#like they could never have been an endgame due to their disparate views

[americankimchi]

thinkin bout how i'm really glad rey wasn't a kenobi. narratively it would've been really fucking funny to have a kenobi spawn right when skywalker shit got real again like some sort of cosmic immune response by the force but like. nah. it wouldn't have made sense.

[abundantchewtoys]

HS Epi: Meat p7 reaction

Well, seeing as to what movie I just watched on Sunday. "We're in the Endgame now." :O I wonder if it'll switch back to Earth C before showing us (the tail end of) the Masterpiece scene.

I'm curious to know how truthful Caliborn was about the scene, what he may have omitted from his retelling (the presence of the leprechauns, maybe?), and also how it concluded. I wonder if it'll be told from Dirk's perspective, after the B1 kids have been stolen. He's got the closest connection to Cal and Arquiusprite, after all. I wonder how his perception of his puppet might have changed, too. For all we know, LOTAK might have been ripe with allusions and phropecies regarding the thing, thanks to his denizen. That's another thing connecting him to LE, after all: Yaldabaoth. Just cause he never went into the Lion's Mouth doesn't mean he didn't harvest every bit of intel and backstory. This is Dirk 'Batman Gambit' Strider we're talking about.

---

"The boxing bell is going off like it's having a fit." Well, I did ask for Dirk's perspective. :P Wrong Dirk! Okay, so it seems like the POV will be changing hands like a baton pass on Earth C. That would mean we're in for Rose's POV next, and I wouldn't mind that. Tight-lipped as she would still be even in her own mind's narration about her plans, it'd be nice to see things from her end!

"Dirk has to stick a finger in one ear to hear what Rose is saying over the cacophony of boos and buckets being lobbed toward center stage." Not sure if it would be worse or not for trolls to have thrown that bucket.

"He considers it all pretty fucking annoying, so he flips off the crowd and jumps the ropes. Always a good idea to abscond from the stadium before the customary show-end riot hits full swing." ... So his whole upset-the-audience-into-rioting is par for the course? Dear god, are all his fans hooligans? ... That actually runs pretty close to what happened in AIDS, come to think of it.

"ROSE: It’s not so much “what is up” as “what is down,” the answer to which is, proverbially: Me." Down for the count, not down in the brooding caverns, naturally. You know, since she's ascended to the highest top of the surface.

"ROSE: I mean that both physically and philosophically by the way.

DIRK: You’re down philosophically?

ROSE: Yes.

DIRK: I’m not sure what that actually means.

ROSE: What doesn’t it mean, Dirk." Oh my freaking god, these guys might even be more amazing together than Dave and Rose, it's a sight to behold.

"DIRK: Glad to see that my genetic predisposition for melodrama is still alive and well in my slime-progeny even after all these years.

ROSE: Please don’t interrupt. This is important, and I’ll need all the energy I can spare to sustain even a heavily monologic transmission of the relevant facts." Yes, Dirk, please cut Rose some slack, she only has so few monologues left in her. :P

"ROSE: Anyway, the matter at hand is my “condition,” with which you’re already familiar.

ROSE: I’ve struggled to devise the right way of telling you without causing undue alarm, which would unquestionably trigger the overbearing tendency of yours to “solve the problem” for me, which is not the kind of circumstance my constitution can withstand these days.

ROSE: I can barely lift a wrist to my forehead to telegraph my infirmity, of late. Your bullshit is precisely the thousand-pound feather that could knock me clean through my apartment’s plate glass window." While I don't disagree Rose's condition might be severe, I see she's still well enough to heat a scalding plate of sarcasm. Also, wouldn't Jasprosesprite^2 be better than Dirk at handling her situation? Her feelings for interacting with a clownesk version of herself not withstanding, it's a Rose that already went through the ultimate self thing. Granted, she had fake magic Sprite powers to help her cope, as well as bullshit feline asshole personality issues.

"I’m taking solace in the fact that your infirmity doesn’t seem to have spread to your vocal cords yet." Right, got to remind myself that actual voices are being used to talk with one another. Still not used to it for Homestuck characters doing this when phones are involved. :P The only time it happened in-story was when a "shellphone" was involved, after all.

"ROSE: The bottom line is this.

ROSE: I am ascending, and it is terrible." ... Hmm, could that imply that the Ultimate Self is the last of the god tiers, or pretty high up there, at least? It would take a ridiculous amount of XP, seven years may or may not be enough, but if it's about the accumulation of self-reflection & general knowledge, a Seer of Light would be pretty quick to collect that kind of required boons.

"Rose adjusts her position on the couch with the body language of one about to dive into the latest gossip about a mutual friend. The mutual in this case: her tortured psyche." So the therapist is seeking counsil, in a way, is she? :P

"ROSE: Years of refining my Seer of Light powers have cursed me with what is approaching near infinite prescience. Dwelling in this idyllic post-canon realm has worn down the barriers separating my primary consciousness from the memories and experiences of all my doomed alternate selves, which were forgotten and discarded over the due course of our journey." So that implies they were many, more than we'd assume immediately. There's Dream Rose, Alternate Future Rose, pre-retcon Rose (now Jasprose) & B2 Rose, but it appears there are more still. Well, okay, there's also Reload Rose now, I guess.

"ROSE: As I approach the realization of my Ultimate Self, I cannot stop the extant knowledge from seeping in. I am plagued by near constant visions from the less fortunate versions of myself, as well as a broadening view of the metatextual nature of our existence." She's starting to become self-aware, before you know it she'll be addressing us directly through the Fourth Wall! Well, it's not like we didn't have a smug monologic narrator before. (Did I mean Doc Scratch, Andrew Hussie or Lord English? Yes.)

"ROSE: It drains all of my energy to keep my consciousness focused on relevant events, but even then I am losing my ability to discern what is and is not canonically relevant, let alone what is also true or essential." Well, okay, if she can't even discern between her own life, fanon and fan fiction, she might really have a problem.

"ROSE: And all of this is making me incredibly fucking sick." Rose is getting Homestucksick, is it? :P

"DIRK: Oh. Is that all?" My first thought was: blatant sarcasm. But then... We don't know how far Dirk's powers extend, do we? What shards of his has he had access to all this time, if Brain Ghost Dirk is any indication?

"DIRK: Well, in the spirit of full disclosure,

DIRK: Same." Ooooooh, wow. So it's the same for him? If he was nurturing the mother grub of all splitting headaches all this time, no wonder he pisses on the whole audience experience every time. While he would have more experience juggling disparate experiences, it was already a strain on him back when it was just him and Dream Dirk. Can you imagine him having to jostle Arquiusprite's thoughts & desires, or god forbid, some part of Lord English' experiences too? ... Okay now I'm curious as to what it's like for Dirk.

... Dirk's Ultimate Self experience would have been one of those things I would have liked to see speculation of, back on the old forums. But alas, we're archival readers now, not serial readers. It was not meant to be.

Got to say though. If it's this hard on the god tiers, how must it be for Terezi? Because I'm pretty sure post-retcon Terezi forced an ultimate self revelation on herself through her mindy thing.

It might be that Mind is the aspect best suited at handling all these inflows from doomed timelines and conditional experiences. Or it might be that Heart is, they're related aspects, and Heart is supposed to stand for Soul. It just might depend on where you think the self is defined: in actual experiences, or in the potential for them, realized or not.

"DIRK: We are suffering from the same condition, Rose." So... Does this lend more stake to Dirk's idea for backing Jane, or is it just one of those situations where he can't discern the right course of action any more, that Rose was referring to?

"She allows several rare conversational beats to pass in silence between them, to process the admission." That's how you know things are grave, when Dirk and Rose stop talking.

"DIRK: I guess I used the wrong phrase. You are suffering from it. I am adapting to it.

DIRK: I already have, really." No, wait, THIS is how you know things are grave: when Dirk insists he's got a handle on things. "Adapting", like he's the AI version of himself, not the human version.

"ROSE: When were you going to tell me this?

DIRK: When you were ready.

ROSE: So you have determined that I’m ready to receive this rather critical piece of information now, of all times?

ROSE: What distinguishes the present from the other moments you could have mentioned it?" Well, isn't today the day that things become relevant again, Rose? April 13th? :P

"DIRK: Wow. Well, when you put it that way, it makes me sound like kind of a dick.

DIRK: But I guess it isn’t far from the truth, either." Well, you already sound like kind of a Dirk, most of the time, so

"

ROSE: Unbelievable.

DIRK: Look, it’s not something you just spring on people that frivolously.

DIRK: “Hey folks, just so you know, the boundaries of my awareness are coming apart, and now I know almost everything, about everyone, everywhere.”" "I can see into forever!" Okay, so it was more Dirk's low self-esteem springing up again. He was waiting for someone to "get it" and make the first move. So, is the omniscience thing coming from Arquius' unfathomable depths of AI? Or its connection to Doc Scatch???

"

DIRK: “Also, the process should be tearing my body apart, but actually I’m handling it quite well. Thanks for the concern though.”" Imagine Dirk as the dog in the "This is fine" image.

"DIRK: There will be time to explain all this.

DIRK: Despite whatever appearance of callousness I’ve maintained in withholding this information from you, I actually do have your best interests in mind. I don’t want to wear you out on this call." Gotta say, omniscient Dirk working behind the scenes with whatever boatload of narrative information he has on hand is both assuring and worrying.

"DIRK: For now, I’ll just mention that I’ve been alert to your problem for some time, and I’ve been devising a solution which should permanently remedy it without compromising the boon of your expanding consciousness." ... Definitely tipping back into worrying. It's for the lack of kernelsprites on Earth C that I'll give Dirk the benefit of the doubt, for now.

"DIRK: Would love to tell you, but I’ve got some work to do. Why don’t you stop by my studio later so we can hash this shit out in person." ... I dearly hope his solution isn't: "Here, upload your consciousness into this Rosebot. There! All the limits of your feeble immortal biological coil, removed."

So, Dirk (and Jake) have a studio, Rose has an apartment, Dave 'n Karkat 'n Jade a hive, John a house. I wonder if Jane has ended up owning a mansion of sorts (the White House doesn't count... yet).

Also, Dirk hashing things out is funny, because of Dave's former sylladex mode: hashmap.

"

DIRK: Right now, you should get some rest." Hmm, Blaperile has some theories rest might help her condition. I wonder if, through sleeping or some other process, Rose might be able to actually 'act' through her alternate selves. What if she could make contact with Reload Rose, send her some bits of the bigger picture without overloading her with information?

"ROSE: Actually, I’m feeling oddly invigorated suddenly. I think I’m good for more exposition, if you are." ... Okay didn't see that coming. Either she's scathingly sarcastic right now, or we're in for a treat.

"DIRK: Can’t say I’m surprised. But no." Nothing to perk up Rose better than the promise of secrets not yet revealed, I guess!

"ROSE: Have I caught you at a bad time?

DIRK: Nah, but there is an election coming up, and my work as a political operative is going to be absolutely essential for the fate of humanity." See, Rose could think Dirk is being falseful, but she's nearing omniscience so probably not. Still, Dirk is forgetting to include other species' fate in his calculations, not just humanity's.

"ROSE: I see. Wheels within wheels, I assume?

DIRK: There are always wheels. Wheels are everywhere.

DIRK: They aren’t my wheels or yours. The wheels don’t have owners or designers, but they do have caretakers.

DIRK: They won’t keep turning on their own without someone to grease the mechanism." This is turning into a Dave metaphor again. ... But hmm, that's a mechanics metaphor he's using. Is that a reference to that Rosebot I theorized about... or Arquiusprite? Cause if Rose could act through Reload Rose, Dirk could act through either his Reload self or Arquiusprite! Here's to hoping there isn't a shard in Lord English influencing his behaviour, or reading his every thought and intent.

"the full brunt of the sunset: purple and orange, blending brilliantly on the horizon." I see what you did there. Yes, Dirk and Rose's first actual conversation was brilliant.

"She’s right about him, he thinks. While his ecto-daughter views herself as having a somewhat deft artistic hand that lends itself naturally to a gentle push-and-pull style of influence, Dirk knows his methods are mechanical, like those of an engineer. There is nothing adaptive or interpretive about his method. Every piece has a purpose, a slot, an interlocking mechanism that is functionally pointless without the whole." Yes, it's been pointed out on occasion Rose is quite elegant in her ways. Those ways don't include tidying her room, but still. With the visuals being used to describe both of Rose 'n Dirk's different takes on influencing people, I am reminded of how Names in the "Practical Guide to Evil" story feel different for each person. For one, like putting on a tailormade pair of gloves, for another, like observing the methodical churning of a machine. I already felt quite a few times reminded of Homestuck while archive-reading PGtE (not done yet!), it's only fitting it now goes the other way around again.

Also, thinking about the wheels metaphor has gotten me thinking about LOHAC, and now I have the Clockwork theme from the Medium album stuck in my head.