Lalonde: What’s your favorite retro game? LoZ ocharina of time. Or pacman. Or pole position.

Jake English: What’s the last action movie you saw? uh…..hellboy ? Idk 

Aradia Megido: Name your favorite historical site/sites. The Cahokia mounds in st Louis, they’re so big? You can see for literal miles from the top. 

Tavros Nitram: Do you like collecting? If so, what do you collect? Hahaha….smuppets. Bones. Coins. Everything I can get my grubbly lil hands on, I’m basically a crow. 

Sollux Captor:How sarcastic are you on a daily basis? potato

Karkat Vantas: What’s the cheesiest thing you’ve ever witnessed? my friend joy and my other friend adyn when they were still dating

Nepeta Leijon: Do you consider yourself a cat-person? yes but please remember I’m also a dog person

Kanaya Maryam: What’s your ideal look when in comes to fashion? …on me? clothes. 

Terezi Pyrope: What’s the weirdest craving you’ve ever gotten? does the time I ate a full jar of pickled jalapeños when I was like two count

Vriska Serket: Do you believe in luck and fortune? yeah definitely

Equius Zahhak: Do you consider yourself physically and/or mentally stong? I can pick up an 140-pound person but don’t ask me to perform social interactions or get yelled at rip

Gamzee Makara: Do you prefer comedy or tragedy? yes

Eridan Ampora:Magic or science? hahahaha give me a world where there’s both. Like piers Anthony’s incarnations of immortality series. 

Feferi Peixes: Favorite sea creature? MANTIS SHRIMP THEY CAN SEE LIKE TEM EXTRA COLORS AND PUNCH THROUGH GLASS and I’ll probably never see one in person since they break aquariums

Damara Megido: Do you consider yourself a vengeful person? ….uh. Not really but it’d depend. 

Rufioh Nitram: If you could dye your hair any color, what would it be? deep blue

Mituna Captor: On a scale of 0-10 how would you rate your skateboarding? oh god I fall but 3 because I keep trying. Although last time someone tried to teach me I fell off, bruised my hip, the skateboard flew off at a tangent amd broke a pipe and I’m just lying on the garage floor laughing hysterically as water slowly floods the area and Brandon tries to shut it off. 

Kankri Vantas: Are you prone to going off in lengthy rants? uh I want to but then I remember that I suck amd I don’t have enough friends to alienate people by ranting so yeah

Meulin Leijon: Approximately how long are you on the internet everyday? too many

Porrim Maryam: Your stance on feminism? …I am a feminist? I think? 

Latula Pyrope: Favorite outdated slang word?  all I can think of is “fuc” because mom’s watching deadwood and that’s literally every third word out of everyone’s mouth but. Groovy? All the old words for gay and lesbian? I don’t know

Aranea Serket: What’s your all-time favorite book? The entire dark tower series by Stephen king, which can new extended to include almost all Stephen king books written. 

Horuss Zahhak: Opinion on horses? they,,, lorge  :2

Kurloz Makara: Would you give up your voice for telepathy? On the one hand my voice sucks but on the other hand telepathy is a vague term I’d need more specifics

Cronus Ampora: Your favorite thing about the 50s? the fact that they’re nothing like happy days depicts them as and also pulp era sci fi

Meenah Peixes: Favorite fish-pun? shell phone

Caliborn: Any old pieces of fanworks you could share? if I get one (1) ask aboutbtjis I’ll GI through my deviantart and post anything presentable here

Calliope: Do you consider yourself to be an optimistic person? its complicated but on good things no amd bad things yes. Like I assume that the thing won’t happen. 

Lord English: How far would you go to achieve your goals? ?? ????? ?????

Lil Cal: Do people consider you creepy or intimidating? probably yeah I’m weird as fucl

The Midnight Crew: Do you prefer brains or brawn? a blend of both fuck you

The Felt: If you could have one ability, what would it be? teleportation of a singular object or person from where it is to where I want it to be. Useful for getting my moirail where they belong. 

Dad Egbert/Crocker: Would you wear a fedora? do u know how long I’ve been trying to get one fuck yeah I would

Bro: Favorite bro pun? Bromeo, bromeo, why the fuck are you bromeo

Mom Lalonde: Do you have any regrets? …yeah…lots.

Davesprite: Have you ever felt inadequate? have I ever in

Lil Hal: Favorite meme? I lik the bred

Davepetasprite^2: Nya? owo what’s this??

Jasprosesprite^2: Favorite color combination? Pfffft blue and olive, black and royal blue, red and grey

Arquiusprite: How helpful do you try and be to others? as much as I possibly can please let me be of some use

Erisolsprite: Are you called moody on a regular basis? ….by. some people. 

Carapacians: Do you play chess? If so, do you usually play with the white or black chess pieces? no one will play with me :0( but I’ll take either

Doc Scratch: Ever ‘predicted’ the future? Okay so. There’s a book called…okay I don’t remember what it’s called. Something about a witch king, it’s by mark Anthony amd is in the harpers series of the forgotten realms series. In the emd they leave a character in the collapsing treasure room. Effectively killing him. I loved this guy okay? I wasn’t about to accept that shit. So I went “fuck you mark Anthony” and mentally composed an arc where he found a magic item and escaped. Turns out there was a second book and that’s literally what he did  

Ancestors: What’s the kind of mark you want to leave behind you. just let me make someone hapoy

Hussie: Your zodiac sign and/or god tier? Virgo/leo and knight of heart. 

goddamnit its done. Its done. D I love you but what the fuck.